THREE INSTRUMENTS
(worth repeating)
We construct three forms of instruments.
1- Physical Instrumentation (the instruments)
2- Logical Instrumentation (the logics and methods)
3- Social Instrumentation (institutional)
And of three, the third is most important, since it is the hardest to develop and control, because the incentives of individuals are contrary to the production of instrumental measurements.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-25 16:24:00 UTC
WE MADE A BIG MISTAKE – A FRAUD.
I have learned a lot living in eastern Europe. It has reinforced my conviction that bureaucratic government is an unfortunate byproduct of the process of imposing rule of law on the unwilling, who are free riders, rent seekers, frauds and thieves whenever possible. And that only through rule of law do we force free riders to choose productive activity in the market over their natural human instincts to free ride, and do as little as possible.
Communists, Socialists, Democratic Socialists, Keyesian socialists, Chicago-monetarist socialists are all 1) bureaucratic, 2) advocating decision making based upon the imperceptible and incalculable and therefore engaged in BOTH (a)immoral deceptions and (b) impossible fallacies that (c) produce far worse externalities than direct benefits – they are lies that force the creation of additional lies, until all we live by is lies – including the lie of distorted prices: our information system.
But these are errors and deceptions of means, not ends. So that does not mean that the same ENDS are not achievable by MORAL and CALCULABLE MEANS: as a set of voluntary exchanges. It does not mean that MEANING(reason) cannot be converted to TRUTH (calculation).
One thing that’s clearly obvious, is the value of soaking up manual labor. manual labor abounds in the east, and it means that the infrastructure is produced at human scale: cobblestones and brick buildings. Ten men show up in a truck and take turns digging a hold to adjust a water main, rather than five men most of whom direct traffic impeded by machinery and trucks, and charge us exorbitant pensions in exchange.
And the other that’s clearly obvious to the economist, is that the pricing system distorts the compensation for labor. I have addressed this issue in many forms of late, but let me try to put it into a narrative that makes a little more sense to most people:
When we were all workers of the land, participation in the market was a BONUS form of income that allowed us to buy other market goods using money. If some of us were good enough at ORGANIZING and DISTRIBUTING production, some of us could then live entirely upon the benefits of the market – by profiting entirely by organizing production (capitalists-“can”, priests-“should”, and warriors-“must”) and distributing the fruits of production (investors, bankers, distributors, traders, salesmen, and craftsmen.)
And fluctuations in the economy did not impact the fluctuations (so much) of our means of sustenance (the farm) – the opposite actually. Sure, if the economy declined, then we would just have fewer market luxuries, and people who worked in the market would return to labor on the land, while the few who survived in the market also tightened their belts (or moved to better regions).
In order to participate in the local community, we were forced to respect property rights. In order to participate in the market, we were forced to respect even MORE property rights – more complex property rights than the simple rights of the village. Because we use more forms of property in the market than in the home or village.
But during the 19th, and early 20th century – and in some parts of the world, right up until the present – we converted people from sustenance for necessities, and market participation as a luxury, to near universal market dependence for both necessities and market participation. And we did it ON PURPOSE. As an organized, purposeful objective.
Now, some of us ‘Burkeians” feel that this is was a MORAL ambition to save mankind – the “OBLIGATION OF THE NOBILITY”. This is a western aristocratic sentiment expressed on world scale. (“Noblesse Oblige” – Chivalry – a demonstration of one’s status by Christian Works.) Others, viewed this conversion as merely a means of obtaining POWER and STATUS. Others today (Mr Putin and most of the tribal world) still view it as a means of obtaining power and status rather than Chivalry. The selling of modernity is just the selling of another religion that allows them to obtain status and power. (Not that this is an intrinsic bad really, it’s an incentive and incentives that produce positive outcomes are just selfish incentives and beneficial regardless of selfishness of them.)
So we purposefully changed the world by either Chivalric status incentives or Personal status incentives. And others resisted it as a threat to their status and incentives – and they still do.
So just as we forced property rights on village, property rights on market, and property rights on nations, we have forced property rights on the world.
But in doing so we have also ***eliminated the incentive to respect property rights***.
Yes. You got that right. You wouldn’t have to SELL property rights as a libertarian or conservative, if the incentive was there to RESPECT them without your sale of them. Right? Yes. That’s right. The incentive to respect property rights has been eradicated by FORCING people into the market rather than the tradition of constructing either stated or implied CONTRACTS for their participation in the market.
Why? Because it was useful as a means of obtaining power, to sell them entry into the market at a discount – without obligation. It was this dishonest action that allowed middle and lower classes in government to enfranchise the masses in an attempt to take power from those people who did respect property among themselves in the aristocratic egalitarian tradition as well as in the non-egalitarian aristocratic traditions.
And why was this a serious problem? Well, because as the market has become more efficient at eliminating the need for costly labor, plus we have moved from a shortage of labor in proximity to capital, to a dearth of labor in proximity to capital. So, the demand for labor has fallen. And now two consequences have occurred:
1) Men in particular cannot trade labor for ‘luxury’ income, nor can they return to the land for sustenance. (nor can they trade sex and affection for care-taking).
2) As such there is no positive incentive to respect property rights, only negative punishment for not respecting property rights.
Now, this is because of the original act of fraud: we conflated the COST of producing property rights with the COMPENSATION for respecting property rights. By stating that enfranchisement was a RIGHT rather than something to be purchased with respect for property rights, we OBSCURED the incentives necessary for OPERATIONAL CONSTRUCTION of those rights: the high cost of suppression of free riding in exchange for participation in the market – the extension of kinship to non-kin.
The problem is that for many many people, one no longer gains anything by forgoing opportunity for self interest. They gain nothing from protection of the common property, nor for the protection of norms, nor for the defense of or respect for private property. THEY OBTAIN NO COMPENSATION FOR THEIR COSTS.
And we did this. On purpose. We created this state of affairs. For status. And we sold it by fraudulent means – as a right not an exchange. And without an exchange, no rights can exist. We lied. We sold via fraud. Via verbalism that would have been impossible under the constraints for operationalism: Asking, what was exchanged?
So then, if we correct the problem, and we cannot offer people participation in the market in exchange for respect for property rights, and if property rights and commons are necessary for the voluntary organization of property, then we must find some other form of compensation for them in order to obtain from them the cost of maintaining the physical, normative, commons and private property within that commons.
You see, libertarians prolong the lie: that property rights is something other than a cost we bear in return for access to participation in the market that is the RESULT of trading respect for property rights in exchange for access to the market.
So now that we have made that exchange impossible, what can we do to create something with which to exchange for respect for the commons, and property rights?
OPTIONS
Well, of course, we can pay people for their efforts – all people. And that would be moral – rather than lying and trying to obtain property rights at a discount.
And if we did that we would eliminate immigration problems because each additional person reduces one’s share of the take.
And furthermore we could eliminate wage prices and collective barganing, because the wages would be merely the price of preferences, not necessities.
Now we might have to expunge a lot of people, but then many simple jobs would be available to younger and older people rather than those who require family incomes.
You get the idea.
The incalculable is synonymous with the immoral. The operational exposes the moral and immoral. And by operational articulation we can solve that which seemed before unsolvable.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev Ukraine.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-25 10:01:00 UTC
THINKING
You know Mises and Rothbard killed the idea of bureaucracy. But only Hoppe gave us an answer to it. Hoppe also killed the idea of temporary rather than ownership government – but he did not give us the answer to it.
I think I gave us that answer.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-24 05:06:00 UTC
THE INSTITUTIONAL SOLUTION IS THE JURY AND THE MARKET
We know how to build libertarian government across heterogeneous moral codes: universal standing (proposals) before the jury (of our peers), in which we propose fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchanges, free of negative externality.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-22 02:49:00 UTC
—“I should hasten to remind the court that we are here, in the presence of the court, because someone must decide that which is difficult to decide – not because the court is particularly skilled at such decisions, not that the court is better at such decisions than I, and certainly not because the court’s time is more precious than mine.”—
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-21 20:10:00 UTC
Well, rothbard’s pretense of a solution is ridiculous really. Hoppe tells us that the bureaucracy can’t work but not that government of voluntary contract like homeowners associations can’t work. But I think I explained why MAJORITY RULE DEMOCRACY can’t work. And I am not sure anyone has made that argument before. It’s possible, but I don’t think so.
But I think I am the only person to both state why democracy can’t work (majority rule that is) and HOW TO FIX IT if we want governments of any scale over heterogeneous peoples.
I just don’t think anyone’s every made this argument before.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-21 11:58:00 UTC
TRIBAL VERSUS CONTRACTUAL RELATIONS
–“A condition of liberty is not forcefully removing anyone from your tribe and starting interventionist wars with socialists.”–
I tribe is an involuntary genetic relation.
A contract is a voluntary legal association.
If you remove someone from a tribe, that has nothing to do with voluntary legal association, just as removing someone from the property of a voluntary legal association has nothing to do with their tribal membership.
It is a condition of liberty to remove people from your property.
It is an impossibility to construct a voluntary relation from an involuntary relation and visa versa.
If behavior is prohibited it is.
Mothers evolved dysgenic behaviors as a consequence of producing an irrational sacrificial redistributive moral intuition necessary for the development of highly dependent offspring. Female reproductive strategy is to bear offspring, to further their interests at the expense of the tribe. And to place the burden of their upkeep upon the tribe as frequently as possible – by seeking redistributions, rents and privileges. This intuition is not meaningful except in that circumstance. Even in that circumstance mothers of serial killers, career criminals, socially and reproductive undesirable, as well as unproductive and imbecilic offspring, all demonstrate suspension of disbelief in the merits of their children, and often in the merits of the children of others. This is non-sentient behavior. Conversely, retention of such individuals is a luxury – not a good – by which we satisfy the emotions of such pre-sentient humans. Taken to the extreme, it is dangerous to allow those who would abandon all care-taking of the infirmed in and less able or worse – engage in disregard for the experience of such individuals. Not because these individuals are valuable to mankind, but because people who are careless of others present a risk to us all, and an abrogation of the contract for mutual insurance we demonstrate to all kin out of cooperative necessity.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-18 02:08:00 UTC
I have a policy about not talking about the process of forcing political change.
And I actively refrain from talking about institutional solutions until I’m ready.
But Eli Harman inspired me too much.
He wheedled it out of me. 🙂
No leaking though.
🙂
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-14 06:54:00 UTC
Contrary to the Libertarian position the soviet union did not fail for economic reasons, it failed because of institutional problems and systemic corruption when a coup failed and dismantled the presumption of the persistence of power. The illusion was dispelled.
Had this illusion been maintained, yes, the soviet union would have remained a poor and backward civilization but that was the price for unifying so many primitive peoples and so much territory.
The undesirable nature of living life in such poverty, under such tyranny, by so many, particularly those of talents made flight attractive. But if we view it as a proletarian government trying to control natural elites, and seeking rents from them, I think that is the most concrete positioning. The soviets were an underclass movement, and they succeeded in walling in their talent, and neutralizing the economic differences between the talent groups in the most successful large scale redistribution from producer to the peasantry in history. However, this CAN WORK. The problem is that the cost of enforcing such a system produced and always will, externalities that are much more dangerous than redistributing only that which people are HAPPY to pay for the success of their KIN.
The north sea people are as inbred as appalachian hill folk. That’s why they favor redistribution – everyone is family, and looks and acts like it.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-13 08:40:00 UTC
PARTNERSHIP AS THE MORAL RULE OF BUSINESS
If you are lucky enough to choose the right people, and you work hard at it, the feeling of having partners in business, or in the business of building a nest, or in the business of raising a family – there is nothing like it.
I had a twenty year marriage with a partner I trusted and could talk to. I had a twenty year business relationship with a partner who I could (most of the time) talk to. An I have had investor relationships that you can talk to even under the most hostile of conditions, even when you are absolutely competitors, and you still understand one another and can act with trust.
Right now I have people who work with me as partners. And when you can just hammer on an issue, and come to one resolution after another with some comfort that you all have done your work of prosecuting an idea to the best extent that you can, there is no feeling in the world like it.
I see a lot of my fellow younger libertarians and I realize that the only thing stopping them from doing the same, is sufficient capital to prosecute and test an idea. One of the things I will always support the american way of life over any other country,is that it is far easier to do this in american than in any other place in the world I have yet found. our founders were business people and they made it possible and as yet the socialists haven’t succeeded in seeking sufficient rents against us that we are hobbled like europeans are.
White Europeans worry. White Americans just try. And you can see it spread into black and Hispanic populations. Jews have it by nature. Asians just need permission to separate from the group.
The secret to partnership is trying to make the other person happier than you make yourself. The secret to marriage is the same. The secret to commerce is the same.
The secret to life is the same.
The golden rule – do unto others.
The silver rule – do not unto others
And partnership means applying both.
Source date (UTC): 2014-11-08 07:22:00 UTC