Curt Doolittle

Theme: Institution

  • Capitalism: Cronyism Or Collectivism?

    I’M GOING TO PROVIDE AN INTERESTING AND POSSIBLY NOVEL ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION.

    Neither Capitalism (the voluntary organization of production, and distributed control of property) nor Socialism (the involuntary organization of production, and the centralized control of property) is possible.   Both systems result in totalitarian oligarchies.  Economic operation under socialism is impossible.  Economic concentration under capitalism is undesirable (by the masses).  The general argument is that capitalist oligarchies destroy each other in a constant process of creative destruction, and that socialist oligarchies do not.  This appears to be fairly obvious from both the logic and the evidence.

    Given the impossibility of either, the open question is the following:

    1) HOW DO WE MAINTAIN SYMMETRY OF COSTS OF THE SOCIAL ORDER NECESSARY FOR THE VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION GIVEN THE ASYMMETRY OF ECONOMIC PRODUCTIVITY OF INDIVIDUALS
    Under agrarianism, when we developed political universalism, we were equally able to contribute to the economy, because human physical effort and human mental discipline were the only determinants of relative productivity.  However, increasingly, the ability to work with abstract ideas has evolved to become competitively advantageous, while labor and learning by observation and imitation have lost all value in the economy.  As such, some individuals are highly productive and others are not. And there is no evidence of this difference in productivity.

    Capitalism is the name we use for the distribution of property to individuals where they may voluntarily organize and participate in production, and where they possess the incentive to participate in production, even if their only property is their body, time, and effort.

    When we respect property: private, shareholder and commons, and when we respect norms : manners, ethics, morals, myths, traditions and rituals, we pay for access to society and the market, and the system of production.  Unfortunately,

    Conversely, respect for law, order, manners, ethics, morals, traditions and norms – all of which ask us to forego opportunities for gratification, fall increasingly on the unproductive classes.  So if the lower classes must both observe laws, order, property, manners, ethics, morals, traditions and rituals, while at the same time they are unable to participate in the economy, then it is no longer logical for them to continue to forgo all these opportunities and pay the high cost of deprivation, when they obtain only access to the market for good and services, but not the ability to participate in the voluntary organization of production that forgoing opportunities for gratification makes possible. 

    2) WHY MONOPOLY FORM OF GOVERNMENT?
    Then second question is whether a society, under an homogenous government, practicing homogenous manners, ethics, morals, rituals, and myths,  really needs to exist as it has in the past.  Why for example, cannot the upper classes make use of a libertarian government, while the lower classes make use of a socialist government?  There is no reason really.  Most of western history relied upon state (nobility) and church (laity), or aristocracy (farmers) and labor (slaves – in the old world not new world sense).  The idea that we must possess a single economic and political system for people with different needs was an artifice of the enlightenment and most of our wars, and in fact, the war that nearly ended western civilization (ww1+ww2) was largely caused by the attempt to create an ideology justifying a monopoly form of government over people with dissimilar economic and political interests. 

    For economic cooperation to be possible one must possess uniform individual property rights, or economic cooperation and calculation is not possible.

    However, individuals can choose to collectivize their property, and others to atomize it, as suits their interests, and then the lower classes can negotiate with the upper classes for access to the lower classes as a market, the way states with different economies conduct trade policy with states with higher or lower standards of living and therefore costs.

    The reason we are in conflict is artificial.  We do not need to choose between socialism and capitalism.  We do not need to blend the two.  We can make use of both as we desire. Monopoly is just another word for tyranny, if our interests are sufficiently dissimilar, because our abilities to engage in productivity are sufficiently dissimilar.

    https://www.quora.com/Capitalism-CRONYISM-OR-COLLECTIVISM

  • How Has Civil Society Led To Political Developments?

    This question posits a possible misrepresentation.  No society where government supplies services is categorized as ‘civil’. A ‘civil’ society is one in where we demonstrate civic participation whether in the pre-war or greek sense: where citizens volunteer to participate in the management of the commons and the provision of services.  We live in an managerial society postwar, where the state manages professionals (bureaucrats and their agents) for the provision of services. (See Burnham). 

    The abuse of this term originates in the conflation of treating one another ‘with civility’ (without violence or coercion), with ‘civic society’, in which individuals participate in the voluntary organization and production of commons. 

    We do not live in a civic society, we live in a civil society. 

    Meaning matters.  Ideas produce consequences.

    https://www.quora.com/How-has-civil-society-led-to-political-developments

  • Capitalism: Why Are Investors And Shareholders Profitseekers Alone?

    They are not.

    The data clearly demonstrates that companies operate at the minimum profitability that is tolerated by creditors, and that employees and management seek the highest extraction possible that creditors will tolerate. 

    Government bureaucrats demonstrate exactly the same behavior, but government, because it is a monopoly cannot be ‘corrected’ by the forces of competition, or in practice, by law, and therefore companies tend to have very short life spans, and even very big and successful companies have very short periods at the top, where governments can persist as corrupt enterprises indefinitely.

    https://www.quora.com/Capitalism-Why-are-investors-and-shareholders-profitseekers-alone

  • Capitalism: Cronyism Or Collectivism?

    I’M GOING TO PROVIDE AN INTERESTING AND POSSIBLY NOVEL ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION.

    Neither Capitalism (the voluntary organization of production, and distributed control of property) nor Socialism (the involuntary organization of production, and the centralized control of property) is possible.   Both systems result in totalitarian oligarchies.  Economic operation under socialism is impossible.  Economic concentration under capitalism is undesirable (by the masses).  The general argument is that capitalist oligarchies destroy each other in a constant process of creative destruction, and that socialist oligarchies do not.  This appears to be fairly obvious from both the logic and the evidence.

    Given the impossibility of either, the open question is the following:

    1) HOW DO WE MAINTAIN SYMMETRY OF COSTS OF THE SOCIAL ORDER NECESSARY FOR THE VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION GIVEN THE ASYMMETRY OF ECONOMIC PRODUCTIVITY OF INDIVIDUALS
    Under agrarianism, when we developed political universalism, we were equally able to contribute to the economy, because human physical effort and human mental discipline were the only determinants of relative productivity.  However, increasingly, the ability to work with abstract ideas has evolved to become competitively advantageous, while labor and learning by observation and imitation have lost all value in the economy.  As such, some individuals are highly productive and others are not. And there is no evidence of this difference in productivity.

    Capitalism is the name we use for the distribution of property to individuals where they may voluntarily organize and participate in production, and where they possess the incentive to participate in production, even if their only property is their body, time, and effort.

    When we respect property: private, shareholder and commons, and when we respect norms : manners, ethics, morals, myths, traditions and rituals, we pay for access to society and the market, and the system of production.  Unfortunately,

    Conversely, respect for law, order, manners, ethics, morals, traditions and norms – all of which ask us to forego opportunities for gratification, fall increasingly on the unproductive classes.  So if the lower classes must both observe laws, order, property, manners, ethics, morals, traditions and rituals, while at the same time they are unable to participate in the economy, then it is no longer logical for them to continue to forgo all these opportunities and pay the high cost of deprivation, when they obtain only access to the market for good and services, but not the ability to participate in the voluntary organization of production that forgoing opportunities for gratification makes possible. 

    2) WHY MONOPOLY FORM OF GOVERNMENT?
    Then second question is whether a society, under an homogenous government, practicing homogenous manners, ethics, morals, rituals, and myths,  really needs to exist as it has in the past.  Why for example, cannot the upper classes make use of a libertarian government, while the lower classes make use of a socialist government?  There is no reason really.  Most of western history relied upon state (nobility) and church (laity), or aristocracy (farmers) and labor (slaves – in the old world not new world sense).  The idea that we must possess a single economic and political system for people with different needs was an artifice of the enlightenment and most of our wars, and in fact, the war that nearly ended western civilization (ww1+ww2) was largely caused by the attempt to create an ideology justifying a monopoly form of government over people with dissimilar economic and political interests. 

    For economic cooperation to be possible one must possess uniform individual property rights, or economic cooperation and calculation is not possible.

    However, individuals can choose to collectivize their property, and others to atomize it, as suits their interests, and then the lower classes can negotiate with the upper classes for access to the lower classes as a market, the way states with different economies conduct trade policy with states with higher or lower standards of living and therefore costs.

    The reason we are in conflict is artificial.  We do not need to choose between socialism and capitalism.  We do not need to blend the two.  We can make use of both as we desire. Monopoly is just another word for tyranny, if our interests are sufficiently dissimilar, because our abilities to engage in productivity are sufficiently dissimilar.

    https://www.quora.com/Capitalism-CRONYISM-OR-COLLECTIVISM

  • Is Political Economy A Discipline? How?

    “Political Economy” refers to the pre-war term for the discipline of Economics.  However, because the discipline of 20th century economics evolved to emphasize Macro-Economics and Econometrics, we use Political Economy today to refer to the study of institutions that assist in the voluntary organization of production (which is what capitalism means), by allowing individuals to cooperate in production, and providing them the incentive to cooperate in production. 

    These institutions include numbers, counting, accounting, money, banking, and interest, private property, shareholder property, common property, promise, contract, and common law.  Legislative and Regulatory law, fiat money, fiat credit, Redistribution, Fiscal, Trade and Monetary policy. 

    In practical terms we tend to separate academic economics: macro economics and econometrics into short term spending and policy tactics, from political economy: the long term effects of formal institutions (governmental institutions etc) and informal institutions (manners, ethics, morals, norms, traditions, myths, eduction and religion).

    (I work in Political Economy not Macro Economics.)

    https://www.quora.com/Is-political-economy-a-discipline-How

  • How Has Civil Society Led To Political Developments?

    This question posits a possible misrepresentation.  No society where government supplies services is categorized as ‘civil’. A ‘civil’ society is one in where we demonstrate civic participation whether in the pre-war or greek sense: where citizens volunteer to participate in the management of the commons and the provision of services.  We live in an managerial society postwar, where the state manages professionals (bureaucrats and their agents) for the provision of services. (See Burnham). 

    The abuse of this term originates in the conflation of treating one another ‘with civility’ (without violence or coercion), with ‘civic society’, in which individuals participate in the voluntary organization and production of commons. 

    We do not live in a civic society, we live in a civil society. 

    Meaning matters.  Ideas produce consequences.

    https://www.quora.com/How-has-civil-society-led-to-political-developments

  • WHAT IS CURT DOING? DRIVING TOWARD FASCISM? (NO) Just a note to tame the people

    WHAT IS CURT DOING? DRIVING TOWARD FASCISM? (NO)

    Just a note to tame the people I might make nervous: Don’t get ahead of me. I have already solved the institutional problem of a heterogeneous system of cooperation over homogenous normative polities – the way we demonstrate that want to live. Shared cooperation but tribal homes. Insurance at scale. I solved that first. The problem has always been in explaining why it’s necessary, and why its the ONLY institutional solution to heterogeneous polity: calculability.

    We have to stop people from trying to steal. The history of the evolution of the suppression of free riding is that we must expand our definition of property with the expansion of what we use as property. The commons is property. That property can be polluted with lies, or constantly maintained by truthful debate.

    It’s not that complicated. We’ve been doing it mostly right for 4500 years.

    I work by constructing arguments out of necessary propositions constrained by a few assumptions: liberty, prosperity, and rates of innovation that improve our genetic competitiveness against others who are doing the same. Our western strength has been the degree with which we have maintained conceptual correspondence with reality while increasing the population we cooperate with. This turns out to produce the greatest rate of innovation of any civilization, allow us out here on the fringe to ‘come from behind’ repeatedly.

    The side effect is that we get to profit from selling these innovations to others, just as others previously benefitted from selling their innovations to us. But we have always been in small numbers. And we are returning to a people of small numbers. And we have lost our advantage.

    So when I work I run down ideas and test them via argument. some of them succeed and some of them fail. I reinforce the ones that succeed, and discard those that fail. Sometimes I have to abandon entire strains of thought. But when I have an idea, I take it to market and find people to criticize it. And I improve it more.

    Right now I am trying to find a solution to what I call ‘lying’ or ‘shipping fraudulent intellectual product’. And while I know the basis of it, I see something very interesting out on the horizon at least as interesting as the other ideas I’ve produced.

    And so I am constructing arguments that function as a bridge that extends in that direction.

    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-01 07:45:00 UTC

  • The dim talk about feelings. The well intentioned talk about beliefs. And the wi

    The dim talk about feelings. The well intentioned talk about beliefs. And the wise talk about institutions.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-30 13:55:00 UTC

  • Could We Use Insurance For Public Speech?

    [I]f one had to be insured to issue public speech (sort of like homeowners insurance – everyone had it) then we would rapidly evolve classes in making public speech, which would demonstrate how to witness (truth telling). (Heinlein suggested something of this order.) Now some speech advocates theft, and some does not. Some purports to convey truths, and some does not. This is essentially restoring the greek discipline of rhetoric in an age where media replicates faster than greek era human voices could quell. This is also much closer to anglo saxon law. Why is it that I an produce a ladder that subjects people to harm and am accountable, but if I advocate a political policy that causes millions of deaths, I am not accountable? (as usual, I am suggesting a common law (property rights), universal standing, and private insurance based solution to regulation, with fairly high confidence that the public, insurers and producers will seek practical means of solving problems without authoritarian intervention.)

  • Could We Use Insurance For Public Speech?

    [I]f one had to be insured to issue public speech (sort of like homeowners insurance – everyone had it) then we would rapidly evolve classes in making public speech, which would demonstrate how to witness (truth telling). (Heinlein suggested something of this order.) Now some speech advocates theft, and some does not. Some purports to convey truths, and some does not. This is essentially restoring the greek discipline of rhetoric in an age where media replicates faster than greek era human voices could quell. This is also much closer to anglo saxon law. Why is it that I an produce a ladder that subjects people to harm and am accountable, but if I advocate a political policy that causes millions of deaths, I am not accountable? (as usual, I am suggesting a common law (property rights), universal standing, and private insurance based solution to regulation, with fairly high confidence that the public, insurers and producers will seek practical means of solving problems without authoritarian intervention.)