Curt Doolittle

Theme: Institution

  • IN A CORRUPT SOCIETY, FEDERALIZATION = FEUDALIZATION —“We need to be honest wi

    IN A CORRUPT SOCIETY, FEDERALIZATION = FEUDALIZATION

    —“We need to be honest with each other: if someone wants to dismember the county and carry out not a federalization, dear ladies and gentlemen, but feudalization – there has been one Yanukovych and now they want 27 “Yanukovychs” in smaller regions. … That is my personal stance as a citizen: I will oppose to the last and Ukraine will never be dismembered,”—

    Yatsenyuk

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-17 13:46:00 UTC

  • THE LIFESTYLE CONSTRAINTS OF THE CATHEDRAL I hope I never have to live a social

    THE LIFESTYLE CONSTRAINTS OF THE CATHEDRAL

    I hope I never have to live a social pretense like most professors do, where they must protect their legitimacy with public conformity. I’d rather live like picasso, and chase pretty girls, art, and experiences to my last dying breath.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 07:02:00 UTC

  • RT @pewresearch: Median of 65% in 7 Europeans countries say the EU does not unde

    RT @pewresearch: Median of 65% in 7 Europeans countries say the EU does not understand their needs http://pewrsr.ch/SUJjar http://t.co/gpc4V…

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-15 10:01:29 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/466881043920723968

  • How Is Anarchism A Functional System For A Country?

    Anarchism depends upon rule of law, where the only law is private property, as the only formal institution of social order.  As far as we know this is the minimum requirement for the formation of a division of labor, trade, and contracts, and therefore an economy, wherein people possess a peaceful means for the resolution of disputes.

    For an homogenous outbred people with secure borders experiencing limited rates of change, there is no reason that this system cannot work, but only in rare cases does it work. 

    The problem we see in most of history, is that it has been hard for these groups to deny others the ability to impose a government.

    In modern times, it has become extremely difficult to compete economically without the organization of a body that can tax and produce commons (infrastructure).   This does not mean that it cannot be done by private means. Only that it is rare that it is.

    There is nothing terribly novel about anarchism other than the idea that it would exist outside of a ‘tribal’ polity.

    https://www.quora.com/How-is-anarchism-a-functional-system-for-a-country

  • How Is Anarchism A Functional System For A Country?

    Anarchism depends upon rule of law, where the only law is private property, as the only formal institution of social order.  As far as we know this is the minimum requirement for the formation of a division of labor, trade, and contracts, and therefore an economy, wherein people possess a peaceful means for the resolution of disputes.

    For an homogenous outbred people with secure borders experiencing limited rates of change, there is no reason that this system cannot work, but only in rare cases does it work. 

    The problem we see in most of history, is that it has been hard for these groups to deny others the ability to impose a government.

    In modern times, it has become extremely difficult to compete economically without the organization of a body that can tax and produce commons (infrastructure).   This does not mean that it cannot be done by private means. Only that it is rare that it is.

    There is nothing terribly novel about anarchism other than the idea that it would exist outside of a ‘tribal’ polity.

    https://www.quora.com/How-is-anarchism-a-functional-system-for-a-country

  • THE END OF THE MYTH OF THE ECONOMIC VIRTUE OF DENSE CITIES Now this is something

    THE END OF THE MYTH OF THE ECONOMIC VIRTUE OF DENSE CITIES

    Now this is something that I wasn’t sure was going to play out. But it appears that the data is starting to work in favor of suburbia (the ring around a city) more so than the downtown itself. The places that are experiencing growth are those that are not benefitting so much from the immigration of numbers (poor) but the immigration of talent.

    So I suspect that the next progressive myth that science is going to undermine, is the virtue of well managed big cities, rather than a number of closely related suburbs.

    I’ve sort of been watching the data that’s been slung around for the past decade and I assumed that it was just a matter of cities making it easier for bureaucrats to seek rents. And that’s actually the ‘first cause’. But it didn’t really occur to me that the “seattle/bellevue/redmond” model was actually the one that worked best.

    Now, I’ve looked at various Georgist theories, and there is definitely something to e said there since density increases productivity (of smart people) so much. And I’ve also worked at my preferred solution: pay people to do the work of policing laws, commons and norms. And you know that they accomplish slightly different things. My solution would actually distribute the poor into the surrounding territory where their lower value in production is not hampering the productivity of more productive people by forcing them out. Unfortunately the less well off want the value of the city even if they’re a net drag on the generation of tax revenue because really all they serve to do is allow vote buying that allows political and bureaucratic rent seekers to capture more of the revenue for themselves. Also, normative pressure is higher in rural areas, so the more ‘troublesome’ populations are more subject to normative pressures to ‘behave’ than in urban environments. ALso we are stuck with the fact that raising children in a city in no way is as awesome as raising them in a suburban home. (Spoken as someone raised in a small rural farm town, but who has lived in cities or suburbia for most of his adult life.)

    Anyway, I want to keep working on this a little more before taking a better position on it.

    Net is, that the progressive fantasy is the walking dead at this point. The conservative fantasy is impossible. The Rothbardian fantasy is immoral and impossible. So, what is our solution to the problem of formal institutions that is both moral and possible, even if it’s not ‘efficient’.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-08 15:11:00 UTC

  • It’s sort of like we need a house of Limits for conservatives, a house of Commer

    It’s sort of like we need a house of Limits for conservatives, a house of Commerce for libertarians and a house of Charity for progressives. Commerce and Charity can make contracts with one another, and those contracts must observe strict construction, and under that strict construction limited to observable, demonstrable, voluntary exchanges. The house Limits has the right of veto without comment.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-07 08:01:00 UTC

  • BUSINESS VALUE OF “ENGINEERED MINGLING” –“The purpose of all this engineered mi

    http://www.slate.com/articles/business/psychology_of_management/2014/05/open_plan_offices_the_new_trend_in_workplace_design.single.html#ixzz30vYjgxzHTHE BUSINESS VALUE OF “ENGINEERED MINGLING”

    –“The purpose of all this engineered mingling? It encourages something that a Bloomberg spokesperson terms “institutional eavesdropping.” Employees get a sense of what’s going on in every part of the company—almost through osmosis. As Michael Bloomberg puts it in his book, workers “absorb information peripherally while focusing elsewhere.” And this fuller understanding of corporate doings seems to quell office paranoia. “Openness also constantly puts [employees] in front of their peers,” Bloomberg writes, “preventing childish fantasies that coworkers are out to get them.”–

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-06 05:50:00 UTC

  • BURNHAM’S MANAGERIAL ELITE –“Burnham identified the new elite as the men “able

    BURNHAM’S MANAGERIAL ELITE

    –“Burnham identified the new elite as the men “able to control contemporary mass industry, the massed labor force, and a supra-national form of political organization.” He assumed that this control could be exercised by means of a compelling political formula. So, rational behavior for the elite would be to get the masses to accept unscientific myths. If they failed to sustain beliefs in the myths, the fabric of society would crack and they would be overthrown. In short, the leaders—if they themselves were scientific—must lie.”–

    Burnham was right. Except, that the alternative was not to possess a supra-national political organization, but to prohibit them entirely. The purpose of the large state was war – a creation of Napoleon.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-02 17:41:00 UTC

  • HOPPE’S RIGHT – YOU CAN’T SAY ‘LIBERTY’ IN STATE-FUNDED ACADEMIA – YOU HAVE TO W

    HOPPE’S RIGHT – YOU CAN’T SAY ‘LIBERTY’ IN STATE-FUNDED ACADEMIA – YOU HAVE TO WORK OUTSIDE OF ACADEMIA TO DO THE WORK THAT MUST BE DONE.

    I bet I couldn’t find a dissertation committee for my project. I bet if I was in state-funded-academia there is no way I could keep my job and do this work. Sean Gabb lamented a few weeks ago, that we used to have people in academia, media, and government, but we don’t. You have to do your work outside of the state-system. Even our closest allies at GMU never violate the sanctity of the social democratic state, democracy, and equality except in very timid terms: policy preference.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-02 02:31:00 UTC