Curt Doolittle

Theme: Institution

  • ECONOMISTS IN CHINA –“For most academics not in China, it is difficult for them

    http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/02/the-life-of-a-western-economist-in-china.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29#sthash.BTYhY3GZ.dpufWESTERN ECONOMISTS IN CHINA

    –“For most academics not in China, it is difficult for them to understand the level of scrutiny and monitoring we face on regular basis. Most professors have students assigned to monitor them and security officials approaching many people to report on our behavior. Our email is widely acknowledged, even by students, as being read. While there are some overt obvious forms of intimidation as I have detailed, much of it is also the “deal you can’t refuse” variety. There are no overt threats but the message is clear.”–

    See more at:

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-21 09:18:00 UTC

  • The American diplomat was not honest ENOUGH. The EU is a privileged, toothless,

    The American diplomat was not honest ENOUGH.

    The EU is a privileged, toothless, gutless, cowardly, institution without moral courage or integrity, and whose only legitimacy is its ability to unleash the american military through demonstrated moral indignation.

    “Sanctions”. Bullshit. Freeze all Ukrainian assets.

    GET US, THE U.S., OUT OF EUROPE

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-20 15:54:00 UTC

  • FOR NOTHING : LAZY GOVERNMENT WORKERS If we are to have any bank labor, and fede

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/18/for-federal-employees-office-often-closed-25-of-fi/#.UwTeBTn0uUY.facebookMONEY FOR NOTHING : LAZY GOVERNMENT WORKERS

    If we are to have any bank labor, and federal workers at all, they must remain open for business as any other service provider: From 8:00 AM to 10PM. How about that for a constitutional amendment?

    I’d also like to get an amendment that prohibits collective bargaining (unions) for government workers, as well as fixed benefit programs.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-19 11:40:00 UTC

  • THE POOR QUALITY OF POLITICIANS One thing that I hear pretty consistently, is th

    THE POOR QUALITY OF POLITICIANS

    One thing that I hear pretty consistently, is that the people in charge of the different political factions, and in fact, everyone in politics here, “Isn’t very good” or “isn’t very smart”. And you really do get that impression.

    I don’t know where the smart people are, or if they left, but you know, I always have this impression that the IQ distribution here is narrower (not sure where to get the data to prove that). I know that IQ is a bit lower (around 96) but again, I’ll bet that if I got my hands on the data, it’s a distribution issue. IQ rapidly degenerates south and east of Ukraine. Anything that the Turks touched was seriously impacted.

    But all that nonsense aside, you don’t seem to find smart people in government. And it’s not an anti-intellectual culture. Just the opposite. But the politicians really just remind you of gangsters and thugs.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-18 14:56:00 UTC

  • Necessary, Preferential, and Luxury Properties of Government

      A) NECESSARY PROPERTIES The NECESSARY properties of of a government are 1) provide a means of resolving differences without the use of violence (ie: to create a monopoly of violence within a geography.) 2) To provide a means of resolving differences requires a definition of property rights. 3) To prohibit alternative definitions of property rights from being imposed by force, theft or fraud, (or immigration.) These are the minimum properties of a government. B ) ADVANTAGEOUS PROPERTIES In addition to these properties, it may also be possible for a group of people to afford to also have government engage in the following: 4) To provide a means of investing in commons (human and physical infrastructure) by prohibiting free-riding, privatization, and competition when investing in commons. 5) To provide a means of cooperation between classes where privatization, free riding, rent seeking and competition prevent cooperation between classes. 6) To reduce both transaction costs and fraud by implementing weights, measures and currency. 7) To perform as an insurer of last resort against catastrophes. These are advantageous properties of government. C) PROPERTIES THAT ARE LUXURIES In addition to these properties, it may be possible for a group of people to afford to also have the government engage in the following LUXURIES: 8 ) Redistribution of all kinds, both in services, and in direct payments. 9) Inter-temporal redistribution from young to old, rather than saving and lending from old to young. (But this is very fragile.) These are LUXURIES that can be provided by some governments under rare circumstances in exceptional periods of time, where malthusian and group selection problems have been temporarily held at bay by technological innovation. The government is not the source of the ‘good things’. The courts, under the common law and property rights is the source of ‘good things’. The government we have today, has destroyed the common law, the rule of law, and created both corporatism and socialism. And we now suffer between two factions that try to control the government for corporatist or socialist means.

  • Necessary, Preferential, and Luxury Properties of Government

      A) NECESSARY PROPERTIES The NECESSARY properties of of a government are 1) provide a means of resolving differences without the use of violence (ie: to create a monopoly of violence within a geography.) 2) To provide a means of resolving differences requires a definition of property rights. 3) To prohibit alternative definitions of property rights from being imposed by force, theft or fraud, (or immigration.) These are the minimum properties of a government. B ) ADVANTAGEOUS PROPERTIES In addition to these properties, it may also be possible for a group of people to afford to also have government engage in the following: 4) To provide a means of investing in commons (human and physical infrastructure) by prohibiting free-riding, privatization, and competition when investing in commons. 5) To provide a means of cooperation between classes where privatization, free riding, rent seeking and competition prevent cooperation between classes. 6) To reduce both transaction costs and fraud by implementing weights, measures and currency. 7) To perform as an insurer of last resort against catastrophes. These are advantageous properties of government. C) PROPERTIES THAT ARE LUXURIES In addition to these properties, it may be possible for a group of people to afford to also have the government engage in the following LUXURIES: 8 ) Redistribution of all kinds, both in services, and in direct payments. 9) Inter-temporal redistribution from young to old, rather than saving and lending from old to young. (But this is very fragile.) These are LUXURIES that can be provided by some governments under rare circumstances in exceptional periods of time, where malthusian and group selection problems have been temporarily held at bay by technological innovation. The government is not the source of the ‘good things’. The courts, under the common law and property rights is the source of ‘good things’. The government we have today, has destroyed the common law, the rule of law, and created both corporatism and socialism. And we now suffer between two factions that try to control the government for corporatist or socialist means.

  • CRUSOE ECONOMICS AS THE NON-LOGIC OF THE GHETTO I suppose I can’t say this enoug

    CRUSOE ECONOMICS AS THE NON-LOGIC OF THE GHETTO

    I suppose I can’t say this enough, but Crusoe economics is useful for the analysis of economics between states, but is entirely useless for the deduction of the properties of a social order.

    It should be obvious by now that Crusoe’s island is an analogy to the medieval ghetto, of a state within a state. The sea constructs the borders and walls of the ghetto.

    Crusoe ethics aren’t ethical at all.

    They’re another form of obscurantist fraud that white people seem to just soak up like every other form of pseudoscience: Marxism, Socialism, Freudianism, Feminism, Cantor’s infinities, and Postmodernism.

    Only white people can be this stupid.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-12 03:27:00 UTC

  • DEFINING GHETTO ETHICS Ghetto Ethics: quite literally, the ethics of the medieva

    DEFINING GHETTO ETHICS

    Ghetto Ethics: quite literally, the ethics of the medieval urban ghetto.

    As a ‘state within a state’ residents of the ghetto can conduct exchange as if they are state actors by relying upon high trust exchange in-group, while using low trust exchange out-group.

    However, in any polity, each of us cannot act as a ‘state’ by applying low trust with some and high trust with others because the net result is a near universally low trust society for the vast majority.

    In such an environment demand for the state and its interventions as a proxy for trust remains high, since low trust is by definition the use of cunning and deception to obtain discounts and premiums that the opposite party would not tolerate willingly.

    In other words, low trust ethics are parasitic, and impose high transaction costs on the population.

    The underlying point I’m making is the absurdity of using the model of a state within a state to advocate for a stateless society. In that lens the entire rothbardian project is… well, absurdly illogical. Laughable even.

    Aristocratic egalitarianism (the protestant ethic) suppresses all cheating such that demand for the state is low because transaction costs and conflicts are minimized, while the velocity of production and exchange is high.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-12 02:56:00 UTC

  • THE TERM “BREADWINNER” MAKES NO SENSE WITHOUT THE CONCEPT OF THE NUCLEAR FAMILY.

    THE TERM “BREADWINNER” MAKES NO SENSE WITHOUT THE CONCEPT OF THE NUCLEAR FAMILY.

    And the term ‘family’ is just nonsense today. Families are a minority.

    In a two person household both must work and pay taxes to support the state.

    Why should we be forced into labor so that other people can afford not to labor? I don’t understand at all how that’s moral, ethical, honest or anything other than simple, basic, slavery.

    Yet economists argue in favor of slavery all day long.

    There is no ‘we’.

    I agree to cooperate with you as long as you agree to cooperate with me. But as you say, we are all individuals. I’m an individual. The state is a corporation. Or, a slave master from my perspective.

    The only ‘we’ I recognize are my kin. Outside of my kin, everyone else is not ‘we’ – that’s “you” or ‘them’. If you tell me that you get to appropriate my effort, and force my wife to work so that someone else doesn’t have to work I don’t really see how that’s moral and just.

    In fact, I think that married, cohabiting people with a single person in the labor force should be taxed FAR LESS than single people, rent seekers and free riders. Why shouldn’t we pay mother’s stay home with kids and household?

    You see where I”m going.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-11 10:18:00 UTC

  • LANDED GENTRY WERE BETTER STEWARDS OF THE LAND. Modern states are like locusts

    http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/a-case-for-the-landed-aristocracy-2014-by-sean-gabb/ARISTOCRACY: LANDED GENTRY WERE BETTER STEWARDS OF THE LAND.

    Modern states are like locusts.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-11 02:57:00 UTC