Curt Doolittle

Theme: Institution

  • Question? Where In History Has Libertarianism Ever Worked?

    Where in history has libertarianism ever successfully been practiced? It seems a miserable failure in Somalia. What are the problems that you feel need to be “fixed”? I like much of what I read at the Mises site and other Libertarian internet gathering places, but I dislike and disagree with the majority of it. What would you call “socially progressive” and how can that be achieved through libertarian policy as opposed to our current system?– Jeff.

    You’re right sort of. That is, if you define libertarianism as rothbardianism (anarchism) rather than Hayekianism (jeffersonian classical liberalism). Because the term ‘liberal’ was stolen by the progressive and socialist movements, the classical liberals adopted ‘libertarian’ under Hayek’d advice. The anarchists under rothbard adopted it as well, following the french tradition. (Realistically this division is a debate between the jewish and christian concepts of social order. and those two concepts are differentiated by the norms needed by land holding Christians and non-land holding jews.) At this moment, the anarchists and classical liberals are fighting over ownership of the self identifying label ‘libertarian’. This pair is, over the past two years, further breaking into ‘bleeding heart libertarians’ under the guidance of Horowitz, the Propertarians under Hoppe and people like myself, and the ‘libertarians” (anarchists) under the mises institute., and the more classical liberal republicans under the Cato institute, and the conservatives under the Heritage and other organizations. So when you hear ‘libertarian’ most of the rhetoric on the web is driven the the Rothbardians under the Misesians. Because Lew Rockewell has succeeded in educating a legion of informed followers using the argumentative model developed by the marxists. That is why the ron paul effect is working. And the rest of us are trying to promote either private government that replaces political bureaucracy with private insurance companies, or some version of jeffersonian classical liberal institutions with updated principles that include libertarian economic insights – mostly those developed by Friedman, and legal insights, most of which are developed by Hayek and Sowell. The conservatives meanwhile are relying on insights found from history that finally articulate the conservative position as something rational. These ideas are being provided by economic historians like Neal Ferguson, Religious historians like Karen Armstrong, and inadvertently by political historian Francis Fukuyama as well as hundreds of others. And then I’m in my little corner of the world trying to piece it all together as a consistent framework so that we can have rational rather than moralistic arguments.

    So to answer your question: the reason you and I have the choice to argue about the ‘spoils’ of productivity from this classical liberal economy (libertarian economy) that we live in, is because unlike every other society on earth, we developed the rule of law (which means that the government is limited in what it can do by laws, it does not mean that we have to follow the laws). We developed rational debate, and the competition between powers in order to preserve that rule of law. And we developed the nuclear family in order to break bonds of consanguinity so that people would eschew corruption — something unique to the west — in order to be loyal to society and abstract rules, rather than family and tribe. The trick in history it turns out is to produce innovation faster than the state and others can seek rents against that productivity. This feat is accomplished through property rights guaranteed by the rule of law.

    So the answer to your question is that we live in libertarianism. It was successfully attacked by marxism, at the cost of 100M dead. It was attacked by socialism, at the cost of endemic corruption and poverty. It has been attacked by social democracy, which has played out as bankrupting the west. And finally it has been conquered through immigration.

    The underlying question is whether we transfer from the productive who breed less to the unproductive who breed more. And that question has a dysgenic answer. That answer has resulted in the falling of westerners behind their ashkenazi peers. That is the best metric we use for a practical example of the result.

  • Question? Where In History Has Libertarianism Ever Worked?

    Where in history has libertarianism ever successfully been practiced? It seems a miserable failure in Somalia. What are the problems that you feel need to be “fixed”? I like much of what I read at the Mises site and other Libertarian internet gathering places, but I dislike and disagree with the majority of it. What would you call “socially progressive” and how can that be achieved through libertarian policy as opposed to our current system?– Jeff.

    You’re right sort of. That is, if you define libertarianism as rothbardianism (anarchism) rather than Hayekianism (jeffersonian classical liberalism). Because the term ‘liberal’ was stolen by the progressive and socialist movements, the classical liberals adopted ‘libertarian’ under Hayek’d advice. The anarchists under rothbard adopted it as well, following the french tradition. (Realistically this division is a debate between the jewish and christian concepts of social order. and those two concepts are differentiated by the norms needed by land holding Christians and non-land holding jews.) At this moment, the anarchists and classical liberals are fighting over ownership of the self identifying label ‘libertarian’. This pair is, over the past two years, further breaking into ‘bleeding heart libertarians’ under the guidance of Horowitz, the Propertarians under Hoppe and people like myself, and the ‘libertarians” (anarchists) under the mises institute., and the more classical liberal republicans under the Cato institute, and the conservatives under the Heritage and other organizations. So when you hear ‘libertarian’ most of the rhetoric on the web is driven the the Rothbardians under the Misesians. Because Lew Rockewell has succeeded in educating a legion of informed followers using the argumentative model developed by the marxists. That is why the ron paul effect is working. And the rest of us are trying to promote either private government that replaces political bureaucracy with private insurance companies, or some version of jeffersonian classical liberal institutions with updated principles that include libertarian economic insights – mostly those developed by Friedman, and legal insights, most of which are developed by Hayek and Sowell. The conservatives meanwhile are relying on insights found from history that finally articulate the conservative position as something rational. These ideas are being provided by economic historians like Neal Ferguson, Religious historians like Karen Armstrong, and inadvertently by political historian Francis Fukuyama as well as hundreds of others. And then I’m in my little corner of the world trying to piece it all together as a consistent framework so that we can have rational rather than moralistic arguments.

    So to answer your question: the reason you and I have the choice to argue about the ‘spoils’ of productivity from this classical liberal economy (libertarian economy) that we live in, is because unlike every other society on earth, we developed the rule of law (which means that the government is limited in what it can do by laws, it does not mean that we have to follow the laws). We developed rational debate, and the competition between powers in order to preserve that rule of law. And we developed the nuclear family in order to break bonds of consanguinity so that people would eschew corruption — something unique to the west — in order to be loyal to society and abstract rules, rather than family and tribe. The trick in history it turns out is to produce innovation faster than the state and others can seek rents against that productivity. This feat is accomplished through property rights guaranteed by the rule of law.

    So the answer to your question is that we live in libertarianism. It was successfully attacked by marxism, at the cost of 100M dead. It was attacked by socialism, at the cost of endemic corruption and poverty. It has been attacked by social democracy, which has played out as bankrupting the west. And finally it has been conquered through immigration.

    The underlying question is whether we transfer from the productive who breed less to the unproductive who breed more. And that question has a dysgenic answer. That answer has resulted in the falling of westerners behind their ashkenazi peers. That is the best metric we use for a practical example of the result.

  • Three Institutions And Why Libertarianism Is The Answer To Political Problems

    The nuclear family is an expensive artifice. It is economically accountable. It is the smallest economically accountable unit (tribe) humans can produce. It requires constant compromise. It requires suppression of our instincts and desires. It requires a long time preference. Because of that it encourages late marriage, and careful mate selection. The reward we get for economic accountability, constant compromise, suppression of our instincts and desires, the risk of planning, delaying marriage, and careful mate selection, is status cues and economic enfranchisement by others who pay these high costs. Conversely, if we do not ‘conform’ we pay the cost of lost economic and social opportunity. If one ‘cheats’ through non conformity, one is effectively obtaining the benefits of this highly conforming, high-trust, highly productive social order at a discount — at the expense of others, and they see it as ‘unfair’. It is not clear to westerners who live in a universe of nuclear families, that this social order is an artificial construct created by the church in order to undermine inbreeding and family and tribal ties. The church outlawed marrying as far out as six cousins. (if we did that to the muslim world they would be unable to breed.) The manorial system required that one demonstrate fitness in order to obtain land to rent, in order to obtain a wife and feed a family (and obtain access to sex.) These three systems: the manorial (corporate) system, and the nuclear family, and the common law, induced the conformity we see as ‘western conservatism’. (which is inaccurate. It’s western germanic christian manorialism with english classical liberal institutions that ‘conservatives’ feel ‘conservative’ about.) But it is impossible to create a high trust society (“getting to Denmark”) without these three systems. That is why the west is unique. It used the nuclear family, the ‘corporation’, and the common law (no centralized power) to create a highly accountable system where allegiance was to society as a whole rather than family or tribe. And by doing so, this process insured quality breeding: it suppressed the breeding of the underclasses. (Which has led to the assertion, that while western ‘whites’ and ashkenazi jews previously had the same IQ distribution, we have fallen by 5 points since 1850 because of overbreeding by the lower classes. As it stands, the USA will continue to decline in aggregate IQ over the next century. The impact of this is not something we understand. But given that both the greek pre-industrial revolution and the British industrial revolution occurred after a similar duration of manorialism makes it very curious as to whether our way of life, which is predicated on verbal reasoning that requires a substantial part of the population possess an IQ over 106, is worth considering.) That this economic and social system unarticulated is one of the great unfortunate features of history.It prevents conservatives from understanding that their social system can adapt given the proper institutions and ridiculous non-conforming objections like race and sexual preference are immaterial if the institutional safeguards are in place to protect the economy from aberrant norms. WIthout understanding our own society as a set of causal institutions we cannot create a government of exchanges where both win rather than dictates where one loses. And the central premise of libertarian philosophy is that we can EXCHANGE, rather than FORCE each other to do things.

  • Three Institutions And Why Libertarianism Is The Answer To Political Problems

    The nuclear family is an expensive artifice. It is economically accountable. It is the smallest economically accountable unit (tribe) humans can produce. It requires constant compromise. It requires suppression of our instincts and desires. It requires a long time preference. Because of that it encourages late marriage, and careful mate selection. The reward we get for economic accountability, constant compromise, suppression of our instincts and desires, the risk of planning, delaying marriage, and careful mate selection, is status cues and economic enfranchisement by others who pay these high costs. Conversely, if we do not ‘conform’ we pay the cost of lost economic and social opportunity. If one ‘cheats’ through non conformity, one is effectively obtaining the benefits of this highly conforming, high-trust, highly productive social order at a discount — at the expense of others, and they see it as ‘unfair’. It is not clear to westerners who live in a universe of nuclear families, that this social order is an artificial construct created by the church in order to undermine inbreeding and family and tribal ties. The church outlawed marrying as far out as six cousins. (if we did that to the muslim world they would be unable to breed.) The manorial system required that one demonstrate fitness in order to obtain land to rent, in order to obtain a wife and feed a family (and obtain access to sex.) These three systems: the manorial (corporate) system, and the nuclear family, and the common law, induced the conformity we see as ‘western conservatism’. (which is inaccurate. It’s western germanic christian manorialism with english classical liberal institutions that ‘conservatives’ feel ‘conservative’ about.) But it is impossible to create a high trust society (“getting to Denmark”) without these three systems. That is why the west is unique. It used the nuclear family, the ‘corporation’, and the common law (no centralized power) to create a highly accountable system where allegiance was to society as a whole rather than family or tribe. And by doing so, this process insured quality breeding: it suppressed the breeding of the underclasses. (Which has led to the assertion, that while western ‘whites’ and ashkenazi jews previously had the same IQ distribution, we have fallen by 5 points since 1850 because of overbreeding by the lower classes. As it stands, the USA will continue to decline in aggregate IQ over the next century. The impact of this is not something we understand. But given that both the greek pre-industrial revolution and the British industrial revolution occurred after a similar duration of manorialism makes it very curious as to whether our way of life, which is predicated on verbal reasoning that requires a substantial part of the population possess an IQ over 106, is worth considering.) That this economic and social system unarticulated is one of the great unfortunate features of history.It prevents conservatives from understanding that their social system can adapt given the proper institutions and ridiculous non-conforming objections like race and sexual preference are immaterial if the institutional safeguards are in place to protect the economy from aberrant norms. WIthout understanding our own society as a set of causal institutions we cannot create a government of exchanges where both win rather than dictates where one loses. And the central premise of libertarian philosophy is that we can EXCHANGE, rather than FORCE each other to do things.

  • HUMANITIES AND NORMS “The norms promoted by prestigious humanities departments a

    HUMANITIES AND NORMS

    “The norms promoted by prestigious humanities departments are unpalatable when not couched in euphemism, and shielded by status-affirming organizational structures.” – Anon.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-08 08:28:00 UTC

  • Daily Krugman Watch: On Cato and the Kochs

    March 5th, 2012 Posted by CurtD Krugman jumps on the Kochs bandwagon today: I replied: Of the libertarian think tanks, Cato is the most policy oriented. The Kochs want to move it more into policy and further away from theory in order to help the republican party platform. (Which doesn’t necessarily bother those of us who are members of more radical think tanks.) While I understand that you have an agenda, it is perfectly reasonable to purge language that polls unfavorably. But you will rarely find a conservative engaging in deceptions on the scale that do liberals. Conservative have a higher standard. The public holds them accountable to a higher standard because they profess a higher standard. But that said, voter manipulation, association with global finance, violence, and systemic corruption are by far predominantly liberal activities. So are we supposed to hold you to the liberal standard? Or the conservative standard? Because you claim a high standard, but by your statements contradict it.

  • Daily Krugman Watch: On Cato and the Kochs

    March 5th, 2012 Posted by CurtD Krugman jumps on the Kochs bandwagon today: I replied: Of the libertarian think tanks, Cato is the most policy oriented. The Kochs want to move it more into policy and further away from theory in order to help the republican party platform. (Which doesn’t necessarily bother those of us who are members of more radical think tanks.) While I understand that you have an agenda, it is perfectly reasonable to purge language that polls unfavorably. But you will rarely find a conservative engaging in deceptions on the scale that do liberals. Conservative have a higher standard. The public holds them accountable to a higher standard because they profess a higher standard. But that said, voter manipulation, association with global finance, violence, and systemic corruption are by far predominantly liberal activities. So are we supposed to hold you to the liberal standard? Or the conservative standard? Because you claim a high standard, but by your statements contradict it.

  • Getting To Denmark

    This has a distinctly Chinese authoritarian tone to it. And that’s OK. If we can admire the Chinese for their current economy we can admire the rest of their political edicts too: Economists, social scientists, public intellectuals and politicians all use the Nordic Fallacy: the goal of making every country like Denmark. ie: a small homogenous germanic protestant country surrounded by other germanic protestants, with no exterior enemies and no need for self defense, and no strategic resources. We might ask, why we don’t ‘get to Switzerland’ which as a country has a far harder political problem. That said, here is how the average country can Get To Denmark:

    1. Any state larger than 10M must secede a territory sufficient to reduce it to 10M.
    2. Outlaw Consanguineous marriages out to three generations (This is the most important tactic one can take.)
    3. Outlaw non-english foreign web access, video, television channels, and literature. (english is Lingua Franca of business and science, that’s the only reason to grant it an exception.)
    4. Outlaw and eliminate non christian and or non-secular religious buildings, businesses, and associations.
    5. Raise the age of consent to 21, and the age of marriage to 25 with severe penalties, including prison or permanent deportation and tattooing.
    6. Require proof of sustainable income in order to have a child, with loss of the child, permanent imprisonment or deportation as the consequence.
    7. Enumerate all Property Rights within an immutable constitution, and require all legislation passed to demonstrate why it is permitted by the constitution.
    8. Use lottocracy rather than democracy to rotate political positions every two years.
    9. Outlaw job protection for anyone who directly or indirectly serves the government.
    10. Get a king and queen. The nordics have them. Monarchs are the only form of government people understand and the most common in history – and the tend to stop people from seeking too much political power, or being too ridiculously ambitious.
    11. Mandatory eduction in the western cannon for all citizens regardless of their age at immigration. Religion doesn’t matter as much as the western cannon does. It’s secular but the moral christian values are pervasive and unavoidable.
    12. Mandatory use of single language. Period. No exceptions. Give tickets for it if you have to.
    13. Mandatory civil service for women (delay marriage, and forcibly indoctrinate into cultural norms, with extended work, loss of fertility, and prison for abdication.)
    14. Mandatory military service for males (Forcible cultural indoctrination with physical punishment and loss of fertility for abdication.)
    15. Zero Tolerance Policy with 3 strikes life prison sentences. (Harsh prison sentences have been successful in the USA as a deterrent.)

    That’s what it will take to get to ‘Denmark’. Twenty years of that and you’ll have a solid polity with redistsrbutive instincts. That’s exactly what the european monarchies and nation states did. It’s what the Chinese are doing. And that’s why no one will get there. And in case find that list objectionable, I don’t usually do this but I’ll quote Rand:

    “It’s only human,” you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept “human” mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure–as if “to feel” were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not–as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not.

    In other words, the progressives forgive all possible depravity and call the coward, lazy and fools heroic. While those of us who work daily with discipline and courage are called selfish and inhuman. Nonsense. Time to be done with the cult of guilt: No guilt. No white guilt, no christian guilt, no colonial guilt, no male guilt. Take it back. Take it back now. We did the world the greatest favor since the domestication of plants and animals. Ask for respect not forgiveness.

  • We’re Not Exporting Democracy. We’re Exporting Consumer Capitalism. And Our Military Is Very A Profitable Investment. (Really)

    USEFUL IDEAS FOR DEFENSE OF CONSERVATIVE IDEAS On [online magazine] Counterpunch today, Paul Craig Roberts asks Is Western Democracy Real or a Facade? He starts with:

    The United States government and its NATO puppets have been killing Muslim men, women and children for a decade in the name of bringing them democracy. But is the West itself a bastion of democracy?

    He then goes on to list a number of American sins that broadcast to the world our hypocrisy. It’s a straw man argument that seeks to reframe historical American strategic policy into current populist jargon for what must be purely political reasons. I have only met Paul once, quite a few years ago, and only for a few minutes of discusion at a conference, but he appears to be an honest man, and I can only attribute this article to the effects of accumulated frustration. Which I can understand. But a questionable portrayal of events hinging upon a specious moral argument does nothing to improve matters at all. It’s much more helpful to deal with the facts and determine where we go from there: GEOPOLITICAL STRATEGY REGARDING THE MUSLIM WORLD1) The United states government has been attempting to contain the Muslim world since the fall of the British Empire for the following reasons:

      Americans are pragmatic. They ally with successful states and not with failed or failing states. The determine failed or failing by the level of internal conflict. As the world’s policemen Americans see conflict as requiring their involvement, and at great cost. So they are simply pragmatic in seeking to support ‘successful’ states: those without violent conflict. THE WORLD’S POLICEMEN America has assumed the role of the world’s policemen for two reasons:

        Both the assumption of the system of trade, and the the desire to provide an alternative to world communism, are pragmatic choices, not ideological choices. For some reason americans are comfortable criticizing a political ideology like communism that is little more than a religion wrapped in pseudo economic dogma, than they are in criticizing a religion that is little more than a political movement. If americans would correct this error in their ‘talking points’ the battle against Islam would be much easier. Islam is not a religion. It is a political system, and a religion in name only. AMERICAN STRATEGIC ERRORS American errors over the past decades have been the following:

          Historian Oswald Spengler called western civilization Faustian: westerners keep pursuing this ideological view of human nature despite the obvious fact that we are making a deal with the devil in order to achieve the impossible. The west is exceptional. Our culture can never be universal. Criticisms of the NeoCons are correct in that they assume human consensus with western values and where they attempt nation building. Criticisms of the NeoCon’s are wrong where they seek to contain islamic civilization by military means. Islam is far worse a threat than marxism. At least marxism was subject to rational criticism. Muslims appear entirely happy to think themselves self righteous and holy as they descend into permanent ignorant illiterate abject poverty and vent their failure outward as terrorism. THE COMMERCIAL SOCIETY2) The US does not support Democracy. It supports success. Americans are a commercial people. Much more commercial even than Europeans (which is why they don’t understand Americans at times.) In fact, the only thing Americans have in common is their commercial sentiments. CONSUMER CAPITALISM NOT DEMOCRACY3) The US advances “Consumer Capitalism” not Democracy. Democracy is a code word for “Consumer Capitalism”.

            POLITICAL COMPATIBILITY OF CONSUMER CAPITALISM4) Consumer Capitalism is not incompatible with what we popularly call Social Democracy: Redistributive Social Democracy. Under Redistributive Social Democracy, profits are captured through taxation and redistributed, allowing the market system to function using both incentives and the information embodied in prices. Consumer capitalism is incompatible with Socialism and Communism, both of which destroy incentives and the information embodied in prices. Consumer capitalism is compatible with libertarianism, conservative classical liberalism, and progressive social democracy – all of which interfere in the economy to varying degrees. Consumer Capitalism is just not compatible with a managed economy. Americans are exporting social democracy and consumer capitalism. But they’ll take consumer capitalism alone if they can get it. Why? Because it decreases the cost of policing and decreases the risk to the average American (Canadian, Brit, German, Belgian, Italian, Australian.) WE’RE A DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC NOT A DEMOCRACY5) Technically speaking, the USA is not a democracy. It’s a representative republic. That’s why we have the Senate and the Electoral College: to inhibit the dangers of democracy. In particular, our political system is organized to prevent democratic ‘fashionability’ with a hard constitution (that the progressives have effectively ruined via the commerce clause, and through judicial activism rather than calling for a constitutional convention) a high-turnover house, and a longer turnover senate (that was originally appointed not directly elected). So technically, we’re exporting “Social Democratic Republican Consumer Capitalism.” ECONOMIC IMPACT AND ANALYSIS6) If America loses its military power, its control over oil, or the dollar’s status as a reserve currency, then the ‘average’ American, if there even is such a thing, will experience a drastic reduction in standard of living. We complain about our national debt and our military expense. But really, this is how it all works out: We spend a lot of money policing the world. We export debt to pay for it. The debt encourages the world to support our policing activities. We inflate the debt away. And we obtain economic advantage that directly benefits the average American raising his or her economic class by something on the order of 50%. If you travel the world, and then come back to the states,its blatantly obvious the average person can consume vastly more as an American than anyone else on earth: more living space, more heat and air conditioning, more varieties of food, more kinds of entertainment, more information, and more air travel, more car travel, more free time. More everything. So, the pure COST of our military activity is a cheap return. It costs $700B this year, and our entire interest burden is $227B. Over the next three years alone, the American government will inflate 30% of that debt away.  We do not directly bill the world for our services, but we DO INDIRECTLY charge them for it, and it is our MOST PROFITABLE export.  There is a difference between wasting money and putting it to good use. Our military is not a poor use of funds. BUT the cost of nation building is impossible to bear. If we must bomb a country into submission that’s one thing. In many cases — preventing communism, preventing a nuclear Iran — its the lesser of two evils. But we cannot transform its culture or its economy. We can’t. That cost is infinite. And it’s futile. Thanks Curt Doolittle

          • APPLE IS ALREADY ROTTING I didn’t want to stick my neck out last month and say t

            APPLE IS ALREADY ROTTING

            I didn’t want to stick my neck out last month and say that Apple’s brand is decaying. I thought the Steve Jobs worship was overdone. But, just as kings and queens tend to keep a populace holding positive sentiments, so does a heroic and visionary leader. Apple isn’t actually a very nice company. It pushes ethics to the limit and often beyond. When we saw the company anthropomorphized as a heroic Steve Jobs trying to fight for us by creating simple interfaces against the careless and mechanistic IBM/WIN-TEL behemoths, we forgave Apple its indiscretions. But if you follow the sentiments expressed online by pundits and average consumers it’s clear that they still want their iphones and ipads and macbooks. But it’s also clear that company that we see as Apple, is attracting negative sentiments rapidly. It’s a magnet for criticism.

            I’ve been toying with how to create a replacement identity for Apple – a persona that isn’t so much of a replacement for Jobs, but at least would allow the public human image that they believed was still fighting for them on their behalf. Anything I’d find attractive would be too obscure. Someone else might have more populist instincts. I’ve always felt that TMobile selected good representatives. Geico does a good job as well. But Apple needs something special. A person that they can trust – and I don’t see that person on the management team at apple. So it’s got to be an actor capable of engendering nerdy-artist consumer trust. I do NOT think creating a set of identities will work. Or that a populist brand will work.

            There are better people than I working on it. I’m more interested in simply recording that the problem exists and that it needs to be solved.

            Source date (UTC): 2012-02-10 10:59:00 UTC