Curt Doolittle

Theme: Measurement

  • JUSTIFICATION OF MAINSTREAM MACRO BY CREATIVE DEFINITION (I am on a roll today)

    http://crookedtimber.org/2015/05/18/the-political-is-personal/IMMORAL JUSTIFICATION OF MAINSTREAM MACRO BY CREATIVE DEFINITION

    (I am on a roll today)

    John,

    This might come across as offensive, but we all have jobs to do in defense and preservation of the informational commons, and this is mine.

    1) Fascism was a ‘good’. A necessary means of combating communism. Persisting in the denigration of authors who supported it is merely conflating a utility in time of stress with a truth of social science. Fascism was a good. By any measure.

    2) Hayek completed his journey by correctly identifying the common law as the source of liberty, which is how he perceived western exceptionalism. Most of his work an be seen as a series of investigations in various fields into solving the problem of the social sciences. It took him most of his life but he got there. Prior works can only be seen in this light. Most of his work is partly correct. His movement across fields is evidence that he ran into dead ends in all of them.

    3) The jury is out on social democracy, and at present, despite the rather obvious self interest of the state and academy, those of us who work the subject are fairly certain that democracy is little more than a temporary luxury for the redistribution of a civilizations windfall, rather than a system that constructs liberty and prosperity.

    4) Mises failed to solve the problem of economics because he failed, like everyone else in his generation, to solve the problem of operationalism. (Mises:economics, Brouwer:math, Hayek:Law, Bridgman:physics. And countless others in philosophy.) Everyone failed.

    They failed, and Hayek’s prediction that the 20th century would be seen in retrospect as an era of mysticism appears to be true. He didn’t get it quite right, because pseudoscience and mysticism perform the same obscurantist functions differently. But it is becoming clear that the 20th century (macro included) will be seen as an era of pseudoscience, and most of us will be cast as fools because of it.

    Hayek is not to be disrespected for having failed if so many thinkers failed in every other field of human inquiry. I made this mistake myself by crucifying Mises for a time. They were men of their time. They could sense something was wrong, but they were not able to solve it. Strangely enough, Brouwer and Bridgman do so, but not thoroughly enough to grasp that the problem was material in morality, epistemology, law, economics, and politics. Helpful in physical science. and only tepidly meaningful in mathematics. Its both telling and interesting that psychology – a pseudoscientific field totally absent any empirical content – saved itself by adopting Operationalism – and in doing so produced all the innovative content that it has in just twenty years – nearly overturning the century of pseudoscience.

    Economics requires this reformation as well. Mises could sense but not construct it. In simple terms Keynesian macro is the the study of how much we can ‘lie’ in order to achieve a suspected good by increasing consumption despite the negative externalities for mankind by doing so. So objectively, mainstream macro is very much the study of immoral politics The operational view, and the moral study of economics (Austrian) is predicated on attempting to improve voluntary transfers so that all lying is eliminated from human cooperation.

    They were great minds working desperately hard against an existential threat to man. But they failed. That does not mean we have to.

    Neither does it mean that we should consider luxuries not of our own construction, as measures of our merit. They are not. If anything we merely consume twenty thousand years of western development in a century.

    So, economics is the study of human cooperation. We can perform that study toward immoral ends (dysgenia, consumption, and lying), or we can perform that study toward moral ends (eugenia, accumulation, and truth).

    There is only one ‘law’ of human cooperation: that is that the only moral criteria that one can imposed costs upon another, is by productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchange, free of negative externality. Under no other condition is cooperation rational. That single statement explains all moral biases.

    The purpose of economics is to complete the sequence of training the human mind to understand cause and effect at different levels of complexity. Perception(existence), counting(scale), arithmetic, mathematics(ratio), geometry(space), calculus(relative motion), economics(equilibria), relativity(frames).

    Only with this understanding can man understand and apply this general rule to human affairs such that we can calculate all worlds determined by an action, and choose between them. But only once we have determined the full circuit of consequences in each.

    Only with this understanding can man apply this general rule to human affairs so that we can use monetary prices to sense and compare complex phenomenon at a given point in time.

    Only with this understanding can we make policy decisions that allow us to justify takings and givings as producing a common good.

    But only if we include all costs: Genetic, Territorial, Institutional, Normative, Pedagogical (Knowledge), Material, can we say we have accounted for all costs.

    Otherwise, we are just engaged in an obscurant means of justifying our preferences.

    5) You (John) have an extremely Australian view of the world, and your definition of economics and your interpretation of what ‘economics is reducible to’ is a justification of that Australian view. That Australian view is, like that of the English, Canadian and Americans: a North Sea islander’s view: one who is insulated by the seas from the pressures common to territorial peoples. If your tradition and genetics originated in the steppe or the levant you would hold very different views.

    So it appears (obvious) that your perception is a cognitive bias that you are seeking to justify, not a scientific truth that describes necessary properties of human cooperation. It is terribly apparent to me (as I would assume it was to any intellectual historian) that you are confusing a luxury of circumstance with a ‘good’ that one should aspire to.

    So as far as I can tell your selected definition is one that justifies your conclusion. It’s creative accounting so to speak by selective ‘ben franklin’ accounting of costs and benefits.

    By carefully defining a preconception as a good, we can justify anything.

    And that is what your two laws do.

    6) The alternative argument I would like to put forward. “Every forced transfer, is a lost opportunity for mutually beneficial exchange.”

    We do need a means of constructing commons. Physical and institutional commons are a unique western competitive advantage, second only to our most valuable commons: truth-telling. But why is it that commons must be constructed monopolistically? Why is not government constructed to facilitate exchanges, rather commands?

    There isn’t an answer justifies that question that does not violate the only law of human cooperation: that cooperation must be rational.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-05-18 13:40:00 UTC

  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb (re: violence) I’d like to add an economist’s point of vie

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb

    (re: violence)

    I’d like to add an economist’s point of view: that the use of the term ‘violence’ is obscurant. (In my lexicon that is equivalent to pseudoscientific).

    Humans engage in a vast spectrum of parasitism whenever possible, and in production only when easy or necessary. Parasitism can be performed by violence, theft, fraud, fraud by omission, fraud by obscurantism, imposed cost by indirection, free riding, privatization of commons, socialization of losses, conspiracy to extort, by normative conversion, by immigration, asymmetric reproduction, conquest, and genocide.

    Conversely, mutually beneficial, productive, warrantied, fully informed, cooperation by voluntary exchange is, by contrast, a very narrow field of human activity in a vast spectrum of parasitism.

    Over the centuries we have increasingly abstracted assets (that which we seek to consume by parasitism), from the physical to, fragments of a value chain, to mere numerical promises (accounts), so that violence is almost useless as a means of obtaining wealth. However, the volume of predation and parasitism performed by violence, is currently performed by various forms of pseudo-scientific and pseudo-moral fraud instead of violence.

    But the parasitism remains.

    Humans are open to coercion by only three technologies: Gossip(religion and morality), remuneration(trade, credit, tax and redistribution), or threat of violence(law,military). Although at any times some people specialize in some axis of coercion (public intellectuals:gossip, government:violence, corporations:purchasing influence.)

    So if we have exchanged parasitism via violence, for parasitism via pseudoscientific fraud (which is one aspect of what I believe you are investigating), then the form of parasitism has changed, but not the parasitism itself.

    We might argue that some form of parasitic equilibrium is actually some sort of Pareto optimum. But that is very different from saying that parasitism no longer exists, or has decreased.

    So as far as I am able to tell, net change in parasitism is zero, or perhaps as some people argue, we have seen a dramatic increase. It is just that we have created sufficient technology that our parasitism by pseudoscience does not injure production as much as parasitism by violence does.

    Furthermore, all the great syntopical historians have, as far as I know, come to the same conclusion: that since 1945, the Pax Americana is only paralleled by the Pax Romana.

    I argue rather frequently (as do many historians) that all economic measures since 1600 are little more than the reflection of the distribution of consumer capitalism, accounting, and rule of law around the world at the point of British gunships.

    So to address violence instead of parasitism, is to blind one’s self to the rest of the spectrum of human criminality in order to congratulate one’s self on having invented a more effective form of crime.

    Affections.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-05-18 11:23:00 UTC

  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb (re: violence) I’d like to add an economist’s point of vie

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb

    (re: violence)

    I’d like to add an economist’s point of view: that the use of the term ‘violence’ is obscurant. (In my lexicon that is equivalent to pseudoscientific).

    Humans engage in a vast spectrum of parasitism whenever possible, and in production only when easy or necessary. Parasitism can be performed by violence, theft, fraud, fraud by omission, fraud by obscurantism, imposed cost by indirection, free riding, privatization of commons, socialization of losses, conspiracy to extort, by normative conversion, by immigration, asymmetric reproduction, conquest, and genocide.

    Conversely, mutually beneficial, productive, warrantied, fully informed, cooperation by voluntary exchange is, by contrast, a very narrow field of human activity in a vast spectrum of parasitism.

    Over the centuries we have increasingly abstracted assets (that which we seek to consume by parasitism), from the physical to, fragments of a value chain, to mere numerical promises (accounts), so that violence is almost useless as a means of obtaining wealth. However, the volume of predation and parasitism performed by violence, is currently performed by various forms of pseudo-scientific and pseudo-moral fraud instead of violence.

    But the parasitism remains.

    Humans are open to coercion by only three technologies: Gossip(religion and morality), remuneration(trade, credit, tax and redistribution), or threat of violence(law,military). Although at any times some people specialize in some axis of coercion (public intellectuals:gossip, government:violence, corporations:purchasing influence.)

    So if we have exchanged parasitism via violence, for parasitism via pseudoscientific fraud (which is one aspect of what I believe you are investigating), then the form of parasitism has changed, but not the parasitism itself.

    We might argue that some form of parasitic equilibrium is actually some sort of Pareto optimum. But that is very different from saying that parasitism no longer exists, or has decreased.

    So as far as I am able to tell, net change in parasitism is zero, or perhaps as some people argue, we have seen a dramatic increase. It is just that we have created sufficient technology that our parasitism by pseudoscience does not injure production as much as parasitism by violence does.

    Furthermore, all the great syntopical historians have, as far as I know, come to the same conclusion: that since 1945, the Pax Americana is only paralleled by the Pax Romana.

    I argue rather frequently (as do many historians) that all economic measures since 1600 are little more than the reflection of the distribution of consumer capitalism, accounting, and rule of law around the world at the point of British gunships.

    So to address violence instead of parasitism, is to blind one’s self to the rest of the spectrum of human criminality in order to congratulate one’s self on having invented a more effective form of crime.

    Affections.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-05-18 11:20:00 UTC

  • MEASURES ARE A PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC DISTRACTION The question is better served by how

    http://www.aei.org/publication/are-middle-class-americans-significantly-better-off-today-than-in-1980/INCOME MEASURES ARE A PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC DISTRACTION

    The question is better served by how we spend our time, what we consume, and what we worry about, than any measure of income. Income is a poor proxy for measuring inter-temporal changes in consumption, and is only a useful measure of temporal asymmetry.

    What is for example, the cost of not fearing the soviet union, the change in crime in Boston and new York?

    Conversely, what is the cost of increase in political friction due to immigration? What is the cost of the conflict over Obamacare? What is the cost of maintaining the post-war empire (probably neutral). What is the cost of outsourcing? What is the cost of failing to reform education?

    Income is the least important of these measures. And that is precisely why it’s the topic of conversation: because it is the least important but the most emotionally loaded topic. It is an elaborate pseudoscientific distraction for purely political purposes.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-05-14 06:00:00 UTC

  • The Operational Revolution

    (important piece)

    [O]ne can describe events subjectively (how we feel about them); 
    one can describe them objectively (how we observe others), and;
    one can describe them operationally (by the actions taken).

    One of the most useful methods of overloading, framing, and loading is to describe a process subjectively. Hence why physical scientists write operationally, why mathematics requires the test of intuitionism, and why psychology requires the test of Operationism; and why in economics (cooperation), we write in human actions.

    The chief innovation of the left was to legitimize the pseudoscience of psychology for the purpose of loading, framing, and overloading. Postmodernism and propaganda are the ultimate achievement of the technology of ‘lying’.

    – If we see myth as an attempt to convey truths. We can see monotheism as the organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – if we see reason as an attempt to convey truths. We can see philosophy as the organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – If we see empiricism as an attempt to convey truths, we can see rational philosophy as an organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – If we see the darwinian scientific revolution as an attempt to convey truths, we can see the psueudoscientific revolution as an organized development of lying by loading, framing, and overloading.

    – If we see the logical revolution (analytic philosophY) as an attempt to convey truths, we can see the postmodern revolution as an organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – If we see the (Failed) operational revolution:
    – intuitionism in mathematics 
    – operationalism in physics
    – strict construction in law.
    – operationism in psychology.
    – praxeology in economics.
    – e-prime in language
    – performative truth in philosophy
    we can also see the the development of the academy since its seizure by the left, public intellectuals prior to the conservative 1980 movement, the media prior to the fox news and drudgereport movement, as a means of preventing the completion of the operational revolution.

    We are defending truth but liars compete with us. They compete with us because we tolerate their competition. Lying and parasitism and immorality in all its forms are just thefts from the commons.

    PROPERTARIANISM
    I can fix all of this even if I cannot alone, distribute the technology for defeating liars. The only means of defeat is the common law, the informational commons, universal standing, and the mandate for warranty of all public speech.

    They will simply invent a new method of lying. However, we will have the tools to constrain them for centuries I suspect.

    Curt Doolittle 
    The Propertarian Institute 
    Kiev, Ukraine

  • The Operational Revolution

    (important piece)

    [O]ne can describe events subjectively (how we feel about them); 
    one can describe them objectively (how we observe others), and;
    one can describe them operationally (by the actions taken).

    One of the most useful methods of overloading, framing, and loading is to describe a process subjectively. Hence why physical scientists write operationally, why mathematics requires the test of intuitionism, and why psychology requires the test of Operationism; and why in economics (cooperation), we write in human actions.

    The chief innovation of the left was to legitimize the pseudoscience of psychology for the purpose of loading, framing, and overloading. Postmodernism and propaganda are the ultimate achievement of the technology of ‘lying’.

    – If we see myth as an attempt to convey truths. We can see monotheism as the organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – if we see reason as an attempt to convey truths. We can see philosophy as the organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – If we see empiricism as an attempt to convey truths, we can see rational philosophy as an organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – If we see the darwinian scientific revolution as an attempt to convey truths, we can see the psueudoscientific revolution as an organized development of lying by loading, framing, and overloading.

    – If we see the logical revolution (analytic philosophY) as an attempt to convey truths, we can see the postmodern revolution as an organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – If we see the (Failed) operational revolution:
    – intuitionism in mathematics 
    – operationalism in physics
    – strict construction in law.
    – operationism in psychology.
    – praxeology in economics.
    – e-prime in language
    – performative truth in philosophy
    we can also see the the development of the academy since its seizure by the left, public intellectuals prior to the conservative 1980 movement, the media prior to the fox news and drudgereport movement, as a means of preventing the completion of the operational revolution.

    We are defending truth but liars compete with us. They compete with us because we tolerate their competition. Lying and parasitism and immorality in all its forms are just thefts from the commons.

    PROPERTARIANISM
    I can fix all of this even if I cannot alone, distribute the technology for defeating liars. The only means of defeat is the common law, the informational commons, universal standing, and the mandate for warranty of all public speech.

    They will simply invent a new method of lying. However, we will have the tools to constrain them for centuries I suspect.

    Curt Doolittle 
    The Propertarian Institute 
    Kiev, Ukraine

  • THE OPERATIONAL REVOLUTION (important piece) One can describe events subjectivel

    THE OPERATIONAL REVOLUTION

    (important piece)

    One can describe events subjectively (how we feel about them). One can describe them objectively (how we observe others), and one can describe them operationally (by the actions taken).

    One of the methods of overloading, framing, and loading is to describe a process subjectively. Hence why physical scientists write operationally, why mathematics requires the test of intuitionism, and why psychology requires the test of Operationism; and why in economics (cooperation), we write in human actions.

    The chief innovation of the left was to legitimize the pseudoscience of psychology for the purpose of loading, framing, and overloading. Postmodernism and propaganda are the ultimate achievement of the technology of ‘lying’.

    – If we see myth as an attempt to convey truths. We can see monotheism as the organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – if we see reason as an attempt to convey truths. We can see philosophy as the organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – If we see empiricism as an attempt to convey truths, we can see rational philosophy as an organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – If we see the darwinian scientific revolution as an attempt to convey truths, we can see the psueudoscientific revolution as an organized development of lying by loading, framing, and overloading.

    – If we see the logical revolution (analytic philosophY) as an attempt to convey truths, we can see the postmodern revolution as an organized development of lying by loading, framing and overloading.

    – If we see the (Failed) operational revolution:

    – intuitionism in mathematics

    – operationalism in physics

    – strict construction in law.

    – operationism in psychology.

    – praxeology in economics.

    – e-prime in language

    – performative truth in philosophy

    we can also see the the development of the academy since its seizure by the left, public intellectuals prior to the conservative 1980 movement, the media prior to the fox news and drudgereport movement, as a means of preventing the completion of the operational revolution.

    We are defending truth but liars compete with us. They compete with us because we tolerate their competition. Lying and parasitism and immorality in all its forms are just thefts from the commons.

    PROPERTARIANISM

    I can fix all of this even if I cannot alone, distribute the technology for defeating liars. The only means of defeat is the common law, the informational commons, universal standing, and the mandate for warranty of all public speech.

    They will simply invent a new method of lying. However, we will have the tools to constrain them for centuries I suspect.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-05-10 04:40:00 UTC

  • SMALL VARIATIONS IN IQ MATTER —“A decrease in the average IQ of just under 5 p

    SMALL VARIATIONS IN IQ MATTER

    —“A decrease in the average IQ of just under 5 points doubles the number of retardates (IQ less than 70), and cuts in half the number of gifted (IQ over 130). Furthermore, Herrnstein and Murray found that when they moved the average IQ down statistically by just 3 points, from 100 to 97, all social problems were exacerbated: the number of women chronically dependent on welfare increased by 7%; illegitimacy increased by 8%; men interviewed in jail increased by 12%; and the number of permanent high school dropouts increased by nearly 15%.”—

    Dysgenia matters. Liberty requires ability.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-05-06 00:44:00 UTC

  • PRACTICAL UTILITY OF PERSONALITY TESTING: A YARDSTICK IS ENOUGH TOPIC: Arbitrary

    PRACTICAL UTILITY OF PERSONALITY TESTING: A YARDSTICK IS ENOUGH

    TOPIC: Arbitrary precision (general, generalizable rules), and the cost of increases in precision versus the utility of increases in precision.

    I have been involved in personality testing since 1981, and have researched the work back into the 1950’s, and IQ back into the first world war, and I stand by the Meyers Briggs as the least precise, yet most useful tool precisely because it is the least precise.

    When I worked with Predictive Index, I had to carry around something on the order of fifty index cards listing each personality type. In our company all management had to take the training. Then we had to try to figure out everyone’s personality in the company. The President would then tell us if we had it right or not, given the individual’s results.

    Even in that test I would vary greatly on introversion/extroversion, but not at all on dominance, patience, or fear of blame. And knowing that variation was very interesting, because it was true – I vary a lot.

    The Minnesota Multiphasic is useful, despite its framing, largely because it is exceptional at lie detection. But it’s like 600 questions or so. And it’s very negative. It forces you to obsess on the negative.

    The Big 5 is part of the fucked-up, pseudoscientific drivel of Freudian psychology – an elaborate system of framing in order to justify authoritarianism and demonize non-conformity to authoritarian (Jewish) ideology. This suits the kind of people who pursue psychology – to find a source of dominance.

    If we constructed a test with Nietzschean framing, and with as many questions, and as much lie detection, we would find a different and more useful LIBERTARIAN rather than authoritarian distribution of results.

    In Propertarianism I have tried to eliminate all this nonsense by framing all analysis as measures of means of acquisition, and the (a) production or non-production, and (b) truth or deceit we use to acquire. A Propertarian analysis would not lead to authoritarian framing, but instead, to moral framing: how suitable an individual is for cooperation.

    Propertarianism is the replacement for psychology. We can test that because all moral propositions are decidable.

    But Propertarianism is pretty analytically challenging to learn.

    Conversely, for most people, and for forecasting performance in the work place, MBTI can be constructed from as few as 30 questions, and as many as 100. And it’s all positive. It frames the questions as how you interact with others in public.

    Now, if I want to measure 5 attributes, and I ask 100 questions on each, with `100 additional lie detectors (20% more questions for the purpose of lie detection) I am going to get pretty accurate results if carefully administered.

    If I want to measure 4 attributes, and ask only 30 questions, with no lie detection, then I am going to get a pretty noisy set of answers. But if I ask 30 questions, then I attempt to frame everyone (practice it) that I interact with, then I will be soon able to develop a similar framing for the ascertainment of the motivations and means of cooperating with others in the workplace – if not in life.

    Now, we have really good data that MBTI is a great predictor of relationship compatibility. And we have really good data that shows that people can learn and use it, without a great deal of sophistication. And it’s cheap to administer. And over time you will understand yourself and others within the supplied frame.

    So, what I tend to tell people, is that it is the best extant tool.

    I would like to develop a similar questionnaire for Propertarianism. Because in Propertarianism we test what we know are the causal properties of human behavioral differences. And that would be the MOST scientific data set that I think humans could yet develop.

    But I also think it is for the purpose of TRUTH and I think MBTI is for the purpose of UTILITY, and while truth is useful, rules of thumb are just as useful if the PRECISION afforded by truth is at the expense of practical utility. In other words, we still use Newtonian mechanics in most of life, and very few of us more precise calculations. Because more precision isn’t useful. And its a lot more work.

    What this little comment has done, is convinced me that I need to work with some people to produce a Propertarian values test. Which is pretty easy really. But in Oversing, we will use a jungian analysis, for the simple reason that PEOPLE CAN USE IT TO IMPROVE THEIR LIVES.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-18 06:18:00 UTC

  • THE NECESSITY OF PRIVILEGE (DISCOUNTS ON OPPORTUNITY COSTS) AS INFORMATION (wort

    THE NECESSITY OF PRIVILEGE (DISCOUNTS ON OPPORTUNITY COSTS) AS INFORMATION

    (worth repeating) (from elsewhere) (hayek)

    While, as I’ve written before, I agree with the general argument that women sense some things and men others (and progressives, libertarians and conservatives different things as well) I have a more complete theory of the inter-temporal division of perception, cognition, knowledge and labor than Hayek (and one that eliminates equality, and monopoly decision making). And so there is a minor error in the logic of the first paragraph, and that is that it is irrelevant that we understand others – it is only relevant that we conduct exchanges with them.

    Because their reaction to their senses are not accurate or ‘true’ in any meaningful sense other than as a reflection of the individual’s reproductive strategy – any more than any of the rest of our senses are all that accurate – they themselves are fragments.

    This single insight is the principle cause of why democracy does not work, and the market does. The market allows us to cooperate on multitudinous means even if on disparate ends, with our successes and failures informing both us and others.

    Whereas a monopoly government prevents us from learning anything of value, and the institutionalization of foolish policy by unexpriable law, and the accretion of bureaucratic self interests, prevents adaptation outside of catastrophic chains of failure.

    In fact, monopoly government (monopoly production of commons by majority rule) promotes failure because it is precisely failed policy that permits the greatest rent seeking for all involved.

    It is not that we should prohibit government (as Hayek warns) but that we should prohibit monopoly government. It is not that we should prevent taxation, it is that we should allocate our dividends from the commons we live in to the production of commons we prefer, and not to commons we do not.

    As, furthermore, so called ‘privilege’ is precious information. It is information that informs you whose behavior you should imitate in order to gain discounts on opportunity costs. Privilege is as necessary to the human information system as is status, property rights, rule of law, money and interest.

    Privilege, if it exists, is an inter-temporal store of value that informs others as to the behaviors that they should imitate in order to obtain a discount on opportunities. Likewise, hygiene, dress, manners and language are advertisements for one’s worthiness to engage in increasingly complex inter-temporal risks and returns.

    Those who accumulate such behaviors obtain opportunity at the lowest discounts. Those that fail to adapt, and ask others to ’empathize’ with them, are seeking discounts without bearing the cost of adaptation.

    In other words, they’re free riders participating in an act of fraud.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-04-10 16:10:00 UTC