Curt Doolittle

Theme: Measurement

  • What Does “Kaleidic” Mean? (In Economics)

    –“As a propertarian I’m assuming you follow the Lachmann rather than Shackle tradition in your appreciation of kaleidics.”— Chris Shaeffer


    (Note For Readers: Kaleidic, as used by Shackle, refers to the way groups and individuals in an economy rearrange, much like a kaleidoscope image, into new patterns – constantly, in response to changes, demand, innovations and shocks.  However, the term also implies that this process is unpredictable: uncertain. But this is just the first of three metaphors.  The second is flocking-and-schooling: an analogy to how fish and birds move in response to external stimuli. Humans flock and school toward opportunities and then groups break off if better opportunities present themselves, and the whole group splits in multiple directions when circumstances radically change.  The third metaphor, and the most concrete, by Arnold Kling, is “Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade”, or “PSST”, which reminds us of the stickiness of relationships in the economy, the high cost of organizing them, and the high cost of changing them.   I try to use all three of these metaphors depending upon whether I am talking about uncertainty (kaleidic),  costs (PSST), or psychology (flocking and schooling).   However, the term Kaleidic was used by Lachmann to refer to the fact that the economy does not ever fully equilibrate and eliminate all possibility of profit. But it does tend to move toward efficiency that minimizes profit.)

    [G]reat question.

    I use the term ‘Kaleidic’ primarily in the broader sense as “indeterministic”, and less frequently in the narrower sense “never reaching equilibrium” or “never reaching neutrality” in which profits are no longer possible. And in practice I follow Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Arnold Kling more closely than either Shackle or Lachmann in the cause for indeterminism: that shocks are more influential than regularities (Taleb), and that rather than Lachman’s argument, flocking and schooling (in my terms) or more precisely, “Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade” due to changing opportunities rather than ‘mechanical rearranging’, and that informational asymmetry, opportunity costs, transaction costs, are less meaningful. In other words, I see opportunities as more frequent and influential than frictions. This is because the costs of increasing efficiency are often higher than the cost of seizing new opportunities in a dynamic economy. As such, companies ‘sort’ by which tactic they are able to pursue.

    Cost cutting hurts your allies (employees). Which hurts you. And amateur Austrian economists treat human relationships (alliances) as a funglible resource, when, as dynamism increases, people are the most expensive, least predictive, and most influential resource you can possess.


  • What Does “Kaleidic” Mean? (In Economics)

    –“As a propertarian I’m assuming you follow the Lachmann rather than Shackle tradition in your appreciation of kaleidics.”— Chris Shaeffer


    (Note For Readers: Kaleidic, as used by Shackle, refers to the way groups and individuals in an economy rearrange, much like a kaleidoscope image, into new patterns – constantly, in response to changes, demand, innovations and shocks.  However, the term also implies that this process is unpredictable: uncertain. But this is just the first of three metaphors.  The second is flocking-and-schooling: an analogy to how fish and birds move in response to external stimuli. Humans flock and school toward opportunities and then groups break off if better opportunities present themselves, and the whole group splits in multiple directions when circumstances radically change.  The third metaphor, and the most concrete, by Arnold Kling, is “Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade”, or “PSST”, which reminds us of the stickiness of relationships in the economy, the high cost of organizing them, and the high cost of changing them.   I try to use all three of these metaphors depending upon whether I am talking about uncertainty (kaleidic),  costs (PSST), or psychology (flocking and schooling).   However, the term Kaleidic was used by Lachmann to refer to the fact that the economy does not ever fully equilibrate and eliminate all possibility of profit. But it does tend to move toward efficiency that minimizes profit.)

    [G]reat question.

    I use the term ‘Kaleidic’ primarily in the broader sense as “indeterministic”, and less frequently in the narrower sense “never reaching equilibrium” or “never reaching neutrality” in which profits are no longer possible. And in practice I follow Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Arnold Kling more closely than either Shackle or Lachmann in the cause for indeterminism: that shocks are more influential than regularities (Taleb), and that rather than Lachman’s argument, flocking and schooling (in my terms) or more precisely, “Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade” due to changing opportunities rather than ‘mechanical rearranging’, and that informational asymmetry, opportunity costs, transaction costs, are less meaningful. In other words, I see opportunities as more frequent and influential than frictions. This is because the costs of increasing efficiency are often higher than the cost of seizing new opportunities in a dynamic economy. As such, companies ‘sort’ by which tactic they are able to pursue.

    Cost cutting hurts your allies (employees). Which hurts you. And amateur Austrian economists treat human relationships (alliances) as a funglible resource, when, as dynamism increases, people are the most expensive, least predictive, and most influential resource you can possess.


  • A Definition of Economics?

    QUESTION: CURT: WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF ‘ECONOMICS’?” (good piece)

    —“Hi Curt…I can relate to your comments. Perhaps you mentioned it and I missed it, but what in your definition of “Economics”. Is it sociological? A physical science? Something else?”—Lee Roesner

    [L]ee, Great question. Thanks. I think, that the scope of the term Economics is an interesting question, because we can discuss the etymological, normative, technical, and ‘necessary’ properties of the discipline. And by ‘necessary’, those properties that distinguish the discipline from other fields of inquiry. If we look at the etymology, the term evolved from running the household, then the nation, then an abstract discipline that studies the behavior mankind’s production, distribution and trade, chiefly by studying demonstrated preferences recorded as monetary transactions. If we look at how it is practiced, I think that today it is practiced as a social science, and that accusations of ‘economic imperialism’ in social science are probably justified: that economics has evolved into the dominant social science, and that experimental psychology and cognitive science, together have evolved as the dominant individual science. This appears to be the current state of affairs, where experimental psychology and cognitive science focus on our biases and limits, while economics focuses on the effect of those behaviors in the aggregate. And I think that the people in both disciplines expect to meet in the middle with a theory of mankind. (The problem is, that this merely justifies intervention – how to fool people.) Now, I tend to look at disciplines by necessary properties, and I view economics as the study of institutional (both formal and informal) means by which we facilitate human cooperation in pursuit of prosperity. This is traditionally called political economy. So the problem is that if we study it as how we can manipulate man’s biases, I think that is immoral on objective grounds, because it violates the principle of voluntary exchange (imposition of costs). Whereas if we study it as political economy, then we retain the moral constraint that all exchanges must be voluntary. We don’t try to fool people, we try to create transparency – to reduce friction, not to fool them that risk is lower than it appears. This is why I try to stay on message with the statement “Every forced involuntary transfer is a lost opportunity for mutually beneficial exchange.” Because I prefer that economics be constructed and performed as an analysis of moral and voluntary cooperation in the western tradition, rather than an immoral and involuntary analysis in the eastern tradition. And also, because I agree with the Austrian theory of the business cycle: that all attempts to cushion the rate of reorganization of the economy, merely exacerbate the problem by funding the existing (exhausted) order. So, I define economics as the study of morality: the study of the means of human cooperation in pursuit of the production of informal and formal institutions that assist us in cooperating. And as such I see law – the capture of normative constraints on involuntary transfer – as a subset of economics. And in practice I see the purpose of economics as little more than the justification of common, polycentric, organically evolved, law. And I see economics as dependent upon experimental psychology, and cognitive science for the study of man’s actions. This is because these disciplines have proven extremely fruitful in exposing the numerous and extensive limitations to human reason. I think this framing of the disciplines and the scope of the terms, is difficult to argue with – honestly that is. Thanks for the great question. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute L’viv, Ukraine.

  • A Definition of Economics?

    QUESTION: CURT: WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF ‘ECONOMICS’?” (good piece)

    —“Hi Curt…I can relate to your comments. Perhaps you mentioned it and I missed it, but what in your definition of “Economics”. Is it sociological? A physical science? Something else?”—Lee Roesner

    [L]ee, Great question. Thanks. I think, that the scope of the term Economics is an interesting question, because we can discuss the etymological, normative, technical, and ‘necessary’ properties of the discipline. And by ‘necessary’, those properties that distinguish the discipline from other fields of inquiry. If we look at the etymology, the term evolved from running the household, then the nation, then an abstract discipline that studies the behavior mankind’s production, distribution and trade, chiefly by studying demonstrated preferences recorded as monetary transactions. If we look at how it is practiced, I think that today it is practiced as a social science, and that accusations of ‘economic imperialism’ in social science are probably justified: that economics has evolved into the dominant social science, and that experimental psychology and cognitive science, together have evolved as the dominant individual science. This appears to be the current state of affairs, where experimental psychology and cognitive science focus on our biases and limits, while economics focuses on the effect of those behaviors in the aggregate. And I think that the people in both disciplines expect to meet in the middle with a theory of mankind. (The problem is, that this merely justifies intervention – how to fool people.) Now, I tend to look at disciplines by necessary properties, and I view economics as the study of institutional (both formal and informal) means by which we facilitate human cooperation in pursuit of prosperity. This is traditionally called political economy. So the problem is that if we study it as how we can manipulate man’s biases, I think that is immoral on objective grounds, because it violates the principle of voluntary exchange (imposition of costs). Whereas if we study it as political economy, then we retain the moral constraint that all exchanges must be voluntary. We don’t try to fool people, we try to create transparency – to reduce friction, not to fool them that risk is lower than it appears. This is why I try to stay on message with the statement “Every forced involuntary transfer is a lost opportunity for mutually beneficial exchange.” Because I prefer that economics be constructed and performed as an analysis of moral and voluntary cooperation in the western tradition, rather than an immoral and involuntary analysis in the eastern tradition. And also, because I agree with the Austrian theory of the business cycle: that all attempts to cushion the rate of reorganization of the economy, merely exacerbate the problem by funding the existing (exhausted) order. So, I define economics as the study of morality: the study of the means of human cooperation in pursuit of the production of informal and formal institutions that assist us in cooperating. And as such I see law – the capture of normative constraints on involuntary transfer – as a subset of economics. And in practice I see the purpose of economics as little more than the justification of common, polycentric, organically evolved, law. And I see economics as dependent upon experimental psychology, and cognitive science for the study of man’s actions. This is because these disciplines have proven extremely fruitful in exposing the numerous and extensive limitations to human reason. I think this framing of the disciplines and the scope of the terms, is difficult to argue with – honestly that is. Thanks for the great question. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute L’viv, Ukraine.

  • QUESTION: CURT: WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF ‘ECONOMICS’?” (from elsewhere) (good

    QUESTION: CURT: WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF ‘ECONOMICS’?”

    (from elsewhere) (good piece)

    —“Hi Curt…I can relate to your comments. Perhaps you mentioned it and I missed it, but what in your definition of “Economics”. Is it sociological? A physical science? Something else?”—Lee Roesner

    Lee,

    Great question. Thanks.

    I think, that the scope of the term Economics is an interesting question, because we can discuss the etymological, normative, technical, and ‘necessary’ properties of the discipline. And by ‘necessary’, those properties that distinguish the discipline from other fields of inquiry.

    If we look at the etymology, the term evolved from running the household, then the nation, then an abstract discipline that studies the behavior mankind’s production, distribution and trade, chiefly by studying demonstrated preferences recorded as monetary transactions.

    If we look at how it is practiced, I think that today it is practiced as a social science, and that accusations of ‘economic imperialism’ in social science are probably justified: that economics has evolved into the dominant social science, and that experimental psychology and cognitive science, together have evolved as the dominant individual science. This appears to be the current state of affairs, where experimental psychology and cognitive science focus on our biases and limits, while economics focuses on the effect of those behaviors in the aggregate. And I think that the people in both disciplines expect to meet in the middle with a theory of mankind. (The problem is, that this merely justifies intervention – how to fool people.)

    Now, I tend to look at disciplines by necessary properties, and I view economics as the study of institutional (both formal and informal) means by which we facilitate human cooperation in pursuit of prosperity. This is traditionally called political economy.

    So the problem is that if we study it as how we can manipulate man’s biases, I think that is immoral on objective grounds, because it violates the principle of voluntary exchange (imposition of costs). Whereas if we study it as political economy, then we retain the moral constraint that all exchanges must be voluntary. We don’t try to fool people, we try to create transparency – to reduce friction, not to fool them that risk is lower than it appears.

    This is why I try to stay on message with the statement “Every forced involuntary transfer is a lost opportunity for mutually beneficial exchange.” Because I prefer that economics be constructed and performed as an analysis of moral and voluntary cooperation in the western tradition, rather than an immoral and involuntary analysis in the eastern tradition. And also, because I agree with the Austrian theory of the business cycle: that all attempts to cushion the rate of reorganization of the economy, merely exacerbate the problem by funding the existing (exhausted) order.

    So, I define economics as the study of morality: the study of the means of human cooperation in pursuit of the production of informal and formal institutions that assist us in cooperating. And as such I see law – the capture of normative constraints on involuntary transfer – as a subset of economics. And in practice I see the purpose of economics as little more than the justification of common, polycentric, organically evolved, law.

    And I see economics as dependent upon experimental psychology, and cognitive science for the study of man’s actions. This is because these disciplines have proven extremely fruitful in exposing the numerous and extensive limitations to human reason.

    I think this framing of the disciplines and the scope of the terms, is difficult to argue with – honestly that is.

    Thanks for the great question.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    L’viv, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-04 06:23:00 UTC

  • GETTING EASIER TO GET ACROSS THE MAIN MESSAGE (reposted from elsewhere) The scie

    GETTING EASIER TO GET ACROSS THE MAIN MESSAGE

    (reposted from elsewhere)

    The scientific method consists of a set of moral rules on what scientists must consider truthful testimony. Otherwise no ‘method’ exists. The scope of these moral rules has evolved during the twentieth century in ways that I think very few people, scientists included, understand. (I will go into this a bit later if need be.)||

    Scientists do not practice (or even pay any attention to) philosophy or philosophers. Philosophers tend to be justificationists, but scientists do not practice justification. So no, scientists do not defend arenas using logic at all. That is what philosophers do when they try to defend one epistemological justification or another. Scientists demonstrate. They do not justify. Philosphers justify. So no, they did not evolve nor are they practiced by similar means. Rationalism and science are practiced by opposite means: justification versus demonstration and warranty.

    Scientists, and the discipline of science operate upon these epistemological principles:

    (a) we know nothing for certain, and may never be able to know anything for certain. (the most parsimonious non tautological statement possible).

    (b) we know what works and what doesn’t work. Everything else we say is just hypothesis, theory and law

    (c) all knowledge is theoretical (intuition, hypothesis, theory, or law)

    (d) we can combine theories to create models, which themselves are theories.

    (d) To publish a theory (‘distribute an intellectual product for consumption’) one must subject it tests (Provide a Warranty) stating that it is:

    i) consistent (logical)

    ii) correspondent (correlative)

    iii) empirical (observable)

    iv) operational (existentially possible)

    v) falsifiable

    vi) reasonably falsified

    The scientific method consists, if anything, in meeting these moral constraints upon their statements. It is their job to speak truthfully. But they never claim to state the truth. Even mathematicians (of any degree of sophistication) will say that truth is a problem of philosophy, while proof is a problem of mathematics.

    Mises’ argument is false because there are no non-trivial, non-tautological, certain, premises. If, as Einstein demonstrated, even time and length are concepts that we cannot count upon (length is the argument used to demonstrate the fallacy of even geometric premises). While we may imagine a point or a line, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine infinite sets, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine the square root of two, it cannot exist without a physical context to determine its arbitrary precision and therefore its existence.

    So no. Mises’ rationalism is a good story. But it’s just a story. An analogy.

    In order to warranty a statement as truthfully represented, it must meet the criteria that scientists have put forward. Science is merely a moral discipline for the purpose of truth telling. If we cannot say it scientifically then we cannot warrant that we are saying it truthfully: free of all possible error, bias, and deception.

    Mises was trying to combat the abuse of pseudoscience in economics, but he did not, as Brouwer did in math and Bridgman did in physics, discover Intuitionism, Operationalism and Operationism: the necessary test of existential possibility that checks our premises against the context in which we apply them. Praxeology was very close. But he got it wrong. If we see him in this light, as failing in economics where others succeeded in math and science, we can see Mises as part of a triumvirate that tried to add a new moral constraint to the sciences consistent with, or perhaps as an extension of falsification.

    It is unfortunate, since the reason Brouwer and Bridgman were not influential was that they failed to grasp that they were making a moral argument to the externalities caused by failing to demonstrate tests of existential possibility. whereas in economics, EVERYTHING WE WORRY ABOUT IS A PRODUCT OF EXTERNALITIES.

    Had Mises gone with Science rather than Rationalism we might have saved a century of semi-pseudoscientific argument only recently overthrown. Because in economics, externalities matter. It matters that Keynesian macro is an attempt to justify the manufacture of vast, slowly accumulating, negative externalities that burn down social and genetic capital. It matters that mathematicians talk about a mathematical reality that does not and cannot exist; that Cantorian sets are a bit of verbal nonsense by which to substitute quantity in timeless state, with frequency in a state where time is present. It matters that mathematical physics has seem to be nearly fruitless compared to physical experimentation, and that the entire multiple-world hypothesis was as nonsensical as we intuited.

    Externalities matter. And that is before we start talking about postmodernism: the most elaborate lie developed since the invention of theism.

    So the truthful, testifiable statement, is not the one mises makes, but that no economic statement that cannot be reduced to sympathetically testable operations can be true. AND any economic proposition that has not been reduced to a sequence of sympathetically testable operations can be stated to be ethical and or moral.

    So no statement that is not open to sympathetic testing (falsification) by operational means (sympathetic testing) can be ‘true’, nor ‘scientific’ since ‘scientific’ refers to morally warrantable constraint upon one’s statements.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    L’viv, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-01 14:03:00 UTC

  • INFORMATION SYSTEM IS NOT WELL BEHAVED AND LINEAR My fundamental interest is ins

    https://www.academia.edu/9865619/Understanding_Financial_Instability_Minsky_Versus_the_AustriansOUR INFORMATION SYSTEM IS NOT WELL BEHAVED AND LINEAR

    My fundamental interest is institutions and law, but I geek-out when someone helps me better understand economics by providing a language for concepts we fail to understand sufficiently to articulate alone. (I love this paper. Maybe it just appeals to my niche interests, but it’s awesome.)

    —“The conventional economic paradigm is thus not the only way economic interrelations can be modeled. Every capitalist economy can be described in terms of sets of interrelated balance sheets. At every reading of the balance sheet the financial instruments can be interpreted as generating two sets of time series: the liabilities generate payment commitments, and the assets generate expected cash receipts. Balance sheets relations link yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows: payment commitments entered in the past lead to cash payments that need to be executed now as well as future cash payments, even as liabilities are taken on now that commit future cash flows. In this structure the real and the financial dimensions of the economy are not separated: there is no so-called real economy whose behavior can be studied by abstracting from financial considerations. This system, linking yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows both financially and in terms of the demand for and supply of goods and services, is not a well-behaved linear system. Furthermore, the presumption that this system has an equilibrium cannot be sustained. This modeling of the economy leads to a process in time that generates a path that can fly off to deep depressions and open-ended inflations, even in the absence of exogenous shocks or strange displacements. In this model money is never neutral. (Minsky ibid. 78)”— Ludwig van den Hauwe

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-26 08:57:00 UTC

  • “Minsky’s theory, however, comprises a “two price” model which is of a very diff

    —“Minsky’s theory, however, comprises a “two price” model which is of a very different distinctive nature. According to Minsky, there are really two systems of prices in a capitalist economy – one for current output and the other for capital assets. When the price level of capital assets is high relative to the price level of current output, conditions are favorable for investment; when the price level of capital assets is low relative to the price level of current output, then conditions are not favorable for investment, and a recession—or a depression—is indicated. Business cycles result from a dance of these two price levels, even as the price of a unit of money is fixed at one. (Kregel 1992, 87; Minsky 1986 [2008], 160”— Ludwig van den Hauwe

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-26 07:19:00 UTC

  • The Difference Between “Operational” and “Intuitionistic”.

    (important)

    [I] use the term “Operational” in preference to “Intuitionistic” because the term “intuitionistic” is an uncomfortable one (like “rent-seeking”) that is open to easy misinterpretation, and the term “operational” invokes the meaning that I want it to: actions that humans can possibly take.

    But this is a personal act of argumentative license. There is a significant difference between the terms Operational(actions we take to observe and measure) and Intuitionistic(physical and mental operations that it is possible for humans to perform).

    In practice, when speaking tests of existential possibility, macro economic measures must be performed operationally, often using logical and physical instrumentation. But tests of existential possibility, rationality, and voluntary and involuntary transfer, require only sympathetic testing (reducing economic phenomenon to at least loosely rational sequence of actions that are subjectively believable).

    So just as mathematical operations must be mentally possible and logically consistent (maintaining a balance of ratios), so must sequences of human actions be mentally possible (posses information to do so), subjectively consistent (what we often mistakenly call ‘rational’, but meaning preferential), and if physical action required, physically possible.

    Lest someone leap to conclusions, The difference between mathematical systems and real world systems, is the difference between axiomatic(closed) and real (open) in which humans are constantly subject to information by which they can rearrange the priority of preferences in vast overlapping networks, as well as attempt to outwit one another (contrarian opportunism).

    As such, since in an axiomatic system all information is present, and in a real-world(open) system, all information can never be present, our ability to deduce outcomes is dependent on the degree to which the information is closed (invariant): the more open the system is to new information the less predictive it can be – and as Taleb has demonstrated, shocks generate more consequential signals than predictable signals, and the information required to anticipate signals in the tail is many thousands of times higher than the same predictability within the primary distribution. Therefore while we can deduce general trends in economic phenomenon, we cannot deduce all economic phenomenon with any degree predictive success. Yet we can (usually) explain observed phenomenon given time.

    This means that the Austrian program is largely correct: that economic policy will produce deterministic results. But the position of the main stream opposition is that the good achieved by manipulation is greater than the harm caused by economic distortion. (This remains the central subject of contention, since it will be very hard to prove on way or another.)

    The general trend in economics has been one in which we attempt to provide that improvement by disallowing a shortage of money that would impede growth, by targeting various empirical measures of questionable use, and using the maximum borrowing capacity of the state as a means of inter-temporally adjusting investments in infrastructure and commons. But this emphasis has led to ignoring the means by which economies perform: demographics, education policy, industrial policy, rule of law, homogeneity of culture, and trust. In other words: taking human capital for granted under the false assumption of equality and the good of diversity.

    And this is problematic, because the first most important criteria for economic performance in the absence of external inputs of technology, or military conquest, or possession of unique territory, is trust. And the corporeal state, multiculturalism, and universalism appear to erode that trust systematically – with predictable results.

    BACK TO INTUITIONISM AND OPERATIONALISM
    So, while I may switch from Operationalism (broader) to Intuitionism (narrower) at present I prefer the broader term because of its general meaning and broader scope even though in economics the term Intuitionism is probably closer to corresponding with the purpose I intend: a requirement for the existential possibility of operations in order to criticize our assumptions (premises).

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine

  • The Difference Between “Operational” and “Intuitionistic”.

    (important)

    [I] use the term “Operational” in preference to “Intuitionistic” because the term “intuitionistic” is an uncomfortable one (like “rent-seeking”) that is open to easy misinterpretation, and the term “operational” invokes the meaning that I want it to: actions that humans can possibly take.

    But this is a personal act of argumentative license. There is a significant difference between the terms Operational(actions we take to observe and measure) and Intuitionistic(physical and mental operations that it is possible for humans to perform).

    In practice, when speaking tests of existential possibility, macro economic measures must be performed operationally, often using logical and physical instrumentation. But tests of existential possibility, rationality, and voluntary and involuntary transfer, require only sympathetic testing (reducing economic phenomenon to at least loosely rational sequence of actions that are subjectively believable).

    So just as mathematical operations must be mentally possible and logically consistent (maintaining a balance of ratios), so must sequences of human actions be mentally possible (posses information to do so), subjectively consistent (what we often mistakenly call ‘rational’, but meaning preferential), and if physical action required, physically possible.

    Lest someone leap to conclusions, The difference between mathematical systems and real world systems, is the difference between axiomatic(closed) and real (open) in which humans are constantly subject to information by which they can rearrange the priority of preferences in vast overlapping networks, as well as attempt to outwit one another (contrarian opportunism).

    As such, since in an axiomatic system all information is present, and in a real-world(open) system, all information can never be present, our ability to deduce outcomes is dependent on the degree to which the information is closed (invariant): the more open the system is to new information the less predictive it can be – and as Taleb has demonstrated, shocks generate more consequential signals than predictable signals, and the information required to anticipate signals in the tail is many thousands of times higher than the same predictability within the primary distribution. Therefore while we can deduce general trends in economic phenomenon, we cannot deduce all economic phenomenon with any degree predictive success. Yet we can (usually) explain observed phenomenon given time.

    This means that the Austrian program is largely correct: that economic policy will produce deterministic results. But the position of the main stream opposition is that the good achieved by manipulation is greater than the harm caused by economic distortion. (This remains the central subject of contention, since it will be very hard to prove on way or another.)

    The general trend in economics has been one in which we attempt to provide that improvement by disallowing a shortage of money that would impede growth, by targeting various empirical measures of questionable use, and using the maximum borrowing capacity of the state as a means of inter-temporally adjusting investments in infrastructure and commons. But this emphasis has led to ignoring the means by which economies perform: demographics, education policy, industrial policy, rule of law, homogeneity of culture, and trust. In other words: taking human capital for granted under the false assumption of equality and the good of diversity.

    And this is problematic, because the first most important criteria for economic performance in the absence of external inputs of technology, or military conquest, or possession of unique territory, is trust. And the corporeal state, multiculturalism, and universalism appear to erode that trust systematically – with predictable results.

    BACK TO INTUITIONISM AND OPERATIONALISM
    So, while I may switch from Operationalism (broader) to Intuitionism (narrower) at present I prefer the broader term because of its general meaning and broader scope even though in economics the term Intuitionism is probably closer to corresponding with the purpose I intend: a requirement for the existential possibility of operations in order to criticize our assumptions (premises).

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine