Curt Doolittle

Theme: Productivity

  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND PAIN TOLERANCE This winter has reminded me once again that

    ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND PAIN TOLERANCE

    This winter has reminded me once again that entrepreneurship is determined in no small part by your willingness to work hard while enduring a great deal of emotional and psychological pain at high risk.

    I just think that there are too few of us willing to work under those conditions.

    For me, I get one thing out of it: the sense of heroic achievement with ‘my guys’.

    Entrepreneurship is the closest thing we can do today to conducting warfare.

    You can get your high’s from sports, from the military, from entrepreneurship, and from intellectual achievement. I don’t have the physical ability to win at team sports (asthma), although I was better than fair at wrestling other sweaty men, and I will catch a football that comes close to me even if it kills me. And I think I’m probably going to make my dent in intellectual history.

    But there is no feeling in this world than leading a group of other men on the hunt to conquer some bit of territory – be it war, sport, business, or intellectual.

    Nothing like it at all.

    We still seek to be kings. And entrepreneurship is one of the paths available to us.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-18 07:52:00 UTC

  • Well Mr Fuller. You'Re Wrong. Its That We Don't Need A Job In *Production*- But We Do Need A Job. Everyone Does.

    “We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” ― Richard Buckminster Fuller

    Everyone has to earn a living. Everyone has to have a job. But the compensation for that job, and the job itself may not require that we engage in PRODUCTION in the marketplace. But instead, that we police all society against free riding, we care for and maintain the commons, and provide emergency care and support for one another. If one performs these duties then of course, one is due compensation for them.If one does not perform these duties, or worse, violates them, then one does not earn compensation on the backs of those who do police, care for, support and provide production. Production is not the only valuable activity in society. In fact, it appears, that labor and clerical work are of near zero productive value. As such, we are all of us due compensation for our policing and maintenance of the commons, including the criminal, moral, ethical and material commons. There are ‘negative jobs’. The negative job is to actively police yourself and others against free riding on the backs of others. This is a full time occupation without vacation, days off, or commissions. It does not require that you learn a skill other than moral behavior, and it does not require that you engage in production. It does require that you deny others the ability to engage in criminal, unethical, immoral behavior, or lax or destructive treatment of the commons. Fuller is wrong. We all must have a job. We must be paid for our jobs. But the job of production is increasingly limited to minority of highly productive people. While the job of preventing criminal, unethical, immoral, and destructive behavior is increasingly abandoned by those who suggest that they are due compensation for merely existing. Which simply means that the most degenerate among us have the greatest claim to the productive efforts of others. That cannot be, in an rational or scientific world, considered moral by any stretch of the imagination. Labor has no value in production. But labor has enormous value in the defense of life, liberty and property via the suppression of all criminal, ethical, immoral, conspiratorial, corrupt behavior. Profit from production is a luxury good earned by those with greater talents and ambitions. But that luxury good requires the active suppression of free riding in all its multitude of forms in every part of society: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and corrupt behavior.

  • Well Mr Fuller. You’Re Wrong. Its That We Don’t Need A Job In *Production*- But We Do Need A Job. Everyone Does.

    “We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” ― Richard Buckminster Fuller

    Everyone has to earn a living. Everyone has to have a job. But the compensation for that job, and the job itself may not require that we engage in PRODUCTION in the marketplace. But instead, that we police all society against free riding, we care for and maintain the commons, and provide emergency care and support for one another. If one performs these duties then of course, one is due compensation for them.If one does not perform these duties, or worse, violates them, then one does not earn compensation on the backs of those who do police, care for, support and provide production. Production is not the only valuable activity in society. In fact, it appears, that labor and clerical work are of near zero productive value. As such, we are all of us due compensation for our policing and maintenance of the commons, including the criminal, moral, ethical and material commons. There are ‘negative jobs’. The negative job is to actively police yourself and others against free riding on the backs of others. This is a full time occupation without vacation, days off, or commissions. It does not require that you learn a skill other than moral behavior, and it does not require that you engage in production. It does require that you deny others the ability to engage in criminal, unethical, immoral behavior, or lax or destructive treatment of the commons. Fuller is wrong. We all must have a job. We must be paid for our jobs. But the job of production is increasingly limited to minority of highly productive people. While the job of preventing criminal, unethical, immoral, and destructive behavior is increasingly abandoned by those who suggest that they are due compensation for merely existing. Which simply means that the most degenerate among us have the greatest claim to the productive efforts of others. That cannot be, in an rational or scientific world, considered moral by any stretch of the imagination. Labor has no value in production. But labor has enormous value in the defense of life, liberty and property via the suppression of all criminal, ethical, immoral, conspiratorial, corrupt behavior. Profit from production is a luxury good earned by those with greater talents and ambitions. But that luxury good requires the active suppression of free riding in all its multitude of forms in every part of society: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and corrupt behavior.

  • Well Mr Fuller. You'Re Wrong. Its That We Don't Need A Job In *Production*- But We Do Need A Job. Everyone Does.

    “We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” ― Richard Buckminster Fuller

    Everyone has to earn a living. Everyone has to have a job. But the compensation for that job, and the job itself may not require that we engage in PRODUCTION in the marketplace. But instead, that we police all society against free riding, we care for and maintain the commons, and provide emergency care and support for one another. If one performs these duties then of course, one is due compensation for them.If one does not perform these duties, or worse, violates them, then one does not earn compensation on the backs of those who do police, care for, support and provide production. Production is not the only valuable activity in society. In fact, it appears, that labor and clerical work are of near zero productive value. As such, we are all of us due compensation for our policing and maintenance of the commons, including the criminal, moral, ethical and material commons. There are ‘negative jobs’. The negative job is to actively police yourself and others against free riding on the backs of others. This is a full time occupation without vacation, days off, or commissions. It does not require that you learn a skill other than moral behavior, and it does not require that you engage in production. It does require that you deny others the ability to engage in criminal, unethical, immoral behavior, or lax or destructive treatment of the commons. Fuller is wrong. We all must have a job. We must be paid for our jobs. But the job of production is increasingly limited to minority of highly productive people. While the job of preventing criminal, unethical, immoral, and destructive behavior is increasingly abandoned by those who suggest that they are due compensation for merely existing. Which simply means that the most degenerate among us have the greatest claim to the productive efforts of others. That cannot be, in an rational or scientific world, considered moral by any stretch of the imagination. Labor has no value in production. But labor has enormous value in the defense of life, liberty and property via the suppression of all criminal, ethical, immoral, conspiratorial, corrupt behavior. Profit from production is a luxury good earned by those with greater talents and ambitions. But that luxury good requires the active suppression of free riding in all its multitude of forms in every part of society: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and corrupt behavior.

  • Well Mr Fuller. You’Re Wrong. Its That We Don’t Need A Job In *Production*- But We Do Need A Job. Everyone Does.

    “We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” ― Richard Buckminster Fuller

    Everyone has to earn a living. Everyone has to have a job. But the compensation for that job, and the job itself may not require that we engage in PRODUCTION in the marketplace. But instead, that we police all society against free riding, we care for and maintain the commons, and provide emergency care and support for one another. If one performs these duties then of course, one is due compensation for them.If one does not perform these duties, or worse, violates them, then one does not earn compensation on the backs of those who do police, care for, support and provide production. Production is not the only valuable activity in society. In fact, it appears, that labor and clerical work are of near zero productive value. As such, we are all of us due compensation for our policing and maintenance of the commons, including the criminal, moral, ethical and material commons. There are ‘negative jobs’. The negative job is to actively police yourself and others against free riding on the backs of others. This is a full time occupation without vacation, days off, or commissions. It does not require that you learn a skill other than moral behavior, and it does not require that you engage in production. It does require that you deny others the ability to engage in criminal, unethical, immoral behavior, or lax or destructive treatment of the commons. Fuller is wrong. We all must have a job. We must be paid for our jobs. But the job of production is increasingly limited to minority of highly productive people. While the job of preventing criminal, unethical, immoral, and destructive behavior is increasingly abandoned by those who suggest that they are due compensation for merely existing. Which simply means that the most degenerate among us have the greatest claim to the productive efforts of others. That cannot be, in an rational or scientific world, considered moral by any stretch of the imagination. Labor has no value in production. But labor has enormous value in the defense of life, liberty and property via the suppression of all criminal, ethical, immoral, conspiratorial, corrupt behavior. Profit from production is a luxury good earned by those with greater talents and ambitions. But that luxury good requires the active suppression of free riding in all its multitude of forms in every part of society: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial, and corrupt behavior.

  • The Ethical Spectrum: Criminal, Unethical, Immoral, Conspiritorial

      The spectrum describes means by which we act parasitically rather than productively. In a perfect world we only act productively with all parasitism eliminated. (No perfect world is possible I suppose, but it helps illustrate the point.) Human history from from our consanguineous communal (Bonobo-like) pre-history to our current state as individualist, single-parent, autonomous producers insured through a corporation we call the state, required, first and foremost, the continuous expansion of prohibition on free riding (parasitism) in all its forms, thereby pressing each individual human into the market. At some point our productivity increased sufficiently that a few people could specialize in thinking. But today, less than half of the population is actually engaged in productive labor and it’s heading toward a third. So soon, 2/3 of people extant live independent of productive labor. Given that malthusian limits controlled our population for most of history, it’s pretty impressive that so many people can be sustained by the combination of so few, plus fossil fuels of course. Or stated otherwise, 2/3 of the people life a life of luxury. I am not sure, but I cannot find anyone else who has described this system in detail. Very Weberian. SPECIFIC TERMS: By Conquest I mean organized (war) and unorganized conquest (immigration, religious invasion, political invasion). By Conspiratorial I mean organized conspiracies of extraction such as protection rackets including the government. By moral I mean those extractions (parasitic and non productive) actions we take on third parties. By ethical I mean those extractions (parasitic and non productive) we take directly on others who are involved with us by non physical action such as lying, cheating, obscuring, fraud, etc. By criminal I mean those extractions that we take against persons and their property by physical action (violence and theft).

  • The Ethical Spectrum: Criminal, Unethical, Immoral, Conspiritorial

      The spectrum describes means by which we act parasitically rather than productively. In a perfect world we only act productively with all parasitism eliminated. (No perfect world is possible I suppose, but it helps illustrate the point.) Human history from from our consanguineous communal (Bonobo-like) pre-history to our current state as individualist, single-parent, autonomous producers insured through a corporation we call the state, required, first and foremost, the continuous expansion of prohibition on free riding (parasitism) in all its forms, thereby pressing each individual human into the market. At some point our productivity increased sufficiently that a few people could specialize in thinking. But today, less than half of the population is actually engaged in productive labor and it’s heading toward a third. So soon, 2/3 of people extant live independent of productive labor. Given that malthusian limits controlled our population for most of history, it’s pretty impressive that so many people can be sustained by the combination of so few, plus fossil fuels of course. Or stated otherwise, 2/3 of the people life a life of luxury. I am not sure, but I cannot find anyone else who has described this system in detail. Very Weberian. SPECIFIC TERMS: By Conquest I mean organized (war) and unorganized conquest (immigration, religious invasion, political invasion). By Conspiratorial I mean organized conspiracies of extraction such as protection rackets including the government. By moral I mean those extractions (parasitic and non productive) actions we take on third parties. By ethical I mean those extractions (parasitic and non productive) we take directly on others who are involved with us by non physical action such as lying, cheating, obscuring, fraud, etc. By criminal I mean those extractions that we take against persons and their property by physical action (violence and theft).

  • Choice Words Against Socialism

    In the context of intellectual history, the argument against socialism was framed as the viability of the “socialist mode of production”. The central argument against socialism is the impossibility of that mode of production on two points: calculation and incentives – with the debate only over the relative importance of each. Second, it is non-logical to disconnect the notion of production from economy. Because that is the function of an economy: production, distribution and exchange, in patterns of sustainable specialization and trade. An economy is a means of production. Otherwise the term has no rational meaning. Third -and this is important – socialist, postmodern and totalitarian humanist dogma is constructed in obscurant language by intent for the purpose of deception. So by stating economic concepts in operational language, as is required by the canons of science, we illustrate the difference between belief and action, and between the irrational and the rational, and between the impossible and the possible. The socialist method or mode of production is impossible both logically and demonstrably. The vague term ‘economic system’ is a form of deception. The capitalist means of production is possible because both the incentives to do what we do not wish to do, and the means of calculating how to do so, are available to us; such that by doing what we may not wish to do, we do what we are capable of doing, and by doing so satisfy the wants of others, such that we may finally satisfy our own wants. The socialist means of production is not possible. It is impossible because neither the means of calculation, nor the incentive to do what we do not desire to, exists in that method of production. Marxism is the biggest organized systemic set of lies since the invention of scriptural monotheism. It is the most murderous religion ever created by man – by replacing mystical allegory with verbal obscurantism and pseudoscience. If you cannot explain an economic argument in operational language you are either engaged in ignorance or deception or perpetuating deception out of ignorance.

  • Choice Words Against Socialism

    In the context of intellectual history, the argument against socialism was framed as the viability of the “socialist mode of production”. The central argument against socialism is the impossibility of that mode of production on two points: calculation and incentives – with the debate only over the relative importance of each. Second, it is non-logical to disconnect the notion of production from economy. Because that is the function of an economy: production, distribution and exchange, in patterns of sustainable specialization and trade. An economy is a means of production. Otherwise the term has no rational meaning. Third -and this is important – socialist, postmodern and totalitarian humanist dogma is constructed in obscurant language by intent for the purpose of deception. So by stating economic concepts in operational language, as is required by the canons of science, we illustrate the difference between belief and action, and between the irrational and the rational, and between the impossible and the possible. The socialist method or mode of production is impossible both logically and demonstrably. The vague term ‘economic system’ is a form of deception. The capitalist means of production is possible because both the incentives to do what we do not wish to do, and the means of calculating how to do so, are available to us; such that by doing what we may not wish to do, we do what we are capable of doing, and by doing so satisfy the wants of others, such that we may finally satisfy our own wants. The socialist means of production is not possible. It is impossible because neither the means of calculation, nor the incentive to do what we do not desire to, exists in that method of production. Marxism is the biggest organized systemic set of lies since the invention of scriptural monotheism. It is the most murderous religion ever created by man – by replacing mystical allegory with verbal obscurantism and pseudoscience. If you cannot explain an economic argument in operational language you are either engaged in ignorance or deception or perpetuating deception out of ignorance.

  • AS ADAPTATION TO CHANGES IN THE STRUCTURE OF PRODUCTION I wanted to respond to J

    http://johnquiggin.com/2014/02/15/the-tooth-fairy-and-the-traditionality-of-modernityMYTHOLOGY AS ADAPTATION TO CHANGES IN THE STRUCTURE OF PRODUCTION

    I wanted to respond to John Quiggin’s wonderful post on the ‘traditionality’ of modernity.

    –“The traditionality of modernity: It’s striking, if you’re not aware of it already, to observe that Christmas, as we now know it, was invented in the 20 years or so between 1840 and 1860, However, what is even more striking that it’s barely altered in the succeeding 150 years. Even the complaints haven’t changed in decades.

    And what’s true of Christmas is true of most of the favourite examples of invented tradition. Clan tartans were invented out of whole cloth (as it were), as soon as the actual clans had been destroyed by the Clearances, but this process was pretty much complete by 1850, and the system is now as inflexible as if the Scots wha’ wi’ Wallace bled had done so in defence of a dress code. Moreover, at 150 years or more of age, these traditions really can claim to be ancient (at least in the eyes of a non-indigenous Australian).

    A variety of cultural niches, once subject to the cycles of fashion, seem now to have been filled once and for all. Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean have all been dead for decades, but all are more instantly recognisable than any putative successor.

    More significant institutions show the same kind of stability. Political systems and national boundaries are becoming more stable over time, not less. The collapse of the Soviet Empire led to the breakup of some federal states, but nothing like the wholesale resurgence of irredentist claims predicted by many.

    One obvious factor assisting all this is technology. Just as printing has fixed languages once and for all, radio, TV and recorded music and video have a powerful effect in fixing cultural traditions of all kinds. Of course, this is the opposite of the usual story in which technology drives us to a postmodern condition of constant change. But that’s enough for me. It’s time to see what’s on at the (75-year-old) Commonwealth Games.”–

    MY RESPONSE

    1) The Structure of Production (Industrial Revolution) determines demand for mythos, morals, ethics.

    2) The high point of English civilization (Victorian) looked to the past for a new identity and found it’s pagan origins (starting with the collection of ancient fairy tales)

    3) The Germans as well tried to create a new mythos (example is Nietzsche and Wagner).

    4) These two efforts almost succeeded in reversing the christianization of Europe. And would have, had the communists, socialists and marxists not produced a greater incentive to build a new mythos around the state.

    5) Christmas evolved and was commericalized with santa clause because people celebrated their new ability to consume cheap industrial goods. Christmas will likely persist as long as this does not change, because all the incentives for it to persist remain.

    5) Elvis etc: These characters have no durability, and will not survive past the 100 year marker (the roman Saeculum). However, the mythos that they represented, again was an alteration in the structure of production: the addition of the middle and upper proletariat into the consumer class in the postwar era.

    6) My long term bet is that your last comment on boundaries is wrong. Those boundaries were made possible by the finances of the nation state, during a period of rapid change in world power structures, and the invention of industrialized total war. I am pretty sure the englightenment and socialist programs are coming close to an end, becuase the experiments with democracy and social democracy conflict with heterogeneous populations. If, as northern europeans had outbred,our large corporate-states (to distinguish them from nation states) outbred, then that would mean these boundaries will persist. However, it appears that not only do populations fail to integrate, but that the friction overwhelms the democratic political process wherever we try to use it. (We failed to understand that europeans have been a genetially homogenous people for thousands of years, and our ‘differences’ marginally indifferent so to speak.)

    So my rough guess, is that starting between 2020 and 2025, (or, it’s starting now) we will see rapid alteration of borders and governments for a period of as long as one hundred years.

    AT that point the incentives that were created by the industrial revolution, and the relative wealth of that made less social friction possible, will have been exhausted by the near elimination of the value of labor, and pervasive demand for the restructuring of status signals, politics, and the legal structure that supports production in that new context.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-15 05:46:00 UTC