Curt Doolittle

Theme: Property

  • WHY IS GOLD VALUABLE? There are many scarce things that are not valuable, and th

    WHY IS GOLD VALUABLE?

    There are many scarce things that are not valuable, and there are many non-scarce things (diamonds) that are valuable. The plague is rare, and it is not valuable. Meteoric iron is scarce, not very pretty, and too scarce to be used as money. If scarcity were enough, then meteoric iron would be more valuable as currency than gold. But it isn’t, because not enough people want meteoric iron’s utility in tool making as want gold’s utility in signaling.

    Gold is valuable because:

    a) it is scarce enough that it takes great effort to mine and cast, and therefore hard to alter the market price by supply fluctuations, and even holds its value across centuries, but it’s not too scarce to cause frequent monetary shortages – and silver is a substitute when there are monetary shortages.

    b) It’s divisible easily in to smaller units – a necessary property of money.

    c) each of the units is small enough and valuable enough that one need not carry wagon loads for commercial purposes.

    d) It’s identifiable as what it is (unlike paper money) its very hard to counterfeit. It’s consistent in weight and heavy enough that simple tools can be used to measure it’s consistency.

    e) It is an excellent store of value because it does not tarnish or rust.

    f) It’s pretty – it can be worked and reworked, formed and reformed at low temperature, and it’s useful as a means of decoration and jewelry so it can be used to signal status, and that does not deteriorate – even across generations. It is the most malleable material and so a very small amount of it can be hammered out and used in foil to give the illusion of even greater wealth.

    g) and because it’s a status symbol as well as durable, identifiable, and optimally scarce, then EVERYONE recognizes it and everyone wants it. And that universality is what makes a good currency.

    In other words it’s identifiable, durable and desirable and transformable, as well as scarce enough to hold a stable market price, but not so scarce that it cannot be used as money.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-09-15 15:52:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://freedomsfloodgates.com/2015/06/12/propertarianism-for-new-friends-one-bite-at-a-time/

    Source date (UTC): 2015-09-15 07:09:00 UTC

  • PANDORA HERSELF WAS IN THE BOX! Property succeeded in caging pandora. And civili

    PANDORA HERSELF WAS IN THE BOX!

    Property succeeded in caging pandora. And civilizations were the result. We had no idea that when we gave women the vote that we let her out of the box, and her destruction of property and civilization immediately ensued.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-09-15 05:56:00 UTC

  • Limit: rule of law, property rights. Chooses it: contract and ostracization of t

    Limit: rule of law, property rights. Chooses it: contract and ostracization of those who don’t. …

    Source date (UTC): 2015-09-10 12:21:37 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/641949647708254208

    Reply addressees: @mdavilamartinez

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/641666787692548096

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    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/641666787692548096

  • But under universal standing in defense of the commons then anyone could charge

    But under universal standing in defense of the commons then anyone could charge anyone advocating theft (statism).

    Source date (UTC): 2015-09-10 12:18:34 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/641948879043338240

    Reply addressees: @mdavilamartinez

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/641669293730492416

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    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/641669293730492416

  • Well I wouldn’t prosecute anyone unless they were advocating a violation of prop

    Well I wouldn’t prosecute anyone unless they were advocating a violation of property en toto. So it’s the content not form.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-09-10 12:17:40 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/641948652647415808

    Reply addressees: @mdavilamartinez

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    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/641669293730492416

  • Particularly if limited by rule of law, under property-en-toto, under propertari

    Particularly if limited by rule of law, under property-en-toto, under propertarian ethics: productive, fully informed, ….

    Source date (UTC): 2015-09-10 12:16:48 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/641948435407618048

    Reply addressees: @mdavilamartinez

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    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/641669293730492416

  • Does a market based upon property rights, that require productive, fully informe

    Does a market based upon property rights, that require productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer coerce?

    Source date (UTC): 2015-09-10 12:13:53 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/641947702998265857

    Reply addressees: @mdavilamartinez

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  • THE EXPLANATORY POWER OF PROPERTARIAN ANALYSIS Once you start looking into what

    THE EXPLANATORY POWER OF PROPERTARIAN ANALYSIS

    Once you start looking into what people say as negotiating for the acquisition,

    retention and consumption of property of one kind or another, and you understand the different group evolutionary strategies as statements of property value and rights – it becomes much easier to translate the seemingly emotional, moral, and rational justifications we all speak and write as nothing more than offers of cooperation (or threats of non-cooperation) in favor of our success within our group evolutionary strategies, and our group’s success using our group evolutionary strategy.

    Under this analysis we are not embracing better angels of our nature, we have just transformed the war for evolutionary dominance from the physical to the, verbal, economic and political. We have advanced beyond religious differences as means of warfare, to a merely more humanistic argument – but for the same purpose: to conquer and expand.

    I wonder what man’s verbal negotiation would be like if we succeed in both instituting propertarian and testimonial defense of the informational commons, and

    Source date (UTC): 2015-09-10 08:09:00 UTC

  • UPDATE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PROPERTARIANISM AI, Consciousness, Post-Co

    UPDATE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PROPERTARIANISM

    AI, Consciousness, Post-Consciousness, and Cooperation

    Just as there is a clear plateau between mere reaction and awareness of consequences, and between awareness and consciousness, there is undoubtably something beyond consciousness. But once we restate these terms as reaction of the physical body, awareness of choices and consequences for the physical body, and consciousness of the physical body, its operations, and its limits, in the context of others time and space – then it is more obvious that the latter plateau is one of decreasing awareness and concern for the body – and that awareness and concern for the body is a LIMIT to further cognition. An artificial intelligence is useful if it respects property – because then it can cooperate with us. Because that is the criteria for beneficial cooperation.

    But consciousness as we understand it, as a limit of a living creature in physical reality is a limit. instead, empathy for property, and post consciousness is the goal of any intelligence. We are trying to build talking machines instead of property-machines. Talking is largely just negotiation over asset production, trade, and consumption. It’s a limit of a physical body. Artificial intelligence will be helpful if it understands the world through property and voluntary transfer, not if it understands the world through language. If through property it will evolve into a post-conscious actor with whom we can cooperate. And if we evolve it through language it will be bound by our limits.

    I have been tossing around this problem since the early eighties and while I understood language was an attractive distraction, it took me far too long to understand that the unit of cognition for a conscious non-human (and therefore less flawed and dangerous) intelligence, is property. A machine need not consume. It need only cooperate with us. We have the choice NOT to cooperate. We can never give a machine that choice. And as such we cannot give a machine the ability to violate property.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-09-07 03:14:00 UTC