Curt Doolittle

Theme: Property

  • Contractual Commons: Law is Discovered, Contracts and Exchanges are Made.

    [W]e can produce a market for un-consumable commons using a government just as we produce a market for consumable private goods. But that law and commons are two different things. But there is no reason whatsoever, that knowing how to construct the common law, government should be capable of producing law. It cannot. Law is discovered, contracts and exchanges are made.
    1. Economic velocity (wealth) is determined by the degree of suppression of parasitism (free riding/imposed costs). This eliminates transaction costs.

    2.  Central power originates to centralize parasitism and increase material costs, by suppressing local parasitism and as a consequence, eliminated local transaction costs. And using those costs to pay for the suppression of local parasitism.  We trade expensive local transaction costs for less expensive costs of suppression.

    3. Once centralized those costs can be incrementally eliminated. But if and only if an institutional means of deciding conflicts can be used to replace personal judgement as a means of deciding conflicts.

    4.  The only means of producing institutional rules to replace personal judgement (provision of ‘decidability’) is in the independent, common, evolutionary law resting upon a prohibition on parasitism/free-riding/imposed costs (negatives), codified as property rights (positives): productive, warrantied, fully informed, voluntary transfer(exchange), free of negative externalities.

    5. Suppression of violence and theft is fairly easy because the actions are existential and the results obvious.  But as we increasingly suppress violence and theft, people resort to fraud, fraud by omission, fraud by suggestion, imposition of costs by externality, corruption, and conspiracy. So suppression of these more complex thefts requires testimony and decidability.

    6. Language evolved to justify (morality), negotiate (deceive), and rally and shame (gossip), and only tangentially and late to describe (truth). Truth as we understand it is an invention and an unnatural one – which is why it is unique to the west, and why it has taken philosophers so long to understand it. However, westerners evolved a military epistemology because they relied upon self-financing warriors voluntarily participating, as well as the jury and truth telling. (The marginal difference in intellectual ability apparently not common – they were all smart enough. and such testimony was in itself ‘training’.)

    7. We cannot expect or demand truthful testimony from people unless they know how to produce it. ie: Education in what I would consider the religion of the west: “the true, the moral and the beautiful”. So I consider this education ‘sacred’ not just utilitarian.

    8. We cannot demand truth and law from people unless it is not against their interests: ie: the only universal political system is Nationalism, because groups can act truthfully internally, truthfully externally, and can use trade negotiations to neutralized competitive differences. And with nationalism, individuals cannot escape paying the cost of transforming their own societies, and themselves, and laying the burden of doing so upon other societies.

    9. Commons are a profound competitive advantage. Territorial, institutional, normative, genetic, physical, and economic (industrial) commons are a profound advantage to any group.


      The west is the most successful producer of commons so it is even more important to the west. So we must provide a means of producing those commons.


      The difference between market for private goods and services (where competition in production is a good incentive) and corporate (public) goods, where we must prevent privatization of gains an socialization of losses, requires that we provide monopoly protection of those goods from consumption.


      But does not require that we provide monopoly contribution to them. Commons require only that the people willing to pay for them, do so. Otherwise there is no demonstrated preference for that commons.

      Insurance is a commons and I will leave that for another time.

      Return on investment (dividends) are the product of commons. I will leave that for another time as well.


      The central point is that we can produce a market for common goods using government just as we do in the market private goods. But that law and commons are two different things. and that there is no reason whatsoever, knowing how to construct the common law, that government should be capable of producing law. it cannot.

      Law is. It cannot be created. Only identified.


  • Public Economics of Marriage

    [M]arriage is, first and foremost, a contract between two parties, husband and wife. And this contract is originally set up to last for all eternity — till death do them part. As such, two married people (Family, in the following) form an economic union with responsibilities deriving from the contract, if so specified explicitly, or from societal norms accompanying it (yes, including current Zeitgeist, and prevailing moral concepts), and their union’s main purpose is to control reproduction and property. From the fact that a family is set up to be ever-lasting, the main purpose of controlling reproduction and property, and basic economics, we can derive a few things:

    1. Any one person is either member of a Family as defined above, or not.
    2. A family can allocate their resources (labor or capital) to produce goods, and either consume them, or invest (“save”) them.
    3. A family can engage in (re)production.
    4. Derivative from 2 and 3: A family will engage in long-term planning to optimize their inter-temporal resource-allocation. Depending on future time orientation, this planning horizon may span a few weeks, or a few centuries.
    5. A family that engages in long-term planning can probably be relied upon in/by another family’s long-term plans, given coincidence of wants.
    6. Derivative from 5: Families can engage in mutually beneficial trade with other families.
    7. Derivative from 4, 5 and 7: In any society, Families can form cartels, to exclude less-reliable parties.
    8. Derivative from 8 and 4: Any one single person will be found less reliable than any one family, cartel-breakers notwithstanding.
    9. Cartel-breakers will benefit in the short-term, and be punished in the long-term. Bear in mind that the famous “Bromkonvention”-case study, which Libertarians like to harp over, does not work in real life. Cartels form all the time, for mutual benefit.
    10. A family member (husband or wife) can suspend the marital covenant, and engage in cheating (“cheater”, in the following)
    11. Derivative from 10 and 1: Any one cheating family member (“cheater”) must do so with either a non-family-member, or a fellow cheating family member (“cheater”).
    12. For any cartel to remain stable, cartel members must be in a position to force high costs on any cartel breaker.
    13. Derivative from 6, 8, 9, and 12: Families must levy a high tax on whoever is discovered cheater, or enabler of cheaters (It *does* take two to Tango).
    14. Currently, the divorce laws enable “no fault divorce”, with basic separation of economic goods (aka, “She gets half.”)
    15. Even if women bear no children, women typically earn less during their lifetime. However, for equal qualification and ambition, women earn the same.
    16. Derivative from 14 and 15: The introduction of no-fault divorce laws has weakened a man’s position to get away with cheating, without losing half his Family’s assets. In other words, he loses more than he contributed to that marriage, on average.
    17. Derivative from 14 and 15, pt 2.: The introduction of no-fault divorce laws has strengthened a woman’s position to get away with cheating, all the while retaining half her Family’s assets. In other words, she gains more than she contributed to that marriage, on average.
    18. Publicly known cheaters, and their enablers, will be discriminated against economically (in matters as obtaining income and credit).

    Cheating, like lying, doesn’t pay off. QED.

  • Public Economics of Marriage

    [M]arriage is, first and foremost, a contract between two parties, husband and wife. And this contract is originally set up to last for all eternity — till death do them part. As such, two married people (Family, in the following) form an economic union with responsibilities deriving from the contract, if so specified explicitly, or from societal norms accompanying it (yes, including current Zeitgeist, and prevailing moral concepts), and their union’s main purpose is to control reproduction and property. From the fact that a family is set up to be ever-lasting, the main purpose of controlling reproduction and property, and basic economics, we can derive a few things:

    1. Any one person is either member of a Family as defined above, or not.
    2. A family can allocate their resources (labor or capital) to produce goods, and either consume them, or invest (“save”) them.
    3. A family can engage in (re)production.
    4. Derivative from 2 and 3: A family will engage in long-term planning to optimize their inter-temporal resource-allocation. Depending on future time orientation, this planning horizon may span a few weeks, or a few centuries.
    5. A family that engages in long-term planning can probably be relied upon in/by another family’s long-term plans, given coincidence of wants.
    6. Derivative from 5: Families can engage in mutually beneficial trade with other families.
    7. Derivative from 4, 5 and 7: In any society, Families can form cartels, to exclude less-reliable parties.
    8. Derivative from 8 and 4: Any one single person will be found less reliable than any one family, cartel-breakers notwithstanding.
    9. Cartel-breakers will benefit in the short-term, and be punished in the long-term. Bear in mind that the famous “Bromkonvention”-case study, which Libertarians like to harp over, does not work in real life. Cartels form all the time, for mutual benefit.
    10. A family member (husband or wife) can suspend the marital covenant, and engage in cheating (“cheater”, in the following)
    11. Derivative from 10 and 1: Any one cheating family member (“cheater”) must do so with either a non-family-member, or a fellow cheating family member (“cheater”).
    12. For any cartel to remain stable, cartel members must be in a position to force high costs on any cartel breaker.
    13. Derivative from 6, 8, 9, and 12: Families must levy a high tax on whoever is discovered cheater, or enabler of cheaters (It *does* take two to Tango).
    14. Currently, the divorce laws enable “no fault divorce”, with basic separation of economic goods (aka, “She gets half.”)
    15. Even if women bear no children, women typically earn less during their lifetime. However, for equal qualification and ambition, women earn the same.
    16. Derivative from 14 and 15: The introduction of no-fault divorce laws has weakened a man’s position to get away with cheating, without losing half his Family’s assets. In other words, he loses more than he contributed to that marriage, on average.
    17. Derivative from 14 and 15, pt 2.: The introduction of no-fault divorce laws has strengthened a woman’s position to get away with cheating, all the while retaining half her Family’s assets. In other words, she gains more than she contributed to that marriage, on average.
    18. Publicly known cheaters, and their enablers, will be discriminated against economically (in matters as obtaining income and credit).

    Cheating, like lying, doesn’t pay off. QED.

  • THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF PROPERTARIAN ETHICS (revised and expanded)(worth repeati

    THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF PROPERTARIAN ETHICS

    (revised and expanded)(worth repeating)

    0 — Man is a costly form of life in an unpredictable universe.

    1 – Man must acquire resources to live amid this unpredictable universe.

    2 – Man must act to acquire and inventory resources:

    3 — Man must defend that which he has acquired and inventoried. (His property is demonstrated by what he defends from loss, and what he retaliates for imposition of costs upon.)

    4 – Man demonstrates that he acquires and defends:

    ……4.1 Life, Time, Rest, Memories, Actions, Social Status, Reputation

    ……4.2 Mates (access to sex/reproduction), Children (genetics), Familial Relations (security), Non-Familial Relations (utility),Consanguineous property (tribal and family ties)

    ……4.3 Organizational ties (work), Knowledge ties (skills, crafts), Insurance (community)

    ……4.4 Several Property: Those things external to our bodies that we claim a monopoly of control over, having obtained them without imposing costs upon others.

    ……4.5 Shareholder Property: Recorded And Quantified Shareholder Property (physical shares in a tradable asset), Commons: Unrecorded and Unquantified Shareholder Property (shares in commons), Artificial Property: (property created by fiat agreement) Intellectual Property.

    ……4.6 Informal (Normative) Property: Our norms: manners, ethics, morals, myths, and rituals that consist of our social portfolio and which make our social order possible.

    ……4.7 Formal Institutional Property: Formal (Procedural) Institutions: Our institutions: Religion (including the secular religion), Government, Laws.

    5 – Man must act cooperatively to disproportionately improve acquisition of resources. (Cooperation is disproportionately more rewarding than any other activity.)

    6 – Man must only cooperate where it is beneficial and preferable to non-cooperation. As such all cooperative actions or sets of actions, must result in:

    ……5.1 Productive (increases property)

    ……5.2 Fully Informed (without deceit – a form of discounting)

    ……5.3 Warrantied (promise of non parasitism warranty of restitution)

    ……5.4 Voluntary Exchange

    ……5.5 Free of negative externality (imposes no costs on the property of third parties).

    7 – Man must act to preserve and extend cooperation to preserve the disproportionate rewards of acquisition through cooperation. (Cooperation is itself a disproportionately valuable scarcity)

    8 – Man acts to preserve and extend cooperation by the suppression of parasitism that creates the disincentive to cooperate, and therefore decreases the disproportionate rewards of acquisition through cooperation. (Man evolved necessary and expensive moral intuitions to preserve cooperation – including expensive forms of punishment of offenders.)

    9 – Man engages in parasitism by:

    ……7.1 violence,

    ……7.2 theft,

    ……7.3 fraud, fraud by obscurantism, fraud by moralizing, fraud by omission,

    ……7.4 externality, free riding, privatization of commons, socialization of losses,

    ……7.5 conspiracy, conversion, immigration, conquest, war and genocide. (Violence, Theft, Fraud, Externality, and Conspiracy.)

    10 – Man suppresses parasitism by threats of interpersonal violence, promises of interpersonal violence, interpersonal violence, interpersonal ostracization from cooperation, organized ostracization via norms and commerce, when he must by remuneration, and when he can by organized violence in law and war.

    ……10.1 Man possesses three weapons of influence: violence(imposition of material costs), gossip(imposition of opportunity costs: ostracization-inclusion), and remuneration(transfer of assets: exchange).

    ……10.2 Man uses all three weapons of influences, usually in concert, to different degrees.

    ……10.3 Some men specialize in one weapon of influence: Warriors, Sheriffs and judges: Violence; priests and public intellectuals: Gossip; Organizers of Production: Remuneration.

    11 – The most rapid means by which man can organize the suppression of parasitism is by defining property rights as all demonstrated property, and creating a court of universal standing under the common law, under the rule of law before a jury of his peers – since any innovation in parasitism is suppressed by the creation of a new prohibition with the first suit adjudicated. (Common, organically evolutionary law most rapidly prevents expansion of demonstrated parasitic opportunities.)

    12 – A market for goods and services produces consumables, but a market for commons produces non-consumables. Non-consumable goods that provide utility whether those goods be privately constructed (use by private shareholders only) or publicly constructed (use by all citizen-shareholders). Commons (whether physical, normative or institutional) provide a disproportionate return to shareholders by preventing consumption and preserving utility.

    — dissent and adjudication not assent and confirmation –

    –division of cognitive labor–

    — the family-regulation of reproduction–

    13 – A condition of liberty is constructed when all men, including those who participate in the construction of commons – members of the government – are equally bound by the prohibition on parasitism: the common law against parasitism. (Morality is a synonym for non-parasitism. Liberty is a synonym for a moral – meaning non-parasitic – government.)

    14 – A condition of both interpersonal morality, and it’s mirror: legal liberty, both forces all human action necessary for man’s survival into productive participation in the market by denying parasitism, and reduces or eliminates transaction costs (frictions due to risk), which in turn maximizes the potential economic velocity of the group.

    15 – If one does not engage in parasitism by doing so, the forcible increase of the suppression of others’ free riding is always by definition moral and just. This increases the possibilities of prosperity for all men. (Legal colonialism is moral. Economic colonialism is not.) (Aristocracy is obliged to increase the pool of aristocratic people whenever possible, and affordable.)

    There is no competitive strategy greater than the suppression of parasitism in all it’s forms. Because all human effort is limited to the market for productive ends, and all market activity is conducted under the lowest possible speculative friction.

    The optimum group evolutionary strategy is to suppress all parasitism, while constantly driving up it’s intelligence by suppressing the reproduction of its lower classes (non performers). This causes no harm, and produces the greatest and longest term competitive benefit.)

    If many groups follow this strategy, the largest group with the highest median IQ and aggression (competitive energy) will produce the most innovation.

    Some groups cannot compete. So they will continue to act as parasites. (Gypsies).

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-07-19 23:20:00 UTC

  • Property:Positive / Commons:Negative

    [P]roperty is an attempt to solve the problem of decidability on the use of resources. But no matter how we arrange property we still have the problem of producing commons – where we define ‘commons’ as an investment that produces goods, but must be free of privatization (consumption). (Parks are a great example because their central function is to prevent consumption of land – they have no other ‘use’ than transit and experience.) Some commons produce status (art, poems, plays, parks, monuments, monumental architecture). Some commons improve quality of life and safety (sewers, water treatment, armies). Some improve prosperity through trade (roads, street cars, railways, airports). To qualify as a commons, the use of the good must not be limited to those who paid for it. It’s just that the consumption of the good is prohibited. Property=consumption (positive).  Commons=preservation(negative).

  • Property:Positive / Commons:Negative

    [P]roperty is an attempt to solve the problem of decidability on the use of resources. But no matter how we arrange property we still have the problem of producing commons – where we define ‘commons’ as an investment that produces goods, but must be free of privatization (consumption). (Parks are a great example because their central function is to prevent consumption of land – they have no other ‘use’ than transit and experience.) Some commons produce status (art, poems, plays, parks, monuments, monumental architecture). Some commons improve quality of life and safety (sewers, water treatment, armies). Some improve prosperity through trade (roads, street cars, railways, airports). To qualify as a commons, the use of the good must not be limited to those who paid for it. It’s just that the consumption of the good is prohibited. Property=consumption (positive).  Commons=preservation(negative).

  • Another on Aristocracy(criticism) vs Republicanism(Justification)

    Science=critical.  Morality=justificationary. [I] have been working on the series: ‘obverse/revers, justification/criticism, morality/science, property-right/prohibition, GoldenRule/SilverRule, that is the western innovative alternative to eastern static ying-and-yang. Where they match sides, we only overlap in a venn diagram. Where they have a balance of equality and necessary cooperation, we have a division of labor and voluntary cooperation.

    OBVERSE: Positive Government uses Justification and ascent (republic) – the objective is to do good. Concentrate all resources behind single ideas: monopoly provision of commons: the government society. But we cannot know good, or agree on good. Napoleonic law of prior restraint. Scope of Property is limited. Standing is limited. Rule is by Coercive Government (ascent). Judgements are ideological and hypothetical. And this creates opportunity for rent seeking(parasitism). At best, this strategy is useful for transitioning a failed people.

    REVERSE: Negative Government uses Criticism and prosecution (aristocracy) – the objective is to do no harm. Distribute all resources according to preferences of the contributors: market provision of commons: the civic society. And we can know harm. Common law of dispute resolution. Scope is Property-en-toto, Standing is universal. Rule is by prohibitionary judgement (veto). Decisions are empirical and operational. And this strategy creates no opportunity for rent seeking (parasitism). At worst, this strategy is useful for maintaining a successful people.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine
    (London, July 16, 2015)

  • Another on Aristocracy(criticism) vs Republicanism(Justification)

    Science=critical.  Morality=justificationary. [I] have been working on the series: ‘obverse/revers, justification/criticism, morality/science, property-right/prohibition, GoldenRule/SilverRule, that is the western innovative alternative to eastern static ying-and-yang. Where they match sides, we only overlap in a venn diagram. Where they have a balance of equality and necessary cooperation, we have a division of labor and voluntary cooperation.

    OBVERSE: Positive Government uses Justification and ascent (republic) – the objective is to do good. Concentrate all resources behind single ideas: monopoly provision of commons: the government society. But we cannot know good, or agree on good. Napoleonic law of prior restraint. Scope of Property is limited. Standing is limited. Rule is by Coercive Government (ascent). Judgements are ideological and hypothetical. And this creates opportunity for rent seeking(parasitism). At best, this strategy is useful for transitioning a failed people.

    REVERSE: Negative Government uses Criticism and prosecution (aristocracy) – the objective is to do no harm. Distribute all resources according to preferences of the contributors: market provision of commons: the civic society. And we can know harm. Common law of dispute resolution. Scope is Property-en-toto, Standing is universal. Rule is by prohibitionary judgement (veto). Decisions are empirical and operational. And this strategy creates no opportunity for rent seeking (parasitism). At worst, this strategy is useful for maintaining a successful people.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine
    (London, July 16, 2015)

  • Choice: Truth vs Lies

    [W]E HAVE A CHOICE: Truth and Trade (propertarianism) -versus- Lies and Takings (progressivism) Source: (2) Curt Doolittle

  • Choice: Truth vs Lies

    [W]E HAVE A CHOICE: Truth and Trade (propertarianism) -versus- Lies and Takings (progressivism) Source: (2) Curt Doolittle