Curt Doolittle

Theme: Property

  • I’M NOT SURE MOLINARI IS RIGHT “Private property is redundant. “public property”

    I’M NOT SURE MOLINARI IS RIGHT

    “Private property is redundant. “public property” is an oxymoron. All legit property is private. If property isn’t private it’s stolen.”

    — Gustave de Molinari.

    (from the libertarian page – by Francesco Principi)

    I’m torn Francesco.

    It looks like private property is a normative ethic (“should”) that produces multiple beneficial out comes, but that as a descriptive ethic (“is”), people act as though they have property interests in all manner of ‘commons’. And they are even resistant to quantification of ownership in any commons by a process of articulating all commons’ as shares. In my work I argue that the distribution of preferences for the allocation of property between private and public commons appears to be a reflection of reproductive strategy. That reproductive strategy is able to be expressed by individuals by a combination of the decline of the family as the productive and reproductive unit, and the ability to vote for preferences in the distribution of property rights between the individual and the commons.

    Elsewhere i’m being teased about this at the moment, but the natural order of human societies appears to be matrilineal with transitory males. The ‘innovation’ that led to productivity in a division of labor, was accidental: from pastoralism which was more productive and competitive than sedentary life, and which created greater conflict over property.

    Property is an innovation, as is paternalism. Both render the world ‘calculable’ and as ‘calculable’ create the possibility of incentives to specialize in a division of knowledge and labor.

    But if women can ally with a minority of males, and vote to reverse 10,000 years of social evolution, by maintaining very limited private property rights necessary to provide survival incentives, but not the rights to the profits from the use of that property, then it appears that they will do so, in order to regain their instinctual reproductive preference.

    Control over breeding between males and females has oscillated before. Males dominated as they do in the other ape species. Alphas terrorize and rape. Humans developed language, gossip and weapons and managed to constrain and kill wayward alphas. This made sex more widely available for males, and put females back in control of reproduction.

    When domestication made it possible for males to provide constant sources of protein at the expense of having to control territory and protect their livestock, grain stores, and irrigation channels, the paternal family was an innovation that altered the reproductive relations and familial organizational structure between men and women once again.

    At present, the combination of information systems and the state apparatus – allow extraction of abstract property (money) by various means, thereby eliminating the male advantage in possessing property for the purpose of selecting a mate – at least in the ‘beta’ or bottom half of society. Humans are returning to serial monogamy, with men unable to accumulate wealth because it is extracted by the child support, alimony, and various redistribution systems.

    Property rights were granted by our european ancestors to those who fought in battle – to protect private property rights. If the meaning of that sinks in, then what we learn is this: private property is an innovation that is the preference of the minority, and it was instituted over the reproductive preferences of the majority. It produced eugenic reproduction, the division of knowledge and labor, reason and science, literature and arts.

    But the source of property is the organized application of violence by a minority against a majority who does not desire it, and should not, because it is against their reproductive and instinctual interests.

    In the west, purely by accident, the battle tactics required expensive equipment, voluntary participation, and heroic behavior. THis resulted in a shortage of men, who, as a minority, could out-fight more numerous competitors. But they constantly needed to increase their numbers, so they extended the franchise of property rights to any of those who would fight to preserve it. having earned it, those members fought to keep it.

    This system of habits and incentives created what we call egalitarian aristocracy. It is unlike political leadership elsewhere, which cold rely on subjugating large numbers of warrior slaves, such as in north africa, the middle east, and the far east.

    Property produces a virtuous cycle when combined with contract, numbers, money, and especially literacy. But it isn’t natural to man. And it’s entirely unnatural to women. And they are, world wide, expressing distaste for it wherever they can vote.

    US Presidential candidates and therefore policy are at present determined by single female voters. They vote as a consistent block: to undermine 10k years of the development of property, and 5k years of european egalitarian property rights.

    Mainstream economists see this as increasing people’s choices, and suiting the Rawlsian ethic. But the external consequences are something quite different: the destruction of the nuclear family, and everything about that social order that we have created for millennia.

    I don’t know pricelessly what will happen over the next two generations, but I suspect that, as in all of history, unmarried men, and poor and unemployed men, who are currently assuming the change in their circumstances is temporary, will produce a generation that has a different perspective, and that different perspective will lead to catastrophic change in the social order, one way or another – Proving that Strauss and Howe were right, perhaps by coincidence.

    Small things in great numbers have vast consequences.

    The source of property is violence.

    Property is unnatural to man.

    Because it is against the interest of women.

    I don’t like it. But that’s how it is.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-06 14:29:00 UTC

  • The majority does not desire freedom. Is freedom equivalent to private property

    The majority does not desire freedom.

    Is freedom equivalent to private property rights, and are private property rights equivalent to voluntary exchange?

    If so, people desire to consume voluntarily, but demonstrably not to produce voluntarily. Money may be equal in purchasing power regardless of who holds it. But it is not equally productive regardless of who holds it.

    Therefore there is a structural advantage to intelligence, will, and discipline under capitalism. It is a virtuous advantage, thats true. But an advantage.

    Only a minority desire Freedom. Liberty. Property rights. Voluntary exchange.

    To the rest of the world freedom means freedom to consume. Not responsibility for limiting all transfers to voluntary exchange in the market. And it is praxeologically irrational to expect them to.

    This difference between normative libertarian ethics and dscriptive ethics is significant. And denial that the praxeologial incentives for people to organize into groups seeking non productive participation in profits is evidence of the intellectual failure of the framework of thought.

    Our argument is that un the long run we all benefit. And its true. However the majority demonstrate little concern for the long run. In fact social status is largely a function of time preference.

    So, given our numerical inferiority, we can use violence to preserve our rights as did our ancestors. But begging for them by weak argument is a demonstrated failure. 🙂

    Or we can develop solutions for institutions that, like the market, do not require us to cooperate on ends, or even norms.

    We cannot logically agree on morals, ethics, and norms. Not when we no longer reproduce, produce, and vote as families and aggregate our interests, but instead, reproduce, produce, and vote as individual actors, whereupon our differences are not masked by family interest, but expressed as individual interest.

    In particular, the addition of women to the labor and voting pools has led to policy, unlike that of the family, that systemically seeks rents: women vote to marry the state. Not their husbands.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-05 06:15:00 UTC

  • Libertarianism and Justificationism

    [A]ny political system wich seeks to implement involuntary transfers must be based upon justification. Any political system which seeks to implement voluntary transfers need not be based upon justification. But this is an INSUFFICIENT ANSWER to the problem. This sounds quite simple. However, the first problem is not voluntary versus involuntary transfer, but the distribution of control between the monopoly of private (several) property, and the prohibition on monopoly of control under the shareholder relations of common property (the commons) – and the difficult means by which commons are privatized without the conduct of free riding, profiting from interference, profiting from fraud by omission, profit from fraud, profit from privatization of the commons, profiting from rent seeking, from organizing for the purpose of extraction (taxes) and corruption, takings and war. It is true that private property improves both incentives and calculation, and reduces the friction, but the problem is that even at that point, the system of property rights is in fact a shareholder agreement, and there are very different moral arguments over the distribution of the proceeds produced by the corporation and its members. This question is not trivial, especially with the introduction of women into the voting pool, since women’s biological moral code, demonstrated by their voting pattern, is by definition one of rent seeking and totalitarian equality. Their moral code is not ‘wrong’ for them. It is very wrong for productive males. These problems are not trivial. And libertarianism’s argument that LIBERTY is a universal desire has been demonstrated to be false. CONSUMPTION has been demonstrated to be a universal desire. But not Liberty. [A]ll moral codes and the philosophies that justify them are in fact, class philosophies. It is illogical for one to adopt a philosophy that is a disadvantage to one and an advantage to another – especially if that advantage plays out over the long rather than the short run. I hope this was more helpful than confusing.

  • The American economy is the housing economy, right? There isn’t really any recov

    The American economy is the housing economy, right? There isn’t really any recovery on the productive side. There is just a recovery in housing prices, and taxes on housing? (I think I”ve got that right… )

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-01 11:28:00 UTC

  • WE ALL BENEFIT FROM CHINA’S PIRACY

    http://m.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139452/kal-raustiala-and-christopher-sprigman/fake-it-till-you-make-it?page=showHOW WE ALL BENEFIT FROM CHINA’S PIRACY

    Source date (UTC): 2013-06-25 09:12:00 UTC

  • “…the fatal tendency that exists in the heart of man to satisfy his wants with

    “…the fatal tendency that exists in the heart of man to satisfy his wants with the least possible effort, explains the almost universal perversion of the law.” – Bastiat. The Law.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-06-24 10:27:00 UTC

  • Cultures Are Portfolios Of Property Rights

    [C]ultures are portfolios of property rights. The composition of, and distribution of those property rights, varies from culture to culture. In each culture, those rights are expressed as norms. Property rights themselves are a norm. Those property rights perpetuated by norms may be more or less beneficial than other portfolios of property rights. But any idiot who thinks that (a) formal institutions don’t matter – such as libertarians or (b) that formal institutions are sufficient – such as progressives, will have history prove him wrong to the chagrin of the people who understand (c) that norms are a form of property – conservatives. Norms are a commons that we all pay for. The tax we pay for them with is forgone opportunity to consume them, and absorbing the risk that no others will absorb them too. Aristocratic Egalitarian Culture (The West) prohibits not just fraud, theft and violence, but the more deceptive versions of fraud: profit from asymmetry of knowledge, and profit from involuntary transfer via externalities. Market competition itself, is an involuntary transfer via externality from people outside of the exchange (competitors). This is why humans naturally object to it, and must be trained to respect and practice competition. But this externality provides instruction and incentive to all in the market, such that we all seek greater variety and lower cost of production. It produces beneficial ends. But it is non-trivial to create the norm of respecting and practicing competition. That’s why so few cultures did it. [R]othbard was wrong. The market isn’t sufficient to maintain the norms against fraud theft and violence, and certainly not against externalities. The marginal impact of reputation in the market is lower than the marginal impact of fraud. That’s why only the west developed the high trust society – by out-breeding such that the entire nation to be an extended family – at least within it’s social classes. Without excessive out-breeding that destroyed the perception of extended family through common physical properties, and common normative behavior. In order to retain the sense of extended family, both physical properties and normative properties must be similiar enough that signaling is consisten within the group, and only class (selection quality) within the extended family differentiates between group members. Trust. The extension of familial trust to all possible exchange partners, by prohibitions on externality and asymmetry, when backed by warranty, is the composition that creates the high – trust society. Only AFTER these informal institutions are enforced by formal institutions, even if only the formal institution of the common law, will trust develop. And with trust, the velocity of trade that makes extraordinary marginal wealth possible for a group, because that group is more competitive than other groups.

  • Are There Objectively Moral Statements?

    “There is no such thing as objective morality only preferences and demonstrated preferences.” I’m not sure that’s true. [I]n every society, the portfolio of norms consisting of maners (signals of fitness for voluntary transfer), ethics and morals (prohibitions on involuntary transfer), vary considerably. But all of them are signals of fitness, signals of contribution to a commons, and prohibitions on involuntary transfer. Some of these suites of property rights produce superior economic outcomes, and some inferior. That’s true. But they aren’t preferences. Norms are not preferences they are artifacts of the process of evolutionary cooperation according to prejudices (pre-judgements). Given that human beings universally eschew involuntary transfer, in every possible culture and circumstance, and will act twice as hard to punish it as they will for their own interest, its clear that it’s not a purely subjective phenomenon. And in fact it is a necessary phenomenon which genetics must eventually enforce. So while the arrangement of property rights and obligations in any set of norms may vary, the fact that humans observe norms out of prohibition on involuntary transfer is entirely objective. So, moral actions are only a preference in those cases where normative codes, like laws, are general proscriptions, and where for specific circumstances, one’s actions do not create an involuntary transfer. Moral codes may correctly or incorrectly constituted at any given moment (because they are intergenerational habits and must be constantly re-tested by each generation). But as long as they are prohibitions on involuntary transfers, then they are in fact, objective. If members of a group observe a set of norms, and by observing those norms, forgo opportunities for gratification or self interest, then they have in fact paid for those norms. If others do not pay for those norms, and constrain themselves to signaling, then that’s not an involuntary transfer.if however, others choose to sieze opportunities created by the normative sacrifice of others, then that’s theft, plain and simple. This is a quick treatment of one of mankind’s most challenging topics, but hopefully it will at least give you a few ideas. – Curt BTW: ALSO a) an action is a demonstrated preference. b) a preference is a demonstrated bias c) a bias may or may not be subject to cognition d) a habit is not subject to cognition, thats’ the value of them. They’re cheap. e) a normative habit is rarely understood, but almost universally practiced. Which is the reason we even have this conversation in the first place. f) a metaphysical bias is not subject to cognition, it’s almost never understood by anyone in any culture.

  • Property, Praxeology And Violence

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    [U]nfortunately, while humans demonstrate a preference for the consumption that is made possible by the combination of private property, the division of knowledge and labor, and the experimental innovation the market drives us to, humans also demonstrate an equal preference for violence, theft, fraud, omission, interference, free riding, privatization of the commons, socialization of losses, rent seeking, corruption, organizing for the purposes of extortion, and organizing for plunder and conquest via war. All of these forms of theft from the most direct to the most subtle, in the absence of the threat of violence, are easier means of competition than is the risky and personal act of speculative production we must engage in, if we choose to compete in the market for goods and services. Only a minority of us demonstrate a preference for the market, and by consequence, demonstrate a preference for private property: which is to eschew, at high cost to ourselves, the tempting portfolio of thefts – and instead work to consume exclusively via voluntary, informed, exchange that is the product of guesswork, planning, foresight and risk. For these reasons – these praxeologically obvious reasons – any portfolio of property rights, from the most collective, to the most individual, to the most totalitarian, and within that portfolio, the scope property ranging from simple personal possessions to complex anonymous contractual commitments; has been and must be imposed on a body of people by the threat of violence. [T]he concept and practice of liberty was created by egalitarian aristocrats who granted property rights to those who equally respected property rights of their peers, and who fought to preserve them at great personal cost. Moral arguments as to the utility of private property are specious. They are an attempt to obtain the right of private property at a discount – despite the fact that the majority do not favor those rights for either themselves or others. That the enlightenment’s emergent middle class philosophers tried to justify taking power from the aristocracy by fabricating moral and utilitarian arguments was a necessary political ruse at the time. But we if we desire to preserve our vestiges of freedom we should not confuse that ruse with the factual reality that all systems of property rights are imposed by the threat of violence. It is praxeologically illogical to suggest that those who would compete better in the absence of private property, should suffer lower state in order to yield to the desires of those others who may be more successful under private property. This makes no sense. As such, the only defense is the offensive application of organized violence for the purpose of implementing one system of property rights and obligations over another. [A]ristocracy is a functional synonym for private property – and private property a right gained in exchange for reciprocity both in the respect of private property and the obligation to use one’s wealth of violence to ensure the perpetuation of the portfolio of property rights that we call ‘private property’ at the expense and exclusion of all other possible portfolios of property rights.

  • Statism And Corporatism vs Partnerships And The Common Law

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    [C]an you imagine commercial trade and the market without the abstract entity we call the corporation? Sure you can. The corporation is just a partnership that the government has granted limited liability to in order to increase tax revenues from ventures that are both expensive and high risk. THink of it as off-book investment in research and development. If you can imagine commerce without corporations, then you can imagine government without the state. The state is just a corporation – a collection of people who are insulated from liability for their actions. The common law, and the rule of law under the common law, with private property, and a government that is a contract, wherein the governors have no right to issue law, only to facilitate contracts between groups, which are then enforceable by the courts. Under such a common law system, (the anarchic system), people in corporations and in government are not protected from you suing them for violating our contracts -the most important contract being our constitution. [A]narchy as we describe it, isn’t the absence of organization, of commons, or of law. It’s the absence of the state and the state bureaucracy that through the violence of law, forces us to do what we do not wish to, and its members profit from doing so. We can have all the government we want. but we do not need the state, the bureaucracy, legislation, and majority rule to accomplish it. Our government needs only to facilitate contracts and to forbid all parties, whether parties to the contract or not, from free riding, rent seeking, privatization, socialization, corruption, theft, and violence involving those contracts.