Curt Doolittle

Theme: Property

  • Property Is Not Created by a Choice, Or by a Belief. But by Action. That Action is The Application of Organized Violence.

    [O]nly humans can act. 1) Any description of a political concept, that is not articulated as action, is an attempt to obscure those actions. THis is the meaning of praxeology. It makes the involuntary transfers visible. If you cannot describe rights in praxeological terms, it’s because you are either unable to articulate thema s action, and therefore fail to understand them, or you are engaging self deception in order to justify your thefts, or you are engaging in the deception of others in order to justify your thefts. 2) Describing property as that which we obtain through voluntary exchange and homesteading, is an epistemic statement: it tells us only how we can KNOW something adheres to the contract for the institution of property, and therefore we have exclusive (a monopoly) of control over its use. It’s an epistemic statement. It still requires the contract in order for others to respect the property of yours. Implicit in any claim for several (individual, private) property, is that the grant is reciprocal. The fact that you don’t articulate this reciprocity is an accident or a contrivance. But if it is reciprocal than it is an act of exchange. It must be.

    [callout]Any attempt to state that rights are acquired other than by organized violence is an attempt to acquire them at a discount. In other words, it is an act of fraud. Any attempt at utilitarian justification then opens us to the utilitarianism of involuntary transfer, and undermines the entire libertarian argument that property rights are absolute.[/callout]

    3) It is entirely possible to state that you are not engaging in a reciprocal contract (an agreement) but in fact,t hat you are stating demands that you will back by violence. And this is, in fact, how the institution of property was created in the west, and eventually extended through enfranchisement to the militia, and then through political and tax enfranchisement to the middle class, and finally through vote-enfranchisement to the proletariat. (Who were advanced to consumers because of industrialization and capitalism.) Unfortunately, thinking that your violence is meaningful as an individual is an absurd proposition, since there is no evidence that individual violence can achieve anything, property included, without allies to enforce egalitarian property ownership by violence. The source of property is violence. But it is organized violence for the purpose of egalitarian (enfranchised) individual ownership of property. 4) the natura, instinctual, and genetic order of man is tribal – the ethics of the extended family. The west invented private property for a sequence of reasons that resulted in the high trust society that made our western exceptionalism possible. But the rest of humanity still engages in racial, tribal and familialism. And the most primitive and sedentary cultures, on matrilineal familialism. It is instinctual. while alpha males desire to crate tribes, and strong tribes. Women instinctively desire both to constrain alphas in order to control mate selection, and desire to place responsibility for the feeding of their children on the tribe – not themselves. These are our competing genetic strategies and they play out in every aspect of life. With women enfranchised into the voting pool, and increasingly abandoning the artificial institution of the nuclear family, they are exercising their instincts to restore the primitive, pre-herding order of human society. This is what we see in western voting patterns. Not a change in the distribution of male philosophical predisposition toward political orders, but an increasing expression of the female reproductive strategy let loose from the agrarian constraint of the nuclear family. 5) Rothbard recreated the mystical jewish religion of the ghetto, ignoring in his example of both the ghetto and Crusoe’s island, that there is a walled fortress of soldiers around the ghetto, and the violence of the ocean around Crusoe’s island. These are convenient defices that obscure, like his property rights, that the source of property is not choice, not will, not a divine right, not a gift from a divinity, not an abstraction. The source of property is the application of organized violence to acquire and hold property rights, such that all who participate in the violence used to obtain and hold those rights, possess that right of sovereignty: property rights. Any attempt to state that rights are acquired other than by organized violence is an attempt to acquire them at a discount. In other words, it is an act of fraud. Any attempt at utilitarian justification then opens us to the utilitarianism of involuntary transfer, and undermines the entire libertarian argument that property rights are absolute. Rothbard did us a favor by inventing propertarianism. Even though it appears that he did not understand what he had done. But we must, absolutely must, free libertarianism from the ghetto, and return it to the aristocracy that created it. Property is not a belief. A moral code, a sentiment, or a feeling. It is an institution created by the organized application of violence. Because property CAN only be created by the organized application of violence. Hoppe has succeeded in creating the institutions necessary for a homogenous polity. But he did not succeed in creating institutions necessary for a heterogeneous polity. Hopefully I’ll succeed. Not quite sure yet. Time will tell.

  • 1) It doesn’t follow that a one time expense, followed by fees for use is the sa

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/conservatives-and-sewers/?smid=fb-shareFALSE

    1) It doesn’t follow that a one time expense, followed by fees for use is the same as redistribution that creates dependencies. the first requires action, the second does not. THe free-rider problem is different from the progressive-fees problem. Free riding is a negative signal that says free riding is a ‘right’, progressive fees illustrate that this is not a ‘right’, but a ‘charity’. This sends ‘truthful’ signals to both parties. And truthful signals are necessary to prohibit involuntary transfers.

    2) It doesn’t follow that investment in a commons is the same as state-mandated redistribution. If that was true, there wouldn’t be factories, universities, churches and roads.

    3) It doesn’t follow that investment in a universal commons is not conservative. Only that to do so out of charity at a cost, is different than to do so out of opportunity for profit.

    4) it doesn’t follow that taxes must be levied other than fees. (They don’t need to be.)

    5) It doesn’t follow that taxes should be put into a general pool and open to use OTHER than the purpose levied. (they shouldn’t)

    6) It doesn’t follow that the monopolistic state is more efficient than competitive private administration (it’s not)

    7) It doesn’t follow that funding the bureaucracy doesn’t produce externalities that are of intolerable cost. (it does – one of which is forcing us to spend time defending ourselves against other people’s political movements, as they seek to control the predatory state)

    Conservatism is a metaphorical language. Conservatives have one ‘curse word’ with multiple meanings: “Socialism” – state control of property and production and b) “Democratic redistributive socialism” – state ownership of the proceeds from limited private control of property. This ‘curse word’ is a catch-all for ‘those people that use the state to destroy aristocratic individualism and the status signals that I get from individualism regardless of my rank. And this is important. Conservatives do not feel victims because they obtain positive status signals from other conservatives regardless of their economic rank. This is obtainable in human societies only through religious conformity and it’s consequences, or economic conformity and its consequences.

    Conservatives do not object to investment in the commons. Conservatism places higher value on delaying gratification than immediate gratification – the formation of moral capital – which is an inarticulate expression meaning training human beings to enforce a prohibition on involuntary transfers of all kinds.

    Conservatism is the argument that we should not fund the expansionary bureaucratic state that out of deterministic necessity subverts our property rights and therefore our freedom, and therefore our ‘character’ – a euphemism for the prohibition on involuntary transfers of all kinds – because it is our universal prohibition on involuntary transfers both within our families and tribes and without, that is the source of western exceptionalism: the high trust society.

    Our high trust society is unique because we CAN trust others to avoid involuntary transfers, because of the pervasive prohibition on involuntary transfer that we developed under Manorailism by demonstrating fitness needed to obtain land to rent. Partly as a rebellion against the Catholic Church, partly because the church forbid cousin marriage and granted women property rights, in order to break up the tribes and large land holding families. Partly as an ancient indo-european tradition of personal sovereignty in the nobility, which became a status signal, and, thankfully remains a status signal in conservatives.

    Small homogenous polities are redistributive. Large heterogeneous polities are not. This is because trust DECLINES in heterogeneous polities. And trust DECLINES in heterogeneous polities because of the different signals used by different groups, and the fact that signals in-group are ‘cheaper’ (discounted) that signals across groups with differing signals. A strong state in a small homogenous polity that functions as an extended family and therefore with high redistribution, is entirely possible. But by creating a powerful state in a heterogeneous polity, it becomes necessary and useful for people to compete via extra-market means using the state by seeking redistributions and limited monopoly (legal) rights in order to advance their signaling strategy. (Which is what Dr. Krugman does, daily – advance an alternative strategy. A strategy that he does not recognize is from the Ghetto. And would cause a return to the low trust society. And **IS*** right now, causing a return to the low trust society.

    Because the low trust society is natural to man. Thats why it exists everywhere but the aristocratic west.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-16 01:26:00 UTC

  • Kinsella’s Criticism of Locke, and My Explanation of Locke’s Reasonable Mistake, and What To Do About It.

    [T]hanks to Stephan Kinsella for giving me the opportunity to explain why Locke accidentally created the Labor theory of value. (From a FB post)

    I’m starting to think one of the costliest intellectual mistakes of all human history was Locke’s ridiculous idea that we own the fruits of our labor (or that we own our labor). This labor theory of property has led to all kinds of mischief, not to mention the labor theory of value and communism and hundreds of millions of deaths, plus the horrible IP system which also literally kills people and retards progress and imposes relative impoverishment. PLus, Locke anchored his theory in God-owns-us stuff, instead of rational argument, and he was a racist and pro-slaver. Meh. Lockean homesteading is correct, but not for Locke’s reasons. I’m going to do a long blog post about this.

    He needed to justify the middle class takeover of property from the aristocracy. To put a fork in feudalism. In the church. In the feudal commons. And to do that he had to justify ACTION as the source of property ownership. And he made the obvious logical leap that confused ownership with (a) subjective value, (b) exchange value and (c) market value. Which to us, is absurd, because we work to expose properties of the market in order to illustrate the evils of the middle class and proletarian states. Each of which attempts to reconstruct that aristocratic commons under different administrative ownership – full of sound and fury but changing nothing. But he wasn’t trying to do [what we are – expose the problem of the middle class and proletarian states]. So he didn’t have the need to disentangle the spectrum that we call ‘value’. (a,b and c above.) You’re right that he was imperfect and that there have been consequences to that imperfection. [B]ut to some degree, our emphasis on subjective value alone creates a similar problem. 1) Subjective value is immeasureable. (psychological) 2) Exchange value is incomensurable (barter: visible but incommensurable )) 3) Market value is calculable. (prices: visible, commensurable) I think, that when we libertarians use imprecise language that we make Hume’s mistake. We dont go deep enough and create confusion: political externalities. Just like he did. Because we do not illustrate the problems that the market solves by commensurability. Instead we think subjective value is self evident. And it may be. But it is incomplete. And therefore insufficient to support our claims. This is the same problem we have with Rothbardian ethics and Misesian Praxeology. Theyre incomplete as stated. And if incomplete they cannot be apodeictically certain as we claim. Too deep perhaps. More simply: There is more to value than subjectivity. [Subjectivity is but one point on a spectrum.]

  • Liberty Isn’t Inherent. It’s unnatural. We create it with Organized Violence.

    Liberty isnt’ ‘inherent’. Liberty is created by force and held by force. And no people without an armed militia to do so has even had liberty. Property is ‘inherent’ in the sense that it’s necessary, and that the mind is organized to make use of it. But liberty, which is the universal prohibition on the involuntary transfer of property, is a construct made and held by the will to use violence. Liberty is unnatural to man. That’s why it doesn’t exist outside of a few cases in western history. Liberty produces peace because conflict must be resolved in the market. Pacifist libertarianism is not only illogical, and counter to the evidence, but it’s suicidal. Don’t buy into the christian nonsense in libertarian theory. Liberty is a product of the application of violence. It always has been and it always will be.”

  • RENT SEEKING In its original sense, rent seeking is the act of gaining partial o

    RENT SEEKING

    In its original sense, rent seeking is the act of gaining partial ownership of land in order to gain control of a part of its production.

    In government it is the act of gaining privileges, redistribution or partial monopolies.

    In its broadest sense it is the act of obtaining some sort if claim on the productivity of others rather than producing something ones self, or through voluntary exchange.

    We all seek rents. We all seek opportunity for benefitting from either the actions of our organizations, the actions of others, or the grant of state state monopolies. Women seek mates as monetary rents and men to ease the burden of childrearing. We all seek rents. We could argue that rent seeking is the primary incentive for cooperation. Because so few of us are productive enough through direct exchange of our efforts.

    The only rent thats totally moral is interest. Interest is free of involuntary transfer.

    Interest, in the sense that we rent money to others, contrary to our superstitions, is moral.

    Now, It is possible to seek rents via interest. Either through usury or through leveraging the state’s fiat money.

    One can collect interest on production. On can collect interest on consumption. Neither of these things is necessary. Both are voluntary. Neither produce negative externalities. They create whole sequences of positive externalities.

    But collecting interest on externalities is immoral if it creates externalities that produce involuntary transfers.

    Rothbards ghetto ethics actually encourage involuntary transfers. Under the false presumption that the market will solve the problem through competition. But Since all things being equal, profit from externalities is greater than the same loan without externalities, just the opposite is true. The market will encourage externalities.

    Also, ghetto ethics assume that judges will not hold people accountable for those externalities and require restitution of them. But they have and will. Because it is consistent with the ethics of property to do so.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-24 11:56:00 UTC

  • Property: “..the three [necessary] elements of private property are: (1) exclusi

    http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/02/armen-alchian.htmlPrivate Property: “..the three [necessary] elements of private property are:

    (1) exclusivity of rights to choose the use of a resource,

    (2) exclusivity of rights to the services of a resource, and

    (3) rights to exchange the resource at mutually agreeable terms.”

    (We libertarians tend to say that Private property is a monopoly on the use of the self, those things that are homesteaded, or which are obtained by voluntary exchange.)

    The Third Law of Demand: (Shipping Out The Good Apples): “…when the prices of two substitute goods, such as high and low grades of the same product, are both increased by a fixed per-unit amount such as a transportation cost or a lump-sum tax, consumption will shift toward the higher-grade product. This is true because the added per-unit amount decreases the relative price of the higher-grade product.”

    (For those who don’t know the three laws of Demand, here are 1 and 2.)

    The Second Law Of Demand: (Price Elasticity Over Time) “…demand is more responsive to price in the long run than in the short run.”

    The First Law Of Demand: (Supply vs Demand) : “..all else being equal, as the price of a product increases, a lower quantity will be demanded; likewise, as the price of a product decreases, a higher quantity will be demanded.”

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-20 02:32:00 UTC

  • ROTHBARD’S FOLLY – THE WALLS OF THE GHETTO A system is determined by its limits.

    ROTHBARD’S FOLLY – THE WALLS OF THE GHETTO

    A system is determined by its limits. Limits are causes. Rothbard’s system of thought is based upon ghetto ethics, and the assumption that the ghetto can be extended to all human orders. But the ghetto is a product of the city that contains it. The ghetto cannot exist without the city. The circular folly of that reasoning – despite Rothbard’s extraordinary literary production, never seems to have occurred to him.

    Aristocratic egalitarianism (classical libertarianism) is caused by the necessity of a minority of professional warriors to use cooperation on rapid tactics while at the same time retaining their sovereignty. It is an alliance of small businesses. A group of shareholders. And their strength increased as they increased enfranchisement.

    There are limites to this system too: those aristocratic egalitarians must continue to fight for sovereignty.

    And the only criteria for sovereignty is private property.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-17 03:44:00 UTC

  • MOB RULE I’m not a Randian, but this quote via Libertarianism.org is worth shari

    MOB RULE

    I’m not a Randian, but this quote via Libertarianism.org is worth sharing:

    “A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort … is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence.” – Ayn Rand

    But institutionalizing private property rights appears to take a mob as well. and a disciplined and self interested mob at that. And once created, those private property rights cannot be held without the mob. So some group must forcibly create private property rights by prohibiting familial, tribal, or state property rights that maintain property as a commons. (A militia appears to be a mandatory requirement for maintaining private property rights.)

    Now, once any group that succeeds in institutionalizing private property rights within a territory, they may have made some redistribution of earnings per share warranted. That’s how our classical ancestors saw it. And It may be true that the purpose of government is to allow us to concentrate capital on common investments while prohibiting involuntary transfer of that capital via privatization – that’s what shareholder agreements do. Shareholder agreements are quantifiable systems that allow for exclusion, and constitutions and citizenship are non-quantifiable, and often avoid exclusion because of births and differing birth rates.

    But even if some redistribution of earnings is warranted, that does not mean redistribution is the purpose of creating the institution of private property. It means only that the proceeds from increases in productivity must be redistributed to shareholders, rather than consumed by the interests of the administration.

    Property, from the most individual to the most common, is instituted by mobs who apply violence. Aristocratic egalitarianism (libertarianism) evolved to create individual property rights out of its own self interest. is simply an accident.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-17 03:33:00 UTC

  • LIBERTY: Just say ‘NO’ to ghetto ethics. 🙂

    http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3ss9ov/ADVANCE LIBERTY: Just say ‘NO’ to ghetto ethics. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-30 13:31:00 UTC

  • ROTHBARDIAN GHETTO ETHICS : THE WALL AND THE OCEAN We libertarians must realize

    ROTHBARDIAN GHETTO ETHICS : THE WALL AND THE OCEAN

    We libertarians must realize the numerous logical errors in the ideological arguments that we use to support our ethics, if we are to include enough of the classical liberals with their aristocratic egalitarian ethics into our movement that we may represent anything more than an irrelevant minority.

    The most common error in libertarian thought is the ghetto ethics of Rothbard. Rothbard could not solve the problem of institutions. So he invented contrivances (and weak ones) to give the appearance of legitimacy to his ethical system. Hoppe succeeded where Rothbard failed. But Rothbard’s arguments persist.

    a) Rothbard’s Ghetto Ethics work only because where there is a ghetto within an existing political system, and no means by which members of the ghetto can replace the exterior political order. It’s all well and good to advocate ghetto ethics in the ghetto. It’s not good, or even rational, to suggest that those ethics could persist without the political exterior to the ghetto. The ghetto is anarchic. Sure. But it’s anarchic because the exterior power will not let a formal monopoly of property rights develop in the ghetto, and the anarch of the ghetto is perceived as a form of punishment for its inhabitants.

    b) Rothbard’s Crusoe Ethics are an example of ghetto ethics. Crusoe ethics sound “all sweet and libertarian” – until you realize that the ocean that surrounds the island provides the violence that separates the island from other humans: instead of the ghetto wall, we have the ocean deeps.

    The only rational model for political systems, that isn’t bent on such a logically faulty contrivance, is quite the opposite: that we are all standing on a continent shared with many other tribes, where each tribe uses slightly different measures of communal and private property. And you, alone, in your tribe, figure out that if you can institute private property, that your tribe will out-compete every other tribe. The question is, how do you create the institution of private property?

    That answer is quite telling: you buy it in a voluntary exchange. That is the only answer that is consistent with the non aggression principle. If you cannot buy it, then you must use violence to implement it. And you must, of certainty, use violence to protect it once you’ve instituted it.

    c) For human beings, instinctively, all property is communal, and privatization is the source of scarcity. It turns out that instinct is wrong, because it prevents the division of knowledge and labor. But we still ‘feel’ that instinct. And for the lower classes, it’s to their advantage to express, and act upon those feelings.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-30 13:14:00 UTC