Curt Doolittle

Theme: Reciprocity

  • Property rights defined by aggression are necessary and sufficient for limiting

    Property rights defined by aggression are necessary and sufficient for limiting the state, sure. But they aren’t necessary and sufficient for limiting each other in a voluntary polity.

    If you want a voluntary polity in the absence of a state then you must provide a means of resolving all conflicts with each other.

    We don’t have the privilege of determining what causes conflict – evolution mandated it: we can cooperate if and only if we cannot parasite or prey on each other by doing so. Otherwise evolution will punish us for it.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-16 15:28:00 UTC

  • ROTHBARDIANS CAN CLAIM THEY ARE ANARCHISTS AND LIBERTINES, BUT NOT LIBERTARIANS,

    ROTHBARDIANS CAN CLAIM THEY ARE ANARCHISTS AND LIBERTINES, BUT NOT LIBERTARIANS, OR ETHICAL AND MORAL MEN.

    Anarchist is true, libertine is true, libertarian is false, moral man is false.

    There is no liberty in rothbardian libertinism. No means of obtaining it nor means of holding it.

    Rothbard would have us return to the ethics of the nomadic pastoralists an their endemic warfare. We all bring our cultural heritage with us. As such we can look at the results of pastoral heritage. If we acted as Rothbards’ ghetto inhabitants, or Rothbards’ pastoralists, or Rothbard’s wandering merchants, we would be treated like them: landless, despised, ostracized, and frequently decimated. We cannot construct absurdly utopian social systems on absurdly unsuccessful social systems. The western militia led by professional warriors of equal status, is a unique social system.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-14 01:44:00 UTC

  • “The percentage of time devoted in contribution to the production of the commons

    —“The percentage of time devoted in contribution to the production of the commons shall be equal to the percentage of income provided to the commons by results of trade. This places reciprocal limits on the producers of goods within the voluntary organization of production, and the producers of the commons that enable the voluntary organization of production.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-12 04:50:00 UTC

  • UPDATE ON PROPERTARIAN ETHICS “Proof and Calculability” = Ethical Truth in Polit

    UPDATE ON PROPERTARIAN ETHICS

    “Proof and Calculability” = Ethical Truth in Politics

    I got stuck while writing Propertarianism in 2010 on the ethical requirement that at that time I called “Calculability”. I knew it was needed in any contractual government to prevent externalizing costs – if not outright acts of abuse and fraud.

    For all intents and purposes, I was forcing contractual and monetary (numeric) constraints into political ethics. But I knew something was ‘wrong’ in verbal constructions as well. Even if strict construction and original intent were known issues, how could I prevent fallacious argument in politics (lying)?

    And I just couldn’t get my arms around it. And it’s taken me really, what, three and a half years to solve it with Operationalism? So, instead of one ethical addition called ‘calculability’ which we need to keep, I need to add Operationalism as well (ie: ‘Proof”). I suppose I could work the language a bit and demonstrate that they’re in fact, the same principle applied to calculable and argumentative problems but I think that would only complicate matters. So I’ll keep them separate and overlapping (which is a theme I keep finding myself using.)

    So Truth(Testimony) Operationalism(Proof), and Calculability(testability of contract) are the additional properties of political ethics I’ve added to to propertarianism. I am not sure but I think that’s the hardest problem I had to solve in this entire program so far.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-07-11 06:26:00 UTC

  • Manufacturing Liberty

    (Guest Post by Eli Harman: ) [A]sking people to forego parasitism (if they’re weak) or predation (if they’re strong) is asking them to bear a substantial opportunity cost. They will only do so if someone stands ready to impose a higher actual cost for choosing to engage in them. This is what Curt Doolittle means when he says “liberty must be manufactured by violence.” Libertarians love to sing liberty’s praises, and there is much to be said in its favor. But it does not follow from this that liberty is always in everyone’s best interests. There are many people who stand to lose more from liberty than they would stand to gain. (And not just because they misperceive the situation.) There are still more people for whom the uncertainty over what they would stand to gain or lose would make desiring liberty irrational. The incentives that favor liberty do not exist by default, they must be proactively created. And in order for this to happen there must be people likely to benefit from liberty, strong people, capable people, wise people, intelligent people, responsible people, farsighted people; in short, aristocrats. And they must organize to impose liberty on the remainder by force, and in many cases, to their detriment, or to their enduring resentment. If liberty is thus to be manufactured, the problem of free-riding must also be overcome by institutional forms that deny the benefits of liberty to those unwilling to participate in its manufacture, and that preserves the benefits for the exclusive enjoyment of those so willing.

  • Manufacturing Liberty

    (Guest Post by Eli Harman: ) [A]sking people to forego parasitism (if they’re weak) or predation (if they’re strong) is asking them to bear a substantial opportunity cost. They will only do so if someone stands ready to impose a higher actual cost for choosing to engage in them. This is what Curt Doolittle means when he says “liberty must be manufactured by violence.” Libertarians love to sing liberty’s praises, and there is much to be said in its favor. But it does not follow from this that liberty is always in everyone’s best interests. There are many people who stand to lose more from liberty than they would stand to gain. (And not just because they misperceive the situation.) There are still more people for whom the uncertainty over what they would stand to gain or lose would make desiring liberty irrational. The incentives that favor liberty do not exist by default, they must be proactively created. And in order for this to happen there must be people likely to benefit from liberty, strong people, capable people, wise people, intelligent people, responsible people, farsighted people; in short, aristocrats. And they must organize to impose liberty on the remainder by force, and in many cases, to their detriment, or to their enduring resentment. If liberty is thus to be manufactured, the problem of free-riding must also be overcome by institutional forms that deny the benefits of liberty to those unwilling to participate in its manufacture, and that preserves the benefits for the exclusive enjoyment of those so willing.

  • Propertarianism is not a Philosophical Preference – It's The Logic Of Cooperation : Praxeology

    [P]ropertarianism can be used to describe, compare, and advocate any political system in rigidly logical, universally commensurable form. While one can surely advocate liberty with it, its primary purpose is to suppress error, fallacy and deception. Its the logic of cooperation. The logic of ethics and politics. Aristocratic Egalitarianism can be argued with it. Which I do every day. And AE is the most ethical political model yet developed. But propertarianism only allows me to argue in favor of it logically and truthfully – to construct proofs. But preference for any given political order is still one if choice.

  • Propertarianism is not a Philosophical Preference – It’s The Logic Of Cooperation : Praxeology

    [P]ropertarianism can be used to describe, compare, and advocate any political system in rigidly logical, universally commensurable form. While one can surely advocate liberty with it, its primary purpose is to suppress error, fallacy and deception. Its the logic of cooperation. The logic of ethics and politics. Aristocratic Egalitarianism can be argued with it. Which I do every day. And AE is the most ethical political model yet developed. But propertarianism only allows me to argue in favor of it logically and truthfully – to construct proofs. But preference for any given political order is still one if choice.

  • Propertarianism is not a Philosophical Preference – It's The Logic Of Cooperation : Praxeology

    [P]ropertarianism can be used to describe, compare, and advocate any political system in rigidly logical, universally commensurable form. While one can surely advocate liberty with it, its primary purpose is to suppress error, fallacy and deception. Its the logic of cooperation. The logic of ethics and politics. Aristocratic Egalitarianism can be argued with it. Which I do every day. And AE is the most ethical political model yet developed. But propertarianism only allows me to argue in favor of it logically and truthfully – to construct proofs. But preference for any given political order is still one if choice.

  • Propertarianism is not a Philosophical Preference – It’s The Logic Of Cooperation : Praxeology

    [P]ropertarianism can be used to describe, compare, and advocate any political system in rigidly logical, universally commensurable form. While one can surely advocate liberty with it, its primary purpose is to suppress error, fallacy and deception. Its the logic of cooperation. The logic of ethics and politics. Aristocratic Egalitarianism can be argued with it. Which I do every day. And AE is the most ethical political model yet developed. But propertarianism only allows me to argue in favor of it logically and truthfully – to construct proofs. But preference for any given political order is still one if choice.