Curt Doolittle

Theme: Religion

  • The Child Of Democracy And Secularism Is Stillborn

    (Posted in the comments section of the NYT) In response to the comments section of one of Paul Krugman’s articles: British Decline I felt that all the people that were commenting were right. They understood the failure of conservative policy. The same way that conservatives understand the failure of liberal policy. But they are working on different axis. Neither to do with one another. Our ideological war has now become a race and class war. New elites are emerging. They are less invested in the previous order. They are messianic. They are driven by the one force that is unstoppable: the loss of status and power, which no group will tolerate, and which whites only tolerated because of the combined guilt of slavery and colonialism, and the attack on men by feminism. The elites widthrew from society, participated in the commercial marketplace, left the arts to immigrants, and abandoned high culture. This was fine until the middle class was threatened. At this point, not only is the middle class threatened but so are the working class whites. Under duress people rely upon the mirror test: people who look like them. They are under duress economically. And they feel that their government, the very government that they surrendered, is against them. The ascendency of europeans and the protestant reformation is being undone. Classical liberalism is being undone. It is being undone for exactly the reasons conservatives stated it would be undone. The inability of conservatives to produce a cult (romanticism) and the abilty of conservatives to produce an economic and political model to compete with socialism and social-democracy, using the tools of monetary policy, and the state, to transfer power and advantage. RE: “Japan has a big asset: a leadership that honestly cares for its people. This caring (amateur sociology, according to professional economist), is due to their tribal unity.” This comment correctly states the issue: that despite hardship and demographic changes, the japanese remain under solidarity.

    [callout]Neither side wins. Period. We all lose. A nation is its cult. Economics is not a sufficient means of organizing a polity. Democracy wasn’t the only god that failed. It married secularism. And it’s child is stillborn.[/callout]

    This is scientific data, not amateur sociology: The japanese are a homogenous racist society. Economic success by any group will not lead to political disenfranchisement of another group, wherein the dominant group will lose privilege and opportunity, or the competing groups will not eliminate but simply alter the baises of privilege and opportunity. The USA is an empire. People of different races, cultures and religions, do not mix except under very rare circumstances at the margins, largely to do with status economies and the resulting access to mates and opportunities. The human accounting system is status, not money. Because intra-group status is more rewarding than extra-group status. We will not have multi-culturalism when different groups have the ability to obtain political power, and can undermine the majority status system. There was far more multi-culturalism under the great monarchies of europe than today. Simply because commercial excellence was the only status route available to minorities, because the political system was not open to them. Power is not meritocratic. It just is power, and the most important objective of power is to deprive other people of it. And the most important feature of western culture was that it allowed status gain by market activity even if denied access to political office which might alter that dichotomy. The conservative movement was a reaction to a violation of its core principle of long term group cohesion – a necessary component of land holding and trade-route holding – persistence which cannot be maintained through economic means alone. Only tribalism and pure military strength are strong enough to hold trade routes. THe conservative movement since the end of the war was a reaction against the disintegration of the sentiments of group-persistence, due to immigration, post-slavery political problems, feminism and anti-colonialism, as a coalition against the established political order. And instead of obtaining their ‘rights as englishmen’ of property, and market participation, these groups sought political power – political power is not meritocratic. It is just force. This process s playing out, and will play out, as materially important and highly predictive. Our culture will not assimilate and unify. It will not achieve the grand vision. We are demographically adopting the south american model. We will, and are, fragmenting to the point where the government may lose the ability to govern. If we get only two states to make use of nullification that will be the end of our multi-cultural, melting-pot fantasy. And three more years of low employment will almost guarantee it. Good economics is not macro economics. All economics is micro. Because the vast movement of human beings over time is determined by what they cannot sense by quantitative means, and what they can sense by qualitative means: the loss of their status and opportunity due to enforced competition, and competition from people who are no longer asked to integrate and to be ‘american’ and adopt american values, but to oppose those values and retain their culture at any cost, because en-masse, it is a way to obtain political power, rather than participate in the market and become an american by earning status in the market. All your criticisms of the free trade movement are correct. Conservatives were attempting to preserve the cult of american classical liberalism, preserve existing status hierarchies, and force people to conform to that value system – their cult – and therefore force people into the market under the monarchic classical liberal model. THe conservative policies that you are railing against are simply means of undermining the attack on the classical liberal cultural order. Justified as economic nonsense maybe. But pursued for precisely conservative reasons. Neither side wins. Period. We all lose. A nation is its cult. Because economics is not a sufficient means of decision making in a polity. Democracy wasn’t the only god that failed. It married secularism. And it’s child is stillborn.

  • A Political Movement Pretending To Be A Religion Replaces A Religion Pretending To Be A Political Movement

    From The Left’s Unlikely Alliance with Islam By Robert Eugene Simmons Jr.

    [callout]First we encounter Marxism, which is a religion masquerading as a political movement. When we finally defeat Marxism the void is almost immediately filled by Islam, which is a political movement masquerading as a religion.[/callout]

    Most fair-minded Americans have no problem with people who wish to practice their religion. In addition, most fair-minded Americans know of the difficult pasts of Christianity and Judaism and would demand of Islam what has been demanded of other religions. Americans don’t tolerate inquisitions anymore than they do Sharia courts. Americans realize that religious freedom is inherent in the melting pot that is America, but they also understand that all religions must exist under an umbrella of mutual respect and within the boundaries of common law. Americans would no more accept honor killings than they would accept a Catholic man killing atheists for the sake of his religion. The freedom of religion, in the end, is not a carte blanche to do whatever you wish and then yell “first amendment,” but rather a constraint to prevent the government from imposing a single religion, as Islamic governments do.

    I would add, that any religion that seeks dominion over temporal matters (to establish laws) is not a religion, but a political movement masquerading as a religion. And any religion that encourages its people to lie about their convictions, is incompatible with democratic government. Even worse, it’s incompatible with the western way of life. First we encounter Marxism, which is a religion masquerading as a political movement. When we finally defeat Marxism the void is almost immediately filled by Islam, which is a political movement masquerading as a religion. Islam and Marxism are the same. They are the totalitarianism of equality in ignorance and poverty. (In retrospect, Christianity wasn’t much better when it was brought into the empire. )

  • Ground Zero Mosque. No. Never.

    Let me say this in public. Openly. With conviction. “Over…. My…. Dead…. Body….” Let me promise any and all that I mean that statement. I’ll die to prevent it. Period.

  • A Life In Denial: The Scripture Of Democratic Secular Humanism

    Tenets Of Democratic Secular Humanism (DSH). 1) IQ Denial: The belief that people are, all things considered, equal. When instead they are unequal in ability, and demonstrate that inequality both in testing and by the demonstrated result of their actions in real life. 2) Class and Status Denial: Classes Do Not Exist or are irrelevant. When instead they not only exist, but they appear to be biologically determinant, and are materially useful in the division of labor. 3) Race Denial. Race is immaterial and a construct. When instead, races are material because people act as if they are material, and they act that way because status in-group and status extra-group are achieved with different degrees of difficulty. In grop status is easier to obtain. And status determines access to opportunity, access to mates, and access to talented individuals.

    [callout]Secular Humanism is a faith. It is a utopian religion. And there is no difference between holocaust denial, moon landing denial, and secular humanism’s requirement that members of the religion practice Reality Denial.[/callout]

    4) Gender Denial: The belief that men and women mature at the same rate, have similar IQ distributions, prefer the same experiences, and think in the same manner, and that any difference is environmental. 5) Acquisitiveness Denial: The believe that humans can suppress acquisitiveness — when humans show signs of unlimited acquisitiveness simply to occupy themselves, or to gain stimulation, and their acquisitiveness is a two edged sword: both providing incentives and creating demonstrative differences. 6) Anthropo-implasticity Denial. The belief in the Infinite Plasticity of Humans and their society — When instead, Natural Law is demonstrably correct in that people have permanent unalterable tendencies 7) Rational Limits Denial The belief that rational arguments about political subjects are both persuasive and comprehensible to a democratic polity. 8) Integration Denial: The belief that groups with different racial identities and religions traditions integrate into the utopian homogenity of universal human equality. 9) Democratic Limit Denial: Unlimited people can agree on both ends and means 0- – the Consensus Cognitive Bias – when there are Limits to Political Consensus On Means Of Achieving Goals : 10) Positivism, or The Limits of Empiricism Denial. Empiricism yields universal truths – when there are consequential limits to empiricism and probabilism in prediction of Human Behavior. 11) Concreate Metaphysical Beliefs Denial The belief that people change their beliefs – when people never change their beliefs, they only reinforce them. The restructuring of metaphysical judgments is so expensive only the most dedicated can alter them.All changes in political sentiments come from demographic shifts, not changes in belief. Most political argument is preaching to the choir. Secular Humanism is a faith. It is a utopian religion. And there is no difference between holocaust denial, moon landing denial, and secular humanism’s requirement that members of the religion practice Reality Denial. Secular humanism is anything BUT scientific. Scientific observation would demonstrate what people DO. It is up to religion and philosophy to determine what people SHOULD do, and up to science to determine whether it is possible for them to do it.

  • From Modeled Behavior: On The Religions Of Positivism, Secular Humanism and Monotheism

    Karl Smith, writing on Modeled Behavior, in response to Ron Rosenbaum falls into a rational argument between theism and atheism. And demonstrating that both he and Rosenbaum err. Even the early theologians did not make this mistake. Religious debate is allegorical, not scientific. Only fundamentalists argue for the sicentific basis of gods and religion. And fundmentalism is a political reaction to the rise of science in politics. However, neither side of this populist debate (and it is a populist debate, not an intellectual one) has much to offer. Karl says:

    Ron Rosenbaum launches a long and varied attack on the New Atheism. His complaints are many and his tone heavy, but I don’t think I do him much injustice by saying his central claim is this:

    Atheists have no evidence—and certainly no proof!—that science will ever solve the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Just because other difficult-seeming problems have been solved does not mean all difficult problems will always be solved. And so atheists really exist on the same superstitious plane as Thomas Aquinas, who tried to prove by logic the possibility of creation “ex nihilo” (from nothing). . . In fact, I challenge any atheist, New or old, to send me their answer to the question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” I can’t wait for the evasions to pour forth. Or even the evidence that this question ever could be answered by science and logic.

    If Rosenbaum means that he wishes us to explain the “universe” then we should talk about the properties of high density energy and the creation of bubble universes. Or, we can tell a story about 11-dimensional membranes which may have collided and produced everything that we could ever see. However, I think the Rosenbaum wants more than that. I think he doesn’t want to stop at our universe but wants to ask – from the outside of everything in the moment before the first event – why did it become so?

    Actually, that’s a false premise he’d be arguing if he did. The question he’s really asking is “what are the implications for my anthropomorphic anthropocentric view of the universe. In other words, how can I make this universe about the creature man rather than a universe in which man is not central, and in fact, may be an improbable accident? That’s the question he’s asking and the problem he’s seeking, becaus that is the comfort that religion brings to man: anthropocentrism. But that anthropocentrism also adds value to political discourse. Because ANY ANSWER includes a proscription for human behavior. I think we forget too often that the purpose of religion is to provide an inexpensive means of proscribing behavior for humans who must coexist in large numbers. Externalizing requirements as scriptural is simply an inexpensive means of lawmaking.

    However, there simply is no sense to be made of these propositions. Equally, there is no sense to be made of the question “why is there something” that is unless Rosenbaum is using different definitions of “why” and “something.”

    This just misses the point. It confuses truth with utility, and in politics these things have no relevance.

    Now, if I don’t believe that science, reason or logic can answer “why something as opposed to nothing.” Then what do I mean when I say that I am an atheist? I mean that I believe all answerable questions can be answered with science, reason and logic. Said slightly more formally, there exists no question which can be meaningfully answered that cannot be answered by science, reason and logic.

    Lets return to Rosenbaum’s query to see how that works. He asks “why is there something” The theist might answer that God created the something. But, then the theist must be referring to a limited set of something. Indeed, typically we imagine the theist as referring to the physical universe, space, time, etc.

    Well, you’re making an argument against his STATED reasoning instead of his UNDERLYING reasoning. And, as Pareto, Weber, Michels, and Sorrel will remind you, this is YOUR error, not theirs.

    Now, does my belief in science, reason and logic constitute a faith? No.

    Perhaps. But your use of logic for the purpose of political debate is pretty ameturish.

    First, I have evidence for the belief. Predictions based on science, reason and logic tend to come true.

    Oh no. You don’t realize what youve stepped into here. In fact, you’re making the EXACT mistake that your opponent is. You have incomplete knowledge and the process you follow may yield consistent results, even if you do not fully understand the process. The process of religion and belief in god produces consistent results, even if that process is irrational. In fact, in the history of science, those predictions that exist int he physical world have largelly been false, and tehrefore they are scientific but wrong. The problem with the sphere of human action is that we know less about it than we do the physical world, simply becuase itis more COMPLEX than the physical world, because humans can LEARN.

    Indeed, I am not currently aware of a case where they have failed to come true and no subsequent reasoned explanation was found. So the trio of science, reason and logic carry with them an incredible track record.

    Phlogiston theory? Aristotle’s motion? The human genome project’s assumption of a manufactured man rather than a grown one? The limits of Aristotelian, Newtonian and Einsteinian physics?

    However, this track record could plausibly come to a halt. A pillar of fire could appear before me and declare that he is the lord. He could then go on to predict the violation of the laws of physics and subsequently show them to be false.

    Or we could find that the mythical structure is a very useful pedagogical contrivance and that the unarticulated content of these myths contains devices for assisting people with cooperating in agrarian society and in a division of labor and knowledge, where the limits of their perceptions and knowledge in a complex society exceed their tribal biological capacities. This is actually what’s expressed by the content of most of the christian mythos and dogma. Now, conversely, there is a great deal of incredibly destructive content in the monotheistic religions. One could successfully argue that they institutionalize ignorance. The appear to institutionalize poverty. But they appear to spread like a virus along with the underclasses. But they do serve their purpose, which is to override tribal sympathies and sentiments, and essentially create a new tribal identity, while preserving of class systems. Some are simply far worse than others (Islam). Some are useful despite their ridiculousness (Judaism).

    He could show me that despite all of my reasoning to the contrary that 2 + 2 = 5, that the logic I depend on explains nothing and that my confusion of this moment tells me nothing about my confusion in the next. Every prediction I make would have results no better than chance but every prediction the pillar makes would come true.

    Any number of fairly great minds have pondered this problem at length, and you’re really not even scratching the surface at the level of an undergraduate. I’m not trying to be antagonizing, I’m just stating the obvious. There are volumes on this subject.

    [callout]The only reason for this debate, is for the purpose of coercing someone to do with himself or his property what you wish, against his desires, without compensating him with something for which he would willingly part with it.[/callout]

    “Gods exist like numbers exist”. They exist because people act like they exist. People use them in the same way: to calculate. To reason. To estimate. To judge. We lack the knowledge, the experience, the perception, the time and computational ability to exist as a polity in a market, in a division of labor, without them. The question is the form of their existence. Do they have the properties that people attribute to them? No, but neither did shakespeare or Socrates, Washington or Alexander. Edison or Michelangelo. Marx or Machiavelli. And the existence of these concepts as memories, as memes, and as complex symbols have extraordinary long term impact on individuals, groups, cultures, and civilizations. Science is, and always has been, a ‘faith’. Scientific knowledge is the most perishable that we have. Entire bodies of knowledge have expired with one innovation. It’s pretty certain that thousands more will do so. Certainly, we are fairly sure, that we are missing something very important at the subatomic level. Certainly we are very sure that we are missing something very important in the human experience: hume’s problem of induction. Certainly there is something wrong with out entire concept of mathematics. Certainly our belief that the genome project would deliver to us vast knowledge, but in the end, only confirmed our ignorance. Science is a formal process for discovering patterns and replicating them. It is a process. That is all. What we know from science is that which is falsifiable – the negatives, not what’s ‘probable’ – the positives. Science is largely eliminative. But scientific knowledge is constantly open to further revision, greater explanatory power, and the elucidation of error. It is constantly being disproven. Contrary to our religious wisdom, science is egregiously more perishable. In economics in particular, vast swaths of our knowledge is patently false. THe entire DSEM model appears to be false. One should separate fully articulated reasoning from the results produced by it. Our politicians rely upon what they believe is scientific thought, and it is articulated as a rational process, even if with competing means and ends. But they have made a terrible mess of the world economy because they believed Nobel laureates – some of whom are being disproven at this very moment, for reasons that most of history’s philosophers would have stated were obvious, as violation of the calculus of measurement. By contrast the church built a vast bureaucracy that governed europe for nearly two millennia and did exceedingly well at it, despite the fact that it’s dogma was absurd, and methods of argument laughable by almost any measure. Plenty of religious doctrine is simply well-though human behavior codified as the word of god. Sure the reasoning behind it is ridiculous. But it works. Wisdom is generalization. It is rules to apply when facing the unknown. But largely, wisdom is our protection against ignorance and hubris. Warning against Hubris in all it’s forms is the primary teaching of the body of greek mythos. THe fact that it’s conveyed by the allegory of the gods is simply a pedagogical device. Secular humanism is as much a religion as is any other silly set of beliefs. Humans aren’t that plastic. The greek myths are just as important a set of lessons as are fairy tales, and the two sets of knowledge may be more useful than all the knowledge that science bequeaths to us. The most important question is this: The only reason for this debate, is for the purpose of coercing someone to do with himself or his property what you wish, against his desires, without compensating him with something for which he would willingly part with it. In other words, these are political arguments. As political arguments, like all law, they are practical, not truthful. THey are for the purpose of persuasion. And the only reason for political persuasion is to redirect resources and energies from where they are, to wehre you want them to be. And as such, political, pseudo-scientific, religious and moral arguments are nothing but feints and parries in a fencing match. And you, the spectator, are simply distracted by the hand-waving prestige of the magicians on the sidelines. Numbers exist. Gods exist. Science exists. They exist in the same form. As ideas. And the only reason to debate them is to lie, cheat and steal. Because otherwise we would simply engage in mutually beneficial trade. Then another person enters the conversation:

    Curt. Lots of words and hefty references, none of which support your thesis, which I take to be: “But belief in the scientific method, particularly in the social sciences, is entirely erroneous.” Science is empirical, faith isn’t. The scientific method is an attempt to understand the real world based on the measurable properties of the real world. The only faith involved is that the careful use of the senses and invented measuring devices is capable of giving real information about real things. If that is wrong, they we all might as well believe in unicorns. The concept of “social science” is less valid than “natural science” because a collection of people is more different, and in a greater variety of ways than a collection of oxygen molecules or green beans. Hence, the use of probability becomes problematical. Let’s not even go there. Faith involves belief in the unprovable. Science is a search for what can be proven. You might not know this, but before Adam Smith wrote THE WEALTH OF NATIONS he wrote THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS. Which, like the writings of Keynes, is totally irrelevant to the discussion. Cheers! JzB

    Curt Doolittle You made my point. Thank you. Empiricism is a ‘faith’. So is Positivism. A positivist or empiricist puts his faith in the process that he uses. A theist puts his faith in the process that he uses. We know that much knowledge provided by these processes is false. But we know that we obtain utility from using these processes, despite their imperfections.

    [callout]Empiricism is a ‘faith’. So is Positivism. A positivist or empiricist puts his faith in the process that he uses. A theist puts his faith in the process that he uses. We know that much knowledge provided by these processes is false. But we know that we obtain utility from using these processes, despite their imperfections.[/callout]

    Religious ‘Faith’ is a political and social concept, and social content is NOT probabilistic. It CANNOT be. We can debate wether in retrospect we can measure correlation of historical data. But human behavior is only correlative and historical. It is not probabilistic and predictive. The fact that legions of positivists fall into the trap of treating empiricism as a truth rather than a method, is no different from the error that theists fall into when they think faith is a truth rather than a method. Knowledge is not finite. It is not static. Knowledge is embodied in our methods, not in what is static and certain. And, contrary to your accusation, all of my references support my position. Almost everything here is just Popper revisited. And popper along with Kuhn is the author of the philosophy of science, as well as much of the theory of knowledge. Popper argues for an open universe. He argues (along with Godel) that we have made a mistake in the calculus of measurement. Nassim Taleb make the same argument and warns of the fallacy of prediction in financial markets. Hume argues that we cannot know what we do not know and correctly posits that this is the fundamental problem that humans must solve. Kant tries to solve the problem and fails miserably, although artfully by trying to create a closed (chrsitian apologist) system. Weber refers to content of religious concepts. Pareto describes the limits of human knowledge and the human reliance upon sentiments when faced with insufficient information by which to make decisions. Hayek warns us about the limits of knowledge, and that we should not debase traditional knowledge. Michels warns us that bureaucracies must possess limited knowledge and therefore become self serving. Mises makes the same proposition in ‘Bureaucracy’. Conversely, the line of probabilists from Walras to Keynes to Samuelson all argue for probabilism, but all their models are demonstrably false in practice. They are false in practice for this reason: the categorical representation of any measurable object of utility is necessarily erroneous because the UTILITY of any object is plastic or polymorphic. Unlike the physical world. And therefore it is the DIFFERENCE between possibilities that is the real, and therefore, hidden cost of all human behavior. (All costs are opportunity costs.) Therefore we only record and quantify history but not our hypotheses, because the hypothesis is unimaginably complicated and purely mental in construct without external representation and therefore not readily open to categorization and quantitative representation. Likewise, (via Mandelbrot) people and markets react to learning curves and forgetting curves. The greater and more frequent the stimulation the more attention it gets, and the less the less it gets. This is the only logic present in the stock market: frequency of stimuli and the plasticity of the objects traded in reaction to that stimuli. There is a vast body of knowledge that is critical of the philosophy of secular humanists (which is the religion you’re a member of). The point is, that you are confusing TWO DOMAINS OF KNOWLEDGE that are critically analyzed by different METHODOLOGIES and committing an ERROR in doing so. The gains from science are in the PHYSICAL non-heuristic fields of DISCOVERY of an existing and CLOSED system. The gains in the political sphere are horrendously more complicated than that of the physical world and far less open to our method of scientific testing as we currently understand it. And our current understanding is limited by the somewhat linear and non-causal, categorically implastic mathematics that we make use of in our analysis, exposition, and prediction. So in making your argument with me, and with Rosenbaum, you are applying an irrelevant standard to the concept of god. ( And it’s an impossible problem to define these things rationally. Social Good is one of my favorites. So is the french “liberty fraternity equality”. They are meaningless terms. They express sentiments, not reason. If “social good” exists, then god exists. Good luck defining either one of them. And without defining them you cannot argue a position. ) So, you’re making an ERROR, the nature of which you do not understand. Science is a method. What you do not see is that religion is a method. It is an argumentative and philosophical method for the resolving differences between ‘shoulds’ and achieving cooperation of large numbers of people in a vast division of labor, and among vastly different people of different ages. And achieving that vast labor where rational pedagogy (reason and science education) did not exist, or where it is insufficient (where we are too ignorant), or where the people are too limited in ability, or konwledge, or time, to make use of rational means. Or where, because of the pragmatic nautre of politics, reason, which is an elitist tool, is not available to the majority of the polity engaged in decision making, especially in a democratic society. Reason is a poor political tool. People need narratives. And we have not YET produced sufficient narratives under empiricism to replace mythic content. And the narratives that we have produced (which are those of secular humanism) are patently FALSE. Secular humanism posits: 1) People are equal. (They are unequal) : IQ Deniers. 2) Everyone can be of the same social and economic class (they cannot) : Class Deniers 3) Race is immaterial. (Races are material because people act as if they are material, and they act that way because status in-group and extra group is achieved at different costs) : Race Deniers. 4) Infinite Plasticity of Humans (Natural Law is correct in that people have permanent tendencies) : Anthropo-implasticity Deniers 5) Limits to Political Consensus On Means Of Achieving Goals : Democratic Limit Deniers 6) Limits to empiricism and Probabilism In Human Behaviors : “Positivists”, or Limits Of Empiricism Deniers. These are all failures of the religion of secular humanism, that is the result of empiricism. The great thinkers alive today would state (because they do) that they are not trying to solve a problem of objective truth but of practical utility, while understanding that scientific thought is very limited in scope. The fact that you do not take this same position of skepticism, and that moreover you ignore the record of the history of what utility that civilizations have gained from the absurd technology of monotheism, means that you are indeed a member of the positivist ‘faith’. The monotheistic religions are ridiculous as stated. But they are terribly successful algorithms. Much of science in human history has been well articulated, but entirely false. That said, I’m not supporting monotheistic religion but I do understand the problem of pedagogy: 1) children must learn symbolic social judgements by habit and narrative before they have the capacity to understand rational judgements. 2) people are vastly unequal in their ability to make rational judgements. In fact, it is an expertise and a product of life long mastery. 3) reason has been demonstrably ineffective compared to law and religion and credit, in creating social order. Largely because it is so susceptible to error and fraud. Reason is insufficient and the narrative method and allegorical content are a superior means of providing actionable content to human beings of different abilities, different ages and different experiences. We live in a vast division of knowledge and labor, with multiple social classes, multiple mythologies, and multiple forms of social cooperation encoded in different categories of property rights, freedoms and constraints. Science is the process by which we slowly chip away at discovering fundamental objective causality. But as it stands, it is insufficient for the composition of a social order. And it has been demonstrably harmful to apply such standards to the social order in the vain assumption that our traditions err. =====

    Curt, Impressive.

    “Politics is a process of utility not truth. And the only purpose of debate is to obtain another’s property for one’s desires rather than theirs. By inventing politics we traded violence for fraud. ”

    Shouldn’t this be: property is theft, war is struggle over it, politics negotiation on it, and trade exchange of it? In war, might makes right, politics lowers the cost through the fraud of property, which trade can then exchange. Even the prehistory is reversed. Politics can reduce war, and trade can reduce politics, but larger populations, densities, and interactions increase politics and politics increase war. -Lord

    @Lord. First, thanks. Second, your summary is both astute and accurate. Although, the form you’re using (which is the civic republican set of assumptions, and assumes equality) employs a neutral point of view, and the form I’m using (which is is machiavellian politico-scientific which assumes inequality) is intentionally constructed to demonstrate the error of applying the criteria of either religion, science, or philosophy, to the field of politics — when the first three presume a search for objective truth, and the latter is the domain intentional rhetorical fraud for the purpose of obscuring the contests over property and masking the facility with which the bureaucracy exploits it’s position for self gain behind the necessity of implied moral contrivance, and political expediency. In other words, I’m assaulting the assumptions upon which republican government are based. So I was chastising the authors for silliness by stating that the only reason for debate is to mask their attempt at taking each other’s property. But back to forms: The civic republican model is based jupon the assumption that public debate and voting will produce optimum use of resources among people with similar interests. However, this model originated with small populations, with a minority of the productive social class of participants, with hard money, and where these politicians possessed similar economic incentives, and where the agrarian model, and sail-based shipping guaranteed long time frames for decisions, and accounting periodicity, and where production consisted of fairly simple products converted from a resource to a consumable. All of wich allow for fairly simply accounting processes, and limit the bureaucracy to what can be borrowed from external entities, and therefore what non-bureaucrats are willing to subsidize. Today, instead, we live in an industrialized world of multi-part products composed from across the world, with complex human capital requirements, and vast differences in price structures, and where the rate of movement of economic forces is incomprehensible to an individual. (And where it is precisely that incomprehensibility that makes socialism impossible – socialism being management of production, but which is now commonly applied to redistribution.) Further, we live in a world where the government is both a domestic and international empire that abuses multiple groups under the auspices of shared benefit, while bankrupting the civilization on scale unimaginable by the Athenians. Where politicians do not read, and cannot even understand much of the law that they pass. And where, having removed the gold standard, and allowed the pooling of financial information both through taxation on the way in and lending on the way out, we launder all ability of individuals to comprehend the instructions we give each other through the pricing system, both temporal, and inter-temporal. And by this laundering, and loss of the boundary held in place by hard money, have removed the only means by which external wisdom can limit the ignorant politicians, and the corrupt and ideological bureaucracy. So, In practice, debate is fraught with fraud. There is nothing dishonest about violence. ie: we have traded violence and the use of the parliamentary system to protect us from undue violence by the king and unite us in that pursuit, for fraud, and the use of parliamentary drapery to subject us to extortion and class warfare. So, in practice, yes, you are both succinct, and correct. But you’re not providing the reason why – and as such, are positing a memorable solution but one easily dismissed. The reason you’re missing out on is an epistemic one: That the government is large enough, over too divergent a set of interests, and our pricing, accounting, tax and law systems inadequate to provide politicians with the information necessary to make decisions about the matters with which we charge them, and possessing levers that are too imprecise to achieve their desired ends. In this environment of inadequate information, bureaucrats have no choice but to rely upon metaphysical and cognitive biases when making decisions. And because law makers feel the need to make laws, they do so, and poorly. And because laws do not perish with the fools that write them, the are calcifying the body of law, and as a byproduct losing the faith of the populace not only in them, but in rule of law itself. Politicians are not evil. they are merely human. And they are unable to synthesize sufficient information about our state of affairs to make rational judgements because our information systems are insufficiently complex enough to allow them to do so. Consequently, rhetorical debate is easily fraudulent under this system because there are no external checks and balances via credit and hard money, vie minority vote, vie accounting, on the politicians or on the bureaucracy. And in this arena a fraud, debates about religion, science, and the like are ridiculous. They are ridiculous first, because they are insufficient means of solving the problem, and second because the only reason you would need to rely upon them is because you lack rational, scientific, quantitative information, OR are not regulated externally by limits to credit, and as such, one must resort to Morality, Beliefs, Preferences, instead of resorting to facts as established by monetary information and access to credit. Personally, I would much rather than we stop debating the virtues of science or religion, because both are falsehoods, and instead discuss implementing schemes by which we improve our accounting, tax, credit, baking, and forecasting abiltites so that our politicians cannot hide from information, or make obviously erroneoius statements about fianances. And if christians want to do some moral good, stay off the biblical quotes and get onto the real issue: economic calculaitno is now impossible for our governemnt, and teh tools we thought we had, in the Dynamic Stochastic Equilibrium Model and the ambitions of full employement under Keynesianism are profounding erroneous, ans simply a schme by which we have dstroyed western civilizatoin and force our politicians to resort to chicanery, fraud, ideology, ignorance, and pettiness. The bible, and all scriptural religion are allegorical wisdom.They are not science. Even Science itself is inapplicable to the social sciences. And as such neither religion or science is sufficient to replace ‘quantitative information’ given to us by the system of prices and credit. Because the only truth we know of, is the truth men tell by their actions with their money.

  • A Response To Arnold Kling’s: The Church Of Libertarianism

    Arnold Kling continues one of his themes by writing on one of my favorite topics, “The Churches Of Government”, where he laments the overlaps and conflicts between different conservative and libertarian philosophies.

    You see, I think that the overlap between liberals and libertarians is somewhat suspect. The libertarian thinks that government should get out of the business of regulating marijuana primarily because the libertarian believes in limited government. The liberal thinks that government should get out of the business of regulating marijuana because the liberal doesn’t think marijuana is such a problem.

    And later he explains the philosophical problem:

    Still, I believe that it ought to be possible for a conservative to be in the Church of Limited Government rather than the Church of Unlimited Government. In theory, I would think that a conservative might really care about education or health care without necessarily favoring government involvement. However, in practice many conservatives went along with President Bush when he expanded Medicare and the Federal government’s role in primary education. My sense is that his approach to conservatism has few adherents at the moment.

    To which I would respond, that the reason for confusion on this issue is the failure of the conservative, classical liberal, and libertarian movements, to provide an articulated alternative solution to socialism while at the same time, maintaining their long standing justification for taking power from the monarchy in order to implement a democratic republic managed by the capitalist class.

    [callout]… the reason for confusion .. is the failure of the conservative, classical liberal, and libertarian movements, to provide an articulated alternative solution to socialism while at the same time, maintaining their long standing justification for taking power from the monarchy.[/callout]

    And finally, a reader comments: “From a libertarian point of view, it would be inconsistent to advocate legalizing marijuana and banning trans fats.” And from there I try to use the author’s and reader’s inability to distinguish the reasons for regulating products differently as one of state intervention not of market management. Actually, the two issues are different. Marijuana The only reasons to ban marijuana are: 1) Because it impedes the mind, and therefore choice, and choice is a necessary capacity, and necessary assumption, in the libertarian model. This is a technical concept, not a practical one. 2) Because you can expose others to risk due to impaired judgement, largely while driving a vehicle. This concept is both technical and practical. Justifying the application of force must be both technical (epistemically rational) and practical (materially implementable). Epistemic applications alone are infinite and open to error. (ie: laws should be enforceable not specious.) Trans fats Foods are a voluntary health issue, not an externalized risk issue or capacity issue. The libertarian concept of freedom allows people to harm themselves. However, since it is not possible to make a rational choice over the content of goods , regulating labeling is not a question of freedom but a question of limiting fraud or accidental harm in a market. Libertarianism’s Failures Classical liberalism is an outgrowth of conservatism. Libertarianism is an outgrowth of Classical Liberalism. Rothbardian anarchism is an outgrowth of libertarianism. The only fully articulated philosophy is the Rothbardian. The Classical Liberal philosophy is analogistic, pragmatic, and contractual. But it is a practical moral philosophy, not a necessary logical philosophy. Necessity and utilitarianism are two different kinds of problems. Rothbard fully articulated his philosophy of natural law. But in doing so, by assuming the principle of non-violence, he avoided the problem of creating markets, the costs to people of having done so. And instead, by circumventing the natural law of violence ended up advocating a religion of property. Hoppe improved this line of thinking by developing private institutions that provided public goods, and reinforcing the concept of natural law, by the ARgumentation Ethic which purportedly demonstrates that property is natural to man. But these methods are flawed because they start with non-violence and trade, rather than the human capacity for violence and fraud, and the necessity of building and creating markets. In that sense, while anarchists have made innovations ( monarchic inter-temporal incentives, private insurance institutions ) they have failed to provide an answer for advances in abstract forms of property, and as such are providing solutions that are regressive as did Marx. A market is a joint stock company that was invested in by the fraternal order of soldiers who then collected fees for their service in creating that market. Merchants enter the market by registering products such that they meet the market criteria so that the shareholders experience an appreciation in value. The common people gain access to the market by respecting property, which is a material forgone opportunity cost. Everyone pays, and everyone profits from market participation. The history of economic thought is the history of demonizing monarchs for the purpose of transferring control of the market from it’s military founders, to the vendors – the middle classes. This demonization is nothing but falsehood. As it turns out, kings were kinder to their populations than are republican and democratic governments. But because of this demonization, the causal origin of civilization, of cities, of markets, of prosperity, and of western culture itself, is obscured by the rhetoric of demonizing the nobility who created this culture under which we prosper. Despite it’s variety of logical strengths, libertarian philosophy contains a number of errors, the most influential of which is in confusing the role of government as necessarily social in nature or necessarily defensive in nature, or a tool of class exploitation, versus the historical and causal origin of government as a protector and regulator of markets.

    [callout]Markets are the primary social institution of post tribal man. Governments have no reason for existence outside of Markets[/callout]

    Markets are the primary social institution of post tribal man. Governments have no reason for existence outside of Markets. Government IS a market function, because the purpose of government is determining the rules of the market which funds the government. Trade exists without government, but markets do not. Advanced markets for the trading of abstracts do not. All forms of property beyond portable personal property (several property) require registration, and rules for exchange in the market. The primary difference between the concept of trade and the concept of market is one of anonymity — whereby the market operator places some guarantee on the products offered so that the market’s shareholders can create a competitive advantage against other markets, and to reduce the cost of conflict administration within the market.

    [callout]The difference in cultures is simply in the definition of ownership of different forms of property that they permit in their markets.[/callout]

    The difference in cultures is simply in the definition of ownership of different forms of property that they permit in their markets. And these differences are material: the more granular the property the more liquidity and velocity it produces, and the greater the division of knowledge and labor that is possible. This culture of Market-Making is one of the three causal differences for western civilization versus the central and eastern models. (The other two differences being military tactics that required enfranchisement – leading to debate, reason an science, and IQ distribution mixed with resource and transport availability.). Libertarians confuse fear of abuses by the government with the necessity of constraining the government to the maintenance of the rules of the market, and the value in those rules as a means of increasing the productivity of the market and their yield from that market. Libertarians have abandoned the problem of managing the market, and therefore have become a religious institution not a political institution. That is the difference between religion and politics: the market and the absence of it. Because in large part, neither institution has been rational, only practical. Conservatives lack the ability to articulate their concepts in other than moral terms. Libertarians do significantly better. But both systems of thought are lacking in an understanding of what they argue for. Libertarians, despite being a minority selling a minority philosophy, seek to create a nation governed by a ‘religion of property’ in order to exit the influence of government. When in fact, government is responsible for making the market, and libertarians should lobby for additional rules to limit the state. Not limiting the state to social activities of dubious non-market nature, but to it’s role in regulating the market and evolutionary increases in defining the ever expanding set of objects and options we refer to as property, and which we frequently trade, so that we, as a people, maintain a competitive advantage against other markets. The problems with the anarchic movement are substantive in that they do not account for market-enhancing asymmetries, versus market-harming asymmetries. In other words, they are advocating the ‘buyer beware’ ethic of the Bazaar, rather than the ‘seller responsibility’ that is required of participants in the Market. This is not an advantage to the shareholders (citizens).

    [callout title=Trade and Market Are Different Systems][anarchists] are advocating the ‘buyer beware’ ethic of the Bazaar, rather than the ‘seller responsibility’ that is required of participants in the Market. This is not an advantage to the shareholders (citizens).[/callout]

    The problem with our institutions is that they do not separate redistributive efforts from market efforts. Libertarians (of which I am a member of the group of theorists) would be better served by abandoning our rhetoric of monarchic criticism, and instead develop a language and metaphysics such that we can provide an institutional response to an increasingly complex world in which we must register, trade and police a market of increasingly vast and complex products and services, so that we may maintain our competitive advantage over the rest of the world.

    [callout title=Separation Of Church And State]The problem with our institutions is that they do not separate redistributive efforts from market efforts.[/callout]

    And abandon luddite religions of all sorts. That includes all forms of the Church of Limited Government and Church of Unlimited Government. Instead, a rational epistemology can be applied if we simply look at the material problem of building and maintaining markets in an increasing division of knowledge and labor, where most of our inventions are abstractions that like large numbers, are beyond the ability of our perceptions. That is the one and only important function of government, after territorial defense and the policing of trade routes. And the implementation of rationalism is in separating our institutions such that redistribution is held by one house, and market regulation by another. Further, our separation of banking, including the currency, credit and interest (which has replaced both our religions and our code of laws as our primary means of maintaining social order) is insufficient for the current state of our division of knowledge and labor. That system of institutions and approach to analysis is Post-Rothbardian libertarianism. And it is the only rational alternative to encroaching socialism. Libertarianism was hijacked by Rothbard simply because Hayek, Parsons and Mises failed. And both Rothbard and Hoppe created extraordinary epistemological and institutional value with their research program. But they have failed, as did the libertarians, and the classical liberals, and the conservatives before them, to create a system of institutions capable of providing an alternative to the anti-market anti-civilization sentiments and philosophy of socialism by failing to articulate the causal purpose of government as market maker, and to create institutions that expand and evolve along with the objects that we exchange in that market. And that is your solution membership in A Church: the articulated causality of the market and it’s institutions and the purpose of government communicated by the technique which we call ‘reason’.

  • Notes On “Adam’s Fallacy: A Guide To Economic Theology”

    I’ve purchased two books, this one “Adam’s Fallacy: A Guide To Economic Theology”, as well as “Economics As Religion: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond”. There are any number of books on this theme. Note: This book was a waste of time and money. It is a silly marxist pamphlet. I can summarize it as “poor people breed too much and capitalism doesn’t care” when in fact, capitalism simply makes it very expensive to have children and those who breed irresponsibly are punished abstractly by enduring poverty rather than forced by village and tribal elders to leave their child exposed and dead. The vast silliness of the logic in this book is unworthy of further commentary. I’m surprised that this notion of economic religion is not more commonly discussed in the venal press. But it is too valuable a tool of those who wish to empower a democratic state and it’s politicians who are, quite frankly, at a loss to apply something other than the practicalities of getting elected, or the mysticisms of our founding documents, christian religion, or marxian fantasy. I start with Adam’s Fallacy. Using the KIndle edition on a mac, and therefore cannot annotate in place, and am not sure of page numbers. (This is a problem we need to fix, because we’re going to increasingly use dynamic text, which requires paragraph numbering not page numbering. Anyone remember wordperfect versus word?) PREFACE I am not sure I buy the argument that smith created a fallacy by separating market life from personal life. The Wealth Of Nations (TWON) is only the second half of his philosophy. the first is The Theory Of Moral Sentiments. (TOMS) They together represent his insight that the division of labor increases production and that human sentiments to cooperation at both the intimate, interpersonal, local, social and global level. While we are only in the preface, I’m not sure I buy the assumption because it’s too loose an assertion. Instead, I blame Knight and Keynes. Smith is nothing but a moral philosopher. “Contemporary economics has grown into a major intellectual industry” I hope this is elaborated further because it’s the the same problem presented by the clergy. People depend on perpetuating the faith. “Teaching economics reinforces the world view I call Adam’s Fallacy”. I don’t think so. I think that’s the crowd post 1900. “Teaching students to think like economists .. is hard.. and thinking like an economist … is just as value laden as any other way of thinking about society”. The idea in economic reasoning is the broken window problem: the need for all humans to think in terms of secondary causes and to follow the chain of secondary causes. This teaches people to think more deeply about the trade offs of both personal and political decisions. Yes it’s hard for people. Otherwise we wouldn’t need a market. CHAPTER 1 “The moral fallacy of smith’s positin is that it urges us to accept direct and concrete evil in order that indirect and abstract good may come of it.” Well, now, we need a definition of evil, don’t we? “neither smith nor … his successors have been able to demonstrate rigorously ad robustly how private selfishness turns into public altruism”. I don’t think he says that. I think he says that by participating in the market europeans will have fewer wars. CH1 – The Division Of Labor “Smith leaves unanswered the chicken and egg question of whether it is ultimately the human propensity to truck and barter that lads to the division of labor, or the division of labor that compels people to exchange.” Isn’t this a false dichotomy? People have always bartered and exchanged. the division of labor is simply more profitable for the individual. Ask any art-jeweler or craftsperson, who starts out producing one offs, but determines that quality of life depends upon his or her development of a product line that can reliably produce revenue, so that she is free to create those individually interesting pieces. The VIrtuous spiral of economic development. “Smith puts his faith in the ultimate benefits to be gained from the virtuous spiral to in crease standards of living and enhance the wealth of …. the sovereign.” “Smith SAYS LAW “… rise in labor productivity has at least one immediate and negative effect: a reduction in the demand for labor in the industries undergoing raid rises in productivity. …. unemployment can result.” “thus say’s law is based on a belief in the efficiency of the financial institutions of a capitalist economy” I don’t think so. I think it’s based on the belief that no other alternative is available while retaining the productivity RELATIVE to other nations, so that wars can be averted, and we can overcome the myth of the fixed-pie. “some of these displaced workers will eventually find alternative jobs” Yes, they will. They just might not like them. The alternative is that people should subsidize workers to produce goods at increased cost of goods to themselves and/or that the entire enterprise of production that employs ALL workers will fail to compete for market share against people from OTHER nations. In other words, it’s the smallest of three evils. “It appears that over long periods of time, says law does operate” Well, of course it does. At this point I’m frustrated because I don’t understand the problem. I know marxian fantasy must be in here somewhere by now. THEORIES OF VALUE I cannot for the life of me discern what point he is trying to make here. MARKET PRICE AND NATURAL PRICE Well, since the time of smith we understand that the labor theory of value is flawed and we have dismissed this part of smith as an error. So I don’t see this as material. he states in many more words ,that natural prices and market prices are in disequilibrium at all times. This makes no sense because a natural price is a tool for us to use to conceptualize movement, and a market price is a thing that comes into existence. So far either he is trying to accumulate a later argument or he’s simply confused. “contemporary economics on the the hand, focuses more theoretical attention on the the ideal imaginary state of equilibrium where market price and natural price coincide.” At this point he is trying to build an argument upon a falsehood – the labor theory of value and natural price. I hope that this is going somewhere. Either that or he is trying to state that the DSEM construct is a myth, and we all understand that it’s a myth. There is no bell curve. There is no equilibrium. It’s just a construct we use so that we can apply math because without that construct we CANNOT apply math. WAGES “… wages have the social function of allowing workers to reproduce themselves” (he means have children). “In order for wages to perform this function, they have to be high enough to allow workers to buy a subsistence standard of living” Ok, so this is supposed to be that the poor have the right to breed? So when did this become a social good? the problem for mankind since industrialization is that people simply don’t die, and they’re expensive. Our problem is overpopulation not supporting the unproductive people’s fantasy of unrestrained child birth. “Smith associates high wages and a high workers standard of living with a growing capital stock” Yes, I agree. at this point I understand that he is providing contemporary context. I read the rest of chapter1 and move to chapter 2 in the hopes that he is going to provide some insight here. Note to authors. Make your premise first then prove it so we don’t have to guess our way through your fantasy. FAR AHEAD “Behind this…. lies the unpleasant truth about capitalist social relations. The organization of the social division of labor through commodity exchange and wage labor systematically inverts the ordinary logic of human relationships.” What logic is that? That people have not exposed children for years, or even outright murdered them or sold them into slavery if they could not support them? In fact, breeding differences account for large differences in the prosperity of difficult cultures. So is this the author’s point? That he has some fallacious concept of the ‘right to breed’, instead of the ‘responsibility to only breed a child you can afford to feed?” Then he goes on to say that marx systematically breaks down and…. helps us understand. What he does instead is create a system of justifying primitivism. Look. We converted from hunter gatherers to farmers. We figured out how to control our breeding by creating the ‘family’ and monogamy. This made families economic units that could manage resources. We invented the market, and the tools of quantitative cooperation we call money, accounting, numbers, interest and credit. We increased our ability to breed further, but penalized those who have less foresight. Capitalism creates temporary extraordinary wealth then forces people to control their breeding in order to participate in the wealth. Those who don’t, suffer because of their choices. We just have a more abstract way of controlling population. ( INSERT A VAST AMOUNT OF JUSFICATIONISM OF MARX HERE. ) ESCAPING ADAM’S FALLACY “thus we cannot look to capitalism to solve inequality and poverty” That is correct. WE can only look to capitalism to provide the incentives for controlling reproduction so that the poor do not doom themselves to perpetual poverty in a world where children do not provide security or comfort but are a drain on resources. In other words. This is a silly marxist book, and I wasted two hours reading it. The chinese solved it with the one child policy, and it was a good policy and successful. Rather than redistribute ourselves into mutual poverty and regale the thought leaders of the past, you could simply write a book on the value of the one child policy, or at least, pay men and women to sterilize themselves. Capitalism makes poverty a choice of reproduction.

  • Two Misleading Infographics – One Religion of Secular Humanism

    Timeplots posted an infographic on women’s participation in congress, which, all things being equal, has essentially remained flat. However, I take issue with the assumption that participation alone is a measure of somehting valuable, other than than as a vidication of the spread of the religion of secular humanism. Also: The Guardian posted an infographic on military spending, which implies that spending is some sort of jingoistic preference, rather than necessity. Together, these graphics illustrate something other than stated. THey represent a measure of the non-rational ambitions of secular humanism rather than the material expression of economic risk and necessity. The first is a misleading graphic, because it assumes that women would achieve some unstated GOOD by greater participation in political participation, rather than are a reflection of political sentiment. For example, another Infographic that’s misleading is the comparison of the US military’s expenditures, which is far larger than any other nation’s. But this ignores the underlying reason for having a military: protecting trade routes. After first, property rights, and second, corruption the third factor most important in prosperity is trade routes. And the civilization that polices trade routes is, in human history, the prosperous one. Another problem is that Chinese military’s size is overstated versus the US. The US uses vast numbers of contractors, as many or more of them than military personnel. The Chinese do not, but instead they perform these tasks within the military ranks. Another problem is that our military is one of technology not numbers, so cost per soldier is more important. Lastly, a very large portion of the military budget is for benefits and in particular, military benefits. The meaningful, and therefore accurate measure of comparison of military cost is the total dollars minus benefits, adjusted by national purchasing power, expressed as a percentage of GDP spent on the military, divided by the number of miles of air, water, rail and road transit that the nation operates. This would show that the USA is very close to dead last in military expenditure. Or rather, that the cost to its citizens is infinitesimal compared to that of other nations. The same analysis would be informative for viewing other nations. Russia for example has a horrific country to transport goods upon and police. It is vast, much of it is harsh to human life, it has a terrorist threat on it’s border, China at it’s south and east, very little in the way of connected waterways and little access to worthwhile seas. All miltary costs for russia will be higher. It must be a threat in order not to become a victim. (See Stratfor’s articles on Rivers and seas as well as on China’s security needs) The US is, fortunately, or unfortunately, the policeman of the seas, and took on that duty after the fall of the british empire. Our wealth is largely dependent, not upon democracy and all the other self-congratulating features we attribute to ourselves, but almost entirely to our control of the seas, because water transport is so much less expensive than any other. This military dominance makes our political values (secular humanism) and our currency, and our laws, the dominant structure on the planet, and is the reason why americans are prosperous. Early US growth was simply the result of applying european technology for the purposes of selling off and occupying a continent. The assumption made by advocates of decreased military expenditure is that there would be little material impact, or that we would not be impacted. Or that this impact would lead to greater equality at home. But that would nto be true. It would lead to vastly higher costs and a permanent upper class, and a vast reduction of the middle class to lower standards of living. Any argument to the contrary must rely upon an example of decreasing control over shipping that led to something other than widespread decline across a nation. In other words, advocacy of pacifism is an appeal to Ludditeism. The problem with women in politics in the US is related to the underlying political necessity of trade route protection. Since many people in the USA, rightly understand these necessary militaristic sentiments (Pareto would call them residues and derivations, and others would call them metaphysical preferences, others would call them biases, or jingoism) they are accurate representation of the problem at hand. Since our political structure is largely organized to maintain that policing and that trade, the population is more interested in maintaining a similar political sentiment. This tendency is generational, class based, and culturally influenced, and is becoming the minority sentiment (which is how civilizations age). But it is still the dominant sentiment among males. Even hispanic males. The reason other nations have higher percentages of women en-toto, is that trade route protection is not the problem faced by, or sentiment held by, people in weaker states. Redistribution is. The correct analysis of women in politicswould be visible if countries were ordered by their ability to expand trade routes. As such, you would see weak countries dominated by women, correctly expressing the social sentiment, and strong countries dominated by men. This is, another example, of the philosophy of Power and Weakness stated by Kagan. People develop philosophies that they CAN. Women have a preference for maternal redistributive duties, and men have a preference for conflict resolution and status enhancement. These charts, by contrast, are an example of a metaphysical bias toward the religious doctrine of secular humanism. (Which is the evolutionary result of christianity.) A pacifist doctrine that is only possible to maintain in the midst of prosperity – a prosperity generated by trade routes, and maintained by militaristic, expansionist, sentiments in a population. Both sentiments are necessary. But dominance of one sentiment is a function of the nation’s needs. So, in other words, if we look at the miles of transport that we police, we have a very, very cheap military. And women serve according to their preference, and societies preference for their sentiments. Women CAN serve in politics. Ability is not a question. Sentiment is a question. Because, in the presence of inadequate information to allow us to predict the future, we make decisions according to our sentiments. And politicians are of necessity both inadequately informed, and not in their positions because they are informed, but because they appeal to voter sentiments. So these charts do not illustrate what the authors mean them to: an illustration of the progress yet to be made in advancing the religion of secular humanism. They illustrate something else entirely: the resistance by the objective and material world of raeality to the religion of secular humanism, and the rationality of those existing judgements in the face of the irrationality of the ambitions of secular humanism. Men and women have different sentiments, and it is almost entirely biological in nature. And there is no evidence to the contrary. Yet our political discourse must, for secular humanist reasons of faith, deny that fact. Arguably from a man’s perspective, especially a divorced man, we have rendered unto women extraordinary privileges never available to men in human history. To the detriment of men’s quality of life, men’s occupational distribution (men take the high risk jobs and largely bear the brunt of unemployment), and medically, more money is diverted to research for women’s health than for mens. Certanly benefit systems are set up to give women an advantage. Especially when we consider that the world’s primary issue is overpopulation, not pollution, or health care. Overpopulation. We have implemented this shift from male dominated benefit, to women dominated benefit, by women’s participation in the voting structure, not by women’s participation in politics – a participation level which appears to have leveled out. The same is true for women’s participation in the work force. It has leveled out. The same appears to be occurring in the past two generations. Women under 30 are not as activist as they were in the post-war generations. The post war generations were largely an effort to demilitarize society that has been militarized in order to fight the world wars, and recently, because of labor saving devices (invented by men) that no longer made it necessary for women to spend the day in home labor. In other words, we attribute to our politics those causes which were actually effects. This overemphasis of politics is another example of the religion of secular humanism, which attributes to collective judgment that which is an artifact of economic conditions. And economic conditions which are an artifact of military sentiments. In the 19th and early 20th century, our trade routes were largely internal, as the Great Lakes region industrialized so that the west could be populated. In the 1980’s our trade routes moved from the atlantic to the pacific, along with the technology leadership, and increasingly are doing so. The same is true for financing. San Francisco is the primary source of investment capital for experimental ideas. At some future point, our trade routes will change again. When that happens, we will change our political participation to be more masculine, or more feminine, depending upon our nation’s position of power and weakness. Just as every other nation will.