Curt Doolittle

Theme: Responsibility

  • On the Renting of Persons Liberal thought (in the sense of classical liberalism)

    On the Renting of Persons

    Liberal thought (in the sense of classical liberalism) is based on the juxtaposition of consent to coercion. Autocracy and slavery were supposedly based on coercion whereas today’s political democracy and economic “employment system” are based on consent to voluntary contracts. This paper retrieves an almost forgotten dark side of contractarian thought that based autocracy and slavery on explicit or implicit voluntary contracts. To answer these “best case” arguments for slavery and autocracy, the democratic and antislavery movements forged arguments not simply in favor of consent but arguments that voluntary contracts to legally alienate aspects of personhood were invalid “even with consent”—which made the underlying rights inherently inalienable. Once understood, those arguments have the perhaps “unintended consequence” of ruling out today’s self-rental contract, the employer employee contract.

    Also see, On Property Theory,

    http://www.ellerman.org/on-property-theory/

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-02 17:11:00 UTC

  • If a man must pay for a child at great personal cost to himself, and a woman and

    If a man must pay for a child at great personal cost to himself, and a woman and the child have a right to the standard of living prior to divorce, and he cannot export this expense to the state, then why does a woman have the right to export the cost of her single motherhood to the state?

    A man cannot chose whether or not he is to father a child. Women are no longer economic victims, but have both saturated their distribution in the economy, and forced men out of the economy such that more women are both voters and workers than are men. So we cannot say that women are disadvantaged. Just the opposite. It is true that men dominate the upper margins, but men dominate nowhere else in society.

    This is an inequality of justice. A double standard. Given the dissolution of the family, and our emphasis on individualism, it is only jus that men export their children’s cost to the state just as women export their children’s cost to the state. No?

    I don’t really see any moral case for child or spousal support. There isnt any evidence that it’s necessary. It is disproportionally more punitive to men, who have shorter working careers, and endure disproportionate economic risk.

    I mean, if we have universal socialized health coverage, why not universal socialized child coverage. Why not a minimum guaranteed income?

    In that world, men can contribute to a household or not, but they carry their productivity with them. So any woman whose nest he shares, gains from his productivity, but loses at his departure. His income is a luxury. A perk. A benefit, not a necessity.

    The point of my argument is that property rights in a world where the individual, not the family, is the rule, and where all costs are highly socialized, will be one in which it will be increasingly difficult for us to treat evolutionary norms and morals dependent upon previous economic political and social means of production and reproduction, as criteria for predicting human behavior.

    I wouldn’t mind a world where women could not become vampires on males, and where all rights were in fact, equal.

    I also realize that this is the only way to restore male-female relations. But I suspect it is too late. And that the more likely development will be a caste system like we see in the northeast, with white/jewish/asian elites and mixed and brown everyone else – with token representatives of those groups permitted into the upper castes as a means of preserving the illusion of meritocracy.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-30 15:13:00 UTC

  • Bentham was right and wrong. Rights theory was nonsense on stilts. But so was ut

    Bentham was right and wrong. Rights theory was nonsense on stilts. But so was utilitarianism.

    We cannot cooperate on ends. Any attempt to do so defeats the premise as self contradictory. We can cooperate only on means.

    Cooperation on means depends only upon objective processes, not subjective wants and experiences.

    As such, the only “law” is the suppression of discounts.

    The institutional solutions for such suppression are simple: rule of law, common law, contract, property, and universal standing.

    It is true that a separate and isolated organization, must have the ability to negotiate contracts for the production of commons and the prohibition on free riding, privatization and socialization. But this body has no need for voice in law.

    If a consent to a prohibition on discounts is the cost of entry into the market owned by others, or it is the purchase of interest in that market is an open dispute. Demonstrably people act as if the latter.

    As such it seems that people should have direct choice over the use of dividends. Whether for consumption, insurance or investment.

    It appears that an insurer of last resort is a necessary competitive advantage. But that if open to discretion is a license for corruption.

    If these rules are fixed then one cannot abuse these processes.

    It is our reliance on human discretion and failure to divide the houses that has caused the failure of the classical model’s balance of power.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-30 08:47:00 UTC

  • WHY DID ICELAND DO IT RIGHT? A CRITIQUE OF CORPORATISM VS CAPITALISM Because cap

    WHY DID ICELAND DO IT RIGHT? A CRITIQUE OF CORPORATISM VS CAPITALISM

    Because capitalism requires, and is defined by, the fact that risk takers both win and lose, and they bear the burdens of both their wins and losses.

    There is nothing in capitalism that supports the privatizing of social gains, or the socialization of private losses. That isn’t CAPITALISM. That’s state CORPORATISM. The alliance between the state and the capitalists, AGAINST the general population.

    Without the counter-incentive of risk, only totalitarianism of rules and regulations can attempt to control natural human behavior to socialize risk and privatize reward. That is what free riding and rent seeking do.

    The purpose of competition in the market is to reward consumers by way of a competition between lenders, producers, distributors, and vendors. Whenever a competition exists, at least one party loses, but that is never the consumer – who always benefits. This is the most elegant form of redistribution ever created by man. It is a virtuous cycle.

    But if the state INSURES COMPETITORS, it breaks the virtuous cycle, and provides incentives for competitors to privatize gains, and to socialize losses.

    When you create debt of any kind, you are not in the clear with the profits until the debt is paid off. That is, you have earned only the right to USE the income from that debt, but it is not YOURS until the debt is paid off.

    This is counter to human loss aversion instincts. In our emotional machinery between our ears, we own what we have. But that is not true, and cannot be. A debt and corresponding credit function as a production cycle. The good is not MADE until it is paid off.

    Our legal system does not recognize this liability and that is why we fail to correctly adjudicate credit and debt, and why we fail to correctly implement policy to protect consumers and hold lenders accountable.

    The reason is quite simple: the state is trying to put credit out there all the time in every way possible so that it creates employment and taxes from employment.

    But the production cycles are lost in a sea of confusion and this immeasurable distortion in information is inconceivably complex, and impossible for economists to tease from the data.

    The left’s proposition is that ‘it will all work out’. The right’s proposition is that we are undermining the entire SCIENTIFIC nature of the anglo model of economy we call capitalism.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-15 07:55:00 UTC

  • DID IT RIGHT. And they keep doing it right. Fry bankers. Socialize the mortgages

    http://rt.com/op-edge/iceland-bank-sentence-model-246/ICELAND DID IT RIGHT.

    And they keep doing it right. Fry bankers. Socialize the mortgages. Burn the investors. I”m a capitalist. These guys are corrupt.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-14 19:17:00 UTC

  • PROPERTY RIGHTS CAN ONLY ORIGINATE IN A CONTRACTUAL EXCHANGE – therefor there ar

    PROPERTY RIGHTS CAN ONLY ORIGINATE IN A CONTRACTUAL EXCHANGE – therefor there are limits to those rights.

    If you fail to state the limits of those rights in that contract, then it is quite possible to abuse them. But the moral use of property – meaning the ban on involuntary transfers – does not include such uses as rent seeking on property rights THEMSELVES. That would mean a contradiction.

    I hope that logic is as clear as it is to me. Maybe not.

    Human moral code illustrates that we expect that if you profit, that you profit by contributing something to the agreement.

    This intuition is what confused us over interest. Interest is a necessary property of inter-temporal production. It’s not a convenience. Its a necessity. We can’t function without it.

    And it is moral, because interest is an opportunity cost paid for by the lender, to the borrower.

    However, that does not mean that you can take advantage of human suffering as a lender. That violates the principle of involuntary transfer.

    This topic is exceptionally rich turf for libertarian reformation. Because by solving it, we solve the problem of placing limits on property rights such that they are acceptable to high trust societies.

    Profound if you grasp it.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-08 12:37:00 UTC

  • If I ever see any man physically abuse a woman again, I will kill him. With joy,

    http://enpundit.com/watch-one-year-abusive-relationship-one-minute-video/ABUSE

    If I ever see any man physically abuse a woman again, I will kill him. With joy, and without remorse. If I knew who the guy in this video was, I’d take care of it myself – I put up with enough of that against my mother.

    We are overly servile to the law. The world would be a lot better place if meting out justice was done quickly and passionately by any group of men supplied with twenty feet of rope. The best cure for domestic violence is beating the man to near death and hanging him of the nearest bridge.

    Women are, we men all know, largely nuts. They are impulsive, deceitful, violent, manipulative and abusive creatures. They have to be. They have us around them all the time and we’re dangerous.

    But that doesn’t mean anything. You hurt a woman, every man worthy of the name should end your miserable existence.

    I call bullshit on ‘shelters’ and eduction and all other soft-nonsense remedies.

    We just need more rope.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-25 11:11:00 UTC

  • I. LIBERTARIAN AND PROPERTARIAN ETHICS Ethics is the study of right ACTION. Righ

    I. LIBERTARIAN AND PROPERTARIAN ETHICS

    Ethics is the study of right ACTION. Right ‘belief’ is only a matter for ethics, when wrong ‘belief’ may impede or encourage ethical action. And as such, ostracizing or punishing those with wrong ‘belief’ is necessary self defense.

    Aristotelian Action, modernized with Praxeology, won’t tell you much without Austrian Opportunity costs and Libertarian Property. Without property and opportunity costs, the multitude of transfers involved in any action are invisible, and as invisible, they are unmeasurable.

    As invisible and unmeasurable, they are vehicles for organized involuntary transfer. And without the Propertarian requirement of operational language, symmetry and warranty, it’s impossible to

    And Rothbard’s failure to account for these immoralities is why libertarian ethics have been (rightfully) rejected by the majority.

    And given that libertarian ETHICS have been rejected (rightfully) all the visionary libertarian solutions to the problems of cooperation in politics and on commons have also been rejected as being founded on immoral principles.

    II. LIBERTARIAN REFORMATION

    We must clean libertarianism of Rothbard’s Ghetto Ethics. Return liberty to the ethics of the high trust society. To Aristocracy. And to a popular if not majority preference.

    The Prohibition of Involuntary Transfer

    1) Prohibition on the accumulation of power

    (anarchy, private government, private property, constitution.)

    2) Prohibition on ‘incalculable’ corporation

    (competition, partnership, and shareholdership)

    3) Prohibition on involuntary transfers

    (externality, symmetry, warranty, operationality, calculability)

    APPEND

    FWIW: Philosophers hold on to nonsense metaphysics, the way pre-moderns hold onto mysticism.

    ‘Cause they’re the same. The philosophy of action isn’t complicated.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-24 13:35:00 UTC

  • THE BHL’S, SENTIMENT VS REASON, AND ASKING FOR AN ARGUMENT Stephan Kinsella has

    THE BHL’S, SENTIMENT VS REASON, AND ASKING FOR AN ARGUMENT

    Stephan Kinsella has me thinking about our socially conscious friends: the BHL.

    And, again, I enthusiastically support ANY pursuit of liberty, wherever possible, by whomever possible. The more the merrier. The more positive the better.

    I think that, sure, adding ‘social compassion’ it’s an attractive means of making libertarianism palatable for the mainstream. If you can’t fight off the proletarians, then you can simply buy them off. I’ve certainly advocated the same strategy.

    Social compassion is certainly a way to destroy the myth of equality, and destroy the nuclear family, as well as the pressure to create and keep the nuclear family. So, that helps correct the erroneous assumptions of equality of interest, and that liberty is a universal desire, instead of the priority of a permanent minority.

    I mean, but, I think that the most likely outcome, without a ‘package deal’ is that we would both redistribute more money, AND get less freedom in exchange. Because the moral hazard would increase the weight of the unproductive, and the state would use that lever to increase extraction from us.

    I guess, what I’d like to see from the BHL’s is, some argument that supports their position by rational rather than sentimental means.

    Propertarianism can be used to rationally defend the BHL’s objective WITHOUT sacrificing, any way, the sanctity of individual property rights, or requiring charity. Compassion is a camel’s nose and there is no end to its infiltration of the tent of liberty.

    Propertarianism requires that you decide whether the reward for respecting property rights (and manners, ethics, morals and norms) is simply access to the market, or whether additional dividends are warranted for that investment.

    I think, intuitively, people feel that they are due more than access. And that (a) commissions are due on production and (b) dividends are due to ‘shareholders’, where shareholder-ship is obtained by, respect for property rights.

    This is a descriptive, not normative ethical explanation of what people actually think, feel, and do. It asks ‘at what point have I paid for my property rights? And what is my dividend on that ownership?

    But this strategy is incompatible with open immigration. And open immigration is incompatible with property rights – at least without full and immediate adoption of all manners, ethics, morals and norms. The most important of which, is the norm of private property, without which, the formal institutions of private property cannot exist.

    At least it is not possible to demonstrate otherwise.

    Give them some love too:

    http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-21 02:36:00 UTC

  • helplessness. Reap dependence.” – Roman Skaskiw

    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/08/legal-concealed-carry-permit-protects-two-college-students-from-six-time-felon-now-they-face-expulsion/”Sow helplessness. Reap dependence.” – Roman Skaskiw

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-10 10:52:00 UTC