Curt Doolittle

Theme: Responsibility

  • The Questionable Ethics Of Climate Scientists And Economists

    Karl Popper (who wrote the Logic of Scientific Discovery) and Thomas Kuhn (who wrote the structure of scientific revolutions) approached the problem of knowledge in the domain of DISCOVERY, which we call the physical sciences. At the same time, the CLOSE FRIEND of Karl Popper, Friedrich Hayek, worked on the problem of hubris in the social sciences. Hayek ended up combating Keynes over the frailty of models and reason. Keynes wrote ‘A Treatise On Probability” and then the “General Theory” which led to the governmental use of economic calculation that all of us live under, by trying to solve for unemployment – something Hayek (correctly) stated was not possible in the long run and would lead (as it has) to our bankruptcy. Hayek stated that traditional knowledge that was handed down, and perpetuated by trial and error, was ‘true’ even if we did not understand it rationally as yet. And that our record of rational judgment was exceedingly frail, and that history was filled with examples (past and present) of ridiculous scientific error. Keynes won in the short term however, because his theory solved the problem of socialism by replacing a false pretense of REASON (a managed economy), with the false pretense of PROBABILITY ( a monetarist economy) in the field of national economics. In other words, Keynes gave politicians power over our economies. The power that has led us to our financial crisis. BOTH Popper and Hayek were countering two problems. A) the use of the fairly new field of statistical analysis and it’s limitations at prediction due to what Nassim Taleb calls the LUDIC FALLACY. And B) the rise of Socialism, and the socialist hubris of central planning . These men, plus Hayek’s mentor Ludwig von Mises, effectively undermined and predicted the impossibility of a socialist economy. Both men stated that human minds are frail and capable of very limited reason and prediction. More importantly, that the Anglo RECORD OF WHAT WORKS, or EMPIRICISM, is a superior form of KNOWLEDGE to the French (and then Marxian) fantasy of RATIONALISM. The fact that the average american does not understand this by doctrinare education difference is probably equal to the use of today’s mysticism in Islam or medieval christianity. It is a means of keeping people ignorant. We have attempted to replace mysticism with science without also teaching history (mythology) which teaches us the error of hubris. We do not teach history because in a pluralistic society, history includes value judgments and value judgements are class, race, and culture judgements. However, aside from class, race and culture, we are taught only the error of the churches, without the errors of silly scientists who were little better than shaman. We did not teach our children HUBRIS. Greek mythology teaches one lesson above all others: Hubris.

    [callout]We have attempted to replace mysticism with science without also teaching history (mythology) which teaches us the error of hubris. We do not teach history because in a pluralistic society, history includes value judgments and value judgements are class, race, and culture judgements.[/callout]

    To the physical sciences, which is the process of DISCOVERY of what EXISTS already, is the objective of study. The holy grail is to discover the first-causal properties of the physical universe. To economists, the problem is one of INVENTION. This is called Hume’s problem, or the problem of induction. That is, what can humans INVENT given their current state of knowledge. THe problem of economic science, which is the ONLY social science we yet possess, is similar to climate science in complexity, yet additionally more complicated because there is no process of EQUILIBRATION in the intellectual world. (there is no human equivalent to the law of thermodynamics – there is in fact, energy added to the system. We call it ‘increases in production’.) Nor is time constant. In fact, that’s what productivity does: it creates more ‘time’ by using less of it to produce more calories. Instead, of an equilibrium as in nature, the mind of man invents new ideas all the time from permutations of existing patterns and disrupts all attempts at equilibria. Both forms of our theories, whether physical science or economic science, can only be tested by FALSIFICATION. Unless you can stipulate ACTIONS by which we can prove climate hypothesis false, they are not in fact, scientific. For example, Einstein said that the absence of red shift would falsify one of his theories. The first principle of Greek Rationalism is SKEPTICISM as a warning against HUBRIS. Hubris is a danger because of the cognitive biases humans of necessity possess because we attribute higher value to that which we study most. TRUTH IN SCIENCE IS PREDICTION AND FALSIFICATION. Models are not truth. They are tools for rationalizing data. The carpenter may not understand the metallurgy of his chisel. He may not understand the distribution channel for his wood. The scientist is often using chisels and wood that he or she does not understand. If he or she understood, then he or she would understand that the peer review process CANNOT WORK. DOES NOT WORK, and QUANTIFIABLY, given the record, DOES NOT WORK. Furthermore, he or she would understand that only FALSIFICATION, not correspondence with a model, is the means of proving a theory. Since these two problems DISCOVERY (Physical Science) and INVENTION (induction) are the two fundamental problems of the universe, it is not surprising that we are still incompetent at both. What is surprising is that in both PHYSICAL SCIENCE and in ECONOMIC SCIENCE, the cognitive bias we bring to our studies, in which we confuse the practical utility of the limited tools and methods of our craft, consistently overwhelms and suppresses the knowledge that in fact, out tools are rough approximations with very poor records of prediction. And that only a combination of prediction and falsification demonstrate the veracity of any theory in either domain.

    [callout]A financier who violates one of these principles, or a lawyer, or a craftsman, is held accountable for violating the ethics of his craft. With free speech, comes the same ethical constraint on Physical and Economic scientists. That is because there is HARM put upon populations whenever our work products are put into the public domain such that they may be used for the purpose of policy. The reason is, that all public policy is the application of VIOLENCE[/callout]

    A financier who violates one of these principles, or a lawyer, or a craftsman, is held accountable for violating the ethics of his craft. With free speech, comes the same ethical constraint on Physical and Economic scientists. That is because there is HARM put upon populations whenever our work products are put into the public domain such that they may be used for the purpose of policy. The reason is, that all public policy is the application of VIOLENCE: the forcible taking of resources and the coercion of individual behavior under the treat of violence. The scientist or the economists is appealing for the application of violence to his purposes. Therefore, a scientist is operating ethically by publishing FACTS. He or she is NOT operating ethically when he publishes theories or predictions unless the theory is accompanied by falsification. Failure to include how to falsify one’s theories is by definition a form of deception. If we made it possible to sue scientists the way we can sue doctors and CEO’s then no doubt the quality of work would increase dramatically. And the fact that we cannot sue scientists for the harm that they cause, puts them in the realm with fortune tellers and astrologists.

  • Curry discovers Hayek. I complain that scientists aren’t operating ethically. An

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/?p=2576Judith Curry discovers Hayek. I complain that scientists aren’t operating ethically. And we should be able to sue scientists the way we sue doctors, lawyers and accountants.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-04-21 09:48:00 UTC

  • Violence and Virtue vs Morality and Fraud

    My rights are protected by my willingess to kill in order to defend them. Legal documents either require that many people are willing to kill to defend them, or that many people are willing to kill to enforce them, or that many people are wiling to kill to change them. Moral arguments by contrast are a form of deceptlon by which the weak attempt to gain advantages without paying the costs for obtaining those advantages. That is the sole purpose of moral argument. By contrast, any right that is possessed by virtue of social contracts, formal or not, is possessed only because of the willingness of people to use violence in order to protect it. The government does not protect my rights. I do. Instead, government is a shareholder system whereby we each obtain the productive efficiency of scale in enforcing our defense of established rights, and therefore obtain them at a discount. But the government has that power only because we relinquish it to them. And we do not pay those costs equally. Some of us have a greater virtue of violence at our disposal than others. We are initially wealthier in violence than other people, so the cost of our privileges is higher. While those who are weaker, obtain a higher benefit than do the stronger. This is looking at the mythology from the opposite perspective. Since in all of history, the minority who has the greatest capacity for violence has established all political orders.

    [callout]Moral arguments by contrast are a form of deception by which the weak attempt to gain advantages without paying the costs for obtaining those advantages. That is the sole purpose of moral argument. By contrast, any right that is possessed by virtue of social contracts, formal or not, is possessed only because of the willingness of people to use violence in order to protect it. The government does not protect my rights. I do.[/callout]

    The west was built diffrently from the east or middle east, because it was built by a fraternity of warriors. Even with our vast specialization of careers, it is still protected by vi olence. Violence is a virtue. The fact that women are poorer in violence, and that the poor and ignorant are less able to pay the sacrifice nand discipline eeded to use it, is why they rely on moral arguments. THE PROXY FOR VIOLENCE AND SOCIAL CLASS There is no argument among philosophers, and certainly among political economists, that the system of property rights and exchange, regardless of culture, is a proxy for violence. By monopolizing violence, ‘governments’ force people to compete by production rather than violence. This provides people wiht incentives to produce. Production vastly favors discipline. Wealth vastly favors IQ. Productivity has the negative emotional consequence of amplifying the differences between individuals, and rewarding individuals more diversely than under tribal society, and therefore subjects the proletariat to more negative status signals, and making a social class out of the proletariat because of it, that our tribal sentiments and cognitive biases support. THE ECONOMICS OF MORAL ARGUMENTS Moral statements depend on economic circumstances. In pre-agrarian society, murder, plunder and rape are heroic, not prohibited activities. In post-industrial society, some sort of redistribution is at least suggested by human sentiments. “rights” are a MORAL not NECESSARY argument. Rights are POSSIBLE only when there is very limited SCARCITY. Legal RIGHTS are only POSSIBLE when a minority is willing to exercise violence to protect them. We ACKNOWLEDGE the POSSIBILITY of certain rights only because we can AFFORD them at some period in time. There are vast differences between social classes on what ‘rights’ we can afford at one period in time or another. The lower social classes argue for rights. The upper social classes argue for utilities. The lower classes breed. The upper classes don’t. The lower classes envy the productive classes, the upper classes protect their assets. Property, civilization, society, in ALL CASES WITHOUT EXCEPTION were created by the application of violence by a minority Ideas held in ignorance are just evidence of ignorance, and nothing more. Moral arguments are irrational arguments because they do not enumerate their properties. Economic arguments are NECESSARY arguments, not the display of PREFERENCES nor MORAL arguments. The lower classes use resistance movements rather than actions to work against stronger forces. Resistance movements are ‘costs’. They are opportunity costs. They create economic friction. They create cooperative friction. Resistance increases the costs for the middle class, and can overwhelm the ability to export violence by the upper classes. Moral statements on rights made under the threat of the application of either resistance, political violence, or street violence. “MIGHT MAKES RIGHTS” “Might may not make right. But might certainly makes all Rights.”

    [callout]”Might may not make right. But might certainly makes all Rights.[/callout]

    Hence, my correct statement that my rights consist of my willingness (along with others) to use violence to protect my rights. THE FRAUD OF MORAL ARGUMENTS Violence is a virtue. It is the first virtue. And those who argue otherwise do so out of either ignorance or fraud. Because it is fraud to make a moral argument rather than a necessary and economically necessary argument. Moral arguments are, without exception, arguments made from either ignorance or deception. In most cases they are made from deception, in order to obtain transfer payments in order to accumulate resources at a discount. IN effect most if not all proletariat arguments for transfer payments are threats of organized violence against others. You are welcome to debate this topic with me but I am fairly sure I will prevail. Because unlike you I am not arguing from a network of silly moral deceptions. In moral arguments “follow the money” is a more valuable technique than it is in forensic investigation. Because the world is very clearly separated into people who produce and those who form resistance movements in order to obtain the productive results of others by the reliance on moral arguments the implication of which is violence if their wants for transfer payments are not met. The only good and bad is whether the transfer payments requested by the proletariat threat of violence is Pareto Efficient or not. ie: whether more harm to the economy is done by the transfers (redistribution) than by failing to do so, and over what period of time that harm is created. There is no harm in creating roads because roads increase productivity which is for the good of all. But all redistribution to individuals that is for personal consumption has significant negative consequences. While there is some benefit to Poor Farm’s and Social security, as long as it is a very minimal cost. Creating a dependent class of people by failing to force them to save, is creating an economic hazard. No matter what transfer we talk about the society is exposed to risk by the creation of supposedly risk abating transfer payments. It is very simple really.

  • The Reality Of Freedom #1: Freedom Requires Coercion

    Whenever something is scarce,  some concept of property (the exclusive use of a resource)  is necessary for the development of incentives, coordination, and production — even if the difference between ‘several property’ and ‘shareholder property’, is defined differently by different groups — therefore all societies include and sanction some form of coercion.  No society can exist without coercion. This applies to tribal hunter gatherers, nomads, village agrarians, market city dwellers, and vast urban and rural empires in a complex division of knowledge and labor. We can equally forgo the opportunity for violence theft, fraud, corruption.  For the poorest, this means refraining from theft, fraud, deception and violence in exchange for access to the market society and it’s prices. For the middle class, it means refraining from fraud and deception in exchange for participating in the market society and profiting from it.  For the wealthiest, it means refraining from manipulation of market prices or and participating in corruption of the rules of the market, and corruption, in exchange for status and choice.  For the most powerful it means refraining from corruption, and refraining from laziness, incompetence, and maintaining disciplined efforts to serve the marketplace in exchange for freedom from participation in the marketplace. Each of these forgone opportunities for profit is a cost to the individual.  Cumulatively, for each individual, and for any society, these are very, very high costs, because opportunities for violence, theft, fraud, deception, market manipulation, and corruption are more frequent than opportunities for fair exchange of goods and services due to asymmetries of knowledge and resources — even if the type of cost is different along the spectrum: theft and violence are easiest for the bottom and corruption is most easy for the top.

    [callout=’Freedom’]There is no social order that is free of coercion as long as there is scarcity. Property itself is a form of coercion. It must be or we would not have to invent it and enforce it.[/callout]

    There is no social order that is free of coercion as long as there is scarcity.  Property itself is a form of coercion. It must be or we would not have to invent it and enforce it. The coercion that people object to, and classify as corruption, is profiteering by the political class.  Or financial coercion, which means the taking of their time, opportunity, effort, property, or most importantly, status, and to some degree their very attention,  and distributing it to people with whom they disagree, or using it for purposes with which they disagree.  They see this as corruption: obtaining political office and favors by taking from one group and giving to another whom they disfavor. All societies concentrate and redistribute wealth. All societies participate in coercion – or else they could not have property and production.  But whenever a society consists of people with dissimilar interests, by definition there must be negative coercion. Almost all members of any society will tolerate any commonly accepted set of property definitions, even if the scope of individual property is severely limited.  They may form black markets if that scope is too severely limited.  They may form tax avoidance schemes if taxes are too expansive.  But if those definitions remain constant, and they do not have to feel that their plans, and efforts at gain were frustrated, then they will not see the state as coercive. Freedom is defined as freedom from coercion. Meaning freedom from all but equal coercions. And the only freedom we can equally coerce each other with is respect for property. And even then, respecting property is a higher cost for some, and lower for others.

  • Save Bradley? Maybe.

    Save Bradley. The soldier who leaked the video to Wikileaks? Sorry. No dice. People die in war: People kill intentionally in war. All sorts of people die by accident in war. Guilty people die by accident. Innocent people die by accident. Innocent people die because of bad information. Innocent people may die simply because someone used poor judgement. War is dangerous, messy, confusing, frightening, and largely conducted by people who are dehydrated, frightened, under extreme stress, operating largely by instinct and without the time to think, and who are physically and mentally exhausted. Only very silly people think that war is surgical, or manageable, or nice or neat or safe — for anyone at all. And some people are foolish enough to think that soldiers have time to make good judgements. War is scary, dangerous and risky. Thats why people are very cautious of it. And besides that, it’s dangerous for soldiers to behave as if everyone isn’t out to kill them.

    [callout]As a soldier, you are a voluntary, paid, and willing participant in killing, breaking, destroying life and property. And if you don’t believe in it, then you better not join. Because when you join, you give up your right to have an opinion.[/callout]

    As a soldier, you are a voluntary, paid, and willing participant in killing, breaking, destroying life and property. And if you don’t believe in it, then you better not join. Because when you join, you give up your right to have an opinion. That’s how it works. And you’re just trying to steal a paycheck and benefits, or operate as a saboteur if you enter the military without understanding that this is the very purpose and nature of war. We grant soldiers certain special rights when the enter the military. In particular, we allow them to kill people and destroy property. We allow them to do what we allow no others to do. And in exchange for that special right, they lose the right to have an opinion. Just orders are easy to understand. Unjust orders are not. The problem isn’t just or unjust orders. It’s the very fact that there is nothing just or good about war. It’s just war.

    [callout]Immoral orders are one thing. Your choice is not to obey them, resign (accept court martial) and let the military court accept it. That’s the method the military has had for centuries. Accidents, bad judgement, stupidity are part and parcel of war. There isn’t any crime in error, any more than war itself is simply terrible[/callout]

    Immoral orders are one thing. Your choice is not to obey them, resign (accept court martial) and let the military court accept it. That’s the method the military has had for centuries. Accidents, bad judgement, stupidity are part and parcel of war. There isn’t any crime in error, any more than war itself is simply terrible. If you want to leak something, become a journalist. We grant journalists very special rights that we would not grant others. Journalists are more often wrong than write, and create as much bad as good. We simply think the good is worth the bad. If you want to be a journalist, then be one. A journalist’s job is to have a point of view. A soldier’s job is to break stuff and kill people until the other side gives up. Period.

    [callout]If you want to be a journalist, then be one. A journalist’s job is to have a point of view. A soldier’s job is to break stuff and kill people until the other side gives up. Period.[/callout]

    Besides. Telling us that people died by accident, or because someone made an error, or even lost their judgement during a military exercise, is simply stating the obvious. That’s what happens in war. And so the only reason to leak it is to create propaganda for the enemy, and undermine the will of the citizens to support their military. Supporting the military may be a grand game. No one wants to see sausage made. But when you sign up, that’s what you sing up for. And if you break that confidence, those rules, from the inside, then you’re just thief and a criminal, and you deserve to be punished to the fullest extent possible. Now assuming that he leaked it because he’s a young, stupid kid who had not motivations other than to show his friends something cool, is very different from having some cause or purpose. One is bad judgement, one is treason. That’s for the military courts to decide.

  • A Definition Of Morality

    In taking a survey on liberal and conservative morality, I came across a question that asked me to define morality, and gave it an answer that I thought I would share here as part of my ongoing effort to provide conservatives with a framework for rational debate, rather than watch them continue their reliance upon tedious irrational arguments consisting of sentiments (conservatism) or legality (classical liberals) or an absurd single class state (libertarianism) or abandonment of government altogether (anarcho capitalism). Rothbard and Hoppe have given us a language, we just have to apply it to a multi-classed society wherein we hold trade routes and keep the proletariat from revolting. A Definition of Morality: In the sequence of cooperative social protocols beginning with manners ( limited personal consequences to one’s status), followed by ethics (externalized consequences of actions wherein one may be subject to retribution) , followed by morals (fully externalized consequences wherein one may steal from others unaccountably or irreversibly), Morality consists of those common habitual principles and descriptive statements by which which we codify and distribute the cultural rules of economic constraint whereby individuals pay for membership in the benefit structure of the group.In other words, manners, ethics and morals are human social general accounting principles. VIolation of moral principles is theft from those you do not know. Violation of ethical principles is theft from those who you may know. Violation of manners is petty theft from those who you do know. While these thefts may not be quantitatively measurable because of their incommensurability in units of measure, they are qualitatively accumulative in the form of decreased potential that may be drawn from the opportunities created by the division of labor.

    [callout]There are habitual property criminals…[And] there are habitual ethical and moral criminals. … Moral violations are forced redistributions to moral criminals[/callout]

    There are habitual property criminals. There are habitual ethical and moral criminals. Moral violations are forced redistributions to moral criminals. There is a Moral economy wherein different moral theories compete for economic dominance, just as there are political and financial economies wherein we compete for redistribution by the violent force of the state. Just as there are competitions between nations we call wars. it is our failure to articulate these actions as costs that make the political resolution of our differences impossible. Curt Doolittle – www capitalismv3 com

  • The Keynesian Conversion Of The Responsibility Of The State

    Think of how much easier the job of government is, when instead of seeking competitive increases in production, it seeks redistribution and reduced unemployment. The first requires that you have some comprehension of your economy. The second requires that you have little to none.

    [callout title=The Net Effect Of Keynes]The net effect of the Keynesian revolution was to change the purpose of the government from one of concentrating capital such that the population would derive benefits from increases in competitiveness and production, to one of consumerism, whereby the citizenry is discouraged from saving in order to create consumer velocity.[/callout]

    The net effect of the Keynesian revolution was to change the purpose of the government from one of concentrating capital such that the population would derive benefits from increases in competitiveness and production, to one of consumerism, whereby the citizenry is discouraged from saving in order to create consumer velocity. We have accomplished that objective. We have converted to the consumer society and shipped the productivity of our lower classes offshore, and made the upper classes dependent upon the lower classes consumption. We have destroyed the cultural habit of saving. And with it, the culture of individual responsibility. Our whole country lives under the myth of prosperity without applying a discount to the increased risk we are exposed to by our hubris. The responsibility of the state is capitalization which reduces risk. Not consumption which increases it.

    [callout title=Callout Title]Think of how much easier the job of government is, when instead of seeking competitive increases in production, it seeks redistribution and reduced unemployment. The first requires that you have some comprehension of your economy. The second requires that you have little to none.[/callout]

    I am not against redistribution or the insurance-state. I am against the destructive state. And our state has become destructive. It has become destructive because it has become consumptive. And it justifies that consumption by leaving competitive increases to the private sector, despite the market’s incapacity for extraordinary investments. We need 200 nuclear power plants. We need a new power grid. We need to convert to electric cars. We need to rebuild the voting system and reform the houses of government. We need to increase research funding for hard sciences and decrease it for humanities and social so called sciences. We need to change the structure of the tax code. We need to change accounting procedures that allow causal laundering of money. We need to restructure corporate law so that we can de-corporialize the corporation so that it must serve customers or fail. We need to reform the banking industry. We need to privatize the administration of social insurance. We need to do a hundred other things that will create institutional improvements for the population to compete against other nations who have cheaper labor costs. Yet we consistently fall under the Keynesian spell, and distract ourselves from the meaningful work of building a competitive society.

  • People ‘Earn’ Redistribution By Controlling Their Breeding

    Another Empathic Appeal for the poor on NewsJunkiePost.com, entitled, Poverty: Half The World Lives On Less Than $2.50 A Day Unfortunately, the first prerequisite for prosperity is to control your population’s breeding. The worlds problems are not ‘density’ or ‘pollution’ or ‘capitalism’ but the transfer of life-extending technology to peoples who do not the cultural ability to control their breeding without the limits set on life by agrarian food production. For thousands of years, food production and disease gradients have limited population for people who lack the personal and social technology to control their birth rates so that they may stay within their productive means. Then we in the west, in our compassion, and in our lust to profit, sell these people life extending technologies without demanding that they control their birth rates. Were we to distribute all the wealth of the west to these people they would simply consume it and would match their reproduction to all increases in production, impoverishing the west as well. The division of knowledge and labor, the resulting increases in production, and the virtuous cycle of lowering prices because of this increased production are only one half of the equation. The control of breeding in the (protestant) countries is the other half of the social problem. More countries need a one-child policy, and the infrastructure to support that policy. Unfortunately, corruption is so rampant in these breeding-centers. Thankfully the rate of capitalism’s transformation of the world from agrarianism where children are a productive asset, to industrialization where children are a very high cost, is slowing the overbreeding problem in the ’second world’ of organized states. Incorporation of women into the workforce further controls breeding, and often too much (Japan and Russia). The reason we need women’s participation in the work force, especially in poorer countries, is so that they do not breed their civilizations into permanent poverty. The problem isn’t money. It’s cultural discipline. If we are going to even discuss mobilizing states to correct poverty then we should mobilize states to control breeding. Otherwise, along with our technology of life extension we are simply handing a murder weapon to a madman. “In other words, in 2004 about 0.13 percent of the world’s population controlled 25 percent of the world’s wealth. If we consider the global spending priorities of 1998, the trends were already extremely alarming.” Most people who read have heard of the 80/20 principle. Which means that 20% of the people control resources. This principle was developed by Vilfredo Pareto, for whom it’s named the “Pareto Principle.” He used quite a bit of data to show that in England in particular, 20% of people controlled about everything, and that income was rewarded accordingly. This also supports the value added by people. Despite our rhetoric of egalitarianism and equality, the top third of people are more productive than the bottom two thirds combined. And, at least it appears, that the top twenty percent are more productive (have more impact on generating goods and reducing prices) than the rest combined. The problem for any society is allowing the most productive people to concentrate sufficient capital that they may raise the population into prosperity. After which it’s possible to implement programs of redistribution. you can’t share what you don’t have. Unfortunately, the only value most citizens have in an economy is to provide menial labor and to consume goods and therefore create demand for goods and sevices. Imbalances in assets are needed to allow the creative and productive members of society to concentrate capital (which is the ability to influence others in an organized fashion) so that productivity can be increased. There is no record in history of this system of wealth concentration being abated. If it IS changed, then the vast majority of people on this earth will rapidly die. The problem is instead, to control reproduction and to increase production and continue the ‘virtuous cycle’ while we live within our means, so that we can redistribute something on the order of 20% of our wealth to those who have EARNED that right by the cost of forgoing further reproduction. In other words, you EARN redistribution by controlling your breeding.