Curt Doolittle

Theme: Sovereignty

  • If Democracy Is Forcefully Enforced In A Country By Another, Wouldn’t It Be Called Dictatorship On The Enforcer’s Part?

    It is not dictatorship it is conquest.  Conquest is any alteration of the current allocation of property rights, property allocation  and norms, by force, whether that force be direct (violence and theft) or indirect (the promise of violence or theft in the event of non-compliance.)

    The justifying argument is generally that all other forms of government are even more corrupt that democracy.  This is questionable in practice as democracy seems to be a peculiarity of western civlization, and doesn’t seem to work very well elsewhere.  In india for example, corruption is so pervasive that the country stagnates. Whereas in China where the government is very strong, and now an oligarchy, the government managed to make everyone literate and move the economy much faster than India.

    Consumer capitalism and property rights are meaningful exports. THe tradition of democracy looks as though it has proven to be a failure outside of western Europe – where corruption is simply very naturally low due to ancient cultural reasons.

    https://www.quora.com/If-democracy-is-forcefully-enforced-in-a-country-by-another-wouldnt-it-be-called-dictatorship-on-the-enforcers-part

  • Untitled

    http://www.mendeley.com/research/human-rights-popular-sovereignty-liberal-republican-versions/

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-27 02:29:00 UTC

  • LIBERTARIAN TERMINOLOGY: STATE AND GOVERNMENT ARE NOT SYNONYMS THE PROBLEM IS NO

    LIBERTARIAN TERMINOLOGY: STATE AND GOVERNMENT ARE NOT SYNONYMS

    THE PROBLEM IS NOT GOVERNMENT: THE PROBLEM IS THE STATE.

    One of the problems we face in the libertarian movement is the confusion between the terms “state” and “government”. A government can consist of a constitution enumerating property rights, a private judiciary, and a volunteer militia. This government need not assist in the concentration of capital into infrastructure. It needs only to define a monopoly of property rights, and to provide the means by which to evolve that definition via the evolution of the common law along with the means of evading property rights that evolve along with the market .

    When we use the term “state”, we refer to a bureaucracy that holds a monopoly on the use of violence and which holds a means by which to arbitrarily redefine property rights, and to confiscate and make use of property.

    Our alternatives to the state rely on a formally articulated property rights and obligations, private judiciaries, competing insurance companies that provide all of the services we attribute to the monopoly that is the state, and private institutions (like stock markets) that concentrate capital for the purpose of creating infrastructure.

    Libertarianism does not suggest solutions for creating a social order – the ability to cooperate at scale – that are without “government”. Even the anarchic program relies upon articulated private property rights – a government of norms, meaning informal but not formal institutions.

    Instead, Libertarians argue against the “state” because it is a fictitious representation of a collective will that is better able to provide for wants than is the market. When in fact, the state is a vehicle by which a class of individuals profits by stealing from some constituencies to give to others.

    We argue that the products of modernity exist because of the market, and that this prosperity exists in spite of statist governments who plunder us, not because of such statist governments.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-16 20:15:00 UTC

  • NULLIFICATION IS CHEAPER THAN REVOLUTION OR SECESSION 1) Nullification. Inexpens

    NULLIFICATION IS CHEAPER THAN REVOLUTION OR SECESSION

    1) Nullification.

    Inexpensive. Weakens tyranny, allows greater social experimentation, preserves existing economy, promotes local opportunity while preserving federated trade, credit, insurance and military assets.

    2) Secession.

    Expensive. Eliminates tyranny, allows greater social experimentation. Creates opportunity, improves the economy, and autonomy. Allows adaptation of institutions. *Can* weaken credit, insurance, and military assets. Can also improve them.

    3) Revolution.

    Devastatingly expensive. Damages the economy, social capital, institutional capital, trade, credit, insurance, and military assets.

    Revolution carries a very high cost. The choice between Nullification and Secession is simply whether the value of the federated services of insurance, trade, credit and military are more or less valuable. Assuming that the federated system is anywhere near solvent, nullifying LAWS while retaining legitimate functions of a federal system – largely as insurer of last resort – inexpensively reduces the state to it’s only beneficial function.

    We needed a federal government because we had a vast continent that could be occupied by competitive international powers. This federated system allowed us to conquer that territory, and insure no foreign power did so instead. This strategy worked.

    But that was the ONLY REASON for the federal government at the time.

    At present, the federal government has only one redeeming value, and that is as insurer of last resort, and provider of military services too costly for independent states to field on their own.

    Nullification is the systematic means by which to devolve the united states federal government from a law-making body to a body that does nothing but provide insurer of last resort services.

    (Originally under Dave Quick’s excellent post on nullification – Here for record purposes.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 04:27:00 UTC

  • THE VIRTUE OF MONARCHIES Monarchies, or “private governments” denied access to p

    THE VIRTUE OF MONARCHIES

    Monarchies, or “private governments” denied access to political status to all but the family, and those few hired by the family.

    The remainder of the population sought status signals in the market, and within their identity groups. These societies were ‘diverse’. Sections of each city were dedicated to the cultural expression of their members, and signals within those sections served to convey status without the need for political power to convey such status.

    Under representative democracy, heterogeneous societies compete for the political power necessary to alter their status in relation to other groups. Instead of using the market, and market behavior to signal status. IN other words, we harm cultures by giving them access to political power.

    The answer is not how we share power. It is how we have no ability to use the violence of the state to create signals that are only mutually beneficial if they are manufactured do to the most important community service we can deliver: market participation.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-13 18:18:00 UTC

  • Illustrating The Meaning Of Liberty From A False Dichotomy 🙂

    A Facebook friend asked this question.

    “What is your definition of liberty? Penniless in a free world, or wealthy in a corrupt one. Those are the choices that I give you. Without deviating from those two choices, what is your response?

    I dont understand the question yet….

    First reply to your definition on liberty. Then reply to my questions within that context.

    [H]mmmm….. Ok. Lets define liberty: LIBERTY:a) Sentimentally: liberty is the desire to conduct individual experimental action from which we gain stimulation, knowledge, understanding, or temporal or material gain. b) Historically: it is an allegory to the sentiments of sovereignty in aristocratic egalitarianism. c) Politically: Liberty is the ability to use your property, defined as your body, and your possessions obtained by free exchange and homesteading, as you see fit, as long as you force no involuntary transfers from others by doing so. d) Praxeologically: a set of property definitions which are monopolistically bounded, absent new invention, as norms. THEREFORE [W]ithin the context of that definition of liberty, I can’t address the next dichotomy. SO I will try to deduce the cause of that dichotomy from the two statements and see if I can come up with an answer. ANSWERING THE QUESTION [Y]our question might mean “would you prefer to be penniless in a free world or wealthy in a corrupt one”. The phrasing could also mean “you can only be penniless in a free world and wealthy in a corrupt one”. Which I think is illogical, so I’ll have to assume that’s not correct. Or it could mean that “is it just that there are penniless men in the free world and wealthy men in the corrupt world?” I am going to assume that you mean the first, but might also be suggesting the third. I’ll answer them in that order. I would rather be the wealthy person in the corrupt world of course. However, if I am a penniless man, I would prefer to be in the free world, where it is possible to change my state. To answer the third question, the world is not just because justice requires the possession of knowledge within a limited domain that is available to individuals. ie: the family or tribe, and the family or tribal economy. However, for a division of labor to form, we must possess the knowledge that only money and prices can provide us with. And since none of that knowledge is ‘owned’ and much of it is noise, and the value to the market of scotch tape is much higher than the value of another Beethoven, then whomever ends up wealthy is a matter of the lottery effect and not much else. It’s random. Therefore there is no such thing as output-justice. We have a market precisely because it is created by a lottery effect. if the outcome were known , no one would play in the market. The market is a lottery. It is not just. The only justice is that as a byproduct of that market, goods and services are subject to constant decline in prices and increases in choices. SO the market economy is not a question of individual justice, but of aggregate justice with huge temporal variation among the individuals in the distribution we call the population. And any question of social justice is illogical – at least until you get to my next point: The Propertarian answer to the third question is that if you respect property rights, whatever those rights might be, you have paid for those rights, for yourself, and for others, by forgoing opportunities for involuntary transfer, fraud, theft and violence. As such you are a shareholder in that market. Some might argue that respect for property is just the cost of access to the market. But the cost to the poor of those property rights is far higher than the cost to the wealthy, and as such, those rights are unequaly paid for. So, others, including myself, argue that shareholders not only have the right of access to the market, but we also have the right to whatever distributions (profits) that the market wherein those property rights are defined, produces, in compensation for that variance in costs, and unless we compensate for those variations in costs, then those with property are conducting an involuntary transfer from those who pay a very high price for respecting property. (ie: we have the right of variable redistribution if we adhere to property rights.) (Of course this would also requrie that you did not vote for privileges and redistributions.) This is undeniable praxeological reasoning. There is no alternative to it. Redistribution is warranted. And therefore you will never be a penniless man, even if you are a poor one, unless you have very poor judgement. Propertarianism is based upon the universal human demonstrated preference for a prohibition on involuntary transfer. It is not, like libertarianism, based upon preference, natural law, or any other artificial construct.

  • THE PURPOSE OF GUNS IS TO OPPOSE THE GOVERNMENT Hunting and Personal Protection?

    THE PURPOSE OF GUNS IS TO OPPOSE THE GOVERNMENT

    Hunting and Personal Protection? Misdirection.

    “Someone at the office asked me, yesterday, what type of “arms” I thought the Second Amendment protects. The answer to that is those arms of the same caliber and quantity as the armed federal officers who come to your door have.” — David Sack, via Lew Rockwell

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-10 07:48:00 UTC

  • CITIZENSHIP: A BANK, AN INSURANCE COMPANY AND A LAWYER. Why do we need to be the

    CITIZENSHIP: A BANK, AN INSURANCE COMPANY AND A LAWYER.

    Why do we need to be the property of a government?

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-30 13:04:00 UTC

  • God save the Queen

    God save the Queen.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-25 12:00:00 UTC

  • BREAKUP OF COUNTRIES IS NO ECONOMIC DISASTER Actually, it’s a fantastic opportun

    http://becker-posner-blog.com/2012/12/breakup-of-countries-no-economic-disaster-becker.htmlTHE BREAKUP OF COUNTRIES IS NO ECONOMIC DISASTER

    Actually, it’s a fantastic opportunity.

    Here is Gary Becker chiming in on the Catalan secession movement.

    To bad he doesn’t turn his attention to what would happen to the united states if we broke up. And how fantastic an opportunity it would be.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-12-04 15:41:00 UTC