Curt Doolittle

Theme: Truth

  • On The Limits Of The Misesian Criticism

      “Mises’s contention came in setting the context for Human Action by explaining why people have had such a hard time accepting the validity of (Austrian) economics as a field of knowledge–it does not fit in with anything else.” – Konrad Love you man, but I want to clean this up a bit. And I hope you will forgive me for using your statements as a jumping off point to articulate this subject a little more clearly than is usual in our field. 2) The first is your statements (a) “put into context” and (b) “human action”. Praxeologically speaking, any statement regarding human action, not stated as human action, is untestable by praxeological analysis. As such, if you can’t say something in operational terms, then it is possible that you are mistaken, or misled, since only such operational language opens any statement to praxeological testing. Mises was trying to refute socialism. He was frustrated because there was not empirical means of demonstrating that it wouldn’t work. So he had to rely on rational deduction. He was attempting to show (as was popper by very different means) how socialism was impossible – particularly, the socialist method of production. Praxeology was his attempt to use the very clear, irrefutable, sympathetic test of the rational incentives of actors given their need to act in real time, to refute the theory that humans would act by the same means without money and prices. Without money and prices, and the incentives that they make possible, humans cannot rationally act. He suggested, and argued poorly, that humans literally could not think, in the same way that we would be radically impaired in our thinking, without the use of numbers, numeric operations, ratios, measurements, and the syllogism. As such, if people cannot cooperate rationally using property, money, prices and time, then in fact, no science of economics is therefore possible. We cannot conduct a science predicated on a unit of measure dependent upon property and prices, if neither property nor prices no voluntary cooperation exist. That is non-logical. We should note that this is an argument, now proven, both logically and by evidence, that the socialist method of production does not work, precisely as Mises predicted, because Calculation and it’s obverse, Incentives, are impossible. But this is a limited criticism. We must understand that the limit of Misesian criticism, is the socialist mode of production. It does not mean that progressive taxation, especially by simply increasing transaction costs at the high end, and redistributing the fees on those costs to consumers, or investing them into infrastructure violate the ability of people to think, plan, and coordinate their actions. The science of economics can in fact exist, if the logical method of measurement that it depends upon: voluntary cooperation using property, money and prices, does exist/ So the Misesian critique of economics as a discipline dependent upon human action is a refutation of the socialist mode of production, but it is not a refutation of the democratic socialist redistributive method of production. (Although I am not sure anyone else has said so this clearly. I haven’t run across it if so. Caplans ‘Why I am not..” is an obscurant, and meaningless argument which he later took the teeth out of himself : there is no difference between economic calculation and incentives. They are mutually dependent concepts. An argument which I forgive him for, and attribute to the folly of his youth. ) 2) The second problem you put forth is that people have a problem understanding Austrian Economics. And I’m afraid that’s just not demonstrably true. (a) the argument from the mainstream economics profession is that the insights of the Austrians have been fully integrated into mainstream economics. (b) The only remaining dispute that separates Austrian economists from mainstream economists today, is the theory of the business cycle, where by continuous distortions of the money supply, while long term neutral in affect on price, are non-neutral on the Sustainable Patters Of Specialization and Trade – largely due to little more than the fact that humans due to the process of youth, maturity, reproduction, decline in learning capacity (or increase in required repetitions), as well as normal aging, mean that not only are prices, and contracts ‘sticky’ but so are human lives and relations. And while we may ameliorate the problems caused by the stickiness of prices,we appear to have very little control over contracts, and the accumulated impact on individuals in the business cycle means that such cycles, the longer that they are perpetuated, force their members to become increasingly sticky, and if more than four years to nine years in duration, that it is no longer possible for individuals to transition at anywhere near the same quality of life. This may in fact be another argument against immigration which only exacerbates this problem severely. The last argument, and the one made by conservative advocates of Austrian economics, is not just the utility of the lost human capital, but the loss of moral capital, and the increase in demand for the state as insurer, now that the individual citizens have been placed at risk by the use of credit and insurance by the state, rathe than allowing the natural, and frequent cycle of PSST to discourage people from over-investing in any given pattern, and instead, developing dynamic risk protection given the constant reordering of such patterns. 3) The point being the one I articulated in my first response to your post: that the Austrian method makes visible the involuntary transfer of property, and the behavior of individuals within patterns of sustainable specialization and trade IF WE MEASURE patterns of sustainable specialization and trade as our category of measurement. (industry networks are the highest level of meaningful aggregation). And investment in trade policy and industrial policy should outweigh any interest in monetary policy. If only because those policies have been in use since the dawn of human cities, and appear to have worked well. Whereas, the use of Keynesian aggregates and monetary policy does not localize distortions and those distortions that are caused by such policy are not measured, or even measurable. Just as Einstein did not invent relativity(actually, constancy), Keynes did not invent his ideas either – he adapted them from Marx, and cut out the references to prevent criticism of what he had accomplished via even greater obscurant language than Marx: the forcible involuntary transfer of wealth and the consequential empowerment of the government as the vehicle for such transfer. All of which was justified as a means of decreasing unemployment. The sacrifice of the west for reduction of unemployment and facilitation of the expansion of the reproduction of the lower classes that had been held in check by private property and manorialism for more than 2500 years. The great weakness of human reason is our inability to disentangle multiple axis of complex relations. Only analysis of the voluntary transfer of property allows us to disentangle heavily loaded propositions and reduce what appears to be many competing and overlapping axes of causality to one simple factor: whether property, which is the necessary device for cooperation, has been voluntarily expropriated or voluntarily exchanged. CLOSING This is probably worth sharing or saving for later reference. Affections Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev  

  • “PROPERTARIANISM: THE FORMAL LOGIC OF COOPERATION” (There we go. Today was a mil

    “PROPERTARIANISM: THE FORMAL LOGIC OF COOPERATION”

    (There we go. Today was a milestone.)

    Universally descriptive, universally commensurable logic of ethics. We no longer must rely on moral or rational argument in advocacy of moral, ethical or political preference. We can rely on ratio-scientific argument under which illustrates the multitude of thefts, or suppression of thefts, being conducted in any action.

    Propertarianism, the logic of property, is the formal logic of cooperation.

    Terminology

    Grammar

    Compactness

    Explanatory power

    Testability and Falsifiability (via Praxeology)

    Praxeology, when corrected under Propertarianism by the enumeration of all types of property demonstrated by human action, is scientific because it consists in the universal, test of rationality of incentives, by means of sympathetic experience.

    Private Property as the result of the suppression of discounts.

    The suppression of discounts leaves the only possible human cooperation as fully informed, warranted, voluntary exchange. And the only possible means of competition, the quality and price of the production of goods and services.

    Cause. Private property is a consequence of the organized application of violence for the purpose of suppressing all discounts, in all human action, regardless of sphere.

    (Fk… Libertarians did it. We did it. First new ‘math’ in over a century. The solution to the formal logic of the social sciences. Durkhiem, Weber, Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, Hoppe and …me.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-24 07:16:00 UTC

  • Propertarianism vs Libertarianism – Universally Descriptive vs Preferentially Prescriptive – But All Rights Remain Property Rights

    Prescriptive vs Descriptive

    There is a very great difference between rothbardian libertarianism as an aspirational philosophy ADVOCATING liberty, and Propertarianism as the correction and completion of praxeology as the science of human cooperation. Libertarianism is structured as advocacy: a NORMATIVE ETHIC. Propertarianism is structured as explanation: A DESCRIPTIVE ETHIC. And that is the difference between libertarianism, and my attempt to reform libertarianism in Propertarianism. Or rather, merge libertarianism and conservatism into a single rational language, that unifies the libertarian emphasis on economy, with the conservative emphasis on norms. As a united attack on totalitarians who wish to restore rent seeking and free riding to the masses. Conservatives are right on morality. They are the remnants of aristocratic egalitarianism. The explicit, universal ban on free-riding that occurred under the various forms of manorialism. I am using the insights from the Dark Enlightenment (reactionary conservatives) to ground libertarianism (reduction of rights to property rights) in ratio-scientific rather than purely rational (deductive) terms.

    Objectives

    My objectives are:

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    • 4)
    • 5)

    I knew Hoppe had the answer the first time I heard him speak. The explanatory power when taken along with calculation and incentives was there: a necessary rather than arbitrary analysis of political orders. There was something subtly wrong with it. I only intuited that. But I have spent about fourteen years trying to identify an repair it for my more ratio-scientific generation. In Propertarianism, I extend property to a UNIVERSAL DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS – those demonstrated by humans rather than NORMATIVE PRIVATE PROPERTY ETHICS that we have developed as a set of technologies for the suppression of various forms of free riding.

    The Theory is “All Rights Are Reducible To Property Rights”

    The theory is that ALL RIGHTS can be reduced to property rights. Even commons can be reduced to shares of individual property rights. Even norms can be reduced to property rights. The NAP is an epistemic test of whether private property rights have been violated. It is an exceptional test. But that is the limit of it. One still needs a theory to test.

    Property Rights: Cause or Consequence?

    We can argue the construction of property from the bottom up as the prohibition of discounts, or from the top down, as advocacy of private property:

    • 1)
    • 2)

    In this light, which I will show below, humans do not necessarily desire private property, but they universally demonstrate a distaste for discounts (cheating). As such, private property is the natural consequence of SUPPRESSING ALL CHEATING, and requiring earning of benefits. This is a profound theoretical difference in understanding liberty: The prohibition on all cheating among members of an extended family of common genetic interests, versus the advocacy of private property. This may also explain why the mature societies closer to the fertile crescent are teh most inbred, and serve as a warning that liberty is an artifact of primitivism, and that low-trust, inbred familialism with a high demand for a strong state, is the norm into which all societies mature, unless freedom is constantly and vigilantly maintained. The Fallacy of Crusoe’s Island This thought experiment is backwards, and a common source of confusion in libertarian circles. Crusoe on his island, is surrounded by an impenetrable army, called ‘the sea’. So property is created by the force of the ocean. Just as argumentation is presupposed upon the presence of violence. The ethical question is not what to do when one is upon an island,and property already has been created by the sea. The question is, how does one, on a plain, heavily populated by others, construct the institution of private property against the multitudes who would seek to appropriate it by all means of discounting possible? By the organized application of violence. That is how. The Crusoe argument is nonsensical. It presupposes what it attempts to demonstrate. It is true that once we assume property we can correctly deduce implications from that point. But argument and agreement are not the source of property itself. Violence is. Was. Forever will be.

    The Construction of Property from a Prohibition on Discounts

    “THOU SHALT NOT LIE, CHEAT, STEAL OR HARM” This rule applies to all human societies whether all property is communal or all private. I. CAUSAL AXES Four Possible Actions:

    • Axis 1
    • Axis 2
    • Axis 3
    • Axis 4

    Restated as Weapons of Influence We humans have invented only four weapons of influence.

    • Influence 1)
    • Influence 2)
    • Influence 3)
    • Influence 4)

    II. DISCOUNTS However: We can use permutations of the above weapons of influence to extract DISCOUNTS. Forms of Discount:

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    III. FORMS OF PROPERTY1. Several (Personal) Property Personal property: “Things an individual has a Monopoly Of Control over the use of.”

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    2. Interpersonal (Relationship) Property Cooperative Property: “relationships with others and tools of relationships upon which we reciprocally depend.”

    • 1.
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    3. Institutional (Community) Property Institutional Property: “Those objects into which we have invested our forgone opportunities, our efforts, or our material assets, in order to aggregate capital from multiple individuals for mutual gain.”

    • 1.
    • 2.

    4. Artificial Property Artificial Property: “Can a group issue specific rights to members?” This topic is dependent, upon the ORIGIN of rights in the circumstance. If markets are made, then the shareholders of the market may create artificial property of any type that they desire. Including but not limited to:

    • 1.
    • 2.
    • 3.

    Questions on the Limits of Property Rights

    1. Ownership of the market depends upon:

    • i)
    • ii)

    2. Whether, we pay for our property rights by forgoing our opportunity for using violence, theft and fraud – or using any form of discount. If so, then by consequence, people pay for the norm of property – and in fact, pay for ALL norms. And as such, failing to observe norms is a theft from the shareholders of those norms. 5. Limits: On the limits of property rights (at what points one’s rights begin and end). For example, some would argue that the right to property is infinite regardless of the circumstances of others. Some would argue that property rights are a norm that is subject to limits at the extremes. So, for example, if I have gallons of water in a desert I cannot let the man before me die of thirst. Some would say I must simply give it to him. Others would argue that the man owes for the drink of water at a later date at market price, but that I cannot refuse to give it to him under this condition of duress simply because he currently lacks a means of payment. I support the latter position since it does not violate the principle of property it only presses my assets into a receivable. Otherwise I am profiting from suffering which is an involuntary transfer, not a voluntary exchange. 6. Temporality: Whether property rights apply across time (after death), and across generations.

    Trust (Velocity of transactions)

    The NAP, as used in libertarian ideological discourse, suffers from the weakness of the low trust society, in that it relies entirely upon Ostracization to suppress various forms of fraud. The problem is that we cannot demonstrate that fraud is suppressed without the associated norms rules and laws that suppress it. Then market is demonstrably insufficient for the suppression of fraud, and certainly for the suppression of fraud by either omission or obfuscation. The high trust, aristocratic egalitarian society of the northern Protestant west, relies on the ADDITION of these moral constraints to the NAP:

      These ethics arose because everyone in the area was closely related, and as such they obeyed family ethical biases, rather than adopting extra family ethical biases. This is why diversity only works for a short while, until power, signal and property structures can be coordinated using signals within the extended family group. Canada will only be politically “Canadian” for two more generations. And London and New York are already ‘post-anglo’ corporations rather than city-nations.

      Descriptive High Trust Ethics of Northern Europeans

      The intra-family system of outbred North Sea Europeans contains these rules:

      • 0)
      • 1)
      • 2)
      • 3)
      • 4)
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      • 6)

      These additional properties forbid the use of ‘cunning’ in exchange itself, and force all cunning in production, and distribution. Furthermore in propertarianism, I have added political constraints on contracts (ad laws):

      • 7)
      • 8)
      • 9)

      These last three topics are the complex matters I have had to wrestle with in Propertarianism. Primarily as a defense against the Continentals, the Culture of Critique, the Postmoderns, and their philosophical heirs. All of whom have adopted the technique of obscurantism from monotheistic religion, and modernized it for advocacy of the state. Unfortunately, the Culture of Critique, Postmodernists, and the Continentals have mastered the art of obscurantism, and as such we must require operational language, and calculability of contracts, as does science, as a means of prohibiting use of obscurant language as means of obtaining discounts (theft).

      High Trust Is A Prohibition On Discounts

      These rules prohibit discounts. The only reason to eschew violence and engage in exchange is if ALL discounts are prohibited from the market, and therefore, by consequence, all improvements are in the construction and distribution of goods, and NOT in the verbal means of selling those goods.

      As Such, All Conflict Is Pressed Into The Market

      Not the market for words, but the market for goods and services. And since the only possible means of competing is innovation in production and distribution, then such societies will innovate in production and distribution faster than all others. So not only do such rules that place a prohibition on both violence, theft, and discounts foster peace and prosperity, it fosters innovation, and trust. As Such,

        As Such, A Common Law System Can Function

        Where a homogenous set of property rights exist, and *ALL* discounts are violations of property rights, demand for intervention is limited to disputes over property via common law courts. Without homogeneity of property rights, and wherever all discounts are not suppressed, then demand for the State increases, since commensurability of discounts is logically impossible. (This is profound if you grasp it.) In other words, under rothbardian ethics, the common law is not possible. Under aristocratic ethics, it is possible.

        Any Science Requires Means of Commensurability

        As such Propetarianism provides us with the previously unmet promise of praxeology by changing the theory of human behavior from a deductive a priori form of rationalism, to an empirically descriptive science of all human behavior whose units of measure are property, and whose truths and falsehoods are involuntary transfers via discounts. Praxeology: Action, Property, Calculation and Incentives, supplies us with a science of human action, if we treat property as DESCRIPTIVE rather than NORMATIVE.

        • 1)
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        Comprehensibility

        I am not interested in Criticizing Kinsella, Hoppe, the BHL’s or anyone else. I’d rather advance their agenda, because I advocate big-tent libertarianism, if only for the problem of accessibility of ideas to different quintiles. But myself, addressing my demographic, I’d rather advance liberty in ratio-scientific, rather than ratio-moral language. The prior generation of thinkers had to rely on rationalism and deduction to fight the intellectual and ideological battle with the socialists who were winning the population and the institutions. But our generation does not NEED to rely on rationalism alone, and instead, can rely on evidence that, since about 1980, has been produced in volume; and at this point, overwhelmingly demonstrates that universalism, whether libertarian universalism or communal universalism, would be intolerable. And that micro-states catering to different moral codes is the only possible route to liberty for those of us who desire it. But that liberty is neither desirable or advantageous for the many, for whom collectivism, free riding and rent seeking are the only effective means of group competition. I am not terribly concerned just yet whether my work is comprehensible or not, since until I have reduced it to a book, there isn’t enough of it in one place for anyone to criticize. On the other hand, it has taken prior writers on average about seven or eight years to put together a work of this nature, and I’m only half way through that time period. As I state frequently, I make my philosophy in public and those that follow me tend to appreciate it – errors and all. I treat arguments in analytic philosophy as theories that must be tested. If I can construct an argument that I cannot defeat, then that is the best that I can do. And some of them succeed and others fail. Hopefully my book will contain only the successes. I am too well aware of individuals using the terms ‘confused’ to criticize opposing propositions whose only failure is to conform to their structure of argument. I am not confused. I am struggling to articulate in existing language a counter-intuitive proposition, that morals are not available through introspection, any more than is the mind, even if the source of moral biases are scientifically identifiable as reproductive strategies. I have seen numerous criticism of ‘engineering thinking’, mostly of others, despite the fact that rationalists have, in their proximity to analogous religious argument, failed to grasp that most of the advancements in conservative thought are in fact coming from engineers, for the very reason, that unlike science, physics, macro economics, and philosophy, engineering must constantly reconcile demonstrated human behavior with scientific evidence and formulae. I would address this problem in both ‘departmental mathematics’ as well as Macro Economics as well as any branch outside of scientific philosophy here, but the truth is, that other than maybe Rod Long, I’m not sure any other reader could grasp it. Further, Hoppe is not exactly an easy read. And if Hoppe is challenging go back to Bohm Bawerk, whose writing is nearly opaque with analogy. Clarity is a function of marketing and having clarity as a goal. The accessibility of an idea has nothing to do with whether an idea provides compact explanatory power and survives falsification. Rothbard is not challenging because he does not solve the hard problem of norms. Propertarianism does solve that problem. And I can reduce it to less than 10K words. It is the application of the principles, and the refutation of criticism that takes a book length work. I am struggling (at Hoppe’s criticism) to use extant language, and it is working, but I must make it increasingly compact, which is an art in itself.

        We Must Understand That Rothbardian Ethics Have Failed

        All of that prevarication aside, we must realize that we libertarians have not succeeded in affecting policy. We have given OTHER libertarians a common language, and label for our preference. We have united people with libertarian sentiments and intuitions under a common name, common ideology, and in rare circumstances, common philosophy. But we have been unable to affect policy. By contrast, the conservatives have affected the government, bringing it to a halt, merely by appealing to traditional morality – even against the economic interests of conservatives. They may only have managed to put up a resistance, and failed to implement new policy, but they correctly understood the moral code of western peoples, and ‘libertarians’ didn’t. That is an empirical criticism. It is what it is. Evidence is evidence. Libertarianism can be demonstrated as a sentiment, a moral argument, a rational argument, an economic argument to utility, or a ratio-scientific argument about human nature. Ideologies make use of sentiments, religions of moral arguments, and political scientists make use of scientific evidence. If your libertarianism is ideological or religious in structure, then that is one thing. If it is rational that is another. If it is ratio-scientifically based, it is yet another. And mine is ratio-scientifically based. Philosophy in this context is just a means of reordering the objects and relations and values we attach to them prior to developing a system of measurement for them. But to reduce something to a science requires a means of commensurability and property, if defined as demonstrated, rather than defined as aspired to, provides us with a science of cooperation. Criticizing the left is easy because most of what they do is demonstrate conspicuous consumption in an effort to gain cheap status signals, by spending other people’s money and flaunting disregard for norms. But libertarians, too often justly called ‘asperger-tarians’ are far too often enraptured by their self rewarding signal economy of self righteousness to grasp that liberty is demonstrably not desirable or advantageous for many. It is actually advantageous for those who do not desire liberty, that we exist as libertarians SOMEWHERE in the world, to innovate and compete, but not necessarily in the same geographic monopoly of arbitrary property rights, insured by the threat of violence. They cannot compete with us without organizing the equivalent of trade policy against us in exchange for access to their markets. It is not rational for them to expect us to. We insure ourselves with our competitiveness. They insure themselves as a collective by mutually sharing rents and free riding, and negotiating terms as a block. We may prefer otherwise, but to enact liberty upon those who do not desire it is to ask them to let us prey upon their uncompetitiveness.

        Why Hoppe Is Right – On Everything

        It is the monopoly of government and the state that forces us under the same insurer of both economic transactions and social insurance policy. When under federation in the swiss model of direct democracy, we could separate the functions of insurer of transactions (property rights) with insurer of life and limb (social programs.) In Hoppe’s model we hire our own insurers. These arguments are the same. He is right. It is quite simple do demonstrate that while the Argumentation ethic is sufficient for deduction of all that Hoppe has deduced from it, it is not a CAUSAL argument. If Hoppe’s insights are to survive the loading he has added and that his critics have added, and his critics are to be allayed, we must complete his work by transforming his insights from entirely rational to ratio-scientific arguments. I am doing that. My argument is that Hoppe, despite relying entirely on Argumentation Ethics, rather than the underlying causal properties that give rise to opportunities for argumentation, has correctly deduced everything – including his correct stance on immigration. And that if we use the explanatory power of Propertarianism, we can further reduce not only all RIGHTS, but all human BEHAVIOR to statements of property and its voluntary or involuntary transfer. Because that reduction is the universal cause of all property rights in all cultures, in all circumstances, for all of mankind. Therefore the difference between Hoppe’s analysis of what would be PREFERABLE for people with libertarian sentiments, and for Hayekian reasons of productive utility and wealth, No one other than me, that I know of, is trying to convert Hoppe to ratio-scientific argument and prove that his deductions were correct, and that the criticisms of his Argumentation Ethics are erroneous in so far as that they are correct that Argumentation is not a cause. But incorrect in that argumentation is not sufficient for the purpose of deducing all that Hoppe has deduced from it. (That this has escaped so many other philosophers is somewhat surprising to me.) As such, what propertarianism does, is provide a universal language for exposing involuntary transfer (theft) and conducting commensurable arguments in all moral codes regardless of the portfolio of moral codes made use of by any polity.

        Failures and Successes

        Hayek did not correctly understand Mises’ arguments and tried to solve the problem of universal behavior using, what I would call ‘psychology’ and the properties of the mind. However, Mises was closer to the answer provided by Propertarianism with the Obverse of Economic Calculation, and its Reverse: Incentives. However, Mises again, out of necessity, attempted to create a rational and deductive science without integrating all forms of property, especially norms and human capital into his analysis. For this reason both Mises and Hayek despite being very close, failed to make the observation that it was not money or psychology or mind that all human behavior could be deduced from, but property in all its forms as humans actually demonstrably practice the discipline of property allocation and use. Rothbard was very, very close. Unfortunately in his quest for a rigorous ideology and admonition of bureaucracy, he put forth an argument again, which discounted the high trust norms. Instead, arguing that the market would be sufficient to suppress the various subtle forms of theft. We all draw upon our ethical backgrounds. Me on my anglo imperialism, Hoppe on his Northern Germanic nationalism, and Rothbard on his Jewish diasporic tribalism. Without the knowledge of Propertarianism – that all behavior is reducible to property rights- we must rely on our intuitions. Even Weber and Durkheim came close but did not succeed in making Rothbard and Hoppe’s insights. And if I do my work correctly, just as Rothbard solved the problem of normative institutions for homogenous diasporic tribes, and Hoppe the problem of formal institutions and normative institutions for homogenous landed nuclear families, I will solve the problem of rhetoric, commensurability, and institutions for entirely heterogeneous polities. In this sense we will have completed the promise of libertarianism, by reducing all rights, in fact, all ethics and moral argument, and therefore all political arguments, to statements of property rights, and in doing so demonstrate the casual link between biologically necessary reproductive strategy, the structure of the family, the structure of moral codes, and teh demand for different levels of intervention by the ‘state’.

        The Ghetto vs The Aristocracy

        This is the ethic of the high trust society, and the only society every to invent and employ liberty – the protestant west. It may be unclear that the Absolute Nuclear family is yet again another institution that forbids discounts. And that is why ANF families from northern european cultures prefer liberty, and NF and Traditional families from southern Europe prefer more of the state: because ANF Families suppress all free riding and NF and Traditional families do not. ANF and property rights are eugenic and ostracizing. They are the rights of aristocratic egalitarians. The rights of those who can compete. Those that cannot compete do not seek those rights as they view free riding and rent seeking at the very least to be necessary for competitive survival. That is all that there is to understand about politics. Rothbardian’s NAP is the ethic of the ghetto. It is not the high trust ethic of the northern europeans, and certainly not a sufficient ethic to allow a low friction common law society to function without a strong state. For this reason the NAP is insufficient AS A THEORY, and it is the reason for the failure of rothbardian, libertarian ethics to gain any acceptance in the population. The reason being, that it’s too low a bar. It does not prohibit discounts> I will leave it to Kevin MacDonald to illustrate where Rothbard got these ideas from and why. I was very frustrated with Rothbard originally, but now see him, as Hayek saw Mises, and as I see Hayek, as a participant in an intuitive culture which they lacked the scientific evidence to escape by comparative analysis. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev

      • Propertarianism vs Libertarianism – Universally Descriptive vs Preferentially Prescriptive – But All Rights Remain Property Rights

        Prescriptive vs Descriptive

        There is a very great difference between rothbardian libertarianism as an aspirational philosophy ADVOCATING liberty, and Propertarianism as the correction and completion of praxeology as the science of human cooperation. Libertarianism is structured as advocacy: a NORMATIVE ETHIC. Propertarianism is structured as explanation: A DESCRIPTIVE ETHIC. And that is the difference between libertarianism, and my attempt to reform libertarianism in Propertarianism. Or rather, merge libertarianism and conservatism into a single rational language, that unifies the libertarian emphasis on economy, with the conservative emphasis on norms. As a united attack on totalitarians who wish to restore rent seeking and free riding to the masses. Conservatives are right on morality. They are the remnants of aristocratic egalitarianism. The explicit, universal ban on free-riding that occurred under the various forms of manorialism. I am using the insights from the Dark Enlightenment (reactionary conservatives) to ground libertarianism (reduction of rights to property rights) in ratio-scientific rather than purely rational (deductive) terms.

        Objectives

        My objectives are:

        • 1)
        • 2)
        • 3)
        • 4)
        • 5)

        I knew Hoppe had the answer the first time I heard him speak. The explanatory power when taken along with calculation and incentives was there: a necessary rather than arbitrary analysis of political orders. There was something subtly wrong with it. I only intuited that. But I have spent about fourteen years trying to identify an repair it for my more ratio-scientific generation. In Propertarianism, I extend property to a UNIVERSAL DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS – those demonstrated by humans rather than NORMATIVE PRIVATE PROPERTY ETHICS that we have developed as a set of technologies for the suppression of various forms of free riding.

        The Theory is “All Rights Are Reducible To Property Rights”

        The theory is that ALL RIGHTS can be reduced to property rights. Even commons can be reduced to shares of individual property rights. Even norms can be reduced to property rights. The NAP is an epistemic test of whether private property rights have been violated. It is an exceptional test. But that is the limit of it. One still needs a theory to test.

        Property Rights: Cause or Consequence?

        We can argue the construction of property from the bottom up as the prohibition of discounts, or from the top down, as advocacy of private property:

        • 1)
        • 2)

        In this light, which I will show below, humans do not necessarily desire private property, but they universally demonstrate a distaste for discounts (cheating). As such, private property is the natural consequence of SUPPRESSING ALL CHEATING, and requiring earning of benefits. This is a profound theoretical difference in understanding liberty: The prohibition on all cheating among members of an extended family of common genetic interests, versus the advocacy of private property. This may also explain why the mature societies closer to the fertile crescent are teh most inbred, and serve as a warning that liberty is an artifact of primitivism, and that low-trust, inbred familialism with a high demand for a strong state, is the norm into which all societies mature, unless freedom is constantly and vigilantly maintained. The Fallacy of Crusoe’s Island This thought experiment is backwards, and a common source of confusion in libertarian circles. Crusoe on his island, is surrounded by an impenetrable army, called ‘the sea’. So property is created by the force of the ocean. Just as argumentation is presupposed upon the presence of violence. The ethical question is not what to do when one is upon an island,and property already has been created by the sea. The question is, how does one, on a plain, heavily populated by others, construct the institution of private property against the multitudes who would seek to appropriate it by all means of discounting possible? By the organized application of violence. That is how. The Crusoe argument is nonsensical. It presupposes what it attempts to demonstrate. It is true that once we assume property we can correctly deduce implications from that point. But argument and agreement are not the source of property itself. Violence is. Was. Forever will be.

        The Construction of Property from a Prohibition on Discounts

        “THOU SHALT NOT LIE, CHEAT, STEAL OR HARM” This rule applies to all human societies whether all property is communal or all private. I. CAUSAL AXES Four Possible Actions:

        • Axis 1
        • Axis 2
        • Axis 3
        • Axis 4

        Restated as Weapons of Influence We humans have invented only four weapons of influence.

        • Influence 1)
        • Influence 2)
        • Influence 3)
        • Influence 4)

        II. DISCOUNTS However: We can use permutations of the above weapons of influence to extract DISCOUNTS. Forms of Discount:

        • 1.
        • 2.
        • 3.
        • 4.
        • 5.
        • 6.
        • 7.
        • 8.
        • 9.
        • 10.
        • 11.
        • 12.
        • 13.
        • 14.
        • 15.

        III. FORMS OF PROPERTY1. Several (Personal) Property Personal property: “Things an individual has a Monopoly Of Control over the use of.”

        • 1.
        • 2.
        • 3.
        • 4.

        2. Interpersonal (Relationship) Property Cooperative Property: “relationships with others and tools of relationships upon which we reciprocally depend.”

        • 1.
        • 2.
        • 3.
        • 4.
        • 5.
        • 6.
        • 7.
        • 8.
        • 9.

        3. Institutional (Community) Property Institutional Property: “Those objects into which we have invested our forgone opportunities, our efforts, or our material assets, in order to aggregate capital from multiple individuals for mutual gain.”

        • 1.
        • 2.

        4. Artificial Property Artificial Property: “Can a group issue specific rights to members?” This topic is dependent, upon the ORIGIN of rights in the circumstance. If markets are made, then the shareholders of the market may create artificial property of any type that they desire. Including but not limited to:

        • 1.
        • 2.
        • 3.

        Questions on the Limits of Property Rights

        1. Ownership of the market depends upon:

        • i)
        • ii)

        2. Whether, we pay for our property rights by forgoing our opportunity for using violence, theft and fraud – or using any form of discount. If so, then by consequence, people pay for the norm of property – and in fact, pay for ALL norms. And as such, failing to observe norms is a theft from the shareholders of those norms. 5. Limits: On the limits of property rights (at what points one’s rights begin and end). For example, some would argue that the right to property is infinite regardless of the circumstances of others. Some would argue that property rights are a norm that is subject to limits at the extremes. So, for example, if I have gallons of water in a desert I cannot let the man before me die of thirst. Some would say I must simply give it to him. Others would argue that the man owes for the drink of water at a later date at market price, but that I cannot refuse to give it to him under this condition of duress simply because he currently lacks a means of payment. I support the latter position since it does not violate the principle of property it only presses my assets into a receivable. Otherwise I am profiting from suffering which is an involuntary transfer, not a voluntary exchange. 6. Temporality: Whether property rights apply across time (after death), and across generations.

        Trust (Velocity of transactions)

        The NAP, as used in libertarian ideological discourse, suffers from the weakness of the low trust society, in that it relies entirely upon Ostracization to suppress various forms of fraud. The problem is that we cannot demonstrate that fraud is suppressed without the associated norms rules and laws that suppress it. Then market is demonstrably insufficient for the suppression of fraud, and certainly for the suppression of fraud by either omission or obfuscation. The high trust, aristocratic egalitarian society of the northern Protestant west, relies on the ADDITION of these moral constraints to the NAP:

          These ethics arose because everyone in the area was closely related, and as such they obeyed family ethical biases, rather than adopting extra family ethical biases. This is why diversity only works for a short while, until power, signal and property structures can be coordinated using signals within the extended family group. Canada will only be politically “Canadian” for two more generations. And London and New York are already ‘post-anglo’ corporations rather than city-nations.

          Descriptive High Trust Ethics of Northern Europeans

          The intra-family system of outbred North Sea Europeans contains these rules:

          • 0)
          • 1)
          • 2)
          • 3)
          • 4)
          • 5)
          • 6)

          These additional properties forbid the use of ‘cunning’ in exchange itself, and force all cunning in production, and distribution. Furthermore in propertarianism, I have added political constraints on contracts (ad laws):

          • 7)
          • 8)
          • 9)

          These last three topics are the complex matters I have had to wrestle with in Propertarianism. Primarily as a defense against the Continentals, the Culture of Critique, the Postmoderns, and their philosophical heirs. All of whom have adopted the technique of obscurantism from monotheistic religion, and modernized it for advocacy of the state. Unfortunately, the Culture of Critique, Postmodernists, and the Continentals have mastered the art of obscurantism, and as such we must require operational language, and calculability of contracts, as does science, as a means of prohibiting use of obscurant language as means of obtaining discounts (theft).

          High Trust Is A Prohibition On Discounts

          These rules prohibit discounts. The only reason to eschew violence and engage in exchange is if ALL discounts are prohibited from the market, and therefore, by consequence, all improvements are in the construction and distribution of goods, and NOT in the verbal means of selling those goods.

          As Such, All Conflict Is Pressed Into The Market

          Not the market for words, but the market for goods and services. And since the only possible means of competing is innovation in production and distribution, then such societies will innovate in production and distribution faster than all others. So not only do such rules that place a prohibition on both violence, theft, and discounts foster peace and prosperity, it fosters innovation, and trust. As Such,

            As Such, A Common Law System Can Function

            Where a homogenous set of property rights exist, and *ALL* discounts are violations of property rights, demand for intervention is limited to disputes over property via common law courts. Without homogeneity of property rights, and wherever all discounts are not suppressed, then demand for the State increases, since commensurability of discounts is logically impossible. (This is profound if you grasp it.) In other words, under rothbardian ethics, the common law is not possible. Under aristocratic ethics, it is possible.

            Any Science Requires Means of Commensurability

            As such Propetarianism provides us with the previously unmet promise of praxeology by changing the theory of human behavior from a deductive a priori form of rationalism, to an empirically descriptive science of all human behavior whose units of measure are property, and whose truths and falsehoods are involuntary transfers via discounts. Praxeology: Action, Property, Calculation and Incentives, supplies us with a science of human action, if we treat property as DESCRIPTIVE rather than NORMATIVE.

            • 1)
            • 2)
            • 3)
            • 4)
            • 5)
            • 6)

            Comprehensibility

            I am not interested in Criticizing Kinsella, Hoppe, the BHL’s or anyone else. I’d rather advance their agenda, because I advocate big-tent libertarianism, if only for the problem of accessibility of ideas to different quintiles. But myself, addressing my demographic, I’d rather advance liberty in ratio-scientific, rather than ratio-moral language. The prior generation of thinkers had to rely on rationalism and deduction to fight the intellectual and ideological battle with the socialists who were winning the population and the institutions. But our generation does not NEED to rely on rationalism alone, and instead, can rely on evidence that, since about 1980, has been produced in volume; and at this point, overwhelmingly demonstrates that universalism, whether libertarian universalism or communal universalism, would be intolerable. And that micro-states catering to different moral codes is the only possible route to liberty for those of us who desire it. But that liberty is neither desirable or advantageous for the many, for whom collectivism, free riding and rent seeking are the only effective means of group competition. I am not terribly concerned just yet whether my work is comprehensible or not, since until I have reduced it to a book, there isn’t enough of it in one place for anyone to criticize. On the other hand, it has taken prior writers on average about seven or eight years to put together a work of this nature, and I’m only half way through that time period. As I state frequently, I make my philosophy in public and those that follow me tend to appreciate it – errors and all. I treat arguments in analytic philosophy as theories that must be tested. If I can construct an argument that I cannot defeat, then that is the best that I can do. And some of them succeed and others fail. Hopefully my book will contain only the successes. I am too well aware of individuals using the terms ‘confused’ to criticize opposing propositions whose only failure is to conform to their structure of argument. I am not confused. I am struggling to articulate in existing language a counter-intuitive proposition, that morals are not available through introspection, any more than is the mind, even if the source of moral biases are scientifically identifiable as reproductive strategies. I have seen numerous criticism of ‘engineering thinking’, mostly of others, despite the fact that rationalists have, in their proximity to analogous religious argument, failed to grasp that most of the advancements in conservative thought are in fact coming from engineers, for the very reason, that unlike science, physics, macro economics, and philosophy, engineering must constantly reconcile demonstrated human behavior with scientific evidence and formulae. I would address this problem in both ‘departmental mathematics’ as well as Macro Economics as well as any branch outside of scientific philosophy here, but the truth is, that other than maybe Rod Long, I’m not sure any other reader could grasp it. Further, Hoppe is not exactly an easy read. And if Hoppe is challenging go back to Bohm Bawerk, whose writing is nearly opaque with analogy. Clarity is a function of marketing and having clarity as a goal. The accessibility of an idea has nothing to do with whether an idea provides compact explanatory power and survives falsification. Rothbard is not challenging because he does not solve the hard problem of norms. Propertarianism does solve that problem. And I can reduce it to less than 10K words. It is the application of the principles, and the refutation of criticism that takes a book length work. I am struggling (at Hoppe’s criticism) to use extant language, and it is working, but I must make it increasingly compact, which is an art in itself.

            We Must Understand That Rothbardian Ethics Have Failed

            All of that prevarication aside, we must realize that we libertarians have not succeeded in affecting policy. We have given OTHER libertarians a common language, and label for our preference. We have united people with libertarian sentiments and intuitions under a common name, common ideology, and in rare circumstances, common philosophy. But we have been unable to affect policy. By contrast, the conservatives have affected the government, bringing it to a halt, merely by appealing to traditional morality – even against the economic interests of conservatives. They may only have managed to put up a resistance, and failed to implement new policy, but they correctly understood the moral code of western peoples, and ‘libertarians’ didn’t. That is an empirical criticism. It is what it is. Evidence is evidence. Libertarianism can be demonstrated as a sentiment, a moral argument, a rational argument, an economic argument to utility, or a ratio-scientific argument about human nature. Ideologies make use of sentiments, religions of moral arguments, and political scientists make use of scientific evidence. If your libertarianism is ideological or religious in structure, then that is one thing. If it is rational that is another. If it is ratio-scientifically based, it is yet another. And mine is ratio-scientifically based. Philosophy in this context is just a means of reordering the objects and relations and values we attach to them prior to developing a system of measurement for them. But to reduce something to a science requires a means of commensurability and property, if defined as demonstrated, rather than defined as aspired to, provides us with a science of cooperation. Criticizing the left is easy because most of what they do is demonstrate conspicuous consumption in an effort to gain cheap status signals, by spending other people’s money and flaunting disregard for norms. But libertarians, too often justly called ‘asperger-tarians’ are far too often enraptured by their self rewarding signal economy of self righteousness to grasp that liberty is demonstrably not desirable or advantageous for many. It is actually advantageous for those who do not desire liberty, that we exist as libertarians SOMEWHERE in the world, to innovate and compete, but not necessarily in the same geographic monopoly of arbitrary property rights, insured by the threat of violence. They cannot compete with us without organizing the equivalent of trade policy against us in exchange for access to their markets. It is not rational for them to expect us to. We insure ourselves with our competitiveness. They insure themselves as a collective by mutually sharing rents and free riding, and negotiating terms as a block. We may prefer otherwise, but to enact liberty upon those who do not desire it is to ask them to let us prey upon their uncompetitiveness.

            Why Hoppe Is Right – On Everything

            It is the monopoly of government and the state that forces us under the same insurer of both economic transactions and social insurance policy. When under federation in the swiss model of direct democracy, we could separate the functions of insurer of transactions (property rights) with insurer of life and limb (social programs.) In Hoppe’s model we hire our own insurers. These arguments are the same. He is right. It is quite simple do demonstrate that while the Argumentation ethic is sufficient for deduction of all that Hoppe has deduced from it, it is not a CAUSAL argument. If Hoppe’s insights are to survive the loading he has added and that his critics have added, and his critics are to be allayed, we must complete his work by transforming his insights from entirely rational to ratio-scientific arguments. I am doing that. My argument is that Hoppe, despite relying entirely on Argumentation Ethics, rather than the underlying causal properties that give rise to opportunities for argumentation, has correctly deduced everything – including his correct stance on immigration. And that if we use the explanatory power of Propertarianism, we can further reduce not only all RIGHTS, but all human BEHAVIOR to statements of property and its voluntary or involuntary transfer. Because that reduction is the universal cause of all property rights in all cultures, in all circumstances, for all of mankind. Therefore the difference between Hoppe’s analysis of what would be PREFERABLE for people with libertarian sentiments, and for Hayekian reasons of productive utility and wealth, No one other than me, that I know of, is trying to convert Hoppe to ratio-scientific argument and prove that his deductions were correct, and that the criticisms of his Argumentation Ethics are erroneous in so far as that they are correct that Argumentation is not a cause. But incorrect in that argumentation is not sufficient for the purpose of deducing all that Hoppe has deduced from it. (That this has escaped so many other philosophers is somewhat surprising to me.) As such, what propertarianism does, is provide a universal language for exposing involuntary transfer (theft) and conducting commensurable arguments in all moral codes regardless of the portfolio of moral codes made use of by any polity.

            Failures and Successes

            Hayek did not correctly understand Mises’ arguments and tried to solve the problem of universal behavior using, what I would call ‘psychology’ and the properties of the mind. However, Mises was closer to the answer provided by Propertarianism with the Obverse of Economic Calculation, and its Reverse: Incentives. However, Mises again, out of necessity, attempted to create a rational and deductive science without integrating all forms of property, especially norms and human capital into his analysis. For this reason both Mises and Hayek despite being very close, failed to make the observation that it was not money or psychology or mind that all human behavior could be deduced from, but property in all its forms as humans actually demonstrably practice the discipline of property allocation and use. Rothbard was very, very close. Unfortunately in his quest for a rigorous ideology and admonition of bureaucracy, he put forth an argument again, which discounted the high trust norms. Instead, arguing that the market would be sufficient to suppress the various subtle forms of theft. We all draw upon our ethical backgrounds. Me on my anglo imperialism, Hoppe on his Northern Germanic nationalism, and Rothbard on his Jewish diasporic tribalism. Without the knowledge of Propertarianism – that all behavior is reducible to property rights- we must rely on our intuitions. Even Weber and Durkheim came close but did not succeed in making Rothbard and Hoppe’s insights. And if I do my work correctly, just as Rothbard solved the problem of normative institutions for homogenous diasporic tribes, and Hoppe the problem of formal institutions and normative institutions for homogenous landed nuclear families, I will solve the problem of rhetoric, commensurability, and institutions for entirely heterogeneous polities. In this sense we will have completed the promise of libertarianism, by reducing all rights, in fact, all ethics and moral argument, and therefore all political arguments, to statements of property rights, and in doing so demonstrate the casual link between biologically necessary reproductive strategy, the structure of the family, the structure of moral codes, and teh demand for different levels of intervention by the ‘state’.

            The Ghetto vs The Aristocracy

            This is the ethic of the high trust society, and the only society every to invent and employ liberty – the protestant west. It may be unclear that the Absolute Nuclear family is yet again another institution that forbids discounts. And that is why ANF families from northern european cultures prefer liberty, and NF and Traditional families from southern Europe prefer more of the state: because ANF Families suppress all free riding and NF and Traditional families do not. ANF and property rights are eugenic and ostracizing. They are the rights of aristocratic egalitarians. The rights of those who can compete. Those that cannot compete do not seek those rights as they view free riding and rent seeking at the very least to be necessary for competitive survival. That is all that there is to understand about politics. Rothbardian’s NAP is the ethic of the ghetto. It is not the high trust ethic of the northern europeans, and certainly not a sufficient ethic to allow a low friction common law society to function without a strong state. For this reason the NAP is insufficient AS A THEORY, and it is the reason for the failure of rothbardian, libertarian ethics to gain any acceptance in the population. The reason being, that it’s too low a bar. It does not prohibit discounts> I will leave it to Kevin MacDonald to illustrate where Rothbard got these ideas from and why. I was very frustrated with Rothbard originally, but now see him, as Hayek saw Mises, and as I see Hayek, as a participant in an intuitive culture which they lacked the scientific evidence to escape by comparative analysis. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev

          • THE DIALECTIC IS BETWEEN OUR FRAGILE MINDS AND OBJECTIVE REALITY… And that deb

            THE DIALECTIC IS BETWEEN OUR FRAGILE MINDS AND OBJECTIVE REALITY…

            And that debate is conducted in four languages, each of which supplies only one quarter of the solution, but togehter, explain all.:

            THE FOUR MORAL SCIENCES

            1) Reason = The instrumental logic of Perception.

            2) Mathematics = The instrumental Logic of Relations

            3) Physics (Science) = The instrumental logic of Causes

            4) Property (Economics) = The instrumental logic of Cooperation

            We have spent more than a century trying to construct morality as a science, without grasping that the scientific method is in fact, moral philosophy.

            You don’t need to go to a place if you’re already standing there.

            We were standing there all the time.

            Source date (UTC): 2013-12-18 06:56:00 UTC

          • I always think what I say is obvious, but that’s just the aspie intuition talkin

            I always think what I say is obvious, but that’s just the aspie intuition talking. 🙂 This is a post to Peter B, one of our best, on why it does no good to make general complaints about people’s lack of education or inability to think and reason, without specifically stating WHY.

            You know, we are very simple processors. Even the best of us have to draw diagrams to illustrate different relations between ideas. People like Feyneman (who I detest really) are able to imagine inordinately complex relations, as are many mathematicians. Economics is a discipline that is counter-intuitive, and one must alter instincts and cognitive biases to make use of it.

            And, so, given this limitation, it is very easy to use various forms of obscurantism to influence and frame other people’s thinking.

            Science is the cure. But only if we understand the difference between science and not-science.

            ————————–

            (on Boettke’s frustration) 🙂

            Peter,

            Regarding:

            –“Is it possible that we are witnessing the return of the ‘public intellectual’ through the internet, but that with the sad state of schooling and education that we have an entire generation of “intellectuals” who don’t know how to think, don’t know how to construct an argument, and don’t know how to examine factual claims?”–

            You have expressed repeated frustration over this and related issues over the past few months (and perhaps longer). What events or conversations are driving you to this frustration?

            -Krugman as Ideal Type-

            Krugman uses cunning to create loaded, framed, and obscurant language with which to accuse opponents of ignorance, anti-empiricism, stupidity and fraud, as a means of distracting from the causal properties of, and externalities produced, by his arguments. And then he fails to answer criticisms that such aggregates as we use in macro, both obscure the changes in all manner of human, social, and political, capital, and obscure the causal properties of changes in our economy.

            I have tried a number of times to catalogue the number of errors he makes in a week’s worth of posts, but like any argument, the counter to such density of misrepresentation or error, when each misrepresentation or error appeals to the reader’s incentives, cognitive biases and inventory of status signals, that it is literally impossible to counter argue against them except as a purely academic exercise in the empirical measurement of deception.

            – Argument By Critique –

            Krugman is a master of the Culture of Critique: which is the art of using complexity and moral conjecture as a means of distracting from the analysis of one’s own advocacy. It is not a matter of advancing policy ratio-scientifically. It is a matter of criticizing RATIONAL or TRADITIONAL policy so that an alternative MORAL policy can be advanced free of criticism. In effect, this technique is a very sophisticated method of constructing a pseudo-science, by critique and moral claim, FASTER than ratio-empirical analysis can counter it.

            We have seen this approach taken by Marx, Freud, Cantor, in the pseudo-sciences, and we have seen the same approach taken by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger in philosophy. More recently, in our lifetimes, we have seen postmodernists use the same method of critique in both academia, politics and the popular press as a means of redefining morality. And, it has only been since perhaps, 2000, beginning with Pinker, that science has begun to dismantle the counter-factual arguments of the technique of ‘Critique’.

            – Cause in Argument is the same as Cause in Science –

            So, what troubles me about your objections, which I agree with, is that they’re not specific enough. You aren’t identifying WHY PSEUDOSCIENCE under the political force of Critique, and the various rhetorical means of deception, succeeds in OVERLOADING the ability of most people to rationally process arguments.

            Most of the time you make arguments that appeal to the scientific method, or knowledge of a domain, without articulating how it is that we defend and test against the complex method of deception in the method of Critique. Science does not solve this problem empirically, but linguistically: with operational language, and the Canons of Science. The scientific method is a MORAL DISCIPLINE. It reduces error, a bit, but moreso, it prevents evangelism, aspiration, loading, framing, obscurantism. The method of Critique does just the opposite.

            For your arguments to be effective, and other than complaints, and arguments by weak analogy, you would have to continue on your argumentative path that macro is not scientific, but pseudo scientific, and that we violently extract human, social, political, and material capital from families, from generations, from out entire civilization by the use of pseudoscience that selectively chooses easy to obtain data as a means of selective measurement, and as such, selective advancement of progressive communal morality at the expense of traditional conservative and libertarian, individualistic morality. And does so at enormous cost to our civilization, in all forms of capital. And does so by deceptive means.

            – On Journals and Public Speech –

            I disagree with your argument that top journals are a test of ideas. If anything such an argument when out the window with Popper and Kuhn logically defeated that position, and empirical analysis suggests that indeed, the publishing of books is the only test. Papers in journals may be necessary and analogous to intellectual copyright claims, and journals analogous to patent registries; but evidence suggests that it requires a book length treatise to make even a trivial argument, and to test it in the market of ideas.

            The internet decreases publishing costs, and as such increases the volume of low content, but high demand arguments. My experience is the opposite of yours, perhaps, because I see each argumentative ecosystem as competing with itself:

            Hierarchy of argument:

            1) Sentimental (emotive)

            2) Moral or Allegorical (shaming)

            3) Historical (analogy)

            4) Rational

            5) Empirical (subjective surveys)

            6) Economic (objective measurements)

            7) Ratio-empirical (all of the above based up on incentives)

            Just because you can hear the din, does not mean it was not there before. It always has been.

            And as far as I can tell, from participating in this game for twenty years, the quality of argument in each sector is improving. In no small part because from the top-down, science is defeating critique.

            We can win. But science is not a speedy process.

            I hope I’ve put an idea thats of value to you somewhere in there. 🙂

            Curt Doolittle

            The Propertarian Institute

            Kiev

            Source date (UTC): 2013-12-14 07:09:00 UTC

          • (on Boettke’s frustration) 🙂 Peter, Regarding: –“Is it possible that we are wi

            (on Boettke’s frustration) 🙂

            Peter,

            Regarding:

            –“Is it possible that we are witnessing the return of the ‘public intellectual’ through the internet, but that with the sad state of schooling and education that we have an entire generation of “intellectuals” who don’t know how to think, don’t know how to construct an argument, and don’t know how to examine factual claims?”–

            You have expressed repeated frustration over this and related issues over the past few months (and perhaps longer). What events or conversations are driving you to this frustration?

            -Krugman as Ideal Type-

            Krugman uses cunning to create loaded, framed, and obscurant language with which to accuse opponents of ignorance, anti-empiricism, stupidity and fraud, as a means of distracting from the causal properties of, and externalities produced, by his arguments. And then he fails to answer criticisms that such aggregates as we use in macro, both obscure the changes in all manner of human, social, and political, capital, and obscure the causal properties of changes in our economy.

            I have tried a number of times to catalogue the number of errors he makes in a week’s worth of posts, but like any argument, the counter to such density of misrepresentation or error, when each misrepresentation or error appeals to the reader’s incentives, cognitive biases and inventory of status signals, that it is literally impossible to counter argue against them except as a purely academic exercise in the empirical measurement of deception.

            – Argument By Critique –

            Krugman is a master of the Culture of Critique: which is the art of using complexity and moral conjecture as a means of distracting from the analysis of one’s own advocacy. It is not a matter of advancing policy ratio-scientifically. It is a matter of criticizing RATIONAL or TRADITIONAL policy so that an alternative MORAL policy can be advanced free of criticism. In effect, this technique is a very sophisticated method of constructing a pseudo-science, by critique and moral claim, FASTER than ratio-empirical analysis can counter it.

            We have seen this approach taken by Marx, Freud, Cantor, in the pseudo-sciences, and we have seen the same approach taken by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger in philosophy. More recently, in our lifetimes, we have seen postmodernists use the same method of critique in both academia, politics and the popular press as a means of redefining morality. And, it has only been since perhaps, 2000, beginning with Pinker, that science has begun to dismantle the counter-factual arguments of the technique of ‘Critique’.

            – Cause in Argument is the same as Cause in Science –

            So, what troubles me about your objections, which I agree with, is that they’re not specific enough. You aren’t identifying WHY PSEUDOSCIENCE under the political force of Critique, and the various rhetorical means of deception, by OVERLOADING the ability of most people to rationally process arguments.

            Most of the time you make arguments that appeal to the scientific method, or knowledge of a domain, without articulating how it is that we defend and test against the complex method of deception in the method of Critique. Science does not solve this problem empirically, but linguistically: with operational language, and the Canons of Science. The scientific method is a MORAL DISCIPLINE. It reduces error, a bit, but moreso, it prevents evangelism, aspiration, loading, framing, obscurantism. The method of Critique does just the opposite.

            For your arguments to be effective, and other than complaints, and arguments by weak analogy, you would have to continue on your argumentative path that macro is not scientific, but pseudo scientific, and that we violently extract human, social, political, and material capital from families, from generations, from out entire civilization by the use of pseudoscience that selectively chooses easy to obtain data as a means of selective measurement, and as such, selective advancement of progressive communal morality at the expense of traditional conservative and libertarian, individualistic morality. And does so at enormous cost to our civilization, in all forms of capital. And does so by deceptive means.

            – On Journals and Public Speech –

            I disagree with your argument that top journals are a test of ideas. If anything such an argument when out the window with Popper and Kuhn logically defeated that position, and empirical analysis suggests that indeed, the publishing of books is the only test. Papers in journals may be necessary and analogous to intellectual copyright claims, and journals analogous to patent registries; but evidence suggests that it requires a book length treatise to make even a trivial argument, and to test it in the market of ideas.

            The internet decreases publishing costs, and as such increases the volume of low content, but high demand arguments. My experience is the opposite of yours, perhaps, because I see each argumentative ecosystem as competing with itself:

            Hierarchy of argument:

            1) Sentimental (emotive)

            2) Moral or Allegorical (shaming)

            3) Historical (analogy)

            4) Rational

            5) Empirical (subjective surveys)

            6) Economic (objective measurements)

            7) Ratio-empirical (all of the above based up on incentives)

            Just because you can hear the din, does not mean it was not there before. It always has been.

            And as far as I can tell, from participating in this game for twenty years, the quality of argument in each sector is improving. In no small part because from the top-down, science is defeating critique.

            We can win. But science is not a speedy process.

            I hope I’ve put an idea thats of value to you somewhere in there. 🙂

            Curt Doolittle

            The Propertarian Institute

            Kiev

            Source date (UTC): 2013-12-14 07:02:00 UTC

          • Um… Empirical means observable and verifiable. Not numeric. It’s just that we

            Um… Empirical means observable and verifiable. Not numeric. It’s just that we most often need numbers to verify our observations, due to the limits of our perception, cognition, and short term memory.

            Source date (UTC): 2013-12-12 10:13:00 UTC

          • EMPIRICIAL LANGUAGE VS LINGUISTIC ‘SUPERSTITION’ (Important)(profound) I suppose

            EMPIRICIAL LANGUAGE VS LINGUISTIC ‘SUPERSTITION’

            (Important)(profound)

            I suppose it’s partly that my Americanism is annoying to him, because he really doesn’t pay me any mind, but Hans has only given me I think, three bits of advice. One of them I disagree with. One I have to remind myself every day – how Hayek failed to actually solve the problem . And, one of them was critical: to use established terminology whenever possible.

            I made the same mistake many others do outside of academia, which is, that because existing paradigms are so heavily loaded, it’s tempting to define new terms, in order to load them differently – or in my case, unload them entirely.

            And it turns out that its entirely possible, because philosophy is so littered with frames of reference that one merely must play an intellectual game of conceptual pickup-sticks, and modify the properties of existing concepts to establish an entirely different order.

            I am still troubled by a few problems. The first is that the persistence of the continental model of linguistic ‘superstition’ which uses heavily loaded language, by intention, to

            It is possible that aristoctratic language, that is, the language of science, or ‘truth’ – meaning, unloaded correspondence with observable actions in objective reality, is just more natural to anglos for antiquarian reasons. I am unsure. I do know that ‘duty’ in the anglo metaphysical value system is ‘to each other’ and in the continental system ‘to place in the order’, is quite different. And it is quite different because of ancient land ownership and defense reasons. That this ancient bias served to force the english people into an empirical rather than hierarchical set of conceptual biases, is probably an obvious cause in retrospect. But at this point in time, empiricism, that is, **order independent of hierarchy**, or “unloaded” truth, is embeded into the language so deeply that anglos are indoctrinated into empiricism by simply learning the language.

            This is, of course, after the Absolute Nuclear Family, the next most important reason for forced cultural integration: Language: The Anglo Framework of Ratio Scientific Empiricism.

            And that is why the Postmoderns must undermine the english language here, and not so severely on the continent: Because the language itself prevents loading – either subjective or hierarchical. And without prevention of loading, or without reversing the ability to load the language, it is impossible to obscure inequality of ability and merit.

            One of the reasons I am attempting to reform libertarianism, is because of the German and Jewish fascination with obscurantism in creating pseudosciences: Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, Freud, and Cantor, and I must unfortunately, add Mises and Rothbard to that list. I think for precisely the same reason.

            Unfortunately, the anglo, indo-european fascination with, and intellectual bias toward, space/time and mechanisms, seems to create a vulnerability to pseudoscience created by obscurant and loaded language.

            So, I am taking this german and jewish pattern of obscurant and loaded thought and converting it to RATIO SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE.

            Every month I get closer. If I live long enough I should finish it. Right now I can get most of it across in something on the nature of 5000 words. My expectation, when done, is that I should have reduced this set of complexity down to less than 10K words in its entirety.

            And that reduction has come, because of Hans’ advice, by using and extending the properties of, existing terminology.

            That does not mean that it is trivial to grasp. And mastery of the framework will still require a bit of study. But Propertarianism is, as a philosophy, the most complete and most empirical philosophical system we have yet been able to devise.

            Now, I get a great deal of feedback on my perceived arrogance. But from my extremely skeptical perspective, as someone who has spent a lifetime in pursuit of resolving the problem of political conflict, i’m just speaking as objectively as I can.

            I did not come to libertarianism naturally. I came to libertarianism because I understood that the economic calculation argument, and its obverse, incentives, were the only NECESSARY argument that I could find in all of philosophy. And it was from that initial necessary observation that I was able, with a great deal of work, to express all philosophy in a single consistent framework, by reducing not only all rights, but all of ethics, morals, manners, to the process of voluntary exchange, given the different reproductive strategies of individuals.

            And this is the conflict that I have with both Marxist Dialectic and Rawlsian aggregates: neither are empirical. And they are not empirical, for the sole purpose of forcing cooperation between people who do not wish to involuntarily cooperate, by claiming a commonality of interest on ends, where there is none. And there is only a commonality of interest on means.

            Exchange is observable and empirical.

            Source date (UTC): 2013-12-12 09:36:00 UTC

          • FROM TRUTH TO LIE: IMPROVEMENTS TO ANALYSIS OF ARGUMENT AND DEBATE This spectrum

            FROM TRUTH TO LIE: IMPROVEMENTS TO ANALYSIS OF ARGUMENT AND DEBATE

            This spectrum covers the categories of argument used to make honest statements or to deceive.

            I – HONEST (SCIENTIFIC) STATEMENTS

            1 – Operational language (as observable actions)

            2 – Unloaded language (absent verb ‘to-be’) (Unprimed / E-Prime)

            II – LOADED STATEMENTS

            3 – Loaded Language (with verb ‘to be’)

            4 – Shaming and Rallying Language (morally loaded language)

            III – OBSTRUCTIVE STATEMENTS

            5 – Obscurant Language

            6 – Analogistic language

            IV – DECEPTIVE STATEMENTS

            7 – Lying by Omission

            8 – Lying by Misrepresentation

            V – COMBINED DECEPTIVE STATEMENTS

            9 – combinations of types II,III,IV.

            Source date (UTC): 2013-12-12 04:50:00 UTC