Speaking: The Property and Freedom Society, London Conference, December 12-16, 2013
Andy Curzon, intellectual, friend and hero, has organized a PFS Conference next month in London at the Hilton. Yours truly will speak twice. First on the origins and causes of morality and the moral bias toward liberty, and second on the reformation of libertarian ethics to support liberty in the high trust society. These two…
(CORE)The Family Shrinks as Property and Wealth Expand
(However) Primitive matrilineality (endogamous) Community Family (endogamous) Patriarchal Community Family (exogamous) Authoritarian Family Egalitarian Nuclear Family (~catholic) Absolute Nuclear Family (endogamous) (Anglo Saxon) Post-Marital Individual Family (endogamous) (Feminism) The Anglo Saxon Absolute Nuclear Family – no precise inheritance rules, frequent use of wills; – no cohabitation of married children with their parents; – no…
Ethical Intuitionism Is Correct (I Think) (via Praxeology)
IF I AM CORRECT, THEN ETHICAL INTUITIONISM IS CORRECT But they authors just didn’t have Mises, Rothbard and Hoppe to help them. (I did.) What Mises, Rothbard and Hoppe didn’t have, was the past twenty years of scientific research to rely upon. And the diverse set of ethical intuitions are not diverse at all. He…
The State Is The Enemy Of Civil, Voluntary, Society
“…a herd of timid and industrious animals of which government is the shepherd…” QUOTE: “It seems that if despotism came to be established in the democratic nations of our day, it would have other characteristics: it would be more extensive and milder, and it would degrade men without tormenting them. … I see an…
“Way’s Of Thinking” Are Premodern Solutions. We Need Understanding of Our Failures and Institutions That Correct Them.
We dont need another way of thinking. We cant convince anyone to adopt it. We dont need a new religion or belief. What we need is to understand why our beliefs, ways of thinking, and institutions failed to survive the extension of the franchise, and what to do about it now that they have failed.…
"Way's Of Thinking" Are Premodern Solutions. We Need Understanding of Our Failures and Institutions That Correct Them.
We dont need another way of thinking. We cant convince anyone to adopt it. We dont need a new religion or belief. What we need is to understand why our beliefs, ways of thinking, and institutions failed to survive the extension of the franchise, and what to do about it now that they have failed.…
The Contributions Of Computer Scientists To The Reformation In Libertarian And Conservative Political Thought.
When I went to Mises for the Austrian Scholars Conference the first time, I was struck dumb; first, by the incredible genius of the economic calculation argument, second by hoppe’s solution to the problem of institutions… But then equally by the failure to see that that BOTH Hayek and Mises were very close but…
(CORE) Propertarianism : Uniting Hoppe And Hayek
“Hayek’s work composes a system of ideas, fully as ambitious as the systems of Mill and Marx, but far less vulnerable to criticism than theirs because it is grounded on a philosophically defensible view of the scope and limits of human reason. ” –John N. Gray, in Hayek on Liberty (1984), Preface, p. ix COMMENT…
One Thousand Years Of The Anglo Saxon Absolute Nuclear Family
“The English are descended from the Germanic conquerors who brought to England the ‘integrated nuclear family,’ in which nuclear families formed separate households, but stayed close to their relatives for mutual cooperation and defense. These people were illiterate, so we have no written records from those times, and we cannot know precisely how they…
Almost Everything You Need To Know About American Elections
THE WAR AGAINST WHITE MARRIED PEOPLE Add gender and marital status, and thats all you need to understand. “93% of blacks, 70% of Latinos, 60% of those under 30, and 62% of single people, voted for Obama. And white married couples over 30 years of age voted for Romney. Not much else matters.” –Dick Morris
The Cognitive Biases In The Empirical Fields
THE COGNITIVE BIASES OF THE EMPIRICAL FIELDS? (question) (see The Smart Fraction Theory of IQ and the Wealth of Nations at www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com) What is the difference in the the cognitive biases of the different disciplines? 1) Engineering and engineers 2) Computer science and computer scientists, 3) Economics and economists (statistics) 4) Physics and physicists 5) Mathematics…
A Question Of Libertarian Terminology
(Freedom vs Liberty) Is it just my own selection bias in action, or has the term FREEDOM been sufficiently appropriated as to mean “Positive Freedom and liberty” and LIBERTY such that it currently means “Negative Freedom and liberty”? It’s too bad we LIBERTARIANS don’t have such energetic literary activists who can put together a campaign…
1) On The Purpose Of Scriptural Versus Rational And Ratio-scientific Ideologies. 2) On The Source Of Property Rights And Liberty.
(good read) (Quotable) “I don’t like package deals. That’s mainly the reason I don’t identify with a particular political position. If I end up looking like a libertarian, it’s only because they happen to be where I’m going anyway. I reserve the right to do my own thinking.” – Kenneth Allen Hopf COMMENT Ideologies can…
(CORE) We Cannot Think Without Metaphysical Biases
Given that Don Finnegan has just hit a nerve by reminding me about Friedman’s perspective on Irish Law, I’m going to throw something out here that may not be as obvious and important as it seems. As usual it might take me a bit to get there. But I think it’s worth the journey.…
BUT IS IT GENETIC?
Yes, conservatives are INNATELY more critical of free-riders: “North Eurasian and Circumpolar hunter-gatherers (Hutterites and Amish, Puritans) will be more prone to altruistic punishment than those from Middle Old World culture area (Jews, Gypsies, Chinese)” “…. *** Puritan groups seem particularly prone to bouts of moralistic outrage directed at those of their own people…
The Melting Pot That Isn’t
Data is data. Turns out that what we melt is purely scientific, legal, and commercial; and what doesn’t melt is family, morality, metaphysics, and therefore politics. Or, what I would describe in Propertarian terms, as “explicitly calculable” implicit knowledge vs “inexplicitly calculable” tacit knowledge. We can structure formal institutions only for a subset of…
The Melting Pot That Isn't
Data is data. Turns out that what we melt is purely scientific, legal, and commercial; and what doesn’t melt is family, morality, metaphysics, and therefore politics. Or, what I would describe in Propertarian terms, as “explicitly calculable” implicit knowledge vs “inexplicitly calculable” tacit knowledge. We can structure formal institutions only for a subset of…
Reasons For The Decline Of The Humanities
(good)(attack on academia) (Disclaimer: I have a fine art degree: art history and theory. Aesthetic philosophy. Although I am also educated in economics, philosophy, history and computer science.) [Warning: Harsh words follow.] 1) COST. Now, if I paid 10K for this degree, or even 20K, that would be one thing. But these degrees are too…
The Source And Purpose Of Paul Krugman’s Intellectual Corruption
(explanatory power)(important) “The Conscience Of An Immoral Man” In a series of recent articles, Krugman suggests that there is only one answer for Europe and the world, and that is, for the Germans to redistribute to the periphery. But that’s false. The opposite answer is that the periphery borrow to REFORM themselves. And when I…
The Source And Purpose Of Paul Krugman's Intellectual Corruption
(explanatory power)(important) “The Conscience Of An Immoral Man” In a series of recent articles, Krugman suggests that there is only one answer for Europe and the world, and that is, for the Germans to redistribute to the periphery. But that’s false. The opposite answer is that the periphery borrow to REFORM themselves. And when I…
VIOLENCE: The Source Of Liberty Is The Militia – Every Armed Man. Everything else is decoration and ritual
A people must consist as an extended, outbred family. The philosophy (religion) of these people must be fairly homogenous. The men must be armed such that the government must fear the people. The source of freedom is not democracy, it is the militia. Democracy is precisely the opposite of freedom. It is incompatible with freedom.…
Eliminating the Corporation Insured by the State
(Sketch) Eliminate the state sponsored corporation. A corporation is a partnership whose members are insured by a monopoly insurer insulated from competition: the state. All associations are, and only can be, partnerships. Restore right of suit for any and all involuntary transfers, outside of morally sanctioned competition, against any and all individuals within the partnership…
Slowly The Dark Enlightenment Spreads
SLOWLY THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT SPREADS Another social science academic concludes that there is little there there. Writing in 1942, the Oxford Professor of Metaphysics, RG Collingwood, said that dismissing academic discussion for insignificant speech is like “scolding little girls for giving dolls’ tea-parties with empty cups and little boys for playing with wooden swords.” Academic…
Ruining An Austrian’s Day
RUINING AN AUSTRIAN’S DAY “Man must act” is of course, true, but it is an incomplete sentence. “Man must act to serve his interests” is the full sentence. And completing the sentence demonstrates it’s irrelevance. The meaningful problem is that “Man must voluntarily cooperate.” And that is where the problem becomes difficult. Because man must…
Ruining An Austrian's Day
RUINING AN AUSTRIAN’S DAY “Man must act” is of course, true, but it is an incomplete sentence. “Man must act to serve his interests” is the full sentence. And completing the sentence demonstrates it’s irrelevance. The meaningful problem is that “Man must voluntarily cooperate.” And that is where the problem becomes difficult. Because man must…