Month: July 2014

CONSENSUS, INTENT, TABOO AND SACRED VS INCENTIVES AND INSTITUTIONS : ANOTHER INEQUALITY (very good piece) [W]e humans are usually much happier once we figure out that “consensus and intent” are possible only for small groups, and beyond that scale we must construct protocols (processes) and incentives (information) via institutions (formal institutions) such that it is…

[I]t turns out that honesty (truth) is the most important political institution, because it permits people to trust, which in turn permits risk taking, which in turn permits capital accumulation, which in turn produces economic velocity, which in turn produces prosperity. You might not think it matters so much, but of all the institutions humans…

(insightful)(first application of operationalism) West Point forbids its cadets to use the passive voice. It’s an excellent practice. In the strict sense we forbid the passive voice in English and it makes for much more solid communication than in French where the passive voice acceptable. Inverted sentences in the passive voice drive me nuts as…

ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN LIBERTARIANISM A kinship of property rights. The initiatic brotherhood of warriors. The cult of egalitarian sovereignty The origins of western exceptionalism. The only possible means of possessing liberty. The solution to the problem of creating extra-familial trust, is achieved by the extension of property rights, in exchange for the reciprocal guarantee of defending…

FROM : Roman Skaskiw QUESTION: Been reading Fukuyama — Seems state structures replaced kinship-Aristocratic ones b/c states were better at coordinating violence and meritocracy (first in war, then in bureaucracy). He uses the end of the Chou Dynasty in China to illustrate this. 1. Do you agree with this assessment? 2. Do you think modern…

(Guest Post by Eli Harman: ) [A]sking people to forego parasitism (if they’re weak) or predation (if they’re strong) is asking them to bear a substantial opportunity cost. They will only do so if someone stands ready to impose a higher actual cost for choosing to engage in them. This is what Curt Doolittle means…

THE IRONY OF AUSTRIAN APRIORISM(profound) (reformation of libertarianism) [F]rom my position as a scientific realist, understanding that praxeology is and must be an operational discipline, the advocates of apriorism and the universal deducibility of economics appear humorously ironic – whenever they are not exasperatingly frustrating. SUBJECTIVE TESTINGWe cannot deduce economic phenomenon (laws) from fist principles.…

LIBERTY IN OUR LIFETIME [A]phoristic arguments, programmatic as they may be, are ideologically utilitarian, and place limited burden on the speaker. They teach the intuition through use and repetition, better than verbose and detailed arguments. Conservatives (aristocratic egalitarians) understand this. Or at least intuit it. That is why they win the moral battle for votes,…

(seriously) (worth reading) [I]t’s been done. Secret? Threaten a big company’s revenue stream or customer base, by providing a service better than they do. Why is that possible? Internal incompetence of bureaucracies. Why? Because brands always seek to facilitate the brand with tangential value rather than deliver a product or service in the most excellent…

—“Surely you understand how individualists might view your little eugenics project as pretty unworkable, fucked and backwards, don’t you”— [I] don’t have a eugenics project, I make the argument that at some point in your chain of reasoning you must have a means of making judgements between one set of preferences and another, and that…

[P]ropertarianism can be used to describe, compare, and advocate any political system in rigidly logical, universally commensurable form. While one can surely advocate liberty with it, its primary purpose is to suppress error, fallacy and deception. Its the logic of cooperation. The logic of ethics and politics. Aristocratic Egalitarianism can be argued with it. Which…

[P]ropertarianism can be used to describe, compare, and advocate any political system in rigidly logical, universally commensurable form. While one can surely advocate liberty with it, its primary purpose is to suppress error, fallacy and deception. Its the logic of cooperation. The logic of ethics and politics. Aristocratic Egalitarianism can be argued with it. Which…

MORE ON COMING APART : SALON’S ARTICLE : RESPONSE 2 DECEPTIONS IN THIS ARTICLE 1) NATION: A ‘nation’ describes a body of people with similar genetic, linguistic, cultural, normative, and religious properties. When we discuss a diverse populace we do not use the term nation, we use the term EMPIRE. All diverse states must be…

MORE ON COMING APART : SALON’S ARTICLE : RESPONSE 2 DECEPTIONS IN THIS ARTICLE 1) NATION: A ‘nation’ describes a body of people with similar genetic, linguistic, cultural, normative, and religious properties. When we discuss a diverse populace we do not use the term nation, we use the term EMPIRE. All diverse states must be…

A PROPERTARIAN SOLUTION TO THE COMING MOBS OF PITCHFORKS – A BETTER WAY OF GETTING PEOPLE MINIMUM INCOME (READ THIS) (IMPORTANT PIECE) See http://topinfopost.com/2014/06/30/ultra-rich-mans-letter-to-my-fellow-filthy-rich-americans-the-pitchforks-are-coming (regardless of your political persuasion, you should read this. because it’s the best existing answer to the social problem of post-agrarian capitalism). [T]his might sound like a criticism, but it’s not:…

[O]perations are not analogies, the exist, they are ‘real’. That’s what’s so ‘truthful’ about them. When we perform an operation, there is no information loss, and conversely, no information is ‘gained’, or assumed, that isn’t there.

[O]perations are not analogies, the exist, they are ‘real’. That’s what’s so ‘truthful’ about them. When we perform an operation, there is no information loss, and conversely, no information is ‘gained’, or assumed, that isn’t there.

GOD’S THREE EUROPEAN LANGUAGES AND THE CHURCH RESORTS TO ONE [U]nfortunately Socrates’s criticism applies to all of academia. Or in the new vernacular, all members of the neoreactionary’s ‘Cathedral’ – the replacement of the church and academy with the state and academy under a bizarre form of numerical and technological heresy. I was thrilled at…

GOD’S THREE EUROPEAN LANGUAGES AND THE CHURCH RESORTS TO ONE [U]nfortunately Socrates’s criticism applies to all of academia. Or in the new vernacular, all members of the neoreactionary’s ‘Cathedral’ – the replacement of the church and academy with the state and academy under a bizarre form of numerical and technological heresy. I was thrilled at…

(worth repeating) [M]ost of my arguments consist of various permutations that point out the fallacies of the libertarian, classical liberal, and progressive canons that do not account for the three genetic problems of (a) outbreeding and extension of kinship trust, (b) minimum pareto distribution of verbal intelligence, and (c) reduced genetic testosterone and therefore impulsivity,…

[T]he least likely people on earth to say “I don’t know enough about that to have an opinion.” We have the most confident, yet most ignorant populace in the developed world. A massive progressive-induced, Dunning Kreuger test, serving no other purpose than to give righteous inspiration to the ignorant to cast votes for that which…

[D]amn it. I do not think of people’s race except in descriptive terms, the same way I point out the color of a shirt, car or house when describing it. There are great men. If I have to think of the person’s race to determine if they are great men, then they aren’t. Either a…

[M]any utilitarian concepts are convenient, but not true. Most untrue things produce negative externalities. Most negative externalities cause others harm. Small things in large numbers produce vast consequences.

[M]any utilitarian concepts are convenient, but not true. Most untrue things produce negative externalities. Most negative externalities cause others harm. Small things in large numbers produce vast consequences.