Month: December 2014

(important) [I] use the term “Operational” in preference to “Intuitionistic” because the term “intuitionistic” is an uncomfortable one (like “rent-seeking”) that is open to easy misinterpretation, and the term “operational” invokes the meaning that I want it to: actions that humans can possibly take. But this is a personal act of argumentative license. There is a significant difference between the […]

[S]cience is a moral discipline wherein we criticize our ideas, so that we can speak them truthfully: 1 — We test our relations for categorical consistency (identity) 2— We test our reasoning with logic for internal consistency. 3— We test our observations with external correspondence. 4— We test the existential possibilities of our premises by defining them in operational language […]

“[I]f we cast Praxeology a failed attempt at constructing the economic equivalent of Operationalism in physics, Operationism in psychology, and Intuitionism in mathematics, all of which are tests of the existential possibility of premises, then we can rescue praxeology from the domain of pseudoscience, and instead, use it as an additional moral constraint on scienti?c argument: that no economic statement […]

[M]acro economic phenomenon are emergent, not deducible. They are often explainable. And the discipline of macro economics attempts to explain those phenomenon. Yet many phenomenon are still not yet explainable. Although rapid increase in economics in the past twenty years has improved the field dramatically. Any given price for example, is often not explainable. Nor did we nor could we […]

[T]his is why the rationalist argument is a straw man. Critical Rationalism won. In propertarianism I focus on truthful speech as an IMPROVEMENT on critical rationalism’s narrow focus in the absence of ethical and moral constraints (imposed costs, such as creating a hazard). So operationalism is an existential test – a further criticism, on top of falsification, that is necessary […]

“This is empiricism’s central claim: Empirical knowledge must be veri?able or falsi?able by experience; and analytical knowledge, which is not so verifiable or falsifiable, thus cannot contain any empirical knowledge. If this is true, then it is fair to ask: What then is the status of this fundamental statement of empiricism? Evidently it must be either analytical or empirical.” ~Hans/Hermann Hoppe —“Logic is powerful enough to expose weak arguments, […]

[H]ayek is right that a condition of liberty can only be constructed by organically evolutionary (common) law of property. Hoppe is right that institutions can replace monopoly bureaucracy. However, Hayek has no solution to making such a condition universally preferable; and Hoppe has no solution to the provision of the commons, nor for constructing a condition of liberty. Neither address […]

[W]HY ARE CONSERVATIVES MORE IMPORTANT THAN LIBERTINES?Because given moral justification to correct violations of purity and sanctity a sufficient number of conservatives will use violence to restore order. Only conservatives act for social good alone. Libertines and progressives act only in their self interest. Why? Because libertinism is purely a status seeking effort, and progressivism is both status seeking and […]

[M]oral Corporatism: LIBERTARIANA libertarian ethic in negative sense, is that one seeks to eliminate all external constraints upon his resources so that he may seize opportunities for productive gain. His analogy to a shareholder agreement is one in which he will cause no cost, but in return will liquidate his holdings if opportunities can be seized. CONSERVATIVEA conservative ethics in […]

http://mises.org/library/should-economics-emulate-natural-sciences[P]seudoscience hurts us. Conspiracy theory hurts us. Immoralism hurts us. Rothbard hurts us every day. MI has got to stop their absurdity. Cosmopolitanism, Marxism, Socialism, Postmodernism, Libertinism, and Neoconservatism are all dead campaigns from the era when we assumed democracy would prevail, and ideologies were needed to use the voting booth or revolution in order to sieze power. They were […]

[W]ith the exception of the (restored) Spanish and (created) Belgium monarchies–all the surviving monarchies of Europe are either Protestant (UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden) or tiny (Luxembourg, Liechenstein, Monaco), with Catholic (Italy, Portugal, France, Austria) and Orthodox (Russia, Greece) national monarchies having a much higher failure rate than Protestant ones (Germany), suggests that being able to engage in (and keep) […]

(interesting) [H]UMANS divide (a)Perception, (b)Consideration, (c)Knowledge, (d)Labor, and (e) reproduction – and we negotiate through words and provide ‘facts’ or ‘data’ through acts of voluntary exchange. We operate as a fascinating computational system. Just as a transistor flips to make a connection that was not previously available, and signals downstream its change in state, we signal through voluntary exchange our […]

[I] have a problem with causing suffering as punishment or for personal gratification. I have no problem with torture for the purpose of gathering information – particularly non-destructive torture. I certainly have no problem with killing, and I think we don’t do nearly enough of it. It’s cheap, effective, and provides exceptional incentives. Moreover, In individual societies we must limit […]

[T]hough subject to normal human failings, the long time horizons of monarchy is one of its distinct advantages. As economist Mancur Olson pointed out that, the longer the time horizon of the ruler, the more their interests tended to converge with those of their subjects. One tends to be somewhat more careful and accommodating the longer you and your children […]

[I]t really doesn’t matter what an author says or intends. What matters is whether its true or not- and I do not mean internally consistent, I mean externally correspondent. In the sense that logical conclusions can be and must be drawn from any set of statements. and that the author’s ‘way of thinking’ is either correspondent with reality or not. […]

[P]raxeology: is Mises’ failed attempt at discovering Operationalism in economics, as it was discovered in psychology (Operationism), Intuitionism (mathematics) and Operationalism (physics). Regardless of field it is reducible to the statement that we cannot know whether we are discussing (or whether one testifies to) the imaginary or the existential unless it can be described as a set of operations – […]

[I]t really doesn’t matter what an author says or intends. What matters is whether its true or not- and I do not mean internally consistent, I mean externally correspondent. When we roll a bag of conceptual marbles down the hill, we do not control them – reality does. When we roll our sentences into the public it does not matter […]

[T]he progressive pre-cognitive need for false consensus bias confuses them into thinking that everyone else is likewise as susceptible to false consensus bias. But that is a female genetic ‘defect’ – an adaptation necessary for primitive survival, and one that evolved in concert with ‘gossip’, which is meant to appeal to (take advantage of) false consensus bias. Secondly, need for […]

(Guest post by Michael Phillip) Postmodernism (Pomo) is an intellectual blight, and a moral one. For, as Norman Geras has pointed out, if there is no truth, there is no justice. If there is no truth, there is also no heritage. Creating, in reaction to progressivist post-modernism, PoMo conservatives who are so unaware of the heritage they are supposed to […]

Guest post by Michael Phillip The liberal right are attracted to order and plurality (e.g. F. A. Hayek), the anti-liberal Right are attracted to order and unity (e.g. Auguste Comte), the liberal Left to turbulence and plurality (e.g. John Stuart Mill) and the anti-liberal Left to turbulence and unity (e.g. Karl Marx).

(worth repeating) [I]n political philosophy we separate the use of proactive force (aggression) from reactive force (defense). So force can be put to positive (defensive) or negative (aggressive) uses. But then this approach requires that we define what we can aggress against, in order to know what we can defend against. In libertinism they refer to intersubjectively-verifiable property (physical things) […]