Category: Thoughts

[T]here is very little difference between the negotiated construction of the Pentateuch, or the Bible, and the American Constitution: they were the product of committees constructing the criteria for civil law. This is quite contradictory to the Indo European Tradition in which law EVOLVES. But these things are constructs of man for the purpose of…

[W]e start with Zoroaster who is the first philosopher. —“Zoroaster sees the human condition as the mental struggle between aša (truth) and druj (lie). The cardinal concept of aša—which is highly nuanced and only vaguely translatable—is at the foundation of all Zoroastrian doctrine, including that of Ahura Mazda (who is aša), creation (that is aša),…

[T]he Technologies of Cooperation 1) Tribal Hunter Gatherer -> Steppe/Desert -> Agrarian -> Urban -> (Slum?) 2) Headman -> Chieftain -> King -> President/Prime Minister -> (Judge?) 3) Memory -> Oral Tradition -> Written -> Printing -> Media -> (Digital Records?) 4) Norm -> Religion -> Law -> Credit -> (Digital Reputation?) 5) Spiritualism-> Mythos->…

—“Q: I came to be aware [of] Julian Jaynes’ thesis materials. Seems to jive with your theme, Curt. You alluding to a similar theme when referencing the Pentateuch, or the Bible?”—Mark Palmer [G]reat question Mark. Great Question. Well, I don’t really agree with how Jaynes is stating it, but I agree that the ‘separateness’ of…

[Y]OU SEE THE TEMPLARS HAD A GOOD DEAL: ROOM AND BOARD. And you see ISIS doing the same. And we see Ukrainian Volunteers dong the same. And you saw american revolutionary soldiers doing it. And you saw european soldiers throughout history do it. The central problem of raising an army is not weapons, it is…

(from elsewhere) I don’t understand Shaun. I think people who have been following me for a few years know why I use FB and why I run all these “tests”. Maybe it isn’t obvious any longer. I construct theories. I test them. These theories are designed to help me understand what I don’t. So I…

[E]VOLUTION OF METHODS OF REGULATION 1) RELIGION – threat of ostracization. (culture) 2) LAW – threat of punishment, loss of property or liberty. (state) 3) CREDIT – threat of loss of consumption. (suppliers) 4) SOFTWARE – threat of loss of opportunity. (friends) Religion records your birth, promises, and deaths. Law produces a history of your…

(very important concepts) (important piece) [W]eber was right, in that the evolution of civilization was achieved through improvements in various kinds of ‘calculation’ – a term which will not sufficiently convey the depth of importance or meaning to the uninitiated. CALCULATION (ability to ‘think’ and plan) – Perception, Comparison, Decidability, and Memory We are somewhat…

(reframe the debate) WESTERN ‘CONSERVATISM’ = ‘ARISTOCRACY’ = ‘ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIANISM’ [W]e must reframe the debate, swapping the word ‘Conservative’ for ‘Aristocratic’, and ‘progressive’ for ‘Socialistic’. Aristocratic (paternal meritocratic) Egalitarian (open to all of merit who voluntarily take the oath not to steal.)

(the thrust of this argument is a conflation of good and preference, and my opponent’s presumption that because of that conflation there are no ‘goods’. This may be a bit hard to parse, but there are objective goods.) [I] think it is that I simply failed to provide sufficient touch stones so that you would…

[I]’ll add a little context by way of political economy, and say that the world (a)first organized by household and slaves in the agrarian era by kinship relations, then (b) organized militarily and monarchally for the unskilled for the seasonal production cycle with extended relations, (c) then industrially and socialistically for the semi-skilled medium term…

[T]he Truth was enough to create the west, and it is enough to restore the west. But we must suppress the liars as we have murder, violence, theft, and fraud. That is because like air, land, and sea, information is a precious commons that cannot tolerate pollution if truth is to survive. Punish the wicked.…

[P]arasitism is just as natural as cooperation. And so the function of the law is to discover new forms of parasitism so that the polity can insure one another against the new forms of parasitism. So it is not simply natural to cooperate, it is natural to cooperate as much as incentives allow, and to…

[W]hen one says “Socrates said…” or some other philosopher, in defense of some position, the fact that these thinkers said one thing or another never increases the merit of the thought – that’s an appeal to authority. Instead, it tells us that this idea has been in the public discourse for many years. And that…

[B]uilding a nice pretty world is great for impressing the females. But too many of them take it for granted. Feminism killed our incentives to produce that world. They don’t seem to grasp that if we don’t have the incentives for that world, we can create any world we want with the incentives we want,…

[W]e had ‘Ghettos’ and ‘Quarters’ under the Great Christian Monarchies. There is no reason we cannot have ghettos and quarters as we did under smaller scale states, and no reason we cannot have whole cities under today’s governments of greater scale. Rule, governance, commerce, and existence are very different things. (I have seen escape from…

[M]ale – Female relations are a trade between competing reproductive strategies. Feminists seem to have the opinion that their strategy is superior despite the fact that all civilization seems to have been constructed to control women’s gossiping, lying, sexual and reproductive excesses as much as it has been to control men’s theft, violence, murder and…

[B]oth Jewish and Muslim cults include the original claims of Megalomania and utopianism that Abraham invested in the doctrine, and which is the excuse used to both create unity and prevent assimilation into host civilizations. The master race of the Nazis was the same argument made by genetic destiny rather than divine command. There is…

[W]estern man, like eastern man, is poly-philosophical. UPPER – TRUTH – RULE – FORCE 1) Aristotle’s Law of truth, The Common Law, and The Martial Law of those who rule: aristocracy. MIDDLE – UTILITY – COOPERATION – TRADE 2) The Host of Middle Class Philosophers myths of aspiration for cooperation, 3) Aesop and the Nordic,…

(important piece) (progress on the cosmopolitan method of lying) [K]rugman is one of the most artful liars in the modern world. We tend to criticize him on his errors. But casting his work as error is too generous: he is simply an extremely artful liar. If you could ask the Genii how to create the…

[A]lexander I am fairly certain that it is possible if not necessary to construct a finished constitutional basis for rule of law. It may be impossible to imagine the means of production of commons that we call government within that rule of law. Because the basis of the rule of law appears to be a…

[R]othbard “appropriated” the term “libertarianism” and instead gave us anarcho capitalism as the reinterpretation of cosmopolitan ethics of the eastern european borderlands, under Russian, Lithuanian, and Polish rule. It is the ethic of the ghetto. Of the people who do not produce commons or defense. There is nothing ‘libertarian’ in Rothbarianism, and nothing moral in…

(from an exchange) [W]hy would you even try to criticize Propertarianism unless you either don’t understand it, are immoral, or both? Are you trying to make the argument that a minority prescription cannot produce a revolution? Or that a majority is needed to force political change? Or that treating information as s commons such that…