Regarding: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/05/david-hathaway/are-you-talking-to-a-agent-provocateur/

( I Thought about this for a day before commenting, and I won’t tear the author of the post apart for his use of technique of Marxist Critique, despite it being a classic example of the method. Libertarians spent too much time with marxists and not enough time with scientists.)

[I] am trying to reform libertine, rothbardian ‘ghetto’ libertarianism for the good of liberty seekers everywhere, and am absolutely, by deliberate choice, using provocation. There is no other means of attacking dogma than to force dogmatists to defend against it by direct confrontation. (Marxist Critiques or no)

1) Thick / Humanist / Psychological / Left libertarianism is a luxury good, and it is neither scientifically or rationally formulated, remaining true to the psychological tradition of classical liberalism. We CAN form a polity under Thick libertarianism, as long as luxuries are voluntarily constructed, requiring voluntary participation, rather than mandated.

2) Aristocratic Egalitarian / Scientific libertarianism is necessary and sufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of the state. It is both rationally and scientifically formulated. We CAN form a polity under aristocratic egalitarianism.

3) Thin / Ghetto / libertine / Brutalist libertarianism is necessary but INSUFFICIENT for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of the state. It is rationally but not scientifically formulated. And furthermore, would be the target of conquest and oppression by all nearby polities.
We CANNOT form a polity under rothbardian, ghetto, libertinism.

So this particular provocateur is doing his moral duty in the pursuit of a state of liberty. I do not care whether we choose luxuries or not. But we have no option to choose a libertine / Ghetto / Thin polity. It is irrational to construct one on transaction costs alone. It is unsurvivable given external hostility to all groups who have demonstrated ghetto ethics: (Gypsies and pre-modern Jews the most common examples).

Cheers.
An admitted Provocateur.

PS: The revolution in Ukraine would not have been possible if it were not for the risks taken by the Right Sector. Most people (like rothbardians) are free riders. They won’t participate until there isn’t any risk.

(worth repeating)

1) Thick / Humanist / Psychological / Left libertarianism is a luxury good, and it is neither scientifically or rationally formulated, remaining true to the psychological tradition of classical liberalism. We CAN form a polity under Thick libertarianism, as long as luxuries are voluntarily constructed, requiring voluntary participation, rather than mandated.

2) Aristocratic Egalitarian / Scientific libertarianism is necessary and sufficient for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of the state. It is both rationally and scientifically formulated. We CAN form a polity under aristocratic egalitarianism.

3) Thin / Ghetto / libertine / Brutalist libertarianism is necessary but INSUFFICIENT for the formation of a voluntary polity in the absence of the state. It is rationally but not scientifically formulated. And furthermore, would be the target of conquest and oppression by all nearby polities. We CANNOT form a polity under rothbardian, ghetto, libertinism.

FREE RIDING IS NOT AN EXCEPTION IT IS THE RULE. IT IS NATURAL TO MAN. PROPERTY IS THE EXCEPTION. ITS UNNATURAL. AND CREATING THE INSTITUTIONAL HABIT OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IS AN ACTIVE NOT PASSIVE PROJECT.

[Y]a’ gotta’ understand: aristocracy is an activist form of defense.

We evolved in a state of pervasive free riding. To create the institution of Property, you must deny people access to the fruits of your efforts except by voluntary exchange. To deny them access, you must use violence. You must first stop existing free riding. Then you must prevent future free riding. You cannot obtain liberty by pacifism, or reaction alone. Property requires activism. Because aggression against your property: the attempt to free ride upon your efforts, is not an exception – it is the RULE.

Sorry.

Aristocracy of the willing, for the willing.

A JOURNAL OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT

[W]e learned art criticism in college. We learned to debate in college. Both were required in the rather socratic program they taught at the time. I improved my debate skills first in bulletin boards, then on Compuserve, then in internet forums, then websites, and Facebook. Debate is an art.

I’ve always given up on these forums though. They peak. And after that, newbies are too frustrating to mature into peers, and you rapidly exhaust the abilities of the top people. Intellectual equivalent of flocks of birds. Schools of fish. Forming and reforming.

But the virtues of these little microcosms is that they are both ludus and circus for training in debates with passionate and interested people of similar interests. Since anyone can enter these debates one becomes familiar not so much with the academic arguments, but with the moral, analogical, and traditional arguments of ordinary people.

The “Cathedral” is so ensconced, as is the fallacy of the enlightenment (the aristocracy of everybody, the equality of everybody, and therefore the discount of the frictions of diversity ), that academic debate all but outlaws arguments constructed on refutations of the Cathedral’s fallacies. So we are at present stuck with criticizing the cathedral, largely from outside of academia.

As such the only venues available are blogs, magazines, and forums.

[S]o what I am proposing is to fund a conference and a journal of aristocratic egalitarian studies. I believe I can pull this off, at least for the first five years. If my business investments play out then I can fund it essentially in perpetuity (although I suspect I will not have to.)

However, I would like to separate the publication into sections by form of argument. Meaning, I would prefer to include only scholarly level works, but to provide forum for moral arguments (and propertarian arguments). There is a particular wisdom to providing this contrast: it engages both the professional, public intellectual and amateur constituencies.

However, I am vehemently against pseudoscience and it’s philosophical equivalent in continental rationalism. And my interest is in promoting works that provide not a justification for aristocracy, but a serious analysis of the structure of formal and informal institutions necessary within aristocratic egalitarian societies.

Liberty in our lifetimes.

Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
The Philosophy of Aristocracy
Kiev Ukraine

A JOURNAL OF ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT

[W]e learned art criticism in college. We learned to debate in college. Both were required in the rather socratic program they taught at the time. I improved my debate skills first in bulletin boards, then on Compuserve, then in internet forums, then websites, and Facebook. Debate is an art.

I’ve always given up on these forums though. They peak. And after that, newbies are too frustrating to mature into peers, and you rapidly exhaust the abilities of the top people. Intellectual equivalent of flocks of birds. Schools of fish. Forming and reforming.

But the virtues of these little microcosms is that they are both ludus and circus for training in debates with passionate and interested people of similar interests. Since anyone can enter these debates one becomes familiar not so much with the academic arguments, but with the moral, analogical, and traditional arguments of ordinary people.

The “Cathedral” is so ensconced, as is the fallacy of the enlightenment (the aristocracy of everybody, the equality of everybody, and therefore the discount of the frictions of diversity ), that academic debate all but outlaws arguments constructed on refutations of the Cathedral’s fallacies. So we are at present stuck with criticizing the cathedral, largely from outside of academia.

As such the only venues available are blogs, magazines, and forums.

[S]o what I am proposing is to fund a conference and a journal of aristocratic egalitarian studies. I believe I can pull this off, at least for the first five years. If my business investments play out then I can fund it essentially in perpetuity (although I suspect I will not have to.)

However, I would like to separate the publication into sections by form of argument. Meaning, I would prefer to include only scholarly level works, but to provide forum for moral arguments (and propertarian arguments). There is a particular wisdom to providing this contrast: it engages both the professional, public intellectual and amateur constituencies.

However, I am vehemently against pseudoscience and it’s philosophical equivalent in continental rationalism. And my interest is in promoting works that provide not a justification for aristocracy, but a serious analysis of the structure of formal and informal institutions necessary within aristocratic egalitarian societies.

Liberty in our lifetimes.

Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
The Philosophy of Aristocracy
Kiev Ukraine

[I] guess, I just assumed that it was so obvious that I didn’t need to say it. But apparently it’s not.

So why would you try to rely on all this Kantian nonsense, in order to justify human action? Instead, why wouldn’t you base the philosophy of human action, on human action?

What is the difference between, say, justifying something aprioristically, and simply stating that it appears that we are able to use description, deduction, induction, abduction given the amount of information available to us. But that deduction is possible only when describing constant relations?

What is the difference between stating, the obvious falsehood, that categorical descriptions of human actions are axiomatic, as in mathematics, and therefore not bounded by reality, rather than that any general description of human actions is theoretical, parsimonious, with broad explanatory power, but remains bounded by reality?

Why would one want to appeal to an authority using verbal contrivances, instead of honest descriptions of human actions? Why would you base the theoretical system upon which we analyze human actions on anything other than human actions? Especially when to do so you must misrepresent that which is ‘axiom-like’ but not axiomatic, as that which it is not?

Unless you were trying to justify an appeal to an authority? To grant to that which is empirical, scientific and theoretical, the authoritative content of mathematics and logic, which because both are axiomatic, are fully tautological and unbounded by reality?

Misesian reasoning, and rothbardian ethics, could be simply an intellectual error. Or it could be a dishonest use of obscurantism to hide the fact that human actions are observable. Even introspective actions are observable by the actor who makes them, and if communicated, observable by others. And as observable, those actions are empirical.

Theories may be very hard or very weak. Some theories are very hard, in that under most conditions they are true. But because of time and space, no economic theories are axiomatic. They are bounded by reality. This does not mean that they need to be tested. That is a fallacy of positivism. It means that there are always the possibility of conditions under which they may or may not apply, for any given period of time. In axiomatic systems this is never true. That is what defines them as axiomatic.

Operationalism solves the problem of reducing all statements to empirical (observable) and therefore sympathetically testable terms.

Praxeology is either an empirical science for the purpose of determining the rationality of human actions, and the voluntary exchange of property, and therefore it is the test of moral action – or it is another of the many, many, cosmopolitan and continental fallacies.

If you cannot explain human actions as human actions, then you are either unsure of what it is that you speak, or engaging in obscurantist deception. Continental and Cosmopolitan authors were (and are) trying to preserve traditional authority in the face of science, for the purpose of maintaining group homogeneity. We must treat their arguments as specious. Because they are.

All we need is property rights, a contract for their fullest expression enforceable under the private, common, law, and the willingness to organize and use violence for the purpose of obtaining the opportunity to construct those property rights, contract, and private common law.

Everything else is obscurant nonsense.

Science won.

Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute.
Kiev.

WHY DID THE PHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE ONLY PARTLY SUCCEED?

(cross posted for archival purposes)

[D]id you ever read a novel, which you felt passionate about, and thought that the story was enthralling and insightful, then returned years later to re-read it thinking it was ok, but childish? You wonder what you were thinking?

The story didn’t change, you did.

I’ve spent a lot of time on the problems of ethics and politics and found my way to Instrumentalism, Operationalism, and Intuitionism as means of placing higher constraints on our theories (and arguments) such that we are unable to engage in deception and self-deception.

So when I read almost all philosophers, popper included, I have the same reaction to their ‘allegorical’ imaginary arguments, that others would have to even weaker allegorical religious or platonist arguments.

Now, in many cases, you can convey the same relationships (understanding) through supernatural, platonist, abstract imaginary, and operational terms. But the difference in correspondence between your terms and reality is narrowest at the operational end of that spectrum, and widest at the supernatural end.

Popper is one of the best philosophers of the past century. Certainly one who had the most impact upon me. But he had the most impact on me because I am predisposed to think scientifically, and in the manner that he sought to convince us.

Only a minority of us are predisposed to think as such. For those who are not so predisposed, they fail to grasp Popper’s arguments. And unlike other philosophers (Smith and Hume for example) Popper failed to sufficiently articulate his ideas such that one not be predisposed to agree with them. And the evidence confirms this.

The reverse test is also telling: if one cannot articulate poppers ideas operationally, then one merely agrees with them allegorically, but does not understand them operationally. Now, I can articulate CR/CP operationally, but I’m less certain about falsificationary ideas, and I’m less sure about verisimilitude.

If we put popper’s work into the context of ethics and politics, he is in the same position as Taleb, Hayek, and the rest: the moral prohibition on government, is to make small tests and measure the results, rather than large risk-inducing, fragility-creating irreversible programs. However, it is in the interests of the redistributionists, if not all rent-seekers, to do precisely that.

Telling us what NOT to do, is very different from telling us WHAT to do. And this is the problem with taking the philosophy of science, which pursues absolute, most parsimonious theories, in pursue of absolute truth, regardless of time and cost, and applying it to human affairs whose purpose is to outwit the dark forces of time and ignorance at the lowest possible current cost.

[H]uman cooperation requires solutions to the problem of institutions that facilitate our cooperation in ever expanding ways, most quickly, at the lowest cost. To tell us what we should not do, is not very useful in telling us what we should do. But they cannot tell us what we should do, because they failed to solve the problem of the social science. And they failed to solve that problem, because the dramatic increase in the legitimacy of science due to its successes encouraged philosophers to copy the methods and assumptions of science, which does not equilibrate in reaction to investigation, and apply those methods to human cooperation which does equilibrate in reaction to investigation.

As such, Popper remains, largely a moral philosopher. He tells us what not to do. His recommendations are simple enough to apply to the problem of science, which does NOT require complex coordination in real time, and incentives needed to construct a voluntary organization of production. But it is not explanatory enough, that he could provide a solution to the problem of

I suspect that he maintained the error of classical liberalism: “Us and We where there is neither.” Once we abandon that fallacy, politics and ethics are no longer an impossible equation to solve, they are solvable entirely. Because one can calculate means of cooperation, but one cannot calculate ends of cooperation.

So, this is why I have a different perspective from you. To move from A to B is one thing. To move from B to C is another. Popper brings us to B. But in light of the fact that the problem is to bring us to C, he fails, like all other philosophers of his era failed. And we continue to bear the problem of that failure.

I hope that adds some clarity to my position.

Cheers