Introduction to Hoppe's main work [Archive]

Skybird

03-11-13, 06:00 PM

Link to Text (http://mises.org/hoppeintro.asp)

Since in a thread some days ago I mentioned the critical analysis of of democracy (and monarchy) byH.H. Hoppe, and recommended his book, somebody has taken me by the word and picked the book and read it. Obviously he must have read day and night, since he now reported completion in an enthusiastic email to me this late afternoon. :D

He also asked me about a certain website and whether I knew it. Well, I didn't know it, but when checking it out I found there this full reprint of the introduction of the book, "Democracy - The god that failed". The title is reminding of an earlier book of apostates from communism in the middle of last century, that was entitled as "Communism. The failing god", or close to that.

Hoppe is neither a communist nor a monarchist, to leave no doubt on that. He is anti-state and anti-etatist. Even most libertarians take fire by him, since most libertarians nevertheless defend a remaining basic state as a basis - which Hoppe sees as part of the problem that always must lead to growing injustice, socialism and tyranny.

Hoppe is strongest when on the attack, there his full callibre comes to effect in brilliant and logical analysis that leaves little space for evasion or deflection. Onm his recommended solutions that he sees as most liekly to be able to overcome the desastrous solution, I only follow him fully in his thoughts on"sezession", but his idea of private legislation union and free market in the typical naive understanding of libertarians that simply ignore the excesses shown by free markets, I am hesitent still to agree with him, sinc eI see such a system only work in dimensions of communal organisation that are not bigger than those minimal ciomm unity level diemnsion where maybe, possibly, basic democratic principles could work. So, to me Hoppe is best when running the diagnosis of present failling and desintegration. When it comes to remedies, handle him with care, however. I see many preconxitioons needing to be fulfilled for his ideas to work as advertised. Probably too many as if they could ever work as he intends.

The introduction is interesting due to the brief reflection about recent Western history, and how he indicates that he has a reverse view of the positve nature of the change from monarchy to democracy. To Hoppe, this indicates a phase not of growing civilising of human communities, but growing de-civilising. However, as I said, Hoppe is no monarchist, do not be misled there.

The book is 600 pages in its German edition, with many lengthy footnotes. Esoeciallyx the first two chapters are a bit difficult, sicne they are a bit abstract and theoretical, however, the basic sorting of terms that he explains there is essential to undersdtand his logic and hmotives in the later chapters of the book which usually are easier to read. The chapters are autark essays, which could be taken each for themselves, every essay standing alone, but combining with the others.

Hoppe is close to the Austrian-Mises tradition of economy, but does not share Rothbard'S and Mises'S sympatyh for democracy. He teaches economy and I think politics at the university of Nevada in Las Vegas. He still holds German citizenship.

And yes, he is slaughtering the fat golden cow, and very determinedly so. If you prefer to still dream on of democracy being the best of all bad options, and consider it to be just and lawful - don't touch it then. Your idols are unlikely to survive this lecture. Hoppe is the most uncompromised critic and attacker of the institution of states that I have ever read.

LINK (http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363042773&sr=8-1&keywords=Hoppe+democracy)

LINK 2 (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Hoppe&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3AHoppe)

Catfish

03-12-13, 03:26 AM

Skybird

03-12-13, 06:06 AM

Thanks, but imho we do have as much as a democracy as Russia was a communist state (the latter was a dictatorship, and it remains unclear whether this is always the outcome when trying this - the same as if capitalism has to be the way it is - we will probably see the whole economy fall, after globalization is more or less established).

We say the government has been elected by us, but who did we directly elect, and are the wants and needs of the people being followed by the politicians (also what real possibility does a politician have, to overrule its own secret services and their clandestine actions, let alone know of it ?)
And why should the old grand mother in the black forest have the same voting authority (one vote) like a well-studied Dr. of political, state sciences or philosophy ?

You do not contradict Hoppe. Hoppe says that democracy is a tyranny, always (for example the dictate of the majoirty on the minority, we call it decision-making by majority vote), and that it always bases on more redistribution patterns than under a monarchy. He is about the interest of saving private property and treat it so that it grows and survives, to be able to give it to your offsprings. If you have personal value at stake, you care more for something, than if you do deal with something you do not own. That is why democratic leaders are frantic spenders and raise debts and taxes like crazy - they spend money that is not theirs and that they cannot use once they are no longer in office, because it is not theirs. So they make maximum abuse of it as long as their power lasts. Redistribution of this kind always is robbery. Politicians use the robbed money to please demands of the canaille. The canaille demands more, politicians increase taxing and make more debts, to redistribute, and by that getting elected. More and more people become dependent on the gifts by the state, the state goes bankrupt, few and fewer have to pay more and more.

Lots of questions, it's like electing cholera or the plague alright, but which better system would you or Hoppe advise ? Alternatives ?
Statelessness. No state. Local communities acting independent and basing on people forming relations on the basis of private law. The unavoidable minimum of regional administration - due to the small size of community - being grounded on basic democratic principles, but leaving as little to such an administration as possible. People then vote with their feet: if they do not like the market situation in one such small region or do not like the laws and legal rules in place that regulate social interaction, they must not move far to move to another community where there is a different. That way, administrations and regions necessarily would need to compete with each other. It is like this a bit in Switzerland and its Kantone, in the 70s for example I think the region around Zurich split because many people disagreed over something, and a group split away and founded a new Kanton, Jura it was, I think.

Hoppe insists, and I agree since I thought it through, that every democracy is dictatorship by the state, and is pure socialism, so that in the end it necessarily leads to socialist economy, communist state, and collapsing economy and finances in the end. Look at the EU. It has taken over power mechanisms and principles to deceive the people from the GDR and USSR. It looks more like these than 20 years ago I would ever have imagined possible. I am not joking when comparing Western Europe to the former Warsaw Pact states occasionally. When I see our state TV news, its empty phrases and stupid slogans, the language reminds me of what they used to broadcast during GDR-TV's Aktuelle Kamera. Even the language style is the same now.

German readers might like to compare to this: Geld für Claquere - EU setzt neue Standards in Manipulation und Täuschung. (http://sciencefiles.org/2013/03/10/geld-fur-claqueure-eu-kommission-setzt-neue-standards-in-manipulation-und-tauschung/)

The opposite to democracy is not dictatorship or monarchy, but freedom from any state.

Aufgeklärter Absolutismus ?
We pay more taxes than in the middle ages, and we are still reigned by people who think of their people as dumbs and 'Stimmvieh', using propaganda like the media (Fox News etc.) to condition and influence people.

Yes, taxes some 100 years ago were between 5 and 8% of peoples incomes, today are 45-55%. As I just explained Hoppe, democracies tax more and more, to keep their elected politicians in power by making more and more promises that can only be fulfilled temporarily by getting more money - through more taxes and more debts. Democracy means massive and ever increasing mismanagement and unscrupulous abuse of the public property that is not owned by politicians, but the public. If all own everything, nobody owns anything he feels responsibility for, and so everybody grabs as much as he can, and runs. Sociology knows this problem under a special name, I think it is called the problem of the Alm: if several farmers share possession of a meadow, and use turns to use it to feed their cattle on it, than everybody can use it for a limited time only. So in this time he tries to maximize his profit from it by letting as many cattle eat from it as possible. And the next... And the next... Hopeless overgrazing is the result, to the loss of all. Meadow gone. Cattle dying. Farmers dying. That is where we are today in the Western democracies. We have overgrazed the Alms we live by. The cattle is ourselves. The farmers is the leaders we have voted for.

Different a monarch. Owning his land and property, he has a very personal interest to protect his property, to let it foster and blossom, so he will limit taxation, where he is wise, to encourage and stimulate trade and attract wise thinkers and good artists increasing his fame. That was what Germany was before unification, when there were some 30 or 40 small kingdoms on German grounds, who all competed with each other for the best composers, painters, bridge builders, farming experts, and so on. It was the blossoming of German culture. It declined once Germany got united and turned into one national state.

Of course, bad monarchs who are greedy but stupid, will ruin it. They will try to finance wars of conquest, and by that ruin their property: country and its inhabitants. There is no remedy against bad leaders. Point is, democracy has no remedy against bad leaders as well. It seems, if I look around today, that democracy has bad leaders not as exceptions form the rule, but as the rule itself. We have democracy producing bad leaders everywhere, from beginning on. Leaders must not have any interest to deal careful with the communal property, because they do not own it: all own it, thus nobody owns it. The interest of the democratically elected leader is to make hay while the sun shines, to abuse his grab on legislation to increase his chances to get reelected by redistributing private property of private people even more: so that the canaille elects him again, the big group of parasites. That not only the rich but also the people pay in the end, many seem to not be aware of, maybe because it is more distant in time than the immediate profit. That is why Hoppe says it was no civilizational leap forward when democratic republican order took over the helm from monarchies after WWI, but it was a leap backwards. I must agree with him on that. The ruinous state the Western democracies are in, unsurvivable and unmaintainable, speaks volumes. Economies not worth the name, but being cadavers linked to life support machines. Finances hanging on the drip of heartblood that gets taken from the next generation who have their lifes sucked out of them to support the current misery just a little bit longer.

But what bothers me most - you said close to Mises ? Is the Austrian Mr. Mises not the one who said that National Socialism would be the same as socialism, along with a lot of other nonsense the US libertarians so like to embrace ?

I do not know that and do not know much about Mises, I also would not judge him on the basis of just one quote. Mises was part of the socalled Austrian school of economics, a very influential tradition. Hoppe is close to classical libertarians for sure, but he distances himself from them also, saying that most libertarians still hold ideas about a democratic state. And that is for Hoppe the beginning of all misery, this democratic state - or any state at all, this monopole of administration for dictating people what they are allowed to do and what not, with ever more rules strangling them (as we see today, we are hopelessly overregulated, and still they push more laws down our throat) and with ever climbing taxes and robbing of socalled wealthy people and socialist redistribution, which has a very demotivating effect on people, it strips them off their competitiveness, their creativity, their initiative, and more and more people turn into parasites, and few and fewer have to pay for that.

I here also link to another book I have mentioned before, Christian Ortner: Prolokratie. Blows into the same horn, but focusses more on how bad it is if you let people vote who cannot differ between the number of letters in BMW and AUDI, but every four years are being given the - minimum - opportunity to influence complex issues like taxing, state finances, economic question, future policies, without knowing sh!t about anything of that. Since ancient Greece, many philosophers and artists and thinkers said again and again that democracy means the tyranny of the uneducuted mob, the "Pöbel", the canaille. They are right. I try to discourage people from voting, as you may have noted, my argument being that they legitimise a rotten system by that no matter what party they vote for, and that parties mean nothing in net outcome. But in principle I am even more radical: I am against any general right to vote. Only people having private wealth at stake should be allowed to vote, people who in net effect contribute more to a society than they take from it, and who are actually showing a minimum level of general education so that they can even assess the highly complex stuff they are voting on. People who take more in net effect than they give, will just vote so that they can suck more life juice at other people'S cost, without any sense of responsibility for the whole communal context, they do not give a damn. They will, that is the translated subtitle of Ortner's "Prolokratie", democratically vote the state into bankruptcy.

I know how all right wingers embrace this idea, but it unfortunately is nonsense.
Hoppe shares views with libertarians, and many of the amerian foundign fathers can be described as liobertarians better than as anythign else. However, as I said, his basic idea is anti-etatism and non-statehood. And as I said in the opening post, Hoppe is best when attacking the current system and analysing it, his analysis is brilliant and intellectually irresistable. When he describes his views of how a free market between rivalling small communities will all by itself settle things, I am becoming more cautious, however. The belief in the totally unregulated free market I have always seen as somewhatg naive, and the pst years have shown us where total unregulated markets lead: abuse. Becaseu capitalism leads to monopolism, and if oyu let people vote by their feet so that they move into anbother small community where they like the rules better, monopolists from several such regions will form up cartels.

Maybe this "race" is a problem for which no solution exists. I do not believe in this kind of opportunistic optimism that for every problem there necessarily must be a solution, I think there are problems that cannot be solved, because whatever exists always has two sides, and everything carries the seed of its own self-destruction within itself. The everlasting and unavoidable tragedy of this polaristic thinking of ours.

Hoppe also points out that democracies are so slow moving in decision making and even slower in chnaing fundamentals of thinking and practicing, that they might be too suicidal to deal with challenges of critical nature, especially regarding their own survival in the future. Centralised governments have the capacity to act much faster and with greater detemrination in reaction to events. That is the great temptation of centralism, though a dangerous one. The EU's groiwng centraism however, is a carricature of it, since it is no competent leadership sitting in the central nest making the decisions. The central committee may be able to produces legally binding proposals fast - but whether they are competently done and have good intentions, is something totally different. And what I think of their competence, you should know by now. I would line up these corrupt suckers against the wall immediately. And that is no joke at all - if I could have my way, all heads of the EU institutions and the decision makers and the representatives and commissioners would loose their heads before this day is over. The charges would be the same for all: corruption, conspiracy against the people, high treason, forming of criminal organisations. - And all people in Europe voluntarily going to elections, would get a good, solid spanking on their bare bottoms.

Sailor Steve

03-12-13, 12:03 PM

The 'Stateless' state sounds good in principle, but I have some observations of my own. If there is no State, how to the communities interact with communities in what are now other countries? The United States originally tried to have individual smaller groups (the States) but were told by other established nations (Britain, France and Russia) that they would only deal with a unified central government. This was partly what led to our Constitution. If one nation followed the prescribed route and others didn't, how would the smaller communities deal with that?

Throughout history nations have been created by individuals who gathered followers, put togethere armies and dominated their neighbors, then their neighbors, until they had an empire. How would individual communities oppose the strong man?

It seems to me that Madison's statement, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary" holds true here. Such a thing might work, but how would it resist someone who created power of his own to subjugate the populace?

My biggest question is how would this all be put into effect? When the United States came into being the need for a strong central government was recognized as a necessary evil. I can see how it could work, but how would people be convinced to try it in the first place?

03-12-13, 12:08 PM

Sounds like going back to tribal times.

Skybird

03-12-13, 01:30 PM

The 'Stateless' state sounds good in principle, but I have some observations of my own. If there is no State, how to the communities interact with communities in what are now other countries?

On the basis of private relations and legal agreements for the most, and by small regional local communities competing for citizens wanting to live there - citizens that are free to move and to vote for living and working conditions by their feet. the real question is how in an era of big nationals tates, supra-national organisations and growing totalitarianism and centralism in Western nations, such ideas could succeed. Hoppe says: secession is the way to follow, but what if the central government does not accept that without putting up a violent fight? And let'S not be mistaken, governments will set up a fight if you queston their very basis on which they exist.

I doubt that it could go as reasonable and peacefully as Hioppoe maybe indicates. There is a reason why revolutions often are so bloody and violent - because peacefully a no longer wanted establishment does not give up its privileges, and it has tailored the rules of the running system since toi long to serve its interests to defend this power.

Another thing is that nothing will happen if people do not understand these things and are willing to get off their democracy-.drunken azzes and stand up against the reign of the very system itself - the system that they have learned to absue themselves, to take away their freedoms in exchnage for being nannied, etc.

So the real precondition in the end is that people understand how the status quo is ruining us all and that we will end in a malstrom if we do not break out. Th belief that democracy is the best form of government, roots deep in present man, and especially in America. It is a very big pill to swallow to see and understands that it is not, but in total summary is worse than the monarchy system that ruled before.

The United States originally tried to have individual smaller groups (the States)
I think thes eocmmunitie levels still are way too big. Mind you. in population sizes some of these states equal one European national state.

I think in community sizes of low thousands at max. Hoppe maybe more. Jarred Diamond, who also outlined that democracy can only work in very small community sizes beyond which it necessarily must fail, probably would favour smaller ones. I think that modern communication technology maybe allows us to slighty increase the size limit - if only we would show the ablity to use out hitech for slightly less childish main purposes thna we do today, consuming technoloy for entertainment and using only small part of the educational and administration levels it could offer us. In this regard I see very great potential - and great risks if we are not aware of the dangers. I am for technology, I absolutly am, but I do not share this blind n trusting hyper-optimism that we are beign fed with regarding technology.

I cannot give loyu a detialed answer, Steve, I have none, and Hoppe also does not offer a full-featured blueprint. We are too huge nations, and too many people. Evertyhing, in all regards: too much, too big, too huge, too many. So far, Hoppe or my opinions, still rank as theoretical work only. Whether it will ever turn true, I do not know. I'm pessimistic.

I also do not know whether these ideas coulöd ever work. But I believe I know quite certain now that if we stay with our current ways, we will be doomed, on so many levels.

but were told by other established nations (Britain, France and Russia) that they would only deal with a unified central government.
A strong unified centralised government with the monopole to enforce its will on the people existed only since the civil war.

This was partly what led to our Constitution. If one nation followed the prescribed route and others didn't, how would the smaller communities deal with that?
The state'S lacking self-justification is a very principle problem and doe snot depend on the question whether it is a monarchy, a military dictatorship or a democracy. State always means tyranny. So the question of how small communities would interact with great states, comes down to the question of how to abandon states globally, no matter for the form of government in these states.

Throughout history nations have been created by individuals who gathered followers, put togethere armies and dominated their neighbors, then their neighbors, until they had an empire. How would individual communities oppose the strong man?
Indeed. Maybe countries like Norway and Switzerland can serve as a hint. Especially Switzerland gets mentioned again and again.

It seems to me that Madison's statement, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary" holds true here. Such a thing might work, but how would it resist someone who created power of his own to subjugate the populace?
Subjugation demands two: the one who subjugates,m and the other who allows to get subjugated. Obviously, education and the influence of community play a role here.

For us modern Wetserners, it starts with coming to clear assessment of this thing that we see as our golden cow: democracy. As long as we do not even do the first step and just live on the ground as seeing it as the best that could happen to us, we must no make plans on whwere we will be once we have completed what probbaly will be a very long and stormy journey. I cannot imaginbe thta this journey could proceed without serious conflict, violence and probbaly even civil wars. I do not know what Hoppe would say on that. Mind you, he sees it from the perspective of a theoretician. and I admitted already that he is at the peak of his convincibility when diagnosing the present and the way that led us to where we are. On his remedies I am not so sure, and I do not know how they could be reached, or if they even could work at all. I believe to know that we must try, however. Staying with what we have, will spell desaster for us.

My biggest question is how would this all be put into effect? When the United States came into being the need for a strong central government was recognized as a necessary evil. I can see how it could work, but how would people be convinced to try it in the first place?
How could it work differently than in the way I am trying - by mouth-to-mouth convincing, interpersonal discussion that tries to sow doubt in people's mind? I do not believe that it makes any sense at all to form a party and trying to come to government - that runs the game by established rules that will lead nowhere. I speak with people in my real life, I try to challenge their views. I'm killing their nerves, especially in internet fora. :) I try to lead them to not to vote, to disrespect state authorities, to find ways of civil disobedience. I try to catch their attention by arguments, texts, books. I want people to not take the current situation for granted, and not to puit their trust in parties and demicracy, and I want people starting to ask questions and to lower their demands and expecations. You must not tell me how small the success rate is, and still - I see no other way than this. That is my way of being political, and you can be political only on the very basic level: when you tlak to the one person whose face is right in front of you. Everything else - is not politics but ,manipulation and propaganda. I think the turn must come form the people, from the social grassroots, by education and information. We have nothing good to expect from parties and governments, they are more interested in their own interests to stay in power and rob our wealth to survive a little longer before it all collapses.

Hm. Re-reading it I realise I sound a bit pathetic, but I cannot help it, I am not sure how to say it any different. Since many years I feel and realise a growing discomfort and sense of alertness in myself. I see how spendings grow, how debts grow, I see how our social realities change, our social rules fail, our communal integrity desintegrates, our freedoms get sold away, our liberties get limited, our rights get cut back, our opinions get manipulated, and how we turn into what 20 years ago we considered to have "defeated" - the ways and the system of the eastern Block states. But we have not really won, we are falling ourselves now, our system "democracy" shows its failure more and more openly and obviously. The price makes itself felt to more and more of us.

We need to get some basic acts together and correct some terrible mistakes we fell for - but I am not certain that we even have sufficient time left. There are other players ion the world coming to power, and although they are economically successful, they are not democratic at all, which makes another one of our wrong assumptions go flying out of the window.

In the end, the only thing that is acceptable to be given the right to rule, the the rule of the law, or "a" law. For economic fostering and legal stability, the law is far more important than democratic basic order, or even individual freedom. Many people live in un-freedom, from our perspective, but are happy as long as they enjoy some basic material wellbeing. In the Wets however we must realise how in the name of protecting democracy, democracy takes more and more rights away from us and legal insecurity grows by every quarter because some new government her,e some new lobby group there, or the EU comes with new suggestions, proposals and new laws that change the laws that yesterday were valid and that we yesterday founded our decision son that we made.

A stable legal system and the rule of law is far more important than democracy. Democracy does not lead to justice and legal stability - it ruins legal stability and justice - especially social justice, because growing redistribution destroy social justice.

Sorry if all this sounds as if I am just thinking loud. It's okay, because it seems that that indeed is what I do. :know:

Edit. I am not just reflkecting on Hoppe. I also refer to the writings of Leopold Kohr, and in parts E.F. Schumacher. They too reiterated the importance of focussing on small local regions as the core cells of government and administration, and organising economies there instead on national and supranational levels. The latter simply are too big, and cannot be controlled, and start to live a life of there own, and act by a will of their own. Not good.

Takeda Shingen

03-12-13, 02:21 PM

How could it work differently than in the way I am trying - by mouth-to-mouth convincing, interpersonal discussion that tries to sow doubt in people's mind? I do not believe that it makes any sense at all to form a party and trying to come to government - that runs the game by established rules that will lead nowhere. I speak with people in my real life, I try to challenge their views. I'm killing their nerves, especially in internet fora. :) I try to lead them to not to vote, to disrespect state authorities, to find ways of civil disobedience. I try to catch their attention by arguments, texts, books. I want people to not take the current situation for granted, and not to puit their trust in parties and demicracy, and I want people starting to ask questions and to lower their demands and expecations. You must not tell me how small the success rate is, and still - I see no other way than this. That is my way of being political, and you can be political only on the very basic level: when you tlak to the one person whose face is right in front of you. Everything else - is not politics but ,manipulation and propaganda. I think the turn must come form the people, from the social grassroots, by education and information. We have nothing good to expect from parties and governments, they are more interested in their own interests to stay in power and rob our wealth to survive a little longer before it all collapses.

But what you fail to realize is that it makes you the missionary at the door, asking if we have found Jesus. It is your radio that is too loud, as you are attempting conversion that is not wanted. You have become the very thing that you claim to hate.

August

03-12-13, 02:48 PM

On the basis of private relations and legal agreements

What legal agreements? No government means no law remember?. No one to write the laws and no one to enforce them if they were written. What you seem to be advocating here is a feudal system of city states who will constantly be at war with each other until one city defeats the rest and imposes their will.

Skybird

03-12-13, 06:02 PM

LINK: The Idea of a Private Law Society (http://mises.org/daily/2265)

August

03-12-13, 06:46 PM

LINK: The Idea of a Private Law Society (http://mises.org/daily/2265)

Doesn't answer the question. No law can exist without an authority to enforce it. This private law society lacks all authority and would quickly crumble into anarchy.

Sailor Steve

03-12-13, 08:01 PM

I like the idea, as an idea. The biggest problem I see is the same one all governments face - that they can only be their best if people are perfect, or close to it. I wish I had an answer.

Don't forget that Sky freely admitted that this is all theoretical. Within that context it merits discussion.

Cybermat47

03-12-13, 08:15 PM

What legal agreements? No government means no law remember?. No one to write the laws and no one to enforce them if they were written. What you seem to be advocating here is a feudal system of city states who will constantly be at war with each other until one city defeats the rest and imposes their will.

Thank you for describing the rise of the Roman Empire and thus most of western culture :up:

Skybird

03-12-13, 09:34 PM

I like the idea, as an idea. The biggest problem I see is the same one all governments face - that they can only be their best if people are perfect, or close to it. I wish I had an answer.

To stay in Hoppe'S analogy, Crusoe did not need neither law nor government as loing as he stayed alone on his island. Crusoe and Friday still did not need a government when they had to deal with each other. The social context was that of a cxommunity - two people - that was so small that a government was not needed to oversee their interaction.

Hoppe argues that if communities are small enough that they leave people free of control by any state, needed monitoring of rules of interaction people in that community basicö-demoicratically gareed on would be ovberwatched by private service contractors providing that funciton on the grounds of sa commercial deal. That seems to be the basic principle behind his "private law society".

If people in such a community do not like the rules people agreed on, or the conditions by which deals and financial transactions - goods for money or money for work - get done, they move from one community tot he next one, a close neighbour which is because communities are so small. This seems to happen a lot in Switzerland, a high fluctuation of local populations if the single Kantons do not represent well enough the living cinditions people do like to live in.

Again, a government is not needed for all that. Like you also do not need a giovernment when handling the social interaciton in your huge family, for exmaple.

Every state is a tyranny, no matter who got in control by what mechnaism, demciractic eleciton or monarchy, it alsways is an entity that to differening degrees parasitically lives by the many and claims the right to enforce rules and imposoe them on people at cost of their self-determination and freeedom. The govenrment says: "taxes", and people have to pay taxes". The goivenrment says "law", and people have to live by laws. The monarch has an interest to do both in a way that the whole - which is his private possession - is blossoming, he uses his own property to foster it (if he is wise). The democratic govenrment does not posess anything, but is given tools and means (tax income and legislation power) for limited time only, so it will try to make maximum preofit from it, and you end with the problem of the Alm, as explained earlier in this thread. A respknsible monarchy will tax less and be careful with laws to let trade and private intiiave blossom. A democratric or dictatorial government, which in the endis the same , will also tax, but more and more over time, and will help to increase the number of laws that reuglate and limit freedom.

That is why Hoppe is no monarchist, in his own words. Both government tax and limit freedom, they only vary in the intensity of their efforts - with the democracy performing for the worse record.

Note that he also hints at how the change from monarchies to democracies turned wars from being waged over questions of private possession to wars over ideologies, brutalizing warfare and resulting in the ultimate confrontation between monarchies and republics in WWII. Like before the idea of religious wars made war much worse, the clash of now two ideologies deleted the inhibitions of trying to save one'S own (Royal) property, because where that property is not at stake because one does not own it,. one can hack away with much less self-limitation - one is not fighting for property, but ideology again. Hoppe mentions somewhere that Wilson and his administration did have reservations about the German emperor, but that they really HATED the Austrian monarchy, because more than any other it represented everything that monarchy stands for, plus it had shown sympathy with the Mexican "incident". Since then at the latest it was clear for the new American republic, that monarchies had to be rooted out worldwide - and that was the mission Wilson embarked on then. And that is why the monarchies had to fall in Europe one by one, either by getting mutilated (Austria), pressed down (Germany) or moving into representative functions only where they did not hold any power anymore (Scandinavia etc). To later hold close alliances with totalitarian regimes like that of Stalin, was not only the "lesser evil", it also resulted form a situation of clashing ideas in WWI that without that war would not have emerged at all, and, as Hoppe describes, most likely would have prevented the Nazis to come to power, WWII, Stalinism, the economic fall of Eastern Europe. Without all that, you would have had a nationalistic but nevertheless reasonable and moderate German kingdom and Austria as a center of cultural life that was unique at its time an rich in colour and diversity, wealth and general success. Imperial Vienna was the place to be, wasn't it, for artists, intellectuals, scientists, bankers, business entrepreneurs - everybody who considered himself worthy and being of name and fame. - But with Austria surviving as such an influential culture, there would not have been the dawning of the American century - which may have helped to motivate Wilson. :) From isolationjism to global influence - the European monarchies and especial,y Austria were in the was. They had to go.

Hoppe - and meanwhile me too - doubts that the overall gain in social, civil, and material welath in europe since then until today, is what it could have been if Europe would not have gone republican. I I look at the world today, I see the accelerating spreading of totakitarian control and the collpase of our welath. Me may have shown for some decades, but th shine all was on tick,, and obviously we build our palaces on quick sand. What we achieved thus was not meant to stay. And here we are, drowning in debts and burdens and a world totally off balance.

I feel a rapidly growing discomfort with our system since six, seven years. But not before one or two years ago I have started to put the many pieces and loose ends together. The puzzle is not yet complete, but the picture becomes clearer, slowly. And I do not like what it shows. Hoppe I did discover not before early Spring last year. Felt relief to read his analysis, helping me to finally come to terms with what confused me before because it seemd not connected in details and contradictory. But it isn't many different issues, it is just various aspects of one and the same issue. Felt like being less isolated in my thoughts.

Oberon

03-12-13, 09:46 PM

August

03-12-13, 10:05 PM

Thank you for describing the rise of the Roman Empire and thus most of western culture :up:

Indeed every empire and culture our species has ever created. It's just who we are and utopian ideals like that never work because of it.

Takeda Shingen

03-12-13, 10:32 PM

Coming back to the Crusoe analogy, what is there to stop Crusoe from smashing Fridays head open with a rock because he wanted his coconut?

And there you have it. Anarcho-capitalism is great until you have your first murder. Then what happens to the murderer? Is he killed? If so, by whom? Is he detained? If so, by whom? Does he get a trial? How? By what method? With what consequence? What if he flees to the next community? He didn't murder anyone there, so is he bound by the same law? Is one community obliged to extradite him so that he may face trial?

In a larger society with policing the knowledge of potential punishment by an external source provides the deterrent, however if that overarcing governance is removed then absolute freedom is indeed obtained but that absolute freedom gives people the opportunity to commit acts of good and of great evil alike.

Exactly. After all of this dreaming we still have the need for overarching laws to govern the behavior of individuals. Going further, what happens when when two communities cannot agree on a geographical boundary? We've got two private law systems, how will they agree? We either have bloodshed or a higher system of common law that allows for disputes to be resolved without violence. And if we have the common law, how is that legal entity staffed? To whom are they answerable? How is the solution enforced, and by whom? We end up right back at where we are now.

No, democracy is not a perfect system, which is the argument presented. However, anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-socialism, anarcho-anything doesn't even make it off the drawing board. The holes are so numerous and so large that anyone can see them. It's the worst type of academic work; sloppy garbage that gives people in my profession a bad name.

Hottentot

03-13-13, 01:09 AM

Thank you for describing the rise of the Roman Empire and thus most of western culture :up:

Except that the Romans were a society that deeply believed in making pacts and agreements and especially during its early days relied on diplomacy and laws more than to the strength of arms. "Roman legions smash everything LOL" is a one-sided myth.

Tribesman

03-13-13, 03:01 AM

And there you have it. Anarcho-capitalism is great until you have your first murder. Then what happens to the murderer? Is he killed? If so, by whom? Is he detained? If so, by whom? Does he get a trial? How? By what method? With what consequence? What if he flees to the next community? He didn't murder anyone there, so is he bound by the same law? Is one community obliged to extradite him so that he may face trial?
A good example of community/tribal society would be the spate of drug rapes that hit the Amish communities in South America.
In the end they had no options left but to hand over their rapists to the government and ask the state to solve their problem.

Bilge_Rat

03-13-13, 04:51 AM

"It has been said that Democracy is the worst form of Government except all the others that have been tried"

- Winston Churchill

Skybird

03-13-13, 07:51 AM

Coming back to the Crusoe analogy, what is there to stop Crusoe from smashing Fridays head open with a rock because he wanted his coconut?
In a larger society with policing the knowledge of potential punishment by an external source provides the deterrent, however if that overarcing governance is removed then absolute freedom is indeed obtained but that absolute freedom gives people the opportunity to commit acts of good and of great evil alike.

You have not read the link on Private Law Society. A state is not needed to have a security service working for the overwatching and monitoring of rules that the local community agreed on. It's just that the community is small enough to decide int he rules itself in a more basic-democratic understanding, and the laws not formed up by a government. Instead of giving a monopole for force and executive power to a political caste that in a democracy, for the already explained reasons, has an inbuilt interest to abuse its power due to the limited time it is available to it and because politicians have no private property at stake but only waste the property of other people, security becomes a service item that you order and pay for like you pay a craftsman for painting your wall, a baker to bake bread or a trainer to train you in something. This is what is meant with private law society. Hoppe refers to it also as "natural order".

Obviously, it cannot be allowed that companies providing such services become so big that they no longer offer their service under the valid rules, but that they can actually make the rules. In other words, the corruption of power and the forming of monopoles. Both size of companies and size of communities must stay that limited that the population of the community can oversee the general developments and actions taken, and can then vote against something people do not like by moving into a neighbouring community with different rules. What you get is a competition between communities to be attractive for people.

It is of the essence I think, that we say good-by to this idea of thinking that bigger always is better. It is not. The bigger the system, the more complex it is, the more options there are for hiding corruption and abuse. Transparency depends on system dimensions that are such that it does not take an elitist caste or informed insiders to "interpret the signs", but that people with ordinary solid education can see the links and contexts, can see how the action of others of their community effects themselves, and how their own actions effect the others. This alone sets rigorous size limits to communities.

Service companies must be prevented form becoming so big that they can form monopoles that enables them to dictate the conditions to the community. while people can vote with their feet and move elsewhere, monopolist companies of several communities may be tempted to form up a cartel, a mega-monopoly that dictates conditions to not just one but several communities. Obviously, this is no desirable condition.

Service like a "privatized police" are needed only for the very obvious violation of common sense rules in this model. Many other rules for business contracts, social interaction and social self-organisation can be left to the participating people in place, it doe snot take a state to tell them what rules they must follow. Communities can only blossom when sufficient people want to live min them, it is in the very own interest of communities to be attractive for people, and thus: to compete with others.

LINK with subtitles, 3 minutes: Germany's fall began with the founding of the national state.

I think that excerpt is from this longer program. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gn0cLvkzHU) But I admit I have not watched it all.

I took me quite some time to come around to an old argument by Steve which he raised very early, in some forgotten discussion years ago. Steve said something like this: state all nice and well, but why trusting in that politicians are the better managers, enabling them to define good and solid rules of regulations? He was and is right. Even before that, Neal once said something like that, too, asking me why I thought that politicians would be handling business rules better than the corrupted economic leaders that at that time I was attacking. Next he perplexed me with the simple question why people should pay taxes (which back then I still took for granted...) Hehe, those were the days... :) Now, Hoppe in general questions that in a democracy politicians ever could have an interest to serve the common good, the common sense reason, the bets longterm interest. He argues it is the explicit interest of democratically elected politicians to abuse the system. Because they do now own its properties, but have only limited time in which they can make use of its resources. So they make hay while the sun shines. They make expensive promises that should get them reelected (as long as the people do not realise that debts and interests in the future will be even ore expensive). They bribe the people with giving them back taxes - that before had been robbed from the people on grounds of that the state should have the authority to do so. Why should it? Why not leaving the question whether that school gets build, that highway or railway gets build, to those people being effected by it - the people living right in place?

International relations, some may say. Well, everybody is free to travel, to visit places that he wants to visit and where his presence is tolerated. But international globalised trade: must we build TVs in Japan and have them shipped around the globe to the US - can the Us manufacturers not build TV themselves? Why must butter from Ireland be delivered to Holland, Dutch butter to Germany, German butter to Denmark, and Danish butter to Ireland? Why must German potato farmers fear for their existence when their sales drop because somebody thinks it is a clever idea to help the Egyptians by buying Egyptian potatoes and ship them to Germany? Germany is drowning in potatoes, the whole damn EU does. What kind of frikking madness is all this? "Freedom"...? No, parasitism. The parasitism coming from people forcing themselves into the middle position. A wants to buy from B, but here comes C, taking A's money and a fee and handing the money to B, and taking B's item for a fee and giving it to A. That is nice where A and B live a good distance apart and C can offer the needed transportation. But it still only makes sense when B's goods and items are something that A does not have and cannot produce. Sending Green tea from asia to Europe, makes sense, we cannot plant green tea in Middle Europe. But shipping butter from Denmark to Austria makes no sense at all or potatoes from Egypt to Germany makes no sense at all. International trade should focus on items that are rare, while items everybody has or can produce himself must not be shipped around at all.

The rules by which this form of trade is handled, again do njot need government, but can be organised and settled by the participating partners: the Japanese regional community producing the tea, and the European local community ordering it. The shipping company can settle the contract for transportation with the partner in negotiations that need to government and no politicians. If people think it becomes too expensive, they will not agree to a deal. Where is a state needed that robs taxes and claims the right to limit people'S freedoms? The longer i think about it, the less I can see any such need.

Like democracy always leads to growing totalitarianism and socialism, capitalism always wants to turn into monopolism, one has to ensure that this does not happen, with enforcing conditions for basic minimums of competition never beeing bypassed or eroded and violated. Transparency< and limited dimension/size of companies and communities and administrating structure I consider to be vital here.

Even cases of military defence against the inevitable evil-doers and conquerers can be handled this way, though there is a risk. A huge cooperation between many regional communities is needed to organise a military defence effort powerful enough to repel any thread by an aggressor. The mere size of such an effort holds risks to the construction of communities that are designed to be not as big but as small as possible. We recall the times when mercenary armies in Europe helped to keep wars alive and prevent peace, because thy made their living by fighting wars, not earning money when there was peace. So, there is a critical point. Right now, I have no satisfying complete solution. I could point at the Hanse alliance that was a very powerful trading alliance of over 200 cities around the Baltic with my beloved city of Lübeck being the capital - but also maintained the privatised military forces needed to protect itself and its trading routes.

The EU is the opposite, the total opposite of all this. It claims more and more rights for itself, and wants more and more control over national taxes, and wants more and more of these taxes for itself. It regulates people to death, and produces an overboarding flood of laws and regulations that strangle us and tell us what to do, what to think and what to say. Commissioners release rules just because as commissioners they are expected to release rules. Commissions departments get build not because they are needed but because every nation should have one. that'S why the EU has - how many? 28 commission departments now? And they claim to fight against bureaucracy...? The EU claims totalitarian control over our private issues and private lives. And it tries to keep itself alive by grabbing more and more of people'S savings and rights and freedoms. That is not only totalitarianism - the redistribution it runs also ironically is truly socialistic where the money flows into the planned channels, and it is pure corruption and abuse where it ends in dark channels and for bribery. On national levels, it runs the same way, only that the EU administration has no legitimation whatever to speak on behalf of 500 million people, while governments got elected, which is not really a compliment from my point of view - no compliment for the voters, I mean. It's like freely and voluntarily choose which criminal you want to break into your home and steal your jewels when you are not there, and it is as if you are choosing which fraudster you prefer to lie to you and trick you into a thimblerig match where you will get ripped off. By making your vote, you legitimise them to rob you, no matter your choice.

A last argument against democracy, that has become very evident in the euro crisis, but also in German inner politics and any national policy in any state, is that of the stable reliability of the law. Where you have a government democratically elected that is aiming by definition to stay in power by abusing the system and ruining the state for the community, the law cannot be trusted as a long term basis on which to make long-termed decisions, maybe even very costly decisions. A law is a rule made by the legislation, the government. The next government can scrap it with one woooosh with the red pencil. And actually, that is what is happening all the time. In Germany, we have many such short-interval changes when it comes to pensions. Ecological regulations. Tax regulations. Investment regulations. The history of the Euro is a perfect, flawless parade of broken promises, violations of laws, bendings of the law, violation of treaties, changing additions to a treaty afterwards, and eroding the already mutilated result. I am surprised that companies still dare to found new factories and enterprises in an environment that legally is s instable and unpredictable as that we have over here, with an every greedy EU commissions produces a never-ending plethora of more and more regulations and micro-regulations - and some Eu players threatening openly to expropriate company's rights that result from the status of "private property".

I agree completely with Hoppe where he says that democracy is neither a precondition to economic prosperity - see the many emerging economies that are wealthy, have less debts and are anything but democratic -, nor is democracy the precondition the come to a state of law and order - democracies tend to erode law and order, while having been emerging on the basis of law and order that existed before. And in many places, people are not so much craving for what Westerners understand as individual freedom -. they want to live in conformity with their cultural habits, and want to enjoy a relative amount of pragmatic freedom and a moderate amount of material wealth. Democracy does by far not top the list of most-wanted political virtues in the world!

Skybird

03-13-13, 07:54 AM

"It has been said that Democracy is the worst form of Government except all the others that have been tried"

- Winston Churchill

Oh these never changing reflexes. :)

Now think that through. The last part of that sentence ("except the others...") often is mistaken by people to be a defence of democracy by relativising the criticism of the first part. But it isn't.

What Churchill did by these words, was this: slamming ALL forms of governments by declaring them all as unsuitable.

Churchill also said this:

The best argument against democracy is having a five minute talk with just any ordinary voter.

Who wnats to vote, should have pri8vate prooerty at stake. He should contribute more to the community than he gets back from it. He should not live by it and hang on itsa drip. He should be qualified and educated enough to oversee coplex economical, fiscal and other poltrial issues of high complexity and information density.

That's why I finally found a personal position of being against a general right to vote. If you let every uneducated unqualified incompetent dillettant Peter and Paul vote, you get uneducated, incompetent, dilletant politics. No surprise.

In the first German federal state, the SPD and the Green - in an attempt to battle massive rates of desinterest and loss of voters by cosmetical manipulation of statistics - have lowered the voting age from 18 to 16.

It is so very easy to look through this underhanded move.

Tribesman

03-13-13, 08:15 AM

That's why I finally found a personal position of being against a general right to vote.
So you are talking about one of the previous forms which Churchill said is worse.
You didn't think it through did you.
Since you clearly cannot think on such simple informational issues you have by your own words banned yourself from any input on complex issues.
You are duly appointed as a lowly rightless serf in your glorious new world order:haha:

Bilge_Rat

03-13-13, 08:17 AM

"It has been said that capitalism is the worst form of economy except all the others which have been tried"

-Bilge Rat with apologies to a great englishman. :D

Takeda Shingen

03-13-13, 08:49 AM

You have not read the link on Private Law Society. A state is not needed to have a security service working for the overwatching and monitoring of rules that the local community agreed on. It's just that the community is small enough to decide int he rules itself in a more basic-democratic understanding, and the laws not formed up by a government. Instead of giving a monopole for force and executive power to a political caste that in a democracy, for the already explained reasons, has an inbuilt interest to abuse its power due to the limited time it is available to it and because politicians have no private property at stake but only waste the property of other people, security becomes a service item that you order and pay for like you pay a craftsman for painting your wall, a baker to bake bread or a trainer to train you in something. This is what is meant with private law society. Hoppe refers to it also as "natural order".

So when that murderer runs we've got to hire Skybird's private bounty service to hunt this man down and exact justice upon him. And I assume that we'd have to pay in gold, because there is no system of organized currency. The only resource that my immediate locale has is lumber, so I suppose the only way I am going to survive in this new utopia is to become a logger. With only four households (communities must be as small as possible), we're not going to have a whole lot of logging output. So what happens when we can't afford the bounty hunters? Moreover, how does the next feudal kingdom down the road react when corporate assassins that they didn't hire arrive and shoot the place up as they go after that murderer?

It doesn't work.

Obviously, it cannot be allowed that companies providing such services become so big that they no longer offer their service under the valid rules, but that they can actually make the rules. In other words, the corruption of power and the forming of monopoles. Both size of companies and size of communities must stay that limited that the population of the community can oversee the general developments and actions taken, and can then vote against something people do not like by moving into a neighbouring community with different rules. What you get is a competition between communities to be attractive for people.

If companies have to stay small, where is the power coming from? Who owns the infastructure? Or are we all supposed to go neo-luddite? How are roads going to get cleared? Are 1500 little feudal kindgoms each going to be responsible for 1/4 of a mile of the highway that intersects their territory? How are four families supposed to clear these roads ourselves?

It is of the essence I think, that we say good-by to this idea of thinking that bigger always is better. It is not. The bigger the system, the more complex it is, the more options there are for hiding corruption and abuse. Transparency depends on system dimensions that are such that it does not take an elitist caste or informed insiders to "interpret the signs", but that people with ordinary solid education can see the links and contexts, can see how the action of others of their community effects themselves, and how their own actions effect the others. This alone sets rigorous size limits to communities.

Service companies must be prevented form becoming so big that they can form monopoles that enables them to dictate the conditions to the community. while people can vote with their feet and move elsewhere, monopolist companies of several communities may be tempted to form up a cartel, a mega-monopoly that dictates conditions to not just one but several communities. Obviously, this is no desirable condition.

As I hinted at above, you're going to need big companies, and more than a few of them.

Service like a "privatized police" are needed only for the very obvious violation of common sense rules in this model. Many other rules for business contracts, social interaction and social self-organisation can be left to the participating people in place, it doe snot take a state to tell them what rules they must follow. Communities can only blossom when sufficient people want to live min them, it is in the very own interest of communities to be attractive for people, and thus: to compete with others.

The problem with this islands of humanity argument is that no community can create what it needs to survive. Power, water, etc. It just doesn't work.

I took me quite some time to come around to an old argument by Steve which he raised very early, in some forgotten discussion years ago. Steve said something like this: state all nice and well, but why trusting in that politicians are the better managers, enabling them to define good and solid rules of regulations? He was and is right. Even before that, Neal once said something like that, too, asking me why I thought that politicians would be handling business rules better than the corrupted economic leaders that at that time I was attacking. Next he perplexed me with the simple question why people should pay taxes (which back then I still took for granted...) Hehe, those were the days... :) Now, Hoppe in general questions that in a democracy politicians ever could have an interest to serve the common good, the common sense reason, the bets longterm interest. He argues it is the explicit interest of democratically elected politicians to abuse the system. Because they do now own its properties, but have only limited time in which they can make use of its resources. So they make hay while the sun shines. They make expensive promises that should get them reelected (as long as the people do not realise that debts and interests in the future will be even ore expensive). They bribe the people with giving them back taxes - that before had been robbed from the people on grounds of that the state should have the authority to do so. Why should it? Why not leaving the question whether that school gets build, that highway or railway gets build, to those people being effected by it - the people living right in place?

This is a contradiction in itself. Communities have to be as small as possible, but then they have to not only build schools, but infastructure as well? I have to build a railroad? Do I have to pay for the trains? Who maintains this infastructure? Companies cannot get too big. Communities cannot get too big. It doesn't work.

International relations, some may say. Well, everybody is free to travel, to visit places that he wants to visit and where his presence is tolerated. But international globalised trade: must we build TVs in Japan and have them shipped around the globe to the US - can the Us manufacturers not build TV themselves? Why must butter from Ireland be delivered to Holland, Dutch butter to Germany, German butter to Denmark, and Danish butter to Ireland? Why must German potato farmers fear for their existence when their sales drop because somebody thinks it is a clever idea to help the Egyptians by buying Egyptian potatoes and ship them to Germany? Germany is drowning in potatoes, the whole damn EU does. What kind of frikking madness is all this? "Freedom"...? No, parasitism. The parasitism coming from people forcing themselves into the middle position. A wants to buy from B, but here comes C, taking A's money and a fee and handing the money to B, and taking B's item for a fee and giving it to A. That is nice where A and B live a good distance apart and C can offer the needed transportation. But it still only makes sense when B's goods and items are something that A does not have and cannot produce. Sending Green tea from asia to Europe, makes sense, we cannot plant green tea in Middle Europe. But shipping butter from Denmark to Austria makes no sense at all or potatoes from Egypt to Germany makes no sense at all. International trade should focus on items that are rare, while items everybody has or can produce himself must not be shipped around at all.

The rules by which this form of trade is handled, again do njot need government, but can be organised and settled by the participating partners: the Japanese regional community producing the tea, and the European local community ordering it. The shipping company can settle the contract for transportation with the partner in negotiations that need to government and no politicians. If people think it becomes too expensive, they will not agree to a deal. Where is a state needed that robs taxes and claims the right to limit people'S freedoms? The longer i think about it, the less I can see any such need.

If I want to order Japanese tea, I go online using Verizon's internet service (a big company), purchase from the company's website, and the tea is shipped using a carrier (another big company). To do this in feudal land, I have to inquire by word of mouth to a regional trade company, who in turn must inquire with the next and the next and the next until we reach someone who deals with Japanese goods. So now we have taken something in three steps and turned it into dozens of steps. I might get my tea in a few years, provided I can get that railroad built. It doesn't work.

Like democracy always leads to growing totalitarianism and socialism, capitalism always wants to turn into monopolism, one has to ensure that this does not happen, with enforcing conditions for basic minimums of competition never beeing bypassed or eroded and violated. Transparency< and limited dimension/size of companies and communities and administrating structure I consider to be vital here.

Even cases of military defence against the inevitable evil-doers and conquerers can be handled this way, though there is a risk. A huge cooperation between many regional communities is needed to organise a military defence effort powerful enough to repel any thread by an aggressor. The mere size of such an effort holds risks to the construction of communities that are designed to be not as big but as small as possible. We recall the times when mercenary armies in Europe helped to keep wars alive and prevent peace, because thy made their living by fighting wars, not earning money when there was peace. So, there is a critical point. Right now, I have no satisfying complete solution. I could point at the Hanse alliance that was a very powerful trading alliance of over 200 cities around the Baltic with my beloved city of Lübeck being the capital - but also maintained the privatised military forces needed to protect itself and its trading routes.

You'd better find a more than satisfying and complete solution, because I think that you've forgotten just how bloody this period was. Expect lots of violence.

Skybird

03-16-13, 05:34 PM

Two quote-collections. The first especially gives a basic oversight.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hans-Hermann_Hoppe

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/98317.Hans_Hermann_Hoppe

A selection from the wikiquote page, sorted by me in order to give the very basic of his logic that democracy means abuse of the capitalstock by winners in the competition for power who are embedded in a mutually parasitc relation with those who vote them for the very purpose of takiung profit from the selected leaders abusing the capitalstock. By empiric economic and tax data from the past Hoppe can show extremely clearly that in monarchies this abuse by the elites was much smaller than it is in democracies. Hoppe also argues that this demand by the governed to get nannied and fed., leads to expropriation of those who work and are expected to pay, leading to a socialist-communist expectation model that necessarily leads the state to act more and more oppressive and totalitarian, denying people what they wrongly think democracy is about: freedom.

However, I recommend to check the wikiquote page instead just the few snippets I copy here. It's maybe twice or three times as much.

Hoppe is not shy of using very clear words on occasion. He does not stop of calling anti-social behavior as what it is, and an uneducated mob of animals right that. The point is that he does so with precision, were calling the target of his criticism any different would mean to distort truth and gloss over unwanted reality.

He is also perfectly right on target when claiming that democracy promotes legal, juristic instability. Temporary caretakers abusing the capital stock also havce no longterm interest instable law, but prefer to tailor the laws opportunistically for the shortsighted interest of maximising their income from the capital stock in the immediate present. If you do not believe that, study the Euro crisis and its perfect record of bended and violated laws and treaties carefully. There is no longterm and trustworthy stability of the law in democracy. Our present demonstrates us that instead our laws, especially those regulating expropriation and taxation become more and more short-living. This does not really encourage investments in large. - The FED has just reported a profit of so and so much. But that proifit was generated by printing more and more mopeny, it is no gold the FED produced, but FIAT paper money. The amount of profits the FED gained just illustrates the amount of general money-devaluation int he whole system. These losses by far outlass these wins in total. What the FED therefore really is reporting without people - even at the FED - realising, is this: it all has become worse, there is more money, and this money is less of worth.

According to the pronouncements of our state rulers and their intellectual bodyguards (of whom there are more than ever before), we are better protected and more secure than ever. We are supposedly protected from global warming and cooling, from the extinction of animals and plants, from the abuses of husbands and wives, parents and employers, from poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and countless other public enemies and dangers. In fact, however, matters are strikingly different. In order to provide us with all this protection, the state managers expropriate more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers year in and year out. Government debt and liabilities have increased without interruption, thus increasing the need for future expropriations. Owing to the substitution of government paper money for gold, financial insecurity has increased sharply, and we are continually robbed through currency depreciation. Every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is regulated by ever higher mountains of laws legislation), thereby creating permanent legal uncertainty and moral hazard. In particular, we have been gradually stripped of the right to exclusion implied in the very concept of private property. ... In short, the more the state has increased its expenditures on social security and public safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth.

Predictably, under democratic conditions the tendency of every monopoly - to increase prices and decrease quality - will be only more pronounced. Instead of a prince who regards the country as his private property, a temporary caretaker is put in charge of the country. He does not own the country, but as long as he is in office he is permitted to use it to his and his proteges’ advantage. He owns its current use - usufruct - but not its capital stock. This will not eliminate exploitation. To the contrary, it will make exploitation less calculating and carried out with little or no regard to the capital stock, i.e., short-sighted. Moreover, the perversion of justice will proceed even faster now. Instead of protecting pre-existing private property rights, democratic government becomes a machine for the redistribution of existing property rights in the name of illusory `social security.’

The American model – democracy – must be regarded as a historical error, economically as well as morally. Democracy promotes shortsightedness, capital waste, irresponsibility, and moral relativism. It leads to permanent compulsory income and wealth redistribution and legal uncertainty. It is counterproductive. It promotes demagoguery and egalitarianism. It is aggressive and potentially totalitarian internally, vis-à-vis its own population, as well as externally. In sum, it leads to a dramatic growth of state power, as manifested by the amount of parasitically – by means of taxation and expropriation – appropriated government income and wealth in relation to the amount of productively – through market exchange – acquired private income and wealth, and by the range and invasiveness of state legislation. Democracy is doomed to collapse, just as Soviet communism was doomed to collapse.

In a covenant...among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one’s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and removed from society.

In every society, a few individuals acquire the status of an elite through talent. Due to superior achievements of wealth, wisdom, and bravery, these individuals come to possess natural authority, and their opinions and judgments enjoy wide-spread respect. Moreover, because of selective mating, marriage, and the laws of civil and genetic inheritance, positions of natural authority are likely to be passed on within a few noble families. It is to the heads of these families with long-established records of superior achievement, farsightedness, and exemplary personal conduct that men turn to with their conflicts and complaints against each other. These leaders of the natural elite act as judges and peacemakers, often free of charge out of a sense of duty expected of a person of authority or out of concern for civil justice as a privately produced "public good."

We must promote the idea of secession. Or more specifically, we must promote the idea of a world composed of tens of thousands of distinct districts, regions, and cantons, and hundred of thousands of independent free cities such as the present day oddities of Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Greatly increased opportunities for economically motivated migration would thus result, and the world would be one of small [classically] liberal governments economically integrated through free trade and an international commodity money such as gold.

As soon as a crisis breaks out, within the given institutional framework, the same mistake will be made over and over again, on a larger and larger scale. Every future crisis will be bigger than the crisis that we had before.

History is ultimately determined by ideas, and ideas can, at least in principle, change almost instantly. But in order for ideas to change it is not sufficient for people to see that something is wrong. At least a significant number must also be intelligent enough to recognize what it is that is wrong. That is, they must understand the basic principles upon which society — human cooperation — rests ... And they must have sufficient will power to act according to this insight.

Families, authority, communities, and social ranks are the empirical-sociological concretization of the abstract philosophical-praxeological categories and concepts of property, production, exchange, and contract. Property and property relations do not exist apart from families and kinship relations.

Egalitarianism, in every form and shape, is incompatible with the idea of private property. Private property implies exclusivity, inequality, and difference. And cultural relativism is incompatible with the fundamental----indeed foundational----fact of families and intergenerational kinship relations. Families and kinship relations imply cultural absolutism.

Tribesman

03-16-13, 08:04 PM

Well there you have it, Hoppe is nuts.

03-16-13, 10:58 PM

It is getting worse and worse.
I think you must be kidding.:doh:

August

03-16-13, 11:09 PM

Oh these never changing reflexes. :)

Now think that through. The last part of that sentence ("except the others...") often is mistaken by people to be a defence of democracy by relativising the criticism of the first part. But it isn't.

What Churchill did by these words, was this: slamming ALL forms of governments by declaring them all as unsuitable.

No, I think he was addressing those doubting Nancies who find fault with everything regardless of quality or improvement over all previous methods. It's pure English sarcasm and understatement delivered by a master of the art.

AndyJWest

03-17-13, 02:09 AM

Winston Churchill may well have held a jaundiced view of democracy. It is ludicrous however to suggest that a man who had been at the head of arguably the most state-controlled economy in western Europe - Britain during the dark days of WW2 - could ever have been some sort of Anarcho-capitalist. Sheer lunacy...

Tribesman

03-17-13, 03:44 AM

It is getting worse and worse.

Correct.
I think you must be kidding.:doh:
Unfortunately wrong.

Skybird

03-17-13, 06:53 AM

It is getting worse and worse.
I think you must be kidding.:doh:
No. It's just thinking against the mainstream follies that have ruined us and even already ruined our future. The fiscal, economical, sociological and juristic indices he gives in hard empirical data in his books prove his model right - since the 17th century, to the present, the development of these indices roughly is in congruence with his model. He gives explanations for what that is so on the basis of reasonable thought and logic. Those wanting to show him wrong, need to prove wrong both the empirical data and the logic.

He also has predicted the turmoil we are in since 2007/2008 correctly - in the mid or late 90s already.

Just to say "democracy is great" and "Hoppe is nuts" is a lousy way to counter him, only adds to the pessimistic outlook one must have for our near future.

He is slaughtering one of your most favourite golden cow. And worse, he then scratches off the paint and shows that it never was made of gold anyway, but was a cheap fake made of wood that you have payed high ticket prices for to party in its shadow. I do not know which of the two acts you guys feel more anger over, but both together is definitely more than you can bear.

But the reserves democracies have eaten up over the past 90 years or so, are not only gone - one has also already consumed resources meant to support the future. We are heading for a total and complete not only fiscal and economic breakdown, but for a total and complete civilizational system breakdown. And I fear that after that breakdown it will not only become not better, but will become even worse, and will stay that for a longer period of time. We are left with no reserves on which something new could be tried.

Most people still live in complete denial of reality when it comes to state debts, and social desintegration of our culture. That that denial is to be expanded so that realizing how the tyranny of the mob leads to a basic-socialist and communist wealth redistribution order and a loss of freedoms and a growth in centralized totalitarian control, is not really surprising. The only thing one may feel surprised by is that even those who usually are the first to defend America's fundament from its founding era, refuse to see the strong links, because realizing them would need to also realize how much the present America has distance itself from its founding reasons and ideas and how distanced from the claimed ideal the current status quo in fact is.

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. - Benjamin Franklin

I do not follow Hoppe blindly and just parrot him. Much of what he says, I have come to in conclusions myself already in the past years. The socialist nature of democracy. The massive redistribution scheme that secures temporary power for the elected elites. The underhanded nature of general elections, the corruption in ruling elites, and how abuse of common interest allows those in power to bribe people to vote for them. The primitive nature of the mob given the right to vote. The ruinous nature of our fiscal and economic system, the danger of our paper money scheme. The need to go back to small regions with administrative autonomy. the superiority of a feudal system once the scale of a community is beyond a certain size limit. If you think back and remember past threads from the past years, you have heard all these single things form me in the past, but always outside a combining context, I never was able to bring it all together in one cohesive model - and I also had to fold over any questions on by what alternative it all could be replaced, imo. I had to owe a coercive answer. My answer was: basic democracy in minimum-size local communities, feudal structures on supra-communal levels. Hoppe'S thoughts of private-law-society and city-states, is more convincing and logical, and he also has finally led me to how to bring all my lose thoughts together. He is less a source of new info to me, but more a help in organizing it all in one cohesive, reasonable theoretic structure. That is the big benefit I take from his work.

u crank

03-17-13, 08:01 AM

The need to go back to small regions with administrative autonomy. the superiority of a feudal system once the scale of a community is beyond a certain size limit.

... basic democracy in minimum-size local communities, feudal structures on supra-communal levels.

We must promote the idea of secession. Or more specifically, we must promote the idea of a world composed of tens of thousands of distinct districts, regions, and cantons, and hundred of thousands of independent free cities such as the present day oddities of Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Greatly increased opportunities for economically motivated migration would thus result, and the world would be one of small [classically] liberal governments economically integrated through free trade and an international commodity money such as gold.

Given humankind's penchant for greed, elitism, and dominance of others it is hard to see how a system like this would work. Human traits and history show that when there is conflict, and there will be, these city states will join together in like minded groups to accomplish their goals. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. This utopian model would only work with a radical shift in human nature.

I'm not entirely disagreeing with Hoppe's analysis of the problem. It's his solution that makes me shudder.

From Democracy: The God That Failed.
There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They--the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centred lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism--will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.

Tchocky

03-17-13, 08:24 AM

Ah yes, an appeal for an apartheid feudalism based on undeserved autocracy, posing as a solution to a made-up problem.

Nuts is right.

Oh, and a fair amount of gold-buggery.

Tribesman

03-17-13, 09:43 AM

It's his solution that makes me shudder.

Be fair, it isn't a final solution, just a policy of errrrr....resettlement.

Takeda Shingen

03-17-13, 09:51 AM

Indeed. Simply purge society of undesirables and we will have a perfect world. I've heard this before......

Hottentot

03-17-13, 09:56 AM

Be fair, it isn't a final solution, just a policy of errrrr....resettlement.

Indeed. Simply purge society of undesirables and we will have a perfect world. I've heard this before......

Who's up for Subsim Bingo?

http://i.imgur.com/4ujaYPC.jpg

Skybird

03-17-13, 09:56 AM

From Democracy: The God That Failed.

-> LINK (http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363531510&sr=8-1&keywords=Hoppe+democracy)

If people can disprove the logic and data in this, then criticism becomes valid. Until then, it is just noise, and an expression of displeasure over being disturbed while wallowing in one's cozy illusions.

Tchocky

03-17-13, 10:02 AM

-> LINK (http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363531510&sr=8-1&keywords=Hoppe+democracy)

If people can disprove the logic and data in this, then criticism becomes valid. Until then, it is just noise, and an expression of displeasure over being disturbed while wallowing in one's cozy illusions.

This is exactly how forum discussions go. Someone posts a link to a book, insulting those who might disagree with it's conclusions. Any disagreements are null and void because they haven't read the book.

Good grief.

Right let's all buy the book (using Neal's handy link above, need money for new torps!).

Then we'll reconvene after a suitable interlude to discuss the book.

If you can manage to stop talking down to anyone who might disagree with you while this is going on, I'm sure we'd all appreciate it. It would be nice if you could also get it into your head that it's possible to disagree out of honesty, and not comfortable lazy illusions. So you can can all the talk about golden cows and false idols. Reading it gives me a headache.

Although I suppose discrimination against those with different opinions is right up your street.

Oberon

03-17-13, 10:04 AM

Who's up for Subsim Bingo?

:har::har::har::har::har::har::har:

That is brilliant! :up:

u crank

03-17-13, 10:15 AM

If people can disprove the logic and data in this, then criticism becomes valid. Until then, it is just noise, and an expression of displeasure over being disturbed while wallowing in one's cozy illusions.

Disprove it to who? You have obviously made up your mind. Or have you just found someone who agrees with your own 'cozy illusions'?

03-17-13, 10:55 AM

No. It's just thinking against the mainstream follies that have ruined us and even already ruined our future. .

He might have pointed out some problems within current western system to some of which i may agree while some others might not be as serous as he likes them to be.
Nothing new here.

That solutions he comes up with are not some "out of the box thinking".

Just At first glance there so many flaws in them and some others make my stomach turn up side down....well...i'm dramatising here.:haha:
His solutions could not be agreeable even if applied in perfect world.
Also in perfect world democracy would work much better therefore his much more dangerous solutions would not be needed.

Skybird

03-17-13, 12:15 PM

He might have pointed out some problems within current western system to some of which i may agree while some others might not be as serous as he likes them to be.
Nothing new here.

That solutions he comes up with are not some "out of the box thinking".

Just At first glance there so many flaws in them and some others make my stomach turn up side down....well...i'm dramatising here.:haha:
His solutions could not be agreeable even if applied in perfect world.
Also in perfect world democracy would work much better therefore his much more dangerous solutions would not be needed.
And you are sure you know "his solution" in detail, that well, after just having picked up some sentences that I quoted from random quote pages to give not more than just the most compact of summaries about the reasoning by him? ;) Then you do better than I did. It took me to read all those 600 pages of the full book, and s second, smaller one, and to read them even twice, and then some random input from websites, to finally get sufficient details on the implications he suggests, and to put it all together.

Skybird

03-17-13, 12:21 PM

Disprove it to who? You have obviously made up your mind. Or have you just found someone who agrees with your own 'cozy illusions'?
The participants in a discussion are your audience. When you make a claim about something, somebody being wrong, it is in that context you have to give arguments for your claim.

I did as best as I could in the brief time and by using those quotes, I do not wish to tranbslate a whole book jjust to post it then when people can read it themselevs in English, already. It'S just that it is very unlikely that many, even even a single one, will buy the english book and read it. So I took the second-best option and gave that link, and took some quotes from there that at least give a very general idea of what he is about - without going into the details. If it wopuld be possible to pout it all into ust a few sentences - he would not have needed to write several books, som eof them going into the hundreds of pages.

Takeda Shingen

03-17-13, 12:43 PM

-> LINK (http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363531510&sr=8-1&keywords=Hoppe+democracy)

If people can disprove the logic and data in this, then criticism becomes valid. Until then, it is just noise, and an expression of displeasure over being disturbed while wallowing in one's cozy illusions.

You've got it backwards. You are the one proposing something radical, therefore the burden of proof is on you, dear Skybird. When you can show that your proposed methods will create your utopia, then we have something to talk about. Linking to Amazon is simply noise, and your radio has been playing too loud for too long.

Just go start a blog already. That way you can proselytize to your heart's content and not have to deal with pesky nay sayers that refuse to sit at your feet and accept your views as gospel truth. At the same time, the forum no longer has to be subject to your conspiracy-driven hatred. It's a win-win for all parties involved.

Skybird

03-17-13, 12:45 PM

This is exactly how forum discussions go. Someone posts a link to a book, insulting those who might disagree with it's conclusions. Any disagreements are null and void because they haven't read the book.

Good grief.

Right let's all buy the book (using Neal's handy link above, need money for new torps!).

Then we'll reconvene after a suitable interlude to discuss the book.

If you can manage to stop talking down to anyone who might disagree with you while this is going on, I'm sure we'd all appreciate it. It would be nice if you could also get it into your head that it's possible to disagree out of honesty, and not comfortable lazy illusions. So you can can all the talk about golden cows and false idols. Reading it gives me a headache.

Although I suppose discrimination against those with different opinions is right up your street.
Nonsense. The point is this: I refuse to pay respect to people if their only reaction is not in founded argument adressing arguments by others made before, but in just some noise making and some comment like "he is insane", "totally nuts" "Cannot be that way." People then could as well answer with "blue", "13.74" or "I go fishing" instead.

Just saying "I think he is wrong", is nothing. To explain why one thinks that, and give a reason that adresses the original argument, that is what makes any comment a comment, instead of just a random sound.

I have given plenty of more reaosns and arguments why I think the way I do,. and the quotes I have choosen also include many explanations in themselves, although still leaving out many details. Compared to that the comments by some people in return are not even thin. They are just loud. Yours, for example.

Anyhow, even those of you thinking he or me are insane, you and us and we will not escape the future to come, and that future is nearer than many here want to believe. For a majority still seem to think that the party on tick can run on forever, but it cannot, and it will not. The present problems in the world have the potential to do more damage and to cause greater rifts and crackups in human history than any historic episode ever did before. Whjatz people see today in symptoms, usually is seen as isolated, singular events, that have nothing or at least not much to do with each other. And that is the great misperception. It is not many different little turmoils here and there. It all is just different feature of one and the same, overwhelming turmoil. The island is sinking, and people already stand with their feet in the water. But nobody believes it, everybody thinks its champagne, and so everybody gets a glass and demands some more.

Nuts me or Hoppe were, some claim. It cannot be what should not be, indicate others. Democracy rules, indicate the next.

I agree, some people are insane here. And its not me, trying to find a boat while the majority still parties. Because you guys think it's champagne you are standing in, you demand that the flood valves should be opened. But me is nuts, and insane, eh?

In the end the survivors will see who drinks and who swims. Just that then it will be too late. Maybe - no, probably it already is too late right now.

03-17-13, 12:46 PM

And you are sure you know "his solution" in detail, that well, after just having picked up some sentences that I quoted from random quote pages to give not more than just the most compact of summaries about the reasoning by him? ;) Then you do better than I did. It took me to read all those 600 pages of the full book, and s second, smaller one, and to read them even twice, and then some random input from websites, to finally get sufficient details on the implications he suggests, and to put it all together.

If you quoted the quotes you quoted :o i should suppose that the quotes somehow bring about the essence of his ideas.
Then i haven't red the book...
Again...sometimes it is possible to summarise book with just the amount of quotes you used.
It is also possible to put a book/subject out of context with just few cherry picked quotes but i don't think that you meant it.
Did you?

anyway... i don't like it.

Takeda Shingen

03-17-13, 12:49 PM

Maybe - no, probably it already is too late right now.

Great, then we can stop talking about it.

u crank

03-17-13, 12:55 PM

An opposing point of view.

Hoppe’s exaggerated liberalism or libertarianism is based on a wrong methodology. He ignores everything that does not fit into his simplistic premises and fails to acknowledge reality or other academic disciplines apart from his own school of thought. He systematically overlooks the problems of the real world or simplifies them until they fit into his model. From the perspective of classical liberalism one must criticise Hoppe’s dogmatic and intolerant – one could also say – ideological strategies and approaches which lead him to a kind of autistic totalitarianism. Hoppe does not understand at which point his argumentation loses the argumentative character to become blind ideology.

http://www.oliver-marc-hartwich.com/publications/the-errors-of-hans-hermann-hoppe

Tchocky

03-17-13, 01:28 PM

Nonsense. The point is this: I refuse to pay respect to people if their only reaction is not in founded argument adressing arguments by others made before, but in just some noise making and some comment like "he is insane", "totally nuts" "Cannot be that way." People then could as well answer with "blue", "13.74" or "I go fishing" instead.

There's no requirement for you to pay respect. What I would suggest instead is a attitude that isn't mean-spirited and condescending to people who disagree with you.

It doesn't take long to see from the little bits you've posted here that Hoppe is absurdly simplistic and reductive. Not worthy of a serious time or intellectual investment, by my view.

Quick example.

He suggests Monaco, Liechteinstein, Singapore etc as models for the new autonomous regions. These areas are only notable in how they deviate from normal tax and trading structures, providing them with a comparative economic advantage. They win, and are seen by Hoppe as models because the playing field is not level. If we all had Monaco's tax laws, Monaco would no longer be special. The attractive nature of these regions is only because of their rarity. It's a moronic argument not worthy of serious consideration.

If I see quote after quote of rubbish like that, I'm hardly going to go into horrendous detail filleting the rest. Not worth it.

Just saying "I think he is wrong", is nothing. To explain why one thinks that, and give a reason that adresses the original argument, that is what makes any comment a comment, instead of just a random sound.Tak wrote quite a good set of points that you completely ignored, you then posted a wall of quotes and proceeded to complain that nobody was taking you seriously.

I have given plenty of more reaosns and arguments why I think the way I do,. and the quotes I have choosen also include many explanations in themselves, although still leaving out many details. Compared to that the comments by some people in return are not even thin. They are just loud. Yours, for example. I didn't go into detail because it didn't warrant it. See the point about SIngapore etc above - the materiel presented is not serious. Don't mistake brevity for frivolity.

Anyhow, even those of you thinking he or me are insane, you and us and we will not escape the future to come, and that future is nearer than many here want to believe. For a majority still seem to think that the party on tick can run on forever, but it cannot, and it will not. The present problems in the world have the potential to do more damage and to cause greater rifts and crackups in human history than any historic episode ever did before.The End is Nigh, eh? I'd say the Black Death or the Spanish flu were pretty nasty.
Whjatz people see today in symptoms, usually is seen as isolated, singular events, that have nothing or at least not much to do with each other. And that is the great misperception. It is not many different little turmoils here and there. It all is just different feature of one and the same, overwhelming turmoil. The island is sinking, and people already stand with their feet in the water. But nobody believes it, everybody thinks its champagne, and so everybody gets a glass and demands some more. This would be why I'm not taking a serious scholarly interest in anything you write or post from Hoppe. This over-generalised totally unfalsifiable conspiratorial rubbish. There was a thread where you were banging on about hormone problems due to gender engineering or saome such EU-dictated socialist control mechanism. I asked for any sort of proof - you kept the thread going and didn't provide any.

And seriously? The US is barely struggling out of recession, the eurozone is drowning in debt, China is waiting for it's housing bubble to burst, Kim Jong Un is playing with more dangerous things than firecrackers, and to top it all off the planet is melting..............and you think everyone is happy at a party drinking champagne?

This reminds me of another bloody stupid thing Hoppe wrote.

According to the pronouncements of our state rulers and their intellectual bodyguards (of whom there are more than ever before), we are better protected and more secure than ever. We are supposedly protected from global warming and cooling, from the extinction of animals and plants, from the abuses of husbands and wives, parents and employers, from poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and countless other public enemies and dangers.

Come on. You can't expect to post this kind of rubbish and not be told it's rubbish. Our leaders tell is everything is ok? That we've fixed the climate? That we're done with discrimination? That must explain how every newspaper is filled with nothing but good news.

Give. Me. A. Break.

I agree, some people are insane here. And its not me, trying to find a boat while the majority still parties. Because you guys think it's champagne you are standing in, you demand that the flood valves should be opened. But me is nuts, and insane, eh?

In the end the survivors will see who drinks and who swims. Just that then it will be too late. Maybe - no, probably it already is too late right now.Again, over-generalised apocalyptic garbage. Apparently those of us who believe that democracy might be worth hanging on to all think we're standing in champagne.

Mine's a double.

Skybird

03-17-13, 01:36 PM

Ah, Hartwich, I read him regularly, too, even quoted him once or twice in threads, even find some of his stuff good.

However, where he claims that Hoppe is for example not explaining what is natural in hbis idea of natural order, Hartcwich simply is wrong and did not study his work carefully enough. Hoppe explains that absolutely, in his books often in context of where the first kings and the first landlords and the first tribe leaders may have emerged from, and how. It is in several parts of his work, but I just pick it from the quotes I already give, as an introductory illustration:

In every society, a few individuals acquire the status of an elite through talent. Due to superior achievements of wealth, wisdom, and bravery, these individuals come to possess natural authority, and their opinions and judgments enjoy wide-spread respect. Moreover, because of selective mating, marriage, and the laws of civil and genetic inheritance, positions of natural authority are likely to be passed on within a few noble families. It is to the heads of these families with long-established records of superior achievement, farsightedness, and exemplary personal conduct that men turn to with their conflicts and complaints against each other. These leaders of the natural elite act as judges and peacemakers, often free of charge out of a sense of duty expected of a person of authority or out of concern for civil justice as a privately produced "public good."

What Hoppe does not spend time on, is elaborating much to what degree such an order offers opportunities for corruption again, corrupting power. However he admits that royals and monarchs tried to cheat and betray for sure - its just that the context of feudal land order with its unique settings of law and different status of private property they found it much more difficult for the most to be successful in that. He also lists empiric indices like taxes and money devaluation, innerpolitical power projection and the relation between king and the laws he must follow to illustrate his point that in monarchies comparable problems of corruption and abuse existed like in democracies: but that democracies allow them to come to much greater blossoming, leading to much greater inefficiency of the administrative apparatus, costs, corruption, and damage to the capital stock. - THAT IS PART OF THE REASON WHY HOPPE SAYS HE DOES NOT WANT A MONARCHY, although he sees a monarchy as the lesser and much cheaper evil, compared to democracy. To explain in full detail what he means by private law society, leads a bit to far in this thread, I refer to some of the chapters in his book The Failed God, where he illustrates that in greater detail. Hoppe also defends himself against being seen as a libertarian, because to him libertarians today are only lifestyle libertarians who are more socialists than anything and hide that behind the label libertarianism in order to make themselves look distinct from other democratic factions (that would be true for the German FDP for example, and the political direction that in europe is called Liberalism).

There are many such simplifications Hartwich implies, and his criticism may come from the fact that Hartwich, a liberal economist himself, represents what Hoppe is attacking in general: the camp of those who may call themselves different names but all consider democracy to be the inevitable basis of any desirable state order. For Hoppe, democracy is the very root of the evil. Hoppe even sets himself apart from Mises and Rothbarth, therefore, since both also had a positive view of democracy and were not able to identify democracy itself as the casue of why political leadership goes corrupt and the economies derail and the finances of the state always will be ruined by democrats and will go bankrupt.

The the very objects of Hoppe's criticism do not like to be attacked and do not sit still when becoming the object of his analysis, is not surprising.

Hoppe's "natural order"W can be easily misunderstood, I absolutely agree, and he also can be easily mistaken for just any archcapitalist liberal, yes. But I think that impression is misleading. Took myself some time to see it that way, too. and I indeed thiunk that he explains an utopia there, an ideal to strive for. Whether it can be realised, I have some doubts myself.

Some days ago I said that imo Hoppe is best when on the attack. His strength is the analysis of the past, and of the reasons why democracy failed and necessarily must fail every time. His empiric data and arguments based on historical facts, are compelling. n the cure he offers, well, I have admitted from beginning on: that still is under debate. I found his vision however making more sense than what so far I was ab le to come up with as an alternative myself. If somebody however has a better model for an alternative in the future, let'S hear him. Just notg more of what we already have had excessively: more supra-state, less national state, more democracy, more social this, social that, more redistribution, more money printing. I base on the very strong opinion that these factors already have been dismissed by their record as trustworthy alternatives. They are the reason why we have the problem that we have today. Just more of the same, is not convincing to me. I do not expect a sudden miracle when trying to extinguish a fire by spilling more gasoline into the fire.

Skybird

03-17-13, 01:42 PM

"Mean-spirited."

I can sing a long song of that, having been the target of rethorical underhandedness more often than I could ever find tolerable. and I often learned that I get treated with quite some arrogance and verbal cheating, and being attacked in mean ways when I stick to something I say that others do not like. My patience learned to know limits then, yes, and I may chose to cut off a communication by a laconic picture or a sarcastic final comment. It seems I am expected in these situations to endlessly sit still and just take rethorical hits, getting misquoted out of context or have words turned in my mouth or even have words pout in my mouth that I never said nor whose meaning I ever indicated. All this happened so often, and some people really expected me, and still do so, to just swallow it and not to move. But beware Zeus when I dare to react and give the change in the currency others have chosen first! Where I still see chances to have a communication, I try again with arguments, often being answered with complaints about pointless walls of text instead.

This must be a great surprise to you :88), Tchocky, but I fullheartly return the complaint you directed at me, and I could say the same that you said about me about quite some people here, usually always the same names, and that is the group of names that usually I no longer or only extremely rarely react to anymore, or even have on the ignore-list.

This is also the reason why with other people, who also may disagree with me, I find it easy to communicate, for they do not start to follow this path, and so I don't either. In principle, it is very easy to get along with me, the rule is just one: the stronger you push me, the stronger I push back. That's all. To some degree it seems one has to be loud and modestly aggressive in this forum if not wanting to get plowed under while saying something unpopular or somebody not liking you. I do not like to follow that path until the ugly end when it gets locked however, and also do not follow it that far anymore than I maybe did many years ago were it sometimes went on endlessly, so I tend to step out at some stage and leave the remaining people to themselves, then. They then sometimes say I would "avoid discussion". Well, let that little victory be there's, then - my ego can afford that .

Takeda Shingen

03-17-13, 01:50 PM

Hottentot

03-17-13, 01:55 PM

And so it comes down to what so many have said of you; that you are interested in dictating your peception of the truth, not discussion. Again, I suggest that a blog would be more appropriate for your tastes.

On the plus side, it does offer great hilarity when he paraphrases the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Takeda Shingen

03-17-13, 01:57 PM

On the plus side, it does offer great hilarity when he paraphrases the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Hmmm....

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c5/Watchtower_Magazine_English_issues.jpg/250px-Watchtower_Magazine_English_issues.jpg

A new avatar perhaps?

Hottentot

03-17-13, 02:05 PM

The style certainly fits and usually the resemblance becomes closer the more pages the thread accumulates.

Takeda Shingen

03-17-13, 02:19 PM

I wonder how large a donation would be required for Neal to change it. :hmmm:

Tchocky

03-17-13, 02:25 PM

"Mean-spirited."

I can sing a long song of that, having been the target of rethorical underhandedness more often than I could ever finbd tolerable. and I often learned that I get treated with quite some arrogance and being attacked in mean ways when I stick to something I say that others do not like. My patience then knows limits, yes. where I still see chances to have a communication, I I try again with arguments, often being answered with complaints about pointless walls of text instead.

This must be a great surprise to you :88), Tchocky, but I fullheartly return the complaint you directed at me, and I could say the same that you said about me about quite some people here, usually always the same names, and that is the group of names that usually I no longer or only extremely rarely react to anymore, or even have on the ignore-list.

This is also the reason why with other people, who also may disagree with me, I find it easy to communicate, for they do not start to follow this path, and so I don't either. In principle, it is very easy to get along with me, the rule is just one: the stronger you push me, the stronger I push back. That's all. To some degree it seems one has to be loud and modestly aggressive in this forum if not wanting to get plowed under while saying something unpopular or somebody not liking you. I do not like to follow that path until the ugly end when it gets locked however, and also do not follow it that far anymore than I maybe did many years ago were it sometimes went on endlessly, so I tend to step out at some stage and leave the remaining people to themselves, then. They then sometimes say I would "avoid discussion". Well, let that little victory be there's, then - my ego can afford that .

I'm not talking about rhetorical underhandedness, whatever that may be. I'm not trying to twist your words or anything like that. I'm quoting Hoppe's words and saying that from a straight first reading of what's been posted, they are not worth serious attention - hence suggesting people should go off and buy the book in order to "graduate" to a higher level of discourse is irritating and without merit.

The other point I'm trying to get across is that you can't fairly complain about not being taken seriously when your own language precludes any disagreement whatsoever. Look at your first post in the thread.

It's kind of subsidiary to the main point - don't expect well-constructed rebuttal to poorly-constructed feudalist pipedreams. As presented here.

Tribesman

03-17-13, 05:42 PM

Catfish

03-18-13, 03:05 AM

Be careful tribesman, this is exactly the logic the far right in the US uses - it loves Mises as it loves Hoppe. And Communism is the same as National-socialism. No joke, they do believe that.
It makes things easier to condemn, however unfortunately it never solves the real problems.

Skybird

03-18-13, 04:02 AM

the far right in the US uses - it loves Mises as it loves Hoppe.

Can't judge Mises, but for Hoppe the right in the US should not be too certain that the love is mutual. Hoppe has distanced himself from what he called today's lifestyle-libertarians, saying that they are not any libertarian at all, but socialists in deception-mode (mind you, in his logic democracy necessarily always ends in socialist motives deciding the state's policy). Hoppe also says that while he owes to Mises and Rothbard, he leaves them alone in their appreciation of democracy, for which both seem to have had more sympathy than Hoppe has, for the already given explanation.

When the book "The failed god" was published first in the US ten years ago, or eleven, it caused an outcry in BOTH political camps in the US. This must be so, since his reasoning implies that he attacks both parties fundaments of how they want to see themselves and their legitimation.

Bilge_Rat

03-18-13, 04:38 AM

Anarchism is one of those theories which sounds good on paper, but is completely unworkable in real life. Its much like Marxism which sounded like the answer to Capitalism, but turned out to be a lot worse.

The only example of Anarchism which, as far as I know, was tried on the ground was by Nestor Makhno during the Russian civil war. He is held up by a lot of Anarchists as an ideal, but when you look at his record, you see he was just another petty dictator who imposed his will through his army.

Skybird

03-18-13, 05:04 AM

Nobody here speaks of anarchism. Nor has Monacco or Hongkong, the around 30 cantons in Switzerland or the era of Italian city states or the German diversity of over 1800 city states and dukedoms in the middle of the 17th century and the surviving later conglomerate of just below 50 of such dukedoms and cities 150 years later, ever been called "anarchistic" in any history book I ever have read. Or the founding phase of the US when the states still had no centralized federal govenrment - that still does not justify a description of "anarchy".

Bilge_Rat

03-18-13, 05:38 AM

Tribesman

03-18-13, 05:53 AM

Nor has Monacco or Hongkong, the around 30 cantons in Switzerland or the era of Italian city states or the German diversity of over 1800 city states and dukedoms in the middle of the 17th century and the surviving later conglomerate of just below 50 of such dukedoms and cities 150 years later, ever been called "anarchistic" in any history book I ever have read.
So you have a list of badly failed attempts and examples that do not fit your ideology.
Makes a hoppelessly convincing case so it does:rotfl2:

Skybird

03-18-13, 07:24 AM

but these are all states? absolute monarchies with a few liberal democracies.

Hoppe only concludes that the evil done by moarchy is smaller than trhe evil done by demiocracies. Democracies have na inbuilt feature of wanting to monopilze their power: towards their inner community, nd towards their exterior - other states - as well. Where their is a monopolist - or several - in action, you see them swallowing smaller competitors. Thus the numbers of overall competitors is shrinking constantly, as a general trend. In the end, as a distant futrure attractor, there will be only one left. You see it currently perfectly in the EU. The forming of one super state with all power transferred from national states to Brussel, the trend is totally clear. People in Europe do not want that by majoity, but it doe snot matter: the democratically elected governments in the natiosn enforce it against their explicit will, even ignore explicit referendums against this trend, as happened in Netherlands and France. The union must be enforced, even against the people's will. America dreamt about bringing democracy to the whole world, since Wilson it dreamt that dream, leading ultimately to Iraq and the collapse of the cardhouse of American ME policies. But on the other side of the spectrum, the left also dreams of the world revolution of the proletariat, wants to establish one giant communist utopia.

What Hoppe argues, is this: if neither monarchy nor democracy protects against abuse of power by those being in power, with democratic systems not only causing greater such damage, but even motivating temporary caretakers to abuse the system at the cost of longterm interests and the communities basic capital stock - then it would be better to limit the size of communities to make them that way that a.) people in each community can overlook what is going on and can decided by moving to where there is a community to whose self-given" minimum rules they feel attracted more (for example moving to the next great city state), and b.) create the need that the plticla system in many small communities must complete with each other in order to be so attractive to people that they - especially the skilled, the gifted, the talented - prefer to move to "my" city state" instead to that citystate of "my "neighbours". Such a competition would introduce a form of natural selection to politics that would lead leaders - no matter of what governing system they are - to realise the need to govern as carefully and tax as little and release as little regulations as possible, in order to not chase away people not liking it.

On page 242 of the German edition of the book, Hoppe gives a 2 pages quote by Goethe that illustrates that Goethe already formulated much of what Hoppe is about. Mind you, the era talked a bout here are the fundament of what has brought Germany to strength and cultural shine, and that created the many names and working results that Germany gave such a great name in cultural history (before a certain Austrian strolled along and made sure that nobody talks of that greatness anymore today). You could also refer to the wealth and cultural climax of the Italian city states. The Hanse in Northern Europe, around the Baltic. There was wealth. Where there was wealth their came arts, culture. Science. Diversity in views on almost everything. Cultures blossomed.

Compare here, part of that Goethe quite is included in it:

http://mises.org/daily/357

I learned about that site just short while ago. I found to be many good texts to be collected there. Hoppe is kind of editor or chairman there. If you do not want to read the full book or spend money on it, I recommend to check what that site has to offer. Many free essays that found entrance in Hoppe'S books, can be found around the web for free, too.

Bilge_Rat

03-18-13, 07:29 AM

This is a bit simplified, but there are basically three forms of human rule:

1. dictatorship: one person or a minority tells the majority what to do;

2. democracy: the majority tells the minority what to do; or

3. anarchy: no one tells anyone what to do.

rarely do you see any one in its pure form, except some dictatorships. Usually, a functioning government has elements of all three.

still not sure exactly where Hoppe's theory fits in.

Skybird

03-18-13, 08:15 AM

Hoppe favours communal self-organization on the basis if private property and inter-human trade done by agreements between the participating partners.

He wants these communities to be as small as possible. That is to safeguard against anybody trying to monopolize either trade (which for Hoppe is one of the basic fundamentals of all sociological interaction and organisation, thus the need to protect private property instead of opening it to be owened by all and everybody - taxation is a form of the latter) or power to make laws and expropriate people (by taxes and regulations).

A certain minimum of adminstration and regulation of course canot be avoided. A minimum. The competition between communities and political systems inside them is meant to make sure that these minimums do not get easily exceeded.

For Hoppe, this should be established not a demoicratcially elected groiup of caretakers or a moarchiy dynasty, but again by the people. Services like policing and proteciton against natural disaster and other strikes by fate, should become services offered by competing organiaztion that people can freely choose to make a contract with, like you do voluntary insurances today. Today, we have the pllci8jng monopoly of the state, the monopoly of the state to rob parts of people'S property, and the monopoly to make ever new legislation and reuglations to whic everybody is submitted, no matter hwhether he was for or against it.

Service like a "privatized police" are needed only for the very obvious violation of common sense rules in this model. Many other rules for business contracts, social interaction and social self-organisation can be left to the participating people in place, it doe snot take a state to tell them what rules they must follow. Communities can only blossom when sufficient people want to live min them, it is in the very own interest of communities to be attractive for people, and thus: to compete with others.

The limited size of communities is key to it all. The communties interact amongst each other by again: private relations organised by private people.

This in very brief is what Hoppe calls "natural order" - the forth form of social organisaiton in your listing above - or "private law society".

Where people holding certain posts are needed - judges for example - Hoppe argues that these natural elites would form up by what again would compare to natural selection :)

In every society, a few individuals acquire the status of an elite through talent. Due to superior achievements of wealth, wisdom, and bravery, these individuals come to possess natural authority, and their opinions and judgments enjoy wide-spread respect. Moreover, because of selective mating, marriage, and the laws of civil and genetic inheritance, positions of natural authority are likely to be passed on within a few noble families. It is to the heads of these families with long-established records of superior achievement, farsightedness, and exemplary personal conduct that men turn to with their conflicts and complaints against each other. These leaders of the natural elite act as judges and peacemakers, often free of charge out of a sense of duty expected of a person of authority or out of concern for civil justice as a privately produced "public good."

He calls them - different to Tchocky'S "feudal aristocracy" natural aristocrats. Feudal aristocrats claim to be an elite, and the claim for being so is hereditary. Natural aristocrats have shown and proven their worth, the claim is not hereditary. Since children are influenced nevertheless by the starting conditions and the quality of education they get at home, natural aristocrats nevertheless can form aristocratic families for sure. - Therein lies a certain risk, of course. azin riskl m of course.

How to get there? Hoppe has little illusions there, I think. You cannot get there by setting up a party and getting elected - then you have become a part of the problem that democracy is. He advocates regional secessions, civil disloyalty of people, no voluntary submission and obedience to the state rule, lip-to-lip confessing, refusing to cooperate with state institutions, and finally small regions agreeing to split from the higher communal entity. Private initiative, instead f putting all responsibility on and directing all claims at "the state". It reminds me of a grassroot movement, what he proposes.

Chances my be slim, I have no illusions ion it, I see the EU every day and therefore get reminded every day with what amount of force, betrayal, abuse and power the governing elite today will react. But small chances are better than no chances.

Much of Hoppe'S reasoning can be seen in the early founding fathers, I think. Since I started to occasionally read about them as well, my sympathy for them and their cultural ideas is constantly growing. I also draw parallels to some of what Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. I'm sure that Steve would agree that there is plenty of good stuff to be discovered, though I am only scratching on the surface of it.

Strange, the older I get, the more I shift away from Europe and the more I see that the social side of politics over here indeed are leading us into communism in the end, and the more I shift towards America. But that is the very early America I have much sympathy for , not so much that of the present or even the modern era. I see a very huge gap between both eras, and it is constantly widening. Again, that seems to be because America was not founded as a democracy - but was turned into one. And so the desribed problems began. - But I stray off, so: full stop.

Takeda Shingen

03-18-13, 08:37 AM

but these are all states? absolute monarchies with a few liberal democracies.

Oh, no. No liberal democracies. All there are in this utopia are a group of feudal kingdoms ruled by a combination of corporate control and local "elites"; a term that Hoppe leave deliberately ambiguous. So what you have is a division of any county within the US into about 500 little feudal kingdoms, each headed by a local warlord. The difference between this and Europe of the 8th century is that Hoppe mixes in a sort of corporate fascism, where privatized corporations compete with each other for control of local law, enforcement, militarization, and all other elements of society formerly domain of the government. This order is ensured through the removal of any element of society that does not agree, consent or is considered non-productive, such as proponenets of other economic or political theories and homosexuals. Hoppe leaves how they are to be dealt with an ambiguous matter as well, but it is pretty easy to figure out what he means.

If it all sounds like madness it is only because it is madness.

Bilge_Rat

03-18-13, 08:59 AM

If it all sounds like madness it is only because it is madness.

I would be more inclined to say it is an utopian idea in the sense that it could theoretically work if everything falls into place exactly as Hoppe theorizes.

However, utopias have a hard time in the real world. Classical Marxism, as theorized by Marx in the 19th century, also theorized a utopian post-capitalistic world where the state would wither away and each person would work in accordance to his/her skill and receive based on his/her needs. We all know what happened in practice...:ping:

Takeda Shingen

03-18-13, 09:05 AM

Skybird

03-18-13, 09:17 AM

I would be more inclined to say it is an utopian idea in the sense that it could theoretically work if everything falls into place exactly as Hoppe theorizes.

However, utopias have a hard time in the real world. Classical Marxism, as theorized by Marx in the 19th century, also theorized a utopian post-capitalistic world where the state would wither away and each person would work in accordance to his/her skill and receive based on his/her needs. We all know what happened in practice...:ping:

I said it three times, and already in the very first post I ever made about a wekk ago or so: Hoppe is best in analysing and doing a diagnosis. The symptoms and their causes as he can link them with empirical data on development of taxes, national wealth distribution, demography, social statistics and especially financial budgets, is compelling. The causal links he identifies he sees as causal relations for very good reason which he can explain absolutely logical and realistic. It makes frighteningly much sense. I agree with you that the alternatively he offers, is kind of an idealistic utopia. It hints at a direction where the voyage should go, but whether it will go there for sure, I have very strong doubts. But his ideas for an altenrative, I admit that, make more sense than what I ever was able to imagine - I failed in leaving the old conceptions behind, and that is why my own ideas probably would have been guaranteed to fail. In absenc eof any better offer, I tend to agree with Hoppe'S alternative, therefore.

One thing is certain: the mess we are in now is seld-made, and what has brought us here is right what most people no want to be put to the extreme: more poison should heal from the poison.

We will hit the hard thick wall sooner or later, we are heading right for it on the shortest and most direct path, with pressed-down pedals. That impact not give us back "health", but at least it will show us the nature of the poison we crave for. Just that then it will be too late.

The unfolding of the disaster in the EU and the Eurozone, is a textbook example for Hoppe's diagnosis.

mookiemookie

03-18-13, 09:18 AM

So what you have is a division of any county within the US into about 500 little feudal kingdoms, each headed by a local warlord.

And then what happens when this guy is knocking on the door to your little feudal kingdom?

http://gon.cdn.on.net/uploads/2012/09/cesar.jpg

Hottentot

03-18-13, 09:22 AM

And then what happens when this guy is knocking on the door to your little feudal kingdom?

http://gon.cdn.on.net/uploads/2012/09/cesar.jpg

Well duh: you grab your portable minigun, a few thousands of rounds of weightless ammo, switch the V.A.T.S. on and let him know why an army of badly mangled Latin speaking grunts is no use if you equip all of them with machetes and baseball bats.

Takeda Shingen

03-18-13, 09:23 AM

And then what happens when this guy is knocking on the door to your little feudal kingdom?

http://gon.cdn.on.net/uploads/2012/09/cesar.jpg

Man, now I want to reinstall that game again.

Bilge_Rat

03-18-13, 09:27 AM

I said it three times, and already in the very first post I ever made about a wekk ago or so: Hoppe is best in analysing and doing a diagnosis. The symptoms and their causes as he can link them with empirical data on development of taxes, national wealth distribution, demography, social statistics and especially financial budgets, is compelling. The causal links he identifies he sees as causal relations for very good reason which he can explain absolutely logical and realistic. It makes frighteningly much sense. I agree with you that the alternatively he offers, is kind of an idealistic utopia. It hints at a direction where the voyage should go, but whether it will go there for sure, I have very strong doubts. But his ideas for an altenrative, I admit that, make more sense than what I ever was able to imagine - I failed in leaving the old conceptions behind, and that is why my own ideas probably would have been guaranteed to fail. In absenc eof any better offer, I tend to agree with Hoppe'S alternative, therefore.

I don't disagree with you on that point. Even though I am not a marxist myself, I often find myself using Marx's theories to analyse world events. Some of his theories are still useful to try to figure out what is really going on.

Bilge_Rat

03-18-13, 09:38 AM

Hoppe's whole point here is the claim that democracy does not allow for true freedom. What he proposes as alternative is a society that is much, much less free. I'd say that is madness, but to each is own; if you like the idea that is fine. I remain unconcerned, as Hoppe's ideas have gained very little traction, and rightly so. It is simplistic, insane nonsense. As such, we with never see such a society, and thankfully so.

I never said I agreed with it. :ping:

In theory, an enlightened dictatorship would seem like the best form of government, at least when you look at Washington...:D

In practice, dictatorships produce nightmares like Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein..

Hottentot

03-18-13, 09:39 AM

Man, now I want to reinstall that game again.

Yeah, me too. I've been meaning to start that Fallout 3 AAR ever since finishing the one with Oblivion, and New Vegas would fit that continuity just perfectly. :yep:

mookiemookie

03-18-13, 10:12 AM

I never said I agreed with it. :ping:

In theory, an enlightened dictatorship would seem like the best form of government, at least when you look at Washington...:D

In practice, dictatorships produce nightmares like Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein..

That's the problem with the government gaining more and more power. You may like and trust the guy in there today, but what happens years down the line when a guy you don't like and don't trust has the reins?

Skybird

03-18-13, 10:22 AM

I don't disagree with you on that point. Even though I am not a marxist myself, I often find myself using Marx's theories to analyse world events. Some of his theories are still useful to try to figure out what is really going on.

I have read Marx myself, too. And I give him that he was a precise observer, for much of his work. It is his conclusions on what to do and the reasons he attributed to the symptoms that I have problems with.

I also do not forget that he never needed to make his own living, but almost always was fed by others. You see, that shows in his ideas about how to redistribute wealth and how to give all people their income independent from their effort, skill, worth and contribution. As an economic manager, Marx sucks, completely. He never had to learn even the basics for his own living.

We have this happening in greatest scaling today, redistribution through the state, and as a precondition for that: expropriation. In the feudal era, say late 17th century and later, the overall taxes people had to give in total, were between 5 and 8 %. Since republican order took over after WWi, it has constantly grown until today, to maximums of 50% and more in total. State debts grew, too, until the ruinous mountains of debts that there are now. The era before WWI, local rulers and Dukedoms and countries made debts, too, mostly to pay for wars. But between the wars they mostly reduced them again. Also, total debts of the smaller players never reached the heights at which they would have become threatening to their existence. There were players boing bankrupt - and quite many since 1500, practically all greater powers went bankrupt at the peak of their powers. But thse powers all had one thing in common: they were the biggest players around, they were countries and huge kingdoms. None of the big continental monarchies was saved.

Hoppe can perfectly and more elegantly than anyone else explain why all this is so. Not only finances, but also growing totalitarianism and centralism, and why more democracy necessarily means less freedom and ever growing socialism/communism. It is inevitable. To have founded the model and having been able to empirically show it to be true is his great merit that separates him from other libertarians, the american right, or Mises and Rothbard.

Tribesman

03-18-13, 10:45 AM

The unfolding of the disaster in the EU and the Eurozone, is a textbook example for Hoppe's diagnosis.
So in this textbook the finacial problems in europe could be solved by rounding up all the poofs and eliminating them.

03-18-13, 10:48 AM

There are some places with about 50% tax rate but as far as i can tell the system works not so bad there.
Was talking about some Scandinavian countries like Sweden or Finland.
It very much depends on the relationship between government and the people's expectations.
In USA it is quite opposite possibly closer to monarchy or simply pure capitalism , people see government in different role from Finns yet the system also works in its own way.
Surly opinions may vary about the level of federal involvement vs taxations.

China might be example of modern monarchy with all its flaws and benefits including long term planning and so on.
Yet not very attractive place to be in.

Hottentot

03-18-13, 10:59 AM

03-18-13, 11:02 AM

You'd have to be super rich to pay even near 50 %. Average people won't ever see percentages like that. Mine is 1 %.
I understand that you have progressive tax rates.
What is average tax rate ?

Hottentot

03-18-13, 11:07 AM

I understand that you have progressive tax rates.
What is average tax rate ?

Really difficult to say. Might be around 20, give or take. Finns with more knowledge correct me if I'm wrong. Speaking solely of the percentage you pay based on your income and not counting any other possible taxes.

Penguin

03-18-13, 11:34 AM

"Anarcho"-capitalism in a nutshell:

'Let's overthrow the government, because it oppresses us.
After this we bow down to our new overlords because they have power through wealth and heritage.'

Yeah, makes perfect sense. :88)

Penguin

03-18-13, 11:55 AM

The only example of Anarchism which, as far as I know, was tried on the ground was by Nestor Makhno during the Russian civil war. He is held up by a lot of Anarchists as an ideal, but when you look at his record, you see he was just another petty dictator who imposed his will through his army.

To be fair, Makhno's Free Territory was in constant warfare with White and Red troops during its short existence, it never existed in times of peace.
I am not saying there were no injustices committed by the Blacks, however Makhno's men were often accused of criminal acts without proven sources. The fact that the Ukraine fell under the Soviet rule and propaganda also made a contribution to paint Makhno as a foe or bandit.
The establishment of people's committee's, and the struggle to establish a basic democratic down-top way of rule, aka self-governance, does not really fit into the dictator category.

For a gasp at societies without government you don't have to look too far from where you live: The Iroquis Confederation definitely had anarchistic elements in it.

Tribesman

03-18-13, 12:46 PM

'Let's overthrow the government, because it oppresses us.
After this we bow down to our new overlords because they have power through wealth and heritage.'

Yeah, makes perfect sense. :88)
But you miss the pure genius of the plan.
Selective breeding and elimination of degenerate elements of society will produce a master race that is worthy of lording it over the serfs.

Hottentot

03-18-13, 01:01 PM

We are approaching Bingo at alarming rate.

Bilge_Rat

03-18-13, 01:12 PM

To be fair, Makhno's Free Territory was in constant warfare with White and Red troops during its short existence, it never existed in times of peace.
I am not saying there were no injustices committed by the Blacks, however Makhno's men were often accused of criminal acts without proven sources. The fact that the Ukraine fell under the Soviet rule and propaganda also made a contribution to paint Makhno as a foe or bandit.
The establishment of people's committee's, and the struggle to establish a basic democratic down-top way of rule, aka self-governance, does not really fit into the dictator category.

For a gasp at societies without government you don't have to look too far from where you live: The Iroquis Confederation definitely had anarchistic elements in it.

To be honest, I made my statement more to see if Skybird was a Makhnoist :D. Makhno was not around long enough to see if his ideas could have worked and the historical record is very slim.

Tribesman

03-18-13, 01:53 PM

We are approaching Bingo at alarming rate.
Muslim Jews Obama?

Hottentot

03-18-13, 01:56 PM

Muslim Jews Obama?

Oh come on, even I'm not sad enough to cheat at Subsim Bingo.

[Quietly goes ticking boxes while no one is looking]

Skybird

04-16-13, 06:38 PM

source: http://lewrockwell.com/orig13/fagerstrom1.1.1.html

Hoppe’s Dangerous Books

by Joakim Fagerström and Joakim Kampe
October 23rd, 2012

A few months ago we were invited to speak at the European Students For Liberty regional conference in Stockholm. Our institute has previously written articles for ESFL and we have also delivered a webinar for them, on May 1st on the topic The Myth of the Socialist Paradise Sweden. It was a great event with about 200 attendees and it was, to our knowledge, greatly appreciated. Thus, we were truly looking forward to speaking at a one of their conferences that was going to be held in our hometown.

The topic of the speech was "How to achieve freedom". In the speech we were going to bring up Mises and use him as a role model in the struggle for freedom, and how you had to be uncompromising in your struggle and never water down your message in order to better suit the masses. What mattered was devotion to truth and to your principles. After all, Mises in his memoirs concludes that if there was one thing that he regretted it was that he compromised too much (Memoirs, p. 60).

As a part of our attendance at the event we were planning on selling books from many of the great authors and legends like Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Henry Hazlitt, Stephan Kinsella, Linda and Morris Tannehill and many more. Since these books are hard to get and a bit more expensive in Sweden we always try to sell them at good prices. We were granted the permission to have a table to sell the books from during the day. At this point everything was ok.

However, a few days before the event we announced at the ESFL event page that we were going to sell these books during the day and about ten minutes later we got a message from the organizers asking us to immediately remove the "Hoppe comment". After some clarification it was understood that what they wanted us to do was to remove the announcements about the books. The reason was that we were not allowed to sell Professor Hoppe’s books at the event. This was quite surprising, since according to their website, ESFL prides itself on embracing "the diversity of justifications for liberty and encourages debate and discourse on the differing philosophies that underlie liberty", and in being a big-tent movement. The explanation was that a person responsible for the event didn’t like Professor Hoppe, and that Hoppe’s ideas were deemed to be too controversial. In other words, an organization that claims that they are all for liberty doesn’t want to sell books written by one of the leading libertarian thinkers of our time because his ideas are deemed controversial.

For many people Professor Hoppe’s books have been and will always be too dangerous to allow. Once you read them you understand the great fiction of the state, and it becomes obvious to what extent you truly believe in property, freedom and society. Of course we fully understand that European Students For Liberty have every right to exclude whatever and whoever they want from their events. It is their property and their event and they can choose to exclude and discriminate in any way they see fit. Ironically, this is a point that Hoppe has made and been widely criticized for, and it is likely one of the main reasons why his ideas are deemed as being too controversial and uncomfortable, and why ESFL wants nothing to do with him.

It is however somewhat hypocritical to say that they want to include everyone in the freedom movement, from minarchists to anarchists, and that they are open to all ideas regarding freedom, but at the same time they are afraid of Hoppe’s ideas. Thus they have shown through their demonstrated preference that they don’t live up to the very ideal and vision they themselves have set up for the organisation.

To water down the message of liberty and shy away from controversies, with no regard to the truth, in order to gain a wider audience is not a behaviour that we think is conducive to the overall goal and can never be a good long-term strategy. It is coincidentally also one which both Mises and Hoppe would advise us against pursuing.

Obviously, since we hold Professor Hoppe in such a high esteem (he is even featured on our crest) and because he is an important reason as to why we started the Swedish Mises Institute we chose to not participate. Following the lead of Mises, and coincidentally even more so of Hoppe, we do not compromise and we are not willing to water down our message in order to better appease the masses. Instead we choose to stand fast in our uncompromising intellectual radicalism. Of course without our participation the event was more homogenous, with statists and bankers.

Also, an interesting detail that seems to have gone by completely unnoticed, is that ESFL at the event handed out a book with the name "Marknader och demokrati" ("Markets and democracy" in English only available in Swedish) for free, by Björn Wahlroos. What they weren’t aware of is that in the book he references Professor Hoppe’s book Democracy The God That Failed, and even quotes Hoppe regarding the connection between democracy and a higher time preference.

In the end, it was a simple cost-benefit analysis on our part. Yes, it is true, we could have gained some followers in the short-run if we compromised and watered down our message, but we would have done so at the expense of denying who we are and what we stand for.

To conclude, and to paraphrase Shakespeare, there appears to be something rotten in the ESFL. While we are sure this article mostly will fall on deaf ears, we at least hope that someone within the ESFL realizes that something is not right and acts to change this. ESFL could be a strong and true force for libertarianism in the world, and it is likely an organization that will be with us for some time. However, to exclude ideas and authors because they are deemed to be too controversial or uncomfortable will in the end be the undoing of the organization and the overall goal. Only an adherence to non-compromising intellectual radicalism will help us achieve our goal. An adherence to pragmatism and gradualism will not. Because, it is just like the libertarian abolitionist of slavery William Lloyd Garrison put it: "Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice."