Quote:
Originally Posted by August
Any society that tries to live by Hoppes law will just become prey for the society that doesn't live by those rules.
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It is not "Hoppe'S law". It is what your own nation once has been founded upon in ideas and what people like you often quite naturally refer to in "American key qualities", that everybody is/should be strong enough to carry his own weight, live in a free society, is his own fortune's blacksmith, shall have the opportunity to become happy, and regulated and tyrannised by government but the government needing to fear the people.
And Hoppe did not invent this modern libertarianism. He bases much on Rothbard's ethics and principle who revived it, basing on what is called Austrian economics that had a renaissance in intellectual popularity after the Keynesian diasaster. The first economist winning the Nobel for economics after Keynes death, was Hayek, an Austrian school economist. The outcome of that disaster and the prediction that spending oneself out of debts never can work, has been predicted since before the 70s, and they have attacked Keynes and Friedman already before. Seeing where it all stands today, they were right.
What sets Hoppe apart is that he is more consistent in identifying even democracy to be a source of cultural decline, erosion of freedom and liberty and financial ruin of nations, where Hoppe, von Mises and Hayek accpeted to live with democracy, hoping to "reform" it. von Mises, short before he died, admitted, that he was wrong in supporting democracy, that he was naive.
A strong defense can be erected by free people as well. You do not need a centralised government for that, but the poeople agreeing to do so. You need competent defnse contrctors who makes it their business to provide that for a payment. We have had that, and we are shifting back to that. More and more intelligence services already get externalised (the current PRISM setup for example uses much spying and data analysis done by private companies like Snowden work for one), same with externalisation of combat power to private mercenary companies. The motives to do so are different, yes. Still it shows that it can be done and can be had. And in afghanistan, a military opponent formed by anything but a centralised government, has had your hightech operation stalled. Not the first time in history that local militias have exhausted a techncially and by paper-form superior enemy. European history is full of that. So is the history of the early United States, and your independence war.
This is all what"private law society" means: that the people living in a place negotiate amongst themselves and decide themselves what they do, and not getting decided by a government that has its own parasitic interest to live at their expense and defend that, and robbing them and demanding their submission. There is no service the goivernment an provide, that free people cannot decide all by themselves to establish it or not, and running it more efficient, most ecponomic and with better net effect. The government is the worst manager of all.
The status quo today is unsustainable in the medium and longer run. Finances bring us down, erosion of liberty brings us down, wellfare state bribery and socialism brings us down. We need to start thinking outside the box. The old familiar way brought us to where we are, if we stick to them, they will destroy us. As I repeatedly said in threads: we are already living in post-democratic era. Our own democratic government since quite a while now have started to destroy democracy, and the people assist them in that, and so the old prediction of democracy turning in ochlocracies* and tyrannies, becomes fulfilled once again. Do we never learn?
* Wikipedia: Ochlocracy (Greek: ὀχλοκρατία, okhlokratía; Latin: ochlocratia) or mob rule is government by mob or a mass of people, or the intimidation of legitimate authorities. As a pejorative for majoritarianism, it is akin to the Latin phrase mobile vulgus meaning "the fickle crowd", from which the English term "mob" was originally derived in the 1680s.
Ochlocracy ("rule of the general populace") is democracy ("rule of the people") spoiled by demagoguery, "tyranny of the majority" and the rule of passion over reason, just like oligarchy ("rule of a few") is aristocracy ("rule of the best") spoiled by corruption, and tyranny is monarchy spoiled by lack of virtue. Ochlocracy is synonymous in meaning and usage to the modern, informal term "mobocracy," which emerged from a much more recent colloquial etymology.