Introduction to Hoppe's main work

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Catfish

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.

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.