Introduction to Hoppe's main work

[Skybird]

LINK: The Idea of a Private Law Society

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

LINK: The Idea of a Private Law Society

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]

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.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

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]

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.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Oberon

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.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Oberon

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

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!

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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.