Introduction to Hoppe's main work

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by MH

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

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]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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]

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.

It's his solution that makes me shudder.

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

[Takeda Shingen]

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

[Hottentot]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

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

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

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

Who's up for Subsim Bingo?

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Hottentot

Who's up for Subsim Bingo?

That is brilliant!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by u crank

From Democracy: The God That Failed.

-> LINK

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]

Originally Posted by Skybird

-> LINK

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.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

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.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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

Great, then we can stop talking about it.

[u crank]

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/...-hermann-hoppe

[Skybird]

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.

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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.

Originally Posted by Hoppe

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.

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.

No, what you posted is fully sufficient for anyone to make a well thought out judgement that the ideology of Hoppe is seriously nuts.
Its so crazy its barking out loud.
The fact that you cannot see the obvious suggests that you share his problem.