By Andrew Dittmer, who recently finished his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and is currently continuing work on his thesis topic. He also taught mathematics at a local elementary school. Andrew enjoys explaining the recent history of the financial sector to a popular audience.
Simulposted at The Distributist Review
This is the third installment of a six-part interview. For the previous parts, see Part 1 and Part 2. Red indicates exact quotes from Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s 2001 book “Democracy: The God That Failed.”
ANDREW: Let’s imagine that a future libertarian society has been established, and security and justice are provided by competing insurance companies. What will happen if two different people, covered by two different security GLOs, disagree about what their rights are?
CODE NAME CAIN: The two people would find an independent arbitrator that would be the unanimous choice of both parties [251].
ANDREW: Suppose that one of the two parties is stronger, and so will likely outlast the other in a direct conflict. Wouldn’t that party prefer to refuse all arbitration and, during the delay, squeeze the other party into submission?
CNC: No.
ANDREW: Suppose someone annoys you, and you pay their GLO a sum of money that is significantly more than the present value of that person’s future insurance payments. Would the GLO kill the person for you?
CNC: No.
ANDREW: Suppose that one security GLO is much stronger than a competing GLO, and it wishes to expand its market share. Will it strategically assassinate clients of the weaker GLO in order to advertise its superior security capabilities?
CNC: No.
ANDREW: These scenarios all appear plausible to me. Why are you sure they won’t happen?
CNC: Security GLOs will understand that the sort of aggressive behavior you describe is economically irrational. In fact, insurers will [not engage] in any form of external aggression because any aggression is costly… implying the loss of clients to other, nonaggressive competitors. Insurers will engage exclusively in defensive violence… [287]
ANDREW: Suppose the CEO of a security GLO understands his own self-interest differently than you do, and starts killing people. What would happen then?
CNC: A security GLO that started assassinating people would represent a threat to stable order not just for the insurer of the murdered individuals, but for all security GLOs. Therefore, the security GLOs would cooperate and defend weaker GLOs from aggression.
ANDREW: How can we be sure about whether you’re right? What if the security GLOs fail to cooperate in the way you say?
CNC: There is nothing that would stop the GLOs from cooperating in order to establish stability. Already today, all insurance companies are connected through a network of contractual agreements… as well as a system of… reinsurance agencies, representing a combined economic power which dwarfs that of most existing governments. [248] Under pressure to settle questions about intergroup conflict, competition would promote the development and refinement of a body of law that incorporated the widest… consensus and agreement… [250-251]
ANDREW: So the insurance companies, taken together, will constitute a sort of global, non-coercive, non-government GLO, established in a consensual and rights-protecting manner.
CNC: Exactly.
ANDREW: Although it can be very difficult, ordinary people in America can sometimes influence what their government does. I get that the global GLO will be different in that ordinary people will have no voice in what happens – but in what other ways will the global GLO not be a government?
CNC: First, you’re wrong – not only will consumers have a voice in the global GLO, they will be sovereign. They will completely control the GLO through their decisions about where to purchase insurance.
Anyway, to answer your question, a government is an organization that exercises a compulsory territorial monopoly of protection and the power to tax [256]. The global GLO will be very different.
ANDREW: The global GLO will protect people through the security GLOs that are part of it. Those organizations will be paid money by people who desire protection: noncoercive Tax-Like Payments. Aside from everything being completely voluntary, what is the difference here?
CNC: The fact that everything will be completely voluntary is, of course, a very important difference. But there will be another difference.
Governments not only monopolize the business of protecting people, but they also monopolize control over territory. In the libertarian society, security GLOs will protect people, but they will not hold final authority over a specific piece of real estate.
ANDREW: Oh, I see, private homeowners will rule over territory instead.
CNC: Not exactly. Most of the time, houses will be part of “proprietary communities,” like modern-day gated residential communities… owned by a single entity, either an individual or a private corporation… The proprietor [will be] an entrepreneur seeking profits from developing and managing… communities… [215]. The residents will not have full title to their homes, since the proprietor will retain the right to enforce covenants – i.e. rules about who can live there under what conditions.
ANDREW: Since these real estate corporations will have authority over specific territorial areas, could we call them territory GLOs?
CNC: We can call them whatever we want, as long as we use our terms precisely.
ANDREW: So I guess the idea is that even though the global GLO and the security GLOs will impose a few basic rules on everyone, there will be a lot of room for each territory GLO to create its own individual culture.
CNC: You’re finally starting to understand. Catholics will be able to live by their principles, Muslims by Islamic principles, and Non-believers by Secular principles.
ANDREW: So these local communities will increasingly separate from each other… That might not bother some people, but given that Dr. Hoppe is an economist, isn’t he worried that the world will divide up into small, economically isolated units?
CNC: That won’t happen – just because one does not want to associate with or live in the neighborhood of Blacks, Turks, Catholics or Hindus, etc., it does not follow that one does not want to trade with them from a distance [140].
ANDREW: Uh… will a lot of people not want to live with blacks or Catholics?
CNC: Each territory GLO will have entrance requirements (for example, no beggars, bums, or homeless, but also no homosexuals, drug users, Jews, Moslems, Germans, or Zulus) and those who [do] not meet those entrance requirements [will] be kicked out as trespassers. [211]
ANDREW: If you’re only allowed to live in certain areas depending on your race, behavior, and religion, that might sound to some people like a less free society.
CNC: Those people are clearly uncomfortable with free individuals making decisions that they think are mutually beneficial. Maybe they would prefer living in the United States of today, where [d]iscrimination is outlawed… [t]eachers cannot get rid of lousy or ill-behaved students, employers are stuck with poor or destructive employees… banks and insurance companies are not allowed to avoid bad risks… and private clubs and covenants are compelled to accept members… in violation of their very own rules and restrictions. [210]
ANDREW: Presumably, some people will not mind living with people of other races.
CNC: Of course, every territory GLO would be free to discriminate in whatever way it wishes. But we need to be realistic. Notwithstanding the variety of discriminatory policies pursued by different proprietary communities… no proprietary community can be as “tolerant” and “non-discriminatory” as left-libertarians wish every place to be. [212]
ANDREW: What do you mean by “left-libertarians”?
CNC: Murray Rothbard likes to call them “modal-libertarians” (MLs). As Rothbard says, “the ML is an adolescent rebel against everyone around him,” who only hates government because it is something else to disrespect. MLs think that profanity, drug use… homosexuality… pedophilia… or any other conceivable perversity or abnormality… are perfectly normal and legitimate activities and lifestyles [206]. What these countercultural libertarians fail to realize… is that the restoration of private property rights and laissez-faire economics implies a sharp and drastic rise in social “discrimination” and will swiftly eliminate most if not all of the… life style experiments so close to the heart of left libertarians. [208]
Left-libertarians and multi- or countercultural lifestyle experimentalists, even if they were not engaged in any crime, would once again have to pay a price for their behavior. If they continued with their behavior or lifestyle [in public], they would be barred from civilized society and live physically separate from it, in ghettos or on the fringes of society, and many positions or professions would be unattainable to them. [212]
ANDREW: I can tell you’re excited about this… But maybe you’re getting your hopes up. After all, you’ve said that every territory GLO will be free to develop its own culture. What if some territory GLOs make it so people are rewarded for smoking weed?
CNC: Every territory GLO is free to develop its own culture, but only subject to the constraints of inexorable economic laws. First of all, the proprietor and largest investors in the territory GLO would, in order to protect and possibly enhance the value of their property and investments, [216] be very careful about whom to welcome to their territory, and these leaders would set clear standards on what kind of behavior is acceptable for local residents.
Second, the security GLOs would also have a say on who immigrates into the territory GLOs, and even more than any one of their clients, insurers would be interested in… excluding those whose presence leads to a higher risk and lower property values. That is, rather than eliminating discrimination, insurers would rationalize and perfect its practice. [262]
ANDREW: So the security GLOs would regulate the territory GLOs… Let’s see if I understand. Suppose that the security GLOs decide, based on their research, that watching television makes people more docile. Do you think maybe they would require every family to watch television for a certain number of hours per day?
CNC: No, you don’t understand. If one security GLO tried to do this, they would lose business to competing security GLOs that allowed people not to watch television.
ANDREW: Suppose that the security GLOs decide, based on their research, that kids who are home-schooled are more likely to oppose a libertarian society. Would they refuse to insure territory GLOs where kids are home-schooled?
CNC: Once again, you fail to reckon with the power of market competition. Security GLOs will only cooperate when doing so leads to positive consequences. For example …insurers would… be particularly interested in gathering information on potential… crimes and aggressors… [A]lways under competitive pressure, they would develop and continually refine an elaborate system of demographic and sociological crime indicators. That is, every neighborhood would be described, and its risk assessed, in terms of a multitude of crime indicators, such as… its inhabitants’ sexes, age groups, races, nationalities, ethnicities, religions, languages, professions, and incomes. [260-261]
ANDREW: Do you think that the security GLOs might offer people they consider to be potential criminals the opportunity to wear a device keeping them under surveillance – as a condition for granting them insurance?
CNC: Now you’re coming up with more practical ideas. But the insurance companies are good at thinking outside the box – they’ve probably already thought of that.
ANDREW: Let’s see – so security GLOs will set up precise financial incentives to segregate residential communities by race, etc., following detailed mathematical models. Many people will be effectively forced, in a rights-respecting manner, to be under 24-hour surveillance. I’m curious – what kind of society do you think this will produce?
CNC: I think most people would agree that under such conditions, all … regional, racial, national… religious, and linguistic wealth redistribution would disappear, and [so] a constant source of social conflict would be removed permanently [262].
ANDREW: I know that you think this is very unlikely, but suppose people living in the free society of the future decide that they don’t like it very much, and would like to go back to living in a democracy. Could they do it?
CNC: That will not be possible.
ANDREW: You mean, you are sure that no one will want to go back to democracy?
CNC: No, I mean they won’t be allowed to discuss that possibility. 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. [218]
ANDREW: But all of these outlaws, excluded from the libertarian society – how do you know they won’t try to rebel against the civilization you’ve created?
CNC: You mean, what if the rejects continue to nurture ideas of democracy, and they make plans to take away the rights of rich people? Keep in mind that in the society of the future, a lot of jobs will be done by robots. As pacifist libertarian Bryan Caplan says, “rich people rarely take the ‘transition to socialism’ lying down…. [If you were a rich person in this scenario], you might want to reprogram your robots for civil war…. True, all of the soldiers of the future may be robots… But… [j]ust because robots do all of the killing doesn’t mean humans won’t do their share of the dying.”
In part 4 of this interview series, Code Name Cain will explain why an attentive survey of history shows that all of the rights of governments are illegitimate, and that all of the rights of modern corporations and property-holders are legitimate.
Notes:
Karl Widerquist envisions a fully sovereign state growing from landholdings like this (“A Dilemma for Libertarianism,” Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 8.1 (2009): 43-72).
“Now that I think of it, they already have”: Insurance 2020: Innovating beyond old models IBM
p. 2: “The… rising tide of technology… empowers insurance underwriters to bring their products closer to realtime interaction via sensor networks and enlightened privacy regulations.” See also p. 6, second paragraph from the top.
Bryan Caplan, however, points out that since the libertarian society will be incredibly wealthy, it will be “child’s play” for the numerous billionaires to support everyone else through “voluntary charity.” He therefore considers a revolution extremely unlikely.
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Who the hell is Hans-Herman Hoppe, and why is he advocating birth of neo-feudal mini-states? Does he really think these passages sound reasonable, or are they being taken out of context?
These guys are beyond hilarious. I’ve set up a blog on direct democracy systems if anyone is interested: samplocracy.wordpress.com
But they are dead serious. Scary.
For anyone who didn’t read the IBM prospectus for the future of the insurance industry, you should. IBM proposes using the tracking capability of, say, google or facebook, to determine every individual’s ‘risks’, to wit:
“The forecast over the next decade calls for a significant
increase in the flexibility of insurance products and use of
pervasive computing technology to make this possible.
We expect that calculating the cost of a specific risk,
regardless of whether it is a personal or commercial
exposure, will make use of inexpensive sensors tied into
the next-generation Internet. The data provided by such
sensors supports the near realtime calculation of risk
based on the collection of appropriate data and tallies a
running charge for the proper amount of premium based
on the actual risk presented. This works equally well for
life risks as it does for property ones.
These same mechanisms also support a broad range of
potential policy durations. They will facilitate “just-in-time
insurance” as a person moves through a set of “spaces.”
Each step of the journey represents a different risk such
as car-to-train-station, train-to-city-station, station-to office,
and so on. Each leg of the trip truly represents a
varying amount of risk. A “pay-as-you-live” product would
trade some location and time-of-day privacy data for
lower insurance bills overall. And in the spirit of active
risk management, the same network of sensors could
also provide convenient information (such as advice
on avoiding an overloaded expressway) relayed on the
appropriate device such as the car audio system, a phone
and, then, in e-mail or as a phone call in the office.”
This IBM document is the most chilling big-corporate-brother thingy I’ve read lately.
Progressive, of course, is already doing this – offering lower rates in exchange for “bugging” your car so they can keep track of your driving habits.
Can they force you to join Facebook? You gonna tell me Zuckerberg wasn’t tipped in the profitable direction?
As in, “Plastics” (The Graduate)? Or was he led into the fold by a Dutch Uncle? No way this is a coincidence.
I suggest the “adults” get their act together as there are loonies waiting in the wings.
More than you know, F.Beard. Their *neuronal circuitry* has taken them beyond the real world we still inhabit. This is what happens to people maxed out, hopeless, but desperate to rule. Think “THE PSYCHOPATHIC GOD: ADOLF HITLER” by Robert G.L. Waite (New York, Basic Books, Inc. 1977). This is what happens when *coping* fails.
We have a lot to deal with, from every side.
Noam Chomsky has said that in refrence to this rightwing libertarian idiology witch I call it a scam. That once upon time in new york there was these privet fire brigades that sold to houses these metal sings that told that this house or building would be put out in case of fire. Those buildings that didnt have the sing had the tendency to burn down as a result of arson. If there are writing errors in the text forgive me it might have somthing to do with me being finnish leftwing libertarian or the fact that I cant write in finish either. On defence of these rightwing libertarians is that they are very consistant on being antiwar who ever is in power.
Private Fire Departments have been in California for many years; their duty is to save the houses of private *subscribers*; for everyone else, it’s “sauve qui peut.”
“The Shock Doctrine” at work in Bush’s *Homeland*.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe (born September 2, 1949) is an Austrian School economist of the anarcho-capitalist tradition, and a Professor Emeritus of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Hermann_Hoppe
Astounding that someone who writes such sophomoric nonsense is a tenured professor … anywhere. Oh, but he’s an economics prof. Enough said.
Such *Professors* for the Master Class have been positioned strategically within academia for at least thirty years. A far higher class of Austrian Economists (from Austria) was evident at Tulane University when Kelly (a Knight of Malta) and Knapp (Tulane, Aspen Institute) began to serve the NOBILITY cause as Generals for the “Republican” agenda.
This is nonsense. there are no “Laws” of economics, and tribalism usually trumps “economics” anyway. This neo-feudalism would result in endless warfare.
Corporations (East India Company, anyone?) have a long history of violence for profit. Iraq, was probably a corporate war. The glibertarian paradise would quickly degenerate into feudal war and a new dark age.
This guy’s hatred of us “little people” and his sense of being the “superior intellect” are what drives him. Ego, fear and hate.
Mutt50
That jumped out at me, too. This person really seems to think that economic laws are as unbreakable as Newton’s laws. Perhaps if every single person on Earth always behaved with utmost rationality economic principles could be more like laws, but of course then we wouldn’t need security corporations with private armies ready to blow away criminals, and where’s the fun in that?
Not even that. Libertarians seem to constantly forget their own selfish impulses apply evenly to everyone.
For example — Alan Greenspan, Ayn Rand’s heir apparent, never imagined that a trader for an investment bank would do anything to benefit himself at the expense of his company. Like one department buying AAA-rated crap from another department with a kick-back on the side. The company blows up, but the two “traders” (read: traitors) count their riches.
How do Libertarians ignore the obvious?
“How do Libertarians ignore the obvious?”
Because it’s a religion. All faith-based systems are like that.
ebear, this is so. Rigid (“fanatical”)thinking comes with the main course. This is how the high priests of *religions* have controlled the masses for the .01% for centuries. You can bet that the .01% Reich is behind this and every other divide/conquer “drive them insane” ruse.
I believe this is a synthetic conversation. The text in red is real, though.
K Ackermann — I agree. This is just an artful way of (justifiably) trashing Hoppe.
Well, yes. But I think Andrew Dittmer very much simply asks ‘questions” of Hoppe and then allows Hoppe to respond through things Hoppe has already said or written.
Ergo, Hoppe trashes himself.
These aren’t the views of a person, but of an ideology.
mutt50, how well you comprehend.
>>> Security GLOs will understand that the sort of aggressive behavior you describe is economically irrational. In fact, insurers will [not engage] in any form of external aggression because any aggression is costly… implying the loss of clients to other, nonaggressive competitors. Insurers will engage exclusively in defensive violence…
oh my got what a crock of shit. as a counterexample, I refer to, oh I don’t know. The ENTIRE RECORDED HISTORY OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION ? how’s that for a counterexample. Jeez.
That is to say, history proves that aggression pays off vs pacifism a whole lot.
Pete,
That is not completely true. Probably not even mostly true.
Wars are not only physical but also intellectual even those fighting don’t realize it sometimes.
Romans fought the Greeks and enslaved them. But in the end it is the Greek way of thinking that won the hearts of even the subsequent generations of Romans.
The Mongols invaded and disrupted the Islamic empire centered in Baghdad in the eleventh century. Later every single one of the invaders became muslim (it took 100 years to happen).
In the end it is the better world view (which gives one a more satisfying/better life) that is going to be victorious.
Don’t think of Victory in physical terms only. Physical dies. Worldview (culture/thoughts) live on.
Mansoor H. Khan
“Romans fought the Greeks and enslaved them. But in the end it is the Greek way of thinking that won the hearts of even the subsequent generations of Romans.”
And what happened to that Greek way of thinking after the next wave of conquerors overran the Roman nation? A thousand-year dark age, that’s what.
Not true. Neoplatonism became the philosophical scaffolding of the Roman Catholic Church. If it’s a Dark Age it’s decidedly part Greek.
it was only a dark age according to the elites. the average person probably had a gigantic rise in living standards because THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO SUPPORT WHOLE GODDAMN ROMAN CITIES ANYMORE! don’t let the creditors fool you.
JTFaraday, did a Roman Catholic Priest tell you this?
Prove it.
Up until the 10th-11th century the hellenized Eastern Roman Empire was doing very well actually. It was only after the westerners started going on organized cruises to the east, visiting ERE and the Calliphate (spelling?), that they realized what they were missing.
@Mansoor
<<<>>>
I’m sure that the billions of people who have been raped, pillaged, tortured, and killed in the name of God, all things holy, and making a buck take great solace in knowing that some world-view that they never gave two rats asses about triumphed. Good grief, some people just think too much.
“Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.”
Huh? Mansoor, did you take a wrong turn, or did THEY get to you (perhaps aggressively)?
Research and common experience clearly show that cheating succeeds. This alone explains why the world is owned and operated by psychopaths.
walter_map,
It is a very temporary ownership. Do you think the current level imbalance in almost everything can be sustained?
Mansoor H. Khan
Certainly not. Civilization’s problems with politics and economics are merely contributory to the greatest threat to it, and that is ecological:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×429540
Bad as the situation is now, it hasn’t even gotten ugly yet, much less weird ugly.
walter_map,
better start discussing this stuff with people around you. education is the first and necessary step to any social change.
mansoor
Mansoor, I’m worried about you. What happened to you?
Sounds like Snow Crash.
Yes! Occurred to me that Neal Stephenson must have had a lot of fun reading Hoppe. I love the wild fling of Snow Crash.
This is turning into sci-fi panel discussion convention. Does anyone see libertarian thinking as a Philip K. Dick variation on some nightmare future world, alternative past, or other dark, strange journey into mystification of a cruel new dystopia?
But Philip K. Dick will get the last laugh, you assholes. :-P LOL
Actually, it is Carroll Quigley who will get the last laugh.
http://tinyurl.com/2ffsx9
My mommy always said there were no monsters, no real ones. But there are.
Your tinyurl link led to *AlexanderHamiltonInstitute.org*.
“Your tinyurl link led to *AlexanderHamiltonInstitute.org*.”
It tried to lead there, but the domain no longer is registered.
As far as sci-fi, the anarchy of Robert Heinlein is an ideal, especially for the techno-nerds of Silicon Valley. Alpha male fantasies for deltas.
L Ron Hubbard’s religious propaganda usually includes psycho strong leaders along with weird psychology. Usually tribal mechanisms, even if it’s corporate states.
Since the real world is devolving down toward a Phillip K. Dick dystopia, perhaps speculative fiction has more to say than a whole shelf full of economics.
Heinlein rules for the sane. We’re getting Dick’s world.
Sorry, Jolie, that link is dead, but Quigley is available online elsewhere. Chadwick’s introduction to ‘Tragedy and Hope’ is instructive, and, scarily, very well-corroborated:
http://compleatpatriot.blogspot.com/2009/09/introduction-to-carroll-quigleys.html
To quote:
‘There really is a “world system of financial control in private hands” that is “able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world.” … They now control every major international institution, every major multinational and transnational corporation both public and private, every major domestic and international banking institution, every central bank, every nation-state on earth, the natural resources on every continent and the people around the world through complicated inter-locking networks that resemble giant spider webs. This group is comprised of the leading family dynasties of the Canada, United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and China. This self-perpetuating group has developed an elaborate system of control that enables them to manipulate government leaders, consumers and people throughout the world. … This group is responsible for the death and suffering of over 180 million men, women and children. They were responsible for World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam, etc. They have created periods of inflation and deflation in order to confiscate and consolidate the wealth of the world. They were responsible for the enslavement of over two billion people in all communist nations—Russia, China, Eastern Europe, etc., inasmuch as they were directly responsible for the creation of communism in these nations. They built up and sustain these evil totalitarian systems for private gain. They brought Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Roosevelt to power and guided their governments from behind the scenes to achieve a state of plunder unparalleled in world history. … For the last two and one half centuries wealth and power have been concentrating in the hands of fewer and fewer men and women. This wealth is now being used to construct and maintain the World Empire that is in the last stages of development. The World Empire is partly visible and partly invisible today.’
Sound familiar?
Walter_map. thanks.
The quote is the unfortunate truth, hence my repeated declaration in NC comments:
Laugh the global inherited rich out of control of “Western Democracies” and into rooms at the Hague where they can be prosecuted for our social degradation.
Actually it reminds me more of William Gibson. I remember reading Neuromancer back in the 90s, and it seemed absurd in several aspects to me: a huge, IT-as-a-service network of computers, almost like a cloud, large masses of alienated unemployed around, semi-sovereign corporations, fitness and looks as signs of wealth…
Actually, I’d say it’s probably closer to The Diamond Age, with all of the ethnic mini-states and all…
Yep, Exactly like Snow Crash ;)
fun book, no fun reality
On the whole, a Huxleyan dystopia might be preferable to an Orwellian one, although it’s a foregone conclusion you’re not actually going to get a choice.
Present trends suggest the likelihood of getting the worst elements of both, although misery will be very much reduced by an extreme moderation of the global human population, if that’s any consolation.
Huis clos.
So which group gets the waterfront and which group the land close to the dump?
It’s interesting to see how ideologists always forget that reources are distributed enevenly on this planet and that human beings will ALWAYS fight to redistribute them when they fell injustice.
It’s weird how these libertarians believe that they can change the world from the bottom but once they get their way, their system will be controlled from the top.
So many contradictions.
His whole premise is that there can be pure competition resulting in complete and direct consumer control of markets. That the consumers best interest will always be protected by their ability to select alternate choices. In a word, this idea is laughable. Libertarian Ideals are nice for the sterile environment of a laboratory but have little if any practical application in reality.
Indeed. How can a consumer’s “best interest” be “protected” if NONE the alternatives are ‘good’ and the consumer is compelled to select the lesser of two evils? Surely any poster here can cite examples.
There is no reason to believe that firms will voluntarily submit to the regulation of markets, because the evidence that they will not is overwhelming. Research and common experience alike show that participants in any market have a natural and powerful incentive to corrupt that market, and universally do so unless external forces are sufficient to prevent it.
Perpetrators of libertarianism do not tolerate any challenge on this point because their position fails immediately and completely. Any such challenge is sufficient to discredit a libertarian.
Are mergers and acquisitions forbidden in this world? What about cartels?
Doesn’t the successful GLO simply buy out all its less successful competitors, so that it has permanent, unchallengeable, access to everybody’s cash, in spite of whatever level of service it provides, indeed, so it could simply after the event, drive service levels down to boost profit?
What is going to stop it doing so? The weaker GLOs? A newly oppositional GLO established to retain a semblance of “competition” in the marketplace, which will of course, be immediately squashed by the extant, dominant incumbent?
Is Hoppe talking about a world ruled by the likes of Microsoft? Which has only be reined in because of lawsuits brought against it by government, specifically in the EU?
And of course all the Open Source/Free Software types would be barred from speaking, no matter how superior their product might be, because they are violating the shibboleth of “private property trumps all” by even daring to exist.
Sorry about that, Mssrs Berners-Lee, Cailliau, Stallman, Torvalds.
Bye bye Mozilla, Apache, GNU/Linux, World Wide Web.
It’s not supposed to work out well for everyone. The INTENTION is to create wealth and power stratification that would make 1700s France look like modern Norway.
Yeah, and 1700’s France worked out so well for the French Aristocracy! When masses of people are fed up and pushed into a corner, not even well armed robots (much less violence prostitutes, er, mercenaries) can save selfish libertarians.
Seriously, isn’t it Ayn Rand on Meth?
To believe that the libertarian scenario here would work as presented is so foolish in the extreme that it cannot be anything but a deliberate scam.
In the real world, companies do not normally compete: they collude. Remember that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A ‘FREE MARKET’. Markets are regulated or they dominated by their largest players, and either way they are never ‘free’.
“There have been repeated fines and malfeasance at literally all the investment banks, but it doesn’t seem to affect their behavior much,” he said. “So I have to conclude it is part of strategy as simple cost/benefit analysis, that fines and legal costs are a small price to pay for the profits.”
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/on-wall-street-some-insiders-express-quiet-outrage/
The financial industry cheats in the normal course of business even when heavily regulated: what makes anybody think these firms won’t cheat if they were not regulated, subject only to ‘market forces’? The very idea is preposterous on its face, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a con artist who is out to scam you.
Capitalism is driven by maximizing return on investment. Capitalists have long ago discovered that competition is inefficient, so they avoid it, using capital to manipulate rather than innovate.
What is role of the financial capitalist in the system, the ones that exist on unearned income, stripping assets or tapping revenue streams? How are billionaires made when traditionally it almost impossible to earn wealth. Will there be a discussion on the money supply and how it is managed?
I keep getting a vision that this is somehow an idealized Neo-Confederate economy that evolves into a few “high society” aristocrats and many serfs, who’s labor funds the “charitable giving” and the inevitable and endless wars of wealth accumulation and market share.
I wish everyone who claims to love “capitalism” would recognize that what they love about it is the benefit to consumers of *competitive* markets — not “free” markets. Just like in football, you need rules and referees to keep the game competitive and to keep people from cheating. “Free” markets don’t stay that way for long without an active force against M&A and other industry collusion.
Ransome, it’s too bad we’re not having the discussion you request. That’s what should be happening at NC.
This lunacy of Hoppe’s has hi-jacked the real issues before us. Is what it was meant to do?
Yves, tell us why we keep getting this information. Is it to let us know how far afield of reality that this bizarre movement has gone? Did you think it would hi-jack the forum? Will you please weigh in on the purpose of this series, Yves?
Ayn Rand on crack?
Great satire! Of course libertopia’s can never be possible – they collapse before the theory is even fully articulated!
I own my house. Not own with a mortgage: own as in paid for. It was never securitized thanks to its age so title is clear to. There are a small number of restrictive covenants, but they’re minimal, allowing utility companies brief visits to fix things. If they weren’t there I’d allow the utility companies to fix the infrastructure anyway if it were broken, because I care about my neighbors and my neighborhood. My house isn’t in an HOA. It was built in the 1920’s in an area that’s attached solely to the city.
So .. how am I going to be forced to deed it into one of these GLO’s? Let me guess; my neighbors will vote and our rights forcibly taken away. Or maybe I’d be forced to sign a contract at gunpoint. For that matter, how is anybody going to be forced to deed their homes into a GLO?! Maybe their mortgage servicers, fine citizens that they are (not), will force them to?
For HOA’s they may get the whole HOA to vote, but even then — unless it’s unanimous — some people will be forced to accept property restrictions they never should have believed were possible. They did contractually agreed to live to HOA rules, but it’s a stretch to say they thought those would someday regulate religion. What’s going to happen to people who own their homes there but don’t fit into the regulations?
One of the few pictures in my office is an autographed photo of Lenin. No, not John Lenon .. that Lenin, Vlad. He had lots of titles, none official. The nicer one’s are “Leader of the Soviet Revolution” and “Chairman of the World Workers Party.” Quieter but probably more common one’s are along the lines of “The Butcher of Russia,” thanks to how he dealt with dissent (Stalin was his protege). He sits there, reading Pravda, to serve as a constant reminder about what happens if we allow these Neo “Free Market” ideas to flourish. He’d probably smile and like your idea very much, knowing that it would quickly devolve to a world much closer to his own ideal.
So .. how am I going to be forced to deed it into one of these GLO’s?
Oh, that’s easy. How are you going to afford a security GLO with that expensive-looking ‘independent’ property? Hope they don’t find a random reason to jack up your rates!
Besides, in the U.S. everyone is one health emergency away from losing their home. Choose between your house or health care for yourself/family member.
“No, I mean they won’t be allowed to discuss that possibility. 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.”
I always said that a libertarian society is a theocracy. Here is the proof!
reason,
I agree, it is a theocracy. This is a deeply religious ideology, with all that entails. I link it most closely to Calvinism.
We have living examples of societies based on all the principles outlined in this distopia. These are some of the worst places on earth to live. Never mind “Atlas Shrugged”–this series needs to be made into the movie, “Children of Deranged Men” or “Escape from Libertopia”!
“deeply religeous ideology’, indeed
though for myself the religion of soviet communism, circa 1920-1970, came promptly to mind.
to put it differently, this movie has already been made and shown in our recent human history; libertarianism the movie is just a remake of communism the movie.
“Never mind “Atlas Shrugged”–this series needs to be made into the movie…”
I was thinking that too.
Isn’the mafia a kind of GLO?
Yes,
that occured to me immediately – these CDO sound like the Mafia. And I’m sure in reality they would behave like Mafia, complete with intimidation and wars.
The mafia started out as a protection organization in their ghettos. They protected Italians from being beaten up. I think Mr. Scorcese made a movie about the earliest version of protection in “Gangs of New York”.
This satire by Dittmer is fun. Very Jonathan Swift. We need more of this. I especially enjoy this Hoppe’s guy’s version of freedom that would “eliminate” DFHs. I mean…he actually uses the word “eliminate” as in “eliminate most, if not all of the life style experiments so close to the heart of left libertarianism.” You know that whole pursuit of happiness deal where you are free to grow your hair or crop your hair; sleep with who you want; smoke what you want; have sheep in your yard instead of a lawn; talk about other worlds and other possibilities to TINA (There is No Alternative) and enjoy diversity of people.
No this is that whole Master Race nastiness that supposedly we rejected. Ha. Ha.
I think it’s the very prototype of a GLO, in fact.
Even now, Wall Street operates as an international organized crime syndicate with all the usual trappings: gambling (“casino capitalism”), loan sharking (NINJA loans, PIIGS, etc.), extortion (“bail us out or we crash the economy), high-level corruption (re: Citizens United), and so forth.
The Mafia must be SO jealous. If they had simply started up banks they could be running the planet by now.
Books specifically exposing many corporations in general, and Wall Street in particular, as organized crime rackets would be easy because there is such a huge preponderance of material.
You think they are not in banking?
walter_map,
very few people are talking about a way forward?
mansoor h. khan
Um – does this guy realise that he comes across as extremely ILLIBERAL. Where does that part word “LIBERT” in Libertarian come from?
And doesn’t he realise that the richest places in our current world are cosmopolitan cities. How does he reconcile that with his super-apartheid world? Where will his super capitalists meet one another to make deals I wonder?
Hands up here who thinks this world sounds attractive – let alone ideal!
‘Where does that part word “LIBERT” in Libertarian come from?’
It comes from the typical tactic of the rapacious to engages in deliberate misrepresentation, as the exact opposite of what the situation really is. There are many examples: note how the bankster loan sharks complain that they have been victimized by the homeowners they have bankrupted, and how corporations whine about regulations imposed by the governments which they themselves have corrupted. And so forth.
When you see ‘libertarian’, read ‘totalitarian’.
Precisely so, walter-map.
Neocons and Libertarians are cut from the same shot bolt. See “The Tomb Raiders of the Postmodern Right: Junger’s Anarch, the Neocon, and the Bogus Hermeneutics of Leo Strass,” Chapter 8 of: “THE IDEOLOGY OF TYRANNY: Bataille, Foucault, and the Postmodern Corruption of Political Dissent” by Guido Giacomo Preparata (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Preparata is also the author of “CONJURING HITLER: How Britain and America made the Third Reich” (London and Ann Arbor, MI, Pluto Press, 2005). Other writings at:
http://guidopreparata.net.
These apparent *opposites* are equally Totalitarian. Now they have gone berserk, spilling the beans.
Chadwick’s summary:
http://compleatpatriot.blogspot.com/2009/09/introduction-to-carroll-quigleys.html
As has been superbly revealed by this series, they are “Propertarians” who worship property rights above human rights. They care only for the liberty of the rich to exploit the rest of us.
“Libertarian” has long been a word used by Anarchists to describe themselves. Anarchists are anti-State, but they also are anti-capitalist and reject private ownership of the means of production. The cry of the Spanish Revolution was “Viva communismo libertario!”
Real Libertarians are also radically democratic. As David Graeber has explained on this site, OWS run according to “small-a anarchist” principles of direct democracy and consensus decision-making.
These Randians stole the word “libertarian” beginning in the 70s and centered around the Randian crowd at Harvard. It’s yet another case of deceptive marketing.
Extreme “propertarian” would best describes Hoppe’s distopia.
But there’s an essential contradiction in the core of his fantasy.
Property rights only exist to the extent that they are defined and defended by the state. There are no “property rights’ in the state of nature (grab and hold leads to life that is “nasty, brutish and short”). So, in the initial position, how are the “rights” the GLOs will protect defined?
Does the GLO simply accept rights currently recognized by the existing territorial state and apply them to its customers who may live in other territories where these rights may never have existed or been more limited. How will those rights be adjusted as disputes arise with and among GLOs over competing claims?
Also, I’ve never heard Libertarians justify how *current* property titles would carry over to their world, given that they have been assigned under faulty circumstances according to them. It would be like starting a game of Monopoly where one player has thousands of times as much money as the next.
Liberty for money, not people.
Very good!
A fine example of libertarian magical thinking – aka Gnome Profit Theory. Watch out for phase two!
I can’t wait to live in this free society where I’m prohibited from saying whatever I want, living wherever I want, practicing whichever form of sexuality I prefer, or owning my own home, and I must either buy protection from a security business or face destruction. Such freedom!
In time, given present trends, everything not required will be prohibited.
TK421,
Wicked!
Indeed, and in the back of my mind the term ‘Arbeits macht frei’ lurks.
Wait … “simulposted at the Distributist Review”? This Dittmer guy likes Chesterton? I knew I liked this Dittmer guy!
My face is sore from all the facepalming… The lack of analytic depth voiced by CODE NAME CAIN is startling. The presumption of rational behavior, economic “laws” and “natural” market forces is hilariously naive. Do Libertarians REALLY think like this???
I don’t know if all do, but I recently had to read Rothbard’s For a New Liberty, and I can guarantee you that it is similarly holey.
They do, yes. They’re sociopaths.
“Do Libertarians REALLY think like this???”
The Part 1 of this interview series had a link to an essay on a Cato page. Try that for a down-the-rabbit-hole experience…
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/06/patri-friedman/beyond-folk-activism/
Patri Friedman’s last name is not an accident.
The notion of Seasteading was new for me…
http://seasteading.org/book_beta/General%20Introduction.html
Stephen Colbert recently touched on it…
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/401790/november-08-2011/colbert-platinum—wealth-under-siege
Rex, “I deeply yearn…” begins the “Lead Essay” of “Patri” Friedman on the Cato page to which your first link takes us.
That puts it immediately into the camp of “German Romanticism” as defined in Peter Viereck’s “META-POLITICS: The Roots of the Nazi Mind” (1941, 1961).
See this book in a list given to GARETH in reply to his remark about *uniquely American Fascism* below.
This is VERY dangerous stuff, as Philip Pilkington attests.
I don’t think you need any quotes around Patri —
grandson of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman
http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2010/11/10/names-you-need-to-know-in-2011-patri-friedman/
Do a search on “patri friedman” for lots of entertaining results.
OK, Rex, I’ve seen the second link’s piece on “seasteading” and I assure you that these people are suffering from a deeply pathologican disturbance. They CANNOT cope with complex chaos any more than Hitler and his minions could.
This is a VERY dangerous development in our society. These are the rank and file of the Fourth Reich, no doubt. They intend to be *the destroyer of worlds*, believe it.
Thanks for the Colbert link. I’m Still laughing.
I have to wonder, do libertarians think or just fantasize.
That doesn’t matter — the question is whether they influence policy.
Cnc’s proposals are diabolical.
Of course the guy is an idiot.
You didn’t. ask the right question. If I’m wealthy, I start my own thieves-robbers-assassins guild and OUTGUN your security companies and demand ‘insurance’ not to assassinate you. You can also join and share the booty and protection. This actually existed/exists – see ‘the professional thief’ published in the 1930s for a free market entrepeneurial crime.
A second question is I don’t have to make it impossible for the security firms to catch me, merely uneconomic. If it would cost them $50,000 to solve a $5000 crime, there is no incentive not to simply pay the claim and raise rates, and there is no all-seeing psychic eye knowing the identity of every criminal for every crime. Detective work is hard and expensive. And they may never catch me, nor can the legitimately charge the bill for the 9 they can’t find to the one they do.
I could go on, but as I’ve noted before you prefer to caricature instead of engage and insult people like me with your broad brush instead of allying against the corruption.
As a natural law libertarian, my view is you need government to make the penalties for fraud, theft, robbery, and violent crimes both certain and punative enough so only psychopaths or sociopaths would risk them.
But you can see how your way works – when laws are numerous and complex, and only bureaucrats can bring people to justice, the government turns into the evil CLO you describe and fails to hold cronies to account, but stomps on the weak and poor.
Having government be a monopoly CLO – use of force and coercion – only works if it is limited generally to punishing after the fact. When it dispenses cash, or privelege, it is immediately corrupt. Mattel can test toys for lead in its own corporate labs and many mom and pop toy makers are out of business. Food safery is destroying small organic farms. The government doesn’t protect, it destroys. So that should be limited to those proven guilty of destruction, not to any and every citizen.
“As a natural law libertarian . . .”
That’s you’re mistake. There is no natural law. Only force and those who wield it.
you’re = your
Ben, at times persuasion has worked, the force of ideas.
the government turns into the evil CLO you describe and fails to hold cronies to account
I (and many of us) agree with you here. except that I’d say that government turned (past tense) into the CLO that is described.
The government doesn’t protect, it destroys.
I disagree with this absolute. The government can protect, and it can destroy.
I think I responded to you yesterday… but as I said then I would consider myself a “left libertarian” which is hilarious because today’s fictional account called me out! haha!
We must try to correctly state the problem. is the problem that all Governments are out of control evil CLOs? Or is the problem that our current government has been converted to this?
This has important ramifications. If governments by their nature are evil CLOs, then the answer might be to rid oneself of all governments.
however, if instead the government has a possibility to be an evil CLO or a “good” CLO, then the problem is that our government has been coopted, and then the answer would be to somehow unwind the coopt.
See the difference?
let us assume that the problem is that governments are inherently evil CLOs. If that is the case, then we STILL need to decide if it is better to have an evil government CLO that forces us into taxation and wars and takes our land? or is it better to have private CLOs who essentially do the same thing, (with different terminology)?
because I’ve been to places with no government. I’ve been to Liberia and to Somalia and the rural Kenya and Ethiopia to name a few. And these places have effectively NO governments. Sure, there is a nominal govt around somewhere, but it doesn’t affect people at all.
and the same thing happens in all of these places: private parties take what they want by force. Often but not always along ethnic lines. You get war torn Somalia and Liberia, where young boys eat the hearts of their victims. (this really does happen).
and this happens again and again and again whenever governments are toppled.
so once we decide that government is an inherently evil CLO, how do we get from HERE to a government free existence? And who is to say that the private CLO will be any more respectful of our rights than the Govt CLO?
—
lastly, as a reminder, I’d guess that most of us on NC agree that the FedGov needs to shrink, and also that FedGov needs to be restricted, and that FedGov needs to change.
so an argument against the Libertarian utopia is NOT an argument FOR BigGov.
Regards,
YTL
We should be thinking about our own “people’s GLOs,” basically citizen militias that protect communities from corporate mafias and their mercenaries.
And when your “people’s militia” goes after someone protected by my “people’s militia, who prevents civil war from breaking out?
With no profit motive there is much less chance of that happening needlessly. I am an Anarchist; I want to see a world of autonomous individuals and communities *which are organized into federations,* which may semi-formally include the entire world’s population. Against government *and* capitalism; for communities and federations.
This series has confirmed my belief that Libertarianism is a uniquely American strain of Fascism. Hoppe is fond of fantasizing about the “removal” of homosexuals, Jews and multiculturalists (people of color) from society. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
Wouldn’t you just love to pay for your child to take a college course from this pathological fool?
Gareth, you may be right that it is *uniquely* American Fascism, although its tenor seems close to the “German Romanticism” defined in:
“META-POLITICS: The Roots of the Nazi Mind” by Peter Viereck (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1941; expanded revised edition: New York, Capricorn Books, 1961). If Viereck were alive today, he might be intrigued by your theory.
Giving insights into the *uniquely* American theory:
“THE PURSUIT OF THE MILLENNIUM: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages” by Norman Cohn (1957, revised and expanded: 1970, Barnes & Noble edition by arrangement with Oxford University Press, 2009);
“SACRED CAUSES: The Clash of Religion and Politics, From the Great War to the War on Terror” by Michael Burleigh (first pub. in Great Britain 2006, HarperCollins; Burleigh copyright 2007, U.S. pub. by HarperCollins: Harper Perennial, New York). Of interest is Burleigh’s forte: Germany. Books: “Prussian Society and the German Order” -“Germany Turns Eastward” – The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945″ – “Ethics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide” -“The Third Reich: A New History.”
“THE FAMILY: The Secret Fundamentalism At the Heart of American Power” by Jeff Sharlet (New York, Harper Collins, 2008); “C STREET: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy” by Jeff Sharlet (New York, Boston, London; Little, Brown and Company, 2010);
“WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES US MEANING” by Chris Hedges (New York, Public Affairs, 2002); “AMERICAN FASCISTS: The Christian Right and the War on America” by Chris Hedges (New York, Free Press, 2006);
“STALKING IRISH MADNESS: Searching for the Roots of My Family’s Schizophrenia” by Patrick Tracey (New York, A Bantam Book, 2008);
“SACRED MATTERS: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, The Living Dead, and Other Signs of Religious Life in America” by Gary Laderman (New York, London, The New Press, 2009);
“AMERICA ALONE: The End of the World As We Know It” by Mark Steyn (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, 2006).
As to the 1% manipulating these striving, magical thinkers, see: “THE IRON HEEL” by Jack London (1907; republished by Lawrence Hill Books – Chicago Review Press, Inc., n.d.).
I find it amusing that Hoppe’s book was edited in 2001. We are clearly in a regressionary period. For instance the conservative party in Spain, after winning the recent elections sent an expert/asdvisor to the senate to declare that homosexuality is a disease. Not to mentions that this expert works for a university owned by conservative old-fashioned never-dissapearing ultra-catholics. In the 70s and the 80s one could possibly think that these guys have disappeared from Plate Earth, but in the beginning of the twentyfirst century they are reviving with a vengeance.
It is a time for zombi-religious zombi-politics. Poor Bertrand Russell, he must be turning over in his grave.
Explained by the ultraconservative authoritarian reactionary forces of “Opus Dei” and the book of 1993–a reactionary “Mein Kampf”–entitled: “NOBILITY and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII” by Correa de Oliveira (York, PA, The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), a “registered name for The Foundation for a Christian Civilization, Inc.”; 1993), with Foreword by Morton C. Blackwell, Reagan’s effective *Education Minister*–which in the 1990’s was required reading for students at the University of Dallas, an Opus Dei stronghold.
The authoritarian reactionary movement is BIG, it’s well-organized, and it has been growing for a very long time into a well-oiled fascist *religious* imperium.
There is no freedom and there is no equality? Hoppe-Libertarianism is so over the top it wipes dilemma off the plate. No worries at all about how to balance everyone’s freedom with everyone else’s equality because emotional democracy is out of the question. CNC takes the instinct for freedom and crushes it forthwith. I was expecting him to crush equality first. Is it an expectation of equality or some level of equality which leads to a sense of freedom or does a sense of freedom lead to an expectation of equality? They are the same thing in one individual but a million things between individuals.
Susan the other says,
Libertarian scenario (chaos) is the default scenario we can’t not re-organize our affairs/ourselves more sensibly.
we better get to work and educate people around us.
Mansoor H. Khan
I’m not really clear why this is on NC.
Oh, it’s humor, I get it…
Are you referring to an ‘interview’ w/ so many direct quotes fr/ the written word or are you disparaging the content?
Does anyone know any good ways of preparing Irish babies? I’m partial to roasting, myself.
Oh, wait. The Austerians are already doing that as we speak.
P
Low and slow, with a dry rub, according to Bobby Flay.
Anarchists get to live outside of respectable society? Sweet! Sign me up!
No, really! The fascistic “Libertarians” CNC represents can have their nightmare world of mercenaries and company towns; and we’ll build a communal utopia organized horizontally that is both socialistic and respects individual and community autonomy, and then we can see which one people prefer. Capitalism won’t last a week.
Of course, this is moot since the “Libertarians” intend to enforce their “property” with the same kind of violence as the State uses, but at least there would be no pretense of ‘democracy’.
I predict our Mr. Cain gets gunned down in a financial dispute with his heavily armed security team.
Wonder if he’ll even make it to Part 6 of the interview.
Is this interview being conducted from a heavily fortified bunker someplace? How much does Mr. Cain spend each month on personal security services?
Andrew, please ask him if you can fit the question in. :)
Please stop running these interviews. While somewhat entertaining, they just give a fringe individual a chance to vent his ideological dogma with no recognition there might be some flaws/drawbacks to his position.
I guess you missed the Cato link, or the comment earlier on the thread about how Rothbard says pretty much the same thing.
Hoppe is just clearer about what this means and what it takes to make libertarianism work than some others. He is far from alone.
you really must stop putting ideas in their heads: http://bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15982882
“Hugary Outless Homelessness…the Homeless shall be fined 600 Euros or go to prison — says the link of nickj.
Dickens must be awake. This is his Hobbesian Universe of “Oliver Twist” and “Bleak House.”
The jackboots of the Fourth Reich are out in force. When will Kristallnacht come to America? Say it isn’t so.
Apologies for lousy typing: the linked article says:
“Hungary Outlaws Homelessness…”
this guy has a big red nose, orange hair and way, way too big shoes. since when did people restrict their actions to what is in their economic best interests? ever had a complete jerk living on your block? they go to work so they can afford bad taste and lawyers to offend and annoy you.
what is really so offensive about this article is the author’s constant use of assertions that are mere opinionat that have no basis in fact, they are simply pollyanna beliefs about the behavior of people or companies or markets that are naive at their best. It is well established that people assemble and filter facts and their perception of reality to suite their beliefs. Few can construct beliefs logically out of an unfiltered reality. And this guy has a very bozo set of beliefs.
Hans Herman Hoppe and this interviewee have a particular view of a Libertarian future. It is not the only view of a Libertarian, future, e.g. Ron Paul’s is that of a Constitutional Republic, the original US Constitution in all of its minimum government glory.
I think it would need a few more restrictions, as the current Constitution has failed to restrain government.
In any case, the comments on this forum reveal an extreme poverty of intellect in the US populace. 175 years of public schooling has made for very narrow minds, a complete inability to understand system dynamics and tease out what causes what.
The guys who wrote the Constitution understood ‘money buys power’ and the implications of that for governments executed by fallible people. Not many of the comments seem to do so.
There are 10s of 1000s of quotes about why democracy will fail, e.g. :
Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.
John Adams, Letter, April 15, 1814
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.
———————–
I think all of this anti-Libertarian hysteria is engendered by the fact that Ron Paul is gaining on the political Establishment.
Be clear : the entire world has been run by Progressives for more than 50 years. Progressive thought has permeated everything, and every Republican (but the Pauls, maybe a few others) is more Progressive than Eugene Debbs ever was.
Because of this, the entire world is falling into the same economic pit at the same time; all of the institutions of the world are hopelessly corrupt at the same time.
Progressives have a lot to answer for.
It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. Lew Glendenning
Actually, in the US, the voters were content with small government until the government backed/enforced usury and counterfeiting cartel, the banking system, wrecked the economy in the 1920s and 1930s.
By the time the voters think to vote themselves benefits, they usually need them because the fascists have looted/wrecked the nation via their government privileges.
And if democracy is abolished will that not mean that only bankers and other fascists will have benefit of government while their victims have no redress?
The only thing you seem to highlight is the fact that the current brand of anti-government politicians (which is basically the equivalent of an anti-potassium banana) is far longer and richer than I’d previously thought.
200 years? I don’t know about the average, but our greatest civilizations have endured for thousands of years. And the greatest of those were most generous with their citizens.
Are you out of your mind?
Ah yes… Faux News in print. Where we can see it’s nonsense.
First big one – Democracies always fail. Of course, dictatorships always fail. Royal houses always come to and end. Chieftans always fail. Etc.
And it isn’t because people lack virtue. It’s usually because they run into some economic or ecological dead end. How bout, like, global warming. Or shelling out manufacturing and trying to get by on finance.
Then, the Liberal Establishment so beloved of Limbaugh and the rest of the bloviaters. Even if you haven’t read Christopher Lasch’s _Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy_ it’s still bizarre to count Reagan and his followers as Progressives. There’s no Progressive trickle-down.
I suppose that could be a real viewpoint. I remember a t-shirt from back in the 70’s, “Attila the Hun was a Bleeding Heart.” If you’re that far out there…
“Be clear : the entire world has been run by Progressives for more than 50 years.”
Sorry Lew, but you’re hallucinating. Rye ergot isn’t a vegetable either.
F. Beard,
you are not being fair. Building up to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 were many, many blow-up of regional banks due to the lack of lender of last resort. This caused many, many deep regional economic depressions (again, due to the regional economy being starved of currency in circulation).
But instead of fundamental money reform (i.e., a ledger based non-lendable government bank account for safe storage of money) what we got is the Federal Reserve Act. Which increased the bankers many, many, folds. It stopped regional depressions but now we must have national/global depressions to deal with (due to currency supply shortage).
Mansoor H. Khan
It stopped regional depressions but now we must have national/global depressions mansoor h. khan
Yes. An analogy is a forest; one must either keep the underbrush cleared (regulation) or allow small fires to do the job (laissez-faire). If neither is done, then eventually the forest is destroyed by a massive forest fire.
F. Beard,
I don’t think you got my point. We don’t have to have regional, national or global depressions if we re-design money along the lines we have discussed.
mansoor h. khan
What gets mre laughing, is that Hoppe and his Ilk, can seem to understand that as soon as thier private armies are fully armed and manned, thier “rules” will become a quaint hypothetical joke. Whatever Charasmatic human being controls the most guns+ personal loyalty will become King. THIS is how human beings behave. We have approx 7000 years or recorded human history to document this. Where written history begins, human societies were already “organized” this way and probably had been for thousands of years prior.
It would be hilarious to be there, after hoppe signs his first conbtract with a “GLO”, and pays them, and then is shot dead by them as dangerous intellectual trouble maker.
“Kings! What a good idea.” — Terry Pratchett
rotter, this is the most likely scenario, in reality.
Oh, why confuse him with the facts. Hoppe is an economist. He doesn’t need empirical evidence. Inconvenient facts can be assumed away.
The existence of the ‘middle class’ is widely considered to be an aberration of history, soon to be exterminated and never to reappear. Previous regimes lacked the technological means and manipulative sophistication to achieve a permanent totalitarianism, a defect cured by modern research.
That’s the bad news. The really bad news is that our largely-anonymous hyperwealthy rulers are likely to discover through ecological difficulties that a substantial human culling will be necessary to preserve themselves properly.
Things are going to get ugly. After that, they’re going to get _weird_ ugly.
Sorry, but what you’re writing isn’t news — it’s prophecy
Have the actuary sciences always like this dreadful when applied to an (a)political ethos?
Elite rule is coming – during the Millennium. But it won’t be the selfish and greedy who co-reign with Christ.
I’m not a libertarian, so I can’t speak for any of their ilk, but I have a feeling that this Hoppe character is as much a strawman as the interview character, and I wonder how many libertarians actually buy into his nonsense. I’m sure there are plenty of conservatives who gobble this shit up, but is it really fair to compare this kind of market fascism with libertarianism?
Hans-Hermann Hoppe might style himself a libertarian, but is it fair to say that he actually represents the intellectual soul of the movement? Maybe this series is just unfairly lumping in all libertarians with this creep.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe might style himself a libertarian, but is it fair to say that he actually represents the intellectual soul of the movement? Jack G.
Well, he was often referred to with favor at Lew Rockwell and mises.org. I presume he still is, though I rarely frequent those sites anymore.
I don’t think you meant to write “soul.” I think you meant to write “vacant place where a soul is expected to be.”
“Hans-Hermann Hoppe might style himself a libertarian, but is it fair to say that he actually represents the intellectual soul of the movement?”
I think he largely does. Think of Rand Paul’s statements regarding segregation etc.
True, his ideas might be different from other ideas in the movement, but the broad sweep is the same. They are a totalitarian movement — no matter how much they talk about ‘liberty’ — and they are almost all fanatical.
This is some very dangerous stuff…
Only because Progressives have failed. Otherwise, they would not be given a second thought by most people.
Since when have true progressives been in charge? When Ida Tarbell’s voice made a difference is the last time true progressives have held sway; although some are trying to get our point across on NC today. This is an open forum, and my “senatorial dues” are paid up, thank you.
Since when have true progressives been in charge? LeonovaBalletRusse
I’m under the impression that the Fed was a Progressive cause. And even now, I hear little talk here of abolishing the banking cartel, only of “regulating” it.
You could just as easily see that as an attempt to defend the status quo — after all, with banking gone, what use would there be for a bureaucracy like the FED?
Certainly. But only because we, as a culture, have come to view this as telologically inevitable.
CNC’s species of libertarianism seems to slyly comment on the oft-used Zizek quote (in paraphrase: It’s easier to imagine the destruction of the world than the end of capitalism’), in that it promises the end of the world (as we know it) with the perfection of the system (that we are unable to imagine life without).
Do you really think these Randian fanatics can understand Zizek? They could not understand Eric Voegelin, they made a perfect hash of his ideas for their Randian cause.
CNC’s “World” sounds pretty much like a re-run of Ye Olde Hobbesian Robber Baron Days. History repeating itself. Would seem as though we’re on track for that.
Exactly.
Hobbes’ Leviathan by way of PIMBOK.
Quite. It might be said that they *worship Hobbes*.
Just hilarious. Also a very good look at libertarianism-it has nothing to to with increasing people’s civil liberties and civil rights.
What’s so impressive is how the “freedom to choose” of libertarianism-this was Friedman’s actualy phrase-leads to much fewer options for most people. Anyone who isn’t white, male, Christian and rich essentiallly.
What is a Libertarian Paradise? Not as good as it sounds
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-is-libertarian-paradise.html
Even among white males you have to cut down the “few” to a handful inside the right family, clique, hometown, clan, organization, vice, etc. It’s rare in the Western history that ethnic tribalism maps perfectly to elite status.
“What is a Libertarian Paradise?”
Indistinguishable from a libertarian perdition. Think solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Anyone who isn’t white, male, Christian and rich essentiallly. Mike Sax
Milton Friedman was Christian? When did he convert?
As for “Free to Choose”, I don’t recall M. Friedman ever saying we should be free to choose which money supply to use.
The libertarian fetish for contracts and private property always makes me think of children playing tag. A kid tags another then calls out “no tag backs” or “home free”. In short, I’m winning, so I invoke a ‘rule’ that says I stay ahead.
Of course, if they’re sufficiently obnoxious, the other kids will change the game being played, the rules, or exclude them. *Insert social/political/economic equivalent here.* Of course, the kid in question will say it’s unfair because they were winning. But he or she has it precisely backwards.
Why go after the obvious loons when it’s the WS oligarchs fused with MSM-stamped “reasonable” elite technocrats of the National Security State that already have their fingers on all the important buttons, and are, in fact, QUITE INSANE:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/
Fiver, they’ve done it: the insane rule the asylum, proven by the link. “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” lives in USA!
“FROM CALIGARI TO HITLER: A Psychological History of The German Film by Siegfried Kracauer” (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1947).
The Austrian Schwarzenegger did his best for his masters with the “Terminator” series: our model of “order.”
If you don’t hear from me, … well, you know.
I replied with a link from ZH, which apparently violates the rules so you will not see for some time. Don’t know why, as they are a good source of info irrespective of ideology. Check out their piece titled:
Hank Paulson Tipped Off The Goldman-Led “Plunge Protection Team” About Fannie Bankruptcy 7 Weeks In Advance.
@ScottS,
For example — Alan Greenspan, Ayn Rand’s heir apparent, never imagined that a trader for an investment bank would do anything to benefit himself at the expense of his company. Like one department buying AAA-rated crap from another department with a kick-back on the side. The company blows up, but the two “traders” (read: traitors) count their riches.
What you don’t seem to understand is that Alan Greenspan was a LIAR. He knew the lies he was spewing, and he spewed them because they lined his pockets. After all, as an Objectivist, he worships his own selfishness. Duh.
Stop assuming evil people are stupid and start recognizing they’re just evil.
The reason so-called “progressives” fail is because they assume everybody else is stupid. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Some of your foes are just evil liars. Don’t enable them by assuming they are being honest and forthright in their statements of their beliefs.
@Andrew Dittmer,
Congrats on getting your PhD in a mathematics. Now, welcome to the real world. Complaining about “libertarians” is really stupid because modern libertarians are really just neoliberal purists.
The problem you face is that the term “libertarian” is actually quite honorable, and most people who think of themselves as libertarians think of themselves as honorable. Consider Karl Denninger. I disagree with over 50% of what Karl says, but that man is NOT a liar or even a well-meaning douchebag. He is good, caring person. Bottom Line: Karl is NOT a neoliberal, and it is neoliberalism that you are really complaining about.
Read The Road From Mont Pelerin and learn.
But I do appreciate the 2008 retro feel you bring to NC. Apparently, being progressive means that we get to repeat the same conversations over and over again (and accomplish nothig). Silliness.
Not sure I agree with you there, Tao.. I agree that Neoliberalism, laissez-faire capitalism and anarcho-capitalism are largely interchangeable terms, but there are also large overlaps between that “position” and any other kind of libertarianism.
Certainly there are principled libertarians out there, but any libertarian who has no ideas about what are and aren’t legitimate forms of social organization/collective action, effectively dooms himself unless he commits (like hoppe) to the creation of a police state. And I’m not sure whether this is an ad hominem (it isn’t intended as such, but just as an observation), but I think it is telling that the Tea party was so easily coopted.. Libertarians think far too little about issues of organization, and it is my impression that this is at least in part because they would then have to rethink some of their other positions somewhat, and they don’t want to do so.
Having said that, why do you come across as so bitter, lately?
“The problem you face is that the term “libertarian” is actually quite honorable, and most people who think of themselves as libertarians think of themselves as honorable.”
I agree. Tom Paine is effectively a libertarian, a decidedly democratic libertarian, but a libertarian just the same. The term and core ideas have been hijacked by propertarians and people mentally stuck in the public/private binary who demonized one term, lauded the other at all costs, and then shut down their brains. (A mistake government skeptic, but democracy booster Tom Paine didn’t make).
They’ve also *selectively* hijacked Adam Smith’s historically situated analysis, raised it to a general timeless and eternal principle true in all contexts regardless of what that context is, and then shut down their brains.
I think most people calling themselves libertarians today wouldn’t recognize themselves in Hoppe/Conservative Nut Case. But I do think that some of Hoppe’s ideas are the “logical” outgrowth of some of the propertarian and private sector lauding assumptions held by today’s typical white collar libertarian. So, it’s no longer about popular rights and popular liberty, it’s about property and the rights of property.
They might better be called “neo-liberals” but that’s not what they call themselves. Nor are they themselves *personally* part of the Chicago School/Greenspan crowd that is actually responsible for the realization of neo-liberal policies. They also only tangentially benefit from them, and at some point that gig may be up. At that point, they may find themselves able to think again. (Maybe).
Tao Jonesing,
It is due to the un-Christianization of the west that liberals and liberal leaning people have very, very hard time recognizing evil in world. They just think, oh these people just need more education.
But it is a good thing that western people are finally recognizing the “evil” of our current world money system (i.e., bankers).
Mansoor H. Khan
I managed to read all of parts I and II, and all the comments, and even commented within the last hour on part II (days late, but so what)..(and part III was hard to find, …odd) .. anyways; I only read a few paragraphs of CNC’s interview of part III above, and only the few first comments;
Seems to me;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMSFZJL3Lvs&feature=related
is quite fitting; (“Logan’s Run”, from the ’70s)
Whoops!
No idea how that paste buffer got in there; wrong URL above; (However; ‘Power of Nightmares’ is a must see).
Here’s the Logan’s Run Trailer;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WUUnc1M0TA