I wonder, was your misreading deliberate or accidental?
How is marriage any different? What about a business partnership?
I only wanted to clarify Hoppe’s point of view.
But you aren’t actually ceding your property to the state; you are creating a legal person to own the property. Just because the personhood and (non-contractually-specified) limited liability of corporations may be illegitimate in a free society, doesn’t mean that the property reverts to being un-owned in the same way that state property does.
Just to make myself clear, I do think that the current forms of legal personhood and limited liability are illegitimate by libertarian standards. I don’t think that that illegitimacy means that corporate property is necessarily on the same level as state property. Other considerations, such as corporate welfare and other subsidies and how much they have abused state privileges, may do that for some corporations, but not all. Its not something that can be specified a priori from the armchair.
Well, we have to look at what the nature of ownership is. The government creates the corporate person, they can destroy it at will. It is utterly a creation and under the ultimate control of the state. To my mind, that means the state owns it. And it, in turn, owns the corporate assets. Surely, it is illegitimate, and just as surely you take this advantage, a state-granted priviledge, a subsidy, that gives you illegitimate power over those who did not agree to cede it to you.
Making up words now?
So what? Rothbard deviated from Mises, few dispute that Rothbard is an extension of Mises. If Hoppe didn’t correct Rothbard’s mistakes he wouldn’t be extending upon his ideas but reiterating them.
Perhaps, reading some of the literature, say, that of Mr Kinsella would be useful. If you want to have a real discussion that is. Your whole position is contingent upon the claim that this sort of arrangement could not be acheived without some sort of state intervention. Well, as had been demonstrated by Mr Kinsella amongst others, that really is not the case. In fact, there’s no reason to assume shareholders would have liability, since you need to prove some form of causality, as you do with any other crime.
Hoppe is just an old order conservative who wants to ressurect the austro-hungarian empire.
And what are you then? An old order social anarchist who wants to resurrect the Paris Commune of 1871.
Your critique of Hoppe is just standard left-vulgar libertarianism. Libertarianism is not Objectivism, there is nothing wrong with Hoppe improving on some of Rothbard’s ideas.
Let us take a look at what Professor Hoppe has to say:
So when will you stop pretending you’ve bothered to read in question (D:TGTF)?
I don’t particularly understand what is so disagreeable with the sentiments expressed by Mr. Hoppe in this book, even to the left libertarians. He does not, at any occasion, exalt monarchy. Indeed, he makes many criticisms of this form of government. Rather, he compares it to democracy in an attempt to delegitimize the latter, meanwhile remaining critical on the first.
In fact, the only reason that comes to mind for the ad hoc, knee jerk rejection of Hoppe’s theory (as expressed by ad homs and strawmen as opposed to logical argument) is that is rejects the egalitarian ideal, strived for by the left, that democracy so adequately represents. In fact, democracy is the epitome of equality.
Hoppe is Rothbard’s intellectual heir. The LLs want to pretend that Rothbard’s legacy ends after he leaned left in the 70s.
And Ludwig von Mises is the intellectual heir of Kevin Carson.
I’ve read some Kinsella, enough to know I disagree. Perhaps, if you could actually show how it is necessary to incorporate, literally and by the letter of the law ceding ownership to a government created and controlled entity, to do business, addressing my point instead of merely pointing me towards a third party, this would be a discussion. I didn’t just post a link to something some other guy wrote, I put down my own synthesis.
As for the fact that this arrangement could not be achieved without some sort of state intervention, it is simply false that you can rightfully limit your liability towards another without a contractual agreement to that effect beforehand. Such unilateral arrangements are hallmarks of the state. As for liability, I hold and have always held that if you claim ownership of something, you are ultimately responsible to ensure that it poses no unreasonable risk to anyone else, because ownership entails ultimate control. Your ceding that control to another is still a choice freely made, within your rights as an owner, but so long as you claim ownership you had best hope that person is worthy of the trust you placed in them.
That’s a biased and preferential perspective. One could just as easily argue that Samuel Konkin was Rothbard’s intellectual heir.
I’m not a social anarchist, I’m a free market anarchist. So strike one.
I harbor no particular feelings towards the Paris Commune. The only reason I can think of as to why you’d make that comment was that Bakunin’s support for the Paris commune was briefly mentioned in my short autobiography of him in my series on anarchist history. And BTW, none of the pieces in the series are necessarily endorsements, they’re merely descriptions.
My critique of Hoppe isn’t even always particulary left-libertarian (for example, my criticism of the Hoppean view on state property and immigration is echoed by Walter Block, who actually holds the classic rothbardian position on that question). My views on the old order also come straight from classic Rothbard.
Hoppe has not improved on Rothbard’s ideas, he’s devolved them into an arch-conservatism that aims to create communitarian standards enforcable by the law and relegate everyone to isolated enclaves. Hoppe’s ideas are closer to classical conservatism (all about preserving and reviving the old order) than classical liberalism, and classical conservatism was an enemy of classical liberalism. If Hoppe’s ideas were implemented, society would plunge into another dark age.
Why is anyone kidding themselves?
Everyone here is biased in some way (not saying it’s a bad or good thing, but it exists); one could argue about how preferences make an objective analysis of anything, let alone an extension of others works, inaccurate due to bias alone.
Yet if we did that, would anything by anyone be considered, at all?
Name game.
Scare-mongering.
So you say.
Actually, although I read your anarchist history, I had forgotten that part of it. I bring up the Paris Commune because some left libertarians bring that up as an example of ‘anarchy’, when in reality it was setting up the state again under another name. The same goes for the so-called ‘anarchists’ during the Spanish Civil War that were a criminal gang of thieves and murderers. Both are cited as examples of anarchy by some left libertarians.
I have always found Block’s position on state property perplexing. The ‘smelly bum’ he borrows from Rothbard is the classic example. The bum by merely loitering there is not ‘homesteading’ anything. I have a few other disagreements with Block, in particular ‘plumb line libertarianism’ in general which he seems to almost use in a manner that his opinion is always correct.
As you often say, semantics. Those conservative positions are merely preferences.
And everyone else wants to pretend that he didn’t really lean left. Also, as BP said, Sam Konkin is just as good a candidate for being Rothbard’s intellectual heir.