That article makes no sense whatsoever. According to Hoppe there’s such a thing as ‘natural elites’ - but it turns out they get overthrown by a king … which was a member of the natural elites.
The thesis is wholly contradictory. If ‘natural elites’ really existed they would always retain ‘natural’ power. But of course, this rosy view of government is nonsense and has nothing to do with libertarianism.
The ‘natural elites’ are an oligarchy, a government, “a gang of thieves writ large”.
Usually, such usage of the term “natural” is just a projection of whatever one likes, to the status of a scientific law.
I don’t see a contradiction within the thesis - the monopolisation of a privately provided public good isn’t absurd. Hoppe references a thourough criticism of exogenous theories of State formation.
Hoppe’s view of the State isn’t a rosy one either; he points out that once the function of judge and peacemaker bacame monopolised, justice immediately became more expensive from the point of view of the citizenry.
how ?
He’s saying that given the choice between the two–and only those two–monarchy offers an advantage.
However a man of superior wealth and talent would accomplish such a thing.
I think you have confused Hoppe’s analysis with the promotion of a bonafide libertarian societal structure.
Hoppe generally promotes decentralization and differentiation. It’s like his analysis about the time preference of homosexuals. People conflate that with his being anti-gay. But he’s obviously not, since he will invite someone like Raimondo to speak at his annual conference in Turkey.
I have a post on my blog about what Rothbard called Hoppephobia. Very few people can get such an emotional rise out of others with direct argument. I have been trying to learn this approach. It’s a great rhetorical skill.
FAIL. You have one gangster - the wannabe king - fighting against all the other gangsters - how can he win ?
The Oppenheimer conquest thesis fails as well, or is as best incomplete.
I probably wasn’t clear enough. I should have said "Hoppe’s theory about the origin of government has nothing to do with libertarian theories about the origin of government ".
Also, I don’t think that Hoppe’s conservatism has anything to do with libertarianism but that’s another topic.
It’s not Oppenheimer’s theory but a classical liberal theory. Maybe it fails too, but that doesn’t mean that Hoppe’s theory is right.
I’m not sure this is an improvement.
Libertarian theories of government as derived by who?
I’m not sure this is even relevant to what I wrote. His observation about time preference is wrong, but his personal preferences, conservative or not, are not something he supports enforcing on anyone else, so in this regard, they are fully compatible.
Anyway…
Sometimes he loses, as was the case in England. However instead of restoring the status quo, the nobles continue to run the state for themselves.
You almost have it right - the oligarchs which you call ‘nobles’ continue to run the state like they always did. .
I would say that buddhist monks are arranged in societies. Surely any given group of buddhist monks at any given temple live in a society? And for the record, I am pretty sure, though not positive, that monks do not beg, but rather grow their own food in the temple garden. That might just be ascetic monks in rural tibet though.
In fact, it would seem to me that buddhist monks represent a form of anarchism. Each monk lives his own life and infringes not upon the property of others. They live governed only by their own thoughts.
Further still, I am now inclined to believe that monks have a better “economy” than democratic nations by following my premise that the best economy is the one that satisfies the greatest amount of demand. Seeing as monks have very low economic demand, they satisfy (to my knowledge) nearly 100% of their demand while even the best “civilized” countries leave much demand unsatisfied.
Someone please point out where I have gone wrong as I seem to be rambling now.
I would be careful about using Buddhist monks as an example here. While, to be fair, the Yellow Hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism represents only a small (but well known in the West) proportion of Theravada Buddhism and Buddhism as a whole, during these days, it was the monks feudal theocracy that was behind the brutal torture (eye gougings, cutting out of tongues) of serfs on the monks monastery-land that tried to run away.
So you can tell me right now what government we will have in the next 20 years? When will the Anarchist revolution happen oh wise Millerite?
Any one can make an apriori statement about the future of government, however stranger seems to be laboring until the delusion that his theory will be correct that we can never go back to monarchy.
It’s hardly conducive towards honest, open discourse with an attempt to reach some sort of understanding and conclusion. There was me thinking that’s what science was about. Apparently science is aimed at getting an emotional rise out of your “opponent” and then claiming victory.
What a lovely strawman, Giles. Now try it without a fallacy.