I think this is true because in the opposite case it is exceedingly easy for the authorities to enact regimentation and curtail freedoms as a matter of existential necessity. As the most extreme example look at how easy it has been for North Korean government to maintain their totalitarianism and completely regiment the society. In my opinion this has been made possible because the country has been technically at war with the superpower that is USA this whole time.
The Dutch also incorporated flooding as part of their military strategy to slow the enemy down. So it is not like they had absolutely no geography working in their favour.
You should probably stop with the comparisons to Switzerland. They are meaningless to me. I don’t know anything about Switzerland and I doubt you know much more than I do.
The only reason that decentralisation aids a country is because it weakens the central government which is the biggest threat to property rights. With property rights more assured the country can then prosper economically, according to its potential given its natural resources, geographic position and so forth. This is the only reason. Decentralisation doesn’t make your infantry shoot straighter or your cannon balls fly farther.
However the central government while the most dangerous threat to property rights is not the only one. Consider 1990s Russia, or your typical 3rd world gangster state. There is no regard for property with expropriation of rightful owners taking place left right and centre - however none of this expropriation is taking place for the benefit of the central state.
It is obvious that a country with a government of this gangster type (also known in our parts as a Banana Republic) will be extremely weak militarily. A bureaucratic communist dictatorship can on the field of battle do short work of a Banana Republic.
There is no doubt that Russia was much weaker militarily in the 1990s than it is now, even though the central government has strengthened a great deal since. There is expropriation taking place, but the beneficiary is the central state (which includes the military) not the Swiss bank accounts of various individual thieves. Also there is actually less expropriation taking place now than it did in the 1990s. Perhaps the Oligarchs were labouring under the problem of tragedy of commons. Everything they did not steal themselves would be soon stolen by someone else. The bureaucracy in charge of Russia today on the other hand feels itself as the monopolist robber and can thus save some fat on the cow for later.
So just because Rzeczpospolita had a weak central government is no guarantee that rights of property were actually respected within its borders. It only means that they were not violated by the central government.
So what was the status of property rights in Poland? I don’t know. I was gonna order Norman Davies’ God’s Playground last month to try to find out but at the last moment I ended up ordering another book in its place. What little I do know is this; Poland pioneered the arenda system. Because the king was so weak and because the nobles could have such a big influence on politics it became very important for the nobles to live in the capital where the politicking was taking place. This means that instead of managing their lands they became absentee landowners and hired arendators to manage their lands in their place. How it would work is that arendators would pay up a fixed sum in advance and then to turn a profit they would need to in the few years that their contract was valid for extract more wealth from the lease than they paid for it. Since you are a fan of Hoppe you will easily see that this is disastrous. Arendators had an extremely short-term outlook. So where in Russia serfs at least laboured under nobles-buerocrats who were granted lands for the length of their lifespans, the serfs in Poland laboured under arendators who had the lands in their care for at best several years and would therefore exploit them mercilessly in this short time without making even the most basic medium-term investments. This contrast was probably not the decisive difference, but it does illustrate we need to really get to the bottom of things before we really know enough to make conclusions.
LOL.
About Switzerland, don’t be so hard on yourself, I’m finding the book you linked in the “Mr. Breaking Point” thread very interesting on the issue.
Generally, I fully agree with your post. Unfortunately it must be recognized for what it is: the restatement of the fact that there is nothing a reformer can do at any time to help (or arrest) ‘freedom’, at least on a political level.
What Hoppe held to be the strong points of monarchy against democracy, and his explanation for the rise to Power of Europe in the high decentralization of the continent for a long time, in short all these institutions which have been assumed to further to some degree a liberal regime, fall to the ground if some X factor is lacking. If the X factor is present, no institutional arrangement can arrest liberalism. I believe this result can hardly be overstressed. Assuming away the very irritating tone, I must say this was an interesting discussion after all.
Do you think it is one “magic bullet”, or a combination of factors?
Hoppe’s main point against democracy is that term limits will increase the discount rate of the leader, thus increasing the amount of predation on behalf of said democratic leader. Well, Hoppe’s sloppy citation practises aside, this against isn’t anything new. It’s well known that imposing term limits on a democratic leader will increase his discount rate.
He makes other points about the alleged virtues of monarchy, which I must say, I find equally clownish and/ or unoriginal. But when the discussion in Democracy: The God That Failed is looked at as a whole, one can see that there is little danger of it been taken seriously but real thinkers.
Well, I never felt convinced when some given fact is explained with “you know, it’s complicated, and it’s really due to a combination of factors”. The fact that almost everything was explained like this in my macroeconomic textbook drove me toward seeking alternate explanation, and finally to AE, with its immensely gratifying single-causation chain of logic.
So, I don’t believe that a multiplicity of factors is often e good answer. I’d rather say that a single factor is the root cause of the evolution, be it gradual, of a private-property minded society. Of course, a single “X factor” might be way too simplistic, but I believe it’s a worthwhile matter to look into.
Don’t worry about that. There’s nothing one can do to revive a true monarchical order once its gone (ask poor Metternich). Heck, there’s nothing one can do to rescind a liberal democratic order while in place, I’m afraid. In this sense Hoppe’s theory, although very well-though out if you ask me, is largely relegated to a theoretical analysis without any possible real-world application.
I was talking about what makes X liberal society succeed, whereas Y society is swallowed by the state, as opposed to why they evolve in the first place, but that’s an interesting question in and of itself.
It seems like a number of things might have to go “right” or “wrong” for a liberal society to get that way, and more importantly, stay that way. I can’t really conceptualize what one factor would make the difference between free, and not free, which itself is far too simple of a distinction.
Well, if seen in its complexity, defining a ‘free’ as opposed to ‘unfree’ society and than trying to find what on earth could make some societies free as opposed to less free, and then what could make some free societies perish, and other expand, would indeed seem daunting.
But if we try to work our way from praxeological thinking into grasping what could make people go for private property instead of communal one, or what could cause some societies to be ‘richer’ than others, the issue already starts looking far, far easier to tackle.
It’s just a matter of comparing praxeological though with historical experience, and trying to isolate what might have been left out the orthodox theory. For incongruences between what we would expect by our theoretical canons and actual history (Poland’s fate being just one example) are far, far too great to ignore. At least that’s the impression I’m getting lately reading some historical works.
Simply saying that “many different factors influence historical outcomes” is indeed true, but would leave us with no answer at all. I believe an oversimplified model is better than no model at all when trying to explain why things tend to go like they did.
Allow people to opt out of it.
here is famous quote from ben franklin when they just created the constitution
person: so what kind of government do we have sir ?
ben: a republic if you can keep it
but anyway is this thread about the current american system or just democracy itself