What did you think of the book? What are the positives and what ae the negatives?
The publishers ineptitude and short sightedness regarding IP.
No free online version / pdf.
I have read the famous introduction to it, that was displayed here on mises.org. And then a few specific chapters from the book I have also seen (read the part on immigration). There is a limited preview on Google Books with several chapters for your reading pleasure.
The man emphasises on how socially conservative values are important to protect liberty. He also criticises left libertarians for believing liberty is about breaking down social taboo and traditions.
He is right; there are many people who have seen liberty as a means to a hedonistic lifestyle, and there is not much substantial to gain from those things, because they ignore that there are much more significant ways in which their liberty might be lost. He thus is also right in pointing out that they have done very little to protect liberty.
But to be socially conservative in order to protect liberty? It’s too much of a foregone conclusion based idea. In free society, we would have to take far more responsibility for our lives and screen the actions of our children and family far more. So that should protect constructive values. But if a large number of people were anyway bong smokers engaging in promiscuous relationships and wasting themselves on alcohol and cigarettes and frequently divorcing wives who keep aborting their babies - that hurts liberty how? Let people who want to waste themselves waste themselves. As Isaiah Berlin said, liberty is liberty, not happiness or a quiet conscience or fairness or justice. I’d be amazed if an immoral society ended up bringing in an authoritarian state. You name me one example, ONE EXAMPLE, of that ever happening.
I agree that a dominant state has led people to become less moral and more inclined to take less responsibility for their lives, but that’s that, don’t flip it the other way round.
When I first read the book I though it was absolutely brilliant until I arrived to that part, then I started scratching my head and after much thinking arrived to the conclusion that Hoppe could not resist mixing his own personal views in an otherwise excellent book.
I can even understand his views on immigration, but my god, to maintain a liberal society, we must collectively maintain a rigid set of values?
Maybe people should worry about maintaining good values in their own families, and perhaps they will find others doing so likewise. This sort of “Society is going down the toilet” thinking benefits nobody, and is better for Daily Mail articles than serious analysis.
Those kids with their hippity hop and vidya games, what will they do next?!
Not specifically talking about those in this topic, but I absolutely love Hoppe’s ability to rile up those libertarians who are still clinging to their politically correct threads.
What can I say, sometimes the truth hurts.
Hurts to the point where people would rather call him a ‘bigot’ and whatnot, in order to avoid the realization that far more often than not, Hoppe is dead on.
It was one of the greatest books I ever read. Highly recommended to all true libertarians.
Hoppe is also an immigrant in America complaining about immigrants in America.
I have no problem with European immigrants like Hoppe.
What do you mean by that?
He was invited.
I don’t think you understand his views on immigration.
I have yet to read the book, but judging from other lectures and writings of Hoppe, I think he is correct in criticizing libertine libertarianism insomuch as those who espouse these positions often see liberty as a means to other ends (smoking pot, whatever). So, they are not really interested in human freedom so much as they are in enabling the pleasures which they enjoy but most of society rejects as vicious. However, I think Hoppe is errant in that he implies that there is a single natural order (conservative libertarianism) when, in fact, it is obvious that there is as much variation in cultures and values as there is in human talents and circumstances. In a natural order, we should expect variety, not homogeneity. For example, the Oneida Community was definitely not conservative in any sense of the word but perfectly consistent with a natural order. A natural order would be characterized by such variation and experimentation in social arrangements. It is the nature of static, coercive society to prohibit (by threat of force) experimentation and variation.
Would the fringe experiments in communal living, sexual promiscuity, and so on, ever amount to anything or be important forces in the wider society? I doubt it, but I have no doubt that a natural order society will be characterized by a wide variation in ways of living. Furthermore, it is this variation which is the all-important foundation of a natural order society and makes it adaptable and strong, in direct analogy to the world of biology. Diversification is a hedge against uncertainty. If you’re not sure whether you will need a hammer or a saw, you bring one of each.
As the world and technology change, social arrangements that made sense in the past (e.g. arranged marriage) make less or no sense now. At some point in the future, perhaps arranged marriages might again make sense. We cannot know. But without a wide variety of societies and cultures, a global human monoculture would be brittle and vulnerable. While I have no problem with a scholar making the case for his preferred cultural values (e.g. conservative libertarianism), I think it is important for scholars of social science, like Dr. Hoppe, to acknowledge that they don’t have the answers because no one does, the only way we can get the answers is by trying things and seeing what works. The libertines, on the other hand, say, “let’s try things and who gives a damn whether they work or not, let people do whatever feels good.” This essentially reduces to total cultural relativism, that is, agnosticism about what does work, essentially saying “we cannot know what works, everything works about as well as everything else.” We can know that some social arrangements work better than others for given ends (e.g. wealth preservation and transmission from generation to generation) by observing the effects of various social arrangements. By observing social arrangements and choosing those which they believe will suit their ends, individuals act in a manner analogous to business entrepreneurs, that is, they copy from the most successful (movie stars, rich people, religious leaders, etc.), add their own variations and then succeed or fail.
I do agree with Hoppe that the most important cultures (as measured by wealth, the spread of ideas, and so on) will likely be those which are more characteristically “conservative” in certain regards (especially sex and wealth management). I think that the family is the least understood and the most important component of social science. I also believe Dr. Hoppe has something in the works that discusses all these issues and I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for it.
I think Hoppe’s mistake in positively espousing conservative social values stems from his following in Rothbard’s mistaken belief in the possibility of deriving an ought from an is, that is, in non-value-free science. Hoppe seems to feel that his value-laden espousal of conservative social values can be done in a scientific way, so long as he follows a sound scientific methodology (praxeology) in doing so.
Clayton -
Oh, I understand it - in a public property-based society, a person within public property must be treated the same way as a guest within private property i.e. only allowed to the extent that owners would desire him to be there. Otherwise, it would amount to forced integration, and a further abridgment of property rights.
Theoretical principle talk.
His views are still based on a mild and innocuous xenophobism. As a third-party observer, I can understand the threat to social cohesion that comes with live human beings of a different culture on your soil, who demand more adjustment than an imported Toyota does. And yet, the harm to this social cohesion might be overstated. Eastern European Jews were frequent immigrants to New York, before immigration was shut down in 1919, but while their habits (in hygiene and behaviour) may have discomforted New York residents, at least those Hungarian and Polish Jews kept to themselves in their own districts and the rest of the Dutch/British/French/German descended New Yorkers stayed in different districts. We can think private property for this, and thus making sure angry violent ethnic riots didn’t break out in New York, and it didn’t require one single restriction on immigration.
In fact, immigration was only shut down in America once Jewish slums were demolished and they were made to move into more luxurious apartments in Anglo-Saxon areas. New York officials wanted a beautiful and homogenous America. And with the anger and discontent that came up when privileged Anglo-Saxons had to walk alongside JOOOS! on the streets, they had to deal with the problems of one government intervention with another government intervention, which was to stop immigration, and keep fixed quotas for immigrants. This, my friends, is the immigration issue in a nutshell. It’s about the problems of other government interventions, be it forced rehabitation or a large welfare state.
I think Hoppe’s idea that an immigrant is violating the right of private property of a particular person by physically being inside his public property is a little contradictory when you consider that preventing an outsider from coming in to buy property and set himself up in your own country is itself an abridgment of property rights.
It’s a troll.
You don’t know about them?
A troll is a person pretending to be another kind of person in order to deliberately be a parody and caricature of that sort of person to provoke and create outrage or confusion in other people in the forum.
A “market fundamentalist” is a derogatory word used by certain non-market-oriented groups to mock free market as a religion. This poster is not for real. He is playing a caricature here.
It’s a game we play on other forums. We tell members of the home forum that we will create an account in Stormfront to be a fake personality of another white supremacist, but we will pretend to be a crude caricature of a fat nerdy white supremacist. And then while the Stormfronters take this fake character seriously, we laugh at our home forum.
So this guy is probably someone from some political perspective opposed to libertarianism which is mocking all the “market fundamentalists” on mises.org.
So, can you explain it to us simpletons? I read Hoppe and am unconvinced that freedom requires that we all share some variation of Judeo-Christian ethics. Can you explain to me why this is true?
It isn’t so much Judeo Christian ethics as it is the preservation of the family as an institution. The state has been destroying that institution. He says that any conservative (judeo-christian types ect.) should oppose the state on the grounds that the state intrinsically opposes social cohesion and the family as an institution.
I don’t think it is Pat Robertson so much as it is Bill Cosby.
Fair enough, but that’s the converse of what needs to be proven. I’ll let him have that those who favor some traditional morality, such as the family, should oppose the state. The claim in question, though, is that those who oppose the state should favor this form of traditional morality, which you’re here limiting to the preservation of the family. What is there in the insistence that others respect the family that is a necessary part of liberty? Why would it be inconsistent to oppose the state, and maintain that it is not my business whether or not you preserve the family? It isn’t enough to say that states erode family values - states also deliver mail, but I’m not against mail delivery in general.
I’ve read the book. It would help, maybe a quote, in which Hoppe says the family is necessary or else the alternative is unprincipled or whatnot. When I read the book I didn’t read it with all these judeo-christian value overtones. It seems a bit injected on the part of the reader, but maybe I’m wrong. Quotes and chapters would help so I could pull out the book and figure out the context all of this is being discussed under.
In Hoppe’s system of natural elites forming hierarchies, the family is just one such source of natural elites providing justice, arbitration and protection, and even within families there will be an elder brother or exceptionally successful one who provides for the welfare of the others.
Since the state grows in power by destroying natural elites and hierarchies, it follows that the attack on the family is the final assault against the last source of natural authority and protection. If you oppose the state you must then support the family, as the family is absolutely necessary to oppose the state and provide the basics of social security without the state. Those individuals without families are 100% dependent on the state.