Only because he is still subject to a superior power. If there was no state to supersede his authority, why wouldn’t he be considered a pico-state?
Also, he probably doesn’t have the means to hire a cadre of knights to terrorize you if you didn’t pay up.
Because he couldn’t subject his tenants to his authority.
Ha! You don’t know what kind of people landlords are these days.
Hey, everyone makes mistakes*, I think we should move past it.
*except myself, of course
Why not? Either way, a baron certainly could.
LOL, Hey! I’m a landlord!
Pretend I am vegetarian. I want to eat and prefer vegetables to meat to rotting flesh. This does not mean that I tacitly advocate eating meat. Is this a faulty analogy?
Still, this is the same rote “arguments” from the same trolls. I don’t see any solution other than to ignore them now.
Because there were other higher authorities the tenants could appeal to.
Yes it is. If you prefer vegetables to meat to rotten meat, then you tacitly advocate meat to rotten meat. In other words, “if it has to be meat, at least make it fresh”. To make an analogy to this in Hoppe’s proposition:
“If there has to be a system of government, at least make it feudalism (or rather, absolute monarchy, because Hoppe considers feudalism a stateless society)”
Who were not in collusion to keep the serfs enslaved? Like the church, or the king?
You see collusion in everything.
Like I said, Brennan & Lomasky maintain a symmetry in their assumptions whilst rejection behavioural symmetry between markets and politics. They don’t assume that all political actors are wealth maximizers (however defined) for similar reasons to Caplan. On the other hand, I would argue that Hoppe does indeed assume that all political actors are narrowly construed wealth maximisers and ignores the role of ignorance and ideology in politics, in fact, this is one of the major problems I have with Hoppe’s thesis.
My other problem with Hoppe’s work is that it ignores what was discussed in the passage I quoted earlier, the tradition of work that looks at those institutional arrangements that will elect democratic leaders who will work for the public good. And then of course there are the citation problems that cause his arguments to be highly misleading.
Wow, didn’t this topic get very unpleasant very quickly. I’m sorry that you doubt the sincerity of my posts, I think I’m sufficiently well read in Austrian economics and economics in general to hold my own here, I wouldn’t proclaim myself to be an expert or even particularly knowledgeable, but then I’m not sure any of the regular posters here can claim such a thing with any honesty. I too often wish that certain posters more better educated than they are and would refrain from certain grandiose claims about what they consider to be “mainstream economics”, but if I find they know less than is necessary to sustain a debate I stay well away from it or I try my best to make a sincere effort to educate them. Like I said in a topic on just this subject, if more people would be willing to do the same, whilst assuming sincerity on behalf of other posters, this forum could be a lot more pleasant.
That said, I find it troublesome that you would refer to me as a troll, I do believe I’ve made every effort to engage you guys honestly and I can’t say you ERO or you have done the same. I’ve been told by both of you that you have absolutely no interest in reading works that were crucial to the discussion at hand and key to the point I was trying to make, whereas I’ve read (yes, I really really have) most of the works we’re discussing, and where I’ve not done so I’m willing to do my research to make the discussion more productive.
I think I’m done posting in this topic, it’s left a bad taste in my mouth, but for any interested third parties who want to know why I reject most of the content of Hoppe’s Democracy: The God that Failed please don’t hesitate to send me a private message and I’ll answer as soon as I have time. To DD5, Conza and ERO, both of you clearly have issues with me posting on these boards, I haven’t any intentions to stop posting soon so I’d really like it if we could get over this and stop cluttering up every topic with this crap. So please either send me a message and we can talk about this off the main forum or stop pestering me and get off your high horse. Do everybody a favour and lighten up and do yourself a favour and realise that nobody in life takes you as a seriously as you take yourself (and this applies to everybody).
Physiocrat, I’ll answer your post in PM.
Public choice theory is perfectly compatible with Austrian economics (praxeology), and it’s a very powerful argument against democracy. Listen to this.
Any good, substantial critiques? Other than Block’s on Hoppe’s position on immigration, no, not that I know of.
I’ll forestall some:
-He hates teh gay
No, he argues a) restrictive covenants could be used to form societies excluding them (bear in mind this is all voluntary and is an illustration to conservatives of how they can have their idyllic societies without a state or initiation of force) and b) that because they tend not to marry and beget heirs, their TP horizon is lower and their TP consequently higher. That’s all.
-He’s a feudalist or portrays feudalism positively:
No, he argues it is superordinate in its performance vis-a-vis democracy and is a step closer to anarcho-capitalism relative to the latter. He uses ample sources to substantiate the position as well as praxeologically rooted theory, so if you wish to disprove it, first make sure you know as much as he does when discussing the topic. He is using historians who challenge conventional interpretations of the period.
Then this
He does? I don’t think so. His argument hardly requires it and if they are not wealth-maximisers, so much the worse for the prosperity of any nation under their thumb. And as for Caplan, his own work is hardly original and not something Hoppe draws upon. Keep up the insults against Hoppe’s person and the exultation of academia, you’re in a place where it frankly means nothing.
Me personally?
Really? Who does he “steal” from?
Where did I imply he ‘steals’ from anyone? He develops ideas pregnant in Mises’s thoughts and the Public Choice school, as Hoppe more or less does too…
You didn’t. I was asking for the originator of the ideas, the scare quotes were just making fun of IP “borrows from,” “takes from” whatever.
You could even attribute a crude version of his argument to Friedman re government not spending its own money, nevermind Mises or the Virginia School. His core premise doesn’t seem as potent as the Austrian case against democracy; at best, supplementary.
It is powerful but not as powerful as it can be. The public choice theory sort of accepts the premise of the theoretical existence of such a thing as a collective policy or even the notion of the “public good”, and then proceeds to show why the goals are not likely to be achieved due to all sort of problems associated with incentives. The arguments from what I’ve heard are indeed sound, at least most of them.
But it overlooks the possibility that the premise itself of the existence of a collective policy is completely fallacious and purely mystical in nature. It is not possible even in theory to benefit society as a whole due to the fact that all public/government policies are economically zero-sum games. One can benefit only by somebody else loosing. The political system is inherently exploitative regardless of the incentives and how informed voters are.
Not in the political sense, no. Anyone in prison was set free. Any laws enacted by the old king became void. You get the idea.
Physics. This isn’t an abstract restriction. Bureaucracies can enable a ruler to govern territories and institutions that no single man could ever have managed, but at the price that the ruler is now dependent on the bureaucracy.
When a feudal knight traveled from one kingdom to another his obligations did not change. The laws of a modern state end at its border (though the US government seems determines to escape this limitation).
That is a crazy accusation.