Hoppe, Libertarianism, Conservativism: on incentives and ideas

Economics Political Theory
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http://mises.org/daily/1766

I’ve just found this interesting article and because it’s old I think it’s better to discuss it on the forum, and also because I’d like to consider further implications of Hoppe’s thoughts.

First. I consider myself Conservative in the philosophical sense but not necessarily in the political sense. It means I’m suspicious about alternative lifestyles, consider natural forms of authority important etc. but at this point I’m not sure whether I would use political coercion or not to maintain (actually, to reintroduce) them. I simply want to know more before making a decision. I’m just a software developer and don’t really know enough to turn philosophy into policy. My most important influences were probably Oakeshott’s thoughts on the difference between rational and practical knowledge, Eric Voegelin’s analysis of modernity as an essentially Gnostic project, and Aristotle’s ethics, and the sympathy for all these come from my Buddhist views - but these are not political programs. It’s an important difference.

Similarly, it is an important difference between being politically Libertarian, meaning one would not use coercion in these matters (or, in fact, in anything), and being philosophically liberal/libertine, meaning one is indifferent about these questions - Hayek? - or even actively encourages deviation from traditional forms of normalcy (as it seems to me Rothbard did, though I’m not sure).

I was glad to find this article because it seems Hoppe is quite clearly Conservative in the philosophical sense, perhaps himself alone of the prominent Austrians, though, of course, clearly not in the political sense.

In fact this article is so convincing that I think it’s high time for me to read Human Action.

I have only one objection. I think the most important question to ask is always the following one: does objective (social) reality determine our consciousness (Marx) or is it our consciousness that creates, generates our world, our reality (Buddha), both in the individual and social level, or perhaps somewhere in between? I agree with the Buddhist approach. (The traditional Western, i.e. Christian approach seems to be in between, but closer to the Buddhist one.)

The other important question is incentives. I think incentives work exactly because we have free will and are always capable of choice. But it follows then that not only incentives are important, but so are our ideas, and perhaps our ideas are more important than the incentives. Our incentives cannot change our ideas - that would be a Marxist concept, of a reality-generated consciousness. The incentives can only determine, or rather influence what kind of choices we make when we follow the path determined by our ideas. Do you agree to that? From it follows that ideas, values can be more important than incentives.

Therefore, while the Hoppe’s political program sounds quite logical to me and I’ll think about it, it’s simply not enough. It’s not enough to get the incentives right, we also need to get the ideas right.

The reason our ideas got wrong in the first time was not the wrong incentives, but simply wrong, how to put it, wrong philosophical, ethical, spiritual teachers: the so-called Frankfurter School. Our current ethical-spiritual squalor comes both from wrong ideas and wrong incentives, both socialists in the state and cultural relativists in the universities and in the press. Correct ideas with incorrect incentives, or incorrect ideas with correct incentives would both have resulted in unrest and rebellion. The political stability of our societies proves that either both our ideas and incentives are correct or none of them.

Therefore we need to repair damage done to the ideas too, for example, with articles and books of the kind that Theodore Darlymple writes, for example: http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_4_oh_to_be.html

More here: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anthony_Daniels_%28psychiatrist%29

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I’m a conservative, but in a different sense. I see a value in institutions such as the church, families etc., as well as the notion of a nobilitas naturalis (I came into Austrianism as a monarchist, hence why Hoppe drew me into it to the point that I became a market anarchist.) On the other hand, I also have no problem with individuals trying to break out of traditional roles based on their own merit. One thing I would never endorse though is the use of coercion to impose my ideals, and if you truly agree with the Austrians on this I think neither would you. I agree on all you say about the importance of ideas, which was one of Mises’ central contentions in the battle against socialism - that ideas are what matter.

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“and if you truly agree with the Austrians on this I think neither would you”

At this point I’m not sure whether I agree with the Austrians on this or not. I have a long backlog of books to read and little time… Coercion to maintain the morals and decency of the public was always such a deeply entrenched idea throughout European history that I need some strong arguments to be convinced to throw it out. Yes I know the Austrians have some strong arguments, but as I said my backlog is long, when I get to read Human Action I’ll probably able to form a clearer opinion on it, right now I’ll just stay unsure and undecided.

BTW do you happen to know about any place in the general West Midlands area where one go to discuss such ideas with intelligent people? “Such ideas” I mean in a very-very general sense, i.e. any place where any kind of people who aren’t Socialists/Moral Relativists meet and chat. OK, not the BNP either :slight_smile: Anything except that.

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Hoppe is a racist idiot, and market anarchism is an oxymoron. The words “libertarian” and “anarchism” have both been hijacked by right-wing loonies like Rothbard, Rockwell, and Hoppe. Both words have socialist origins.

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Do you mind quoting the particular lines in the article that you have trouble with?

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So what? We steal them to gain ground and influence and spread our ideas.

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Hoppe knows where you live, you stupid hippie. And he’s going to rip off your head and st down your neck for calling him an idiot. Then he’ll p* on your corpse for calling Rothbard and Rockwell loonies.

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There are two forms of political conservatism: legal traditionalism and libertarianism. Legal traditionalism is the belief that old laws are just laws. Libertarianism is the belief that natural laws are just laws. There is considerable overlap between these because old laws tend to correlate with natural laws. I am not a traditionalist because, while I agree that there is a high degree of correlation between old laws and natural laws, I don’t think that the age of a law is the cause of its just-ness. Instead, I believe that a law’s just-ness is derived from its correspondence with the natural requirements of human civilization. If a law is in correspondence with human civilization, then there is no need to maintain that law with the force of the state, since even in the absence of the state, man will uphold natural laws with their own private resources. Thus, political coercion is never necessary to enforce libertarianism. Natural laws and justice enforce themselves through any voluntary association. In a natural civilization, criminals and deviants face harsh consequences. The family is the most natural and basic form of human civilization. Thus, family decisions should carry the force of law in all but the most un-civil of cases (like when a family invades their neighbors property or refuses to bring their thief of a daughter to justice).

Let me put it this way. An outlaw is a foreigner outside of the law. This comes from the time when the famly carried political power. Most deviants were punished within the family. If they were not, the community punished the family by refusing to trade with them (For an example of this look at the story of the muslim girl that was stoned to death. Supposedly, her relatives alerted the people that stoned her to the fact that she was back. Why did they do this? - to maintain their standing in the community. She broke the rules. They were unwilling to accept the punishment for her mistake. Would you die for your child if you knew that they would kill your child either way?). If a foreigner walked into your town in the past you were very wary. He had no family to vouch for him. He had no collateral to put up to encourage confidence in trade with him. He was literally ‘outside the law’, and therefore was very difficult to trust. This is the form of law in a natural order. Libertarians are not libertines. I know that there are behaviors I display that are considered ‘illegal’. But in natural law, I break no laws. My family supports my decision. And, my family would defend me, and I would defend my family, from others who aggress against us.

Whether our consciousness is the result of, or creator of, reality matters not. That is equivalent to asking which is more important - 1 or 0? Well, without 0 there would be no 1, but without 1, 0 would continue forever undiscovered. Our reality is the result of the interaction of the reality of existence and the reality of our perception. Does not the perception of a blue sky make me perceive a blue sky? Does not the perception that I am rich make me act as if I were rich?

Our incentives can change our ideas, just as our ideas may change our incentives. Neither of these is the more primal since they both dependent on our existence. Our incentives and ideas are dependent upon our existence, but not completely dependent on or independent of each other. Changing the incentives is equivalent to changing the ideas, just as changing the ideas is equivalent to changing the incentives. Unless you believe that either of these is independent of reality, then they must be mutually correlated.

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Eladiob, pull another little stunt like that and you will be banned from this forum. This is my first and only warning. Trolls are not tolerated here. Read the forum rules.

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Hm. It seems to me you are concentrating on the laws themselves. I’d rather concentrate on the process of lawmaking. My basic problem with modernity is hubris - the Greek knew perfectly that trying to mess with something that’s beyond our understanding generally leads to failure but somehow this knowledge was lost from the mainstream. From what you wrote follows that the libertarian method of lawmaking is more like discovering them than making them. I like it, it sounds like a good anti-hubris medication.

Perhaps it would be fruitful to compare politically libertarian authors with philosophically conservative ones - I think there is a lot in common between Hoppe and Eric Voegelin, Hayek and Oakeshott etc. Voegelin argued that modernity is an essentially Gnostic project: Christianity promises a perfect society at the end of history, but emphasizes that it will not be created by men, but by god. Gnostics thought actually men could create a perfect society if lead by the small elite who has perfect knowledge (gnosis) - and this is where it all comes from. As he put it in his characteristically complicated-yet-simple way, “Don’t immanentize the escathon!” - which was turned into a slogan and popularized by Buckley. (Buckley was an exceptionally intelligent, refined bloke with a very wide perspective and a very open mind - I think Hoppe is unjust a bit towards him, he was much more than just a militarist. In fact his kind of militarism I find completely understandable: what’s wrong with challenging great evils like Hitler, Stalin and Saddam? In a misesian state if a village secedes from the state and then a gang of armed thugs occupies it wouldn’t the others be obliged to intervene, by force if necessary?)

Oakeshott made a very important difference between rational and practical knowledge. Rational knowledge is something you can pick up from a book because they are based on deductive proofs - engineering calculations etc. Practical knowledge is much more elusive: like cooking or playing a musical instrument, one can only learn by experience and from the experience of others: a mentor, and also established traditions, best practices of the given art/profession etc. Oakeshott argued that politics requires more practical than rational knowledge. The Misesian/Hayekian conception of the market seems like the blueprint for putting practical knowledge into maximum use.

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Propertarian thought in anarchism can be traced as far back as Proudhon, and was strong in 19th century individualist anarchism, especially in America. “Socialism” in the 19th century was a broad phenomenon that most certainly did include market-oriented ideas. Here are some quotes to show you how disingenous your arguement from historical precedent really is:

In the posthumously published Theory of Property, Proudhon argued that “property is the only power that can act as a counterweight to the State.”

“property is the greatest revolutionary force which exists, with an unequaled capacity for setting itself against authority…” and the “principal function of private property within the political system will be to act as a counterweight to the power of the State, and by so doing to insure the liberty of the individual.” – Pierre Joseph Proudhon

“Society must be so converted as to preserve the SOVEREIGNTY OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL inviolate. That it must avoid all combinations and connections of persons and interests, and all other arrangements which will not leave every individual at all times at liberty to dispose of his or her person, and time, and property in any manner in which his or her feelings or judgment may dictate WITHOUT INVOLVING THE PERSONS OR INTERESTS OF OTHERS.” -Josiah Warren

“defense is a service like any other service; that it is labor both useful and desired, and therefore an economic commodity subject to the law of supply and demand; that in a free market this commodity would be furnished at the cost of production; that, competition prevailing, patronage would go to those who furnished the best article at the lowest price; that the production and sale of this commodity are now monopolized by the State; and that the State, like almost all monopolists, charges exorbitant prices” – Benjamin tucker

“anarchist individualists are firm in the idea that the system of employer and employed, buying and selling, banking, and all the other essential institutions of Commercialism, centered upon private property, are in themselves good, and are rendered vicious merely by the interference of the State.” – Voltarine De Cleyre

“It is right that one man employ another, it is right that he pay him wages, and it is right that he direct him absolutely, arbitrarily in the performance of labor. It is not in any, nor in all of these features combined, that the wrong of our present system is to be sought and found. It is in the simply failure to do Equity. It is not that men are employed and paid, but that they are not paid justly…” – Stephan Pearl Andrews

Your arguement crumbles in light of these “free market socialists” that are integral figures in the history of anarchism.

Note to readers: sorry, I had to respond to this common arguement because it annoys me. I know that this is a bit off topic.

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I am concentrating on the laws themselves, because people are not in a good position to make them. I do believe they are discovered. I think judicial precedent is a nefarious form of legislation. No case should ever be judged from the point of precedent, even if that entails running decisions over again and again. Every case is unique. Law should be a matter of unanimity. That means that there is no judge with the ability to preside over future cases - regardless the arguments they employ to settle their present cases. If they believe that their vision is that far reaching, they should become legislators.

The three branches of government are dealing with different times. The legislator deals with the future, the executive deals with the present, and the judge deals with the past. No branch of government should be allowed to impinge any other time period. No judge should be able to preside over future cases, while no executive should be allowed to execute laws from the past, and no legislator should be allowed to make laws retro-active. Laws are discovered. Interpretation of the law is also discovered, and every judge, and community value he represents, should be allowed to interpret the law for the case over which he presides.

In fact, if there is one thing wrong with our form of government it is the ease with which it is changed. Laws should be very difficult to pass, difficult to enact, and difficult to defend. There should be no sympathy for law-breakers. But when laws become arbitrary, everyone has sympathy for law breakers and victim’s rights decrease while criminal’s rights expand. We suffer from too much democracy - too much over-reaching - too much government. We must decrease the power of the State and replace it with the power of the family.

We can do this by moving back toward strict constructionism. In the mean-time, I act as if I am as sovereign and capable of interpreting the Constitution as the State - a trait that would be smacked down by the State if they found out about it. No doubt they will. Then I will be a felon with massive student loans that I am unable to pay. Eventually, we will all be in permanent debt to our government. Remember, the power of government is the power of propaganda. Propaganda, has evolved as fast as any other form of mass communication. We might think we are above propaganda because we associate it with Hitler and FDR. But, that form of mass communication was foisted on people who were unable to comprehend or deal with it. We are no different. Propaganda is as powerful as it was then - only they are much more sophisticated with creating and propagating it today. Don’t think we are not propagandized, remember that we are unable to identify it - just like those from the past.

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Cannot really do so - I mean when I say that eggs are not enough for making ham and eggs but you also need ham and salt and pepper, there isn’t much point in analysing a sample of the egg… :slight_smile:

My general problem - which might just come from not being very familiar with it - the Austrian way of thinking is the following: where do voluntary agreements come from and who are the parties to them?

Agreements have a prerequisite: persuasion. An agreement, a contract is but the formal end result of a process of talk, persuasion, deliberation. Therefore a culture where debate, persuasion, talk is highly appreciated is a prerequisite for liberty. (See: the love of the old English of witticisms or the love of the Romans and Greeks of rhetorics.) Where persuasion is underrated, like our society - in modern societies debates between politicians of different parties are a mere facade, they don’t seriously mean to convince each other - the people will always be inclined to the use of force, not necessarily a violent one, of course.

Also, who are the parties in the agreements? What does exactly keep the masses in a democratic society from simply voting the property of others for themselves? We could say that in the long run they would be worse off, because they would just waste the resources. But in the long run we are all dead, therefore a wasting of resources scheduled in a way that they last exactly as long as we live would be the most rational thing to do. This is what European welfare states do: they leave the cost of welfare to be picked up by the next generations, if there will be any… What could protect us from this kind of logic? One possible solution is to see society as the sum of contracts between the current, the past, and the future generations. In this kind of thinking the wasting of inherited resources is frowned upon, because it would contradict the wishes of the previous generations who created that wealth. Thus, respect for the dead would protect the children, even those who aren’t yet born. This is another cultural prerequisite for liberty.

Hoppe argues, I think, that liberty would create a noble society - I can agree to that, but I think a certain amount of nobleness in culture is a prerequisite to liberty.

Rothbard argued that even in a totally immoral society liberty is preferable to tyranny because it’s easier to keep many small thugs off your back than one almost omnipotent one. A powerful argument, but the problem is, that this answers the wrong question. The right question is, would an immoral society be free? No, because when there isn’t a culture of self-restraint, gangs would just fight until one of them emerges victorious and they would create a tyranny. Therefore it’s pointless to talk about whether liberty is preferable or not in an immoral society as there would be no liberty in an immoral society. Morals, culture, ethics, and the sources they come from (tradition, religion, etc.) are a prerequisite to liberty, I think.

That’s my main issue.

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Exactly, agreed. But this is why we need to concentrate on the process: because somebody has to make them sometimes.

Depends. I don’t know the current American system too well. But where it came from, the English Common Law, then it was nothing but the formalization of the customs, beliefs, values, prejudices of a given place, like a shire or a borough. It was pretty much discovered - not universal laws, of course, but simply the discovery of what works at a given place and time.

Agree again and would add something: the other thing wrong is the sheer volume of laws. Law shouldn’t be something youyhave study for 5 years.

??? Why? It’s usually the other way around, the goverment is in debt to it’s citizens (bonds and stuff like that).

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I’m not quite sure I understand the argument in this thread. Hoppe does it make quite clear that exclusion is the major benefit of private property, and that communists and people who advocate socialism would have to be thrown out of society. His point is that a free society rewards nobility and punishes parasitism, but that doesn’t mean that parasites need not be protected from.

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I can give you a quick run down of where voluntary agreements come from, and how they are justified. Working backwards: they come from independent private property owners wishing to improve their personal condition by trading what they value less for what they value more - thereby guaranteeing that both participants in the trade mutually benefit. Private property itself is justified in reason and argumentation. We recognize that private property, voluntary trade, and the concept of homesteading are all presupposed in the act of argumentative justification. Therefore, property, and all things libertarian are ultimately justified because of this, and all things contradictory to this cannot be justified. Therefore, the ultimate foundation of voluntary agreements and those who are parties to them, are the verbal justifications given by peace and prosperity seeking individuals who seek such justifications. Reason and justice, therefore, is at the foundation of such voluntary agreements. For more, read Hoppe on Argumentation Ethics.

More:

“Also, who are the parties in the agreements? What does exactly keep the masses in a democratic society from simply voting the property of others for themselves?”

The first question to answer is can we use reason to demonstrate that such a democratic situation cannot be justified, and that justice and peace seeking people must discard it in the intellectual trash bin. The answer to this is YES.

“We could say that in the long run they would be worse off, because they would just waste the resources. But in the long run we are all dead, therefore a wasting of resources scheduled in a way that they last exactly as long as we live would be the most rational thing to do.”

In fact, we are all currently living in someone else’s long run. There is no justice in this Keynesian sort of reasoning. It is fallacy.

“This is what European welfare states do: they leave the cost of welfare to be picked up by the next generations, if there will be any… What could protect us from this kind of logic?”

One can only battle fallacy with honest and pure reason. And reason refutes democracy, aggression, taxation, and coercive monopolization of any means of production. Only libertarian anarchy can bring us a hope of seeing a just society.

“One possible solution is to see society as the sum of contracts between the current, the past, and the future generations. In this kind of thinking the wasting of inherited resources is frowned upon, because it would contradict the wishes of the previous generations who created that wealth. Thus, respect for the dead would protect the children, even those who aren’t yet born. This is another cultural prerequisite for liberty.”

Respect for private property would be where I would start. A society that has an interest in justice has a sound bedrock of morality on which to build other worthy social standards on top of it. Without an appreciation of justice, we are lost.

”Hoppe argues, I think, that liberty would create a noble society - I can agree to that, but I think a certain amount of nobleness in culture is a prerequisite to liberty.”

He may argue this, I’m not sure. I would argue, and I think Hoppe does as well, that only liberty can be logically justified. A desire for truth, reason, and justice is a prerequisite to liberty and true nobility.

”Rothbard argued that even in a totally immoral society liberty is preferable to tyranny because it’s easier to keep many small thugs off your back than one almost omnipotent one. A powerful argument, but the problem is, that this answers the wrong question. The right question is, would an immoral society be free? No, because when there isn’t a culture of self-restraint, gangs would just fight until one of them emerges victorious and they would create a tyranny.”

Would a moral society argue in favor of tyranny, theft and aggression? I say it would not. But at root of an immoral society is ignorance, a lack of appreciation for truth and justice. We must work to fix this problem, and we will have us a more moral society more deserving of peace, prosperity and justice.

“Therefore it’s pointless to talk about whether liberty is preferable or not in an immoral society as there would be no liberty in an immoral society. Morals, culture, ethics, and the sources they come from (tradition, religion, etc.) are a prerequisite to liberty, I think.”

There will be no liberty in an immoral society. There will also always be a state with an immoral society because they remain too ignorant to see that a state is institutionalized injustice and aggression. So to the extent that a society suffers under a state, to that extent, in a sense, they are too morally depraved to deserve better. Their ignorance must be smashed. The truth must be discovered and that truth is that only anarchy can be just. And only a society that seeks justice can be deserving of it.

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I’ll think about it, but just one comment for now: there is nothing Keynesian about what I wrote, the short run rationality of looting I borrowed from Schumpeter.

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Oh, my mistake! LOL. I saw “in the long run we are all dead”, and immediately thought of Keyenes.

I’ve not read much of Schumpeter, so that is an interesting quote.