I think the upshot of Boétie’s Law is that any society requires the support or acquiescence of most citizens in order to maintain its existence. This is because no society can maintain its existence if enough people are actively resisting it. So for a libertarian society to remain libertarian, it would require that most people believe in the NAP or aren’t actively promoting aggression. (Hence the libertarian movement cannot be abandoned after the anarcho-revolution.)
The difference is that a State uses aggression (i.e. violates rights) to prohibit competition in legal systems.
On the contrary, this is precisely the democracy which Hoppe criticizes, not the pop and lollies brand sold to small children in public schools.
He came to power by the political means which you are conflating with merit in this case, but not in others. I don’t care if the rent seekers chose him. He’s the oligarchs oligarch.
What do you mean by political means? Be precise in your definitions. Bloomberg, for starters, doesn’t take “campaign contributions”. He funds his own campaign against his political opponents. That means no lobby controls him.
Of course, he is in a permanent state of war with the opposition politicians, but that means only that his office is unsecured and so affects his time preferences. That does not change his character, which is monarchical and undemocratic. You can see that in the speeches he gives, which are crap. We are far from the inspirational demagoguery of a Hitler.
He was elected. That means he rules people who do not want to be ruled by him. Elections are a political means.
And of course he funds his own campaign. He is the wealthiest man in NY. Not the best man, the wealthiest.
He’s a tyrant. His social policies are entirely statist.
George Bush Jr was far from Hitler too. What point does that make? I’m interested in social orders built around voluntarism, not violence. Bloomberg rules like all rulers. By managing force and privilege.
Most rulers are elected by somebody. Soviet chairmen were elected. Kings are elected. CEOs are elected. What changes their character is who gets to vote and how.
Elections and democracy are unrelated.
Having the ability to accumulate a lot of capital on the marketplace is a demonstration of competence and good character. No American politician demonstrates that other than Bloomberg. In fact I can’t recall any American politician ever fitting this description.
That may be so, but different rulers achieve different results. What result has W. Bush achieved, and what has Bloomberg achieved? That is the core of Hoppe’s argument.
Indeed, but Hoppe does not make the case for rulers, he only says that some forms of rulership are better than others. Are we to applaud George Washington for not being Stalin?
Perhaps a demonstration of the former, but not the latter. That’s projection. You’re determining character from results, not actions. An epistemological error our heroes also make.
I did not make the case for rulers either. I’m pointing out that the natural elite is relevant and that Hoppe’s political science works out in the present as well as the past.
My apologies then. It sounded like some sort of deification of Bloomberg for being such an upstanding elite.
Hoppe’s political science works out well in the statist paradigm. His ideas about the future seem to me to be more Straussian realism than libertarianism. I have some sympathy for that, but it gets conflated by lesser minds (not you) with a lot of ugly stuff.
I wouldn’t say so, for in the case I outline, there would be no barriers free to pick up. Every bush would already be in process of processing with the most efficient methods available. Switching some berries to bare-hand picking would decrease productivity, even if we totally assume away this “extra guy” need to be feed.
If “there is always more stuff that can be made”, even with no capital, it would follow that in an infinite sand desert where only five camels are to be found (limited capital), an infinite number of people could thrive. Would you uphold this view? If not, than we must see that capital puts a cap on population. If the cap is broken, the economy need adjustment.
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Mises clearly made the case for non-state imposed involuntary unemployment: only when there’s not enough capital, does unemployment in a free market arise. I don’t think that, beside this case, a society can ever be satiated of labor. It is true that, as you say, there’s always something to make.
True indeed. All I’m saying is that, if it is possible to convert labor to capital, a self-interested individual, either “slave” or “master” would do so. This is strictly voluntary, thus qualifies as a market process.
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Process dynamics (“what next?”) are indeed very interesting to explore, and I haven’t had the time to look into them. What you hold could very easily be true. Still it wouldn’t invalidate the argument, I’m afraid.
Again, that would imply than an infinite number of guys could thrive on an infinite desert with only a handful of camels as their only resource. If not, capital does limit the extent of the specialization of labor.
Or else, that would mean that any enterprise could pay positive wages to an infinite number of workers. Is this the case?
Thank you for pointing this out: land need be included in the equation. But as I was only interested in the dynamics of the process, I omitted land as a factor to be found in largely immutable quantity. But it should be added.
Sais Mises (bolds mine),
“The natural scarcity of the means of sustenance forces every living being
to look upon all other living beings as deadly foes in the struggle for survival,
and generates pitiless biological competition. But with man these irreconcilable
conflicts of interests disappear when, and as far as, the division of
labor is substituted for economic autarky of individuals, families, tribes, and
nations. Within the system of society there is no conflict of interests as long
as the optimum size of population has not been reached.As long as the
employment of additional hands results in a more than proportionate increase
in the returns, harmony of interests is substituted for conflict People
are no longer rivals in the struggle for the allocation of portions out of a
strictly limited supply. They become cooperators in striving after ends
common to all of them. An increase in population figures does not curtail,
but rather augments, the average shares of the individuals.” (Human Action, 4rth ed., p. 667)
My limited statements do not amount to any such absurdities. perhaps you are over interpreting my fairly limited criticism. I can agree that an increase in capital goods in quantity and variety give more opportunity for specialization of labour, but it so happens that specialization can occur even when capital goods are not present. and so capital should be seen as amplificatory, and not as a necessity when considering merely the possibility of the phenomenon of division of labour and specialization.
Thanks for the Mises quote. I now remember having read that. Its a good thing that thymology and history, and indicate that the malthusian trap is a bogeyman resigned to pre-capitalist history. In other words, bring on more people…
re-emphasis of your Mises quote :- An increase in population figures does not curtail, but rather augments, the average shares of the individuals.”
If you’re arguing along the lines of “If no capital=no specialization=no society, than how did society arise in the first place?” than it must be seen that primitive tools where crafted before any decent society was formed, back when people knew only their immediate tribe, just like many herd animals. Thus capital was there to allow the specialization of labor, which came about when humans became numerous enough to allow close-vicinity trade to take place. Thus, we must see that society was born after a rudimentary capital stock existed, not before it.
And again, I’m afraid that “specialization can occur even without capital AND LAND (which I corrected)” does lead to the situations I highlighted: if specialization can occour without capital and land (besides mere standing space), than an infinite number of people could bring be it an infinitesimal increase in productivity.
you are just abusing my text to pick a fight with me. obviously no direct(capital-less) production-consumption could occur in the absence of both capital and land. but land is a given. therefore in the absence of capital, because scarce labour can access scarce land, there can be specialization. and you can have a division labour of society that sets about accumulating capital (without first having it), and they can be specialists from day 1.
I don’t want to pick fight with anyone, and I’m sure almost no one here wants to argue for arguing’ sake. All I’m saying is that you can’t just add population adinfinitum over a limited stock of capital and land, and expect everyone to further specialization. There is such a thing as an optimal population level, and once it is crossed a Brave New Theoretical World, yet unexamined by Austrian economists, opens up. I truly wish Mises had writen extendedly on this subject.
And thanks to everyone for discussing this idea of mine. I really appreciate it.
ok, well allow me to be the first person to say that we are in agreement. I think the reason Mises did not say much more on it is that he understood that such a scenario of a relative over abundance of labour vis scarcity of capital and land ,as you call it a Brave New Theoretical World, is so fanciful a concept (under a regime of laissez-faire) as to make it trival. We are very far away from it, there is no evidence that it is ‘fast’ approaching, rather, every development of technological, capital accumulation, increasing access to land, and even growing population, endows such fruits and gains from trade and entrepeneurial skill that the future ‘malthusian trap’ almost seems to be receding from view when viewed from the perspective of the prospects for material well being of the common man (rather than the futurologist).
on the other hand, it can be achieved by interventionist forces and ‘made real’ when the apparatus of the state is arrayed against entrepreneurs and capitalists
True. A decisive objection indeed. Still, we’re not entitled to make quantitative assessments in praxeology, and we may not prove that capital is undoubtedly more abundant than the labor we’d have if everyone able to work did so. Thus, even if to me too it seems practically undoubtable that nowadays capital is more abundant, as long as I have only “it clearly ain’t so” objections, I feel obliged to pursue this possibility some more. Again, thanks for discussing this.
Sounds like there is a hyper-abundance of food, then. No need to for everyone work.
Sure, there’s eventually a population cap. The question is when? I think to call this a concern you would need to marshal significant evidence that this in an impending scenario.
