You just keep on denying the most fundamental facts of reality. It is politicians who control the state and who grant what you call ‘private’ monopolies. Really, newspeak will get you nowhere.
So, it follows that all individuals ‘should’ own the state.
Too bad. If your monarchist-tyrannical premise is true then you must accept its logical conclusion.
Stranger, according to your signature “Minarchism failed because it is socialism”.
So, a system that is supposed to protect individual rights and can even be voluntary funded is ‘socialism’, BUT monarchy is not ?
If somebody is trolling here it is no doubt you.
Your usage of these terms confuse me. To me, “private” refers to anything that is not the state. “Private” refers to non-state property. The state cannot be truly “private”. Monarchy is not a case of “private” defense or arbitration or law. The mere fact that the state holds a monopoly on it means that it isn’t “private”, even in a monarchy. So I don’t understand how you can consider monarchy in this way.
Furthermore, as Juan points out, you say that it isn’t just since only one man is allowed this right and you simultaneously say that public ownership is not the solution, yet the logical result of what you’re saying would imply that it is just for everyone to have this right - which would seem to imply “public” ownership. I’m left in a state of confusion about what you think and advocate.
They do that without regard to the capital value of the state, because they do not own it, they merely control it and their control is institutionally limited by elections.
Owning the state means having the right to disown it, to exchange it for something else, thus receiving the capital value of the property in exchange. Democracy forbids that. It is not ownership, but communism of the state.
And a monarch somehow magically doesn’t run into the calculation problem themselves?
I would say that their control is institutionally enabled by elections.
Private property quite clearly means individual ownership, the “private” part implying that no one else but the owner can have a say in the use of the property. A monarch does not have to justify himself to anyone in the management of the state, can disown the state to his chosen heir, and has a constitutional right to his monarchy. That makes it private property.
Evidently, the solution, and this would be clear if you had read any of Hoppe’s arguments, is to abolish the monopoly and let anyone own privately a security provider, instead of only one man or family having the right to own one and no other. The democratic solution is to forbid anyone from owning the state but instead having a rotating control by elected politicians, who will, as the incentives of the system compel them to, squander the capital of the state.
The monarch’s alleged “rights” and “ownership” is a legal construct and privilege. Private property is not a legal construct or privilege, it is the natural product of labor. The monarch’s “ownership” is not the natural product of their labor. It is based on plunder.
I think the problem is that your definition of “private property” is entirely removed from any theory of justice is property aquisition; it’s purely utilitarian nonsense. “Private property” is not mere “individual ownership”, it has to be justified on the basis of voluntaryism.
The state is not “private property”! It’s stolen property.
I have a suspicion that what Hoppe really suggests (or the implications of it at least) is merely to have a wider variety of smaller monarchies - each of which still hold a monopoly within their respective territories. Some of his statements would almost seem to imply that he’s blatantly pro-monarchy.
I fail to see how a rotating control by privileged family members or aristocracy members is very different. And democracy doesn’t forbid “ownership” of the state, it merely expands the amount of people who own it. It’s still an oligarchy. This has already been addressed.
Furthermore, it seems to me that if we go by your definitions then democracy has an advantage over monarchy - it is less sustainable, while monarchies can more easily be perpetuated. If one’s purpose is to end the institution, democracy is therefore preferable.
I’m curious: Do you think it would be an improvement if George Bush had the presidency for life?
Stranger, it seems that you conveniently overlooked this - I’ll repeat it then
It just seems to me that your position is plain contradictory ? (Oh, by the way, using economic jargon, as you do, is not the same thing as arguing a position in a consistent and coherent way)
Wow, you mean anarcho-capitalism ? The great Hoppe invented that 150 years after de Molinari did ? That’s news…
No, Hoppe advocates a multiplicity of arrangements - his own preferred one being anarcho-capitalism, not monarchy. Presumably he’d go even further with the form he prefers being covenantal. He definitely prefers a feudal form of monarchy over democracy though as one state compared to another. He considers it an impossibility to justify anything but market anarchism anyway.
-Jon
Private property is neither a construct, a privilege, or a natural phenomenon. It is just the quality of one’s control of scarce resources. For property to be private, it must be exclusively controlled in perpetuity by an individual. Monarchy meets this criterion.
As for what secures private property, which is a legal construct, that occurs when a property is recognized as private by law. This can follow from homesteading, and it can also be the result of something like the enclosures acts. The outcome of this is that possession of scarce goods becomes exclusive control in perpetuity in the former case, or that exclusion of exclusive control by anyone is abolished in the latter case.
The bottom line is that you are correct in saying that the definition of private property has no relationship to justice. The justice of private property is a completely unrelated matter.
Your suspicious are unfounded, in bad faith and highly offensive to a man who may be the greatest austrian economist alive. I suggest you withdraw them.
None of these examples are exclusive control by an individual in perpetuity, and therefore none of them compare to monarchy.
It would be if he had the presidency for perpetuity, not simply life. Then he would no longer have to appeal to anyone but himself in his management of the state, and would employ rational economic calculation with the vast resources at his disposal.
Truth at last! Your vast knowledge has really humbled me, Stranger. So, for Bush to enjoy the presidency in perpetuity I suggest that congress pass a law making him immortal .
You’ve really lost me here. I thought rational economic calculation was impossible because of the size of the bureacracy within government, and all of the non-voluntary restrictions on the market within which the government participates, and because they have monopolies in the services they provide. How does a supreme ruler overcome this? He must still delegate tasks, for there is no other way to manage such an economy. Besides that, as Hayek has argued, the government can never have all of the required local and dispersed information that market entrepreneurs have.
I always thought voting for gridlock between the congress/senate and the president was best, and now you’re telling us making a supreme dictator out of Bush for all eternity is a better idea?
Private property is a natural product of voluntary labor and exchange. Once it is obtained, it is up to the individual whether or not to be exclusive or inclusive with it. They could theoretically be extremely inclusive with it. Hence, the definition of private property merely by its exclusive nature doesn’t make much sense to me.
Does it really make sense to support literally anything that is “exclusively controlled in perpetuity by an individual”? Especially when we may face an intergenerational problem in which the original owners are long since dead but their ancestors or some aristocracy that makes no productive use of it legally claims “ownership” over it while other people actually actively make use of and labor upon it?
All that you’re really doing is pushing for less and less people to claim “exclusive control” over the property in question. Non-monarchal systems nonetheless still have “exclusive control” but with more people legally entitled to it. The exclusive nature of it is still there.
The problem is that your dry and utilitarian defense of “private property” opens it up to a whole bunch of charges of authoritarianism and injustice, some of which are entirely correct criticisms due to the fact that your analysis is blind to justice. Your analysis or approach effectively legitimizes unjustice. You appear to defend “private property” as it (allegedly) is (which involves some degree of injustice) rather than based on what it should be or on the basis of a theory of justice. This conservative approach leaves private propertarianism open to all of the socialist criticisms and essentially concedes to them.
I’m sorry, but some of his statements are too absurd for me not to expect that he’s a closet monarchist. He almost seems to romanticize it.
This statement doesn’t make any sense to me. How can dead people own things in perpetuity?
So you think that removing liability and responsibility is good? Unilateral decision-making is good? Good lord!
How so? The calculation problem applies to the king as much as it would to any other individual within an organization. And those vast resources would be stolen resources. We’re still talking about states here, remember?
Basically, what you’re trying to tell me is that dictatorship is preferable to democracy. When the fact of the matter is that democracies give rise to dictatorship anyways. Democracy is merely a process by which oligarchy and dictatorship is enabled. There is nothing genuinely “public” about it in any strong or absolute sense.
I didn’t say Bush should impose a socialist economy. I said that he would now calculate the cost to himself of the acts of government. For example, the price imposed for security would be substantially lowered as that would increase the net value of his presidency. If the market offered lower-cost alternatives to his bureaucracies, King Bush would contract out this work and shut down the bureaucracies, thus realizing large economies that would increase the value of his office even more.
I didn’t say that Bush should have any legislative powers.
Where? He contrasts feudal monarchy as superior to democratic government and offers a number of considerations in favour of this. He in fact argues for anarcho-capitalism on the basis that monarchy cannot be morally justified, is economically deficient and even if less likely to fall prone to certain abuses than democracy, is itself in the end a mere second-best. Essentially, is one more reckless with property they own than with property they merely have custody over? Austrians argue in every case that the former will tend to be better than the latter.
-Jon
Support is irrelevant to this discussion. You’re the only one who keeps bringing it up over and over and over and over and over and over again as if anyone but you is interested in what other people support.
I don’t care what your opinion of Hoppe is. You are a worm and he is a hero of Austrian economics.
No, exclusivity is good. Exclusivity as in I don’t need to get anyone else’s opinion on what to do with my property.
I don’t know why you keep drawing up these red herrings of oligarchies and aristocracies and dictatorship when the subject is monarchy and has nothing to do with anyone of these political systems. I can only conclude that you are an incurable troll.
Your insistance on continueing such conversations in a manner that is entirely blind to the question of legitimacy and justice astounds me.
Personal attacks, eh? Sorry for critisizing your hero! I guess libertarians aren’t allowed to.
Exclusivity is not good as an absolute. A thief can have exclusive control over what they stole. The state is not the legitimate property of the people who exclusively control it. By being “exclusive” in this case, the actual original and just owners are screwed. That’s the heart of the problem here. The people excluded are the original and rightful owners of the capital value of the property in question.
I don’t see how I’m a troll for merely disagreeing with your legitimizing of monarchy and your vulgar libertarian tendencies.
Stranger, have you answered why miniarchism is socialism, but monarchy is not ? -You can’t ? Shouldn’t you learn some basic logic before posting ?