Yes, I am sure. Unless you want to insert morality into economic analysis. For both Mises and Rothbard how the property was acquired was irrelevant from an economic POV. How it was controlled is another matter.
Look, we’ve been through this before. There is a difference if the government is privately as opposed to publicly owned. Monarchical governments, and particularly feudal ones, cannot compare to democratic ones either in being centralized, or even more monopolistic.
Um, then he isn’t? Whoever denied that? However, structurally, compared to a democratic ruler, such an incentive is much weaker.
Without introducing morality, I can say that property acquired through voluntary means is different from property stolen at the point of a gun by oligarchs and monarchs. Not the physical objects, of course, but the way the actors involved regard them.
I’m not sure about Rothbard. On the other hand, I don’t think that Rothbard or Mises ever defended monarchy - but that’s beside the point. The point is, this economic analysis is “out of context” so to speak.
I can accept that an exclusive owner of property would try to preserve it - I assume we’re talking about a free individual in a free-market.
However, that principle is not valid for a government that enslaves a whole country. The explanation just doesn’t scale up. Even if they wanted to preserve their property that doesn’t mean they would ‘grant’ their subjects more freedom.
Yes, you assert that ‘private’ government is different and better than ‘public’ government, but facts contradict you. Democracy, monarchy and any other form of statism are variations on the same theme : oligarchy. Adding the adjective ‘private’ to the word government doesn’t change the nature of things. Majevska just pointed out that democratic oligarchies are not as short term oriented as you seem to believe.
Is this physics ? What, exactly, are we measuring ? A force ? An amount of matter ? Energy ? Monarchical incentives for plunder are “much weaker” you say ? That’s a fuzzy claim - not a praxeological theorem.
Then I’d suggest reading MES, where Rothbard does in effect state that how appropriate came about is irrelevant to whether something is privately owned or not, alongside his own description of how legitimate ownership would arise. He also makes this argument with regard to capital goods, that their present owner is in effect concerned with what uses he can put them to, not the history behind them.
If it increased their profits, it would. Mises’s own arguments have demonstrated that the more liberal a regime is, the wealthier it’ll be. Which requires social as well as economic freedoms.
I thought you’d attempt to bring that up. First of all, no, sorry, facts do not contradict praxeological theorems. It is a sign of confusion to think otherwise. Second of all, Majevska did not answer any of the important questions: does this oligarchy have property in the current and future tax revenues of the state? What are its constraints? So far, it only confirms Hoppe’s theory that democracy is in effect a shadow oligarchy with unlimited incentives for plunder. If this so-called elite is characterized by features that are typical of a monarchy, then again it is for all practical purposes behaving as a private owner of government.
You really are betraying a shocking ignorance of Austrian methodology here, given that Austrians believe quantitatively exact statements in the field of social sciences are largely invalid, especially in the form of predictions. So yes, it is a praxeological theorem, a subset of a more general one pertaining to private ownership. It is odd that you’d mention physics, then exclude something from being a praxeological theorem because it is not quantitatively precise. It is precisely because human action is “fuzzy” and multifaceted that praxeology is called for.
What other economic principles could apply? If one takes control of another or their possesions by compelling obedience with violence, then the same praxeological principles will apply from the perspective of the criminal as if he were the owner of them, and they were his livestock. They render hims services, are scarce, and he has causally brought them under his control. They are goods to him, that is, his property. Maybe unjustly his, but in terms of economic analysis, it doesn’t matter.
Well, the people whose property was stolen may resent it. They may try to get back at their beloved, god-appointed monarch. Who knows ? There may be constant uprisings. The property that the monarch ‘owns’ and controls at the point of a bayonet may not be so secure after all. Et cetera.
Facts indeed contradict wrongly deduced praxeological theorems. Anybody can come up with something resembling a praxeological theory but that doesn’t mean it’s a correct theory.
In a word, you can’t automatically go from “human acts” to “monarchy is superior to democracy”.
Of course. Look for instance at people like JPMorgan, Goldman-Sachs, and similar ‘capitalists’. Are they mere democratic caretakers ? Or are they engaging in long-term planning in order to enslave as many people as possible ?
Democracy is indeed an oligarchy, just like the “natural elites” Hoppe dreams about.
As far as I know Austrians don’t make quantitative statements about subjective experiences (like incentives) at all. You can’t know how ‘big’ or ‘small’ an incentive is - It seems to me it is you the one who doesn’t stick to Austrian methodology.
I mentioned physics because your saying that incentives are “much weaker” does indeed sound like so called neo-classical economics with its attempt to mimic physics.
Okay, and how does this extraneous information relate to how a private owner makes use of property vs one who has no exclusive right to it?
Wrong. A theory that repeatedly fails to interpret certain phenomena might require a revision of the deductions or the formation of concepts involved. If, however, ceteris are paribus, that is false, and the facts do nothing to contradict it.
Just like you cannot go from “man acts” to the ABCT, at least not without making clear the deductive steps in the process, and if needed, any subsidiary postulates.
Neither, except to the extent to which they induce politicians to intervene in the economy for their sake - and short-sighted politicians who can gain from this will do so. This is an erratic process. Neither party possesses full, transferrable title to the good (tax receipts) in question. Moreover, the whole planning to enslave people is pure conspiracy theory - they’re just rent-seekers.
Please, spare me your ill-informed little swipes at Hoppe. Perhaps, if you read the book, you wouldn’t be erecting a strawman.
They don’t? So they don’t argue that if a person holds on to a good (refusing to sell), that it as a higher utility to them than any good they could possibly gain through exchange? Equivalently, they don’t state that as a matter of praxeology, someone who has full title to a good will take better care of it? The incentive will be “bigger”, all else equal, because the person has a larger range of uses to which they can put the good, and thus they can use it to satisfy more ends than if it they were restricted in the ways they could use it. This is basic marginal utility. Austrians do make qualitative predictions of this sort. What they object to is things such as attempting to predict exact price ratios or elasticities and then presenting this as economics, rather than mere economic history, or more generally, of the use of the hypothetico-deductive method. You are aware that “higher” and “lower” are qualitative, not quantitative, predictions given they’re not cardinal, right? That is how Austrians and most others use the term in relation to this.
It’s not extraneous information. It’s a key feature of the system you’re trying to analyze. All you do is say “a private owner will ‘tend’ to preserve his property” and then pretend that using only that theorem you can prove that ‘monarchy’ is superior to ‘democracy’. However…
Characterizing monarchy as ‘private’ government is misleading IMO and conceptually wrong. Unless you believe that the property that the monarch steal is his because he stole it.
Since monarchy is a form of government, that is, a system based on force and fraud, the subjects resent it. So the idea that monarchs can actually control their subjects and “future tax receipts” is simply not true.
The definitions of ‘monarchy’ and ‘democracy’ are fuzzy. During the 19th century America was a ‘democracy’, England a parliamentary monarchy and Russia an absolute monarchy, correct ? Now, it turns out that America and England were mostly libertarian and Russia was not. Oh but wait. According to monarchical theoreticians, the self-interest of the monarch and his dynastic ambitions should limit government ? But it didn’t.
Well, we partially agree there (I’d simply say the theory is wrong)
You mean things like the creation of the Fed for instance are an ‘erratic process’ ?
Oh, it was rhetoric. On the other hand, do you deny that statists and their ‘private’ partners make plans to further their interest, even intergenerational plans ?
I know what Hoppe thinks about ‘natural elites’ because I read his “Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State” - which packs as much historical fantasy as I can tolerate.
Of course. But that’s ordinal, not cardinal. You can only know that a person prefers ‘A’ over ‘B’ - but you can’t quantify how ‘strong’ the preference is.
Doesn’t sounds like a statement about ordinal preference to me. But maybe I’m nitpicking.
Well, “higher” and “lower” sound related to quantity to me, just like “weaker” and “stronger”. “Higher” and “lower” are words primarily used to describe spatial relationships such as positions and sizes - which are quantitative ‘variables’. Maybe that’s a misunderstanding on my part ?
Yeah. That’s why all governments, monarchic or not, collect taxes at the point of a gun. Well, maybe war is peace ? Freedom is slavery ?
Wholly false. Russia was highly totalitarian during the Romanov tyranny and after that, Russians embraced communism, which was only logical in a way. The anglo-saxon world did in fact become less liberal, and democracy was one of the causes, but that doesn’t mean monarchy is any good or that the ‘theory’ is correct.
This is a very interesting discussion. My main question hovers around property. Does government property function economically, in the same way as private property does? The way I understand it, is that there is a clear line separating fundamental opposites: property and state, so as to make ‘king’s property’ a sort of oxymoron. It’s not a moral issue as much as a function-of-property issue.
To me it seems odd to say that the king or tsar owns everything, since he is not actually directly controlling everything, or making every economic decision. He is making broad decisions based on centralized information. I can’t think that communism is very much different, since, there is a group of central planners trying to make the economy work. It seems that there might be a similar calculation problem involved with the king.
If the king can own everything with beneficial economic results, than reams and reams of libertarian theft-chiding becomes rather silly. If theft has any economic meaning, then the government/property dichotomy seems indispensable.
Argue me into the ground: I’m willing to be convinced by the best idea.
Another question: If 3/4 of the american people believe taxes are just, and recognize taxes as legitimate, does that justify those taxes as property? I hope not.
Not only are you denying correct economic principles using bad logic, you are also invoking false history in order to justify your claims. A capitalist economy was growing under the Romanovs. The Romanov Nicholas instituted parliamentary monarchy as a check on his power, just as it existed in the German and Austrian Empires at their end. (The German Empire also had an economic development rate significantly higher than England, implying a much more liberal society.) It was the parliament that made possible the socialist revolutions in all these countries.
The King does not own everything, and neither does any government. In European monarchies, at least, the King owned his estates outright and certain incomes that had been raised as taxes, generally with parliaments’ consent, (it was the only way to achieve it) in order to protect the kingdom. For example, King Louis XVI became heavily indebted after fighting the American Revolutionary War and went to parliament in order to raise new taxes to pay off the debt. The parliament ended up overthrowing him instead.
Even under monarchy, there is a delimitation between the property of the King and that of the subjects. The government and the state are the property of the King, but all that governments can do is use force to resolve conflicts. It does not control anyone.
Do not be mistaken by neoclassical ideology that says the state is naturally inefficient and corrupt. If you look at the state of Dubai, for example, it is the property of the ruling family. It is also a gigantic investment holding that is highly profitable, experiences rapid growth and has companies with excellent reputations. Because the state is so efficient, none of the state’s holdings need to be funded through taxation, and in fact the income from state enterprises allows the ruling family to reduce taxes to such a point that Dubai is nearly tax-free for investors.
They believe this because those taxes are not owned by anyone (Americans are under the illusion that they own the government). If the taxes were owned by one ruling family, then Americans would want their money back and the whole government would be much more efficient.
I made clear that the only principle involved - self-interest - is being misapplied. I’m not using ‘bad logic’ - whatever that is.
Also notice that your definition of property/legitimacy is inconsistent. According to you monarchy is legitimate because the people brutalized by the monarch put up with it. Well, it turns out that ‘subjects’ don’t really like being robbed so they periodically revolt, which means the king’s ‘property’(loot) is never secure.
Yeah, false history as in America and England being industrial societies (false) while Russia had 50 millions serfs (false). I’m making that up - it’s marxist propaganda.
That’s right. You should convince the libertarian anarchists that the state is not naturally inefficient and corrupt. At this point it is tempting to call you a ‘troll’, no ?
That is in fact not even Marxist propaganda since the Marxists were well aware that Russia was an industrial, capitalist country at the turn of the 20th century and used this as part of their ideology. You’re the only one who seems confused about the issue.
Stranger, it would be nice if you elaborated a bit more on this, uh, insight of yours ?
I imagine you are criticizing libertarian ideology ? I thought that political economy had shown that the state is indeed naturally inefficient, because the state is, by definition, a monopoly. But it seems as if you are saying, like the marxists, that political economy is mere ideology ? Weird…