“In every society, a few individuals acquire the status of an elite through talent. Due to superior achievements of wealth, wisdom, and bravery, these individuals come to possess natural authority, and their opinions and judgments enjoy wide-spread respect. Moreover, because of selective mating, marriage, and the laws of civil and genetic inheritance, positions of natural authority are likely to be passed on within a few noble families.”
While I understand that people naturally nurture their diverse talents, Han Herman Hoppe makes it sound like anarchy would be like feudalism! And when he says “selective mating” it sounds like he’s talking about social darwinism.
I’m not an total egalitarian, but wouldn’t we see more natural equality in a world without the state rather than the opposite?
I am reminded of a point that Liberty Student made in which he stated that ‘natural elites’ is largely an anachronism with the advent of globalization and information transference. ‘Natural elites’ would possibly work in a feudal society due to one’s ability to access wisdom and wealth, however, with things like the internet this makes the concept a thing of the past. Happily I might add.
I think his views are off (but that’s just me though). I think you will be quick to find (assuming you get enough responses) he is controversial to say the least. He may actualy be able to be labled as an “anarcho-conservative”, or other off branded type terms rather than libertarian / anarcho-capitalist
When did Hoppe ever state that there would be less equality in a free society than in the current one?
There will always be elites. The question is whther they will be selected by their superior ability to act as “morally uninhibited demagogues” or by the free market due to their talents, skills, etc.
As far as I can tell, aside from those who misquote him, Hoppe has only advocated the latter.
There are people who are more adroit than others. I’m not a fan of genetics, I think every individual despite breeding has infinite potential. Skillful folks make good natural leaders. In a stateless society it will be the skillful who will tend to lead. Some folks need or desire instruction to satisfy their wants.
I think he is trying to make the point that the cream tends to rise to the top. That more folks need to take initiative and be leaders for liberty. That’s at least my short take on Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State.
I don’t see Mr. Hoppe advocating feudalism, serfdom, or the like.
I am not sure what you mean by ‘natural equality’ because no such thing exists naturally. The state’s anti-discrimination and civil rights laws see to that there are supposed equality of outcomes.
The egalitarians won’t like anarchy when it comes.
The issue of nobility is not just about wisdom and wealth. It is principally about character. You can find lots of highly talented maniacs and crooks. These don’t tend to accumulate respect or pass them down generations.
Am I as brilliant as Einstein in physics? No, I can grasp its basics and maybe I grasp quantum mechanics better than him (with the proviso that Feynman posited that no one understands QM). Am I an athlete like Michael Jordan or Lance Armstrong? No, not in the least, although I’m good at bicycling (not professional level though). Am I as good of a programmer as RMS? Not really, but I can keep my code clean and coherent, better than most.
My point in answering this questions as part of the posted message is to illustrate that the concept of natural elites is not anti-liberty or anti-human. Some folks whether by biology or tenacity turn out to be the best of the best. And the rest of us are either 2nd or 3rd or lower in terms of competence. Like Rand pointed out through one of her characters in Atlas Shrugged, I need such people to look up, not to look down. The so-called natural elites are better called natural paragons as they inspire others to improve themselves even if they themselves will never always meet that level of excellence. Why should I begrudge such people? And why should we fear them? I see no logic in either reaction.
"A characteristic feature of the unhampered market society is that it is no respecter of vested interests. Past achievements do not count if they are obstacles to further improvement.(…)
It is certainly true that the necessity of adjusting oneself again and again to changing conditions is onerous. But change is the essence of life. In an unhampered market economy the absence of security, i.e., the absence of protection for vested interests, is the principle that makes for a steady improvement in material well-being."
And from chapter 15…
"Ownership of the means of production is not a privilege, but a social liability. Capitalists and landowners are compelled to employ their property for the best possible satisfaction of the consumers. If they are slow and inept in the performance of their duties, they are penalized by losses. If they do not learn the lesson and do not [p. 312] reform their conduct of affairs, they lose their wealth. No investment is safe forever. He who does not use his property in serving the consumers in the most efficient way is doomed to failure. There is no room left for people who would like to enjoy their fortunes in idleness and thoughtlessness. The proprietor must aim to invest his funds in such a way that principal and yield are at least not impaired.
In the ages of caste privileges and trade barriers there were revenues not dependent on the market. Princes and lords lived at the expense of the humble slaves and serfs who owed them tithes, statute labor,and tributes. Ownership of land could only be acquired either by conquest or by largesse on the part of a conqueror. It could be forfeited only by recantation on the part of the donor or by conquest on the part of another conqueror. Even later, when the lords and their liegemen began to sell their surpluses on the market, they could not be ousted by the competition of more efficient people. Competition was free only within very narrow limits. The acquisition of manorial estates was reserved to the nobility, that of urban real property to the citizens of the township, that of farm land to the peasants. Competition in the arts and crafts was restricted by the guilds. The consumers were not in a position to satisfy their wants in the cheapest way, as price control made underbidding impossible to the sellers. The buyers were at the mercy of their purveyors. If the privileged producers refused to resort to the employment of the most adequate raw materials and of the most efficient methods of processing, the consumers were forced to endure the consequences of such stubbornness and conservatism.
…the composition of the entrepreneurial and capitalist groups has changed considerably. A great part of the former entrepreneurs and their heirs have been eliminated and other people, newcomers, have taken their places."
Yep, I agree with Lilburne on the economic consequence of natural elites. It’s all about what you do now that counts, not what you’ve done. I’ll give an example in game development: Richard Garriot and Tabula Rasa. This was suppose to be THE MMO to beat them all out. It was suppose to be a game that mixes both Eastern and Western aesthetics in game play and art as well as adding new features that made player choices have lasting impact on the game world. But two things occurred in its production. First, the Korean and American teams had conflicts of interest that could not be resolve, thus many game features clashed severely with each other. Second, Richard Garriot and his brother both were given full license to do the project with little or no interference from NCsoft or its investors.
These two elements can be considered the fundamental flaws of Tabula Rasa as the game only lasted one year on the market before closing last year (March/February 2009). NCsoft had to write it off as a significant loss that require the company to lay off many people in the US and EU branch offices, and even reallocate resources to existing successful brands (GW1, CoX, and their F2P games in Korea). Simply put, this case example in a previously considered game developer paragon ends with Richard and his brother laughing to the bank and leaving NCsoft with a pile of debt they’re still paying off to this day. Go figure.
Inherited respect is of little regard under the dynamic, fluid regime of consumer sovereignty.
From Human Action, chapter 15:
"The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain’s orders. The captain is the consumer. [p. 270] Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that. If a businessman does not strictly obey the orders of the public as they are conveyed to him by the structure of market prices, he suffers losses, he goes bankrupt, and is thus removed from his eminent position at the helm. Other men who did better in satisfying the demand of the consumers replace him.
The consumers patronize those shops in which they can buy what they want at the cheapest price. Their buying and their abstention from buying decides who should own and run the plants and the farms. They make poor people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities. They are merciless bosses, full of whims and fancies, changeable and unpredictable. For them nothing counts other than their own satisfaction. They do not care a whit for past merit and vested interests. If something is offered to them that they like better or that is cheaper, they desert their old purveyors."
I think Hoppe is nearly on the mark, but this conception of natural elites is too wide. As the division of labor increases, general aptitude is less important (though its importance is not zero). I think that natural elites emerge within disciplines. That is, of those who become pianists or professional basketball players or lawyers, some are advantaged by their genetics over others… we call this raw talent. There will always be a small minority for whom production in a certain capacity comes much easier than to the average person. These are the natural elites. I think Hoppe, then, kind of mixes this idea up with the emergence of natural elites in social leadership, jurisprudence and war (the historically monopolized components of the State). It seems he wants to say that this is how the State emerged… an abuse of real privilege once held by genuine natural elites but I think this would be wrong. In my view, legitimized parasitism is also a category of human action at which some individuals will excel more than others. The natural elites in this category of human action become politicians or government bureaucrats or corporate CEOs in defense corporations, they are the “schmoozers”, the hypocrite-elite, that excel at trumpeting their great moral fiber while plotting behind closed doors how to steal their audience blind and kill anyone who gets in their way. I think the royalty and nobility of time past were no different and I think that Hoppe’s application of the principle of genetic inheritance to natural elitism explains why the children of nobility were more likely to remain nobles (perpetuate the legitimized plunder racket) and new entrants to the nobility were extremely rare.
Makes sense to me. Some people will always rise to the top. Whether this creates dynasties or not I have no idea. Probably depends on a lot of diverse factors and variables that make these kinds of things very difficult to predict.
There will always be an oligarchy, there will always be a democracy.
People always choose (in a very loose sense) what they think are the elites in a field. Rothbard talked about this on that essay on primitivism. In the end what matters is how we choose these elites.
Do you really think this is true all the time for everyone? I’m pretty loyal to certain brands. I think in social psychology they call this path dependency. The idea is that once someone gets used to doing or getting something one way, it becomes unlikely that they’ll change course even if a supposedly “better” alternative is offered. I remember reading about an example of this in regards to the QWERTY keyboard in Michael Shermer’s Mind of the Market. Apparently, other people have designed supposedly “superior” alternatives to QWERTY but because most people are so used to QWERTY, the new style has had a tremendously hard time getting any kind of market share or market eyeballs. I’ve been using QWERTY my whole life, it’s what I know. I could never imagine myself switching. For another example, I really don’t like Apple products. Not necessarily because they’re inferior, I’ve just been using Microsoft stuff my whole life, I understand Microsoft, I feel a sort of bond with the company. I even owned a bunch of their stock for a long time. I’m not really trying to argue with Mises on theory here and maybe my examples aren’t very good but I’m just saying my own personal experience makes his ideas seem unrealistic to me. But then maybe I’m an outlier, I have no idea.
It’s interesting to note that on many other things, I feel absolutely no allegiance at all to any one brand or way of doing things. So I don’t know why sometimes it happens one way with me and other times it happens another way. But I do know that there are some things that I feel loyalty towards. I don’t really know why, I just know that I do.