This is basically what I thought he said (note: I listened to it once while I was on my bike):
A] Basic economics tells you that, if you have a limited amount of space, then there needs to be some imposed (?) restriction on the population size for people’s standard of living to rise.
B] According to study X, the standard of living of humanity didn’t rise until 1800s. Mises and Rothbard assumed that there must have been some institutional change in the enforcement of property rights, which caused the vast economic growth. However, there was no such institutional change.
In fact, there have been many times when property rights were pretty well protected but no such economic growth came about. Conclusion: protection of property rights is required but not sufficient to explain the history.
C] Intelligence leads to better decisions leads to greatness leads to an awesome offspring (I don’t mean this seriously, but he seemed to be invoking something rather unscientifically stated and that came out of nowhere). The conclusion follows logically that what actually happened was that it was not until the 1800s that humanity evolved into this awesome Nordic creature that was intelligent enough to use savings for investment and make technological progress. You see, because the conditions were really harsch in the late middle ages (snow and what-not), causing biological evolution to sprint ahead.
D] The end
Is this his actual theory or am I missing some deeper explanations? Also, where did A go in this story?
Hoppe has definitely said things that would make him lose credibility. I emailed him my questions about his “Economy, History, Society” lecture series and he responded that he had no time for such questions because he would not have time to do anything else if he responded to such inquiries. i guess we will just have to wait for the book.
In the meantime, here’s a link to an informative thread.
I respect Hoppe in some ways(I know left-libs aren’t often known to say that) but he sounds cranky here.Sounds like he’s dodging.I know he’s busy and all but he could say something.
He said explicitly in that talk that the only ways to increase production per capita is 1) capital formation, 2) extension of the division of labor, then 3) optimal labor factor input given other factors constant (the simple law of association).
Hoppe says things that are often politically incorrect, as in this talk - his willingness to investigate beyond the assumption that the industrial revolution came about because mainly of favorable institutional condition (respect for private property) - namely the knowledge and intelligence required to recognized capital investment opportunities.