I think Hoppe’s position is the only rational one. I know some egalitarians want to give the working class capital goods, so they have a leg up when competing in the post state world, but I reject that for a # of reasons.
First, as a course of justice, the taxpayers are the ones who have lost property to the state. Not the non-taxpayers. It is unreasonable to allocate property to people who were not stolen from and call that justice.
Second, giving people capital who have not earned that capital, or do not have the intimate understanding of how to maintain, or the capacity to maintain that capital is a recipe for disaster. Running a machine, does not mean you know how to build, or repair, or have the capacity to purchase (through capital accumulation) that machine.
Third, Rothbard is engaged clearly in class envy.
Fourth, most state infrastructure is in the hands of state parasites. These are people who work for the state, or receive re-distribution via the state. Even private contractors that work for the state, receive 100% of their income in stolen money, and refund a portion back to the state in the form of taxes, as that is really just a game of three card Monty.
Fifth, Rothbard makes a major break from market principles, by suggesting that the landless labourer class receive capital goods without a market competition process. Clearly state property should go to the highest bidder in the event that the specific ownership cannot be determined for taxpayers.
Wombatron and I had this discussion a few weeks ago, and then it went to private message. A sticking point was that I couldn’t explain how to allocate state goods where ownership by taxpayers was obfuscated by the pooling of state revenue.
But by conducting an auction process, as we know how much taxes were paid in (from receipts and such) it would be possible to divide the auction receipts amongst the taxpayer victims.
In other words, it would be hard to give a state road to 10,000 taxpayers. But it would be easy to sell the state road for $25,000 and give each taxpayer a portion of that money based upon their “investment” into the state.
Sixth, the best thing for the landless labourer class is to break with the capital goods of old, and start fresh. This is my own value laden opinion, but I truly believe that the fastest path to prosperity for the landless labourer class is to get a fresh start and push their creative and entrepreneurial skills through extremis. Giving them a missile silo or aircraft carrier is worthless to their more immediate needs. The post state world needs those capital goods of state, many of which serve only absurd purpose, given to those with the established capital and acumen to alter their purpose for profit and utility as quickly as possible.
I wrote this without drinking any coffee yet. There are probably all sorts of errors I will correct as I re-read it later.