then don’t make those comments!
What comments? The ones that people might disagree with? I don’t really understand why a differing opinion bothers you guys so much. Wouldn’t you relish a chance to challenge yourselves?
Is not a challenge. It’s purely ad hominem itself.
Exactly. Isn’t it such a crappy waste of server space? Let’s have a good conversation, I’ll try not to misbehave.
Okay. Excellent. Let’s have a fresh start with this then.
(protip: starting off with “Hoppe-heads”, you shouldn’t have been surprised how this thread developed… but water under the bridge, now)
I think I did point to specific examples, such as giving two articles on or by Mises. I also said the phrase “natural elites” was an odd concept and said it was a false hierarchy.
have you ever heard of “big men”?
Disclaimer: I’m no expert on Hoppe, and haven’t read much (if any) of his stuff, but I feel that I have a general idea of his philosophy and where he’s coming from.
I think this is saying that late monarchy served people better than social democracy. I think this comes from the idea that monarchs don’t just take a turn controlling the land and laws, they actually have to own it and pass it on. That makes them care for it more.
I think this is just an observation. Nothing more than what’s at face value here.
He’s a libertarian. So for Hoppe, there is no “I would have you do X”
I have to agree with him to some extent that people did have a different set of values towards the state and society in the past, and that in general they are better. But that is my judgment call and it seems to be his, as well. His characterization of the current social psychology of a social democratic society isn’t far off from mine, either. Instead of respecting a king or natural elite, along with respecting their neighbors, people try to use the government as a tool for their own gain and as a legitimate force against other people. How many people that live in tribes know their whole tribe? People in villages? People in small towns? I imagine everyone in a small kingdom knew most other people who lived nearby. In most developed nations and most cities in a social-democratic country, people don’t know 90% of the people on their block. It might be a division of labor thing, or a city thing. But it might also be the fact that people have grown bitter because they know they’re screwing everyone else with social democracy, and everyone else is screwing them the same way.
I know it’s made me bitter. 
Have you ever heard of the Great Wall of China? Replace the word “people” in this passage with “nobility” or “the king”. I don’t really see how the nobility wouldn’t be trying to shaft you and I as much as our peers, or the president.
The hereditary aspect of an aristocracy may make them better stewards of their property, but who cares? I’m sure if the serfs were freemen, they’d be just as good stewards of their much smaller kingdoms (small landholdings). It seems a rather irrelevant conversation to talk about what form of government is slightly better than others. We don’t argue about what type of rape is the best, we just consider all rape to suck.
There may be some pros to an aristocracy, but there are definite cons too. I think the same could be said of democracy.
Seems awfully prudent to formulate an opinion about a guy you’ve never read, then attack him on a forum. All you do in such a case is turn people away from you, and your message.
Good point. But wouldn’t you concede that:
“big man” is a bit more neutral a term than natural elite
the “big man theory” was most likely not derived from political motivations, where Hoppe seems to have been. As in I feel as if he started with wanting to justify his political motivations, and worked back from that and then maniplated arbitrary language in his favor. I do not think Spencer or Mises had that process with their science, and were far more scientists than political polemic authors (not that they did not have political preferences).
that natural =/= good. A capitalistic system for example may not be the way humans “naturally” form societies.
biology/nature/selection whatever you wish to call it, is “nihilistic”; i.e it doesn’t “pick” anything, the “best” do not get rewarded, etc. It is stuff that just happens. Any biologist will say that.
That the recognition of any hierarchy or value is completely up to an individual, as in it is all subjective?
Let me make it clear that I was asking for specific examples of what you are talking about in the part I highlighted. I have Hoppe’s Democracy: the God that Failed at hand, so just give me a page. Please don’t get the impression that I am being hostile to you, and I think of you as much more “intellectually honest” than the other people I mentioned. I didn’t mean to lump you in with them and it is a shame that blatant trolling goes unpunished here.
I got the impression that you might suggest someone besides Mises & Spencer. This book by Barnyeh was posted here today and I found it interesting. He is a sociologist, advocating anarchy, but there is no mention of Mises. It isn’t fatally flawed from what I have read so far, in spite of the economic ignorance, and there are some good bits to it.
I think that Hoppe’s argumentation ethics is way more important than his other writing. Still, I am not sure what genuine objection there can be to the existence of a “natural elite”. What is “conservative libertarianism”? What is “non-conservative libertarianism”? It should be noted that Hoppe is certainly not talking about the “conservatives” that FOX News is. The relevant usage ties into his talk of the process of (de-)civilization and time preference.
Again, I’ve never read his books, but I have given him a fair shake on the media section of this website, and on Lew Rockwell’s.
Well, so be it. I commented on the quotes provided on this thread, and what I’ve read from forum members who profess a belief in said authors conclusions. If you read my opening post, I was referring to his adherents, not the man himself. After the quotes were posted, I commented on them. If that bothers people, I don’t really know what to say.
Nuff said.
You’re conflating and confusing terminology. Natural elites emerge because of some traits (genetic or otherwise) which are particularly useful in society. The fact that all people are inherently different, that they desire different things, and pursue their desires in different ways, must a priori lead to different outcomes. All individuals try to maximize satisfaction, but some are better than others. You will have natural elites in the business world, in the intellectual world, and others who are able to maintain close and personal relationships. This is an indubitable fact of reality; to deny it would be like denying the most self-evident laws of logic. But the key is that in a free system even the disadvantaged are (much) better off (Ricardo’s theory of comparative costs).
This is what I’m talking about when I say natural elites. I’m not talking about specific social classes or families or corporations which are arbitrarily privileged by some state authority/decree. Hence the term natural elites. You find this objectionable because you still hold onto the untenable collectivist definition of “equality.”
I don’t have to justify this anymore then I have to justify scarcity. This is simply how it is.
Well, that is, by far, the most damning critique of Hoppe that I’ve heard yet.
All jokes aside, I really do think Hoppe’s analysis comes off as very ad hoc. It really seems that he started with a number of conclusions and found a number of contrived ways to reach them, and as I’ve already said, his pieces on public goods and immigration are absolute travesties.
This thread isn’t about Hoppe, especially public goods. As I told you in the other thread, you need to say something of substance. You have still done nothing better than call the papers I showed to you weeks ago “travesties”.
http://www.hanshoppe.com/publications/sel-topics/
If argumentation ethics was as ad hoc and contrived as you say, it would have been dispatched long ago. Most of the criticisms from people here, who don’t seem to even know what they are talking about, are either completely unwarranted or dealt with years ago.
Esuric,
I like your post, and I totally agree with it. I can’t imagine how a proponent of the free market could disagree with it, as the free market is essentially a spontaneous meritocracy.
What I disagree with is the concept of natural elites being a class of individuals rather than a spontaneous evaluation. This concept which Hoppe seems to be endorsing (as I interpret them) with the following quotes:
He seems to imply that the natural elites, and the landed gentry are automatically one in the same, rather than the products of an ossified caste system whose continuation relied on force and deception.
In the second quote seems to imply that a democratic system of government unjustly grants its fortunes to entrepreneurs, whereas feudalism somehow was a more just system of meting out land to warlords and their cronies.
I take issue with this analysis, but admittedly, I haven’t read the entire book these were quoted from, so I’m not in a position to say I haven’t misinterpreted what the premises actually are.
How did you arrive at this conclusion? I have a problem with a small minority of individuals claiming a right to eternally subjugate others due to the farcical notion of Social Darwinism?
I’m not saying that I find a disparity of wealth disagreeable, I’m just bringing up the fact that the best and the brightest (and the subsequent heirs of their talents) have used social darwinism as a justification of their wealth in the past.
yes E. R.,
Giles hasn’t figured out what an axiom is yet and goes around making unsubstantial posts some unnumbered times. This recent thread has already vetted through giles’ perpetual errors, which in the philosophical defining of how Kant has put it: It is not merely ignorance but philosophically absurd due to the fact that it has been pointed out to giles were he can learn of these concepts.
I point this out here, because now he is simply bouncing from thread to thread repeating the same ill-conceived notions that have been discussed in other threads without any substantial knowledge shared on his behalf in his post, once again, other than a simple ‘boo-hoo’ on his part.
You are missing the whole point of the book. It was a book that was comparing feudalism (pre-absolute monarchy) with democracy, and Hoppe notes numerous times throughout the book he is not advocating one over the other as they both had their problems. He was trying to point out the bads that democracy created that was good in feudalism, but also points out the bads of feudalism, for one, the reliance on force at times, but his point is that the gov’t has grown since then in it’s use of force far more than pre-absolute monarchy times. There is a good reason that capitalism emerged stronger than ever before during the Middle Ages. Rothbard’s coverage of this history is extensive in his ‘Austrian perspective of Economic History’.
Hoppe never does say, and explicitly points out the wrongs of that historical period as there was still a gov’t. It is a simple compare and contract book to point out how much the gov’t has become involved in the everyday lives of people under a republic-democracy of today.
Natural is logical, in the sense that it is spontaneously conceived by all individuals, which sounds very similar to this meritocracy you are talking about.
Read the book before going off on these wild tangents that have nothing at all to do with the book.