Richard,
where I’m coming from is Conservativism (and, ultimately, Buddhism) but NOT in the political sense. I mostly agree with Hoppe’s criticism of the Conservative politicians. I’m talking about the cultural critics like Roger Scruton who don’t really write much about what the government should do, they rather write about what the people, and the intellectuals, should do.
For example if you look at the current crisis you can explain it from an economic point of view and a cultural point of view.
From an economic point of view it’s fiat money, inflation incentiving borrowing and consuming, taxes disincentiving saving and investing, and the government spending the tax on warfare and welfare. OK. It’s true.
On the other hand, from the cultural point of view, it’s the revolt against the traditional, bourgois and even religious values. In a culture where people want instant gratification from sex (refusing to wait a few months to get married) and instant and powerful gratification from drugs (and booze), it’s just natural people have the same approach when it comes to buying a home. And
Hoppe is right: the government did a lot to encourage this culture of high time preferences. Yes. But not matter how much incentive they have, people would not do it if they thought it’s simply wrong. Intellectuals who launched an assault of critique, derision and relativization of traditional values also contributed a lot to it because they changed the preferences of the people. For example Theodore Darlymple wrote that when he was a child their family had meals together, at a fixed time. This was the typical way most bourgois families worked. Thus sometimes he had to eat even if he wasn’t hungry, and sometimes he could not eat when he was hungry. Thus he learned a bit of discipline, to control his desires etc.
I think this is as important as the economic part of it. Action comes from BOTH preference and incentive and it’s wrong to put the blame just on the incentives. Some blame you have to put on the preferences too.
The most important thing many Libertarians should understand is that in a democratic society you don’t get a government that’s much better or much worse or simply too different from the people themselves. If it’s irresponsible it is because the voters wanted them to be so. It’s impossible to criticize a democratic government without criticizing the people themselves. A government much better or much worse than the people would cause a revolution.
For example fiat money in a culture that emphasises saving, investing and low time preferences would be seen by the people as sinister conspiration to inflate away their savings and they would not tolerate it.
Or the other way around, gold money and thus very low inflation or even deflation in a culture of instant gratification would be seen by the people as too restrictive, too “moralistic” and “unfair” because some “hoard” it.
The analysis of economics and and the analysis of culture, i.e. analysis of incentives and analysis of preferences should go hand in hand, IMHO.
but I think perhaps it’s easier for a shop clerk to quickly check that they have about 20 t-shirts space left… anyway, the point is that width is objective, values are subjective, so objective measurement of wealth is impossible - perhaps that’s where we could start?