I agree with Hoppe that the institution of culture will be more pronounced without the state and will naturally segregate people. And a lot of people are turned off by this because of the speculation that the dominant culture will be distinctly conservative. I know that Dr. Hoppe is an expert in sociology but he hasn’t really expanded on this claim. I hope he writes a book on it cause it really leaves a lot of people befuddled.
I suspect that it’s his bias leaking in wrt culturally conservative. Would there be natural segregation in places, though? I think so.
Historically, America was more culturally conservative when they had less government. As government has expanded in America, so has cultural conservatism declined.
Governments -especially democracies- are entities whose natures must contain a high time preference, leading them to pursue ends in the present, while ignoring and often sacrificing ends in the future.
Seeing that cultural Conservatism is based on a lower time preference, casting a generally negative eye on random sex, unnecessary frills, excessive ‘fun’, etc, it is put directly at odds with the most powerful and encompassing being on the planet; government.
Not to put words in his mouth, as I’m certainly no expert on him, or the matter at hand, but those are just my brief thoughts on the matter.
Conservatism promotes capital accumulation, hence in a free society conservatives would come to own much of everything and crowd out the other types of people.
“Conservative” doesn’t really mean anything to me. You may as well say “Zaxophax”.
Maybe this would be true if only conservatives accumulated capital. There are also plenty of conservatives who do not want to accumulate capital. I see no reason to believe that a free society will be culturally conservative.
That’s an opinion, not an argument.
Just because conservatism promotes capital accumulation, that does not mean conservatives will crowd out other types of people. The “other types” of people want to accumulate capital as well. How do you know that conservatives desire to accumulate capital more so than your average person?
‘Cultural conservatism’ is of course a fuzzy concept, but it’s related to revealed religion, collectivism and blind adherence to tradition so it has nothing to do with libertarianism.
Granting that’s true for the sake of Stranger’s and Hoppe’s non-argument. But even that premise is mostly fantasy.
Correlation is not causation. The state has gotten larger as disease has disappeared, that doesn’t mean all those diseases will come back under anarchism.
If disease and conservatism come back, most likely it will be from another dark ages. Not some new period of freedom or prosperity.
Even when America had less government (and you’ll have to ignore that they had slaves and other ignorant opinions), they didn’t call themselves conservatives. At least not the ones for less government or none.
And I would think there would be less segregation. Without being drawn like moths to particular states, people would be less likely to be tribal. And become free agents, the same way they enjoy competition for services. That and the fact that the absence of moral hazard and political patronizing in welfare statism would cause an upsurge in cooperation in the division of labor (though I will grant that families would be massively improved by this measure as well). Mises, on this point, had a great quote about women. And the fact that the whole world has nothing but to gain from women being in the market and developing their egos such that they go after their own self-interest. Most likely in a freer world – in order to get to such a place – you’d have to have people with the self-confidence first in order to think past tribal warlord mentality in order to want to live under anarchism. Under tribal bigotry, just about anything will be believed. Only when reason and empiricism overtake mere prejudice can you move toward liberty.
Desire is the same, infinite. Ability is higher for conservatives.
Well first, how are we defining Conservatism?
I’m with John Ess on this one. “Cultural conservative” is just a euphemism for authoritarian, theocratic, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, etc. all propped up by governmental force.
Laughing Man is correct. Define conservative first. Hoppe’s book “Democracy the God That Failed” is defining conservative very different from you Wanderer and others in the thread. It might be a straw man. Making a diversional argument about this topic that is rooted more in the semantics - not in the government or lack thereof.
Tribal bigotry is propped up by government but Hoppe speculates that in an anarchy( for him more of a natural heirarchy) there will still be all of those primal qualities only this time it will happen ‘naturally’ or produced by the free market. This un-egalitarian natural order will benefit everybody. Now my question is what is his basis for this speculation or is it just his bias?
Tribal bigotry is propped up by government but Hoppe speculates that in an anarchy( for him more of a natural heirarchy) there will still be all of those primal qualities only this time it will happen ‘naturally’ or produced by the free market. This un-egalitarian natural order will benefit everybody. Now my question is what is his basis for this speculation or is it just his bias?
How did he define cultural conservatism in his book?
What is “tribal bigotry”?
Which is why I didn’t stop my argument there…