HOPPE’S EEoPP AS A BRIDGE? NOPE. I thought that maybe if I went through and brie

HOPPE’S EEoPP AS A BRIDGE? NOPE.

I thought that maybe if I went through and briefly restated each chapter in Hoppe’s Economics and Ethics of Private Property I could so some good at bridging the gap. But it was a surprising bit of work today.

Section one, on economics, wouldn’t require any modification. It’s his best work.

But, I just re-read section two and it’s little more than a set of arguments justifying praxeology and apriorism. Sigh. Which I’ve put an operational bullet it.

As a nit, I don’t t think hoppe understood WHY operationalism didn’t satisfy all of mathematics only all demonstrable math. I think that it’s understandable, because very few people within the mathematical philosophy discipline understand it. But the reason is very simple: arbitrary precision, and the necessity of general rules. Mathematicians can get away with certain claims because it’s acceptable in all cases to apply their deductions in the absence of precision. But that’s a scary monster of a rat hole. I think i’ve settled this topic so I’m going to ignore it for now.

Chapter 15 (Rothbardian Ethics) could be restated as the ethics of out-group exchange, or the ethics of nation-states. But I would have to then add propertarianism as the ethics of in-group exchanges necessary to form a polity. One might counter that the rothbardian solution is to view each of us as ethically equal to a sovereign state, but that’s just an empty verbalism. We are still stuck with the reality of needing to get non-kin cooperate as kin up to some limit where interests diverge sufficiently that such cooperation is no longer in one’s interest.

The evidence that my ‘faction’ of libertarians are so bogged down in the fallacies of a priorism, that its impossible to move them is just piling up. And rothbardians aren’t that unique really. The percentage of mathematicians who subscribe to mathematical platonism is probably only slightly lower than the percentage of libertarians who subscribe to apriorism. Both are wrong, but you know, that doesn’t seem to matter if they can find a nail to hit with the hammer that they have in hand.

Curt