I have to defend Hoppe a lot less frequently these days from passionate critics who don’t understand him, but here is another one. I don’t think I do a very good job really. But I get the discussion started.
By Garry Ladouceur:
THIS IS WHAT THIS ACADEMIC HAS TO SAY ABOUT IMMIGRATION-HE IS OF COURSE A MADMAN.
First, with the establishment of a state and territorially defined state borders, “immigration” takes on an entirely new meaning. In a natural order, immigration is a person’s migration from one neighborhood-community into a different one (micro-migration).
Is Garry saying that neighborhoods consisting of parcels of private property, or which consist of domicilies that are collectively ‘owned’ by shareholders (a defined community) as a ‘commons’ are a natural order without the existence of a “state”, or without the tribal equivalent that consists of a headman and a few warriors who have been arguably as defensive of resources and norms or more so than states? Where does Gary get his concept of ‘natural order” Is he making the fallacy of primitivism? The noble savage fallacy?
In contrast, under statist conditions immigration is immigration by “foreigners” from across state borders, and the decision whom to exclude or include, and under what conditions, rests not with a multitude of independent private property owners or neighborhoods of owners but with a single central (and centralizing) state-government as the ultimate sovereign of all domestic residents and their properties (macro-migration).
Is Gary saying that the state behaves differently than do the tribesman? Because we don’t have much evidence of that. Another mouth to feed is another mouth to feed, and an immigrant’s mouth to feed is not a member of our gene pool to which we have filial instincts.
If a domestic resident-owner invites a person and arranges for his access onto the resident-owner’s property but the government ex- cludes this person from the state territory,it is a case of forced exclusion (a phenomenon that does not exist in a natural order). On the other hand, if the government admits a person while there is no domestic resident-owner who has invited this person onto his property, it is a case of forced integration (also non-existent in a natural order, where all movement is invited).
This argument limits the determination of just action to the act of movement, not to involuntary transfers, or their effects on supposed commons. So it’s just false on it’s premise. Groups encourage transport and trade. They always have, regardless of political construct. What they discourage is appropriation of the ‘commons’, and most importantly the disruption of the commons that we call ‘norms’. Norms are highly expensive. More so than property. And we protect them voraciously by instinct.
Firstly, Hoppe has migrated endlessly. This means that he is not honest. I find him a liar. That is not a good start to developing a teacher taught relationship.
Secondly, He is German of the Austrian school. He speaks of natural order. He is of course a fascist as well. He does not speak to the favourite form of immigration in Europe and Europe to elsewhere which is at the point of a bayonet. So in other words he is dishonest.
You simply do not understand what Hoppe is saying.
Hoppe atttempts (and some of us think he has succeeded) in deducing a means of making political judgments by relying upon the single principle of property rights. Property rights are dependent on the principles of avoiding fraud and theft, and prohibiting involuntary transfers.
All that’s going on here, like most people who criticize Hoppe, is that you don’t know all the types of involuntary transfer (theft) you advocate with your beliefs. Hoppe has tried make all those ‘thefts’ and acts of violence visible.
A Few Definitions:
Order : any system of human cooperation (avoiding theft fraud and violence) that avoids chaos (pervasive theft fraud and violence).
Natural Order = natural rotation of elites by voluntary exchange in the market, rather than by military force or political force. (Oversimplified).
Immigration vs Migration. migration is what occurs whenever a person transfers geographic location without fraud, theft or violence. Immigration is what happens when they PAY for migration. When people immigrate without PAYING for that immigration they are committing an act of theft, fraud or violence.
Citizenship mens you have obtained membership in an ORDER by avoiding theft fraud and violence, and that you maintain your membership in that order by forgoing theft, fraud and violence.
Any forcible transfer by a government from ont or more people to one or more people is an involuntary transfer under the treat of violence. Any contractual transfer between people in mutual exchange is a voluntary transfer, and therefore not an act of theft, fraud or violence.
Hoppe is arguing that open immigration is incompatible with a welfare state because it causes theft from the existing tax payers to the immigrant. This argument is pretty hard to defeat.
Your only defense is that you have the right, by some divine authority, to determine who can be solen from under the threat of violence in order to give to someone else — which is an act in which you profit by not having to satisfy your wants with your own resources.
Hoppe would argue that we can have as many voluntary little ‘countries’ that we want, and that rednecks and racists, and homophobes, and every feminist, separatist anad whatever advocacy one has should exist voluntarily without conducting transfers from people who disagree with that.
In other words, there is no moral argument for stealing from people to give to other people.
I suspect from your emotionally loaded posting that analytical philosophy is not something you have exposure to. It requires that we make a long series of testable statements. Hoppe uses that language. It is not the simple moralistic language of the public intellectual or the common person. Which is why he is poorly understood.
One of the reasons people dislike him is that he has put forth arguments that are very difficult to dismiss. Both he and rothbard may START from different positions ( evolutionary necessity and natural law respectively.) Since they produced their works, we have improved our understanding of economics, psychology (jonathan haidt), political history (Fukuyama on one end and North on the other). And people like me have attempted to reduce their original premises to something more scientifically mandated.
You might not understand that Hoppe started out as a marxist and through his work adopted his current position. His first major work was written on socialism and in that work he shows how it is logically impossible. (As does mises on one end, and hayek on another — although hoppe opposes hayek.)
Hopefully I’ve helped you with Hoppe. (Although I kind of doubt you care.)
Also, please define “facist”. One cannot be a ‘fascist’ without a state. So how, if he rejects the state can he be a fascist?
I will happily debate you on Hoppe to your heart’s content. And I know him quite well and he does not mitigate. Ever.
Curt