Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

https://propertarianism.com/2015/07/31/a-list-of-hans-hermann-hoppes-errors/PROPERTARIANISM FOR HOPPEIANS

(….THIS POST IS A WORK IN PROGRESS…)

In simplest terms I translated hoppe’s “kantian justificationism” into anglo scientific terms, and in doing so completed the scientific method, uniting science, philosophy, morality, and law. Its uniting these fields by explaining the proper function of praxeology that is the innovation.

**The primary difference is that I show that you can’t produce a libertarian commune so to speak, and instead have to produce a full scale political order under ‘natural law of reciprocity’ where property rights apply to any demonstrated investment no matter how abstract. Otherwise demand for authority increases, or retaliation increases, or trust and economic velocity decreases, and competitiveness decreases, with all instances of differences not resolvable under law.**

Therefore you cannot ‘exit’ to create a condition of liberty, you must conquer and hold territory in the market for territories against all possible competition. And this requires you produce an economy capable of producing the means of doing so. And that economy will always look something like a parliamentary monarchy but with purely empirical natural law.

In other words, you can only get liberty by permission and you can only get sovereignty by force.

So, while you cannot obtain borderland european liberty or separatist, ghetto, and borderland jewish ‘liberty’, and if you want a condition of anglo-saxon liberty for the individual, it’s only possible if you create sovereignty in fact for the polity.

And the only way to create sovereignty and liberty is using (a) a militia, (b)natural law of reciprocity, (c) the markets that are made necessary by the natural law of reciprocity, (d) including the markets for association, cooperation, production, reproduction, commons production, polity production. And in order to do so you must produce a competitive market between the family(church/school), the commons (houses for each class), and judiciary (monarchy, judiciary, military).

In other words, by restoring the pre-revolutionary path, of christian monarchies, and converting from mere common law, to strictly constructed judge discovered, law. And eliminating the parliament’s ability to create legislation and regulation – limiting them to contracts of the commons. And transforming the treasury into a purely empirical insurer of last resort for whom regulation is merely a matter of actuarial calculation.

GETTING TO THAT DIFFERENCE

(undone)

COMPLETING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Properly understood, the Scientific method, at least as practiced in the physical sciences, if extended to include tests of volition, reciprocity, and full accounting, serves as nothing more than a warranty of due diligence upon our speech about the world.

In other words, the scientific method demands due diligence in the distribution of information just as we demand due diligence in the market for goods and services, and claims about goods and services, by force of involuntary warranty.

THE SUPPRESSION OF DECEPTION AMONG A HIGH TRUST PEOPLE

(suppression)

CONFLATION, PLATONISM, AND ABRAHAMISM OLD AND NEW.

Lets translate Kantian Rationalism into scientific and testimonial speech.

I’m going to teach epistemology by using economics in order to repair much of the damage that has been done to epistemology by the Platonists(mathematics), and the Rationalists (Kant etc), and the Analytic Philosophers (Just about all of the 20th century).

*Reality consists of a limited number of actionable dimensions and by using economics we are able to include all of them, and therefore avoid the errors that the platonists, rationalists, and analytics have introduced into philosophy.

“DEFINITIONS AND SERIES”

1) Empirical:

Based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic. “From Observation”.

2) Testimonial

3) A Priori:

“independent of observation.”

There are three dimensions to claims of a priori truth claim:

i) Aprioricity vs A posteriori,

ii) Analyticity vs Syntheticity, and

iii) Necessity vs Contingency

Therefore we can produce at least the following spectrum of a priori claims.

(a) Analytic A Priori: tautological: 2+2=4 and all deductions thereof.

(b) Synthetic A Priori : Increasing money increases inflation.

(c) Necessary Synthetic A Priori: Childless women will have no grandchildren.

(d) Contingent Synthetic A Priori: “all other things being equal, as a general trend, increasing demand will increase supply, although we cannot know the composition of that supply in advance, we can identify it from recorded evidence.”

This produces a an ordered spectrum of declining precision:

(a) Identity(categorical consistency) – Analytic A Priori

(b) Logical:(internal consistency) – Nec. Synthetic a priori

(c) Empirical: (external consistency) – Gen. Synth. a priori

(d) Existential: (operational consistency) – Cont. Synth. a priori

Which corresponds to the testable dimensions of numbers (ideals)

(a) identity (numbers)

(b) logical (sets)

(c) empirical (ratios)

(d) existential (constructible)

Which corresponds to dimensions of physical reality

(a) point

(b) line

(c) shape

(d) object

(e) time (change)

Which corresponds to a subset of the dimensions of actionable reality , the full set of which we express in fully express in Testimonialism as:

(a) Identity(categorical consistency)(point)

(b) Logical:(internal consistency)(line)

(c) Empirical: (external consistency)(shape)

(d) Existential: (operational consistency)

(e) Volitional: (rational choice of rational actor)(change)(time)

(f) Reciprocal: ( rational exchange between actors) (relative change)

Which together account for the totality of actionable reality (by man) that we currently know of (and its quite hard to imagine anything else is possible).

The test of speech then consists of dimensional deflation and spoken conflation into parsimonious testimony:

1 – Identity tests categories – differences (deflation)

2 – Logic tests internal consistency – membership (deflation)

3 – Action tests correspondence – measurement (deflation)

4 – Rational action tests incentives – rational choice consistency (deflation)

5 – Reciprocity tests moral – rational exchange consistency (deflation)

6 – Full accounting and limits test scope consistency. (deflation)

7 – Narrative by analogy to perception describes reality – coherence (total consistency) (conflation)

Reality is explained by narrative, and the narrative survives falsification by identity, logic, action, reason, reciprocity, and scope.

We test statements about the world by deflating each dimension and testing each for consistency.

Each sub dimension can only be tested by use of the next dimension.

The only native skill we possess is the test of “differences”. Because our brains use samples of inputs in combination with memory to predict results and alert us through new stimulation to the differences.

Our brains sample senses, provide certain services, the hierarchical (distilled) result of which are combined (conflated) through memory and backward propagation into ‘experience’.

It turns out that except in rare cases we ‘experience’ a fairly accurate model of the physical world – but an absurdly inaccurate model of the social world, and completely nonsensical model of our personal value to that world. All of which are precisely what is necessary to survive as sentient (feeling of changes in state) and conscious (self aware) life form when possessed of uncomfortable knowledge in a universe of consistent risk.

This is a simple way of explaining Hume, Kant, and the Phenomenologists.

DEDUCTIBILITY FROM A-PRIORI PROPOSITIONS

Ergo, while one can claim the tautological truth (the Analytic A Priori), and one can claim the ideal(logical) truth (the Necessary Synthetic A Priori), one cannot ever know the non-tautological(identity, The Synthetic A Priori), non-ideal(Contingent Synthetic A Priori ) truth, because we rarely possess sufficient information to do so. As such there is a vast difference between an a priori rule of thumb, and a

What does this mean? It means that we can deduce from Analytic A Priori and Necessary Synthetic A Priori, but we cannot deduce from General Synthetic A Priori, or Contingent Synthetic A Priori Statements because we cannot know if such deductions are true (for specific cases).

So the problem with making a priori claims in economics is that you can say statements about statements but not about consequences in reality. You can only say ‘all other things being equal’, we should observe this effect. You cannot say, “we will always observe this effect’. Or even that the effect will appear in the given circumstance. Why? Because we don’t always observe such effects, and economics is rife with examples, the most commonly cited being unemployment does not necessarily increase, and prices are sticky – and for good reason.

The innovation that menger brought to the table was to bring the principle of relative change from calculus to economics. The principle contribution of hayek was to transform transform the use of materials to the use of information as the model for all social phenomenon. The principle contribution of Popper was to bring the information model to philosophy, and in particular the philosophy of science and to model scientific investigation on a market. This followed the transition in physics from the use of electromagnetic fields to that of information. Which then brought physics and mathematics into full correspondence.

What Hayek and popper and the classicals and the keynesians all missed and brouwer in math, bridgman in physics, and mises in economics, and the entire analytic and continental movements missed was that man cannot make truth claims.

For example, we did not think the ideas of time(velocity of change), length(distance), and space(volume) varied. Einstein’s discovery was the same as mises’, brouwer’s and bridgman’s: that all our pretense of axioms are false. If our idea of length and time can be false, every other idea that is obvious to our senses and reason can be false.

The difference between economics and physics is in

(a) volition vs determinism

(b) reciprocity vs transformation

(c) sympathetic testing of rational choice vs entropy.

THE SCIENTIFIC (UNIVERSAL EPISTEMOLOGICAL) METHOD

“DEFLATION”

(0) The purpose of the scientific method is to eliminate ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, fictionalism, and deceit from our statements about reality.

“DIMENSION”

(1) We can make:

(a) statements about experiences(metaphysical), or

(b) statements about statements(ideal), or

(c) statements about existential properties(existential/real), or

(d) statements about existential cause and effect(change).

(e) statements about volition

“CLOSURE”

(2) No test of any dimension can be completed without appeal to the subsequent dimension. (ie: godel. this is profoundly important. no dimension can provide a self-test.) Ergo, all speech is deflationary.

“CRITICAL RATIONALISM”

(3) All descriptive propositions of existential cause and effect (change) are contingent.

“CRITICAL PREFERENCE”

(4) The only method of decidability between two or more non-false cause and effect propositions(change) is cost. This is a clarification of Occam’s razor. And appears to be true, for the simple reason that nature cannot but choose the least cost method, and man generally chooses the least cost method – even if we cannot know the full causal density of his considerations.

DUE DILIGENCE AGAINST IGNORANCE, ERROR, BIAS, DECEIT

(5) The only method of making a truth claim is to perform due diligence in each dimension of reality (a ‘premise’ of the consequential dimension) applicable to the cause and effect phenomenon. (ie:physical world can’t engage in rational choice, or voluntary exchanges)

Again, those dimensions are:

(a) Identity(categorical consistency)(point)

(b) Logical:(internal consistency)(line)

(c) Empirical: (external consistency)(shape)

(d) Existential: (operational consistency)(object)

(e) Volitional: (rational choice of rational actor)(change)

(f) Reciprocal: ( rational exchange between rational actors)(changes)

(g) Limited: (Limits: At what points does the description fail?)

(h) Fully Accounted: (Have all costs and consequences been accounted for – defense against cherry picking and special pleading.)

“DARWINIAN SURVIVAL OF IDEAS”

(6) All propositions (facts, propositions, theories) must survive the markets for criticism at the observer-mental-testing, observer-action testing, market application testing, and market survival testing. In other words, the universal epistemological method follows this lifecycle:

(a) observation

(b) *Free association* (F -> observation)

(c) test of reasonability (F -> free association )

(d) *Hypothesis*

(e) Perform Due Diligence (a-h) above. (F -> free association )

(f) *Theory*

(g) Publish to the market for application

(h) Survival in the market for application(F ->observation – of failures )

(i) *Law*

(j) Survival in the market for refutation (F-> observation – of failures)

(k) *Habituation into metaphysical assumptions*

“SPECIAL CASES”

7) This universal epistemological process is universal despite the fact that various results can be identified with it. Because just as we find prime numbers largely by trial and error we find special cases of statements by trial and error. But when we find these statements we have to ask ourselves what is it we are finding?

(a) Sensations: statements about experiences(metaphysical), or

(b) Logic(analytic): statements about statements(ideal), or

(c) Fact: statements about existential properties(existential/real), or

(d) Theory(Synthetic): statements about existential cause and effect(change).

(e) Morality: statements about volition

(f) Testimony: statements about the fully accounted change in state of a given instance of the statement we are making (I have a credit card report that shows John Doe, on 1/1/2018 at 4:06:32 exchanged $2.00 for a hershey’s candy bar at Don’s newspaper stand then existing on 225th and Main in Cityname.”)

EXAMPLES

The most common special cases that we find are those that are impossible to contradict at the same dimension. (a,b,c,d,e) above.

(a) Sense(Metaphysics): we cannot sense a ball is green and red all over at the same time.

(b) Logic: If I issue credit on fractional reserves, I will increase the supply of money.

(c) Fact: The differences between commodity money and note money include but are not limited to: liquidity, demand, exchange fee or interest gain, portability(weight/volume), reserve risk, vendor risk.

(d) Theory: All other things being equal, if we increase the supply of money, prices will eventually increase accordingly and lower the purchasing power of payments against debts.

(e) Morality: All other things being equal, when we force majoritarian decisions on the polity by using representative democracy, we create a monopoly out of the market for the commons, and eliminate the possibility of cooperating on means even if we pursue different ends.

“ECONOMIC LEVERS”

Polities can generally use this series of levers to affect the economy.

-Near Term-

(a) Monetary Policy

(b) Fiscal Policy (Spending)

-Medium Term-

(c) Trade Policy (import export policies, foreign trade policies)

(d) Regulatory/Legislative Policy (also includes price controls etc)

(e) Immigration-Deporation policy / Expand military, WPA etc.

-Long Term-

(f) Human Capital Policy (Education policy)

(g) Institutional Policy (laws, regulations, bureaucracies, institutions, banks)

(h) Strategic (military) Policy

“SCHOOLS OF ECONOMICS”

The schools of economics reflect the culture and class of their origins. These groups do not acknowledge that their strategies and biases are as I”ve stated them here but their research evidence states the contrary. So I have tried to provide a general Spectrum of the institutions by what I understand is their culture/class bias.

a) “Austrian / Rothbardian” (“Jewish”, Separatist) : Rule of Credit, Parasitic Optimum, Separatist / Anarchism.

+Financial Class Bias. Anti-Commons Bias.

(As far as I know, no university teaches the Jewish Austrian method.)

b) “Mason-ism” (“Anglo Libertarian”, Right ) : Optimum Rule of Law, Nash Optimum, Minimal State / Christian Monarchy

+Entrepreneurial Class Bias.

(the only University I know of using this program is George Mason.)

The “Mason-Libertarian” school places greater emphasis on maximizing the voluntary cooperation of individuals and organizations through reduction of impediments to ethical and moral cooperation.

c) “Classical” (“Chicago”, Anglo, Center Right), Rule of Law, Insured Nash Optimum, Parliamentary State / Classical Liberalism.

+Middle classes bias. (I would argue ‘not biased’)

All other things being equal, the Chicago school places greater emphasis on policy that insures against error and failure by seeking formulas and rules that investors, businesses, and consumers can predict, thereby preserving rule of law, and maintaining the prohibition on discretionary rule.

d) “Mainstream” (“Saltwater”, Center Left) : Mixed Discretionary Rule, Pareto Optimum, Social Democracy

+Working Class Bias, Consumer Bias, Female bias(anti-male bias). Minority(anti-white) bias. Underclass Bias (anti-entreprenurial bias).

All other things being equal the mainstream seeks to optimize consumption at all times, using every lever available, and favors abandoning rule of law, and adopting rule that is increasingly empirical, reactive, and discretionary.

e) “Left Mainstream” (“Saltwater”, “Jewish left”) : Authoritarian Rule, Anti-Aristocracy(War), Extractive Maximum (Predatory), Socialism/Communism

+Underclass (outsider) Bias.

This is the Krugman/Stiglitz/Delong club of leftist economists maximizing both consumption and financial extraction as a means of undermining western aristocratic civilization and western norms and traditions and rule of law.

POINT BY POINT TRANSLATION OF HOPPE’S KANTIAN RATIONALISM INTO SCIENTIFIC TERMS

The difference between rationalism(justification) in morality and law, and science(criticism) in testimony about the world, is that while rationalism is additive and uses an explanation of a set of statements that I can ‘get away with saying’, criticism is subtractive and

mathematics

( The Article: https://propertarianism.com/2015/07/31/a-list-of-hans-hermann-hoppes-errors/ )

I’ve included the text of the article below, but it is easier to read using the formatting on the web site where I use ‘bold’ to emphasize key points. In the article I try to refute most of Hoppe’s rationalisms, and replace them with scientific versions.

[I] consider my work as a restatement of Hoppe’s aprioristic justificationary rationalism in ratio-scientific terms.

Hoppe’s errors are natural for a German philosopher who was trained by Marxists. And while the errors are substantial by today’s standards, they are limited to errors in construction (justification), with his conclusions from his justifications surviving. This is important. From Hoppe’s earliest work onward, his deductions from incentives are correct.

– We justify moral actions within a normative system of evolved rules, and we criticize truth propositions to test whether the theories survive. We do not find truth in justification – we find permission. We find truth in survival against all known criticism. Justification translates to “I can get away with saying this so you cannot say I violated the rules of cooperation: morality or law” while truth propositions under ratio-scientific criticism translate to “I have done due diligence to determine if this argument survives all know attempts at failure, regardless of preference, morality or law.” Hoppe confuses legal justification (excuse making), with truth (survival from all competition). As Mises discovered but failed to understand, truth propositions including human choice require the possibility of constructing a sequence of rational choices AND the survival from categorical, logical, empirical falsification. Truth propositions survive competition.

– Possession demonstrably (empirically) exists prior to cooperation, and property exist after an agreement to cooperate. Scarcity exists prior to cooperation. But scarcity is imperceptible. Cost is perceptible. The origin of demonstrable property is in the cost to acquire. Scarcity explains why things are costly, but not the origination of possession nor the origination of property.

– Different sets of Property rights evolve in communities due to the disproportionate returns on cooperation at the given level of division of ability, knowledge and labor – and the necessity of preserving those returns by prohibiting parasitism. Property rights do not originate in scarcity of goods, they originate in the scarcity and disproportionate return on cooperation. We pay for cooperation by forgoing opportunities to use or consume that which others have already invested in using and consuming. Man like other animals retaliates against the imposition of costs upon that which he has himself born costs with the intent to inventory. The universal demonstration of altruistic punishment (disproportionately costly punishment of free riders, parasites, predators) demonstrates the evolutionary necessity and value of cooperation as the most costly and scarce good. (thus upending libertarianism’s attempt to suggest cooperation can be obtained for free, or that it is the natural bias of man or animal. instead, man and animal are rational. we cooperate when possible, parasite when possible and prey when possible, depending upon costs.)

– Argumentation and non-contradiction originate in legal justification post-cooperation, not in constraints prior to cooperation. The first question of cooperation is ‘why don’t I kill you and take your stuff’, and only once we enter into an agreement do we justify our words and deeds within that agreement – thereby relying upon internal consistency (non-contradiction). Prior to that factm no cooperation and nor moral constraint exists – it is only desired. Moreover, the logic of cooperation is not binary. We live in an amoral world of violence, theft, conspiracy and deception, and whle we can construct cooperation, we construct cooperation at will given the costs and returns. And our choices at any time are to:

(a) preserve the options of violence, theft, deception and conspiracy until opportunity avails to use it,

(b) agree not to aggress but not to cooperate either

(c) cooperate when useful preserving future opportunity for cooperation

(d) cooperate whenever possible, expecting the same,

(e) cease any level of cooperation and retreat to a prior level.

So, contradiction is a test for a judge in matters of dispute resolution. It is not a necessary property of cooperation. We can test violations of reciprocity (cooperation) during disputes but no such dependence upon internal consistency exists prior to establishing a agreement (contract) for cooperation.

– The minimum scope of property necessary to construct a reciprocal exchange, in order to provide minimum incentives for the rational formation of a voluntary polity is property-en-toto, or what we call “demonstrated-property” (demonstrated defense of that which we have paid costs to acquire), and the minimum scope of property is not IVP: intersubjectively verifiable property – (property that is epistemologically easy to test if we transfer). Hoppe and Rothbard misapply separatist ethics between polities (between states) as sufficient for the formation of a polity. (Ghetto Ethics.) Arguably Hoppe suggests that IVP is merely a minimum criteria and that all other properties must be arbitrarily constructed upon it. However, this means that IVP is an insufficient criteria for a basis for law. Whereas Property in Toto (demonstrated property) is a sufficient criteria for the basis for law. In other words, physical property is insufficient for the formation of a polity, it is merely sufficient for cooperation between states (organized polities).

– The formation of a voluntary (anarchic) polity requires that local transaction costs are low enough to limit demand for authority to either prevent retaliation for violations of property in toto, and to provide sufficient incentives to join such a polity rather than say, a democratic humanist polity. The reason is we must choose between high local transaction costs with low political costs that prohibit economic velocity, and low local transaction costs that encourage economic velocity with high political costs. Humans rationally choose government over anarchy unless anarchy provides the lower transaction costs. This means that anarchy is only possible under high trust. High trust is only possible under property en toto with it’s total prohibition on deception (cheating) rather than intersubjectively verifiable property with its tolerance for deception and cheating. A rational anarchic polity can only form under property en toto, not IVP.

– Those arguably voluntary anarchic polities that have existed, on the few occasions that they have existed, because larger states have used squatters, settlers and settlers and given away territorial rights in borderlands in order to hold it from competitors cheaply, without having to invest heavily, but still giving them an excuse to conduct war if attempts taken against it. If those have evolved for other reasons, they have been the target of extermination by neighbors. Because the only reason to seek a low trust polity is some variation of parasitism: gypsies on the low end, pirates in the center, and financial predators (moral hazards) on the high end.

– The formation of a voluntary polity (anarchic) will only be possible under western aristocratic martial egalitarianism (a militia) and the independent common law, prohibiting all parasitism against demonstrated property (what we bore costs for and defend), whether that parasitism is by violence, theft, extortion (blackmail, racketeering), fraud, (fraud by obscurantism, fraud by moralizing, fraud by omission), externality, (free riding, privatization of commons, socialization of losses), or conspiracy (statism, conversion, immigration, conquest, war and genocide).

– Mises was, like many of his contemporaries, trying to solve the problem of his era, and incorrectly cast operational testing by subjective analysis of rational incentives (praxeology) as a positive means of exploration sufficient for the investigation of cooperative and economic phenomenon, instead of a test of existential possibility of claims. Economics is empirical as any other of the science and only differs in that we know the first principles of cooperation (rational incentives on the positive side and non-imposition of costs – parasitism- on the negative side.) Whereas the first principles of the physical universe are as yet unknown to us. And where the first principles of declarative systems (logics) are matters of our discretion. (This is a rather difficult subject for all but those of us who specialize in epistemology.)

I could go on a bit, but Hoppe’s insights have been in the perverse incentives of bureaucracies – even under democracy, and the exposition of all moral and legal argument as reducible to property rights.

All his justificationary argument is pure Kantian,Cosmopolitan and Marxist nonsense. We do not justify truth propositions. Truth propositions survive attempts to refute them.

I love the man, honestly. But he was a product of his time and place just as I am a product of mine. Science wins. Rationalism loses. Not only because science is necessary for the provision of truth, but because PHILOSOPHY HAS LARGELY BEEN USED TO LIE.

Rothbardian libertarianism is just the extremism of the Marxist prohibition on Private Property inverted into an the extremism of a Marxist prohibition on Common Property – despite the fact that property rights can only exist as a commons, and no polity can survive competition for people and trade, and against competitors without providing commons as the multipliers necessary to do so.