Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/06/hans-hermann-hoppe/entrepreneurs-are-moral-heroes/REVIEW OF HOPPE’S NEW “ENTREPRENEURS ARE MORAL HEROES”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/06/hans-hermann-hoppe/entrepreneurs-are-moral-heroes/

More of the same. He remains consistent. I have a few clarifications and one criticism of a significant logical contradiction.

—“In the most fundamental sense we are all, with each of our actions, always and invariably profit-seeking entrepreneurs.”—

This is an imprecise analogy for the purpose of ideological conflation. We are, if an described by any analogy, advantage-seeking hunters. Entrepreneurship is merely one of the many venues for seeking advantage. The most important reproductive advantage is status. Status grants us access to associations, opportunity, discounts, rents, and mates. Under monogamy we pursue status for its own sake. Profit is a means of calculating and measuring of the use of complex resources. Humans have to be taught to seek profits. We seek advantage. We seek acquisitions. Profit is merely a means of measuring whether we have obtained advantage (acquisitions). We do not seek the measure. We seek the advantage that we are measuring.

With this in mind, much of the rest of section I is translatable into valuable insight.

—“It is only necessary that every good be always and at all times owned privately, i.e., controlled exclusively by some specified individual (or individual partnership or association), “—

This is not precise enough. It should instead be correctly stated that the transaction costs of decision making, the opportunity costs in time, and the opportunity for free riding, increase with the number of decision makers. If the decision makers (owners) are not fixed in number (calculable) then a calculable (true) decision cannot be made, nor can rent seeking (free riding) be prevented, nor can profits from complex actions be rationally redistributed by apportionment. One cannot calculate ratios without denominators. As such fixed membership (shareholder listings) are necessary for the purpose of retaining calculability, and calculability is necessary for the purpose of preventing thefts (free riding, privatization of the assets of the private commons).

So, because of these multiple factors, the degree of trust (rational ability to take risks) and therefore the velocity of production (frequency of risk taking), is determined by the ability to conduct rational calculation, and rational calculation requires fixed apportionment of ownership, and delegation of decision making.

The individual is less valuable than the collective, however, the allocation of property rights is the only CALCULABLE means of cooperation while at the same time preventing free riding.

With this in mind, sections II+ are tolerable.

—“Justice”—

Well, this is breaking down into logical contradiction.

I think I have persuasively argued that we pay for property rights by forgoing opportunities to commit crimes, obtain unethical rewards, obtain immoral rewards, and obtain conspiratorial rewards. Each time we refrain from these things is a cost to us. We voluntarily pay this cost to pay for the norm of property rights in all its forms, including those of morals rules, rituals and conventions.

I think, also that most of us understand these costs, and willingly pay them.

When all of us are agrarian farmers, the relationship between our respect for rights, and our productivity is constant. But under modern industrialism, where we can no longer provide for ourselves by living off the land, some people are able to respect property rights, and therefore pay for membership in creating the voluntary structure of production, yet these people are not able to participate profitably in the work force, and obtain income from the voluntary structure ofp roduction that they create by observing property rights.

if they are paying a membership fee, but receive no benefit for doing so it is not rational for them to continue to pay the fee once they are no longer able to obtain benefits for it.

So if there is value in the contributions of these people to the voluntary organization of production that we call ‘capitalism’, then we must either pay them for their services in constructing the voluntary organization of production, or cease asking them to pay a membership fee (a tax in forgone opportunities or consumption) for benefits that it is impossible for them to collect.

As such the argument for justice does not hold – it is a logical contradiction.

As such people must have some CALCULABLE (commission) on the performance of the market which they contribute to by respecting property rights, rituals, norms, manners etc, or it is both irrational to expect them to continue to pay the costs of forgoing consumption, and it is a violation of their property rights by failing to return to them compensation in exchange for their actions.

How they obtain those benefits is up to them. They may prefer their benefits in cash, or in commons. But it is not unjust for them to obtain those benefits. It is unjust that those benefits are involuntarily extracted, rather than contractually negotiated in exchange for their policing of themselves and others for adherence to property rights in all their forms, as well as rituals, norms habits, and traditions.

Every forced redistribution is a lost opportunity for mutually beneficial exchange. And the problem that the state creates is the use of legislation under the presumption of a common good among relatively equal producers, rather than the negotiation of contracts between the productive and the unproductive, for their service in facilitating the voluntary organization of production which does benefit us all.

DISINGENUITY OR ERROR?

Recently, Critical Rationalists have criticized Hoppe as “Disingenuous”. But I won’t link to that here, just to avoid that conversation for the moment.

I had always considered Hoppe an evangelical propagandist using absurdity for the purpose of interjecting humor into his arguments for the benefit of entertaining his students. However, his obsession with obscurantist Kantian rationalism, with Marxist emotive loading of his arguments, with ideological contextualization and framing of arguments, and with his persistent cultish hero worship, all accumulate in an unscientific body of work.

His accomplishments, as far as I am able to tell, are limited to his use of property rights and economics to argue the full scope of ethics and politics, his theory of capitalism and socialism, his application of incentives to critique democracy, his articulation of property as necessary and sufficient (despite his reliance on the insufficiency of aggression and IVP), and most importantly of all, his transformation of government as monopoly insurer of last resort, to competing insurers incapable of formation of monopoly. These are significant contributions to political theory, political economy, and political institutions. However, his perpetual obscurantism, framing and loading severely limit his practical value, and his position as a contributor to the history of thought.

I hope to extract the scientific from the rationally framed and loaded, and to extend his work from ideological to scientific. Because it is of extraordinary value in developing alternatives to the predatory bureaucratic state. But his dedication to his past investment in ghetto ethics, cosmopolitan obscurantism (double speak), and continental rationalism are difficult to overcome.