Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

TO TOM : ON THE UTOPIANISM OF LIBERTARIANISM

(all) (worth reading) (insight)

Rothbard’s idea is INTENTIONALLY UTOPIAN because he was, like dozens before him, creating a ‘religion’ in pre-democratic political terms, or what in democratic political terms is ‘an ideology’, using OBSCURANT LANGUAGE – the purpose of which is resist criticism, empower argumentation, and create community.

The MI group (Lew) then took this ideology and used the internet to propagate that ideology the way the marxists used inexpensive pamphlets, newspapers, books and universities. But, Rothbard’s libertarianism is an ideology (religion) not politics (formal institutions of cooperation).

That Rothbard used the rebellious ethics of the jewish ghetto rather than the the high trust ethics of the aristocratic egalitarian society (protestant christianity) is just because it was familiar to him. Hoppe by contrast, repaired a great deal of Rothbard’s errors, but in doing so left us with not necessarily utopian, but certainly a system of ethics dependent upon equality of ethical and moral action, under the nation states with absolute nuclear families, and therefore fully homogenized property rights. This system cannot tolerate diversity.

However, by adding monarchies, and strict property rights, hoppe’s argument is such that it is possible to have DIVERSE COMMUNITIES each of which uses its own norms and status signals, but which trades and exchanges according to private property rights. And this is possible because under monarchy and property rights, individuals are denied access to coercive political power. So, in Hoppeian terms, groups may continue to act as extended families.

What I have tried to do is empirically demonstrate that both genetics of gender, and family structure (the structure of reproduction) determine moral codes. And that the Absolute Nuclear Family is the ultimate compromise between male and female reproductive strategies. But that the evolution of democracy combined with feminism,and the destruction of the nuclear family by feminists in alliance with socialists, has led to a circumstance where women can now ‘marry the state’ for financial support and obtain support from males without exchange of care and sex. This is not unnatural. Humans are naturally serially monogamous and women in history seize both the best male fertility, and the best male support in exchange for sex, that they can – but not from the same person, from many men.

Property is not natural. It allowed men to control reproduction, and women resent this because it places a greater burden on them to make a choice of husband, and they are stuck with what they get. And they can no longer control group behavior by trading sex and affection. It is this choice, plus the need to create a home and property to support a family that created the compromise that was the protestant ANF.

For this reason, both Rothbard and Hoppe make the mistake that was made by classical liberals: once included in the voting and work pool, women have sought to restore control over their reproduction and independence from the compromise with males.

If you want to understand the drive to socialism, there are two axis of cause. This is the first, the second is that small homogenous groups that are out-bred are in fact, family members and as such socialism (in the nordic model) makes sense. There is no ‘belief’ system here. it is all justificationary language. The fact is that the structure of production at any given time can be optimized by a particular structure of reproduction (the family). And that freedom (liberty) is only possible in small, homogenous, out-bred, groups formally forbidden to intermarry as a means of obtaining insurance, and instead, forced to outbreed, and therefore seek insurance from ‘the tribe’ with the state as the insurance broker. This situation cannot change, because it is against the reproductive interests of humans to change. It is suicide to change. Small homogenous outbred families are in fact, highly redistributive, healthy organizations that eliminate near proximity competition and force all competition into the market for goods and services – there is no outlet left. NONE. That is why it works. The ANF, is the genetic institution that creates a compromise. It is, in fact, SOCIALISM. (Let that sink in a bit and it will alter your world.)

THIS IS, IN NO SMALL PART, THE FIRST SECTION OF MY BOOK. It explains the diversity and immutability of moral codes, and therefore the political expression of morality informal institutions, as relationships between the structure of production and the structure of the family; And it is illogical to expect humans to act otherwise – against their reproductive and experiential interests. It is NOT PRAXEOLOGICALLY RATIONAL to ask people to act against their interests.

SO ROTHBARD, HOPPE, AND ….

1) Rothbard (tribal religion of non-landholders)

2) Hoppe (private nation state of land holders)

3) Doolittle (private federation of states of land holders)

With these three models we complete libertarianism in all its possible forms. This is the corpus of solutions from the most ideological and religious (rothbard) to the most practical and moral (hoppe) to the ratio-scientific (doolittle). All of which are founded on property rights – although I have used DESCRIPTIVE property rights across ALL family structures where hoppe and rothbard have use PRESCRIPTIVE property rights and ASSUMED the nuclear family as the unit of reproduction.

(That’s what I’m up to. ‘Completing’ libertarianism. )

UTOPIAN?

Rothbard’s fantasy is clearly utopian. It hasn’t worked very well for the jews, that’s for sure. Except for the postwar period, the entire world has been killing them by the hundreds, thousands and millions for millennia. Comparisons to India’s Gypsies is pretty common, except that gypsies are anti-intellectual at the bottom and jews hyper intellectual at the top. But, what rothbard DID, was reduce all rights to property rights, and give us the answer to human cooperation in doing so.

Hoppe’s solution is ABSOLUTE GENIUS and so deeply engrained in political discourse by now that everyone’s forgotten it’s his idea already. While Argumentation is an analogy, not a cause, (and so I’m critical of it), he used it to deduce the solution to the problem of monopoly bureaucracy and the state by reducing the state to a contract on property rights, and using insurance companies, which is the states’s actual function, to form a competitive bureaucracy.

His solution is not empirically derived, it is rationally derived, and he still makes (unfortunately) moral arguments in the rothbardian model, but in fact, he DID SOLVE THE PROBLEM that has been the ‘problem of politics’ for 5000 years. And as far as I know, no other thinker has done this – based on (ack) argumentation or not.

I won’t go into why argumentation worked despite the fact that it’s a bit silly. That would take me too long. But it allowed Hoppe to deduce the correct answers in almost all cases. IN particular, to immigration. Which again, the migratory, non-property owning, progressive jewish wing of libertarians find understandably uncomfortable.

END RESULT : A RESEARCH

There is nothing utopian about a RESEARCH PROGRAM, which is what I see hoppe, rothbard and Hayek pursuing. Hayek did not have information theory. Hoppe did not have the empirical evidence we have today. Rothbard either didn’t understand or din’t want to understand his moral code’s implications. Mises got praxeology backwards. But it was all there. It was all there. We just needed a little more time. And as far as I can tell it is the most valuable political research program since the enlightenment and not matched in creativity since athens.

Calculation is necessary. Reproduction is necessary. Cooperation is necessary.

Everything else is preference.