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39 Works 718 Members 12 Reviews 5 Favorited

About the Author

Hans-Hermann Hoppe is currently professor of economics at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, AL, and editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly Review.
Image credit: Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949-) photograph by bartvs, Antwerpen, May 25th, 2005.

Works by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

What Must Be Done (2013) 10 copies
Der Wettbewerb der Gauner (2012) 6 copies

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This a long essay covering the same material as Hoppe's best work, Democracy: The God that Failed. In order to shorten it, little justification is given for his assertions, and for someone who isn't already a Rothbardian/Hoppean/Anarcho-Capitalist, it may be hard to accept these assertions without justification. However, it does accurately summarize the AC perspective on politics, although it doesn't go into enough detail on how to get from the status quo (large democratic states) to this end state. The audiobook is decent but I'd prefer it be read by Hoppe himself.

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octal | 1 other review | Jan 1, 2021 |
Essay on how to establish the libertarian social order within existing democracies

Hoppe is..Hoppe. Every one of his essays and books is essentially making the case for the same desired outcome, but focusing on different aspects of the overall argument. In this essay he describes how both we got to where we are today (territorial monopoly democracy) and how to use the tools of democracy to return to a libertarian social order (anarchocapitalism)
 
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octal | Jan 1, 2021 |
Hoppe’s weakest argument

While Hoppe makes a moderately good argument for private defense against crime, the argument for private defense as effective against state or other action is far less solid. Fundamentally, he doesn’t know much about the technology of warfare, and in particular any new forms of warfare. He assumes attacks are symmetric and essentially conservative of value; in reality attacks can cause damage far out of proportion to their cost, can be essentially impossible to attribute, and generally can be challenging to deter even as a single entity controlling a majority of the world’s combat power.… (more)
 
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octal | Jan 1, 2021 |
This book makes the case that 1) democracy, in the sense of mob rule, is a bad social order, as it inevitably leads to socialism 2) monarchy, particularly of the feudal and highly localized/informal model, is superior 3) a theoretical libertarian/anarcho-capitalist social order would be superior to even monarchy. These are pretty shocking conclusions for most Americans today (and westerners in general), but the argument, from some basic and acceptable premises, seems sound -- in particular, the argument for monarchy of the circa 1215 ad English kind being superior to modern "democratic socialism" of the form found in most of the world to varying degrees (including the US).

(I originally heard of Hoppe as "a racist guy who gave intellectual support to the far right", and then later as "someone so extreme as to call Hayek and Mises and Friedman leftists". Eventually, after seeing enough other references (and the popular "Hoppean Snek" series of memes ... the snake from the Gadsden flag crossed with Augusto Pinochet, engaged in "physical removal, so to speak"), I decided to read Hoppe's greatest book. )

I think the case for monarchy or some kind of limited franchise republicanism is well made. The case for anarcho-capitalist utopia seems a bit weaker (essentially, that everything is done by contract, and there are insurance companies with a non-monopoly of force which take a lot of the protective functions of the state). The main weakness of the anarcho-capitalist argument is Hoppe repeatedly says "X is bad", which it is, but it's entirely possible X is less-bad than the alternatives.

Another problem Hoppe finds with "mainstream libertarianism" and modern culture is essentially moral -- he argues that true liberalism/anarcho-capitalist libertarianism must be highly morally upright, and that a wide array of things would be sufficiently injurious to life that they would be banned (not by monopolistic law, but by covenant) -- hence the famous "physical removal" arguments, the proposal that some property could be posted "no beggars, bums, or homeless, but also no homosexuals, drug users, Jews, Moslems, Germans, or Zulus" as an example, etc. I think it's important here to separate out his deliberately provocative "to ban" list, from his idea that private property owners should have the ultimate right to ban anyone for any arbitrary reason. However, he does repeatedly reinforce the value of the traditional heterosexual/nuclear/etc. family and a lot of very conventional beliefs as ultimately best, and I think that's debatable -- it's possible something was never the best, or was the best in a certain setting but not the current setting, etc. -- but I do agree on the fundamental premise of private property owners being unrestricted in their use of property (provided it doesn't interfere with the property rights of others.)

The weakest part of his argument is localized secession as a route to achieving this anarcho-capitalist utopia; as we've seen, this just doesn't happen in the modern world, in that the only people who tend to do so are just as statist as those they're separating from. States also violently suppress any true secession from their system. I'm a firm believer in technology as the only route to achieving any kind of durable and lasting property protection (through computing, cryptography, and at some point, the conquest of new physical frontiers), and I don't think Hoppe has particularly considered that.

The book is very accessible -- it's a collection of 13 essays, each of which can stand alone. There are extensive footnotes, including quotes from other works and references to those works. This probably isn't the ideal introduction to libertarian thought, but it, along with Murray Rothbard, define one extreme.
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octal | 1 other review | Jan 1, 2021 |

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