Property and Freedom Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 269.

This panel discusssion is from the recently-concluded Seventeenth Annual (2023) Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society, Sept. 21-26, 2023.

Doug French (USA), Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), Josef Šíma (Czech Republic), Olivier Richard (Switzerland), Stephan Kinsella (USA), “Discussion, Q&A.”

Other talks to follow in due course.

PFS 2023 Youtube Playlist.

Panelists: Doug French (USA), Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), Josef Šíma (Czech Republic), Olivier Richard (Switzerland), Stephan Kinsella (USA)

Links: Property and Freedom | YouTube

[0:05] Unknown Speaker (Audience): I have a question for Professor Hoppe. Professor Hoppe mentioned that decentralization should be the goal, and Josef also mentioned that earlier. My question is, do you think this process of decentralization should occur in Europe? To me, it seems that the greatest threat to European civilization at the moment is American hegemony. My view is that if Europe undergoes a process of political decentralization, then it will be unable to defend itself, perhaps against the United States, not only militarily but also culturally and socially. This, I think, would be a great disaster for European civilization if the United States found some way to infiltrate Europe—that might not be the best word—it would be an even greater disaster. We saw after the fall of the Roman Empire, for 400 years, it was chaos, anarchy with the Visigoths, the Swabians, and other groups. I’m just curious whether you think this process of decentralization should occur in Europe now, whether now is the best time for this. Certainly in America, I understand if there’s internal instability and the union falls apart, I think that’s a desirable thing for Europe and for other countries that have been abused by American hegemony. But perhaps the disintegration of the coalition of European states that exists now, although imperfect, is not the best strategy to pursue at the current moment. I’m curious what you think.

[1:44] HHH: I would be all in favor of the European countries breaking with the United States. The first step would be, of course, to leave NATO. I do not expect that the United States would attack European countries if they decide, “We will leave NATO.” I don’t think they would have sufficient public support in the United States for doing something like this. I also hope that the European Union will break apart. The European Union currently is only kept alive insofar as some European countries, especially Germany—because Germany is, of course, the eternally guilty country until the end of all days and has to pay for its sins committed in the past until the world ends—if the payments from Germany to various countries would no longer come, these countries would have no reason to stay within the Union. You see diversions, for instance, already now that Hungary is continuously punished, Poland is continuously punished for slightly different reasons by the European Union because they do not adhere to the high standards that are typical, let’s say, of the most idiotic government in Europe, which is the German government. As soon as the payments would stop, there would be no reason for Poland to stay within the European Union. As soon as the payments would stop, there would be no reason for Hungary to stay within the European Union. Once it becomes established that it was the United States, in cooperation with Ukraine or Poland or whatever it was, that blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, there will be a massive move in the population in these various countries to disassociate themselves from the United States. That would encourage not only other countries leaving NATO, but it would also affect the European Union in the same way because what the European Union does is it tries to eliminate competition between various regions in Europe. That’s why they introduced something like the OECD introduced now a minimum tax put on all companies of at least 15%. Even Switzerland, which I always hailed as one of the great examples of neutral countries, in terms of idiocy, only lags a little bit behind the other European countries. So they agreed, for instance, also to accept this 15% minimum tax. Of course, if you are not part of the robbing gang of the gang leaders, you would have to strictly oppose something like it. It reduces the competitiveness of Switzerland as compared to other countries if they have to tax the same way. They have not reached a point where the taxes have been uniformed or harmonized all through Europe, but that is, of course, what they are trying to do. They want to make all countries equally poor instead of allowing some countries to flourish and other countries to go down the drain. I think it is good if some people go down the drain.

[5:38] HHH: I also want to address a little bit the point that Josef made when he said what Jesús Huerta de Soto was in favor of the European Union. Let me say this: this is a nice thing to say from a Spaniard’s point of view because Spain was one of these countries that had very high inflation rates, and their currency continuously devalued. He was in favor of that because he thought joining with Germany and the Netherlands and those countries that pursued a more sober policy, expanded their money supply less than the Spaniards did, would discipline them. But, of course, the exact opposite has happened. If you look at the overall picture, there in the heads of the European Central Bank, you now have a Spaniard, a Greek, an Italian, a German, a Frenchman. You’re overwhelmed by highly inflationary countries and their functionaries determining now the policy of the European Central Bank. So my view on this: I disagree with Huerta de Soto on many, many things, but I do not agree with him on that one. The purpose of money is to be the most easily salable good of all goods, to facilitate trade and reduce transaction costs to the utmost. But this one currency that exists must be out of the hands of government, and this is precisely what the gold standard did. The gold standard was destroyed by governments because it did not allow them to inflate as they like to inflate. If you have fiat currencies, then I think competition is good because it forces countries that are more inflationary to look at countries that are less inflationary, and they have to reduce their willingness to print more money because they know people will go from currencies that are more inflationary to currencies that are less inflationary. So under fiat money regimes, it is good to have competition between different currencies, but that is, in a way, contradictory to the idea of money. So you are in a system of partial barter. I think Rahim mentioned that briefly because he quoted me. You want government out of it. If it is in there, then competition is indeed a good thing because it curtails the power of each individual central bank to do whatever they please. I’ve said more, and I don’t want to monopolize this.

[9:07] DF: I’m not sure the rest of us need to be up here, but I’m probably saying that too early. In the form of your question, you said after the Roman Empire collapsed, that anarchy broke out. Isn’t that what you said? Is that what we’re after?

[9:31] Unknown Speaker (Audience): Well, by anarchy, I mean regions that were defenseless, that had no way of—there was no coalition of states or whatever, no coalition of qualities that was capable of defending itself against invaders: Visigoths, Swabians, Ostrogoths, the Franks. These groups were very fragmented. My question was, if this happens in Europe now, then it would render you very vulnerable to the United States, which at the moment is becoming stronger and stronger despite all the instabilities. So anarchy might break out again, and that would be a bad thing for Europe.

[10:17] DF: Okay, so you are on record as opposed to the rest of this crowd that anarchy breaking out would be a bad thing.

[10:34] DF: I consider myself—okay, sorry, do you have a comment on that, Professor?

[10:47] HHH: As I said, you have to also see what the American army looks like in the meantime. The American army—they let the Ukrainians do the fighting for a reason. The American army is just a laughingstock. They have great military equipment, might be, but in terms of the personnel that they have, I think affirmative action has taken over the American army too. They also have tanks that can be manned by pregnant women and make sure that they are able to operate tanks despite all the problems that women, as compared to men, have when it comes to things like this. No, I think the American army will not attack the European countries. After all, there are also mighty European countries like France that have atomic weapons. The French people would certainly resist an invasion by the Americans. I think Switzerland and Liechtenstein would also resist an invasion by the Americans. You have to have public opinion in your favor. There’s no public opinion in the United States in favor of occupying European countries.

[12:25] Unknown Speaker (Audience): This question is mostly for Professor Hoppe. You’ve made what many of us perceive as a lot of very important contributions to libertarianism, such as argumentation ethics, Austrian class analysis, the critique of democracy—contributions that have helped bring people to libertarianism and helped libertarians get libertarianism right, so to speak. Kinsella has also brought about his contributions in IP, and of course, before you, Rothbard and Mises made their contributions. So, going forward with the next generation, are there any areas that you would love to see new contributions in, areas that might be underdeveloped in libertarianism where you would love to see new ideas come about and see libertarianism brought forward to the future?

[13:18] HHH: I think Stephan Kinsella has brought libertarianism ahead quite a bit. If you read my preface to his big book, I hail him as being the most important legal theorist of his generation. You will find a tremendous wealth of additional things in his big fat book. As you heard before, there are many, many big fat books coming along in the next few years if he holds up his promise. Stephan, can you say something about this?

[14:04] SK: I have thought about this before, about what fields need to be developed. [Areas That Need Development from Libertarian Thinkers.] Most of the ones I have in mind are fairly esoteric. A lot of them are pragmatic, like strategy, because we’ve tried so many strategies over the years. By the way, someone told me they misunderstood—my new IP book will not be a thousand pages; it’s probably a hundred pages, so it will be a nice slim synthesis. That may be something to write about, like areas for future research to give people suggestions for what they could work on next. But I’m about out myself.

[14:50] HHH: I think there’s nothing wrong—in mathematics, you also have very, very slow progress, if at all. In disciplines like logic, you have very slow progress, if any at all. There are some disciplines different than other disciplines. In the natural sciences, there might be continuous progress taking place. In medicine, I hope there will be major progress taking place.

As far as economics is concerned, I think there is not much beyond what Mises and Rothbard have done that can be done. We should be just happy that we still know what they have written, that we can recapitulate it ourselves, that we preserve our culture and our knowledge. That is sometimes the only thing that we can do, and we should be happy that those things are not simply forgotten. The ruling elites want us to not read these books, not learn these things. Every generation has to relearn a large amount of things from people who lived before them.

As we heard from the IQ talk, this is even more important now as the general IQ is going down. The few people who still have a high IQ have an even greater responsibility now to make sure that those things that already exist will not be forgotten and unlearned but kept alive. If somebody comes up with something great, I would be surprised, but I’ve seen at Mises Institute conferences where sometimes people do something new. I laughed about it—I didn’t see that there was anything new; it was just new confusion that they spread.

So, learn what is there, recapitulate it, and spread these things to other people. Don’t always strive for innovation. That happens once in a while, that somebody innovates something in these disciplines. There are disciplines where innovations take place from day to day, but not in logic, not in mathematics, not in praxeology. There are very minor refinements that can take place, but not much more.

[17:49] DF: They say in finance that knowledge is not cumulative; it’s cyclical. That gets proved over and over again as we go through one boom and bust after another.

I would say for Austrians in the crowd that are interested in finance, Murray Rothbard wrote a wonderful book called The Mystery of Banking. But at this stage, that needs to be expanded upon considerably to take into account the shadow banking, the expansion of the Fed, the expansion of the Treasury, and the various programs that have been layered one on top of the other. As these programs get instituted in each subsequent emergency, they never go away. So, Murray’s book, while very valuable—another of his books is What Has Government Done to Our Money? or In Defense of the 100% Gold Dollar—again, very valuable and something that students would never be taught anywhere else. But a book on the entire system, how it works, and the exponential growth of the Federal Reserve and its powers and influences is what should be done. I would hope that it would be done by some student at the Mises Institute or somewhere else, but that is sorely needed in terms of being sorted out.

[19:54] Unknown Speaker (Audience): My question is for Olivier Richard. I saw that in your references, you had Edward Dutton a lot. He has a very jolly YouTube channel that goes into details on IQ. What he actually proposes is that IQ didn’t peak just a few decades ago but that it actually peaked in the late 1800s. The data that he provides for this is not just IQ tests but also other pieces of data, such as major per capita innovations, reaction times which were measured back then, which also strongly correlate with IQ, and the usage of complicated words in text. If you analyze this, then the IQ roughly peaked around 1880 or something like that, which is much earlier than what you have presented. The rationale provided there, how this could possibly be, is that IQ tests oversample the part of IQ which can be taught. One example that is brought is that, for example, the statement, “There are no camels in Germany, Berlin is in Germany,” and then the question, “Does Berlin have any camels?” Many people from a hundred years ago would answer, “I’ve never been to Berlin, I don’t know if there are any camels,” even though they had this three-chain of arguments. Now in school, you learn these logical chains very easily. So, do you agree with his assessment with a very different timeline regarding IQ decline, or do you think there’s a flaw in that reasoning?

[21:53] OR: I’m not familiar with this channel. Obviously, I’m familiar with his name, but only insofar as he co-authored many papers with Richard Lynn, which I had to read in order to put the presentation together, especially on the sort of anti-Flynn kind of side of things. Richard actually was in this sort of conversation with James Flynn about how to name the Flynn effect. I somewhat quickly said that Richard had written an ’82 paper that should have really given him the name, but Richard was a very modest man. So what he did is he looked at all the people prior to 1982 who had observed what we now call the Flynn effect—that is, a rising IQ. I think the first one he got was from 1930. I don’t remember exactly; I didn’t include it in my study. But let’s assume the sample size is, you know, maybe until World War I. So, I think there’s considerable evidence that after the IQ test was invented in 1905, after it was adapted to English by Lewis Terman at Stanford in 1916, from then onwards, all the revisions have been upwards from that point onwards. But I do agree with you, or with Edward Dutton, that correlates to IQ—reaction time is definitely a good one. Another one, which may or may not be feasible, is the size of the brain. For that, you need three-dimensional tomography or whatever it’s called because you can’t just measure the circumference because the brain is shaped in a very strange way—well, the skull is shaped in a very strange way. So it’s possible. My gut instinct, in the absence of better data and certainly in the absence of having seen the videos that you’re referring to, would be that possibly the smart fraction in 1880 was very intelligent, and then a lot of the people who were not intelligent, who were dragging down the average, were malnourished, essentially—the poor. That would probably explain what I know because I’ve read things written by people in the 1880s, seen the tests they had at Oxford and Cambridge, and they’re extremely impressive. So maybe that’s the way I would reconcile it, but I cannot really say much more given the fact that the IQ test was only invented in 1905.

[24:40] Unknown Speaker (Audience): My question is to all the speakers. I might be mistaken in my observations, but if I look at the United States or the European continents, what I see currently is great economic mayhem that they won’t be able to clean up that easily—between green communism, socialism, drugs, inept governments. Everybody out there, even the normal Joe, is able to see something has gone wrong. Every day, his shopping basket is costing him more while he doesn’t have more. The systems are going down—healthcare and everything. So something has gone wrong, but there is no mention of libertarianism or Austrian economics even as a viable alternative. People feel this is wrong, but when you say, “What is the solution?” so few people are exposed. Even in some of the top Ivy League universities, when you say you’re a libertarian, they’re like, “Oh, you believe in that fringe economic theory.” So, what do you think can be done by the Mises Institute or by other people like us to get this as a possible alternative? In the end, I believe everybody is logical about their own pocket. If you say, “This is what’s been wrong, and here, look, there’s a theory; this might get your pocket to be better,” I think at least the exposure would increase.

[26:33] HHH: All of education has been essentially taken over by the state. That also applies to the private universities. The private universities are almost as much dependent on the state as the state universities. All their research grants and so forth are governmental grants, and the government, the state, realizes that the Austrian School is their main enemy. They have to be destroyed. Look, Mises did not acquire a paying job at any elite university in the United States. He had to be paid by outside supporters, even though at that time, at least as far as Europe was concerned, he was one of the most famous economists, and many people now agree that he was the greatest economist ever. He could not get a paying job in the United States. Even Hayek, who is a moderate guy—very moderate; he could live with a Swedish welfare state—even Hayek could not get a paying job in the United States. The University of Chicago had to be paid by the same group of businessmen who also paid Ludwig von Mises’s salary. He returned from the United States back to Germany because the University of Chicago refused to pay him a pension, and because he knew Ludwig Erhard in Germany as some sort of friend. Ludwig Erhard, at that time, was either Chancellor or Economics Minister; he finagled for him to get a job at the University of Freiburg, even though he had already passed the age when you can make somebody a tenured person in Germany. Murray Rothbard, with whom I was very close—as far as I’m concerned, he is the brightest man I ever met in my life. The guy was smarter than all Harvard and Yale faculty put together. He couldn’t get a job at any major university. At the end of his life, by luck, he ended up with some sort of endowed chair at a low salary at the University of Nevada. I was happy enough to be taken with him; he took me with him and managed to finagle that I would get a job there at the same university. None of the Austrian economists, especially not the outspoken ones, have any chance to ever land a big job at any leading, so-called leading university in the United States or in any other Western country. By the way, I think Guido Hülsmann, also by accident, by the fact that some strange events had happened, that the committee that selected professors for French universities, for one year, it was possible for him to get a job. I doubt that accidents like that will happen very frequently. Guido, if that was not right, what I said, simply just protest. He’s one of the very few people whose protest I would take seriously, but I think I was right in what I said. The quick answer is no, they don’t want us. They consider us to be their enemy, and nobody gives us any money.

[30:56] Unknown Speaker (Audience): I have three quick questions. For Doug: What are your three favorite financial newsletters? For Olivier: Are you aware of any studies that examine the impact of the dissolution of the family on IQ development? For Stephan: Are you aware of any other area in law that should not exist, such as IP law?

[31:20] OR: Obviously, I’m not Richard Lynn, so he would know. I only know the papers I read in preparation for this. There wasn’t really much talk about that. I think that there’s definitely a clear case for cognitively demanding intellectual stimulation of children to be positively correlated with their ability to realize 100% of their IQ genetic potential. As I said, IQ is 80% heritable from age 18 onwards. It looks to me that a broken family would probably not really fulfill that very much because then the kid is just going to be playing on their iPhone the whole day. That’s the only correlation I can see with the literature I’ve read.

[32:21] SK: There are lots of areas of law that shouldn’t exist because there are types of laws that shouldn’t exist. Maybe the first one, which is interesting to me, would be antitrust law or competition law, as it’s called in Europe. Of course, that’s all invalid as well. Administrative law would not exist if not for a huge bureaucratic state. But maybe more controversially, from a more theoretical point of view, I sometimes think maybe criminal law should not exist, and everything should be restitution-based. It would be based upon criminal law principles, but it would be sort of restitution-based instead of retributive or punitive. But that’s a deeper topic.

[33:07] DF: First of all, my favorite, by far—and I am a paid-up subscriber—is Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, which has been in business for 40 years. The primary writer and proprietor is James Grant. If you haven’t read James Grant, he has many books and is a big fan of the Austrian School. It’s probably in every other newsletter he mentions Austrian work in one way or another. It’s expensive, I will tell you that, but it’s not as big on actionable ideas and hyperbolic pronouncements. A lot of it is economic history. So if you have the time and you’re interested in just great financial writing, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer is a wonderful publication.

Secondly, I also subscribe to what I consider a financial newsletter, even though they are videos online, and it’s called Real Vision. Real Vision follows the same format. It has a free daily that you can get either on X or you can sign up for it. You get long-form, 30-minute interviews that are quite insightful by people who are outside the CNBC typical financial framework.

Then they have a next step, which is called the Essential step—I forgot what they’re charging for that—and then beyond that, if you really want to dive deep into this stuff, they have another level. It’s set up just like a financial newsletter. Raoul Pal is the proprietor of this. He lives very nicely in the Cayman Islands, it sounds like. I find it very useful because it gives a variety of points of view and makes me think, even though I’m listening to somebody that I don’t necessarily agree with. Sometimes, Keynes said that at some point, you don’t judge the merits of individual securities; you try to guess what the public is going to do next. From that kind of newsletter, from Real Vision, I would recommend trying to do that.

I struggle to find a third because it falls off very quickly, but there probably are others out there. I know people who, until his recent death, were dedicated subscribers to Gary North, and who a few of us know. They were very happy with his work. Those are the two that I can think of.

As far as general advice is concerned, somebody like Doug Casey is, of course, useful, but there’s not so much direct financial advice but simply making you aware of the dangers of the world and how you can protect yourself against those dangers. He thinks along the same lines that we think. I had him here a number of years ago too. He has this website, International Man, I think it is called, that is useful to read, but not if you think, “I will become rich and follow his advice.” He advises you just if you want to protect yourself from inflation, investment in gold and gold mines might be a good idea, and things of that nature—very useful but not directly useful on your way to becoming a multimillionaire.

[38:35] Unknown Speaker (Audience): My question was going to be the same as this gentleman’s question over here on IQ and when it peaked. All I would add to that is that the Edward Dutton stuff is very interesting, and I find it very persuasive. I’m convinced Olivier only said that it peaked in 1992 because a lot of people in this room would have been going through school in 1992 and could go home thinking we’re the brightest generation that’s ever existed or will exist. The only additional thing to say is that the name of Edward Dutton’s website could be applied to all of us in this room. He calls himself The Jolly Heretic, which I think we could all do the same.

[39:20] Unknown Speaker (Audience): A short question for Doug: I was curious if you’re going to have a third part of your series and what it might be about. Then a longer question for Dr. Richard: In your presentation, you showed a graph and talked about four different forces on IQ. One of the positive forces was nutrition, and you said that really is only growing better in the developing world right now. Then you also said one of the negative forces was an influx of immigrants from the developing world. So, I’m wondering, that graph that you showed where it goes down, don’t you think it might actually flatten or go up again as those migrants that are coming in are not going to be as stupid in the future?

[39:59] OR: I think what Richard would say to that is that even if the whole third world is super well-nourished and every kid has to be stimulated intellectually at school until age 18 or homeschooled until age 18, even then, they only achieve 100% of their genetic abilities for intellectual quotient. That is lower than the eight countries that I cited. The basic example is the blacks in Africa have tested at lower IQ than the blacks in the US because blacks in the US are forced to go to school until 18 and they are well-fed. Nonetheless, there is still a gap between the whites and the blacks in the US in terms of average IQ, and that was the whole point of the first book I cited, The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray, which obviously was very controversial, but the data is a bit overwhelming. It’s very hard to contradict. So, I think it’s going to help a little bit, but not enough. There’s still a limit to how much they can catch up with us.

[41:36] DF: Did you have a question for me? What was it? If there’s a third part of your series, what would it be? Well, our gracious host here has not signed on to this yet, but yes, I do have a third part planned. It’s already written, and I’ll tell you what it is: it’s the entrepreneurship academic entrepreneurship racket of teaching entrepreneurship, or as I might call it, teaching the unteachable.

I’ve done the work already; I’ve done the paper. Yes, if there is interest in hearing about that, I know that there are plenty of Austrian friends of ours who are making a handsome living at various US universities, but virtually every US university is now adding an entrepreneurship program because young people view entrepreneurship as being rich. They want to be rich; they want to own their own company, and they believe that’s something you can sit in a classroom and learn. History certainly defies that.

So, yes, that would be the third part to the racket series if there is an interest in anyone wanting to hear it.

[43:30] HHH: To these people, I would also say, if you are so smart, why ain’t you rich? No, entrepreneurship cannot be taught. The only thing that economists can do for entrepreneurs is to help them avoid absolutely stupid mistakes. But that’s the most that they can do. If you see the money supply going up all over constantly, and then people expect that prices will fall next year, obviously, they are making a big mistake. But those are the only things that we can tell them.

There are many successful entrepreneurs who are dumb when it comes to passing a microeconomics class with myself, but nonetheless, they are far richer than I am. Obviously, they have skills that I don’t have, and you cannot teach these sorts of skills. If you could teach them, then you could not even explain why there are successful people and unsuccessful people because then there would be some sort of algorithm that you have to follow, and then you will be a successful man. I don’t know anything about these artificial intelligence things so far, but some people think that artificial intelligence will allow us to make successful predictions in terms of the stock market.

I think that is also all nonsense. If that would really be the case, then all people would use the same sort of artificial intelligence and make the same forecast. But if all people make the same forecast, then these people will not be rich because all buy the same stocks. So, artificial intelligence will not help us. They help us to do certain routine things more easily. I think judges will have difficulties keeping their jobs in the same number because artificial intelligence will tell them all the judgments that were made in similar cases. People who write fundraising letters or something like that—there exist probably thousands of fundraising letters, and artificial intelligence will write a nice letter to tell people why they have to donate for this or that instead of employing deep thinkers to write these fundraising letters. Artificial intelligence can probably just turn them out in a minute for any type of purpose for which you want to raise funds. But entrepreneurship cannot be taught.

[46:32] Peter Wong (Lion Rock Institute) (Hong Kong) (Audience): I have some statements to make in response to Doug as well as Dr. Hoppe’s comment on Doug Casey. I try to defend the indefensible regarding newsletters because I’m currently a writer in a financial column. I don’t know whether I should be classified as one of those newsletter producers, and in a way, maybe I’m also selling snake oil.

Personally, I write a financial newspaper column not because I want to teach people how to get rich—firstly, I’m not rich, so I cannot teach people how to be rich. But before I wrote the financial newspaper, I ran a think tank with Nick for a period of time. I tried to get donations from donors and offered the material basically for free regarding free-market teaching. But from my point of view, it didn’t work very well. It’s free material, and not many people care.

But as soon as I put something financial on—what I’m saying is basically the same thing, but I just change the terms with different marketing—people listen to me. I have no intention of making them rich, and I think this is not teachable. Of course, I need to say something, “Oh, this company, based on my knowledge in economics, I think this company runs very well.” I don’t give the timing of when you should buy, I don’t give the entry price, I wouldn’t give at what price you should sell. I just say, “This is a good company because they run it this way. I would love to own the share.” But whether you can make money or not, I have no guarantee.

In the past, I needed to get money from donors, offer the material for free, but as soon as I change the clothes, people pay me to say the same thing. I don’t know the other people in the newsletter industry; maybe they just want to make money, maybe they just want to sell snake oil, I don’t know, but for me, it’s just a market technique to draw eyeballs.

[49:29] HHH: Basically, we agree on this, right? I give financial advice sometimes too. I just think that might be a good idea, or that one, no, I don’t think I would touch that. Everybody does it. I think Josef is in that business also, right? You give advice.

[51:11] JS: We still have time, right? Do we still have time? A little bit.

Audience: Josef, I’m glad you have the microphone because which year and number of the Playboy I have to buy to read the article?

[51:25] JS: Good question. Send me an email; I’ll scan it for you.

[51:43] Unknown Speaker (Audience): On the IQ, I just wanted to make one little premise—maybe you can agree or disagree. We’re talking about means in IQ, right? It’s just averages over a population. It doesn’t really matter whether it goes up or down because, as you said, it was a reflection of migration, nutrition, and education, and so forth. But as long as smart males hook up with smart females, smart people will still exist, unless smart males start to procreate with low-intelligence women, making it much more average, and then that would be a problem. But as long as we keep—I mean, not we, that’s just all I’m saying—is that I’m not really afraid of seeing these curves, the migration. As long as these low-IQ people have children, and then we high-IQ people also have children, then I don’t see it as a problem.

[53:09] OR: Basically, the question is not whether smart people will still exist—it’s a bell curve, so literally, if you go on the right tail, you’re going to have some people there. The question is how many, and that is kind of the problem. You mentioned three factors in your question, and there was a fourth factor which I mentioned, which was called dysgenic fertility. There’s ample evidence that the smart men who marry smart women have fewer children than the dumb men who marry dumb women. So that means that this right side of the bell curve is getting thinner, and that is a bit of a problem. If you extrapolate to the mean, if the mean goes down sufficiently, the first thing to break down will be indoor plumbing. You won’t be able to flush your toilet just because the infrastructure needed to do that has a lot of engineers and qualified people in the middle of the bell curve to keep it running. So, you may need a big garden to go to the toilet.

[54:38] HHH: As a criticism of Richard Lynn’s book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, some people—not so much a criticism, but more that he did not emphasize enough that it is even more important—is a smart fraction of the population that must exist in order for a country to develop. If it’s small, I think—I have not personally studied this; I only read some of these things—they said you at least have to have 15% of the population that have to be well above 100, or something like that. That is absolutely necessary in order to have some sort of developing country going on, even if the rest of the population is rather lousy.

But of course, what Olivier just mentioned, there is a division of labor in society, and in developed countries, there’s a huge division of labor. Even if the smartest people would have to do plumbing, and they have not been trained to do plumbing, even brain surgeons might not be able to fix the plumbing defect that has occurred. So, you need these people too in order to make it possible for the very smart ones to do their very smart work.

Every person can somehow participate in the division of labor; even people with very low skills are useful for certain activities. What the welfare state does, however, is ruin even those people that do menial work by allowing them not even to get training in these menial activities that are just as important for a comfortable life as some of the top achievements that some of the top people do. Just see at your home if the water pipes break, and your house is getting flooded—what do you do in such a case? You need certain people that are maybe not the brightest people, but what they do for society is very important.

Everyone has a place in society, and we should just avoid that people can linger around, do absolutely nothing, and be paid for this. This is, of course, what the welfare state does. The point that you made, that smart people have fewer kids and dumb people have more kids, is, of course, promoted by the welfare state. You get paid for doing nothing and producing kids. So, if you do that, yes, that will end in disaster.

[58:16] Unknown Speaker (Audience): I have a second premise for Dr. Kinsella, but I will start by introducing it by coming back on something that Professor Hoppe said on taxes. My premise is that there are always multiple arguments to make a point. For taxes, you could say, for example, well, taxes, especially income tax, are basically disincentivizing working—that’s an argument. But the other argument is that taxes are basically theft, and that’s a moral argument. Even if taxes were somehow positive, the moral argument that taxes are in violation of property rights trumps all other arguments that may exist.

So, for Dr. Kinsella’s argument against intellectual property, I haven’t read your book yet, but everybody says it’s very thick, so I read your first book, which was very thin. The main gist of it, at least in my understanding, was that intellectual property is basically immoral because it goes against the rights of everyone to use an idea, which doesn’t harm anyone, so it’s within your right to do so. All other arguments—maybe that’s why the book is thick because you have a thousand other arguments—but do they really matter when that first argument is almost the most important one or the only important one?

[1:00:00] SK: I get it. I focus primarily on the rights issue, which you’re calling moral. Fundamentally, you have the right to do anything as long as you’re not using someone else’s resource without their permission. This is why I mentioned that one of the three property rules is rectification—if you commit a tort or aggression, then you might owe someone some money. But fundamentally, by using an idea that I got from the public, that was publicly available somehow—like if someone sells a new car or a new invention that has a unique idea in it, and I see that, this guy is giving me the information—so if I use that information, I am not trespassing against his resources. I’m not going into his factory, I’m not going into his home, I’m not breaking into his computer. So, I’ve not committed a tort, so there’s no justification to take property from me.

Now, the taxation thing—I think Rothbard has this classification schema; I think you would call that either autarchic or binary intervention, where the government just takes money from you by coercing you to pay it for taxes. But in the patent case, it’s more of a triangular intervention where they’re basically letting one of their subjects take money from another one of their subjects, and then they get a cut from patent office fees and things like that. When in the past I have countered the utilitarian arguments by pointing out that even by their own logic, by the utilitarian logic that patents benefit society—I don’t accept that’s the standard anyway—people criticize me for even answering them because they say I’m buying into utilitarianism. I said, well, I’m just trying to tell them that they’re wrong even on their own terms. But even if they were right on their own terms, I would still oppose patents. So, you’re right.

[1:01:53] DF: I think we have reached the time to stop.

[1:01:58] [Applause]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 268.

This talk is from the recently-concluded Seventeenth Annual (2023) Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society, Sept. 21-26, 2023.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey): “On Centralization, Secession and the Problem of Self-Defense.”

Other talks to follow in due course.

PFS 2023 Youtube Playlist.

On Centralization, Decentralization, and Self-Defense

by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Delivered Sept. 24, 2023, Property and Freedom Society 17th Annual Meeting, Bodrum, Turkey

States, regardless of their constitution, are not economic enterprises. In contrast to the latter, states do not finance themselves by selling products and services to customers who voluntarily pay, but by compulsory levies: taxes collected through the threat and use of violence (and through the paper money they literally create out of thin air). Significantly, economists have therefore referred to governments—i.e., the holders of state power—as stationary bandits. Governments and everyone on their payroll live off the loot stolen from other people. They lead a parasitic existence at the expense of a subdued “host population.”

A number of further insights emerge from this.

Naturally, stationary bandits prefer larger loot to smaller loot. This means that states will always try to increase their tax revenue and further increase their spending by issuing more paper money. The larger the loot, the more favors they can do for themselves, their employees, and their supporters. But there are natural limits to this activity.

On the one hand, the bandits have to be careful not to burden the “hosts” whose work and performance make their parasitic existence possible so much that the latter stop working. On the other hand, they have to fear that their “hosts”—and especially the most productive among them—will migrate from their dominion (territory) and settle elsewhere.

Against this background, a number of historical tendencies and processes become understandable.

First of all: It becomes understandable why there is a tendency towards territorial expansion and political centralization: with this, states succeed in bringing more and more “hosts” under their control and making it more difficult for them to emigrate to foreign territories. This is expected to result in a larger amount of loot. And it becomes clear why the end point of this process, the establishment of a world state, while certainly desirable from the standpoint of the ruling gang, would by no means be a blessing for all of mankind, as is often claimed. Because one cannot emigrate from a world state, and hence, there exists no possibility of escaping state looting by emigration. It is therefore to be expected that with the establishment of a world state, the scope and extent of state exploitation—indicated, among other things, by the level of state income and expenditure, by monetary inflation, the number and volume of so-called public goods and persons employed in the “public service”—will continue to increase beyond any previously known level. And that is certainly not a blessing for the “host population” that has to fund this state superstructure!

Second: A central reason for the rise of the “West” to become the world’s leading economic, scientific, and cultural region becomes understandable. In contrast to China in particular, Europe was characterized by a high degree of political decentralization, with hundreds or even thousands of independent dominions from the early Middle Ages up until the recent past. Some historians have described this state of affairs as “ordered anarchy.” And it is now common among economic historians to see in this quasi-anarchic state a key reason for the so-called European miracle. Because in an environment with a large variety of independent, small-scale territories in the immediate vicinity of each other, it is comparatively easy for the subjects to vote with their feet and escape the robberies of state rulers by emigration. To avert this danger and to keep local producers in line, these rulers are under constant pressure to moderate their exploitation. And this moderation, in turn, promotes economic entrepreneurship, scientific curiosity, and cultural creativity.

Third: In combining these two insights, the grand course of modern history becomes intelligible. Territorial expansion requires war – wars between rival gangs of stationary bandits. But the conduct of war requires means (economic resources), and bandits do not produce anything. They parasitically draw on the means produced and provided by others. They can influence the overall volume of production and the size of their own loot indirectly, however, through the treatment of their “host population.” Other things being equal, the more “liberal” – the less exploitative – the ruling gang, the more productive will be the host population; and parasitically drawing on a more productive host population, then, it is internally “liberal” gangs that tend to win out in war and drive the centralization process. I have called this the paradox of imperialism: internally liberal regimes tend to conduct a more aggressive foreign policy and are the central promoters of imperialism.

This helps understand not only the rise and long-lasting economic and financial supremacy of the collective “West” over and above all of the “Rest.” It helps in particular also to understand the sequence and the progressive stages of Western imperialism. From sizable Spain and Portugal as leading imperialist powers (but broke at last ), the center of economic gravity moves to the small liberal Low Countries (Netherlands), and it is from there that the next major imperialist ventures are launched. The Low Countries are then cut to size, set back and surpassed as the leading imperial power by a liberal Britain with some world-wide Empire. Finally, after more wars, Britain’s former colony, the break-away US takes over and expands on Britain’s erstwhile role. Owing to its ultra-liberal (in comparison) internal policies, US-America grows to become the world’s greatest economic power, and sitting and drawing on such cushy economic foundation, then, the US government has risen to become the world’s foremost imperial power, with a world-wide network of military bases and of foreign vassals and a US-paper-dollar that functions as the international reserve currency (allowing the US gang to have a free lunch – to spend and consume – at foreigners’ expense).

Fourth: These imperialist ventures may initially have liberating effects: a relatively more liberal – less exploitative or more capitalist – regime may be exported to a comparatively less liberal society. However, the further the process of imperial expansion and of political centralization advances, i.e., the closer one gets to the ultimate goal of a one-world government with a global central bank issuing a single universal fiat currency, the less pressure there is on the ruling gang to continue in its former internal liberalism. Internal exploitation, taxation, inflation and regulation will increase and economic crises, stagnation or even impoverishment and decline will result.  And with the economic failure of political centralization becoming increasingly obvious/dramatic, then, the opposite tendency toward de-centralization gains in strength. The lesson of the “European Miracle” is remembered, and the vision of a radically decentralized world, brought about by means of territorial secession – the very anti-thesis to a world-state – gains in popularity. The vision of a world made up of thousands upon thousands of Liechtensteins, Swiss cantons and independent free-holds (dominiums), all linked by free trade and an international gold standard and all seeking, in competition with other places, to retain and attract productive people with favorable local conditions.

One central, regularly presented challenge to this secessionist project – the challenge I will take up in the following – is this: Secession implies that a larger territory is split into two or more smaller parts. Yet how are small and increasingly smaller units to protect and defend themselves against the imperialist desires on the part of some larger state neighbor? Are not small states run by small gangs in constant danger of being conquered and taken over by larger states and larger gangs? And isn’t the only lasting safety and security to be found then as part and parcel of a large state and ultimately a world-state?  Similarly, and directed against the anarchists in particular, it is queried: How can a state-less territory possibly defend itself against an invasion by some neighboring state? Isn’t a state necessary in order to defend against another state? And does this not show the inevitability of states and statism?

First off: Notwithstanding all political centralization going on in the contemporary world, there are still many small or smaller states side by side with large or larger states, in peaceful coexistence. Why hasn’t France taken over Monaco, or Germany Luxemburg, or Switzerland Liechtenstein, or the US Cuba or Costa Rica, or Brazil Uruguay? The reason is certainly not, that the leaders of the large(r) gangs have any scruples regarding conquest, confiscation, imprisonment or even killing of innocent victims. They owe their very own position as gang leaders to such acts, and they continue to perform them on a daily basis. Rather, what constrains the conduct of the gang leadership and prevents it from giving in to its imperialist desires and going to war, is public opinion.

Unlike the good-old-days, when rival gang leaders went mano-a-mano to fight it out in public with their own weapons, in modern wars the gang leadership stays protected behind, outside the battlefield, and the actual fighting is done by other people, and with other people’s means (money and property). It is not sufficient that the leadership calls for war, then. Others (many others), from the military high-command up high all the way down to the soldier pulling the trigger and the worker producing tanks and ammunition, must be willing to execute its orders. And for such obedience to become possible a reason, a justification must be given by the gang-leadership. There must be a provocation on the part of the take-over target, some outrageous misconduct, that can be presented at home as a justification for an invasion.

Moreover, in addition to domestic (and international) public opinion, the gang leaders are constrained of course in their imperialist desires and their willingness to go to war by the defensive capabilities of the to be conquered and subjected rival gang. The stronger and better armed the rival gang, the higher are the costs of war (and the better must appear the reasons to go to war nonetheless).

In light of this, two guiding principles must be followed by small states and even more so by secessionist movements, whether leading to another, smaller state or a state-less territory (an anarchic social order): First, do not provoke, and second, be armed. I will take up and elaborate on both requirements in turn.

From the viewpoint of the larger gang, secession is in and of itself a provocation and the secessionists deserve to be crushed. But it can crush the secessionists and go to war against its own people only if it has public opinion on its side. In order to prevent this and to help bring about instead a public opinion favorable, sympathetic or at least neutral to their cause, then, the secessionists should declare their independence in the least provocative way. To that purpose, the secession should be presented as a separation solely and alone from the large(r) government gang and as motivated by some particular grievance against this gang – but not, and by no means also as a separation from the people residing in the territory controlled by this gang, with whom one is to maintain normal relations.

To further help their cause, and to justify and emphasize their declaration of independence as a universal human right, the secessionists are advised to explicitly allow also for secession from the secessionist territory. That is, people within the secessionist territory should be permitted also, for instance, to stay with the old, larger gang and continue to subscribe and submit to its legal framework if they so desire. As for the secessionists, to declare their independence is to declare that the rules and regulations of the ruling gang do no longer automatically apply also to the secessionist territory. Many old, traditional rules may be kept by the secessionists – such as much or even most of existing private law (including criminal law) – but other rules or commands – mostly public law provisions – may be rejected, changed or nullified. In any case, to minimize the risk of a violent reaction from the ruling gang, the separation should occur in a decidedly peaceful manner and in a cooperative spirit.

That is, for instance, the secessionists should not touch the properties within its territory that are claimed as “their own” by the central government gang (offices, administrative buildings, etc.). Independence only implies that central government agents working within the secessionist territory are no longer permitted to perform any executive function at the places where they are. This may lead to the relocation of some such agents or else it may lead to a change in their employer or their occupation – all peacefully. Moreover, to further help avoid any possible “provocation,” the secessionists should declare their commitment to a policy of non-intervention regarding the internal affairs of the rest-territory and to free and unhampered interregional trade, and they should make it clear that they are prepared to pay for the use of any goods or services provided by the larger gang on and off its territory (water, electricity, streets, etc.) the same price, based on the same itemized bill, that also domestic residents must pay. (As far as capital endowment is concerned, the secessionist supposedly had already contributed their part to it before seceding; after the secession, then, only the current usage of such goods and services can be billed.)

Further, in order to minimize the risk of a violent crack-down by the central gang, it is advisable also to abstain from any internal policies that could be construed as provocations. A prohibition  of secession from the secessionists, for instance, can be easily construed as such by the smitten central gang. However, more generally – and more interestingly – it is the very institution of a state – a small state, but nonetheless a territory governed by a monopolist of law and order – that entails reasons and grounds for complaints that can always be used against it, whether by a well-intentioned party such as an anarchist or by an ill-intentioned one, such as the ruling central gang. Even the most liberal small state has a monopoly of jurisdiction and taxation and thus cannot but create some victims, who, properly stylized as “victims of human rights violations,” may provide the “excuse” for an invasion. And as for the actual world, there are countless of “victims” and of the “oppressed” to be found everywhere, and they may even be paid to cry out loud for outside help and intervention.

Far more difficult for a central gang, then, to find fault and to discover a reason for a violent reaction against the secessionists, if these do not institute another state, however small, but a free territory, a state-less private law society. On the secessionist territory all sorts of social relations, of hierarchies and of rank-orders exist; there exist a multitude of private households, enterprises and associations, each with its own internal rules; and there are also services and institutions such as police, insurance and arbitration in place – but, importantly, there exists no territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making that could issue commands that were binding on all of the territory’s residents and private properties. Any fault, any provocation or aggression to be discovered in a private law society by a ruling central gang, then, is someone’s private fault, provocation or aggression, and as such cannot be used to justify an attack on the collective secessionists. Indeed, if (and to the extent that) there are provocative and aggressive acts committed, these are most likely the acts of criminals – of con-artists, thieves, burglars, rapists, murderers or plain frauds – and criminals will be treated as criminals in a private law society, of course, and be swiftly and effectively punished there. And this result: the treatment of criminals as criminals and the effective containment or reduction of crime, then, is almost impossible for a central government gang to portray to its home public as a provocation and a good enough reason for an invasion of the secessionist territory.

What, however, if the larger gang still decides to attack, all accommodating efforts and peace offerings on the part of the secessionists    notwithstanding? In that case, especially when the secessionists are small in numbers and they are confronted with a huge and mighty gang, it might be best to simply give up and surrender and hope for better times. That way, at least no death and destruction occurs. The motto “rather dead than red” – or more generally: “rather dead than conquered” – and the fighting spirit that it implies may be appropriate sometimes and for some people. But at other times, in particular whenever not only the fighter’s own life but also that of family and friends is at stake, it may be plain stupid and irresponsible, empty heroism.

Even if sometimes advisable, however, surrender is by no means the only option available to secessionists vis-à-vis a big neighboring gang intent upon re-taking its lost territory. They can of course also arm themselves and thus increase the cost of war for an attacker.

What, then, makes for deterrence?

For one, there is certainly strength in numbers. The larger the number of secessionists the more difficult to beat them into submission. But more important than sheer numbers is the cohesion of the secessionists. It is not diversity that gives strength to the secessionists (or the inhabitants of independent small states), but homogeneity: linguistic and cultural commonality, a culture of reciprocity, mutual trust and community spirit.

Still more deterrence can be built up by the secessionists if they allow and promote the institution of an armed citizenry and the establishment of people militias, organized and led by military professionals trained and providing training especially in the conduct of partisan and guerilla warfare. To further strengthen their defensive capabilities and make for still more deterrence, the secessionists may also join or form alliances with various external providers of logistic and military intelligence, assistance, services and equipment (mercenaries). In this endeavor, however, great care must be taken not to lose control over one’s own destiny to some other, foreign entity or institution. That is, the secessionists should stay strictly away from what Thomas Jefferson warned about long ago as “entangling alliances,” i.e. any permanent alliance that may involve or implicate them in foreign quarrels, conflicts or wars that are not, and that are not regarded by them as their own quarrels, conflicts or wars. (NATO is such an entangling alliance: an attack on any one member is supposedly an attack on all members and requires that all members must go to war against the attacker, even if the attacker had been provoked by the attacked.)

Moreover, almost totally ignored and forgotten today, in an atmosphere of heightened militancy and belligerence manufactured in connection with the war in the Ukraine, the “small” can also defend themselves against the “big” by means of civil disobedience. Provided the secessionists – and more generally: the “small” – have the will to be free of the conquerors, the effectiveness of civil disobedience as a defense strategy can hardly be overestimated. The disobedience can take many forms and come in countless degrees. It can range from ostentatious acts of defiance to some completely unobtrusive conduct, thus allowing almost everyone to participate in the defense effort: the courageous and the timid, the young and the old, the leaders and the followers. One may publicly refuse to obey certain laws, or evade and ignore them. One may engage in sabotage, obstruction, negligence, or simply display a lack of diligence. One may openly scoff at orders or comply only incompletely. Tax-payments may be refused or evaded. There may be demonstrations, sit-ins, boycotts, work-stoppages or plain slacking-off. The conquerors may be maltreated, molested, chided, ridiculed, laughed-at or simply ostracized and never assisted in anything. In any case: all of this contributes to the same result: to render the conquerors powerless. The conquerors will leave or they will be absorbed and assimilated by the conquered.

Last but not least, the secessionists – the small – may defend themselves against some bigger invader and raise the level of deterrence for him also in being ready for retaliatory action and counterattack. Any such retaliation should never be directed against the “people,” i.e. the citizenry residing in the territory controlled by the invading gang, while the gang leadership itself is considered off-limits, however, as is current practice and legal opinion. Rather and to the contrary: in order to be effective as a deterrent, any retaliation should be explicitly and exclusively directed against the gang leadership. The leadership, from the king, president and prime minister up high on successively downward should come to fear, wherever they are, that they may be personally targeted as aggressors and be brought down by long- or short-range precision weapons, assassination commandos or secretive poisoning. At the same time, all collateral damage to the property of innocent civilians should be avoided or at least minimized, so as to raise sympathy for the secessionists (the small) and sow doubt and skepticism regarding the war policy of one’s big home-gang, potentially endangering the gang leadership’s legitimacy in the public mind and thus bringing about a situation to be averted at all costs.

Contrary to popular opinion, then, the unitary, top-down command structure of a state is not necessarily a strength in war, but it leaves an Achilles heel open to any adversary. Once the top are toppled the war is essentially over. So, whenever under attack (and unwilling to surrender), go for the top of the attacking gang. Yet this does not just hold for the (small) attacked, however, but also for the (big) attacker. He, too, will go for the top of the secessionists (the small) to accomplish his conquest or re-conquest. And the institution of a state is also the Achilles heel in the defense of the secessionists – the small – against a take-over by the big central gang – and it is once again the anarchic, no-state private law society that turns out as offering the best protection and defense against such contingency.

If the secessionists institute another, smaller state on a smaller territory (rather than a private law society), the decision of how to defend against an invasion by some bigger neighboring gang will fall to the leadership of the secessionist state. As the monopolist of ultimate decision-making, the leadership of the new small(er) gang decides, bindingly for everyone on the secessionist territory, whether to resist or not; if to resist, whether in the form of civil disobedience, armed resistance or some combination thereof, and if of armed resistance, of what form. If it decides to put up no resistance, this may be a well-meaning decision or it may be the result of bribes or threats by the invading state – but in any case, it will be contrary to the will of many who would have liked to resist and who are thus put in double jeopardy because as resisters they now disobey their own state as well as the invader. On the other hand, if the state decides to resist, this again may be a well-meaning decision or it may be the result of pride or fear – but in any case, it too will be contrary to the preferences of many who would have liked not to resist or to resist by different means, and who are now entangled as accomplices in the state’s schemes and subjected to the same collateral fallout and victor’s justice as everyone else.

Weakened by various internal divisions and opposing forces and factions, then, the central gang may be able to crush the secessionists and retake its lost territory with just one surgical strike or one decisive victory over the secessionist government gang. Once this gang is defeated, the entire secessionist movement is finished (at least for the time being).

Matters are distinctly different, however, if the secessionists establish instead  a private law society on the seceded territories. There is no government, no central gang in place that makes one all-binding decision on matters of war and peace. Instead there are numerous interconnected individuals and institutions who choose their own defense strategy, each in accordance with their own risk assessment. Consequently, the attacking gang has far more difficulties conquering the territory. It is no longer sufficient for the attacker to “know” the secessionist (small) government and to win one decisive victory over it to end the war. Because in a private law society there exists no one central decision-maker – and hence, there exist, from the perspective of the attacker, no one clearly identifiable enemy, but there exists instead a multitude of mostly “unknown” private parties, some big, some small, some hostile, some friendly or neutral, some armed and insured and others not. In that situation there is simply no reason to be found to “sell” to one’s invading soldiers or to the public at home (that is to finance the whole endeavor) as to why a collective war must be waged against the secessionists, if, after all, these are just a bunch of independent private parties, associations and institutions. Then, as noted already before, a case can possibly be made for the punishment of some particular party, but nothing constituting a casus belli could ever arise out of such a constellation. Indeed, faced with some neighboring free territory, the abandoned central ruling gang may well be happy to keep control of the territory that it still has and not to lose too many productive people to the secessionists (due to emigration) rather than engage in the violent reconquest of some lost territory and thereby running the risk of losing all of its legitimacy in the eyes of the general public, at home as well as abroad.

To sum up: From the nature of the state as a parasitic gang a tendency toward political centralization can be deduced. As well, based on a few elementary economic considerations, the “paradox of imperialism” and the “dialectic of centralization” can be explained. That is, the fact that political centralization reduces interregional competition and hence tends to lower economic welfare; and yet, that centralization insofar as it is driven by the most “liberal” gang leadership can have a liberating effect at first, and only eventually, the closer a ruling gang comes to the position of a global hegemon, shows its true colors of increasing oppression, social strife, economic crises and civilizational decline. Having about reached this point, the opposite tendency toward political de-centralization has increasingly gained in popularity in recent times. Consequently, the prospects of secessionist movements were analyzed: their difficulties, what mistakes to avoid, and how best to defend against a foreign take-over. In conclusion – as confirmed also empirically by the long-lasting peaceful coexistence of small and large states and by multiple examples of peaceful secession (USSR breakup, Czechia, Slovakia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brexit) – there is, all central gang objections notwithstanding, no principal argument to be made against a process of successively progressing secession. To the contrary, the further this process advances and the larger the number of independent territories the better for the all-around economic well-being. Nor is there any principal argument against the complete dissolution of the state and the establishment and the successful defense of a private law society, as the logical end-point of the process of secession and of political de-centralization. After all, a private law society, exemplified by hierarchically ordered families and by every small, family-centered face-to-face community, logically and temporally preceded any state and all political centralization; and notwithstanding all distortions and perversions of private law brought about in the meantime by state-legislation and so-called public law, the common, private (and criminal) law notions of right and wrong have not been wiped out entirely and forgotten. Hence, the establishment of a private law society via the lengthy detour of a history of statism is like a return to normal, to something old and familiar, from a long period of aberrations – albeit a return on a different level of social and economic development now, of course, than that prevailing when the process of state-formation and political centralization first took off, way back in history.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 258.

This panel discussion is from the recently-concluded Seventeenth Annual (2023) Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society, Sept. 21-26, 2023.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), Alessandro Fusillo (Italy), Anthony Daniels (Theodore Dalrymple) (England/France), “Discussion, Q&A.”

Other talks to follow in due course.

PFS 2023 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 166.

This talk is from the 2016 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society. Doug Casey (USA), On Prospecting the World’s Regions.

PFS 2016 Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 165.

This talk is from the 2016 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society. David Dürr (Switzerland), On How to Take the State to Court.

PFS 2016 Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 164.

This is Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe‘s (Germany/Turkey) introduction before the afternoon sessions on Day 3 of the 2016 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society.

PFS 2016 Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 163.

This talk is from the 2016 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society. Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), On the Ethics of Argumentation.

Transcript below.

PFS 2016 Playlist.

Related:

• Kinsella’s “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide,” Mises Daily (May 27, 2011).
• See youtube below:

Hans-Hermann Hoppe
The Ethics of Argumentation

[Originally published at The Libertarian Alliance Blog, 9 Oct. 2016. Version below edited to include links and notes.]1

I

At repeated requests from many sides – and given my already advanced stage in life – I have deemed it appropriate to take this opportunity to speak a bit about myself. Not about my private life, of course, but about my work. And not about all subjects—and there are several to which I have made some, however little contribution in the course of the years—but one subject only. The one subject, where I consider my contribution the most important: the apriori of argumentation as the ultimate foundation of law.

I developed the central argument during the mid-1980s, in my own mid-thirties. Not from scratch, of course.  I took up ideas and arguments previously developed by others, in particular my first principal philosophy teacher and Doktorvater, Jürgen Habermas, and even more importantly Habermas’ long-time friend and colleague, Karl-Otto Apel, as well as by the philosopher-economists Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. In any case, however, the argument I ultimately developed appeared to me essentially new and original. (Around the same time, Frank van Dun, living in Flanders and writing in Dutch, and having been brought up in very different philosophical circumstances and traditions, had come up with a very similar argument and conclusion. Yet at the time, we both did not know of each other’s work and would only find out years later.)

In a nutshell – I shall come to more detailed explanations and clarifications shortly – the argument runs like this:

That: All truth-claims – all claims that a given proposition is true, false, indeterminate or un-decidable or that an argument is valid and complete or not – are raised, justified and decided upon in the course of an argumentation.

That: The truth of this proposition cannot be disputed without falling into contradiction, as any attempt to do so would itself have to come in the form of an argument. Hence, the“Apriori” of argumentation.

That: Argumentation is not free-floating sounds but a human action, i.e., a purposeful human activity employing physical means – a person’s body and various external things – in order to reach a specific end or goal: the attainment of agreement concerning the truth-value of a given proposition or argument.

That: While motivated by some initial disagreement, dispute or conflict concerning the validity of some truth-claim, every argumentation between a proponent and an opponent is itself a conflict-free – mutually agreed on, peaceful – form of interaction aimed at resolving the initial disagreement and reaching some mutually agreed-on answer as to the truth-value of a given proposition or argument.

That: The truth or validity of the norms or rules of action that make argumentation between a proponent and an opponent at all possible – the praxeological presuppositions of argumentation – cannot be argumentatively disputed without falling into a pragmatic or performative contradiction.

That: The praxeological presuppositions of argumentation, then, i.e., what makes argumentation as a specific form of truth-seeking activity possible, are twofold: a) each person must be entitled to exclusive control or ownership of his physical body (the very mean that he and only he can control directly, at will) so as to be able to act independently of one another and come to a conclusion on his own, i.e., autonomously; and b), for the same reason of mutually independent standing and autonomy, both proponent and opponent must be entitled to their respective prior possessions, i.e., the exclusive control of all other, external means of action appropriated indirectly by them prior to and independent of one another and prior to the on-set of their argumentation.

And that: Any argument to the contrary: that either the proponent or the opponent is notentitled to the exclusive ownership of his body and all prior possessions cannot be defended without falling into a pragmatic or performative contradiction. For by engaging in argumentation, both proponent and opponent demonstrate that they seek a peaceful, conflict-free resolution to whatever disagreement gave rise to their arguments. Yet to deny one person the right to self-ownership and prior possessions is to deny his autonomy and his autonomous standing in a trial of arguments. It affirms instead dependency and conflict, i.e., heteronomy, rather than conflict-free and autonomously reached agreement and is thus contrary to the very purpose of argumentation.

When I had worked out this argument at last, I was struck by how simple and straightforward it was. I was almost astonished why it had taken me so long to develop, and even more so why no one else apparently had thought of it before.

II

Yet then I thought of Ludwig von Mises and his famous argument concerning the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism. Mises, incidentally, had worked out this argument also in his own mid-thirties. In short, what Mises had argued was that the purpose of all production is the transformation of something – an input – less valuable into something – an output – more valuable, i.e., efficient and economic instead of wasteful production. That in an economy based on the division of labor recourse must be taken to monetary calculation in order to determine if production was efficient or not. That input prices must be compared with output prices to determine profit or loss. And yet, that no input prices exist under socialism – and hence no possibility for economic calculation -, because under socialism all production factors are, by definition, owned by one single agency (the State), thus precluding the formation of any and all factor-prices.

When I had first encountered Mises’s argument, I was immediately convinced. My reaction was, wow, how obvious, straightforward and simple! And also: why did it take Mises so long to state something so obvious, and why had no one else discovered his seemingly elementary insight before?! To be sure, some historians of economic thought were eager to point out that some earlier authors had already hinted at Mises’ argument. Terence Hutchison even discovered a glimpse of Mises’ argument in Friedrich Engels, of all people. But this notwithstanding, it appeared to me a gross distortion of intellectual history and a grave intellectual injustice to claim anyone but Mises as the originator of the argument and the man who had finished off classical (Marxist) socialism intellectually, once and for all.

As well, while perhaps not quite so surprising, the reaction to Mises’ “impossibility proof” was also instructive – especially given that Mises’ proof concerned a problem that at the time of his writing, in the immediate aftermath of WW I, had taken on enormous importance with the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 in Russia.

By and large: There was no reaction at all. Mises was simply ignored. And the continued existence of the Soviet Union and, after WW II, of the entire Soviet Empire was taken by most of the economics profession and large parts of the lay public as well as empirical proof that Mises was wrong or in any case irrelevant.

A few young economists such as Friedrich Hayek, Fritz Machlup, Wilhelm Röpke and Lionel Robbins were immediately converted by Mises, abandoned their erstwhile leftist leanings and became prominent spokesmen of capitalism and free markets; and a few prominent socialists such as Otto Neurath, Henry D. Dickinson and Oskar Lange tried to refute Mises’ argument. But, in my judgment, even Mises’ early “fans” watered-down, misconstrued or distorted and so weakened Mises’ original argument; and as for his socialist “foes,” they did not even seem to comprehend the problem. Indeed, even after Mises had systematically restated and further elaborated his argument, two decades after its original presentation, in his magisterial Human Action, and even after the implosion of socialism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a few socialists such as Robert Heilbronner felt compelled to concede that Mises had been right, they still showed no sign of having grasped the fundamental reason why.

III

The fate of my own argument was in many ways similar to that of Mises’s proof.

Most certainly, given that we live today in an age of rampant legal-ethical relativism – of “anything goes” – and a world in which private property rights have been almost everywhere and universally transformed into mere State-granted or fiat-property instead, my argument concerned a matter of some importance. For it implied a refutation of all forms of ethical relativism as self-contradictory doctrines, and positively it implied that only the institution of private property in one’s body and prior possessions could be ultimately justified, whereas any form of fiat-property was argumentatively indefensible. If anything, then, my argument concerned a matter of even greater and more fundamental importance than Mises’ proof.

Nonetheless – but not unexpectedly so – my argument, too, was largely ignored.

But not entirely so. Murray Rothbard, I am particularly proud to say, accepted my proof immediately as a breakthrough,2 and so did Walter Block and Stephan Kinsella. Indeed, only shortly after the first English language presentation of my argumentation ethics, Kinsella brilliantly supplemented and expanded it by integrating it with the legal theory of “estoppel,” i.e., “the legal principle that bars a party from denying or alleging a certain fact owing to that party’s previous conduct, allegation, or denial.”3 As well, several more or less friendly reviews and discussions of my argument appeared in print. A small symposium on my argument appeared in Liberty Magazine, with both supporting “fans” and critical or hostile “foes.”4 I replied to some of my initial critics and their criticisms,5 but then, except for a few occasional asides, let the matter rest. Not least, because I was paid at the time to do economics, not philosophy. Some later critics, in particular Robert Murphy and Gene Callahan, who apparently accepted my libertarian conclusion but rejected my way of deriving it (without, however, proposing any alternative reason for their own libertarian “beliefs”), were argumentatively demolished by Stephan Kinsella, Frank van Dun and also Marian Eabrasu.6 The debate concerning my argument continued, however, and has in the meantime reached a substantial size. Thankfully, Kinsella has documented and regularly updated the still growing literature on the subject.

 IV

It is not my purpose here to give a summary account and assessment of the entire debate. Instead, I want to take the opportunity to further clarify and elaborate on the elementary character and indeed the simplicity of my argument and along the way dispel some recurring misunderstandings. In this, I will proceed in two consecutive steps. First, I will try to clarify the “argument from argumentation” itself and the implied notion of “ultimate justification” (and, mutatis mutandis, of an “ultimate refutation” of all forms of relativism). Then, in a second step, I will try to clarify the specifically and decidedly libertarian implications that follow from the “apriori of argumentation.”

The question of how to begin philosophy, i.e., the quest for a starting point, is almost as old as philosophy itself. In modern times, Descartes, for instance, claimed his famous “cogito, ergo sum” as such. Mises considered the fact that humans act, i.e., that humans pursue anticipated ends with means (whether successfully or not), as such. The later Wittgenstein thought of ordinary language as the ultimate point of departure. Others, such as Popper, denied that any such starting point existed and could be found. As a little reflection shows, however, none of this will quite do. After all, Descartes’ “cogito” is a proposition and its justification comes in the form of an argument. Likewise, Mises speaks about action as an “ultimate datum” and presents an argument: namely that one cannot purposefully not act, to justify this point of departure. Similarly, Wittgenstein’s ordinary language philosophy is not just ordinary talk but claims to be true talk about talking, i.e., a justificatory argument. And as for relativists a la Popper, to assert that there is no ultimate starting point and yet claim this proposition to betrue is plain contradictory and self-defeating.

In short: Whatever has been claimed here as starting points, or even if the existence of such a point has been denied, they all, unwittingly and as a matter of fact, have affirmed the existence of one and the same point of departure: namely argumentation; and they could deny argumentation the status as ultimate starting point only at pain of contradiction.

This criticism of other philosophers is not meant to deny some partial truths of their various contributions. Indeed, upon reflection we can recognize that every argumentation is also an action, i.e., a purposeful pursuit of ends with the help of means (Mises). But: not every action is an argumentation. Indeed, most of our actions are not. Further, we can recognize that argumentation is a speech-act, involving the use of a public language as a means to communicate with other speakers (Wittgenstein). But: not every speech-act is an argumentation. Indeed, most are not. As well, we recognize that every argumentation, and by implication also every speech-act and every action whatsoever presupposes the existence of an acting, speaking or arguing person (Descartes). But: it is only from the vantage point of anarguing person that the distinction between actions, speech-acts (or the so-called “lower” – expressive, signaling and descriptive – functions of language) and argumentation (as the “highest” function of language) can be made and claimed to be true.

[As for Popper and Popperian critics: It is certainly true that deductive arguments proceeding from premises to conclusions are only as good as their premises are, that one can always ask for a justification of these premises, and then of the premises of this justification, and so on and on, leading to an infinite regress. However: The argument presented is not a deductive argument, but a transcendental one directed at the skeptic by pointing out what even he must, and in fact does accept as an ultimate truth simply in order to be the skeptic that he is. Thus, a skeptic could certainly deny that humans act, speak and argue and claim instead that no, they do not, and in doing so he would not become involved in a formal, logical contradiction. But in making this claim he would be involved in a performative, pragmatic or dialectic contradiction, because his words would be refuted by his actions, i.e., by the very fact of claiming his words to be true.]

Argumentation, then, is a (comparatively rare) sub-class of action, and more specifically also of speech-acts, motivated by a unique reason and aimed at a unique purpose. It arises from interpersonal disagreement or conflict concerning the truth-value of a particular proposition or argument (more on the important distinction between disagreement on the one hand and conflict on the other later on!) and it aims at the dissolution or resolution of this disagreement or conflict by means of argumentation as the unique method of justification. One cannot deny this statement and claim such denial as true without actually affirming it by one’s very act of denial, i.e., without performative, pragmatic or dialectic contradiction. Indeed, to paraphrase van Dun, ‘to claim that you cannot or ought not to argue and take arguments seriously is to say that you cannot do what you actually are and claim to be doing.’ It is like saying ‘there are no reasons for claiming this or that to be true and here are the reasons for why there are no such reasons.’ As well, as van Dun keenly observes, Hume’s famous dictum that ‘our reason is and ought to be the slave of our passions,’ while not a contradictio in adjecto, is in fact a performative or dialectic contradiction. For Hume gives reasons and pays serious attention to reasons while claiming that no attention should be given to them.

In light of this insight into the nature and epistemological status of argumentation as the unique method of justification many objections directed at my original argument can be easily discarded.

It has been held against the “argument from argumentation,” for instance, that one can always refuse to engage in argumentation. This is certainly true and I have never said anything to the contrary. However, this is not an objection to the argument in question. Whenever a person refuses to engage in argumentation, he is also owed no argument in return. He simply doesn’t count as a rational person in regard to the question or problem at hand. He is treated as someone to be ignored in the matter. Indeed, someone always, on principle, refusing to argumentatively justify any of his beliefs or actions whatsoever against anyone, would no longer be considered and treated as a person at all. He would be considered and treated instead as a “wild thing” or an “outlaw.” His presence and his behavior would pose for us a merely “technical” problem.7 That is, he would be treated like the little child screaming “no” at everything said to him or like an animal, i.e., as something to be controlled, domesticated, tamed, drilled, trained, or “coached.”

Another “objection” to my argument from argumentation, advanced repeatedly and by several opponents in a seemingly most serious manner, actually better qualifies as a joke. It boils down to the claim that, even if true, my argument is irrelevant and inconsequential. Why? Because the ethics of argumentation is valid and binding only at the moment and for the duration of argumentation itself and even then only for those actually participating in it. Curiously, these critics do not notice that this thesis, if it were true, would have to apply to itself, too, and hence, render their own criticism irrelevant and inconsequential also. Their criticism itself then would be just talk for the sake of talking, without any consequence outside of talking. For, according to their own thesis, what they say about argumentation is true only when and while they are saying it and has no relevance outside the context of argumentation; and moreover, that what they say to be true is true only for the parties actually involved in argumentation or even only for them alone, if and insofar as there is no actual opponent and they say what they say in an internal dialog only to themselves. But why, then, should anyone waste his time and pay attention to such private “truths”?

More importantly and to the point: In fact, these critics are not engaged in idle talk or a mere joke, of course, but in serious argumentation, i.e., in the presentation of an alleged counter-argument, and as such and in this capacity, then, they become inescapably entangled in a performative or dialectic contradiction: because they actually do claim that what they say about argumentation is true inside and outside of argumentation, i.e., whether one actually argues or not, and that it is true not only for them, but for everyone capable of argumentation. That is: contrary to what they say, they actually pursue a purpose above and beyond the exchange of words itself. Argumentation is a means to an end and not an end in itself. It is the very purpose of argumentation to overcome an initial disagreement or conflict regarding some rival truth claims and to change one’s former beliefs or actions depending on the outcome of argumentation. That is, argumentation implies that one ought to accept the consequences of its outcome. Otherwise, why argue? Hence, it is a performative or dialectic contradiction to say, for instance, ‘let us argue about whether or not minimum wages increase unemployment’ and then add: ‘and let us then, regardless of the outcome of our debate, continue to believe what we believed beforehand.’ Similarly, it would be self-contradictory for a judge in a trial to say ‘let us find out who of two contending parties, Peter and Paul, is right or wrong, and then ignore the outcome of the trial and let Peter go, even if found guilty, or punish Paul, even if found innocent.’

Equally silly, some critics have charged me for supposedly claiming, falsely, that the truth of a proposition depends on someone making this proposition. But nowhere did I claim any such thing. Certainly, that the earth orbits around the sun, that water runs downward or that 1+1=2 is true, whether we argue about it or not. Argumentation does not make something true. Rather, argumentation is the method for justifying propositions as true or false when brought up for consideration. Likewise, the existence of property and property-rights or -wrongs does not depend on the fact that someone argues to this effect. Rather, property and property-rights or -wrongs are justified when up for contention.

V

With this I come to the second part of my clarifications: the libertarian implications of the ethics of argumentation.

For this, it is first necessary to point out the obvious fact that all argumentation has a propositional content. Whenever we argue, we argue about something. This can be argumentation itself, i.e., the very subject I have been speaking about so far. But the content can be all sorts of things: matters of fact or of cause and effect, such as whether or not global warming presently exists and is man-made, or whether or not an increase in the money supply will lead to greater over-all prosperity; but also normative matters, such as whether or not the possession (actual control) of something by someone implies his rightful ownership (property) of the thing in question, or if slavery or taxation are justified or not.

In short: argumentation can be either about facts or it can be about norms. The source of an argumentation about facts is what I shall call a disagreement; and its purpose is to resolve this disagreement and effect a change to the better in one’s factual beliefs so as to make the actions motivated by these beliefs more successful. The source of an argumentation about norms, on the other hand, is conflict; and its purpose is to resolve this conflict and effect a change in one’s system of values so as to better avoid future conflict.

In the original presentation of my argument, I was exclusively concerned about the latter matter and this shall also be the central topic here. But I have come to realize that in order to better understand the nature of an argumentation about norms it is instructive to first look briefly, by way of contrast, at an argumentation about facts.

How is a factual disagreement settled within an argumentative setting? That depends of course first on the subject matter of the disagreement and then on the method(s) – the actions and operations – to be employed in order to come to a conclusion and decide between the rival truth claims under consideration. What methods are appropriate for the given purpose? What, if anything, must be observed, and how and under what circumstances? What needs to be measured, and by means of what measuring standard or device? What other purposefully constructed tools, instruments, machines, etc., must be at hand and in working condition to gather the relevant data? Is there anything that must be counted or calculated? Must time and time-lags be considered and time be measured? Must and can a controlled experiment be set up? Are we aiming to establish a correlation or are we looking for causation? Or is it a matter of “meaning” and “understanding” rather than “measuring” that is of concern? Is the matter of contention at all an “empirical” matter? Or is it a “logical” matter instead that must and can be settled by deductive reasoning, or geometric, mathematical or praxeological proof? – And finally then, when one has settled on the question which method(s) to choose for a given purpose, these methods, tools and operations must be put into action and practiced. The relevant data must be actually collected and the measurements, calculations, experiments, tests or proofs actually taken and performed, so as to bring the initial disagreement to a possible conclusion.

Now: What makes this endeavor of solving some factual disagreement an argumentative justification? First and most obviously, both disputants, and indeed everyone concerned about the matter of contention, must consider each other as another person, equally independent and each with his own, separate physical body. That is, no person is to exercise physical control over any other person’s body without his assent during the entire undertaking. Rather, each person acts and speaks on his own, so as to make it possible that everyone may arrive at the same resolution on his own, independently and autonomously, and then accept the conclusion as in his own self-interest. Nor, presumably, is any person involved in the undertaking threatened, paid-off or bribed by any other to merely pretend to argue and pronounce instead, regardless of outcome, a pre-determined verdict.

While all this is generally recognized and accepted as a matter-of-course by the “scientific community,” another requirement is often overlooked – and yet it is in particular this requirement that best brings out the crucial difference between “factual” and “normative” argumentation.

Not only must everyone engaged in the endeavor of resolving some factual disagreement be equally respected and assured in his own personal bodily integrity to speak of an argumentative justification. It is also necessary that each person must have equal access to all “data” and all means, implements, instruments or tools methodically required to decide the question at hand, so that each person may perform the same actions and operations and replicate the results on his own. That is, if it is necessary in order to resolve some factual disagreement, for instance, to use paper and pencil, a yardstick, a clock, a calculator, a microscope or a telescope, etc., or simply some ground on which to stand and make one’s observations, then no one may be denied access to such devices. In fact, it would be contrary to the purpose of an argumentation about facts and hence entail a dialectic contradiction for anyone person to say to anyone else, for instance: we disagree regarding the height of this building or the speed of that car and to bring this disagreement to a resolution we need a yardstick and a clock, but I deny you access to a yardstick and a clock.

But – and with this I come slowly to my central concern: argumentation about normative matters, i.e., of right and wrong, – it would not entail a performative or dialectic contradiction if I denied you access to this or that instrument or tool or this or that standing room, if the source and content of our argumentation is a conflict rather than a mere disagreement. That is, if you and I have different and incompatible plans, interests and goals regarding the instruments, tools and standing room in question. Then, my refusal to permit you access to this or that may be justified or not, but it would not in itself be a self-contradictory demand.

It is the characteristic mark of an argumentation about facts, that for the duration of argumentation a harmony of interests among all participating parties must prevail. All property disputes are temporarily suspended and also the outcome of the argumentation has no consequences or repercussions for the subsequent distribution of property. To bring a factual disagreement to a conclusion, every actual or potential participant must perform, and is expected by everyone else to perform, the same actions and operations with the same or the same kind of objects. As long as the argumentation lasts, everyone does what everyone else expects and wants him to do. All act in harmony with one another. And at the end, after some at least temporary conclusion has been reached, everyone, with his newly learnt lesson, returns back to his normal life, in which everything else has remained and stayed the same as before. – Yet in this normal life, then, people do not only encounter factual disagreements. Indeed, as an empirical matter, at least in the life of an adult person, factual disagreements giving rise to argumentation are comparatively rare. Because the most fundamental and elementary facts about the composition and inner workings of the external world are long recognized, accepted and taken for granted by everyone in his daily life so as to never rise to the level of serious doubt. And if and whenever any serious doubt concerning the truth-value of some factual claim does arise, such disagreements are generally routinely and methodically brought to some at least temporary settlement and accepted quickly and without any resistance by all interested parties. Rather than factual disagreements, then, it is the experience of conflicts that motivates most serious argumentation. And it is argumentation about conflicts that generates our most intense interest.

VI

Conflicts arise, whenever two actors want and try to use one and the same physical means – the same body, standing room or external object for the attainment of different goals, i.e., when their interests regarding such means are not harmonious but incompatible or antagonistic. Two actors cannot at the same time use the same physical means for alternative purposes. If they try to do so, they must clash. Only one person’s will or that of another can prevail, but not both.

Whenever we argue with one another about a matter of conflict, then, we demonstrate that it is our purpose to find a peaceful, argumentative solution to some given conflict. We have agreed not to fight, but to argue instead. And we demonstrate as well that we are willing to respect the outcome of our trial of arguments. Indeed, to argue otherwise and say, for instance, ‘let us not fight, but argue whose will is to prevail in our conflict, but at the end of our argumentation, and irrespective of its outcome, I will fight you anyway’ would entail a performative or dialectic contradiction. To say so is to contradict the very purpose of argumentation.

The task faced by any proponent and opponent engaged in an argumentation about conflict, then, is to find a peaceful resolution not only for a conflict at hand but also for all potential future conflicts, so as to be able to interact henceforth with one another in a conflict-free and peaceful manner, despite and notwithstanding each other’s differing interests, whether now or in the future.

The definitive answer to this problem is provided by a brief analysis of the logic of action, i.e., by method of praxeological reasoning.

Logically, to avoid all future interpersonal conflict, it is only necessary that every good – every physical thing employed as a means in the pursuit of human ends – be always and at all times owned privately, i.e., be controlled exclusively by one specific person (or voluntary partnership or association) rather than another, and that it be always recognizable and clear, which good is owned by whom and which is not or by somebody else. Then, the interests, plans and purposes of different actors may be as different as can be, and yet no conflict will arise between them as long as their actions involve exclusively the use of their own, private property and leave the property of others alone and physically intact.

This is only part of the answer, however. For then immediately the next question arises of how to accomplish such a complete and unambiguous privatization of all economic goods peacefully, i.e., without generating and leading itself to conflict? How can physical things become someone’s private property in the first place; and how can interpersonal conflict in the appropriation of physical things be avoided?

Praxeological analysis also yields a conclusive answer to these questions. For one, to avoid conflict it is necessary that the appropriation of things as means is effected through actions, rather than mere words, declarations or decrees. Because only through a person’s actions, taking place at a particular place and time, can an objective and thus inter-subjectively ascertainable link between a particular person and a particular thing and its extension and boundary be established and hence, can rival ownership claims be settled objectively.

And secondly, not every recognizable taking of things into one’s possession is peaceful and can thus be argumentatively justified. Only the first appropriator of some previously un-appropriated thing can acquire this thing peacefully and without conflict, and only his possessions, then, are property. For, by definition, as the first appropriator he cannot have run into conflict with anyone else in appropriating the good in question, as everyone else appeared on the scene only later. And any late-comer, then, can take possession of the things in question only with the first-comer’s consent. Either, because the first-comer had voluntarily transferred his property to him, in which case and from which time on he became its exclusive owner. Or else, because the first-comer had granted him some conditional use-rights concerning his property, in which case he did not become the thing’s owner but its rightful possessor. Indeed, to argue to the contrary and say that a late-comer, independent and irrespective of the will of the first possessor of some given thing, should be regarded as its owner entails a performative or dialectic contradiction. Because this would lead to endless conflict rather than eternal peace and hence be contrary to the very purpose of argumentation.

If different persons want to live in peace with one another, conceivably from the beginning of mankind until its end – and in arguing about conflict they demonstrate that they do want this! –, then only one solution exists that I shall call the “principle of prior possessions:” All just and lawful (and argumentatively justifiable) possessions, whether in the form of outright property or as rightful possessions, go back directly, or indirectly through a chain of conflict-free and hence mutually beneficial property-title transfers, to prior and ultimately original appropriators and acts of original appropriation or production. And vice versa: All possessions of things by some person that are neither the result of his prior appropriation or production, nor the result of voluntary and conflict-free acquisition from a prior appropriator-producer of these things, are unjust and unlawful (and hence argumentatively unjustifiable) possessions.

The question to be settled in an argumentative dispute between a proponent and an opponent, then, does not really concern a matter of principle. Because the principle of prior possession itself cannot be argumentatively denied without falling into a performative or dialectic contradiction. It is an ultimate ‘given’ and can be recognized as apriori valid. Under dispute between a proponent and an opponent can only be matters of fact, i.e., whether or not the principle had been correctly adhered to and applied in all instances. Whether the proponent’s each and every current possession was acquired justly, in accordance with the principle of prior possession, or whether the opponent of the status quo of current possessions can demonstrate the existence of a prior and un-relinquished title of his to some or all (but not quite all, as we will see in a moment) of the proponent’s present possessions. – And the principle of prior possession also implies that in any dispute between a proponent and opponent about rival property claims concerning some particular means of action, it is always the current and present distribution of property among the contending parties that serves as first and prima facie evidence for deciding on their contentious claims. Prima facie, the present possessor of the thing in question appears to be its prior possessor and hence its rightful owner, and the burden of proof to the contrary, i.e., the demonstration that the evidence provided by the status quo is false and deceptive, is always on the opponent of the present state of affairs. He must make his case, and if he can’t, then not only remains everything as before but the opponent owes the proponent compensation for the misuse made of his time in having to defend himself against the opponent’s unjustified claims made against him (thus reducing the likelihood of frivolous accusations).

And moreover: It is not just the principle and the procedure to be applied in any debate between a proponent and opponent that is irrefutably ‘given,’ it is also one elementary fact that is so ‘given’ and beyond any dispute – which leads me back to the just mentioned restriction of ‘all, but not quite all’ and the argument from argumentation itself.

For while it is a contingent empirical question which external good is or is not rightfully owned by whom, and while in principle it is possible to place any current possession of any and all external goods by any one person into doubt as regards its lawfulness, this is not the case and it is not possible to do so with respect to anyone person’s physical body as his primary means of action. No one can consistently argue that he is the rightful owner of another person’s body. He can say so, of course. But in doing so and seeking the other person’s assent to this claim he becomes involved in a performative or dialectic contradiction. Hence, it is and can be recognized as an apriori truth that each person is the rightful owner of the physical body that he naturally comes with and has been born with, and that he has directly appropriated prior and before any other person could possibly do so indirectly (by means of his own body). No argumentation between a proponent and an opponent is possible without recognizing and respecting each other as independent and separate persons with their own independent and separate bodies. Their bodies do not physically clash or collide, but they argue with one another and hence, they must recognize and respect the borders and boundaries of their separate and independent bodies.

Some critics have argued that this does not demonstrate a person’s ownership of his entire body, but at best only of parts of it. Why? Because to argue it is not necessary to use all body parts. And true enough, you do not need two kidneys, two eyes or an appendix to argue. Indeed, you also do not need your body hair or even arms and legs to argue. And hence, according to such critics, you cannot claim to be the lawful owner of your two kidneys or eyes, your legs and arms. Yet this objection does not only appear silly on its face – after all, it implies the recognition of these ‘un-necessary’ parts as natural parts of one unitary body rather than as separate, stand-alone entities. More importantly, it involves, philosophically speaking, a category mistake. The critics simply confuse the physiology of argumentation and action with the logic of argumentation and action. And this confusion is particularly surprising coming from economists, and even more so from economists familiar also with praxeology. For the fundamental distinction made in economics between ‘labor’ and ‘land’ as the two originary means of production, which corresponds exactly to the distinction made here between ‘body’ and ‘external world,’ is also not a physiological or physicalistic distinction, but a praxeological one.

The question to be answered is not: which body parts are physiologically necessary requirements for one person arguing with another person. Rather, the question is: which parts of my body and which parts of your body can I or you argumentatively justify as my or your lawful possessions. And to this a clear and unambiguous answer exists. I am the lawful owner of my nature-given body with everything naturally in it and attached to it, and you are the lawful owner of your entire nature-given body. Any argument to the contrary would land its proponent in a performative or dialectic contradiction. For me to say, for instance, in an argumentation with you, that you do not rightfully own all of your nature-given body is contradicted by the fact that in so arguing, not fighting, with you, I must recognize and treat you as another person with a separate body and recognizably separate physical boundaries and borders from me and my body. To argue that you do not lawfully own your entire natural body, which you actually possess and have peacefully taken into possession before I could have possibly done so indirectly by means of my natural body, is to advocate conflict and bodily clash and hence contrary to the purpose of argumentation: of peacefully resolving a present conflict and avoiding future conflict.

All I could possibly claim without immediate contradiction is that you do not own all of your current body, because not all of its current parts are its natural parts. That some current body parts are artificial parts, i.e., parts that you had acquired and attached to your nature-given body only later and indirectly. I could claim, for instance, that your kidney is not lawfully yours, because you were not born with it but had taken it against my will from my body and implanted it in yours. Yet in all cases such as this, then, in accordance with the principle of prior possessions, the burden of proof is on me, i.e., the opponent of the status quo of body parts.

A similar category mistake, i.e., a fundamental confusion of the empirics of argumentation on the one hand and the logic of argumentation and argumentative justification on the other, is the source also of another repeatedly, and from several sides presented ‘refutation’ of the argument from argumentation. This ‘refutation’ consists of a simple observation: the fact that slaves can argue with their slave masters. Therefore, with slaves being able to argue, so the conclusion, my claim that argumentation presupposes self-ownership and libertarian property rights is ‘empirically falsified.’ Astonishingly, then, I should have never heard of arguing slaves.

But I did not claim that in order for one person to argue with another full libertarian property rights must be recognized and in place (which would imply, at least under present circumstances, that no one could ever engage in argumentation with anyone else) and that argumentation under any other, less than libertarian conditions is impossible. Of course, a slave and its master can engage in argumentation. Indeed, argumentation is possible under practically all empirical circumstances, as long as every participant can only say and do what he says and does on his own and no one is threatened or made to say or do so. Hence, the criticism levelled against the argument from argumentation is completely irrelevant and beside the point. The argument is not an empirical proposition about whether or not argumentation between one person and another and non-libertarian conditions can co-exist; and accordingly, it also cannot be countered and refuted by any empirical evidence. Rather, the argument concerns the categorically different question whether the existence of non-libertarian conditions can or cannot be argumentatively justifıed without running into a performative or dialectic contradiction. And with regard to this question the answer is straightforward.

A slave master can argue with his slave concerning the truth value, for instance, of the law of gravitation or the existence of invisible germs, and if he were to permit the slave access to all means and data necessary to bring the contentious matter to a conclusion, his arguing with the slave would not involve any contradiction but constitute indeed genuine argumentation. But matters are quite different when it comes to an argumentation between slave master and slave about the subject of slavery, i.e., the conditions under which their argumentation takes place. In this case, if the slave master would say to the slave ‘let’s not fight but argue about the justification of slavery,’ and he would thereby recognize the slave as another, separate and independent person with his own mind and body, he would have to let the slave go free and leave. And if he would say instead ‘so what, I have recognized you momentarily as another independent person with your own mind and body, but now, at the end of our dispute, I deny you ownership of the means necessary to argue with me and prevent you from leaving anyway,’ then he would be involved in a performative or dialectic contradiction. To do so would be contrary to the very purpose of taking argumentation seriously and of accepting the consequences of argumentation. This ‘conversation’ between slave master and slave would not constitute genuine argumentation, but be at best an idle or even cruel parlor game.

And the same response of ‘you are simply confused,’ then, also applies to those critics who tried to double down on the ‘but slaves can argue, too,’ criticism by dragging up additional ‘counterexamples.’ Yes, true enough, a person in jail can also engage in argumentation with his jailer, and a person subjected to taxation can also argue with the taxman. Indeed, who has ever doubted that? However, the question to be answered, and the one addressed by the ethics of argumentation, is if the current status of the person in jail or subject to taxation can be argumentatively justified or not. The jailer would have to demonstrate that the jailed had previously violated the argumentatively indisputable principle of prior possessions and thus committed an unlawful action or ‘crime,’ and that the current restrictions imposed on the movements and prior possessions of the jailed were justified in light of this earlier crime. And if the jailer would not or could not provide such empirical proof of a prior crime of the jailed, and if he then still did not let the jailed go free and restored him to his prior possessions, the jailer would not be engaged in argumentation but in a mock debate, and it would be he, who was guilty of a crime.

And likewise for any verbal dispute between the taxman and the taxed. The taxman, in order to argumentatively justify his claim to any of the tax-subject’s current possessions, would have to demonstrate that he is in possession of a prior debt contract or some sort of rental contract that would justify his present claim to any of his opponent’s current possessions. And if he would not or could not provide any such evidence – and of course no taxman ever could –, then he would have to give up on his demand; and if he would not do so but insisted on payment, his verbal exchanges with the tax-subject, too, would not qualify as genuine argumentation but as only a mock trial, and it would be the taxman, who was an outlaw.

And that is that. The ethics of argumentation stands unimpaired.

1. For background material, see Hoppe, “From the Economics of Laissez Faire to the Ethics of Libertarianism,” “The Justice of Economic Efficiency,” “On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property,” and “Appendix: Four Critical Replies,” as well as other material linked and cited at Stephan Kinsella, “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide,” Mises Daily (May 27, 2011); idem,  “’Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide’ (2011) and Supplemental Resources,” Jan. 1, 2015
2. See Rothbard, “Beyond Is and Ought,” originally published in Liberty (Nov. 1988); see also Rothbard, “Hoppephobia.” See also this Rothbard video commenting on Hoppe’s argumentation ethics, May 1989, after the publication of Hoppe’s TSC, which has comments by Rothbard echoing his positive comments in Liberty. See also this amusing anecdote by David Gordon where he recollects a joke Rothbard pulled on him about Hoppe’s argumentation ethics: David Gordon Speaks with The Society of Libertarian Entrepreneurs (part 2).
3. Kinsella, The Undeniable Morality of Capitalism; “New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory“; “Punishment and Proportionality: The Estoppel Approach“; and The Genesis of Estoppel: My Libertarian Rights Theory. 
4. Hoppe, “The Ultimate Justification of the Private Property Ethic,” Liberty (September 1988); See also Hoppe, “The Justice of Economic Efficiency,”Austrian Economics Newsletter, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Winter 1988);  A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, 1st ed. (1989), ch. 7.
5.  “Appendix: Four Critical Replies.” 
6. Kinsella, “Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy & Callahan”, Van Dun, “Argumentation Ethics and The Philosophy of Freedom,” Eabrasu, “A Reply to the Current Critiques Formulated Against Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics.” 
7. See Kinsella, Hoppe on Treating Aggressors as Mere “Technical Problems”.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 162.

This talk is from the 2016 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society. Walter Block (USA), “Market Failure” – Fact or Fiction?

PFS 2016 Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 161.

This is Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe‘s (Germany/Turkey) introduction before the morning sessions on Day 3 of the 2016 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society.

PFS 2016 Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 160.

This panel discussion is from the 2016 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society. Heiner Rindermann (Germany), Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof (Germany), Anthony Daniels (Theodore Dalrymple) (England), Norman Stone† (UK/Turkey): “Discussion—Q&A”.

PFS 2016 Playlist.