Paleolibertarian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and progressive lawyer and internet troll Matt Bruenig, would appear to have little in common; yet they both have the same idea of what a libertarian world would look like.
In this two-part article (Part I is here), I argue that(1) the very idea of libertarianism that Bruenig claimslibertarians should be following (2) is not only compatible with, but looks like it would result in,Hoppes theorized libertarian society of the future; furthermore, while (3) Hoppes account of that societysuffers from serious flaws and errors, (4) Bruenigs account of that future society, being almost identical to Hoppes, has the same flaws and errors.
Hoppes vision of what a libertarian world of proprietary communities would look like seemsriddled with false assumptions. Let us examine a few:
(1) the restoration of private property rights and laissez-faire economics implies a sharp and drastic increase in social discrimination and will swiftly eliminate most if not all of the multi-cultural-egalitarian life style experiments.[1]
No; there is no reason discrimination would increase sharply or drastically. Some property owners might discriminate on this or that grounds, but there is no reason to think that everyone would: no reason to think that any original community would stop people of different races, religions, or sexual orientations, from living together in it. Nor is there any reason for a community to prohibit life style experiments, from same-sex marriage to rock n roll or hip-hop to marijuana use. Proprietary communities would be established for one reason only to protect the residents property rights, and with it the division of labor not for any of this other stuff.
(2) towns and villages could and would do what they did as a matter of course until well into the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States: to post signs regarding entrance requirements to the town, and once in town for entering specific pieces of property (no beggars,bums, or homeless, but also no Moslems, Hindus, Jews, Catholics, etc.); to expel as trespassersthose who do not fulfill these requirements.[1]
Yes, they could; but no, they probably would not. Why would any town or village in 21st-century America do, or even care about, what towns and villages did in 19th-century Europe? In todays America, Moslems, Hindus, Jews (both Sephardic and Ashkenazi), and Catholics (both Hispanic andHibernian) live and own property in existing small towns and villages all over the country. Whyin the world would they agree to a community covenant whereby they immediately had their realproperty seized and were expelled?
If Hoppe wanted to live in a community with such rules, he would be free to join with other grumpy old white men, leave, and found his own community somewhere; but he would have no power in any existing community to impose such rules on others.
(3) They [these confused libertarians] fantasized of a society where every one would be free to choose and cultivate whatever nonaggressive lifestyle, career, or character he wanted, and where, as a result of free-market economics, everyone could do so on an elevated level of generalprosperity.[1]
Why not? The only necessary criterion, for allowing someone to live in a libertarian proprietary community, would be whether or not his behavior was nonaggressive (in the standard libertarian sense). Communities might also require residents to be productive to support themselves by labor and exchange but even this would not be a necessity: communities could well have consensual welfare arrangements to take care of the old, the sick, the orphaned, et al. There is no reason for anyone to care about other citizens lifestyle, career, or even character, beyond the requirements of standard libertariannonaggression.
(4) every neighborhood would be described, and its risk assessed, in terms of a multitude of crime indicators, such as the composition of the inhabitants sexes, age groups, races,nationalities, ethnicities, religions, languages, professions, and incomes. [] insurers would be interested in excluding those whose presence leads to a higher risk and lower property values.. That is, rather than eliminating discrimination, insurers would rationalize and perfect its practice.[1]
No. First, there is no reason nationwide or even statewide insurance companies would exist without the state. Second, even if they did, there is no reason to think they would want to replace their present-day actuarial methods with the ones Hoppe imagines. Third, even if somedid that, there is no reason to think community residents would want to deal with them. Theriskiest group is young people 16-24, who consistently have the highest violent crime rates; buthow many communities would agree to expel everyone in that age group?
(5) There can be no tolerance towards democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism will have to bephysically removed from society too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.[1]
No. The idea of expelling not just communists and parasites, but gays, hedonists, environmentalists, and even advocates of democracy is as silly as that of expelling all of the Hispanics and Irish. Would Hoppe be in favor of expelling someone who said things like the following?
For the sake of domestic peace, liberalism aims at democratic government. Democracy is therefore not a revolutionary institution. On the contrary it is the very means of preventing revolutions and civil wars. It provides a peaceful adjustment of government to the will of the majority.[11]
If so, Hoppe would be in favor of expelling Ludwig von Mises.
How does Hoppe reach such strange and erroneous conclusions? Only by imagining that what he would do, if free of government coercion, to be the same as what everyone would do if freed from government coercion. How he manages to conflate those two different things seems to rest on onemore error that he makes:
(6) In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on ones own tenant-property.[1]
No, again. While communities with only one proprietor could conceivably exist, why would they? The first proprietary communities would be already existing communities with prior private property ownership, and they would be established specifically to defend that property. Why would their first act be to give up all their real property, along with their privacy and all otherownership rights, to someone else, even someone so eminent as a professor of economics from Nevada?
Rousseau believed that a social contract requires the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights,to the whole community.[12] Hoppe thinks they should be alienated to some sort of feudal lord instead. But there is no reason for the members of a proprietarycommunity to alienate any of their rights. Since, as Hoppe notes, the very purpose of the covenant [is]preserving and protecting private property, one would expect them to hang onto not only theirown real property, but as many rights to it as they could.
Since Bruenigs account of the libertarian future follows that of Hoppe, one would expect it to reflect all of Hoppes faults and errors. And indeed one would be correct.
One point needs emphasis. Bruenig considers Hoppe one of my favorite thinkers,[13] not because he has learned anything from Hoppe, but solely because of confirmation bias; because Hoppes views of libertarianism match Bruenigs own, already set views:
Whats interesting about Hoppe to me is that he sees exactly the things every critic of libertarianism sees. He sees that, in fact, totally unfettered private control over the resources of the world would be a brutal existence (if an existence at all) for the vast majorty ofpeople. Instead of denying these things are true (as many try to), he says they are absolutelytrue, and that constructing this private tyranny is precisely the point of libertarianism.[1]
So, while sometimes Bruenig hides his opinions of libertarianism behind phrases like according to Hoppe, those instances can be dismissed as mere semantic games. Bruenig is not merely describing Hoppes opinions, but also claiming that those opinions are fact and truth (or, in other words, Bruenigs opinions).
With that out of the way, one can turn to evaluating Bruenigs opinion of the libertarian future:
(1) a libertarian world is one in which we all basically live in these private gated communities that are generally managed by big landowners and their insurance companies (the insurance company is also the private police, by the way). The whole world will get chopped into what amount to gated communities, and insurance companies will decide who can live in them and who cant by looking at things like race, gender, class, age, and so on.[1]
No. While gated communities would probably exist in a libertarian world (and almost certainly would exist in Bruenigs Grab World), there is no reason to think the whole world will be chopped into them and that everyone would live in them. Neither is there any reason, or much likelihood,that insurance companies would be the ones to decide who lives in them. There is none at all tothink those companieswould become the police. Insurance companies are based on a profitable business model. An insurance company could see further opportunities for profit by getting into the police business; but so could any other company or entrepreneur.
Not only are most of Bruenigs assumptions here unlikely; two of them that we all will live in his gated communities, and that simultaneously his insurance companies will be deciding that a huge number of people cant live in them are also contradictory.
(2) [Insurance companies] biggest function will be to discriminate against people, and keep people of color, poor people, religious minorities, and so on from the good and civilized people.[1]
As noted, it is impossible both that everyone will live in Bruenigs gated communities and that many if not most people will be kept from living in them. To be charitable, Bruenig might be interpreted to mean (even though he doesnt say) that there will be separate gated communities catering to people of one color, one economic group, one religious minority, and so on. Theremight, but that would depend both on the strength of peoples prejudices, and on how much they value their prejudices over other things. One would expect both to be low in most communities, simply due to the fact that people with strong prejudices could go off and live in communities of their own.
(3) you cant be gay, polyamorous, a bum, or Jewish in this libertarian utopia.[1]
Why not? A person building and selling homes in a community would likely sell none to bums (if by that Bruenig means people with no money to buy them), but why would they refuse to sell them to the rest of Bruenigs list? How would they even know a persons religion or sexual partners without extensive and expensive background checks; and why would they take on that expense just to limit their customers? As noted, people who did care about those things could ghettoize into non-gay or non-Jewish communities, but that would simply lower anti-gay and anti-Jewish prejudice in thecommunities they left.
Besides, as Walter Block points out, suppose that the town or village passed a law prohibiting the entry of a bum, a Jew, or a Christian into the town, but that one of the local property owners wanted to invite such a person into his house or store. Then, for the town council to forbid this access would be a violation of private property rights.[15] Similarly, if a builderwanted to sell to a gay or a Jew, for a community government to forbid that would actuallyviolate property rights. Remember that the purpose of these communities would be defend property rights, not to violate them.
(4) in a world of a true lock down on private property, with no regulation on how such property might be used, there would be unbelievable amounts of social coercion to prevent people fromliving the lives theyd like.[1]
This claim of Bruenigs looks positively bizarre. In standard libertarian theory, private property in homes is important precisely because it allows people to live the lives theyd like on their own property. But not in Bruenigs version; as he sees it, the government in the future libertarian world will not and cannot tolerate people chattering about democratic governance and other evil things[1] in their own homes, any more than it will tolerate their having sex with whom they like in their own homes. And that is by no means all that a government will forbid; government intolerance would extend to vulgarity, obscenity, profanity, drug use, promiscuity, pornography, prostitution, homosexuality, polygamy, pedophilia or any other conceivable perversity or abnormality.[1]
It is bad enough that Bruenig sees this sort of government regulation of private property as no regulation, and worse that he calls it libertarian. But it gets even worse when one considers how such regulations could possibly be enforced. How could a community government knowwhether property owners are entertaining forbidden guests, taking forbidden drugs, having forbidden sex, practicing forbidden religions, listening to forbidden music, reading forbidden books, or saying forbidden things in their homes? Only by having the power to enter and search their homes at any time, and the power to monitor all their conversations.
Not only would Bruenigs libertarianism dispense with freedom of speech and religion, but also the security of person or property against unwarranted searches, surveillance, and seizures
(5) But thats not all. What happens if Bruenig-style libertarian governments find a property owner doing any of those forbidden things? Why, then They will violently exile such people.[1] And again: If you make statements against Hoppes politics, are a nature lover, or are gay [oranything else on Bruenigs lists] you will be expelled from society. [1; stress inoriginal].
Not only do Bruenigs libertarian governments have the power to regulate what people do on their own property; not only do they have the power to search and surveil property owners without the owners consent; they also have the power to throw property owners out of their own homes and expropriate the homes.
To sum up: In Hoppes account of the libertarian world (and also Bruenigs, as he calls Hoppes the true account), individuals would have few if any rights, including few if any property rights. How did the two of them come to reach such bizarre conclusions? Why do they think that an ideology based on individual rights would turn around and practise the exact opposite? There seem to be two reasons, both based on confusion.
The first confusion seems to lie in Bruenigs use of the term the libertarian utopia to describe Hoppes preferred community organization. Both Hoppe and Bruenig assume that, in their postulated libertarian world, all the communities will be the same: that members will have the same beliefs, tastes, and preferences, and those norms will be what every community government enforces. Perhaps it is understandable that Hoppe conflates his own preferred norms with those of every libertarian, indeed of every property owner. It is less understandable that Bruenig does the same thing, considering that those do not seem to be his preferred norms; his motive appears to be only to caricature libertarian ideas. In any case, this looks like simple confusion.
Robert Nozick (whom Bruenig claims to have read) points out that, in a libertarian society individual communities can have any character compatible with the operation of the framework.[15, 325] Byframwork he means the background law governing relations between communities, protectingpeoples right to leave communities, and the like. As Nozick sees it, the framework isequivalent to the minimal state.[15, 333] In contrast, within that framework, individual communities will not correspond to any one form of organization or set of rules: There will notbe one kind of community existing and one kind of life led in utopia. Utopia will consist ofutopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds oflives under different institutions.[15, 311-312]
The second confusion seems to lie in their account of private property. While both describe thesituation in these communities as being based on private property, both assume a state ofaffairs in which private property does not exist. In Hoppean communities, all property is owned by its ruler(whom Hoppe actually calls the proprietor). He may assign property to individuals, and even tell them that hiscommunity covenant is for the protection of their privateproperty, but this is merely a bait-and-switch. In fact they remain mere tenants, and theirhomes and land merely tenant-property.[1] Real ownership is always held by the ruler.
In this case, Bruenigs confusion (given his ideological prefrence for state property) is themore understandable; he appears to sincerely believe that all property is given (or should begiven) by the government, and is (or should be) owned only by permission of the government. Hoppe , on the other hand, seems motivated only by narcissism; since he wants property owners to dowhat and only what he would do, he imagines himself the sole proprietor. But whatever the reason, the idea of a government that lets people alone to live the way they would like to live is incomprehensible to both of them. Both seem unable to imagine that rational people might have different preferences from them.
As strange as their beliefs are, a free society could still accommodate both of them: it would leave Hoppe free to set up his racist community and Bruenig to set up his socialist community. However, it would also leave others free to reject their two communties, and limit their communities success to their ability to persuade others rather than forcing them. Which explains why both, in their own way, reject theidea of a free society.
[1] Matt Bruenig, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Libertarian Extraordinaire, Demos, September 11, 2013.http://www.demos.org/blog/9/11/13/hans-hermann-hoppe-libertarian-extraordinaire
[11] Ludwig von Mises, Human Action. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1949, 150. Print.
[12] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (translated by Jonathan Bennett), Early ModernTexts, December, 2010. Web, Jan. 12, 2017.http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/rousseau1762.pdf
[13] Matt Bruenig, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Libertarian Theoretical Historian, Demos, December 31,2014. http://www.demos.org/blog/12/31/14/hans-hermann-hoppe-libertarian-theoretical-historian
[14] Walter Block, Plumbline Libertarianism: A critique of Hoppe, Reason Papers 29, 161.https://reasonpapers.com/pdf/29/rp_29_10.pdf
[15] Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974. Print.
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When Worlds Collude: Hoppe, Bruenig, and their shared vision of the libertarian future (II) - Nolan Chart LLC
