What is the best aspect of Monarchy? What is its single best feature? This is a very easy question. The best part of any Monarchist order is its respect for private property rights. In a Monarchy the King tends to enforce private property rights while in a Democracy or Republic it is the public property rights that are strengthened over time. Private property rights are (as I have maintained all along) the only rights man has. The right to life or the right of free speech are actually Private Property Rights (i.e. a man
owns his own body, no one else having the right to do so). A Monarchy is, strictly speaking, either absolute or feudal. I support the latter, but the former is still highly superior to the world order we have today. Why? Same answer: Because Kings tended to explain their power through private property rights and it was exceedingly difficult for them to abuse the population. Any undermining of his subjects' property rights would erode the Monarch's claim to his own! In an absolute Monarchy the King was the owner of the entire landmass (much like in today's system) and the people were his tenants. In essence he was a landlord and they were renting his land. This meant many things. It meant, for instance, that the King could rarely legislate without the consent of the people. A landlord today has no right to unilaterally change the contract with the man who rents his house, so it was with even the (so-called) absolute Kings. Today, of course, we have legislative tyranny. The government does not wait for our permission to abuse our rights, it simply does so. Most of what democratic states do would have cost an absolute Monarch his head. Just think of the taxation situation. Even the most efficient absolute Monarch, the last Kaiser of the German Empire
Friedrich Wilhelm von Preußen (known as Wilhelm II), was only able to collect taxes amounting to just over 10% of GDP in times of war. Meanwhile today's democracy collects nearly 50% or over 50% of GDP all the time! This is theft pure and simple (because supposedly we have private property... but just try refusing the taxman). The King was not payed taxes as we have today, he was paid small fees. Most of the population did not pay at all.
To know that the above is true we don't need to look far. Just find the origins of liberty and property as we think of them today. Probably the best definition of property comes from that immense work of beauty, the Commentaries on the Laws of England, by
Sir William Blackstone. Blackstone (who is widely cited by many from Herbert Spencer to the US Supreme Court) is the founder of rights are we know them today. As he wrote:
"...the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe." That is our most important right. The only one we really need. This is why all socialists (whether the hardcore communist variety or the parasitic democrats) are our enemies everywhere and anywhere because they are the enemies of civilization and humanity itself.
"It meant, for instance, that the King could rarely legislate without the consent of the people."
ReplyDelete"Consent of the people" implies all the people, not just the majority. That is almost impossible to do in practical terms. The absolute monarch of Saudi Arabia governs without the consent of homosexuals, Shias, Christians, Jews, and others who are banned from entering his Kingdom or being born in his Kingdom, and he is considered an absolute benevolent monarch by the people of Saudi Arabia.
"There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They–the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centred lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism–will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order." ---Hoppe
"There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society."--- The King of Saudi Arabia does just this with both advocates of democracy and communism, as well as with homosexuals or as Hoppe put it, "advocates of the alternative lifestyle- homosexuality." The King of Saudi Arabia as well as his family literally advocates physically removing them. They are not simply ignored. If "these advocates" refuse to voluntarily move from the Kingdom because they do not want to be separated from their families and friends, they forced and coerced to renounce their beliefs as parasitic and dangerous or face capital punishment or imprisonment by the landowning King. Again, the monarch does not simply ignore those opposed to his absolutism because they are "parasitic," and their "dangerous" ideas can spread. He deals with them just like he would with political opponents, only he is sanctioned to use whatever means necessary because they are on his property and they refuse to leave his property. One would say that the King of Saudi Arabia does not maintain a "libertarian order," but he is still an absolute monarch who can do whatever the hell he wants to his subjects including reneging on the idea of maintaing a libertarian social order when he finds it most convenient. Absolute monarchism does not equate to liberty for all or a libertarian social order, far from it.
I agree with what you just wrote, and I also agree with the King of Saudi Arabia! Thank you for making my point clear! Anarcho-capitalism is great, but if we can't have it and have to micromanage the people through the state, then Monarchy is the way to go!
ReplyDeleteOur morality differs. I find the quote from Hoppe morally repulsive. If my son became a socialist, if my friends were gay, if my parents were environmentalists, and if my cousins were hedonists that indulged in selfishness and did not ever voluntarily donate, they would all be dead under this monarchist model or they would be kicked out of society for essentially dissent and left to die. If your parents became socialist democrats right now, they would end the same way. This is totalitarianism only enforced through private as opposed to public means, pure and simple. A king owns property. A person lives on his property. You have no land property, therefore since all rights are derived from property rights, you have no rights. This legitimizes persecution by the King (his absolute monarchist state) against anyone who speaks freely in views against his favor. This is horrific. That is all I will say. Pinochet and Hitler persecuted opponents both the same way (one for privatization, one for nationalization) as if they owned the state as their own personal absolute monarchy, and both reached these ends of justified murder, one for the individual, one for the collective. This is horrific. if you lived under the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, you would be dead because you are Catholic or you would be forced to convert to Islam because you are in the minority who is not Muslim. You aren't allowed to leave his property Kingdom because you have no property rights (thus no other rights derived from that) and only the King does. Even Shakespeare wrote against absolute monarchism (and absolute power) and its effects in King Lear and Richard III after the the Wars of the Roses. This is horrific.
ReplyDeleteYou really don't understand the point do you? The point is that in an anarcho-capitalist system everyone could choose for themselves. Everyone would be free. I am not saying I would work to eliminate homosexuals (I would have no right to do so!). But if I didn't like someone (such as welfare bums or meat-eaters or military officers) I would have the freedom to not interact with them. In today's tyrannical world I am not given a choice. I have to treat people who I detest in the same way as people I like or else I am punished by the dictator. I am against hegemony and despotism which is why I oppose democracy. Even Plato over 2000 years ago knew democracy always degenerates into tyranny. Because democracy is, in Lord Acton's words, tyranny of the majority or that party which carries elections.
ReplyDelete"Even Plato over 2000 years ago knew democracy always degenerates into tyranny."
ReplyDeletePlato assumed democracy would degenerate:
"The insatiable desire for good to the neglect of everything else may transform a democracy and lead to a demand for despotism."-The Republic
Plato also said this:
"A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants."
and
"Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or in individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery."
and
"When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income."- Book I, The Republic
Also, Socrates had a different notion of "tyrants":
"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers."-Socrates
"I have to treat people who I detest in the same way as people I like, or else I'm punished by a dictator."- Mateusz
Even if you were still a Neo-Nazi I would treat you the same as everyone else and not simply "detest" you as a human being, unlike Hoppe or absolute monarchs.
And absolute monarchy would not degenerate into tyranny quicker than democracy? And the "great generalissimo" Pinochet is still great because he privatized (preserved a relatively more open market) at the expense of thousands of dissenting lives?
Please, I don't equate democracy with perfection. I equate perfect competition with perfection. I equate equal liberty laws (what you would call Spencer's laws, what I would call absolute liberty) for all as perfection. But like anarcho-capitalism that is unrealistic and not going to happen, especially given that human beings are imperfect and cannot ever 100% agree on every single issue (even libertarians and Austrians have disagreements amongst themselves). But this idea of an absolute monarchy being the best alternative to "perfection," is simply absurd (“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”- Lord Acton) Half the people I know and love would automatically be dead if the world were to adopt these series of absolute or feudal monarchies for simple reasons of adopting "alternative lifestyles," i.e. being dissenters of the "libertarian social order" or simply "social order". What Hoppe said about others "physically removed from society" and "physically separated and expelled from society" is so instinctively offensive and I can only imagine my entire family being exiled and separated from me, or forcibly put to death or physically and involuntarily "separated" for "parasitically" existing and having differing beliefs. This is horrific.
Well if your family includes bad people, then I would fully support expelling them. Just like I support expelling thieves or murderers. You are still not understanding the basic fact of the definition of private property. How would you like it if I went into your house and started demanding you feed me and destroying your things? I assume you would want me removed... or not? This is only what I am saying. In a private law society people would have the right to remove whoever they wish from their property. This would not lead to massive deaths or other such things. But most likely 98% of the people who are now on welfare would have to get their act together and stop being lazy leeches on society. If a leech attaches itself to you, you remove it, correct? Or maybe you are such a good neoliberal that you just let the leeches live and multiply all over your body? You don't understand that an anarcho-capitalist social order eliminates all aggression from relationships between people. I don't have the right to aggress against you and you against me. We both live on our property and we can cooperate or not, but all is based on voluntary choice. This is different from the world today. In democracies millions of people are put in jail for preserving their own property. In democracies people are put in prison for speaking out against the regime. In democracies and socialist states there is no room for dissent. All dissenters are powerless to defend themselves. A person like me can't defend himself whether he votes or not. Either way I will be robbed and exploited against my will. The situation CANNOT be worse than it is now. We live under a mild version of Soviet order. The notion of a state assumes that all individuals within the state are slaves.
ReplyDelete"bad people"=advocates of homosexual lifestyle (lifestyle?) and personal hedonists?--from Hoppe quote above.
ReplyDelete"I would say that offers any ruler a strong incentive to act as he/she is supposed to act."
Your only alternative that is outside the realm of anarcho-capitalism is absolute monarchy, and that assumes the monarch is benevolent. This is a City of God scenario. But even if the monarch wasn't benevolent, then nobody would be justified in removing him from his own property (all of which he rightfully owns regardless of his benevolence) and the people would not be authorized from leaving or entering his domain (his property) without consent. And the only way to get rid of an unjust king would be to wait for him to die or kill him (attempting to seize his rightful property unlawfully), in which case there is no guarantee that the next successor (for instance, the murderer) would become any less tyrannical and the same fate of the successor could easily be repeated again again (along with the illegal seizure of the King's property again and again). This is also the premise of many of Shakespeare's works.
I am not questioning your view on anarcho-capitalism (I would love the existence of perfect competition if it could realistically exist), just the absolute monarchist aspect. “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”- Lord Acton.
Rob, if this is you, be a man and debate me face to face (I live next door to you man). Otherwise you just keep writing the same thing over and over without too much substace to it. And you keep using quotes that prove my point thinking it's to your advantage...
ReplyDelete"Libertarian and Far-Right Anarchist Ideology"- title of old blog
ReplyDeleteWhy do you identify with far right (right wing Libertarianism in the form of a monarch) as opposed to just pure libertarianism? Do you just mean far right as in just capitalistic? Do you reject the Nolan Chart, which identifies far right ideologies with constrictions of personal freedom at the expense of absolute economic freedom (i.e. benevolent private property monarchies ridding off dissenters of socialists and democrats)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_chart
It is obvious (and has been for hundreds of years) that it is the left that wants to curtail economic freedom. And economic freedom is in fact personal freedom. You cannot have personal freedomw without economic freedom and vice versa. This is why I support the ancien regime - for the most part it supports freedom (classical liberalism) and rejects dictatorship (socialism).
ReplyDeleteYes, and under that classification anything beyond pure capitalism is in one varying degree or another socialistic. On top of that taxes are a form of collective social engineering; progressive, fair, flat, or any other.
ReplyDeleteThat's correct. But you can have varying degrees of this exploitation. For example a Stalinist regime is very leftist while a Friedman one much closer to freedom. You can have a horrific slave-master or a more lenient one.
ReplyDeleteYes, and all socialists and liberals are not entitled to live in an anarcho-capitalist society because they would publicly and privately advocate theft from another individual, especially if they refused to voluntarily leave the system they themselves denounce.
ReplyDeleteThat is not correct. Everyone is entitled to live in a libertarian anarcho-capitalist order! But if they advocate theft and slavery I doubt they would be accepted by the average Joe. Therefore they could create their own voluntary state or whatever, as long as they don't start to attack people living in the libertarian order. It's not like everybody has to all of the sudden become anti-statist (although that would be the ideal). We can have small pockets of non-states existing among states. Then people in the states would see how good they are doing and also want to secede. But libertarians would not work to destroy states. We just want to be left alone.
ReplyDelete"There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. They–the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centred lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism–will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order." - Hoppe
ReplyDelete"Everyone is entitled to live in a libertarian anarcho-capitalist order!"
They contradict. A socialist parasite must be "physically removed from society if one is to maintain a libertarian order." I agree with you, not Hoppe, that was the point of the last few comments.
"But if they advocate theft and slavery I doubt they would be accepted by the average Joe."
Yeh, the average Joe likes Keynes smile too.
I never contradict Hoppe. Here Hoppe writes about what would create the most utility within a anarcho-capitalist society. Indeed such phenomena as democracy and communism are unacceptable. And if there would be a guy in your house saying how he wants to rob you - you would kick him out right? I would. So democrats can live communally as democrats on their own property and interact with the libertarian stateless order, but they would indeed be removed just like murderers and thieves are removed. It is the way life is. In the same way you argue against removing democrats someone could argue against removing thieves. Also, as you may know, I am personally quite a hedonist (deriving many of my morals from Nietzsche and Epicurus). Even though Hoppe mentions hedonism as damaging (and most likely it would disappear in a libertarian social order due to social darwinism) he does not mean that individual anarchism would be eliminated entirely with a snap of the fingers. He also does not mean that aggression can be used against people who are living on their own property. But through social darwinism such people would tend toward low capital accumulation and thus become marginalized economically.
ReplyDelete"Here Hoppe writes about what would create the most utility within a anarcho-capitalist society."
ReplyDeleteYes, but aren't you applying the law of utilitarianism to humanity or society? I know John Stuart Mill advocated utilitarianism but you reject it. Do you just mean in purely economic terms?
Also, on this issue it is just a matter of opinion of what the nature of man is. I don't think I'm as optimistic as you are. Government may be unnecessary in a non-aggressive anarcho-capitalistic society. But I still regard the nature of man as Hobbes-ian as ever. Man, in my view, is still not a noble savage or has evolved greatly since the time of cavemen (a theme of 2001 A Space Odyssey), but he is foolish for the most part and partially constricted by societal constraints (acting through self preservation in society). He has been, for a good portion of humanity (not saying this about you or me or anybody at this school) irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved, and this sense of instant gratification would not be bred out through social Darwinism and transformed into long term non-aggressiveness unless evolution suddenly sped up in the next couple of thousand years, at which point man would have destroyed himself again and again and again before he would reach an everlasting more peaceful existence. Personally I don't think that can be done or will occur. Some medieval monarchs bet against the spreading of democracy a few hundreds years ago, and they were wrong too. Maybe I'm wrong and mankind will improve. I doubt it if he hasn't bred these traits of aggression out in his millions of years of evolution. Modern day evolutionary scientists and theorists are also divided on this subject. I don't know, but I admit I don't and will not assume and speculate further. Again, I could be wrong, but I cannot conclusively extrapolate either way. In my view, there are universals. Personally, I think laziness, idiocy, irrationality, hedonism, will always exist and it is just as universal and natural as natural law.
The average Joe would probably not think Keynes was saying he would want to (directly) rob you when he is talking about his economic theories. Given the fact so few people outside of libertarians equate taxation with slavery and theft, I doubt the average Joe would equate taxation as slavery unless he was forced to recognize it or persuaded by his average right leaning libertarian anarcho-capitalist next door.
"Physically removed from society" implies a society of all private anarcho-capitalists universally agreeing that socialism is pure evil. If a new political and economic movement spreads, whatever it may be, and it becomes popular (populism among the private owners), then it threatens the existence of anarcho-capitalist society, as socialism and democracy threatened the existence of monarchies a few hundred years ago. The very existence of a socialist threatens the anarcho-capitalist order, because the socialist threatens anyone's property. You would tolerate his existence in that society, but he would not tolerate yours. Your only survival would be either reliant on a private contractor or your own gun against his attacks on your private property to claim it as his own, and in either circumstance you are still purchasing a defense against another person's private army.
You raise too many issues there for me to asnwer. First of all utilitarianism - yes, it is evil. But that is only assuming that it is defined as "the ends justify the means". In reality private property society (moral societ based on "the means justify the ends") turns out to be utilitarian (i.e. it yields the most goods and services per capital). This is a great observation that can be found in Spencer's writings. Second - will negative traits die out? They will because people posessing them will die. We all should want them to die. They are simply bad people. Without the ability to leech off others they will qickly perish (it does not take a million years for a man to starve to death...). Now when it comes to the average Joe's thinking. I simply don't care about his opinion! If only he left me alone I would have no problem with him being even a communist! The only issue is that he is robbing me and enslaving me by forcing me into his system. I don't mind voluntary cooperation under socialism or communism as long as such systems are not thrust upon me and I can live in peace and tranquility completely isolated from them. Only private property anarchism guarantees me that right fully, but Monarchy does a pretty good job at that too.
ReplyDelete