“We’re the first generation to say that voting is worthless,” a young protestor tells the New York Times. The article documents global disgust with political establishments, and a conviction that the usual democratic procedures are no longer working.
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/18564/hoppe-rules-the-world/
Hoppe Rules the World
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{ 18 comments }
I have a hard time being optimistic about this. Seems like all these “young people” have been fed promises of an easy ride of life by their cosmopolitan lefty public-school teachers and are frustrated that the world couldn’t deliver. Why, because the whole idea was ridiculous from the beginning? No, of course not. The problem is that the “system” isn’t sharing the wealth, you see.
It’s like being a citizen of Rome. Yes, the government is despicable beyond description, but those barbarian hordes battering the gates aren’t interested in righting wrongs – they’re just in it for the loot.
I doubt these people would trade their worthless votes for Habsburg rule.
They’d be better off if they did.
And, as usual, the comments there, particularly those well received, sadden me. They’re still confusing this socialist system of state-sponsored and protected business as capitalism.
Maybe the problem of confusion is ours for adopting the word capitalism instead of sticking with laissez faire, or some compelling translation thereof. Didn’t Karl Marx coin or at least popularize the use of capitalism to describe laissez faire? On that score alone we ought to consider replacing it with something else. I suspect that most Americans today equate corporatism with capitalism.
Incidentally, Marx (historicist) perscription of “the revolution” would come about because of capitalism run amok, hence, true communists should be ardent laissez-fairers
Schumpeter also said capitalism’s very success creates the conditions to destroy itself.
I thought he adopted the term as an alternative description for mercatilism, by which he hoped to make his writing “fresh” and thereby become immortal.
I wonder if it’s time to move on to the next stage of government- sharing the power! My idea is that if people choose to be citizens, then they should be required to do some community service (fire brigade, street patrol, militia training, whatever) parttime, and then they should become members of their local government for a few weeks. The longer you stayed as a law-abiding citizen, the higher up you would automatically go, meaning that you are given executive posts as you rise, with the longest-serving citizen becoming local mayor automatically. Get rid of politicians and parties- let us all have a direct share in government! As for other tiers of government, local executives could meet with other local executives in conferences, as needed. Decentralise, and have elected delegates go to conferences (maybe this could automatically be the job given the mayor, as part of his/her duties.)
Philosophically this is forced slavery. Practically this is taking productive people away from being productive.
NOT SO, RTB!!! I did say, if you choose to be a citizen! If you did not choose citizenship, you would be a civilian, subject to local rules, but choosing not to enforce them, or have any say in what the rules are. How is this slavery, in any philosophy? Every adult would be able to vote on any and all laws, once each year. If you joined up in October of one year, you would serve just two or three days each month for 11 months, and in October of every year thereafter, all october citizens would assemble at the enlarged town hall, and review all laws, with eldest citizens speaking first, and new recruits last.
If you did not want to enlist, you would not be compelled.
Why not just join the Technocracy Revolution instead?
“If you did not want to enlist, you would not be compelled.”
And if you did not enlist, you would not “have any say in what the rules are”.
Compulsion takes more than one form.
That’s comparable to dhimmitude in the Muslim world. You don’t have to convert to Islam, but you’ll be a second-class citizen unless you do.
So you think citizenship should be compulsory? And Automatic? Like it is today?
I cannot comment for RTB or Ampontan, but I would say that citizenship should be abolished, along with the entire state apparatus, and that all useful social functions currently supplied by the state should be supplied by private persons and organisations, such as firms, mutual aid societies, etc.
The only rule should be that no person is permitted to aggress against another, where aggression is defined, not as the use of force per se, but rather as the initiation of (as well as the threat to initiate) force or fraud against the person or the justly-acquired property of another. Nothing else should be violently suppressed.
To force any rules, beyond compulsory nonaggression, upon anyone is slavery, regardless of whether we call the person upon whom said rules are forced a “citizen” or not. When one says, “You have only these choices: you may be forced by the citizens to, e.g., not paint on Sundays; or you may have a small say in the matter, but you’ll be forced to do work for the government for X days/weeks/years,” that is slavery, because either way, your self-ownership, your right to nonviolently control your own body in any way you see fit, is being usurped. In the first instance, you are being ruled over by a body politick with which you have in no way contracted. In the second, you are obliged to sacrifice your mind and body to the same body politick in the form of labour, and for what? A mere vote in the rules that that body politick forces upon you and others, without even a shred of guarantee that you will be free from the arbitrary and liberticidal edicts of the others within said body politick.
There are other practical objections to your proposed régime. When the longest-serving citizen becomes mayor, what guarantee do we have that this mayor (1) won’t be so old that her or his mind has started to go, or (2) won’t be just another power-hungry scumbag?
Respectfully yours,
Alex Peak
So you think public service for citizens should be compulsory? And automatic? Unlike it is today? And that citizens should be compelled to accept their government executives based on seniority, regardless of competence?
As I said, compulsion takes more than one form.
When you write that the elders would speak first, the first images that came to mind were of Robert Byrd and Jimmy Carter.
There are several aspects of Hoppe’s ideas that I find appealing, and they certainly should be supported in public debate, if only to shift the center to that direction, but ultimately a form of allegiance to some group, if only a band of hunter-gatherers, is inevitable.
Citizenship isn’t a choice, it is thrust upon you at birth and if you choose to revoke it, wait a few years and pay the government all your money.
At no point did I sign any papers agreeing to be ruled over by the US Government. It’s beyond my choice.
Bastiat’s words never rang so true: “The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.”
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