http://oxlib.blogspot.com/…

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

“There is, of course, some truth in the statement that there’s a difference between criminals and states. But the difference is actually one that makes states look even worse than plain criminals.”

So declared Professor Hans Hermann Hoppe, retired economist at the University of Nevada, LV, and Distinguished Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in his address to the society on Thursday, 23rd October.

Speaking on the subject, ‘What is Exploitaiton? Who Exploits Whom?,’ Professor Hoppe argued that Marxist class-analysis was essentially true in its nominal conclusions, but that fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of exploitative activities had produced the correct conclusions by faulty reasoning, causing them to be misapplied to voluntary free-market exchange. Marxism is correct, however, in recognising the exploitative character of the state, which prospers only by expropriating legitimate property owners and interfering in private exchange. The state is exploitative, then, in that every act of the state cannot occur without making some people - the taxpayer, the conscript &c - worse off, contrary to the mutual benefit of both parties in voluntary exchange.

Refuting the claims of Hobbes and Rousseau, Hoppe rejects the state as a necessary evil, explaining its origins as equivalent to those of criminal gangs and the mafia, who monopolise ‘protection’ not for the benefit of those being protected, but for the enrichment of the protectors. Discussing how the state has evolved from its primitive origins into a largely acquiesced institution, he draws on the thought of French essayist Étienne de La Boétie, pointing out the central place of education and custom that permitted the perpetuation of the state;

“It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they are born … the powerful influence of custom is in no respect more compelling than in this, namely, habituation to subjection”

Discours de la servitude volontaire, Étienne de La Boétie, p. 60

In further consolidating its control by monopolising the supply of currency and prosecuting as counterfeiters those who engage in equivalent activities, the state makes itself a party to all transactions, facilitating further exploitative rent seeking. The role, too, of the intellectuals is considered, with Hoppe sharing Robert Nozick’s analysis of the sybmiotic relationship between anti-capitalist intellectuals and the state.

Returning to Marxist rhetoric, Hoppe concludes by arguing for the development of a “clear class consciousness,” not based on narrow, misleading criteria of income, but a coalition of the exploited - that is, the productive agents who are net losers from the state. Perhaps an appropriate statement of the unity of the exploited could go something like this;

“I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

John Galt, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

The part about Hogan’s Heros at the end is great.

UPDATE: Ron Paul on CNN this morning

http://www.economist.com/…

A LIFELONG libertarian, Alan Greenspan does not ordinarily advocate giving the government more power. But he does so in a new epilogue to the paperback edition of his memoir, parts of which were made available to The Economist. The crisis of the past year has convinced him it is the lesser evil. Better someone else be in charge of bail-outs, he argues, than the Federal Reserve, which he led for 18 years.

Mr Greenspan says a high-level panel of American financial officials should be given broad power to seize any financial institution whose failure threatens the entire economy, bail out its creditors and close it down. “We need laws that specify and limit the conditions for bail-outs” and do so transparently with taxpayers’ money, “rather than circuitously through the central bank, as was done during the blow-up of Bear Stearns,” he writes in “The Age of Turbulence”. (Penguin is to release the paperback on September 9th.)

If that means the government has to wade in, so be it. “Our country has long since abandoned the notion that we should leave crises to be resolved solely by the marketplace,” he says. “The critical need…is to formalise…the procedures improvised in the case of Bear Stearns. This should ensure that in the future, government financial assistance to lending institutions does not impact the Federal Reserve’s balance-sheet and monetary policy.”

He says a standby panel, empowered by Congress, should determine if an institution’s failure is dangerous enough to require taxpayer support. It would then form a vehicle to take the firm into “conservatorship”, wipe out the equity, preferably impose a “haircut” on its debts before guaranteeing them, and then sell its assets. Mr Greenspan’s model is the Resolution Trust Corporation (on whose board he served), created in 1989 to take over failing thrifts, sell their assets, then close itself down. He pours cold water on a proposal by Hank Paulson, America’s treasury secretary, to give the Fed broad responsibility over market stability.

Mr Greenspan’s proposal may be politically difficult. For years Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, America’s mortgage giants, resisted the creation of a regulator that could close them down. With other large institutions—be they investment banks, hedge funds or insurance companies—there might be even more of a fuss. And the Fed is not yet ready to bow out. “Unless I hear from Congress that I should not be responding to a crisis situation, I think that it’s a long-standing role of the central bank to use its lender-of-last-resort facilities,” Ben Bernanke, Mr Greenspan’s successor at the Fed, said last month.

Just because the man used to hang out with Ayn Rand and was apparently a libertarian Objectivist doesn’t mean he continues to be one. Anyone who advocates aggression is not by definition a libertarian. But what better way to destroy a movement then by redefining the words? Eric Arthur Blair would be proud. It was done at around the turn of the 20th century with ‘liberal.’ In economics ‘inflation’ has been redefined. Now a concerted effort appears to be being made to change the meaning of ‘libertarian.’ People like Glenn Beck and Neil Bortz nationally claim to be libertarians. Advocating government manipulation of the market and money bailouts, immigration control and war with people who pose no threat is NOT libertarian.