"An absolute hereditary monarch has no interest in employing a dysfunctional bureaucracy. Since he wants to see his nation thrive, he is more likely to adopt the economic and social system that seems to make nations thrive...."
If I were to claim that in a communist system, every comrade will work tirelessly and selflessly for the good of the collective, I would be mocked --- correctly! -- for my naivete and my ignorance of human nature as well as the plain historical record.
And yet this guy thinks that hereditary monarchs will work only for the benefit of their nation, and never allow a dysfunctional bureaucracy grow up under them. Has he ever looked at the historical record? Can he name even three historical monarchs who even vaguely resemble this fantasy?
Of course, he may claim to be describing the Ideal Monarch. As though that's any better than the Ideal Communist Man?
The interesting thing is that Rothbard's "us" (meaning the people he wanted the elites to stop dominating) is not "him", which is pretty normal for this sector of the American far-right. He went to Columbia, he was an early recipient of right-wing welfare, he spent his first 15 years out of college theorizing, for god's sake--what could be more "the unholy elite" than that?
The puzzle when you dial in on someone like him is whether that's a simple will-to-power move of saying "my small universe of extreme thinkers is simply not enough to command any kind of democratic power unless I help people align their proper class resentments with my ideology", at which point this is a kind of right-variation on Bolshevist vanguardism, or whether this is mostly psychological and personal--e.g., a resentment of the people who stood in his way personally during his aspirational ascension.
Really great post John. Interesting to see as these ideas manifest in the mainstream GOP but also just this weekend even more explicitly in the national libertarian party with the Mises Caucus taking over.
This is wonderful! A symphony of precise and apropos analogies to accompany a rising social cacophony (kakaphony?).
Just one thing that I think might have improved it: The dysfunctional future you describe in the last paragraph is a near match for Europe in the early Middle Ages, as feudal organization was growing up in the shadow of politically weak, mythically strong, monarchies (papacy included), and what eventually became Common Law was still in its infancy.
We are lucky that firearms did not complicate medieval weaponry before the 16th century. For a future we might imagine our new feudal society decreasing the surplus population (as proposed by Manchester Liberal Ebenezer Scrooge) and devolving, deindustrializing, deschooling, and forgetting how to build AK47s.
What is an example of a nation that "thrived" under libertarian capitalism, as the quote below asserts? I can't think of one.
"he is more likely to adopt the economic and social system that seems to make nations thrive: libertarian capitalism."
It seems to me that the massive blind spot that all libertarian (and more extreme) visions share is in how to approach "the commons." They all seem to imagine the absence of anything like a commons, but various common resources are inevitable as soon as a group comes together, or any scenarios where one person's freedom directly clashes against that of another.
I like to use smoking as my test example, where air is the commons. In a shared space, whose freedom trumps whose – the person who wants to light up, or the person who wants to breathe smoke-free air? Libertarians will say that everything is owned by someone (shared space doesn't exist), or that the market will decide (customers will come to the smoky restaurant or they won't), but in the real world, the libertarian ways of reconciling these kinds things has never worked to anyone's satisfaction.
Also really enjoyed this post. Although for me, I guess I wonder to what extent the right or far right in it’s politically existing form is guided or motivated by a coherent ideology at all, besides the self-interested advancement of class interest. I remember going to a conference on fascism after Trump was elected where there was a lot of analysis of stuff Bannon and Breitbart had said, and feeling like in some sense they “rainmade” Trump and were elevated by his success just by dint of the fact that the left needed some kind of foothold for textual analysis. The ideologies always seem totally fungible and ex post facto to me.
Late to the discussion, but it seems like Neal Stephenson gamed out these end-states in the '90s with Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, both of which posit exactly what you're describing here. He's always hung out with tech types and is freakishly good at being very early and very canny about their deep desires.
Let's ask a bunch of those salt-of-the-earth, oppressed, types—say, New York construction workers—c.1971 what they thought of Rothbard once he were explained to them….
These influences were more explicit in the 2015 alt right than the current post alt right, and it would be interesting to address how the Hoppe/Rothbard stuff leads to, synthesizes with, and/or contradicts the Nietzschean BAPism prominent now. Ditto the Catholic Francosim which vies with it, but which I think lacks any mass appeal and is mostly an affectation of beltway nerds.
"An absolute hereditary monarch has no interest in employing a dysfunctional bureaucracy. Since he wants to see his nation thrive, he is more likely to adopt the economic and social system that seems to make nations thrive...."
If I were to claim that in a communist system, every comrade will work tirelessly and selflessly for the good of the collective, I would be mocked --- correctly! -- for my naivete and my ignorance of human nature as well as the plain historical record.
And yet this guy thinks that hereditary monarchs will work only for the benefit of their nation, and never allow a dysfunctional bureaucracy grow up under them. Has he ever looked at the historical record? Can he name even three historical monarchs who even vaguely resemble this fantasy?
Of course, he may claim to be describing the Ideal Monarch. As though that's any better than the Ideal Communist Man?
What a rube. What a laughable rube.
The interesting thing is that Rothbard's "us" (meaning the people he wanted the elites to stop dominating) is not "him", which is pretty normal for this sector of the American far-right. He went to Columbia, he was an early recipient of right-wing welfare, he spent his first 15 years out of college theorizing, for god's sake--what could be more "the unholy elite" than that?
The puzzle when you dial in on someone like him is whether that's a simple will-to-power move of saying "my small universe of extreme thinkers is simply not enough to command any kind of democratic power unless I help people align their proper class resentments with my ideology", at which point this is a kind of right-variation on Bolshevist vanguardism, or whether this is mostly psychological and personal--e.g., a resentment of the people who stood in his way personally during his aspirational ascension.
At least the second mention in recent posts; should I finally commit to finishing Dostoevsky's Demons? Is Pevear/Volokhonsky the best translation?
Really great post John. Interesting to see as these ideas manifest in the mainstream GOP but also just this weekend even more explicitly in the national libertarian party with the Mises Caucus taking over.
This is wonderful! A symphony of precise and apropos analogies to accompany a rising social cacophony (kakaphony?).
Just one thing that I think might have improved it: The dysfunctional future you describe in the last paragraph is a near match for Europe in the early Middle Ages, as feudal organization was growing up in the shadow of politically weak, mythically strong, monarchies (papacy included), and what eventually became Common Law was still in its infancy.
We are lucky that firearms did not complicate medieval weaponry before the 16th century. For a future we might imagine our new feudal society decreasing the surplus population (as proposed by Manchester Liberal Ebenezer Scrooge) and devolving, deindustrializing, deschooling, and forgetting how to build AK47s.
What is an example of a nation that "thrived" under libertarian capitalism, as the quote below asserts? I can't think of one.
"he is more likely to adopt the economic and social system that seems to make nations thrive: libertarian capitalism."
It seems to me that the massive blind spot that all libertarian (and more extreme) visions share is in how to approach "the commons." They all seem to imagine the absence of anything like a commons, but various common resources are inevitable as soon as a group comes together, or any scenarios where one person's freedom directly clashes against that of another.
I like to use smoking as my test example, where air is the commons. In a shared space, whose freedom trumps whose – the person who wants to light up, or the person who wants to breathe smoke-free air? Libertarians will say that everything is owned by someone (shared space doesn't exist), or that the market will decide (customers will come to the smoky restaurant or they won't), but in the real world, the libertarian ways of reconciling these kinds things has never worked to anyone's satisfaction.
Also really enjoyed this post. Although for me, I guess I wonder to what extent the right or far right in it’s politically existing form is guided or motivated by a coherent ideology at all, besides the self-interested advancement of class interest. I remember going to a conference on fascism after Trump was elected where there was a lot of analysis of stuff Bannon and Breitbart had said, and feeling like in some sense they “rainmade” Trump and were elevated by his success just by dint of the fact that the left needed some kind of foothold for textual analysis. The ideologies always seem totally fungible and ex post facto to me.
Late to the discussion, but it seems like Neal Stephenson gamed out these end-states in the '90s with Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, both of which posit exactly what you're describing here. He's always hung out with tech types and is freakishly good at being very early and very canny about their deep desires.
Let's ask a bunch of those salt-of-the-earth, oppressed, types—say, New York construction workers—c.1971 what they thought of Rothbard once he were explained to them….
These influences were more explicit in the 2015 alt right than the current post alt right, and it would be interesting to address how the Hoppe/Rothbard stuff leads to, synthesizes with, and/or contradicts the Nietzschean BAPism prominent now. Ditto the Catholic Francosim which vies with it, but which I think lacks any mass appeal and is mostly an affectation of beltway nerds.