Immediately after you finish David Gordon’s aforementioned online course on “Ayn Rand and Objectivism,” you can start his online course on “Libertarianism and Contemporary Philosophy.” (The poster says “Libertarianism and Modern Philosophers,” but since in academic parlance modernity begins with the Renaissance, and courses on “modern” political philosophy would generally be expected to focus on folks like Hobbes and Locke, I’m going with the title at the top of the course’s announcement page rather than the title on the poster.)
The course will deal with the arguments pro and con of inter alia John Rawls, Gerry Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, and Jan Narveson – as well as, yes, the argumentation ethics of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. (That’s Rawls in the pic, not David, btw.)
Given Hoppe’s argument here, isn’t he also committed to physically removing children from society — along with the elderly and the gay? Does he propose a mass pit or senior citizen gladiators? Both?
We don’t have to speculate as to whether Hoppe is “committed” to physically removing homosexuals from society, since he explicitly says they should be.
And anyway Hoppe’s argument is silly even on its own terms. Your life ends with you, whether you have biological offspring or not. Your kids are not little extensions of yourself; not even a genetically perfect clone would really be an extension of yourself, he’d just be (even if we grant total biological determinism) a person who’s annoyingly similar to you. It’s true that people generally care about their children’s well-being and go to some effort to ensure they are secure even after the parents’ own deaths, but there’s no reason that homosexuals can’t love people who will survive them (as friends, or mentors, or even parents) enough to care about their long-term well-being in a similar way.
Agreed on all counts. Is this guy, like, for real? Please tell me he’s an imaginary academic punching bag stylized after Jeffrey Dauhmer?
MBH wasn’t speculating as to whether Hoppe is committed to removing homosexuals; his comment takes that for granted. He was speculating about whether Hoppe is committed to removing children.
Isn’t he?
From Wikipedia,
To be clear: I think that children have to be in society — in some form — to become adults. I write here that social conscience is kind of what it means to grow up (even reclusive monks pray for others in society). And the implication is that Hoppe — along with all those in agreement with him — have not grown up.
Hoppe also says the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now… 16 years old!
I believe that’s called bananarcho-capitalism.
Hoppe, but not Jasay? Come on now…
MBH,
You’re confusing Hoppe’s statement on time preference with his statement on what he believes to be necessary for a libertarian society.
“They — 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 be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order” is a statement concerning which mindsets he believes to be incompatible with libertarian order and makes no mention of time preference.
His other statement on children, the elderly, and homosexuals is in regards to time preference. In both sets he includes homosexuals, but that does not imply that he also includes children and old people in the “remove from society” set.
Not libertarian order in general, but libertarian order “in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin“.
First, that anyone takes this seriously is bizarre. Libertarianism through a Nazi-like violation of the non-aggression principle is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.
Second, the reason to excommunicate people from society is their lack of family values. Yet, Hoppe is elsewhere saying that the lack of family values causes poor time-preferences. Clearly Hoppe has no problem with epistemic closure since he operates on the assumption that — necessarily — if one lacks kin-centered values, then one lacks well-developed time-preferences. He doesn’t want to excommunicate these people because they don’t gush when the GOP talks about kin-centered ways of life. He wants to excommunicate them because their non-gushing attitude entails poor time-preferences.
Third, this means that orphans wouldn’t be allowed in society. Orphans are, generally, children.
Fourth, this is the guy the Austrian economists turn to for information about Habermas? He couldn’t be more ignorant of why Habermas is reasonable.
Fifth, not only is it unethical to physically remove any non-violent actor from society, but it’s, most likely, simply a premise to accept Straussianism (the synthesis of Plato and Machiavelli). It’s probably followed by, “it wouldn’t go over well with the public, so let’s conduct our own PSYOP to get our way.”
No, remove them from a covenant that prohibits their values, as a covenant in an apartment complex might say no pets or no smoking. There are neighborhoods that prohibit children (only for the retired and whatnot). The paragraph in question in D:TGTF is talking about the sanctity of legal covenants in a libertarian society. HHH could just as easily have written that, to protect the sanctity of covenants, and by extension, property rights, it would be necessary to physically remove smokers from non-smoking buildings. Putting it that way would have made the point much less controversially, since everybody hates smokers.
No, the quote from Wikipedia said “…tend to focus less on saving for the future.” — not such a blanket statement as you suggest.
Why not listen to the talks and make your own decisions about whether the ideas make sense instead of these reflexive, ad-hom attacks using cherrypicked quotes? All of the talks are available on mises.org for free. Are you afraid you might come to agree with HHH, and in so doing be compelled to defend him?
I’m sure HHH is a social conservative, but that doesn’t make him the most evil god damned nazi since Hitler, unlike your somewhat hysterical rhetoric might suggest.
No, just a mid-level Nazi.
I don’t smoke, but some would dissent.