Key ideas: In this book, published in 2001, Hoppe examines the transformation of the West from monarchy to democracy and argues that monarchy, with all its problems, is still a much lesser evil than mass democracy.
Matters fundamentally change and the process of civilization is permanently derailed whenever property-rights violations take the form of government interference, however. The distinctive mark of government violations of private property rights is that contrary to criminal activities they are considered legitimate not only by the government agents who engage in them, but by the general public as well (and in rare instances possibly even by the victim).
Hence, in these cases a victim may not legitimately defend himself against such violations.
The imposition of a government tax on property or income violates a property or income producer's rights as much as theft does...
Like crime, government interference with private-property rights reduces someone's supply of present goods and thus raises his effective time-preference rate.
The illusion even arises [...]: that with a democratic government no one is ruled by anyone but everyone instead rules himself.
Indeed, it is largely due to this illusion that the transition from monarchy to democracy could be interpreted as progress and, hence, as deserving public support. Accordingly, public resistance against government power is systematically weakened.
Just as kings could not exercise their rule unless public opinion accepted their rule as legitimate, so democratic rulers are equally dependent on public opinion to sustain their political power. It is public opinion, therefore, that must change if we are to prevent the process of decivilization from running its full course.
And just as monarchy was once accepted as legitimate but is today considered to be an unthinkable solution to the current social crisis, it is not inconceivable that the idea of democratic rule might someday be regarded as morally illegitimate and politically unthinkable.
Such a delegitimation is a necessary precondition to avoiding ultimate social catastrophe. It is not government (monarchical or democratic) that is the source of human civilization and social peace but private property, and the recognition and defense of private property rights, contractualism, and individual responsibility.
However, up until the mid-nineteenth century of all Western European countries only the United Kingdom, for instance, had an income tax (from 1843 on). France first introduced some form of income tax in 1873, Italy in 1877, Norway in 1892, the Netherlands in 1894, Austria in 1898, Sweden in 1903, the U.S. in 1913, Switzerland in 1916, Denmark and Finland in 1917, Ireland and Belgium in 1922, and Germany in 1924
Yet even at the time of the outbreak of World War I, total government expenditure as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) typically had not risen above 10 percent and only rarely, as in the case of Germany, exceeded 15 percent.
In striking contrast, with the onset of the democratic republican age, total government expenditures as a percentage of GDP typically increased to 20 to 30 percent in the course of the 1920s and 1930s, and by the mid 1970s had generally reached 50 percent.
A caretaker is always under the pressure of political competition from others seeking to replace him.
Given the rules of democratic government—of one-man-one-vote and majority rule—a caretaker, whether to secure his present position or advance to another, must award or promise to award privileges to groups rather than particular individuals, and given that there always exist more have-nots than haves of everything worth having, his redistribution will be egalitarian rather than elitist. Accordingly, as the result of democratic competition the character structure of society will be progressively deformed.
For one, regardless of the criteria on which it is based, all redistribution involves "taking" from an original owner and/or producer—the "haver" of something—and "giving" to another nonowner and/or nonproducer—the "nonhaver" of this thing.
The incentive to be an original owner or producer of the thing in question is reduced, and the incentive to be a nonowner and nonproducer is raised.
Consequently, the number of havers and producers declines and that of nonhavers and nonproducers rises.
And since it is presumably something good that is being redistributed—of which the haver-producers have too much and the nonhaver-nonproducers too little, this change implies quite literally that the relative number of bad or not-so-good people and bad or not-so-good personal characteristics and habits will continually rise, and life in society will become increasingly less pleasant.
Rather than colonization, cultivation, and acculturation, democracy will bring about social degeneration, corruption, and decay.
Imagine a world government, democratically elected according to the principle of one-man-one-vote on a worldwide scale. What would the probable outcome of an election be?
Most likely, we would get a Chinese-Indian coalition government. And what would this government most likely decide to do in order to satisfy its supporters and be reelected?
The government would probably find that the so-called Western world had far too much wealth and the rest of the world, in particular China and India, far too little, and that a systematic wealth and income redistribution would be necessary.
Or imagine that in your own country the right to vote were expanded to seven year olds. While the government would not likely be staffed of children, its policies would most definitely reflect the "legitimate concerns" of children to have "adequate and "equal" access to "free" french fries, lemonade, and videos.
Liberalism's erroneous acceptance of the institution of government as consistent with the basic liberal principles of self-ownership, original appropriation, property, and contract, consequently led to its own destruction.
First and foremost, it follows from the initial error concerning the moral status of government that the liberal solution to the eternal human problem of security—a constitutionally limited government—is a contradictory, praxeologically impossible ideal.
Contrary to the original liberal intent of safeguarding liberty and property, every minimal government has the inherent tendency to become a maximal government.
Once the principle of government—judicial monopoly and the power to tax—is incorrectly accepted as just, any notion of restraining government power and safeguarding individual liberty and property is illusory.
Predictably, under monopolistic auspices the price of justice and protection will continually rise and the quality of justice and protection fall.
A tax-funded protection agency is a contradiction in terms, for it an expropriating property protector that will inevitably lead to more taxes and less protection.
Even if, as liberals have proposed, a government limited its activities exclusively to the protection of preexisting private property rights, the further question of how much security to produce would arise.
Motivated (as everyone is) by self-interest and the disutility of labor but equipped with the unique power to tax, a government agent's goal will invariably be to maximize expenditures on protection (and almost all of a nation's wealth can conceivably be consumed by the cost of protection) and at the same time to minimize the production of protection. The more money one can spend and the less one must work to produce, the better off one will be... Once the premise of government is accepted, liberals are left without argument when socialists pursue this premise to its logical end.
If monopoly is just, then centralization is just.
If taxation is just, then more taxation is also just.
And if democratic equality is just, then the expropriation of private property owners is just, too (while private property is not).
Indeed, what can a liberal say in favor of less taxation and redistribution?
Instead of a king who regarded colonial America as his property and the colonists as his tenants, the Constitution put temporary and interchangeable caretakers in charge of the country's monopoly of justice and protection.
These caretakers did not own the country, but as long as they were in office, they could make use of it and its residents to their own and their proteges advantage.
However, as elementary economic theory predicts, this institutional setup will not eliminate the self-interest-driven tendency of a monopolist of law and order towards increased exploitation. To the contrary, it only tends to make his exploitation less calculating, more shotsighted and wasteful.
Moreover, because the Constitution provided explicitly for "open entry" into state-government—anyone could become a member of Congress, president, or a Supreme Court judge—resistance against state property invasions declined; and as the result of "open political competition" the entire character structure of society became distorted, and more and more bad characters rose to the top.
For free entry and competition is not always good. Competition in the production of goods is good, but competition in the production of bads is not. Free competition in killing, stealing, counterfeiting, or swindling, for instance, is not good; it is worse than bad. Yet this is precisely what is instituted by open political competition, i.e., democracy.