ars libertatis

[D]emocracy’s gravest defect has little or nothing to do with the defects traditionally ascribed to it. I maintain that its severest defect, indeed, a flaw so critical that it gives democracy the potential to destroy civilization, pertains to its effect in corrupting the people’s moral judgment.

To see how this corruption comes about, let us begin by recognizing that in many people’s eyes, certain government functionaries may legitimately take actions that would be condemned as criminal if anyone else were to take them. If you or I were to threaten a neighbor with violence unless he handed over a specified sum of money, we would be universally recognized as engaged in extortion or attempted robbery.
[...]
Libertarians often argue about whether they might more successfully recruit followers by showing that a free society works best or by showing that an unfree society is unjust. Most libertarians, as I see the matter, have chosen to base their arguments on utilitarian grounds, often because they despair of ever convincing the average person that government officials chronically, or even intrinsically, violate moral strictures. Although I have no doubt whatsoever that free societies do work better than unfree ones, that they deliver, for example, greater prosperity and more rapid economic progress for the masses, I am skeptical that we can cut deeply into the current mass support for the welfare-warfare-therapeutic state unless we open people’s eyes to see that the government actions they now support ― and demand ever more of ― are utterly immoral because they violate individuals’ just rights on a gigantic scale and because the government leaders who propose and implement these measures acquire not an ounce of moral justification from their democratic selection for office. “What works best” remains ever open to dispute, as public policy debate on almost any current issue illustrates: each side has its academic experts, prestigious scientists, or other authorities to prop up its position, and although these two sides rarely offer equally compelling evidence, the lay person can scarcely be expected to see through all of the disinformation and rhetorical flimflam.

Everybody understands, however, without any advanced instruction in the matter, that murder and robbery are wrong, and that no one has a justifiable right to bully his neighbors simply because he does not like the way in which they are conducting their lives. The greatest barrier to libertarian progress continues to be that most people give a moral pass to such criminal actions when democratically elected functionaries take them. This presumed moral immunity by virtue of election to public office is the sheerest superstition ― a montrous mistake in moral reasoning ― and if people can be brought to see it for what it really is, then they will be able to act more effectively to regain some of their lost freedom.¹

1. Robert Higgs – Democracy’s Most Critical Defect [↩]

Die Widerlegung von Hoppes Behauptung, die Monarchie sei besser als die Demokratie.

For example, I was talking with a friend of mine some time ago. He had been intensely interested in politics, but less so in political theory. When he asked me about libertarianism, I told him the following tale:

Imagine that you, Dick, Mark, and I go camping. While climbing a mountain to the campsite, you, Dick, and I decide to build a lean-to, so that we have a sheltered spot to rest in on the way down.

“Come help us, Mark,” we shout to him.

“No thanks, I’ll go on ahead and set up the camp site,” he replies.

“No you won’t, Mark.”

“What do you mean, no I won’t?” he asks us.

“What we mean is, you have to help us. We’re the majority. We’ve voted, and we’ve decided that everyone must contribute to our project. And, you see, we’re prepared to kill you if you don’t.”

“Kill me?”

“Yes, kill you, if we have to. Please, it’s not that we want to kill you. At first, if you resist, we’ll just rough you up a bit. But if you continue to be obstinate, eventually we will have to kill you. You’d be defying the will of the people.”

“Now,” I asked my friend, “how is this essentially different than the Social Democratic State, supposedly the epitome of just and fair governance?”

He pondered my story for a minute. Then he said, “Yeah, it really isn’t different, is it?” At that moment, he later told me, he became convinced of the essential soundness of libertarian political theory.

Most people already know that the action of our hypothetical campers is wrong. (And we’ll never convince the few who don’t with any system.) We don’t have to change their whole worldview. We just have to show them the fog that has kept them from seeing that when the government does such things it is acting unjustly, judged from within their current ethical system.¹

1. Gene Callahan – The Right to Walk Away [↩]

Freiheit statt Demokratie!

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Now it has come to pass that a conscript army is in fact a “democratic” army, composed of men who have made adjustment with the “social attitude” of the times. So does the run-of-the-mill draftee console himself when compelled to interrupt his dream of a career. Acceptance of compulsory military service has reached the point of unconscious resignation of personality. The individual, as individual, simply does not exist; he is of the mass.

This is the fulfillment of statism. It is a state of mind that does not recognize any ego but that of the collective. For analogy, one must go to the pagan practice of human sacrifice: when the gods called for it, when the medicine man so insisted, as a condition for prospering the clan, it was incumbent on the individual to throw himself into the sacrificial fire. In point of fact, statism is a form of paganism, for it is worship of an idol, something made by man. Its base is pure dogma. Like all dogmas this one is subject to interpretations and rationales, each with its coterie of devotees. But, whether one calls oneself a Communist, Socialist, New Dealer, or just plain “democrat,” one begins with the premise that the individual is of consequence only as a servant of the mass idol. Its will be done.¹

1. Frank Chodorov – The Divide Between Society and State [↩]

As for the moral status of majority rule, it must be pointed out that it allows for A and B to band together to rip off C, C and A in turn joining to rip off B, and then B and C conspiring against A, and so on.

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

The American model – democracy – must be regarded as a historical error, economically as well as morally. Democracy promotes shortsightedness, capital waste, irresponsibility, and moral relativism. It leads to permanent compulsory income and wealth redistribution and legal uncertainty. It is counterproductive. It promotes demagoguery and egalitarianism. It is aggressive and potentially totalitarian internally, vis-à-vis its own population, as well as externally. In sum, it leads to a dramatic growth of state power, as manifested by the amount of parasitically – by means of taxation and expropriation – appropriated government income and wealth in relation to the amount of productively – through market exchange – acquired private income and wealth, and by the range and invasiveness of state legislation. Democracy is doomed to collapse, just as Soviet communism was doomed to collapse.

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Der kein Demokrat ist, muss nicht die Monarchie oder die Diktatur bevorzugen. Er kann auch schlicht und einfach Zwang verabscheuen (und so gegen den Staat per se sein).

Zuerst ein Artikel von Sphairon, der sich mit Vehemenz gegen Waffenverbote ausspricht und davor warnt Unschuldige und potenzielle Opfer zu entwaffnen und eine Gesellschaft zu kreieren, in der (neben der Polizei) einzig Mörder und Räuber Feuerwaffen tragen (Eine Position, die ich (auch weil ich die Eigentumsrechte so hochhalte und es schlicht skurril ist, mit Waffengewalt eine Person dazu zu zwingen, sich selber nicht zu bewaffnen) teile, die aber in diesen Breiten recht unpopulär ist.):

Guns are force equalizers. Powerful as they are, it is irresponsible to deny ordinary citizens the option to own and use them. Doing that will only strengthen the position of criminals. We can assume that, ceteris paribus, an armed society will deter criminals more effectively than a non-armed one.¹

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Dann ein Artikel von Robert Higgs zu unserem aktuellen Partizipativen Faschismus und bitterschwarze Zukunftsaussichten:

All of which leaves us—by which I mean nearly everybody on earth—converging on the only form of politico-economic system that has a stable equilibrium in our present ideological circumstances: participatory fascism. I am not saying that this system is the only one possible, forever and ever, amen. I am saying, however, that until the world’s people abandon en masse the collectivist ideologies that now determine their social cognition, policy evaluation, political practices, and personal identities, any hope for moving to a freer form of economic order as a stable equilibrium is virtually nil.²

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Schliesslich und endlich eine köstliche und so zwingend notwendige Kritik von James Ostrowski an Noam Chomsky, dem von ihm präferierten Anarchosyndikalismus (oder Anarchokommunismus oder Anarchokollektivismus), seine seltsam wirre (semi- bis ganz) marxistischen Wirtschaftskunde und das pseudoanarchistische Katalonien während dem Spanischen Bürgerkrieg:

No, he favors a vague and ill-defined form of collective ownership that the workers will figure out as they bumble and stumble along towards bankruptcy. As Mises writes in Socialism, “as an aim, Syndicalism is so absurd, that speaking generally, it has not found any advocates who dared to write openly and clearly in its favor.”³

1. Road to Rothbard – Guns and crime [↩]
2. Robert Higgs – Are We All Socialists Now? Not at All [↩]
3. James Ostrowski – Chomsky’s Economics [↩]

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

~ Charles Bukowski

Egal ob Demokratie oder Monarchie, einen Staat schätzen wir immer nur dann, wenn uns die Herrschenden wohlgesonnen sind und das tun, was wir für moralisch richtig halten. Jedes etatistische System ist abhängig davon, dass “gute” Leute an den Schalthebeln der Macht sind. Jeder Bush-, Nixon-, Blocher-, Calmy-Rey- und Clinton-Gegner weiss, wie viel Unheil ein “schlechter” Präsident oder Bundesrat anrichten kann.
Schlechte Präsidenten sind also ein Grundproblem der Demokratie. Die Lösung, die uns Etatisten vorschlagen, besteht darin, gute Präsidenten zu wählen. Die Geschichte lernt uns, dass stets wieder grottenschlechte Politiker zum Staatsoberhaupt gewählt werden. In einer Demokratie zu leben und dieses System zu befürworten, bedeutet also auch, derartige Präsidenten zu akzeptieren. Die andere Möglichkeit ist, wenn man sich nicht mit Präsidenten wie Bush zufrieden geben möchte, auf den besseren Menschen zu warten, der keine kriegslüsterne, paranoide Politiker wählt. Doch ist das nicht ein wenig utopisch, ein wenig illusorisch?
Besonders, wenn man bedenkt, dass jene Leute, die Gefallen an all dieser Macht, dieser Kontrolle über andere Menschen, finden, vermutlich nicht die “good guys” sind. Denn wenn man eine Gesellschaft hat, in der es viele gute Leute hat und ein paar “bad guys”, die andere ausnutzen wollen und auch nicht vor Gewalt zurück schrecken, und nun ein System mit einem Gewaltmonopol kreiert, welches sicher stellen soll, dass der einfache Bürger (im Gegensatz zum Polizisten oder Soldaten) keine Gewalt anwendet, was werden die “bad guys” tun? Werden sie nicht versuchen, auf die Seite des Gewaltmonopols zu gelangen und werden sie, um dies zu erreichen, die Wähler nicht schamlos belügen?

Die anarchistische Lösung dieses Problems sieht so aus, dass man dem Staat so wenig Macht zugesteht, dass dieser diese nicht missbrauchen kann. Doch solange Macht vorhanden ist, kann man sicher sein, dass diese irgendwann einmal dazu benutzt wird, anderen Leuten Schaden zuzufügen. Das heisst, Machtmissbrauch kann nur ausgeschlossen werden, wenn keine Macht vorhanden ist. Entweder man nimmt den Machtmissbrauch hin und bleibt ein Befürworter der Demokratie oder man sucht nach anderen Lösungen.

Ein wunderbares Zitat von Douglas Adams, aus seinem Buch So Long and Thanks for All the Fish:

“On [that] world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”

“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy?”

“I did,” said Ford, “It is.”

“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn”t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”

“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”

“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.”

via reason – A Choice, Not a Gekko