If someone asked you what your favorite emotion was, how do you think you’d answer? For many people, I suspect they would answer “Happiness”, “Joy'', or some variant of exclusively positive emotion. Someone may think more meticulously and answer with “Contentment”, which while a positive emotion has a lot of nuance attached to it. However my answer to that question is what I feel others would consider more orthodox: Bittersweet. Pleasure accompanied by suffering, not exactly most people’s first pick but from my perspective pain is necessary in order to enjoy the pleasure that life gives you. Perhaps I'm over-romanticizing but there’s something to desire from looking back fondly at times where you were hurting and seeing yourself in a better place in the present. Perhaps you finally have moved on from “The one who got away” and can look back on those times with fondness. Perhaps you are sharing stories of a friend or family member at their funeral and though they may never w
One common misconception about agorism - one that’s even held by many agorists - is that we’re natural adversaries of Hans Hoppe, or that his & Konkin’s philosophies are mutually exclusive. Nothing can be further from the truth.
Agorists & Hoppeans are in fact, natural friends. True, agorists don’t advocate covenant communities or secession, and hoppeans don’t see counter-economics as the way forward - but there’s plenty of common ground nonetheless.
Agorists and hoppeans also share an unparalleled mastery of economics. Whereas agorism exists exclusively in the economic sense, Hoppe’s mastery of economics imbued his followers with a deep understanding of the dismal science.
It’s also important to note the wide gap between Hoppe and internet hoppeans.
Despite what you hear on Twitter, Hoppe is neither a white supremacist nor a homophobe. It’s true he once landed himself in some hot water at UNLV while teaching students time preference. Hoppe explained that generally speaking, gays have a higher time preference than straights. This isn’t homophobic, but factual. People with children naturally have a future-oriented outlook because the well being of their offspring depends on future conditions. Nevertheless, one of his students took issue with this and tried to have Hoppe fired.
In a separate incident his critics point to, Hoppe wrote the foreword for a book by Chase Rachels on the right & libertarianism. When the title & cover debuted to the horror of both Hoppe & The Mises Institute, Hoppe promptly withdrew his permission & Rachels’ writings were scrubbed from mises.org. Nevertheless, Rachels proceeded to use Hoppe’s writing without his permission.It's true, we aren't likely to find agreement on the subject of immigration - but so what? Are we to let one issue separate us at a time when politicians are implementing a full on medical-police state? Agorists & Hoppeans have more numerous political disagreements with their own family members than with one another!
No, Hoppe is no foe to the agorist. Instead he’s one of the economic masters who’s work fundamentally underpins our lifestyle. Nor is the agorist foe to the Hoppean. After all, we seek a society built on Hoppe’s vision of private property & individual liberty.
Now isn’t the time for division over one highly nuanced issue. Let’s come together and focus on our common enemy, the State.
please don't act like you speak for all of us. as an agorist, i want nothing to do with hoppe. if someone believes property owners have the right to establish racist communities, they are racist. that is not even arguable.
ReplyDeletehoppe wasn't even an anti-statist, so our common enemy isn't even the same...
DeleteThis doesn't really seem like much of a defense. There are few arguments defending Hoppe, and most of them deal with separating him from his followers. The argument about his ideas, about argumentation ethics, is flawed, because not only Agorists like Roderick Long critiquing its vagueness and logic issues, but also other Anarcho-Capitalists like David Friedman. While both Agorists and Hoppe might share a value of logic, they are in disagreement with the logical consistency of Hoppe's arguments and his argumentation ethics.
ReplyDeleteAs for "a mastery of economics", while it can be said that they both have a connection of economic understanding via Rothbard, each of their masteries are in conflict with each other, with Hoppe advocating only for Capitalism (specifically a free market kind), while vehemently being against any form of Socialism, while Agorism defends free markets, while still in conflict with the idea of Capitalism, and also being open to a version of Socialism based of free markets, too. That's not getting into differences in regards to class theory, which is a part of Agorist economic theory. There is some overlap in ideas with Hoppe, yes, but pure agreement? Too much of an exaggeration.
As for the other, non-theory arguments, it is true that in that comment on homosexuality, he was talking how being parents affected decisions (though wanting to be a parent, and choosing to plan for it, is not limited to those who are straight). It is also true that he compared homosexuality with pedophilia, labelling homosexuality as "perverse". As for the white supremacy point, good on Hoppe for rejecting Rachels; doesn't help that his theory allows for racism, as well as advocating for immigration restrictions that would theoretically allow a "pro-European immigration bias" (so a mix of the immigration and racism issues that many left libertarians, including many agorists, are against).
It is good to have some form of libertarian unity, I agree; but this is an overall sloppy defense for an ideology that is at direct odds with Agorism, if not with libertarianism in general.
*not only are
Deletesmall grammatical correction for third sentence
He's reworked solid Austrian Economic logic to create a bordertarian, statist philosophy aimed at a larger audience: namely the almost universally undesirables, those seeking to establish exclusive inbreeding communities based on the fallacy of "race". Not to knock Austria, because I've had some great times in those mountains, but the visuals of him addressing an audience of alt-righter's in his creepy accent gives off an aura so toxic, it's literally ended over a century of Austrian School generational lineage from advancing any further. Should have taken a note form Mises and never compromised his core values for acceptance.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this perspective. There is much I am learning from both of these perspectives.
ReplyDelete