Show notes
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 263.
This is my short portion of the panel presentation "The Significance of Hans-Hermann Hoppe," from the 2019 Austrian Economics Research Conference (AERC), at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on the occasion of Professor Hoppe's 70th birth year. The entire panel presentation, plus my notes, and a link to a longer talk on similar themes, are below.
Related: KOL259 | “How To Think About Property”, New Hampshire Liberty Forum 2019
“Hoppe on Property Rights”
Panel: The Significance of Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Auburn, Alabama • Mises Institute
March 23 2019
Stephan Kinsella
Kinsella Law Practice, Libertarian Papers, C4SIF.org
NOTES
Came across Hoppe’s writing in law school, his 1988 Liberty article “The Ultimate Justification of the Private Property Ethic.”
Eventually met Hans at a conference in 1994, where I also met David Gordon, Rothbard, Walter Block, Lew, and others
Hans’s contributions in a large number of fields have influenced me and many others: argumentation ethics; various aspects of praxeological economics; method and epistemology; a critique of logical positivism; democracy; immigration; and various cultural analyses.
Helped change my mind about a large number of particular matters, such as the US Constitution, natural rights, and so on
Eventually led to Guido and I editing a Festschrift in 2009
Presented here 10 years ago
Including a large number of contributors including all of the panelists here today
I delivered a 6 week Mises Academy course in 2011 on “The Social Theory of Hoppe”
I’m going to focus on his views on property rights, which has greatly influenced my own ideas
A more in depth talk on this last month at New Hampshire Liberty Forum, “How to Think About Property Rights”, on my podcast feed
Laid out very plainly and concisely in Chapters 1 and 2 of A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (1989)
Only 18 pages—bears re-reading and careful study
“Next to the concept of action, property is the most basic category in the social sciences. As a matter of fact, all other concepts to be introduced in this chapter—aggression, contract, capitalism and socialism—are definable in terms of property: aggression being aggression against property, contract being a nonaggressive relationship between property owners, socialism being an institutionalized policy of aggression against property, and capitalism being an institutionalized policy of the recognition of property and contractualism.”
He lays out the “natural” position on property rights, and distinguishes it from property rights, the normative position.
Natural position is that each actor owns his body
Any scarce resource is owned by the person who first appropriated it, or who acquired it from a previous owner by contract
Property “rights” mirroring this natural position are then justified with his argumentation ethics, which has been very influential and also controversial in the libertarian world
Echoed in Mises, Socialism: “the sociological and juristic concepts of ownership are different.”
Key to this analysis is recognizing the role of scarcity, which is inherent in human action, and which socially gives rise to the possibility of interpersonal conflict and thus the necessity for property norms to make conflict free interaction (cooperation) possible.
Hans anchors his analysis in a Misesian praxeological framework, in which actors must employ scarce means or resources to achieve ends.
In Mises’s praxeological view of human action, there are two distinct but essential components...
This is my short portion of the panel presentation "The Significance of Hans-Hermann Hoppe," from the 2019 Austrian Economics Research Conference (AERC), at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on the occasion of Professor Hoppe's 70th birth year. The entire panel presentation, plus my notes, and a link to a longer talk on similar themes, are below.
Related: KOL259 | “How To Think About Property”, New Hampshire Liberty Forum 2019
“Hoppe on Property Rights”
Panel: The Significance of Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Auburn, Alabama • Mises Institute
March 23 2019
Stephan Kinsella
Kinsella Law Practice, Libertarian Papers, C4SIF.org
NOTES
Came across Hoppe’s writing in law school, his 1988 Liberty article “The Ultimate Justification of the Private Property Ethic.”
Eventually met Hans at a conference in 1994, where I also met David Gordon, Rothbard, Walter Block, Lew, and others
Hans’s contributions in a large number of fields have influenced me and many others: argumentation ethics; various aspects of praxeological economics; method and epistemology; a critique of logical positivism; democracy; immigration; and various cultural analyses.
Helped change my mind about a large number of particular matters, such as the US Constitution, natural rights, and so on
Eventually led to Guido and I editing a Festschrift in 2009
Presented here 10 years ago
Including a large number of contributors including all of the panelists here today
I delivered a 6 week Mises Academy course in 2011 on “The Social Theory of Hoppe”
I’m going to focus on his views on property rights, which has greatly influenced my own ideas
A more in depth talk on this last month at New Hampshire Liberty Forum, “How to Think About Property Rights”, on my podcast feed
Laid out very plainly and concisely in Chapters 1 and 2 of A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (1989)
Only 18 pages—bears re-reading and careful study
“Next to the concept of action, property is the most basic category in the social sciences. As a matter of fact, all other concepts to be introduced in this chapter—aggression, contract, capitalism and socialism—are definable in terms of property: aggression being aggression against property, contract being a nonaggressive relationship between property owners, socialism being an institutionalized policy of aggression against property, and capitalism being an institutionalized policy of the recognition of property and contractualism.”
He lays out the “natural” position on property rights, and distinguishes it from property rights, the normative position.
Natural position is that each actor owns his body
Any scarce resource is owned by the person who first appropriated it, or who acquired it from a previous owner by contract
Property “rights” mirroring this natural position are then justified with his argumentation ethics, which has been very influential and also controversial in the libertarian world
Echoed in Mises, Socialism: “the sociological and juristic concepts of ownership are different.”
Key to this analysis is recognizing the role of scarcity, which is inherent in human action, and which socially gives rise to the possibility of interpersonal conflict and thus the necessity for property norms to make conflict free interaction (cooperation) possible.
Hans anchors his analysis in a Misesian praxeological framework, in which actors must employ scarce means or resources to achieve ends.
In Mises’s praxeological view of human action, there are two distinct but essential components...