Jeff Deist: Your recent talk in Vienna mentioned growing up happy but poor, the son of East German parents who had been driven west during the Cold War by the Soviets. Can you elaborate on the lasting impact their experience had on you, in terms of how you view state power and its attendant evils? Are you in some ways still influenced by their “eastern” roots?

The book you hold in your hands—or that resides in memory bits on your digital device—provides a perfect illustration of the power of Austro-libertarian ideas. Brainpower and genius alone are not enough to provide sound social analysis. One also needs a coherent understanding of economics, in particular of Misesian-Austrian praxeology-based economics. And one needs a coherent and realistic understanding of politics and the state—which is to say, anti-state libertarianism.

Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for people as young as twenty or thirty to feel they have to share their memories with the world. Even at an advanced age, I prefer not to talk publicly about personal things and experiences in my life, but to reserve this for private conversations.

We live in the age of the American Empire. This Empire may be crumbling, but for the foreseeable future it will last, not only because of its military might but, more importantly, because of its ideological power. For the American Empire has accomplished something truly remarkable: that its core beliefs are internalized in the minds of most people as intellectual taboos. To be sure, all governments rest on aggressive violence and the U.S. government is no exception. It, too, does not hesitate to crush anyone resisting its legislative whims. However, the U.S.

When I first envisioned the idea of this Society, more than 10 years ago and then still a society without a name, I had direct experience with only two other Societies from which to learn.

My first experience was with the Mont Pelerin Society, which Friedrich Hayek had founded in 1947.

I. Introduction

A few months ago, a French journalist, Mr. Nicolas Cori, approached me with the request for an interview on the subject of taxation, to be published in the French monthly Philosophie Magazine, in the context of current “tax reform” debates in France.

I. Introduction

Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, born in 1949 in Peine, West Germany, studied philosophy, sociology, economics, history and statistics at the University of the Saarland, in Saarbrücken, the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, in Frankfurt am Main, and at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. He received his doctorate (Philosophy, 1974, under Jürgen Habermas) and his “Habilitation” degree (Foundations of Sociology and Economics, 1981) both from the Goethe University in Frankfurt.