D. Politics

Chapter 45

Term Limits Make Me Sick; A Hoppean Analysis

If I hear just one more time, from a supposed libertarian, about the greatness of term limits, I think I’m going to be sick.

Yes, yes, I know all the arguments. Kick the bums out. Promote political competition. Incumbency confers Soviet style (99 percent) voting majorities. This way, at least, we’ll get new thieves.

Chapter 46

Federalism: Is It Libertarian?

Is France justified in invading New York City to force the latter to get rid of its rent control legislation? Would it be compatible with libertarianism for California to forcibly prevent the U.S. government from imposing a draft on California citizens? The federal government physically attacks Mississippi in 1950 for its Jim Crow legislation; Mississippi resists. Which side does the libertarian root for? The U.S.

Whenever anyone mentions “Austrian economics without You Know Who,” the cognoscenti know exactly who is meant: Ludwig von Mises, of course. This issue arose late in the last century, during a discussion of the phenomenon of the revival of the Austrian School of economics, when it was feared by some that Mises was too radical, too uncompromising. He had to be jettisoned in favor of moderates, such as, for example, Friedrich A. Hayek if the praxeological school was to make any headway, at least in this inside the beltway perspective.

9/11/01, 171

failure of FBI to protect against, 173

and gun control, 172

Abolitionists, 187, 189

Abortion, 181–82

Adams, John, Quincy, 30

Aggression, 22, 24, 103, 160

as distinct from defense, 24–25

Aggressor, 25

nation, 25

Anarcho-libertarian, See Libertarian

Animals. See Private property rights; hunt farms

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith), 53, 56

AIDS, 83, 143, 170

Airport security, 59–62

A Tale of Moral and Economic Folly and Decay

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Mises Institute

AUBURN, ALABAMA

The Mises Institute dedicates this volume to all of its generous donors and wishes to thank these Patrons, in particular:

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Published 2014 by the Mises Institute and published under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a master of theoretical history. He tells us that

it is not my purpose here to engage in standard history, i.e., history as it is written by historians, but to offer a logical or sociological reconstruction of history, informed by actual historical events, but motivated more fundamentally by theoretical — philosophical and economic — concerns.

The work of Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises on the commodity origin of money is a prime example of what Hoppe has in mind.