Hans Hermann Hoppe, Private Law Society without a State - Q&A - Modelhof Academy 2012 - in German

I'd also be happy to answer a few questions, so maybe for a quarter of an hour. Yes . Yes . They didn't even address the murder issue. In cases of murder, they say that the body is property, and that is clearly a violation of property rights, but who will be compensated if the murdered person has no wife and no living descendants? Yes, how is this currently being handled? Yes, so the murderer will be spayed and imprisoned. Yes . Um, in such a case, most of the victims or their relatives would then have a claim to compensation. If they apply the principle of proportionality, they could, at most, insist that it be executed . Normally, one would n't do that. Usually [snorting] prices would then be negotiated . Um, that means, uh, compensate the victim's family as best as possible. Um, if it's a wealthy person , then one might say, well, this amount; if they are less wealthy, the amount might be smaller. Maybe you won't get anything from him at all, but you don't get anything from him these days either. Um, there is no perfect solution for such things. The entire punishment system focuses solely on the victim, either the victim or the victim's relatives . And the counterpart, the current situation, is characterized by the fact that the victim is completely irrelevant. The victims are not being compensated. They will not be compensated in any way . And in such a system, that would of course be the central point. We should do everything humanly possible to heal the victim. In many cases, it is no longer possible to cure it, but we try to rectify the situation as best we can . And most victims would not insist on physical punishment, unless the person is a danger to the public, but would demand compensation for pain and suffering and things like that . This also existed in the Middle Ages; for many punishments, fixed tariffs were in place. If you do that, that's the price. Three goats, if that makes five sheep, and such regulations. Yes, what is it? She herself always says one body, but what about children? Do they also have this right? If they don't have it, then their parents can do it for them, so to speak. Do they want to? No, of course children have this right too, as long as they are children, and so are the parents. What is German guardianship, and then the question is when does this guardianship expire? My teacher Redbeard had the idea, and it seems plausible to me. You ca n't say that this applies to the fifth year, or the sixth year, or the seventh year. What he suggested seems somewhat arbitrary. The moment children can run away and say no, that goes away . I [snort] would also allow certain exceptions if my children wanted to run off like that; sometimes I would have chased after them, given them a good spanking, and then they probably would have come to their senses. But the basic idea seems correct to me. Some children mature earlier, other children mature later, [ahem] but if there are good indications that this is a serious decision and they have seriously said no , then these children can go to a mediator and say, well, my parents are forcing me to come back, but listen to me, hear my arguments, look at me. Am I not independent enough that they have to let me go? One also wanted to address the problem that parents behave, especially in the present example during the time when they are still young , that they can basically do whatever they want with their children. So, in Italian, there is no authority that is, so to speak, an advocate for the children . Normally, the relatives do that, the ones who are known, um, I look, they look at the current situation. Some things like this can never be prevented. That is clearly not the case at present either. Um, currently it's such that children are taken away from their parents against their will, not only if they do such things, but also for politically incorrect behavior. In Sweden, you can take the children out of the house, uh, I don't know, because their parents smoke at home. Um, no order in the world can prevent difficult, delicate problems from existing somewhere. That will remain the case as long as people are the way they are. In the system as I have described it , there are far fewer problems than in the one we currently have. There's nothing more that can be done . More is simply not humanly possible. Yes, they keep bringing up the fact that something needs to be paid for. They would make money. We need a central institution for money. Well, money is created spontaneously in the market . Money is simply the most marketable of all truths. Um, if there were a world with absolute certainty regarding future events, then people would only maintain consumer goods and production goods. Then holding money would be a waste, in a sense. Why hold onto money that you can't eat and that isn't used as an investment? And the answer is because there are uncertainties , because surprises can occur in life, and if you want to prepare for these surprises in life, then you look for marketable goods that you can sell immediately to solve your problems. And such anger has arisen everywhere in the world at all times of humankind , whenever humanity has evolved beyond the most primitive state of simple commodity exchange . This would probably have been a gold standard or silver standard if the world had been different than it is, perhaps a different metal. You don't need a start for that. On the contrary, if I look at the current monetary system, it is the case that the introduction of paper money was only possible because those who originally used metallic money were expropriated. Paper money can never be at the beginning of the development of money. If I were to say, "Here, I'll give you what you want for your glasses," and I'd write you a slip of paper and write ten on it... Uh, then they would say she's about to go crazy, and if I said, "But I'll add two more zeros," then they wouldn't put me in a mental institution. Money was originally always a commodity, and the reason it was accepted as paper is that this paper was originally a title for a commodity. That is, they accept a note from me if it says on the note that this note can be redeemed for, I don't know, 1 gram of silver or 1 gold. And what states did was , at some point, they said, "Okay, we're no longer redeeming this paper for what it was originally intended to be." Now we only have paper left, and we as a state are monopolists, we have a monopoly. We can now print these paper slips as often as we like. I would like to be able to do that too. Um, and then you can also predict what will happen. All state-owned banks are nothing more than a money-counting shield, [ahem] . They print money from morning till night. Nobody will get rich that way. Of course not. Then there would be no more poor countries in the world. The idiotic countries have printing presses. So, they can all do that. Um, a new banknote doesn't create an additional piece of mother or author, nothing. What it can achieve, however, is to make those who get the money first richer, while the other people reap the rewards. The counterfeiter [ahem] counterfeits money, costs almost nothing, and buys himself a Mercedes. The rest of society now has one less Mercedes, one less real commodity, but the money-grubber has more, and prices slowly rise as these banknotes gradually seep through the economic system, causing one price after another to increase. Those whose income was fixed, however, can buy less with a banknote than was previously the case. Inflation, i.e., the increase of the money supply, the purpose of which is to redistribute income in favor of those who get the money first . First it's always the central bank, then the big banks that are transformed along with the central bank, and then the large clients of the big banks, and the small ones, um, they are the ones who are made poorer by the money losing purchasing power. So there's absolutely no need to worry about money. Um, if you look at states, the most important institutions of the states from the state's point of view are, firstly, those who, so to speak, walk around in leather coats, who break their knees if they do n't pay their taxes and lock themselves up, and then there are those in suits. Uh, those are the people who sit in the central banks, and they are of course even more, well, how should I say, admired, highly respected, even though they are actually the more dangerous people. In my opinion, a Jer who works at the central bank is a dangerous person. Those in the lower ranks may not even know this, but those at the top certainly do. Yes, in principle, Befahrfestgesell is in anarchy, you could say that. An alternative term for it is anarcho-capitalism, but I don't like this term because it has a disreputable taste; people are hitting each other on the head. Uh, that's why I prefer the term private company, because it nicely emphasizes two things . Firstly, there is the right, um, and the point emphasized that all people are treated equally under the law . There is no special right for a group of people, i.e., no higher and a lesser right, but all persons are treated according to the same legal regulations. And it also conveys the message that we are well aware that there is private law, and when we conduct business among ourselves, we generally behave in accordance with this law . Private law, too, is naturally permeated by elements of public law. There have also been perversions that have taken place. But overall, most people always think of it as so complicated. The Ten Commandments are usually sufficient to regulate people's lives peacefully. You shall not covet your neighbor's property. Uh, and what do we hear from all the Christian parties? Redistribution here, redistribution there. This has nothing to do with Christianity. Christianity demands of us what all religions, all major religions, do: we should do charity, but acts of charity will consist of giving something voluntarily. Uh, and everything that has been done as social policy is nothing but organized crime. Um, the social policymakers in particular really get on my nerves for that reason. They always feel like they're constantly doing something good. They're not doing anything good at all. Only those who freely give something of their own property to benefit other people do good. And this goodness and the act of being good are, in a sense, driven out of us by the existence of social policy. Of course they say, they're already taking half my salary. You ca n't expect me to be a big donor for this and that now. If they would let me do that more , yes of course, then one would give what the churches have deemed appropriate for ten years or whatever time it has been since the churches were born . And then it also goes to people you know and for things you support . Every small village has its village idiot. And when I was a boy, there were also a few people who did really, really bad jobs, but they were always supported by the people who knew them. Um, if all these things happen anonymously and are used for purposes that one does n't actually want to support, then I just find that disgusting. Yes, please. Do you see any possibility, or have you already developed your own ideas, as to how society, the legal system, uh, the political order could then move or develop in that direction? Because if there were no such possibility, it would actually be too late. So, what I see as a scenario is that all the Western welfare states will collapse. Uh, just like when communism collapsed. They simply cannot meet their financial obligations . Then there will be an economic catastrophe. Um, in this economic catastrophe that I foresee, secessionist movements will prevail on a large scale. You can already see hints of something like that in some regions. Resistance to the EU will continue to grow, unfortunately last in Germany due to German history. We are responsible for the entirety of world history . That's why we have to wait it out for as long as possible, say, uh, and then it happens that Catalonia would secede from Spain because, say, we don't want to finance Andalusia, or the Bavarians might say, why are we financing Sicily? Let's leave the money in Bavaria instead. And if secessionist movements occur and states become smaller again, then states must be more liberal so that productive people don't leave them. Uh, so the interim solution I see is a world made up of thousands of light stands. [snorting] uh, quite unlike what is currently happening before our very eyes , namely a European central state uh with a uniform tax structure, actually a uniform regulatory structure, so that it's no longer worth it for entrepreneurs to go from one word to another, because the crap is the same everywhere. And even worse, of course, would be a world state. Um, there are no economic reasons to go from one place to another anymore , just things like, "the sun shines more there" and "it rains more there," and so on. Um, and the greater the number of states, the more liberal they must be towards their own citizens. States are inherently illegal, so to speak, but the competition between many states forces them, in a sense, to engage in free trade. Imagine you are just a small village and you say, "We're not doing free trade anymore." Imagine Lichtenstein says, "We're not releasing anyone now." We're closing the borders; we're producing everything for ourselves. In 14 days, they will lead those in famine-stricken areas or Hong Kong to such places. Small states must be liberal. Um, and the ability for people to vote with their feet forces them to be comparatively nice. So, I can only recommend to the Swiss never [snorting] to join the EU. uh, to strictly reject the issue, to withdraw from the United Nations again, uh, to give the cantons more power again. Your central government is sending everyone home and the cantons are supposed to take care of things again, and then possibly go a step further and let the individual municipalities in the cantons decide that. The more diversity there is in the state system, the closer one comes to this goal. And I 'm actually quite sure that's the way things will go , but only through a catastrophe. Yes, I'll take one more question and then I think we should... Yes. Yes, because I deliberately didn't eat anything beforehand, because I know that I'll get sleepy, and I told Mr. Burel that beforehand. I didn't want to eat beforehand, but afterwards, but it's already quite late, I must say. Maybe, just maybe, we can take care of the questions right here as we're leaving or something. Um, well, thank you again very much .