The Property and Freedom Society

Professor Hoppe’s article Der Staat als bloßer Konkurrent [PDF] [“The State as a Mere Competitor”] has appeared in a recent issue of the conservative/free-market leaning magazine FOCUS (35/2012), the third-largest weekly news magazine in Germany.

Neville Kennard,  R.I.P.

My dear friend Neville Kennard died on June 3, 2012, at the age of 74. I first met Nev about 4 years ago. Out of the blue, he had contacted me, briefly introduced himself, and asked if he could attend the 2008 Property and Freedom Society meeting in Bodrum. He came to Bodrum again in 2009 and 2010, and we – he, his wife Gaby, Gulcin and I – met again in Istanbul, in January of 2011. Nev had then planned to come back in May to attend our 2011 PFS meeting, but he had to cancel in the last minute, because he had been diagnosed with melanoma and required urgent surgery. Everything appeared to go well after that, or so it seemed. In November of 2011, we met in Australia. Nev had sponsored my trip to Sydney to be the keynote speaker at the first Australian Mises Seminar and Conference. At the time he appeared full of energy and enthusiasm and was looking forward to another trip to Bodrum. But in January, he wrote me that the cancer had returned and he would be unable to come. He did not indicate how serious the matter was, however, and so I was in complete shock when I learned, only a couple of weeks ago, from his son Sam and his wife Gaby that Nev was about to die.

Nev was an enormously successful self-made Australian businessman, a sailor, aviator, globetrotter and adventurer. He was unpretentious. He traveled with only a handbag and, while in Turkey, for example, he crisscrossed the country by bus and train. From his appearance and conduct you never would have guessed that he was a man of great wealth. He was extremely well read, immensely curious and always full of ideas and plans. He was a hard-core Rothbardian, an uncompromising anarcho-capitalist, and a formidable intellectual fighter. He loved and he hated all the right people. He was a great supporter of the Property and Freedom Society and its most generous donor. In the short time that we knew each other Nev and I had become very close friends. I feel blessed to have known a great man, and I will sorely miss him.

My thoughts go out to his family, to his wife Gaby, to his sons Sam, Walt and Jim, and to his brother Andy.

 

Benjamin Marks has written a moving tribute to the great Neville Kennard:

http://economics.org.au/2012/06/neville-kennard-obituary/

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

[Update: For further information about this edition as well as the expanded second edition, 2021, see here. See also:

• Jeffrey Tucker, “Don’t Think about Elephants,” Laissez Faire Today (Sep. 7, 2012)
• Doug French, “The Great Mischief Maker”, Laissez Faire Today (Sep. 6, 2012) ]

Professor Hoppe’s new book, The Great Fiction, is forthcoming from Laissez Faire Books, and discussed by Jeff Tucker in his post Conspiracies and How to Defeat Them. As Tucker writes:

“If you are unfamiliar with the work of Hoppe, prepare for The Great Fiction to fundamentally shift the way you view the world. No living writer today is more effective at stripping away the illusions most everyone has about economics and public life. Hoppe causes the scales to fall from one’s eyes on the most critical issue facing humanity today: the choice between liberty and statism.”

A longer excerpt from the post follows below:

[continue reading…]

Recently we published an excerpt on www.misesinfo.org from von Mises’ book Bureaucracy, which states: “Representative democracy cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government payroll.” You, too, echo these points, almost 70 years later. When will von Mises’ insights finally bear fruit?

I go even further in my views than Mises. I maintain, and have tried to provide evidence of this in many different ways in my writings, that it is democracy which is causally responsible for the fatal conditions afflicting us now. The number of productive people is constantly decreasing, and the number of people parasitically consuming the income and wealth of this dwindling number of productive people is increasing steadily. This can’t work in the long

A longer excerpt from the post follows below: Interview with Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe – Producers against parasites: a call for class struggle

Professor Hoppe’s new book: Der Wettbewerb der Gauner (“The Competition of Crooks”)

Interview mit Prof. Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe:

“Produzenten gegen Parasiten: Aufruf zum Klassenkampf”

 

Andy Duncan (http://thegodthatfailed.org/) has been interviewed by Greg Moffitt on ‘Legalise Freedom’.

They discuss the works of Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe, particularly, Democracy, The God That Failed.

MP3 link: go to http://legalise-freedom.com plus /audio/LF2-Andy-Duncan.mp3

“Steuern sind Diebstahl”

German translation of Hoppe’s Philosophie Magazine Interview on Taxation (2011).

“Der Staat ist eine kriminelle Organisation”  (The state is a criminal organization) Interview with Hoppe, Wiener Zeitung

Der Ökonom und Anarchokapitalist Hans-Hermann Hoppe spricht über die Mängel des Sozialismus, über Privateigentum als Voraussetzung für Wohlstand, untersucht die Zukunft der EU und plädiert für eine Welt ohne staatliche Regulierungen.

A new book has been released in German with material from Prof. Hoppe and a foreword by Prof. Thorsten Polleit. This is an introduction to the field of private law societies and contains translations of several speeches held at the PFS and the LvMI, texts from LewRockwell.com and interviews from German newspapers. Amazon.de link; publisher’s website.

Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe despre impracticabilitatea unui Stat mondial şi despre eşecul democraţiilor de tip vestic, the Romanian translation of “Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe on the Impracticality of One-World Government and the Failure of Western-style Democracy,” The Daily Bell (Mar. 27, 2011), has just been published.

Professor Hoppe was previously interviewed on Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio, on the topic “Anarcho-capitalist libertarianism: What is it?” (approx. 25 minutes). It was aired on Jan. 23, 2012; audio is available here. As described on the ABC site, “What is anarcho-capitalist libertarianism? Hans Herman Hoppe explains the idea behind it and why it’s a very different and quite radical way to think about government, society and the economy.”

Paul Vahur has organized selected pictures from the 2011 meeting; they can be seen at https://plus.google.com/photos/102370610460720295055/albums . The relevant albums are 5 topmost, names starting with PFS2011.

UPDATE: now see PFS 2012 Annual Meeting—Speakers and Presentations

Below is the final list of speakers and topics for the Seventh Annual Meeting of the PFS, which will be held in Bodrum, Turkey at the Hotel Karia Princess, from Thursday September 27 through Monday October 1, 2012. Those interested in attending should contact Dr. Hoppe or Mr. Grözinger, Administrative Secretary, regarding conditions, availability, and requirements.

(Note: The list of speakers for the Sixth Annual Meeting (May 26-30, 2011) may be found in the Program; video of the presentations are available here.)

The Final Program

Property and Freedom Society

7^th Annual Meeting

September 27 – October 2, 2012

Bodrum, Turkey

Karia Princess Hotel

 

Final Program Schedule

 

Thursday, September 27     Arrivals and registration

 19:30-23:00                           Reception and dinner (pool area)

Friday, September 28

8:00-9:45                                  Breakfast

10:00                                          Program begins (Hotel Conference Center)

10:00-10:15                             Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Welcome and Introductions

10:15-10:45                             Andrew Duncan, Liberty through Literature

10:45-11:00                             Coffee Break

11:00-11:30                              Norman Stone, Comparative History: Turkey and Spain

11:30-11:45                               Coffee Break

11:45-12:15                               Hunt Tooley, Engineering Tragedy: The Meaning of the CIA Coup d’Etat in Iran, 1953

12:30-14:00                              Lunch

                                                        from 13:30-14:30 informal sessions

(Sean Ring on the Experiences of an Expatriate, and Oliver Janich on the Party of Reason)          

15:00-15:30                             Rahim Taghizadegan, Understanding Iran and the Iranians

15:30-15:45                              Coffee Break

 

15:45-16:15                              Karl-Peter Schwarz, Between Restitution and Re-Expropriation: Desocialization in Eastern Europe

16:15-17:30                             Duncan, Stone, Tooley,Taghizadegan, Schwarz & Skaskiw, Discussion, Q & A

17:45-19:15                             Optional: Private Guided Tour of Bodrum Castle

19:30-22:00                            Dinner

 

Saturday, September 29

8:00-9:45                                 Breakfast

10:00-10:30                           Joseph Salerno, Money: Sound and Unsound

10:30-10:45                           Coffee Break

10:45-11:15                            Guido Huelsmann, The State and the Gold Market

11:15-11:30                            Coffee Break

11:30-12:00                           Thorsten Polleit, What Do Bankers Know about Money and Banking?

12:15-13:45                            Lunch

14:00-14:30                           Douglas French, More on “What Bankers Do and Do Not Know”

14:30-14:45                           Coffee Break

14:45-16:00                           Salerno, Huelsmann,Polleit, French, Hoppe, Discussion, Q & A

16:30                                        Group Photo in Hotel Lobby

16:45                                        Departure from the hotel lobby to the fishing village Kadikalesi

17:30-22:00                         Reception and Dinner at the beach

                                                   & Toast to Ludwig von Mises at the occasion of his 131st birthday on September 29, 1881

 

Sunday, September 30

8:00-9:45                             Breakfast

10:00-10:30                         Stephan Kinsella, The (State’s) Corruption of (Private) Law

10:30-10:45                         Coffee Break

10:45-11:15                          Anthony Daniels (Dalrymple), The Ultimate “Freedom:” Choice without Consequences

11:15-11:30                          Coffee Break

11:30-12:00                         Jeffrey Tucker, One Million Tiny Miseries. Government Policy in Our Time

12:15-14:00                         Lunch

14:30-15:00                         Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Hayek Myth

15:00-15:15                         Coffee Break

15:15-15:45                          Benjamin Marks, On H. L. Mencken as a Libertarian Model

 

15:45-16:00                         Coffee Break

16:00-17:15                         Daniels, Kinsella, Marks, Hoppe, Tucker, Discussion, Q & A

17:15:17:30                         Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Concluding Remarks, Tributes, and Announcements

19:30-23:00                         Reception, Gala Dinner, Happy Birthday Ludwig, and Entertainment

 

Monday, October 1

8:00-9:30                             Breakfast

10:00                                      Meet in the Hotel Lobby. Walk to the Marina

10:30-17:00                         Boat Excursion. Lunch on the Boat. Swimming.

19:00-23:00                         Dinner and Turkish Night at the Hotel

 

Tuesday, October 2

For conference attendees staying through Tuesday, a day-trip to Ephesus and the last place of residence and resting place of the Virgin Mary can be arranged. Cost per person is about 85 Euro (which includes transportation, entrance fees, professional guide, plus lunch). Please indicate as soon as possibe if you are interested in such an excursion. There will be a list made availabe for this purpose at the hotel reception desk.

The same arrangement can be made also for Monday, October 1, as an alternative to the Boat Excursion.

 

From my post at The Libertarian Standard:

Last year I presented four Mises Academy Mises Academy courses:

• “Rethinking Intellectual Property” (a reprise of one taught previously in 2010);
• “Libertarian Legal Theory”;
• “Libertarian Controversies”; and
• “The Social Theory of Hoppe“.

The audio and slides for the first three courses listed can be found in those links; those for the Hoppe course are appended below. The Hoppe course is discussed in my article “Read Hoppe, Then Nothing Is the Same,” translated into Spanish as “Tras leer a Hoppe, nada es lo mismo“; see also Danny Sanchez’s post Online Hoppe Course Starts Tomorrow. I enjoyed all four courses but my favorite was the Hoppe course. Hoppe has been the biggest intellectual influence of my life, as I detail in “How I Became A Libertarian” (published as “Being a Libertarian” in I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians). I agree with Sanchez that “Hans-Hermann Hoppe is the most profound social theorist writing today.” This is one reason I worked with the brilliant Austro-libertarian theorist, and one of my best friends, Jörg Guido Hülsmann, and one of the greatest guys in the world, to produce the well-received and well-deserved festschrift, Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Mises Institute, 2009).

The experience of teaching the Mises Academy classes was amazing and gratifying, as I noted in my article “Teaching an Online Mises Academy Course.” This and similar technology and Internet-enabled models are obviously the wave of the educational future. The students received an in-depth, specialized and personalized treatment of topics of interest to them, with tests and teacher and fellow student interaction, for a very reasonable price, and judging by their comments and evaluations, they were very satisfied with the courses and this online model. For example, for the Hoppe course, as noted in A Happy Hoppean Student, student Cam Rea wrote, about the first lecture of the course:

Move over Chuck Norris, Hans-Hermann Hoppe is in town! The introduction to “The Social Theory of Hoppe” was extremely thorough. I, a relative newcomer to the Hoppean idea, was impressed by Stephan Kinsella’s introduction to the theory. Mr. Kinsella hit upon all of those who came before Hoppe, and how each built upon another over the past two centuries. In other words, as Isaac Newton stated, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Hoppe is the result thus far of those who came before him in the ideals of Austrian Economics and libertarian principles. Nevertheless, Hoppe takes it much further as in the Misesian concept of human action and the science of “praxeology”, from which all actions branch in life.

Overall, the class was extremely enjoyable, the questions concrete, and the answer provided by Mr. Kinsella clear and precise. Like many others in the class, I look forward to more. So tune in next Monday at 7pm EDT. Same Hoppe-time, same Hoppe-channel!

There were also rave reviews given by students of the other courses.

Read more>>

From Radio Free Market (also noted by Andy Duncan in his blog post Radio Free Market World Report: The End of the Mega States?). See also Skaskiw: Is the United States Too Big to Succeed?, full of interesting Hoppean insights comparing the situation in the US to that in Europe. Roman’s previous Mises Daily article, The Military Mentality, was based on his speech “‘Fighting for Freedom’ in Afghanistan: Unintended Consquences and Military Mentality. A Combat Soldier’s Report,” delivered at the PFS 2011 Annual Meeting (video). Here’s the RFM post:

* The End of the Mega States? * with Roman Skaskiw and Andy Duncan