The Big Idea

While enough people - especially all those who worship at the altar of Democracy - are out looking for the "perfect ruler," there are others like me looking for the "perfect rule." Indeed, the Golden Rule of Private Property is just that - a perfect rule that we all unwittingly follow; this includes not only the unlettered masses, but also all our "learned" communists with PhDs from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

For example, let us take any bazaar anywhere in India, where illiterate vendors line up on the roadside with their wares arrayed before them. Even the PhD-holding card-carrying member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) will be forced to accept, while wandering about that bazaar, that the goods arrayed before each vendor belong rightfully to him; that anyone who violates this Golden Rule will be considered a thief and thrashed; that nothing is "collective property" except for the road or footpath (which is why the "huftha brigade" comes in as "representatives of the collective"); and that along with Private Property, there sits the Principle of Exclusion, by which those who do not agree to a favourable "deal" are excluded from those goods. Once again, this shows "collective property" is a myth, a hoax.

How did this Golden Rule come to be adopted by all? Simple - it all happened by imitation. A child who wants something - say, a bar of chocolate - will see his father go to a shopkeeper and buy it for him. Thus, the child will learn how "desired objects" are obtained - by trade. He will practice this - and teach his children, too. 

Civilisation is "learned behaviour." It means we are NOT "born to be wild." Civilisation is learnt restraints that are self-imposed. If we were wild, we would snatch-and-grab at all that we desired and there would be "chaos." That chaos, indeed, is what the Constitution of India is all about - read on on to find out why.

It is because of the Golden Rule of the Inviolability of Private Property which we all unknowingly follow that "perfect order" reigns throughout all our bazaars. This is why, without any policemen, magistrates, judges or lawyers, transactions worth billions take place in informal markets throughout the Third World. This is the "natural order." This indicates that a "private law society" is eminently feasible. And desirable as well.

This applies especially to India. Here, our The State is a pirate and a predator. Its policemen and its bureaucrats violate Private Property every single day - armed with the might of "democratic legislation" issued by a Parliament that rules because of a Constitution that does NOT recognise our rights to what is our own. 

"Legal plunder" - like "nationalisation" - emanates from this immoral Constitution. And I don't use the term "immoral" lightly. If robbing a street vendor of his wares is "theft," then robbing JRD Tata of Air India is theft too, as is robbing X of his bank or Y of his coal mine. "Land acquisition" is nothing but theft. Legal plunder. Tyranny!

If you read Frederic Bastiat's The Law - which you must - you will find two phrases ringing loudly through the text: "legal plunder" and "false philanthropy." As far as the false philanthropy is concerned, it is financed by new issues of vast quantities of fiat paper money - which is inflationism, and ought to be called "social injustice."

This is allowed to occur because we do not see money itself as Property - that it cannot be mere paper with a State emblem stamped upon it; that it must be something tangible; something "hard" like gold or silver. So, legal plunder and false philanthropy remain with us today, despite Bastiat's warnings of over 160 years ago. I discuss some of these legal issues pertaining to money in this column advocating a return to the Gold Standard. And in this other column calling for Private Money.

Thus, the Big Idea is nothing but the Inviolability of Private Property - the very opposite of our socialist Constitution. The private law society is based on this - and so it includes Contracts, by which transactions in property are lawfully conducted between two or more private parties into the future. It also includes Torts - which apply when damage is caused to Property, even unintentionally or by negligence. 

Legislation is "public law" - and it invariably interferes with the natural order of the private law society. It ought to be rejected in toto. 

In this long interview with The Daily Bell, the philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe examines many of the issues involved in depth. What he proves are three  important truths:

First - that Democracy and Freedom are two different things;

Second - that Law and Legislation are also different things, hence different words are applied to them. Law comes from the past, along with Civilisation - like Private Property. Legislation is "new public law" that is manufactured by democratic assemblies - like the Constitution of India.

Third - that fiat paper money is a swindle. As Hoppe says:

More paper money cannot make a society richer, of course, – it is just more printed-paper. Otherwise, why is it that there are still poor countries and poor people around? But more money makes its monopolistic producer (the central bank) and its earliest recipients (the government and big, government-connected banks and their major clients) richer at the expense of making the money's late and latest receivers poorer.

This may be contrasted with the views of kaushik basu, chief economic advisor to the government of india, that I quoted and critiqued in yesterday's post.

Commenting on people like kaushik basu, who is a "Servant of our The State," Professor Hoppe says:

Thanks to the central bank, most "monetary experts" and "leading macro-economists" can, by putting them on the payroll, be turned into government propagandists "explaining," like alchemists, how stones (paper) can be turned into bread (wealth). Thanks to the central bank, interest rates can be artificially lowered all the way down to zero, channeling credit into less and least credit-worthy projects and hands (and crowding out worthy projects and hands), and causing ever greater investment bubble-booms, followed by ever more spectacular busts. And thanks to the central bank, we are confronted with a dramatically increasing threat of an impending hyperinflation...

Yes, it is a huge, big, ugly Predatory State.

The Big Idea is not the "perfect ruler."

Rather, it lies in the "perfect rule."

The Inviolability of Private Property is just that.

All I did was articulate a rule we all follow. This is what enables Liberty. It is the foundation of Classical Liberalism. As John Locke put it, in 1691:

Where there is no Property, there is no Justice.

And as Ludwig von Mises put it in his exposition of classical liberalism:

Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will. It allows other forces to arise side by side with and in opposition to political power.

These are all old ideas. Very old, indeed. Just that we lost them along the way, thanks to learned PhDs from JNU - and all our "constitutional lawyers," of course.

We Don't Need State Education!

Or, as a t-shirt I saw put it:

I was born intelligent, but education ruined me.

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Deal of the Day from Amazon: Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Economics and Ethics of Private Property.