Hoppe Philosophie Magazine Interview on Taxation

Hoppe Philosophie Magazine Interview on Taxation
March 10, 2011 by Stephan Kinsella

Professor Hoppe has posted a very interesting Interview on Taxation -- as he notes in prefatory remarks:

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 agreed to the interview, it was conducted by email in English, Mr. Cori produced a French translation, my friend Dr. Nikolay Gertchev checked and corrected his translation, and I then sent the authorized translation to Mr. Cori. Since then, more than a month ago, and despite repeated promptings, I have not heard from Mr. Cori. I can only speculate as for the reasons of his silence.

Most likely, he did not get permission from his superiors to publish the interview, and he does not possess the courtesy and courage to tell me.

In any case, here is the original interview. …

Note, in particular, the bolded portion of Hoppe's answer to the final question:

NC: Should rich people be treated differently than poor people?

Hoppe: Every person, rich or poor, should be treated the same before the law. There are rich people, who are rich without having defrauded or stolen from anyone. They are rich, because they have worked hard, they have saved diligently, they have been productive, and they have shown entrepreneurial ingenuity, often for several family-generations. Such people should not only be left alone, but they should be praised as heroes. And there are rich people, mostly from the class of political leaders in control of the state-apparatus and from the state-connected elites of banking and big business, who are rich, because they have been directly engaged in, or indirectly benefitted from, confiscation, theft, trickery and fraud. Such people should not be left alone, but instead be condemned and despised as gangsters. The same applies to poor people. There are poor people, who are honest people, and therefore should be left alone. They may not be heroes, but they deserve our respect. And there are poor people who are crooks, and who should be treated as crooks, regardless of their "poverty."

Hoppe's indictment of big business and banking elites who are in bed with the state is not some outlier libertarian analysis. As I noted here, libertarians such as Rothbard, Rockwell, and others have long pointed out that big business often colludes with the state.1 The common charge by left libertarians that "right" libertarians (i.e., libertarians who do not accept the labor theory of value) are "vulgar" libertarians–too willing to portray state cronies and parasites as part of "capitalism" instead of as part of the exploiting class–is not supported–at least in the case of Rothbardians.

See Murray N. Rothbard, Origins of the Welfare State in America, Mises.org (1996) ("Big businesses, who were already voluntarily providing costly old-age pensions to their employees, could use the federal government to force their small-business competitors into paying for similar, costly, programs…. [T]he legislation deliberately penalizes the lower cost, 'unprogressive,' employer, and cripples him by artificially raising his costs compared to the larger employer.… It is no wonder, then, that the bigger businesses almost all backed the Social Security scheme to the hilt, while it was attacked by such associations of small business as the National Metal Trades Association, the Illinois Manufacturing Association, and the National Association of Manufacturers. By 1939, only 17 percent of American businesses favored repeal of the Social Security Act, while not one big business firm supported repeal.… Big business, indeed, collaborated enthusiastically with social security."); Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., "The Economics Of Discrimination," in Speaking of Liberty (2003), at 99 ("One way the ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] is enforced is through the use of government and private 'testers.' These actors, who will want to find all the "discrimination" they can, terrify small businesses. The smaller the business, the more ADA hurts. That's partly why big business supported it. How nice to have the government clobber your up-and-coming competition."); Rothbard, For A New Liberty (2002), pp. 316 et seq.; Rothbard, The Betrayal of the American Right, 185-86 (2007) ("This is the general view on the Right; in the remarkable phrase of Ayn Rand, Big Business is 'America's most persecuted minority.' Persecuted minority, indeed! To be sure, there were charges aplenty against Big Business and its intimate connections with Big Government in the old McCormick Chicago Tribune and especially in the writings of Albert Jay Nock; but it took the Williams-Kolko analysis, and particularly the detailed investigation by Kolko, to portray the true anatomy and physiology of the America scene. As Kolko pointed out, all the various measures of federal regulation and welfare statism, beginning in the Progressive period, that Left and Right alike have always believed to be a mass movement against Big Business, are not only backed to the hilt by Big Business at the present time, but were originated by it for the very purpose of shifting from a free market to a cartelized economy. Under the guise of regulations "against monopoly" and "for the public welfare," Big Business has succeeded in granting itself cartels and privileges through the use of government."); Albert Jay Nock, quoted in Rothbard, The Betrayal of the American Right, 22 (2007) ("The simple truth is that our businessmen do not want a government that will let business alone. They want a government they can use. Offer them one made on Spencer's model, and they would see the country blow up before they would accept it.") [ ]