Hoppe: As a Rule...

Hoppe: As a Rule...

Hoppe: As a Rule Intellectuals are Worthless Gasbags and Smartasses
Hans Herman Hoppe is out with a new book, Der Wettbewerb der Gauner (“The Competition of Crooks”.

As part of the promotion of the book, Hoppe gave agreed to be interviewed by Andreas Marquart, misesinfo. Robert Groezinger has produced a English translation of the interview from the original German. Hoppe lets it rip. Here's a few excerpts:

...we’ll probably have to experience national bankruptcy spreading through Portugal, Spain, Italy and ultimately on to Germany. Only then, I fear, will it become clear to everyone what many people already suspect now: that the EU is nothing but a gigantic machinery of income and wealth redistribution, from Germany and the Netherlands to Greece, Spain, Portugal, and so on. But that’s not all. It will also become clear that the same insanity, the same mess, exists even within each individual country: redistribution from Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg to Bremen and Berlin, from Little Town A to Little Village B, from one company or industry to another, from Smith to Jones and so on – and always following the same perverse pattern: redistribution from the more productive countries, regions, places, companies and individuals to those that are less productive or not productive at all. Bankruptcy will bring all of this to light in a dramatic fashion.

And perhaps then, finally, will come the realization that democracy – in whose name all these dirty tricks have been done – is nothing more than an especially insidious form of communism, and that the politicians who have wrought this immoral and economic madness and who have thereby enriched themselves personally (never, of course, being liable for the damages they have caused!), are nothing more than a despicable bunch of communist crooks.
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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 run.

That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation. And this fact also allows us to conjecture about what economic ‘miracles’ would be possible if we had unimpeded capitalism liberated from such parasitism.
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...my comments were intended to systematically encourage John Doe. To tell him, and this is coming from an intellectual, an insider so to speak, that his popular prejudice against intellectuals – that as a rule they are worthless gasbags and smartasses – is quite right. That there are far too many intellectuals, because the state pays for and subsidises them via taxes taken from rest of us. That this colors and distorts the object and result of their thinking – towards statism. That it is he, the average consumer, who has to pay for the whole wasteful nonsense, and that therefore he has every reason to cry out and be indignant.

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I’m confident that John Doe is able to realize that these machinations, taking place every day on an almost unimaginable scale, are nothing more than a gigantic case of fraudulent theft.

But the truth is, we don’t hear anything about this fraud from our pretentious, unintelligible and arrogant so-called economic and financial experts on radio, television, and other mainstream media. This is either because they are being paid to consciously withhold or obscure the facts against their better judgment,; or because they were so dumbed down during their time at university, that they are in fact incapable of recognising even the simplest facts and relationships.