My Discovery of Human Action and Mises as a Philosopher | Hans-Hermann Hoppe

“Sociology is in constant danger of thinking something is a law that is not a law. And economists frequently think that something is a hypothesis for the viable regularity when it is, in fact, a logically necessary truth. And Mises is a person who can set us right in all of this and help us avoid these confusions that have invaded most of the social sciences.”

Presented at the 2024 Human Action Conference on Friday, 17 May 2024, at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

[Anti-Stateradio]

Grateful to have Hans back in Auburn. He is a hero in private property rights, economic thought, and political theory.

[maurices]

Good to see this man still sharing his knowledge, so to speak.

[Exiled]

Wow. He studied in the Frankfurt school during critical theory’s nascency. And, he came out without giving up on deductive logic based on undeniable axioms.
That’s the intellectual equivalent of not taking the jab at the height of the coof!

[petarsilic]

Hans is probably the best active intellectual in the world at this moment. By all his work, by the audience he attracts, by the impact he has on individuals. Absolutely great.

btw. Ayn Rand's "collective guilt" means that because values are interconnected, in social dynamics, you inevitably contribute to bad things in society, and to that extent you're guilty. Without this context, "collective guilt" can be used as an excuse for war crimes. And that's what anti-objectivists/Kantians in ARI and ARCUK are doing today. In objectivism, all guilt is individually earned. There is neither "collective guilt", nor "collective".

[dustinseth]

I painstakingly went through human action very slowly. That Hans read it in a few days as a college kid is crazy.

[joshuacrosby]

When I read the first part I found some amazing insights but they were swimming in a sea of arguments against unknown German schools of thought at the time.

[peterpedersen]

@misesmedia I think, this is a very important lecture. Especially so for the history of ideas (with regards to the austrian school, of course). Is this also available as a text? Or is it going to be published somewhere?

In the future, I might want to quote it, but I have a particular distaste for quoting youtube videos. 😄

[NavaidSyed]

You can never properly understand the effect without knowing the cause.

[NavaidSyed]

For me, logic is far more important than rationalisation.

[maxw]

Does anyone know why Ayn Rand would be a proponent of collective guilt and collective punishment? (at 18:25)

[Gorboduc]

The search engines might want to know who the speaker is, no? Or is Triple H too spicy for the normie palette?

[CommandmentsOfHoppe]

I really want to see him speak in person. Just don't think its practical in my situation unfortunately.

[velvetcroc]

Intellectuals like Hoppe have always had a hard time understanding something elementary about life. Might is right. In a world with metal weapons and grain surpluses allowing for a division of labor there will always be a state because those two factors make it possible to force people to provide you stuff for free. Since virtually all people prefer free-riding to working there will always be some people daring and competent enough to force themselves on people that are less daring and competent. It doesn't matter that the state is a parasite. Parasites are products of nature too. Libertarianism is the pipe dream of a just world where no one free-rides on the labor of others. It is no less a Utopia than communism and in fact it is even more naive.

[velvetcroc]

The philosophy of anarchism in its many individualistic/right-wing or socialistic/left-wing variations is founded on elementary misconceptions rooted in poor historical literacy: anarchists make the fundamental error of thinking that the state is a power that imposes itself on society from the outside, in the same way a gang imposes itself on its turf. That is not the case.

Modern archeology has effectively confirmed the view of Frederick Engels who said that the state is a product of class struggles and not their cause. This has long been denied by the received wisdom that sees the state as a quasi automatic product of agriculture or urbanism. Thanks to advances in archeology the conventional view has been falsified. It is now abundantly clear that agriculture and urbanism are in fact far older than the state.

It was thus not the state that created class divisions as bourgeois philosophers who for centuries lament the 'inequality' of civilization think. The state came to being as the result of class antagonisms that existed before the state.

The correct way to view the state is this: it is the product of a society that has a reached a certain threshold in the means of its material reproduction. The manifestation of state structures is the practical admission that this society is torn in contradictions that it cannot resolve. These contradictions are caused by classes of people with opposing material interests.

In order that these classes do not liquidate themselves and the whole of society in fruitless struggles, a power is required that presents itself as being on a higher plane than the rest of of society, with the task to keep the perpetually simmering class conflict in check, within the boundaries of civilized 'order' as it were. This power, a power that emerged from nowhere else but from the very bosom of society but which slowly and gradually became more and more alienated from the needs of society and from the needs of the individuals in society, is the state.

And in fact both kinds of needs are two sides of the same coin. The left-wing anarchists are wrong to believe that the state exists to serve the needs of non-productive individuals at the expense of an otherwise productive and virtuous society and the right-wing anarchists are wrong to believe that the state exists to serve the needs of a non-productive society at the expense of otherwise productive and virtuous individuals.

[kahwigulum]

whats with walter block being dismissed as a senior fellow
lost my respect with that move

[sasaradetic]

What happened to you people?
What do they put in your drinks?

[DaleBolender-msjl]

This guy is hopelessly confused ! Karl Popper was not a positivist ! He did not think a proposition could be verified ! Hoppe continues ranting this untruth every time I hear him speak !