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How Objectivists Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Zionist Regime Change Wars

by on October 29, 2026

Summary and transcript below.

Brook is a moron. So many dishonest or stupid takes. To imply Hoppe and other libertarian anarchists really want a lawless society of might makes right and all against all [transcript: 30:17] is just dumb. He can’t be stupid enough to really believe this.

And take this nonsense about Hoppe’s Democracy book being paywalled due to copyright:

Nikos: … But his biggest contribution in the cultures, let’s say, or so to speak, to use his usual phrase, is his work on democracy And that’s his most controversial work, the book Democracy The God That Failed. And I know libertarians don’t believe in intellectual property.

[00:38:58] Nikos: The book is very, very expensive for some reason, and you can find I mean you can find it pirated, but the actual version is it’s an expensive book. So I think most people use it as a catchphrase rather than they’ve actually read it. But that’s why we’re here.

[00:39:14] Brook: So it’s not online, it’s not available for free? I mean

[00:39:16] Nikos: nope, it’s not available for free.

[00:39:18] Brook: That’s a shocking for for kinsella who doesn’t believe in intellectual I mean Kinsella should should scan the book and put it up on his website for the benefit of humanity because Kinsella doesn’t believe in intellectual property. So I’m not sure why he is spending time respecting the intellectual property of Hans Hermann Hoppe.”

So because I think IP law should be abolished, I should … risk millions of dollars in fines? He is blaming me for having to deal with the consequences of a system he supports? Besides that, Hoppe now, like me, opens up everything he can with CC-BY and cannot help that a couple of his older books were published by mainstream publishers who insisted on an assignment of the copyright. In any case, he does link on his page for Democracy: The God That Failed (Transaction, 2001) unauthorized online copies: Online PDF (2)

And see further:

And see also Matt Zwolinski, “The Trouble with Hans-Hermann Hoppe,”The Bleeding Heart Libertarian (Oct. 29, 2026): “His latest remarks about the Holocaust fit a pattern decades in the making. A guide to who he is, what he’s argued, and why it matters.” (Related Facebook post) Not worth further responding to.

Sarwark snark

Related

  • Hoppe, Book Review, The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars (1996); and Day of the Long Knives (FEE)
  • Jose Nino, How Objectivists Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Zionist Regime Change Wars, February 6, 2026: Niño argues that Ayn Rand’s Objectivism has evolved from her 1964 preference for economic boycotts over invading dictatorships like the USSR or Cuba into aggressive support by her heirs (Leonard Peikoff and Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute) for ground invasions and regime change in Iran, nuclear options if needed, the total destruction of Hamas, and the “pulverizing” of broader Palestinian society as an enemy population to crush its hopes—positions that align Objectivism with hawkish neoconservatives and religious Zionists favoring Greater Israel, unlimited Israeli military action, opposition to Palestinian statehood, and a civilization-versus-barbarism framing, despite Objectivism’s claims to oppose initiating force and uphold individual rights. The article portrays this as intellectual cover for Jewish/Zionist interests prioritizing the subjugation of Palestinians and territorial expansion over philosophical consistency.

Summary

One-paragraph overview:
In this Yaron & Nikos Dialogue, Yaron Brook and Nikos Sotirakopoulos examine Hans-Hermann Hoppe as the leading living heir to Murray Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalist tradition, focusing on the recent clip in which Hoppe minimized the Holocaust (“so-called Holocaust”), claimed nothing comparable to Gaza happened in World Wars I or II, and asserted that video evidence exists for the former but not the latter. They trace Hoppe’s intellectual influence (argumentation ethics, anti-democracy, hostility to the U.S. and Israel), reconstruct and critique his argumentation ethics as an attempt to ground self-ownership and private property in the presuppositions of discourse (drawing on Jürgen Habermas), contrast it with Ayn Rand’s Objectivist derivation of rights from the requirements of human life, and argue that Hoppe’s (and Rothbard’s) framework ultimately rests on hatred of the state rather than a positive love of human flourishing. Later segments touch on Israeli politics, Rothbard’s philosophical failures, and the distinction between libertarians motivated by love of humanity versus contrarian hatred.

Introduction and Setup

[00:01:00]
Brook opens from Buenos Aires while Nikos notes it is a national holiday in Greece that he is spending rereading Hoppe. They handle technical audio issues, preview the absence of a weekend show, and announce the next episode (Suez Crisis on November 8) plus an upcoming San Francisco debate with Catholics on whether capitalism promotes human flourishing.

Brook stresses that the show depends on super-chat support and thanks early donors. The tone is informal and preparatory; both speakers signal that the Hoppe discussion will be critical rather than celebratory.

Introducing Hans-Hermann Hoppe

[00:03:00]
Brook sketches Hoppe as Rothbard’s leading student and the most influential living anarcho-capitalist, especially within the Mises Institute orbit and the “new right.” Nikos adds that Rothbard himself credited Hoppe with advancing his ideas via argumentation ethics and with developing distinctive views on democracy versus monarchy.

They note Hoppe’s influence in Europe (including Poland) and his pattern of hostility toward the United States and Israel. Brook mentions a recent schism and Hoppe’s departure from the Mises Institute to form the Property and Freedom Society. The segment establishes Hoppe’s stature while foreshadowing the critique that will follow.

Playing Hoppe’s Controversial Clip on Gaza and the Holocaust

[00:09:30]
They play a roughly two-minute clip in which Hoppe describes Israeli actions in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran as uniquely cruel (“nothing like that happened in World War I… World War II”), calls the Holocaust the “so-called Holocaust,” and states that while “evil things” occurred, the official narrative contains “huge holes” and “lots of lies.” He contrasts the availability of video from Gaza with the supposed lack of video from the Holocaust.

Brook and Nikos pause the clip mid-way due to technical issues but confirm the audience has the gist. The clip is presented as the immediate occasion for the episode.

Critique of Hoppe’s Holocaust Comments and Historical Claims

[00:12:00]
Brook and Nikos dismantle the clip’s historical claims. They note that Nazi-produced footage of camps exists, that survivors and perpetrators left extensive testimony, and that the Nazis themselves did not deny the killings. Nikos cites the destruction of a Cretan village and the execution of its male population as one of many World War II atrocities that exceed Hoppe’s “nothing like that” assertion; Brook adds Dresden, Stalingrad, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the murder of Polish officers.

They observe the internal contradiction that Hoppe earlier inflated Gaza casualty figures far beyond even Palestinian claims while treating those figures as unquestionable. Brook expresses shock that a respectable-looking audience at a Property and Freedom Society event nodded along. Both speakers frame the comments as evidence of deeper moral and intellectual corruption within Hoppe’s circle.

Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics: The Core Contribution

[00:18:30]
Nikos explains why Hoppe is considered central: his argumentation ethics claims to prove libertarian rights on irrefutable philosophical grounds, transcending both natural-rights/deontological approaches (associated with Rand) and utilitarian/consequentialist ones (Mises, Friedman). Hoppe rejects empiricism in favor of deductive, a priori truths analogous to the law of non-contradiction or the impossibility of a pen being in two places at once.

He illustrates with economic examples (extreme minimum wages cause unemployment; massive money printing causes inflation) that Austrians treat as self-evident rather than contingent empirical findings. The goal is a foundation for both Austrian economics and individual rights that does not rely on testing or on appeals to human nature or utility.

Habermas, Discourse Ethics, and Self-Ownership

[00:23:00]
Nikos traces the argument to Hoppe’s teacher Jürgen Habermas and the theory of communicative action. In discourse one presupposes the autonomy of the interlocutor; Hoppe extends this to self-ownership of body and property—because one chooses to argue rather than seize or assault, one thereby recognizes the other’s rights. Claiming the opposite while arguing is a performative contradiction.

Brook challenges the standard: if one does steal, one has merely “stepped outside discourse,” but what makes force illegitimate in the first place? They contrast this with Rand’s derivation from the nature of man (reason as the basic means of survival; force as the enemy of the mind). Nikos notes that Hoppe largely ignores Rand despite claiming to go beyond deontological defenses. Brook adds that Hoppe’s 2024 remark dismissing The Virtue of Selfishness as lacking “analytical rigor” reflects a rationalist preference for pure abstraction over reality-connected reasoning. The section portrays argumentation ethics as an elaborate but ungrounded syllogism.

Discussion of Israeli Elections and Arab Parties

[01:54:00]
Brook analyzes recent Israeli election results in which two Arab parties (one Islamist, one secular-nationalist/Marxist) together secured roughly 17–19 seats amid unprecedented Arab turnout (>80%). He attributes this to the Israeli state’s failure to assimilate its Arab citizens—higher crime rates due to under-policing, discrimination in housing and education, and inflammatory rhetoric from figures such as Itamar Ben-Gvir.

He expects a Netanyahu-led center-right government that will not include the Arab parties and sketches possible deals (e.g., elevating Netanyahu to the ceremonial presidency). The digression is presented as an illustration of real-world political failure rather than abstract theory.

Rothbard’s Hatred of the State and Philosophical Failures

[02:00:00]
Responding to a viewer question about Rothbard’s “hatred,” Brook distinguishes Rothbard’s solid economic critiques of the welfare/regulatory state from his disastrous excursions into philosophy, sociology, and history. He argues that Rothbard (like Mises and Hayek when they leave economics) becomes conventional or worse once he leaves his competence.

The deeper problem, Brook claims, is that hatred of the state becomes the dominant motive: successful states (the United States, Israel, Western Europe) are therefore hated more intensely. This explains Rothbard’s alliances with Maoists (shared anti-Vietnam War stance) and later with the paleo-right. Everything is filtered through the desire to abolish the state rather than to expand freedom or improve governance.

Two Types of Libertarians: Love of Humanity vs. Hatred

[02:03:00]
Nikos distinguishes two routes into libertarianism: one rooted in love of humanity and the desire to see people flourish in freedom, the other in hatred of the world and the wish to “show it the finger,” with libertarianism as the vehicle. Brook agrees that Rothbard exemplifies the second.

They briefly address viewer questions on corporate personhood (corporations as legal devices representing individuals, not independent rights-bearers), free speech inside Hoppean covenants, and the overuse of “conflict of interest” as a rhetorical weapon against anyone with a financial stake. Brook reiterates that the only real test of credibility is whether the arguments are sound.

Closing Remarks and Next Episode Announcement

[02:19:00]
Brook thanks super-chatters, notes his upcoming travel, and confirms the November 8 episode on the Suez Crisis (from home) followed by the San Francisco debate. Nikos signs off. The episode ends on a practical note after a wide-ranging critique of Hoppe’s framework and its practical consequences.

 

Hoppe: The Libertarian God that Failed

Yaron Brook & Nikos Sotirakopoulos Dialogues

Full transcript from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPdwprAS0j4

Speakers: Brook = Yaron Brook; Nikos = Nikos Sotirakopoulos. Spelling and transcription errors corrected. Timestamps shown at the start of each speaker turn.

 

[00:00:58] Brook: All right, everybody. welcome to the Yaron and Nikos dialogues. I am hi Nikos, how are you?

[00:01:05] Nikos: welcome. We’ve got that echo. Let’s get rid of that. then

[00:01:09] Brook: I know how to get rid of one second.

[00:01:11] Nikos: Welcome.

[00:01:12] Brook: There we go. Hey Nikos. I think I got rid of the die of of of the echo. All right. Today

[00:01:18] Nikos: it’s a national celebration day in Greece. And how do I spend it? Revising the works of Hans Hermann Hoppe. So that’s my patriotic duty to the cost.

[00:01:29] Brook: How much fun is that? I mean, , I mean, , what a fun day Nikos has had. I, on the other hand, was stuck at the back of an airplane flying into Buenos Aires. So I’m in the land of liberty and freedom. The only politician on earth who stands for anything close to that here in Buenos Aires. So I’m in Argentina so look, you know, w you can ask in the in the I haven’t haven’t yet got an impression of Buenos Aires. I might I’m I’m here for such a short visit, I might not get an impression. We’ll see. I’m meeting a lot of Argentinians tomorrow, so maybe I’ll have a better idea after that. Let’s see. We’ve got the remote

[00:02:11] Brook: set up. And let me just let me just do this. Yes, I forgot to do that. All right. Hi everybody. this is for the people just on the audio. me and Nikos are here. so let’s see. So I’m in a hotel, so I who knows w the internet connection supposedly is really good. Believe it when I see it. So let’s see how this the show goes. The audio so far is great. So I don’t think you’re hearing an echo. If you are please let me know so let us know as soon as possible if you can hear any echo or if there are any audio problems. I think so far so good. All right, so Today we’re going to talk about Hans Hermann Hoppe.

[00:02:59] Brook: And we’ll talk about who he is in a minute. This weekend, there’s going to be no show. This is why I moved it to today because The weekend was gonna be too difficult and messy and I wasn’t sure about bandwidth on the weekend and and I thought today we’d have a good good internet but the weekend the weekend after that on Sunday there definitely will be a show. That is November eighth, I think. and we will be doing the Suez crisis. We’ll be talking about the Suez crisis and then I start traveling again so they’re probably and Nikos and I will actually the following weekend we’ll be meeting up in on the Saturday

[00:03:36] Brook: meeting up in San Francisco to do a debate. If you live in the San Francisco area, stay tuned for an announcement, but it will be Saturday evening. November fourteenth, is that right? I think it’s November fourteenth on Saturday. Yeah, it’s gonna be it’s gonna be huge. I I like blue, so bring a dark blue, really dark blue.

[00:03:59] Nikos: Exactly yellow dark blue so not like the Ancap like the Maccabi but with more dark blue

[00:04:06] Brook: There you go. So we want dark blue. And there are gonna be hundreds of people usually at these events. There are hundreds of people. They’ll almost all be in opposition to Nikos and I. we are debating two Catholics on whether capitalism can lead to human flourishing or not. So a great topic for debate, I think. And usually we debate this with a bunch of Marxists. but this time we’re gonna debate it with Catholics. I don’t know there’s much difference between Catholics and Marxists. We’ll find out. but Nikos and I are gonna be ready to take them on and it’ll be a lot of fun So you guys should definitely definitely come if you live in the Bay Area.

[00:04:46] Brook: it’ll be it’ll be quite a brawl. And it gets rowdy, these debates get rowdy. So please join us. also quickly before we get to the topic remind you that you know these shows are only possible because of your support We cannot do them. I mean time is money. Nikos spends spent all day today reading Hoppe and

[00:05:13] Nikos: rereading

[00:05:14] Brook: rereading Hoppe and and so you’re you’re paying for our time our knowledge, our you know, our expertise, but also just our sheer time of doing these shows. So please be generous in the super chat. we have double the amount per hour because there are two of us. We both have to eat You know, so so take that into account. I already see Adri came in with fifty dollars. Thank you, Adrian. Really appreciate really appreciate that. All right. So let’s get started. So Hans Hermann Hoppe you know was a I’ll I’ll just give quickly and then you can fill in the blanks, was a you know student. of of Murray Rothbard.

[00:06:04] Brook: he worked with Murray Rothbard. He he he’s I think he would consider himself a student of Murray Rothbard’s ideas is a follower of Murray Rothbard and is considered probably the leading anarcho-capitalist of the Murray Rothbard school. in in in in kind of the world today. he has been incredibly influential on the libertarian movement over the last twenty years. particularly the anarcho the the anarchist side of the movement. I don’t think he has much influence outside of the anarch an anarchist side of the movement.

[00:06:38] Nikos: He has in the new right these days.

[00:06:40] Brook: Yeah, on the new right, on the non-anarchist, like more of the conservative right, yes, and and on people like What’s his name from the Bayer?

[00:06:47] Nikos: Curtis Yarvin.

[00:06:48] Brook: Curtis Yarvin. So and you’ll see some similarities between him and Curtis Yarvin that I don’t think are accidental. the video on my end seems a little jittery, so I don’t know if if you’re getting a little jitters on the email on the on the video, but hopefully hopefully it won’t be too bad and hopefully it won’t last. But

[00:07:05] Nikos: let me add one more thing in what you said It’s not just that he was a student of Rothbard, Rothbard himself considers that Hoppe has moved his ideas forward. So his contribution to libertarian thought is what we’ll discuss later, his argumentation ethics. And Rothbard says actually I was wrong and my student this Young man of thirty years of age, which is how much how old Hoppe was when he came up with this. For the Austro-Libertarian for the Austrian Libertarian world, and someone who corrected Rothbard and pushed the Rothbard movement actually forward, and also he had ideas that He traded in territories that Rothbard

[00:07:53] Nikos: did not tread so much, such as his theory on democracy and monarchy. With a question mark, and we’ll we’ll discuss this.

[00:08:03] Brook: Yeah, and and you see his influence everywhere, so he had a huge influence on the Mises Institute, you know, continuing through Rothbard and he led intellectually together with Lou Rockwell, I think the the Mises Institute, he had a huge influence in Europe on kind of the anarchist libertarian anarchist movement in Europe. I’ve I encountered his followers, particularly in Poland. I debated a follower of his at a Polish university. we did a debate on anarchy a few years ago So he is out there and he very much kind of follows the pattern of of of Rothbard when it comes to when it comes to anarchy, but also when it comes to, for example, being critical of the United States.

[00:08:53] Brook: not to be critical, but but being hateful towards the United States. And we’ll get to that And as a consequence, I think, or expansion of that being critical and hateful towards Israel. And and that’s really what motivated this, right, to do it now. Is is a video that came out. You want to say something about the video and maybe we can show it in a few minutes.

[00:09:12] Nikos: We can show it so that people get the context of what we’re talking about, and you can pause it whenever you want to include your commentary on it.

[00:09:19] Brook: Yeah, so let me let me let me show you. I’ll share my screen. this is Hoppe, he’s he’s in his eighties, I think. So he he’s

[00:09:27] Nikos: He was born in the late forties, actually on Atlas Rag Day, September second.

[00:09:33] Brook: So he is in his eighties and I I’ll I’ll play this. I’ll play it’s two minutes long. You we’ll listen to the whole thing and then we can talk about it, and then we can get deeper into his philosophy and his contribution, if you will, to kind of anarchist ideas. All right, here we go Let me know if you hear this well, you know, if it’s coming, the sound is coming across. Let me know if there’s any echoes or issues or anything else. But here we go.

[00:10:06] Hoppe (clip): And if you look at what Israel with Americans assist is doing in the Gaza Strip, is doing in Lebanon, and doing in Yaron. of which we all have documentation. We can see there are videos of that. The cruelty that is unarrived Nothing like that happened in World War I. Nothing like that happened in World War II. Look at Gaza completely flat. to compare what happens to Gaza and then the so-called Holocaust. As far as the Holocaust is concerned, If you deny the tedious detail in the official narrative of the Holocaust in Germany, you will be jailed. despite the fact that in nobody I’ve ever met, even among those people who are called Holocaust deniers.

[00:11:10] Hoppe (clip): has ever denied that cruel, evil, ugly things happened during that period. But if you study these things a little bit more closely, again I learned that all from Rose part two, there are huge holes in the story. there are lots of lies mixed into certain things that are under

[00:11:34] Nikos: Well we got the we got the main we got them the gist of the argument.

[00:11:39] Brook: What happened there? I was going oh

[00:11:44] Nikos: It’s a Twitter problem, not your connection. We can still hear you well.

[00:11:48] Brook: Okay, so it is a it’s a Twitter problem, but why why would it that’s weird.

[00:11:54] Nikos: but we got the we got the gist of the argument.

[00:11:56] Brook: Okay, yeah. So let me just stop sharing. So notice just a few things, just a notice in terms of his language. So-called Holocaust, so-called. And then he said, yeah, we all recognize that you know some bad, even evil things happened during that period. So not by the Nazis towards the Jews, God forbid. No, not that. Just evil and bad things happened during that period. Maybe Churchill did them, maybe who knows who did them. We’re not gonna we’re not gonna talk about that So he said Holocaust denier, right? So that’s that’s part of it. So-called Holocaust. That’s enough to deny the Holocaust right there.

[00:12:37] Brook: And he later on goes on to say, look We don’t really know what happened in the Holocaust. We don’t have, in a sense, we don’t have video. We don’t really know what happened, but we know what happened in Gaza. We we see the bombing in in Yaron. We see what’s going on in Beirut. We know what’s going on. We have video. We have from there. Which which which you know he he never.

[00:13:12] Nikos: Yeah. And not the

[00:13:14] Brook: So notice so notice we don’t have videos that now by the way there is video of the Holocaust because there’s video that the Nazis made of the concentration camps. They were quite quite just like Hamas, there was a certain call it pride , pseudo-pride that went into the the the annihilation of the Jews. we have plenty of firsthand testimonials of the people involved. We even have Nazi testimonials after the fact they don’t deny what they did. They just, you know, the they don’t deny what they did. They just say we we were following orders, but they don’t deny the fact of what actually happened. They just denied

[00:13:53] Brook: taking responsibility for it. And yet he’s he in the Holocaust denying industry, which now I think Tucker Carlson is probably a member of. you know, all engaged in this. Yeah, bad things happened. Yep. I mean both sides did bad things but but what Gaza thing we can see with our eyes. We can actually see it. So we’re gonna talk about why he has this view, why his philosophy demands this view. But but go ahead, Nikos.

[00:14:20] Nikos: He says nothing like that happened in World War One and World War Two. My family comes from an island in in Crete, my grandmother where The Nazis burned the whole village and they executed every single male occupant of the village and it’s not even in the top five war crimes in Greece, not to mention in whole World War II. But apparently nothing like that happened in Gaza. The other thing And then

[00:14:45] Brook: have you seen pictures of Dresden? I mean put aside who committed it, but Dresden was flattened, , you know, and it looks it it it very much looks like Gaza, probably worse. And yet it that happened during World War II. I mean the guy is just He

[00:14:59] Nikos: Yeah, but Hoppe would consider Dresden a war crime. So he would say he would ask.

[00:15:04] Brook: Well okay, let’s let’s talk about what the Nazis did to Stalingrad. or what the Nazis did to you know to any place to w the Warsaw ghetto to any place that actually resisted them, right? I mean the the the Nazis didn’t destroy cities primarily because everybody surrendered to the very quickly, right? And then they tried to destroy Prague. They they put bombs everywhere as they left and they destroyed other cities as they left. But I mean the the the the i the idea that nothing like this happened is just you know so absurd. I mean think about put aside the Jews, think about what happened to Polish

[00:15:49] Brook: the Polish officers that were just lined up and mowed down in large numbers by the Germans you know during World War II Yeah.

[00:15:59] Nikos: And the Soviets.

[00:16:00] Brook: Yeah. And

[00:16:01] Nikos: by well

[00:16:02] Brook: Soviets, but also by the Nazis, before the Soviets by the Nazis. So Yeah, I mean this is th the the these are these are ridiculous stories.

[00:16:11] Nikos: And also notice the contra the contradiction. Gaza is supposedly everyone has seen the crimes And yet a couple of years ago or last year when Hoppe mentioned the victims of Gaza, he said, oh there are probably like hundreds of thousands. So it’s so well documented that he gets wrong The numbers by magnitude, the numbers that the Palestinians themselves give, but somehow it’s so well recorded that there’s zero doubt, zero question about what happened there.

[00:16:39] Brook: And what’s shocking is the camera moves to the audience and there’s a bunch of people who look pretty respectable and, you know, nice people that you would meet at libertarian conferences. And they’re all like, hmm, okay. Yeah. He’s he’s just he’s just baking making stuff up and and ho denying the Holocaust and and and making things up and showing a complete lack of any knowledge or an evasion or just lying about history And a bunch of people are just nodding their heads and and and you know, with him on this. And it it it it it it tells you a lot about kind of the the whatever’s left or whatever exists of this movement

[00:17:21] Brook: that is around Hoppe and around the Mises Institute is just so, so intellectually, morally disgusting and corrupt.

[00:17:30] Nikos: And Hoppe himself knows that he’s moved to directions that even some of the Mises people would consider okay, this is embarrassing, which is why he created his own group where this video is from. the property and freedom society. It’s in the bastion of liberty, which is Turkey, it’s based. And the interesting thing is that These views these days are so mainstream among libertarians that maybe he shouldn’t have created his own group because I don’t think the Mises people would be so offended. with with the views of of Hoppe. But anyway ,

[00:18:09] Brook: So there’s been a schism in the Mises Institute where just I think the la six months ago or whatever, nine months ago, I I was watching this on X, , that he was he resigned, he left Maybe it’s a good thing. All the same crap, right? We will basically they don’t they don’t disagree about ideas. They it’s all about personalities.

[00:18:43] Nikos: And we’ll we’ll get to that. Shall we get to Hoppe ‘s Key ideas? Where do you want to start from?

[00:18:49] Brook: Yeah, no, start with his ideas and and kind of his intellectual journey, if you will.

[00:18:53] Nikos: Okay, so why are we even discussing Hoppe? Why is he considered the most important thinker In libertarian recent history, at least in Rothbard Z, because of his argumentation ethics. This is his contribution to knowledge. Now, what is argumentation ethics? So Hoppe wanted to prove libertarianism on a philosophical ground that he would consider irrefutable So he said there are two ways these days that people try to prove that we have liberty and individual rights. The one is the let’s call it natural rights the deontological argument for freedom and most people would put Yaron rand on that side.

[00:19:44] Nikos: So this is that we have rights based on our nature or God gave us to us, and this is why we have rights. And the other side is the utilitarian side or some other people call it consequentialist side which says if you want to achieve things like we are all wealthier and we assume that being wealthy is good then you should have capitalism There you usually see people like Ludwig von Mises or people like Milton Friedman. Hoppe thinks that there’s a way that you can go beyond these things And throughout his career he tries, as other Austro-libertarians, to fight the idea of empiricism. Empiricism claims that every argument needs to be tested.

[00:20:30] Nikos: And everything we prove that is true is proven to be true only temporarily till we make the next experiment and the next experiment might falsify it. So for example, why would the Chicago school economist, and maybe I’m wrong here, you’ll correct me, say that minimum wage laws do not work? Because we run some formula, some tests, and we see it does not work. But we do not draw universal lessons from that. And every person in the Austrian school, the praxeology school. Does not like this approach. They think that economics is a science that does not need this constant testing and verification. So

[00:21:13] Nikos: Hopeth thinks that economics is should be based on arguments that are incontestably true, incontestably obvious, so deductively We can reach truths. So for example, he says do we all agree that this pen cannot be at the same time here and in Buenos Aires? Yes, we don’t need to test this many times. Or he would say if this is smaller than this and this pen is smaller than this notebook, then this post-it is also smaller than this notebook. This is it always going to be like that. Now Hoppe says that in the same way that these are universally correct things, we don’t need to test them. We can draw similar conclusions for economics.

[00:22:04] Nikos: For example, if the minimum wage is, let’s say, two million dollars per hour We should expect that employment will fall because it will be too expensive to hire anyone. Or if we print three trillion dollars every day, prices will go up. There’s going to be inflation So Hoppe believes these things are self-evidently true. Therefore, he says economics is a science that has some deductive big truths. Now this doesn’t tell us though whether liberty is good or not. This tells us that Austrian economics is true, but still the question remains Is there a way to validate not only that the Austrians are

[00:22:50] Nikos: right in their economics, but also that we are we have individual rights and we have rights to our property? And Hoppe is that the right thing is. Yeah, not fear is property

[00:22:59] Brook: because everything everything with the Rothbardians and Hoppe rests on property, not life you know property that is the that is kind of the foundational right that makes all other rights possible

[00:23:11] Nikos: particularly Hoppe because rothbart claimed that he was in the tradition of Ayn Rand and natural rights Now, Hoppe, and here begins his contribution. Hoppe had as his PhD student, sorry, as his PhD professor, Jürgen Habermas. Now Jürgen Habermas, our audience might remember, we saw him when we talked about the Frankfurt School. So he was one of the most prominent new leftist intellectuals. And Habermas had this the his theory of communic communicative action. It means that when we discuss, when you and me discussed This discussion entails some presuppositions. I recognize Yaron as an autonomous entity.

[00:23:53] Nikos: Yaron recognizes me that we are in this let’s say relationship and we are trying to reach some state of coming closer to truth. Also Habermas said We need to understand that some arguments are self-contradictions. For example, if I say I cannot even say one word in English, I contradicted myself because I just spelled the word in English. Now you could say, okay, this is very simple. How can you come up with a mega theory from that? Hoppe takes this from there and says: when I discuss with you, I don’t just recognize your existence over there as someone who is worth communicating. But I recognize

[00:24:35] Nikos: that there is a mind there that I’m trying to reach, but there’s also a body And that you own your body because otherwise I would, I don’t know, come and steal your stuff or beat you up. But instead of beating you up, I’m talking to you Which means I recognize that you have ownership on your body. I cannot come there and take your glasses. I recog the fact that we speak rather than me beating you up Means that I recognize your self-ownership. Also, I recognize you occupy some space. You are wearing some clothes. You have some a computer. Again, notice I’m not coming there to grab your computer Therefore, I don’t just recognize your self-ownership, I recognize also your private property.

[00:25:20] Nikos: So Hoppe claims that merely by communicating with each other peacefully We recognize someone else’s self-ownership. And if I claim you don’t have self-ownership and you are my slave Or I have a right to take your book, but I don’t take your book. I’m engaging in self-contradiction. It’s like what I said earlier. I can’t speak a word of English, but I just spoke a word of English. I’m talking about your stuff, but I’m not stealing your stuff. Therefore I recognize this is your stuff.

[00:25:55] Brook: But if I do steal your stuff

[00:25:57] Nikos: Sorry?

[00:25:58] Brook: But if I do steal your stuff.

[00:26:00] Nikos: If you do steal my stuff, then you step outside of the realm of discourse. And therefore you step outside the realm of civilized existence. This means That you have validate sorry?

[00:26:14] Brook: By what standard?

[00:26:16] Nikos: By the standard that you have validated that force is okay, which means that now I can retaliate against you.

[00:26:23] Brook: Why is force not okay?

[00:26:28] Nikos: Here I black. This is this is above my this is above my pay grade. So there he would say that Either you speak with someone, in which case force is not a K, or you exercise force, in which case then the other side can retaliate force because you’ve you’ve put yourself Outside of the realm of civilized discourse. Therefore you have accepted that I have the right to retaliate on you. And retaliation can be I mean it’s up to me. Well unless

[00:27:00] Brook: unless it’s Israel and then then they can’t retire you. I

[00:27:09] Nikos: get maybe I’m not the brightest person in history. I went through even a period where I st I went through a Hoppe a period just after my Marxism because We can discuss it at some point. He has an interesting Marx -like theory of exploitation, but in which he proves that the socialist is the exploitative class and the producers are the exploited class. Anyway, even in my Hopian period, I could not understand why this argumentation ethics thesis is so bright. It basically says that since we discuss, we recognize each other’s ownership, checkmate socialists. The mere fact that you claim socialism is good

[00:27:50] Nikos: means that you don’t that you are engaged in a contradiction Because you’re recognizing me as self-owner, but you don’t recognize that I have a right to keep my marker or to keep my factory That’s his big contribution. That’s the argumentation, ethics. Not every Austro-libertarian agrees with it. Rothbard agreed with it, Stefan Kinsella, who is a big name Agreed with it and then he took it to a slightly different direction. Walter Block agrees with it, others don’t agree with it, for example, Bob Murphy does not agree with it. It is why he’s considered the biggest living libertarian, this theory of argumentation ethics.

[00:28:35] Nikos: I apologize if I simplified it. If you understand that there’s something deeper there, please correct me

[00:28:42] Brook: Yeah, I mean we have a name for this in objectivism. It’s called rationalism. It is a complete detachment from reality. It’s kind of it’s kind of a a wordsmith, word gaming. in in people’s heads. it has no real referent to anything. you know you you can’t start morality in a sense, which is what he’s doing, right? Or or political theory, with argumentation. you know, without Talking about what kind of man human being with the nature of man, you have to start with the nature of man. You have to start with man’s requirements for survival. You have to start with life, you have to start with something.

[00:29:25] Brook: But argumentation it just seems so bizarre and and and and and really detached from you know from from from reality And ultimately you know it it it it it has to kind of be a circular argument, right? So as long as we’re arguing and I’m not using force, then That means that using force is bad. That means I’m recognizing your rights. But as soon as I use force then I’m not recognizing your rights, which means I’m bad because I recognized your rights when I was arguing with you What if I don’t even argue? I just use force. What if I stay mama? I never open my mouth. I just use force.

[00:30:15] Nikos: But then I can use force against you.

[00:30:17] Brook: Yeah, sure. But what’s wrong with that? So what’s wrong with the world, which I think is what he really wants? what all anarchists want, which is all over all against all, which is what anarchy ultimately is. It’s I use force against you, you use force against me, and the cycle continues. Right? And That’s actually what happens under anarchy. Anarchy is a system where force is legitimized and where force is traded, and back and forth and back and forth we go. So it yeah, I mean the whole thing conceptually really makes no sense. There they they there’s you know it but You know, the whole idea of self-ownership is the starting point

[00:30:58] Brook: of morality and or political theory makes no sense

[00:31:04] Nikos: What about the fact that this is considered a continuation of a priori principles in economics which he claims everyone would agree. It’s self-evident. Everyone would agree it’s self-evident that this cannot be a two place at the same time. And equally, everyone could agree that a minimum wage of one million per hour would mean Higher unemployment. You don’t need to go out in reality and try to prove this empirically.

[00:31:32] Brook: Sure, but you know, so you can find extreme cases. that are you know what do you call it self-evident. By the way, you know the the m the million dollar minimum wage I don’t think is self-evident That is, I think there’s there’s a bunch of theorists out there that would say, well, we’d have to really measure it and think about and what’s the state of the economy and and where’s the money coming from and and what exactly happens so but but yeah if you take things to the extreme, but what happens if I raise the minimum wage by five percent? Does that create unemployment? Well, there’s a huge argument about that.

[00:32:09] Brook: So just because you raise it by a million does it creates unemployment doesn’t mean that if you raise it by five, it’ll create unemployment Yeah, I mean it it does create unemployment, but that you have to show and you have to prove. You actually have to make the argument. So So I still don’t get what’s self-evident here. So what’s self-evident about you know where do these rights come from? The fact that I’m arguing with you suggests that I respect your mind. And respect your body because I’m arguing, I’m not using force. Okay? I know a lot of Marxists who argue And yet they’ll turn around and use force at the at the at the

[00:32:52] Brook: most convenient opportunity. So the fact that they argued, did that mean they recognized my rights for five minutes And then when they use force they no longer recognize their rights? And then they can retire.

[00:33:02] Nikos: It means they engaged they engaged in a contradiction, in a logical contradiction, like saying this can be here and there at the same time.

[00:33:09] Brook: That is true in the sense that force is a contradiction, but because it contradicts human life. But again, I I I don’t get it, right? I don’t get the universality. I don’t get what he’s actually trying to do with this. It it it it really makes no sense. Like most rationalistic arguments that detach from reality. I you know was Lenin was he contradictory because he tried to convince people of communism and then when they didn’t accept it he killed them? Is that a contradiction or is the contradiction in the very ideas that he was trying to convince them of?

[00:33:50] Nikos: He would say both.

[00:33:52] Brook: He would say both, yes. Yes. Yes. And I would say, so what? I mean, so what? Yes. You know, Lenin’s ideas are contradictory, and the use of force is always bad when you initiate it. Okay, what have you proved? You haven’t proved anything. Why is it bad? Why is the use of force bad? Because I argued before. So it it it really goes back to W what is the basis by which we believe the use of force is bad? And Rand has an answer. Human life depends on the mind. The enemy of the mind is force. Therefore, using force Is undermining human life. And if human life is the standard, and life is the standard, my life is the standard, your life is the standard, man’s life is the standard, then anything that you know

[00:34:41] Brook: interru Rupton obstructs human life, the the very idea of pursuing human life, which is for us, is wrong. That’s it. That’s it’s a simple argument. And it starts from The nature of man. Man is a as a rational being, therefore, you know, reason is man’s basic means of survival. Anything that stands in opposition to reason is evil. Force is the ultimate thing that stands in opposition to reason, therefore it’s evil. You know, it’s so where does force becoming evil come in here? How do we get to forces evil?

[00:35:17] Nikos: It’s it’s surprising how Hoppe spends so much time to claim I go beyond the ontological defenses of freedom and empiricist defenses of freedom, but he does not engage with the person who gives. One of the most compelling deontological defenses of freedom, which is Ion run, he doesn’t appear anywhere in theory of socialism and capitalism or the economics and ethics of private property. It’s it’s it’s it’s quite surprising.

[00:35:45] Brook: In in 2024 he wrote that Rand played no role in his own own intellectual development And he thought the virtue of selfishness was lacking analytical rigor. And that’s right, from the perspective of a rationalist, of an analytical philosopher. you know, raised in the German school, right, of of kind of analytical philosophy, I meant comes across as not rigorous Right? Because she’s not a rationalist. Because she’s constantly connecting stuff to reality and she’s talking in English, in in a normal language that everybody can understand. And that to them is not rigorous. Whereas he’s playing mind games.

[00:36:28] Brook: you know and and and and with abstractions, not connecting it to real life. And you know, his critique of Ayn Rand is is he’s not rigorous. And I in in it’s not surprising that his critique of Ayn Rand is the same critique. as philosophers in philosophy departments all over the world who who consider it non-rigorous, not philosophical enough. That that’s exact because he’s his philosophy is conventional. He’s You know, as you said, he comes from a what a kind of a postmodern

[00:37:02] Nikos: not really or I wouldn’t say postmodern, but yeah, critical theory it’s it’s more that you know I’m not even sure how to put it. And again, this is not this is not that’s not the problem with with Hoppe. He could be influenced by Habermas and then take it in a different direction. But he That’s his whole point that argumentation almost creates the fact that we speak creates this reality that is almost by definition irrefutable

[00:37:33] Brook: So there’s something very

[00:37:34] Nikos: whatever you see happening, you can see us punching each other after five minutes, but we entered in this discourse and therefore this this has proven everything

[00:37:43] Brook: There’s something very Kantian about that. There’s something very Hegel there’s something Hegelian and even Marx. I mean, i it it comes right out of the German tradition of philosophy. which which is is tends to be rationalistic, very unintelligible, and and very unconnected to reality because reality We’re not really connected to reality. So yeah, I mean this is analytical philosophy and it’s and it’s I’m not a philosopher, but to a non-philosopher like me, it sounds like garbage

[00:38:16] Nikos: And again, it sounded completely incomprehensible to me when I was a newbie and I spent all my intellectual energy trying to understand it, and I couldn’t. But anyway, the reason why Hoppe is big out there is not so much his argumentation on ethics. This is why he gets all this respect, and this is what got him into the game of being a great philosopher. But his biggest contribution in the cultures, let’s say, or so to speak, to use his usual phrase, is his work on democracy And that’s his most controversial work, the book Democracy The God That Failed. And I know libertarians don’t believe in intellectual property.

[00:38:58] Nikos: The book is very, very expensive for some reason, and you can find I mean you can find it pirated, but the actual version is it’s an expensive book. So I think most people use it as a catchphrase rather than they’ve actually read it. But that’s why we’re here.

[00:39:14] Brook: So it’s not online, it’s not available for free? I mean

[00:39:16] Nikos: nope, it’s not available for free.

[00:39:18] Brook: That’s a shocking for for kinsella who doesn’t believe in intellectual I mean kinsella should should scan the book and put it up on his website for the benefit of humanity because Kinsella doesn’t believe in intellectual property. So I’m not sure why he is spending time respecting the intellectual property of Hans Hermann Hoppe.

[00:39:39] Nikos: Well let’s say that when I didn’t believe in intellectual property, I have read it somewhere. But I I haven’t got here to to show it to you. But let’s let’s sum up the main argument in democracy The god that failed. So Hoppe says: look, in monarchy, so he says there have been two systems mostly in the recent history: monarchy and democracy. In monarchy, something is clearly wrong. The king is above the law. The king can do things that you cannot do And yet how did we correct this with democracy? We actually said that now this privilege to do whatever you want to exploit other people. Now this is democratized.

[00:40:23] Nikos: Now through the ballot everyone and anyone can become a tyrant because If I pass a law to tax you Yaron, now I am a king on your life. So back in the day we had one king Potentially horrible, potentially a tyrant. Now we have millions and millions of kings. That’s one argument. Another argument. A king is to a country what an owner is to a house. If I own this house, I want to make sure that I take care of it because I can Sell it, I can pass it to my kids. Now it’s not clear what selling a country would mean, but the idea is that a democratic government is like you are a tenant under a rent And then I can turn it to an Airbnb.

[00:41:10] Nikos: I can turn it to a whorehouse as Hoppe says, and put 30 beds and make it a bordello and then I make a lot of money very quickly But the the price the value of the house is depreciated. Another problem with democracy, which was not such a problem with monarchy Kings tend to have a smaller state bureaucracy because bureaucracy costs if you have to pay it from your pocket. Which means also that you, the citizen, the subject, would come across less often To the state bureaucrats. There’s less inflation because the king needs to have gold, he cannot just print, and there’s also lower taxes. And also, democracy tends to take from the most productive and give to the least productive, whereas if you are a king

[00:42:00] Nikos: You want the the best, the aristi, the aristocracy, you want them to have around you in good terms with you. Whereas in democracy, because The worse rule, the better. You have you subsidize poverty, you encourage having children out of the wedlock and all that stuff. And last but not least, under democracy you can have massive wars, massive armies, whereas in monarchy We deal with our differences like men. I bring my best men, you bring your best men, we fight it out, and that’s that. So it’s I think it’s a misunderstanding that Hoppe is for monarchy. He’s not for monarchy. But his argument is that historically

[00:42:43] Nikos: democracy is a regression when it comes to the liberty that we have.

[00:42:52] Brook: So does he talk at all about kind of a constitutional republic? Does he talk about the American system of government at all?

[00:42:59] Nikos: Yes. And his claim about America is that It’s clearly America was not a democracy early on. It became a democracy after the defeat of the Confederacy The defeat of the Confederacy is when the United States stopped being what it was, which was a republic ruled by the best. And it became a majoritarian thing that if we decide that the Southern states are now part of this homogenous mass We have the right to attack them and to use a to use a force against them. So that was the turning point. Lincoln was the first democratic ruler of the United States for Hoppe.

[00:43:43] Brook: And therefore, you know, an evil one of the worst presidents.

[00:43:47] Nikos: Oh yeah, that goes without saying. Yes.

[00:43:49] Brook: Yep, yeah. So so yeah, so it’s it’s fascinating to me how ahistorical this is. And and of course he prides himself on being a historian. Murray Rothbard did this as well. I mean Murray Rothbard we’ll talk about him someday had economic theories had ideas about economics and then basically wrote history to validate his economic theories and when the history didn’t quite match his economic theory, he changed it. When facts didn’t match reality, you you you know fake the facts.

[00:44:29] Nikos: and just so so one one comment just as a trailer for the episode on Rothbard. Rothbard claimed that the best example of a non-imperialistic foreign policy of a foreign policy where your focus is Let’s just maintain what we have and protect our borders was Dramrol Stalin Soviet Union.

[00:44:52] Brook: Yeah, which is God, so crazy and insane. but just on a technical thing, I mean he believed that fractional reserve banking caused all banking crises in American history, , and he wrote a whole history of the nineteenth century banking from the perspective of its all-fraction of reserve banking BS, complete nonsense. and and economists have shown that over and over again. there are other causes for the banking crises in America that have nothing to do with fractional reserve banking. And he literally lies in his history. Now this is a history I know because I specialized in banking and I read all the banking history.

[00:45:30] Brook: And it’s complete BS, it’s complete nonsense what he writes about 19th century American banking. And here Harper is talking about kings. Now, you know, what about Louis, what was it, Louis XVIII? I mean, let them eat bread. , I mean, yeah, she really cared about her people. They really cared about France. They really wanted France to be a good country and and and and this is why the king was so good. Or or have you seen has anybody ever been to to to kind of the palaces of the kings of France? and the kind of wealth that they accumulated while their subjects lived in unthinkable prop you know poverty

[00:46:08] Brook: and and and I’m trying to think of exceptions when, you know, the kings of England are considered relatively good, right? But but think of Think of what I don’t know what’s his name with eight wives. Henry the Eighth, who had all the wives and chopped their heads off. I mean for okay, so there are wives, who cares You know, it’s just his wives, he can kill them. But think about how many people he killed when he decided that England was going to leave the Catholic Church and have its own church and and

[00:46:39] Nikos: Ah he has a theory on that. He has a theory. He says don’t At me when it comes to religious wars, they have nothing to do with kings and stuff. This is a diff these are ideological wars Similar to the wars that democracies are fighting today. But but

[00:46:55] Brook: but that is so nonsense because the reality is that Henry VIII wanted a new religion for England. Why because the Catholic the Catholic the Pope wouldn’t give him a divorce. again, wives. I mean it it goes back to his wives. So th the very idea that somehow monarchies are stable. France is a complete repudiation of that. I mean think of the the little monarchies that existed in Europe you know during during this entire period and and or during the post during the Middle Ages and post-Middle Ages. Think of the number of wars and yes some of the wars are religious wars But you can’t separate religion from politics.

[00:47:39] Brook: A a lot of the wars are not so much about religion doctrine as making sure that the people under your realm have the same religion as you as the king have decreed. and therefore following your religion. So it’s it’s i i i it’s part of politics. You know, the the 30 year war was not just a religious war, it is a political war, it was about the control of kind of the the the you know the the Roman Empire. so it’s the the Christian Roman Empire. So it’s It i it’s just such fallacy. The Spanish monarchy did to the Netherlands Right? This wasn’t about religion. This was about the the Netherlands wanting independence and

[00:48:27] Brook: secession. Right? And and wanting to have their own commercial enterprises and and without being beholden to a king was in Spain, which was far away and and and they crushed Netherlands. I mean i it’s just complete evasion of the historical reality and historical fact, just like he’s evading the Holocaust.

[00:48:47] Nikos: You know what Hober would reply to you. That you are now becoming an empiricist. You are trying, you are getting this and that case, and you’re, oh, you see, there it was a. He said, but look, I’m talking about in principles. In principle, it makes sense that the king would behave that way. Therefore, don’t go and find random cases here and there. In principle.

[00:49:11] Brook: But that’s the point. The point is this is why we’re not in princip we’re not rationalists and we’re not empiricists. So one of the ways you test your principles. is by looking at reality. And every principle, every principle in objectivism has to be tested in reality. You can’t just accept it because Ayn Rand said it or because it makes sense, because it’s logical, because it’s it’s deductively true. Go go check it in reality. If it doesn’t work in reality, it’s not true. So so you it y you you you can only induce principles from reality And they have to be checked against reality. So in objectivism, we talked about

[00:49:48] Brook: we talked about inducing. And then once we form an abstract concept, what do we do in order to make it ours, we reduce it. We reduce it to the concretes in reality. So yeah, here’s the epistemology of floating abstractions. It’s detached from reality. Therefore, history doesn’t matter. Facts don’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter. The videos from October 7th don’t matter. All that matters is the principles he’s come up with the the the the rationalistic the rationalistic constructs arguments that he has created in his own head But you know, everybody out there should test these things. When when intellectuals say stuff, and this is true of Ayn Rand, it’s true of Nikos, it’s true of me, it’s true of anybody, when

[00:50:27] Brook: when intellectuals say stuff. . You’ve got to check, you know, okay, is it true? And how do you know if something’s true or not? How do we know the self-evident one? What was the self-evident one? This pencil is bigger than this. How do we know that We look. I mean he’s he’s an empiricist. The only reason it’s self-evident is because it’s perceptually evident, because it’s In our within the the the our senses, we can see it. So you need to bring everything down to the perceptually evident and and and hoppe and Rothbard and rationalists generally Reality doesn’t matter to them. It’s it’s it’s it’s completely f

[00:51:08] Brook: it’s it all of their principles are floating floating completely and this is why They can c they can say stuff that is vicious and evil and they can make up reality and and and they just treat it like yeah, oh but look, it’s consist internally consistent. It’s logical. So of course it’s right.

[00:51:27] Nikos: And at this point of the show, Yaron, there’s at least a couple, I’d say 25 people in the audience would say, okay, okay, yes, maybe Hoppe is wrong in all this, but At least we agree on the basics. We agree on things like freedom, liberty, and property rights. So, shall we test also this by using the thing that made Hoppe so famous? so notorious actually, which is his physical removable meme. So, Sall, I read the infamous part from Democracy that God has failed, where he talks about physically removing Democrats and communists from a p free private property society.

[00:52:13] Brook: Sure, and but but let me just say I mean just looking at the comments And and we’ve got people on here saying, many libertarians are objectivists, so please don’t smear us with a broad brush. So let me be very clear, Bruce. If you’re a libertarian, you’re not an objectivist. If you’re an objectivist, you’re not a libertarian. These are two distinct sets of ideas.

[00:52:34] Nikos: Well okay, but what do we mean by libertarian? I mean if I talk to my grandmother and says, Are you a libertarian?

[00:52:41] Brook: Yeah, but she’s not an objectivist. So that’s fine. You know, so I’m not saying all libertarians are Parians, I’m not saying all libertarians are Rothbardians, but no libertarians are objectivists. If we mean by objectivism an understanding of Ayn Rand’s ideas and adherence to it. So if you understand Ayn Rand’s ideas and you adhere to Ayn Rand’s ideas, you cannot be a libertarian because libertarianism in almost every in every one of its various you know concorded variations is incompatible with objectivist philosophy Right? now some of you libertarians might have a very similar conception of liberty as we do.

[00:53:25] Brook: Some of you libertarians might have a very similar conception of even rights as we do, although not completely. But none of you libertarians have the full philosophy of objectivism. And if you did you wouldn’t call yourself a libertarian. Okay, that’s that’s my little spiel. So go ahead and give Opus meme.

[00:53:45] Nikos: Okay. And ideally you should have it and show it in the screen. Is it too late to send it to you to show it on the screen? He’s his point on physical removal.

[00:53:55] Brook: You can send it to me and I will share it on the screen.

[00:53:58] Nikos: I’m sending it to you right now. So this is again from Democracy the God that failed We should not be allowed to use it without permission, but again intellectual property is communist so we can

[00:54:16] Brook: Well, I mean it’s fair use, we’re educating.

[00:54:18] Nikos: I know. But still.

[00:54:23] Brook: how ‘s it come through? I mean my I th my internet ‘s kind of weird, so it hasn’t come through yet, but it will.

[00:54:30] Nikos: Okay, so just to give a bit of the context here is that you’ve seen perhaps the meme with the helicopter with Pinocchet throwing communists out of the helicopter. This is related to Hoppe because Hoppe has used this infamous term that it’s okay to physically remove communists from eeeh. a society we a private society which is built based on on a covenant as he would put it. Did you get it

[00:55:02] Brook: Yes, I’m trying to see where I can share it.

[00:55:05] Nikos: Good.

[00:55:06] Brook: I think I think this is it.

[00:55:15] Nikos: How, for example, his theory of free speech would be different from our theory of free speech. Because again, these kids, these friends of ours in the comments would say, come on, we basically agree on all the basic stuff with them. So, with that in mind, I want us to read. this quote.

[00:55:32] Brook: All right.

[00:55:34] Nikos: Yes. I can see it.

[00:55:36] Brook: In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community. Tenants in a covenant concluded between among proprietary and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property. No such thing as a right to free unlimited speech exists Not even to unlimited speech to one’s own on one own tenant property. One may say innumerate things and promote almost any idea under the sun But naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. Democracy, not just communism, right?

[00:56:22] Brook: There can be no tolerance towards democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated. By the way, we can talk about what that entails in a minute, and expelled from society. But what if the whole world is libertarian? Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance towards those habitually promoting lifestyles. incompatible with these goals. Watch out, gay, gay libertarians. They, the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles, I want to throw up here so it’s you know Such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature

[00:57:10] Brook: environmental worship, homosexuality, or communism Will have to be physically removed from society too, if one is to maintain the libertarian order. Now, notice here, I mean, there’s so much to notice here, but notice here. A libertarian order, which most of you interpret as an order of liberty. But anybody who disagrees with Hoppe. is going to remove from such a society. And if that society is one and the whole world is libertarian, What that actually means is that they will be killed because that’s the only moo way to remove them from society is to kill them So basically what he’s calling for here

[00:57:53] Brook: is the extermination of people who disagree with him. And note that he includes Democrats And here, what does Democrats mean? You know, anybody who argues for, well, maybe we should have a tax, a low tax, not a high tax, a low tax. to to to facilitate, I don’t know, the military or the police force. It’s going to be a compulsory tax. Well they have to be removed from society because they’re violating property rights, because the tax is obviously evil. Even we think a tax is bad. And therefore, you know, they can’t you can’t advocate against property rights. But

[00:58:26] Nikos: Okay, let me let me here do not devil’s advocate. I’ll actually think you are too harsh on him. But doesn’t he speak about a particular covenant? So we agree and we say we are for property rights. and we create this little community, this Golds Golds as he would say. So in that case you can go to a different covenant

[00:58:52] Brook: First of all, people are not, there is no social contract, there is no covenant. you know there is there is a constitution, let’s say a constitution that protects property rights But you can argue you don’t have a right to stand on your own property and argue against that constitution. That constitution can’t be you you don’t have to even though you’re arguing a contradiction, right? Because because you’re using your property in order to argue against property rights, you have every right as a human being to Hold a contradiction and to have a contradiction as long as you don’t manifest it in the use of force, as long as you’re just arguing, as long as you just

[00:59:34] Brook: but again Anything that involves you know an attack on property rights would be you you’re out, right? And again, notice that if you include the community as a global community, the only way of out is, you know, death camps. That that’s the only way to get to the case. But he claims

[00:59:55] Nikos: we should not have a global government. We should have a trillion small covenants.

[00:59:59] Brook: Yeah, so you have a trillion small covenant, but they’re all libertarians, right? Because we won. The libertarians won. Hoppe they won, convince the world. So you’ve got a trillion covenants, and now people arguing against property rights, what do we do with it?

[01:00:15] Nikos: Okay, here’s what

[01:00:17] Brook: the whole globe is divided up by a bil by a million little covenant communities. There’s nowhere to go. Everything every piece of the land is owned by a covenant community. The only thing is to is to kill them. I mean that’s implicit. I would would Hoppe object You know, he he probably would say he would, but in reality would Hoppe and his ideal object to concentration camps for the what what do we what would you call it? The the Undesirables. I think it’s undesirable. Homosexuals. He lists them. Hedonists, parasites, environmental worshippers, and homosexuals and communists. And of course, in the earlier paragraph, he said

[01:01:01] Brook: Democrats So anybody who disagrees with him on the nature of property rights, and as we know, right, for example, intellectual property rights, property rights can be complicated Right? There can be disagreement about property rights and this is this is you need a process to define property rights. What if people just disagree under this covenant? about property rights. I mean this is really sick stuff. This is not I’m not gonna give him an inch here because this is truly sick. i to treat people who who disagree with you in this kind of in this kind of way. And the reality is that where’s the anarchy here?

[01:01:36] Brook: What if I’m a Democrat But I’ve got a police force. I’ve you know I’ve hired Nikos to to guard to protect me. and and and and you come to try to extract me from society You know, is my police force gonna s fight against you? How how are they gonna negotiate? How how is this gonna be adjudicated under anarchy?

[01:02:00] Nikos: But what if this is a society of voluntary society of Catholics? So would it make sense to expel or not allow someone who is openly gay In a private society of Catholics?

[01:02:15] Brook: No, I mean no, because in the private society of Catholics, there’s no private there’s no Catholic property. There’s no public property. So if I’m gay All my neighbors are Catholic, but I have property. I have my land. I have my house. They don’t get to take my land and take my house because I happen not to be Catholic.

[01:02:40] Nikos: Okay, maybe then the call.

[01:02:43] Brook: You can’t not create a a a you cannot create a covenant. Let’s say you cannot create a let’s say gated community, people like gated community. You cannot create a created community that says everybody who lives in this gated community has to be a Catholic. That is an illegitimate contract. It’s a completely legitimate contract. What if I go into that community of Catholic? I bought the land. It’s mine, right? I’ve bought the land. It’s not my land. And while I’m there, I changed my mind. I’m no longer Catholic. But it’s my land. And I don’t want to leave. You you can’t dictate in advance the intellectual content of somebody else

[01:03:26] Brook: and we I can’t commit to holding I I ideas the same ideas forever you know with regard to property with regard to my property right it would be like let’s say i i i you know i stop being an objectivist while i’m the co of the iron institute I can be fired. I can be fired, but they can’t take my back pay. They can’t take my money away. They can’t, you know, they can’t take what they paid me while I was an objectivist. They don’t have a claim on my property. So you you either we have private property or we don’t have private property Private property means I can use my property as I see fit. And it doesn’t have anything to do with

[01:04:10] Brook: intellectual content. that I hold. So yes, you can say you can’t turn your house into a brothel. Okay? That that could be a covenant that’s in there. But they can say you can’t change your mind about Catholicism. That would be that’s absurd.

[01:04:28] Nikos: And this would include the advocacy of overturning private property. Because you’d say you can believe it, but you cannot advocate it.

[01:04:36] Brook: Say that again

[01:04:39] Nikos: They will say Sure you can believe it, but if you advocate you are actually encouraging violence

[01:04:45] Brook: Not if I’m advocating on my land, but yes, I’m I’m advocating for a system that is violent, but there’s a difference between advocating for a system of violence. And inciting violence. Those are not the same thing. If I say take up arms, let’s overthrow the regime, that’s inciting our violence. If I say the regime is rotten, we need a new regime, that is not inciting violence. This is the big difference in free speech, right? You have every right to advocate for an ideology that is violent. I mean, I consider Hoppe ‘s ideology violent, right? Because I consider anarchism a violent ideology I c I can’t silence him

[01:05:24] Brook: because now if he says let’s let’s go take your wrong stuff, that’s incitement.

[01:05:31] Nikos: I see. Okay. So for me, the very suspicious thing here is while he’s talking about the religious covenant, he says at the end, we’ll have to be physically removed from society. If one is to maintain a libertarian order, a Catholic religious order, that’s what I found weird. And I I reread this.

[01:05:53] Brook: We want freedom. We want freedom. We want liberty unless you disagree with us. And then you have no freedom and no liberty. So unless you buy into Hungarian libertarian ideology, unless you buy the dogma that as we state it, right? Exactly, because you can’t even be a homosexual. Remember, homosexuality has nothing to do with advocating for violence. Nothing. Assuming it’s voluntary, right? So there’s no violence in homosexuality. So and there’s no violence in in what? In in hedonism What’s the violence in hedonism? Individual hedonism. I want to sit on my couch all day. I want to watch Netflix.

[01:06:32] Brook: I want to have sex with as many people as I want. all consensual, all voluntary, all within my property, and that is being banned. I’m going to be removed from society in the name of liberty and freedom I mean this is truly sick and disgusting stuff. And you know, to to to claim that there is anything resembling liberty and freedom and here is is just completely bizarre. This is medievalism. It is it you know he he loves the city-states of of the medieval period this is a new religion. This is exactly religion, right? Hoppe it decides what’s acceptable in your home, right? But you have private property, Nikos.

[01:07:19] Brook: It’s your property. Just you know don’t sleep with the wrong people. And by the way, we’re gonna evaluate whether the people you’re sleeping with, you’re doing it for hedonistic reasons, or whether there’s a rational reason for you to be sleeping with them

[01:07:32] Nikos: You know, I found this so crazy. The fact that it says if one is to maintain a libertarian order, that for a moment I freaked out that it’s a fake quote or I got the wrong contraband version of the book But turns out it is the right quote. It is it it it is i i anyway. Okay, so this I mean

[01:07:54] Brook: this is why this is why I mean, I view these people as as bad, in some sense, worse than communists and fascists. Because they pretend to be pro-liberty. And then they can make this statement. Again, we’re gonna, you know, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature, environmental worship. homosexuality or communism, they’re gonna be physically removed from society. I mean it’s just it’s it it it’s stunning and and again I I want to emphasize physically removed from society is one step away, one step away from eliminating them because there might not be any way to remove them too. So and and we need them out

[01:08:38] Brook: We we need them gone. So we make them disappear. One way or the other. It doesn’t really matter ’cause ’cause th they’re living in contradictions. What what difference does it make if they’re dead?

[01:08:47] Nikos: Okay, now now I am playing devil’s advocate because I have the answer to this. But someone will say, but come on, you can definitely kick me out of Ocon if I come to Ocon and I start Praising Marxism.

[01:08:59] Brook: Because you have no private property in OCAR. So so you when you come to Hokan, you sign a contract, whether that is explicit or implicit.

[01:09:07] Nikos: He will say the same thing. If you come to this covenant, you sign a contract.

[01:09:12] Brook: But you but you don’t right so if you come to Ocon and you rent a room in the hotel I can kick you out of the conference but I can’t kick you out of the room So your room is is a different contract. It’s a property right. So a property right says you have a right to this property. And you know, unless you’ve committed physical force against somebody, you cannot be removed from your property. So you know now you can say and maybe this is what he means you’re only renting. You don’t own the property. So now it’s collectivism. So that’s fine. Maybe so he’s just a collectivist, right? So the group owns the property.

[01:09:51] Brook: We buy a plot of land and then we rent it to people. And we rent it to people under certain terms And if they behave in certain ways that we don’t find don’t like or they or they what do you call it, advocate for ideas we don’t like, then we have a provision in the rental contract, in the rental contract that says out they go. Fine. But then who owns the stuff You know, so yeah, so you could form a corporation that rents stuff to people under only certain terms, but to think that a libertarian, libertarian, political entity would be structured in that way is is again pretty it’s pretty collectivist

[01:10:38] Brook: You know, the the collective is going to decide, the group is going to decide what behaviors accepted to it or not, what ideas are accepted to it or not. So you know again we when in it you know Ocon is a delimited event. It’s delimited in time and space. you know it does not involve the sale of any property. It’s your your attendance is conditional on certain behavior. and even at Ocon Short of engaging in disruptive behavior, we don’t kick people up. I mean, we’ve had Satanists at O’Connor. I you know, if a communist came to UK and stood up and said, according to Marx da da da da in a Q<unk>A, would we kick that person out?

[01:11:23] Brook: No. He’s come and voiced an idea. Our intellectuals should be able to answer these questions. So if our parion showed up, would we automatically kick them out? No, now we might not accept them to begin with, but we wouldn’t kick them out

[01:11:37] Nikos: I see. Now believe it or not, the quote I read still is not the most controversial stuff about Hans Hermann Hoppe, because the most kontroversial is the role that he plays in what some describe as a pipeline between libertarianism and the alt -right. So in two thousand six years,

[01:12:03] Brook: you can see the elements of that already here in this quote, right? he he he’s he’s anti-gay, which plays right into the hands of kind of the Christian conservative, , you know, alt-right type attitude. you know, do we think he’s going to be racist? Yeah, I mean it’s very likely he’s a racist, although I don’t have anything stated here. so you can already see his kind of why can’t we just have an all-white nation Right? Which is, you know, the the the the white nationalists in America claim they’re not racist. They’re not against blacks. They just don’t want to be in the same neighborhood with them

[01:12:43] Brook: They want white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods. They want a white country and a black country. That’s all they want, right? Would Hoppe object to that? No, I mean this the his theory that he just articulated is completely consistent with that So why not add color skin to the homosexuality and the what was it hedonism and a and a bunch of other things? So his view is you within your country Let’s expand his community to a country. You should be able to dis d say certain behaviors unacceptable, even if they don’t violate rights Certain behaviors are unacceptable and therefore kick them out.

[01:13:19] Brook: You being the wrong color skin, kick him out. You being here without a quote visa, kick him out you being a homosexual, kick him out. You being a hedonist, kick him out, a communist or a democrat. You know. I mean this place democrat here, I don’t think it means a democratic party, but I’m sure the.

[01:13:36] Nikos: No, no, it means believing in democracy.

[01:13:39] Brook: Yes. But I think when the alt-right reads that statement, they think of the Democratic Party.

[01:13:45] Nikos: Okay. So what’s the relationship between Hoppe and what we would call the alt -right? So in 1992, Murray Rothbard indicates a new direction for libertarianism, a new tactical alliance. And the tactical alliance would be with paleo-conservatives. Now Palo Conservatives are people of the old right, people who started being against the New Deal, but also who had very particular views on the Civil Rights Act. Not just in terms of the Civil Rights Act is violating individual rights, which is true that it does, but also they go back to historical Views about the Civil War, about the Confederacy, and all that stuff.

[01:14:32] Nikos: So in 1992, Rothbard writes an article, Right Wing Populism, A Strategy for the Paleo Movement. And he and Hoppe Joined the John Randolph Club. The John Randolph Club was a club that had paleo-conservatives, people who are characterized as neo-confederates. Now How much of this is mischaracterization that

[01:14:57] Brook: this is a type Buchanan you a paleo is

[01:15:00] Nikos: yeah Paul Goth with that type of that type of people Later though, because you could say this is neither here nor there, you know, I don’t know these people, whatever. In 2006, Hoppe starts his own group, the Property and Freedom Society. To discuss libertarian ideas. And yet in this group you find Paul Gottfried, which again you could say okay, he’s libertarian, whatever. But you also find Jared Taylor The famous race realist or white nationalist, you find Richard Spencer, you find other race realists, and you wonder. Why are these people in these libertarian circles? Could it be because they’re the only ones who uphold, let’s say, one’s right to discriminate

[01:15:47] Nikos: But this is not the case. You can find people who are not race realists who agree with your right to discriminate on your private property. So That begs the question, why is Hoppe going to bed intellectually with such figures? Could it be that you know his libertarianism is fused with ideas around racism and all that stuff which I’ll just leave this as a question

[01:16:15] Brook: I don’t leave stuff as questions. Of course it is. I mean you sanction the racists because you are one. And you know, again it’s it’s this idea that You know, his ideas these is the little city states, , you know, and one is white and one is you know maybe black and one, but but they keep to themselves. And they get to set the rules. We saw hedonism and all these other things we kick out, we we we take out. it’s yeah, I mean, y y you don’t associate with Jared Taylor unless you think there’s something really in common with Jared Taylor. And what else could be you have in common with Jared Taylor other than kind of a a racist attitude towards the world?

[01:16:57] Brook: So it wouldn’t surprise me given. No. And the Yaron book show, I don’t know about the Yaron and Ecos dialogues. We don’t ask questions. We answer them.

[01:17:13] Nikos: That’s a good

[01:17:16] Brook: car. That’s a good pit. We answer the questions. So But

[01:17:21] Nikos: see how this works also with the with the so-called Holocaust line, right? It’s like we question everything. We don’t believe anything that the Empire is telling us and anyone who is against the Empire and the elites, we’re all friends here.

[01:17:36] Brook: Yes, and and you know, i i it’s and it’s important to note that there’s plenty of evidence. Look i i what we saw the clip before About about his Holocaust denial and his e i equiv equating kind of what oh not equating, saying Gaza is worse than the Holocaust. because there’s evidence in God in the I mean that can only be motivated. I mean it’s not only but there’s certainly reason to believe this might be motivated by anti-Semitism And so I I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an anti-Semitic racist streak within Hoppe that that you know is is he’s so viciously anti-Israel, he’s so hateful towards Israel

[01:18:19] Brook: that one suspects that might be the cause. But then again, what else does he hate? What other country does he hate? What other country?

[01:18:27] Nikos: The number one country that he he hates, the country that he believes is the menace in the world is the United States.

[01:18:33] Brook: It’s the United States. Like Mali Rothbard, they both of them believe that the United States is the ultimate evil. It is the menace. It took a wrong term in the Civil War. Civil War should have never been fought. And since then it has been an empire building colonizer, oppressor. It wasn’t slavery was the problem. When America had slavery, it was actually it was actually good. It was a relatively good country. No, it’s the post-slavery era. That’s when America became rotten to the core. it’s and and it is, you know, I’ve I it is the the ultimate evil in the world. Anything America does is bad And notice that what that leads them to, it led

[01:19:18] Brook: Rothbard and it leads Hoppe is to supporting America’s enemies. So Russia is the good. Putin is okay. Ukraine is evil because it’s part of the West. Any Western country is really not good. Israel is awful because it’s the most similar to the United States in their eyes And it’s a bunch of Jews. In the case of of Rothbard and and and in the past and now Putin And again, this is a connection to alt-right. The alt-right has very much abrased this. I I wouldn’t be surprised if these guys actually like Dugan Right, that’s you know an easy one.

[01:20:01] Nikos: Oh I know I know a libertarian who has invited Dug into his podcast. Now let us put it the way Hoppe would put it. He would say, look, every state is a gang

[01:20:12] Brook: Yes.

[01:20:22] Nikos: However , Ukraine is supported by the most dangerous gang, which is the US gang. Every state in Europe is a vessel state of the United States. Therefore, it is worth Opposing any assistance to Ukraine because this just perpetuates the war. Interestingly, when he talks about the Israel-Hamas war, again he says Hamas is a gang, Israel is a gang. Hamas though is not a vessel gang of Yaron, of the Yaron gang, because Yaron is not so dangerous and so bad. So we also have

[01:21:02] Brook: Israel is evil, partially because it is a vessel of the American gang, which is powerful and strong. He never talks about why it ever becomes powerful and strong. why America became powerful and strong. When it comes to Israel, the reason Israel is powerful and strong is because of American support. for Israel. Otherwise that’s the only reason it it is a powerful extra, right? I e you know and and I mean here’s a line. This is something he wrote. I don’t know when he wrote this, but this is after October 7th. He wrote this explicitly. He’s not against Jews, qua Jews, he says, but specifically against Zionists.

[01:21:42] Brook: Now notice that that line now is.

[01:21:44] Nikos: No, no, that’s Hamas. He says Hamas is not explicitly against Him.

[01:21:48] Brook: Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Hamas is not explicitly against Jews, qua Jews, but specifically against Zionism It actually received, yeah, so notice that that line is now part of the alt-right. That line is not part of the new left, of the of the far left. That line is now standard. Oh, we don’t hate Jews quad Jews, just the Zionists. Just you know, we just hate the Zionists. So it it is it is interesting how how they position themselves and they all position themselves in the same place.

[01:22:21] Nikos: So recently Hoppe excommunicated his old friend and comrade and a legendary figure in anarcho-capitalist Walter Bloch because Walter Bloch who is otherwise v wrong on almost everything regarding foreign policy. He dared to say that Israel has a right to defend itself. And Hoppe in this milieu where everyone has said every crazy thing under the sun, he excommunicates Bloch publicly because Bloch dares To say Israel has the right to defend itself. And he writes a whole article about October 7 where he says the Hamas gang attacked Israel gang We’ve heard many lies because many of the people who died on that day died because of Israeli helicopters

[01:23:08] Nikos: And on the only thing that Israel has a right to do is to send some detectives or police officers or sicarios assassins To find the Hamas perpetrators, kill them one by one, but no retaliation in Gaza is acceptable. And also They should find the Israeli soldiers who by mistake or not by mistake killed Israelis and they should assassinate or arrest them too. But no war is allowed, and if you support a war, you’re a genocidal collectivist. Because you fall for this idea that there’s a nation versus a nation, whereas there are only individuals. And he says, I’m a methodological individualist. And I want your comment on this, Yaron.

[01:23:49] Nikos: He would say, I’m the real individualist here, because I see individuals in Gaza and you see collectives.

[01:23:59] Brook: I mean here’s the thing that you know individuals individuals exist and it’s tragic when truly innocent individuals die But in an attempt to defend myself, if innocents have to die because the bad guys are hiding behind the individuals who are innocent. You know, it’s the bad guys’ fault that they are dead. The moral responsibility for their death is on the other side. So I’m being an individualist by defending myself. And I’m being an egoistic individualist by defending myself by any means possible. I’m not gonna let myself and people I love die. And if that means that some innocents die as a consequence, that is the fault of those who initiate the violence

[01:24:52] Brook: So there’s nothing collectivistic about that. That is true in a gunfight in the middle of the street. You know, if if if if somebody’s rushing to to kill my wife and my children. And they’re doing it in a way where there’s civilians in between me and them. purposefully in order to protect themselves from me shooting back. I’m still gonna shoot back and some civilians will die. But the reason they die is because he tried to kill my wife and kids So so i the whole idea here that that you know defending yourself and and civilians die is somehow collectivist is ridiculous. It also assumes that the civilians are innocent.

[01:25:34] Brook: There’s nothing to suggest civilians are innocent. They provide material support to the people actually engaged in warfare. There are very few civilians who are actually truly innocent, maybe the children, but short of the children, very few others are innocent. And then finally, the reality is, and I don’t think it’s a bad reality, I think it’s a good reality, and this is where we we fundamentally disagree, we do live in states, and we do have governments. And not all governments and not all states are equal morally because they all exercise force Some states exercise force in ways that make them far more immoral than other states that might exercise force more judiciously

[01:26:23] Brook: So Israel, for example, exercised force in a judicial way. It has a rule of law and it it generally is a free country. And yes, it exercises way too much force than I would like. But on the spectrum of history, which I know Hoppe rejects because that’s empiricism, but on the spectrum of history, Israel is on the side of one of the countries that uses force the least Together, by the way, with the United States. They are the devil, right? I mean he shares his view of of of the Iranians. This is why these people love the Iranians. Because the Iranians say the big devil, right which is which is America and the little

[01:27:06] Brook: devil which is Israel and he would use exactly the same terminology to describe American Israel. But the reality is American Israel in the spectrum of force in human history, they are on the good side. No monarch No monarch in history has used less force on his people than these countries have. Then if you look at Hamas. Hamas on the spectrum of using force is one of the worst in all of human history. Towards its own people and towards people outside of itself. So Hamas is a worst, it’s morally condemnable. Israel, you can condemn it on certain respects, but generally it’s good. And that difference, it’s pro-life.

[01:27:47] Brook: It’s on the pro-life side versus the Hamas, which is on the pro-evil side. And if if you can’t see that, then you’re purposefully blind. You’ve blinded yourself. You’re engaging in evasion. Again, rationalists don’t care about reality Force is force, right? If I if I if I steal 10 bucks from your pocket, or if I murder you, I use force against you. I’m just equally evil when I do those two acts. And that’s the that’s the way they equate Israel to Hamas. But you know, the government in Israel taxes, God forbid, they have a tax. Right? Taxes, you know, we all agree taxes are bad. But that taxes is equal to Hamas, you know, oppressing its people, throwing homosexuals off of tall buildings.

[01:28:36] Brook: The meme, maybe Hoppe agrees with throwing homosexuals off of tall buildings. You know, forcing women to to wear hijabs, you know, just treating people monstrously, that is the same as having a tax and the rule of law. so

[01:28:52] Nikos: I’m sure that’s there will be a lot of pushback from the audience and since today we have less time than usual because you have somewhere to be. Shall we get to the questions now

[01:29:03] Brook: Yes, I don’t know that we’ve got a lot. I mean we don’t have a lot of questions, by the way, guys. We don’t have a lot of financial support today. I don’t know. Or push the topic or or the timing And and I don’t see a lot of pushback here. There’s pushback maybe in the comments, but not in the super chat. so

[01:29:22] Nikos: Okay, then let me let me put it

[01:29:24] Brook: I mean the individual is is is conscious moral agent capable of reason and moral choice. the state has neither consciousness nor morality It operates through necess necessity, preserving order, territory, and authority. But that’s nonsense. The state is in some sense an aggregation of the individuals who are part of the state. Just like a corporation is doesn’t have a corporation, has no consciousness, a corporation has no identity, but it has but it it it it it represents it is an agent of its shareholders and therefore it can act morally or immorally based on the consciousness and the morality of its shareholders, right?

[01:30:07] Brook: You project it onto the individuals that are owners of this corporation. The same thing as a state. The state can be a moral state to the extent that it that it facilitates or leaves free individuals to live flourishing life, or it can be an immoral state which suppresses and oppresses the the the individual human beings’ ability to be to be free and therefore to flourish as human beings. So you absolutely can talk about morality as applied to a state by the standard of human life. A state that promotes human life or that protects individual rights generally overall protects individual rights more than it let’s say

[01:30:51] Brook: violates them is is a pro-life state and a state that is only violating individual rights or or predominantly violating individual rights is oppressive to human existence and therefore an immoral state So this idea that you can’t apply morality to states is wrong. You can absolutely apply morality to groups of people, particularly groups of people under, you know, under particular governance.

[01:31:18] Nikos: One last comment on Hoppe there. Again, someone who claims that he has found a way to support libertarianism on moral grounds. Notice on how oblivious he is on the morality of self-sacrifice and the morality of what we call altruism. So he claims that the problem the reason why the most productive give to the least productive is democracy. Without asking why does democracy the obvious option when someone puts a gun against your head is to say okay those of you who have a lot give to those who have who haven’t got a lot. So at the end of the day he hasn’t got even his own good moral theory to understand why this happens and his only answer is

[01:31:59] Nikos: yeah that’s because of democracy

[01:32:01] Brook: Yeah, I mean i you know, remember he said the virtue of selfishness lacking of analytical rigor. He’s not engaged in a moral argument. His arguments are all about force. He’s a typical Rothbardian in the sense that they start with the non-aggression principle. Anything below that You can be a Christian, you can be a Kantian, you can be an objectivist, it turns out, you can be whatever you want. They start libertarianism starts with the non-aggression principle. They don’t care about mor individual morality. They don’t care about self-sacrifice and things like that. They they they they embrace it.

[01:32:40] Brook: and and you know, this is what she sa he said about Ayn Rand and her followers in a in a again in the sa in a twenty twenty-four piece He said Randianism, which is what he called it, involved quote, collective guilt and punishment. This is because of our foreign policy, right? This is, I guess, his attack on me And this is really his attack on me, and genocidal collectivism. So , you know, that that’s that’s the the wanting to defend yourself and be willing to do what’s necessary in order to defend yourself And e even to the at the at the at the the at the cost of some innocent dying.

[01:33:17] Nikos: and notice that whenever there is a war Always his answer is immediately let’s try to find the truce, let’s try to find a negotiated settlement. And ask yourself people who benefits from that So in the Ukraine-Russia, even put it in his terms: the Zelensky gang and the Putin gang. When Putin attacks, his first instinct is to say, okay, guys, you negotiate Who benefits from this? Every single time the aggressor benefits on it. After October 7, he thought that what should have happened is immediately negotiate the release of the hostage. Give them something and they’ll give you something Where is justice in this?

[01:33:58] Nikos: Where is justice is every time you have an aggression, it’s okay, find meet somewhere in the middle.

[01:34:04] Brook: But this is the hearts of of anarchy. so-called anarcho -capitalism. You know, when when somebody steals something from you, the two in the two agencies will negotiate Right? And when I when I pushed Brian Kaplan in our debate about this, and I said, well, what about individual rights? He basically said, well, it’s negotiable. I mean, yes, individual rights will be violated. We won’t get the just settlement because it’s all negotiated I mean it that’s the essence of the whole system. The system is a system that negates individual rights because it’s all about we negotiate, right? The the murderer

[01:34:39] Brook: And the victim’s police forces negotiate a settlement, right? Hey, he spends five years in jail and he pays a little bit of reparations and We we we we let it go.

[01:34:50] Nikos: I remember discussing with an anarcho-capitalist saying, Okay, could you have a covenant when you have Sharia law? And he says, Yes, if the covenant explicitly says this is a Sharia law, and then I say, Okay. What happens? You’re a girl, let’s say your father protects you. Now you turn thirteen years old, whatever, or whenever they consider it’s okay to marry it. What happens to her rights in that private covenant if it is under Sharia law?

[01:35:16] Brook: There are none. They don’t exist. The point is under under anarcho -capitalism, there are no rights. Now I have a I respect David Friedman David Friedman is Milton Friedman’s son, who’s a who’s an anarchist. Respect David Friedman. David Friedman at least says, explicitly, he says, individual rights are nonsense on stilts. There’s no such thing. Okay, well, okay, but they all believe that. Just the Rothbards pretend that they’re natural rights and they believe in individual rights, and but when it comes down to it, they don’t and by the way, Sharia law is a great example of David Friedman gives a talk

[01:35:57] Brook: on private law, because he believed you know private law in an alcoholic capitalism would be private law. And what example does he give of private law? Sharia law in a tribe in Somalia. Look there, private law, it works. It works. And you go, wait a minute, that girl who just got her genitals mutilated, how did it work for her No answer, right? Because there’s no such concept of rights. It’s just it just it you know it’s but you know at least if you don’t believe in rights, say so. But the idea that you can believe in rights and they’re inalienable and they’re absolute and they’re non-negotiable, except

[01:36:40] Brook: you reckon you adhere to a political system that by very definition You know, i i it has no individual rights, no recognition of rights, and clearly is going to engage in violation of rights. Yeah, it’s just horrible. All right, let’s go to questions. Let me first thank the sticker people. Paul, thank you for the sticker.

[01:37:01] Nikos: Thank you.

[01:37:02] Brook: let’s see. Exploring Simon, $50. Thank you. Really appreciate that let’s see. X Ixit, thank you for the sticker. ta-ta -tum. We had hell hell wolf For Liberty, thank you for the sticker. And Oivind, thank you for the sticker. Mary Aline, $50, really appreciate it. Thank you, Mary Aline. And Neil, thanks for the sticker. And Adri, thank you for the $50. so thank you to all the stickers. You can still do a sticker. We’ve got a bunch of people watching, value for value be a trader. You’re listening because we can only do this because you guys are willing to pay up for that. One way to do it is through

[01:37:54] Brook: super chat and stickers, another way is to Patreon. Nikos says a Patreon page. It’s only seven bucks a month. So

[01:38:01] Nikos: I am about to release my Ask Me Anything for this month where some of my patrons thought it’s a good idea to ask me seven and eight questions So it’s going to be but hey, that’s why we’re the stakanovites of objectivism. We did today’s episode with half a day notice. And yet here we are delivering, so you should contribute people

[01:38:21] Brook: Yep, absolutely. So show show the love, show your appreciation, show the value for value, show that you’re a real trader and and not just a consumer, but actually a trader. All right. Catherine. Catherine says, great topic. Thank you, Catherine. Really appreciate it. I Hoppe you enjoyed it. Andrew, $50. Thank you, Andrew.

[01:38:42] Nikos: Thank you.

[01:38:43] Brook: How do you judge libertarians for their moral relativism? When you discuss with better libertarians the objectivist ethics, specifically the standard of individual lives life, how do they respond? Do you sense genuine confusion or fear evasion?

[01:39:02] Nikos: You debated more of them, you take the

[01:39:05] Brook: Yeah, I mean m my general sense is they’re just not interested. most of them just the their eyes glaze over. Oh, you’re getting into this philosophy stuff. They think that because it they’re subjectivists. So morality is whatever they want it to be. And what really interests them is the politics of it. You know, if we had a free society we’d all be rich and we’d be able to do what we want. And and They have no they can’t connect morality to life. And when you try to explain it to them, they’re just uninterested. They’re glazing over it. It’s a form of evasion, maybe. Maybe it’s motivated by fear.

[01:39:43] Brook: I don’t know and then, you know, but look, a lot of libertarians are religious. So when you talk about morality, it it immediately goes to their religion. They they associate morality with religion. and all they know is is the religious morality that they grew up on, so they immediately go there. so it it it really depends on who you’re talking to. but Mostly I find they’re just not engaged. They find economics fascinating and this political stuff fascinating, and they’re just not interested in in anything more philosophical than that.

[01:40:17] Nikos: Which also means that many people will find libertarianism non-inspiring because El Cozero just graphs just how what to do for the economy to do well You get a you you take away the fire and the the the the sense of the heroic sense of life, which is our biggest competitive advantage when it comes to going out there and inspiring people. So they’re also shooting themselves on the feet.

[01:40:42] Brook: You know, and their view of a heroic sense of life is is is is taking drugs and you know doing whatever you feel like doing And and they and there’s a big group of libertarians who are like that. Not all of them, but there ‘s a bigger group of libertarians that they they they they just want access to their drugs. They just won’t be able to do whatever the hell they want. although I I worry for them because I’m I’m very concerned about these libertarians, because I think Hoppe would define them as hedonists and they’re out. They’re out, you know. if if Hoppe was the monarch, these people would would not survive very long under Hoppe

[01:41:18] Brook: ‘s rule. And and and look, this is why there’s so many different types of libertarians I mean most I think Cato libertarians, most reasoned libertarians are not would not have associated with Hoppe because of these kind of views, right? Hoppe ‘s attitude towards homosexuality versus reason’s attitude towards homosexuality. You know, it’s completely night and day. And reason, libertarians tend to be more on the hedonistic side and on the moral subjectivist hedonistic side. Hoppe his dogma and much more, I think, Christian identity, even if he’s not a Christian. That’s where he’s getting his morality from.

[01:41:55] Brook: And you can sense the morality. What what what does somebody like Copper have against homosexuals? The family. The family. The family is all. I mean, where does that even come from, right? If not you know, if that’s not collectivism, I don’t know what is. It’s your duty to have children because that’s what the future, it’s all about the future That’s pure collectivism. Where does this veneration and you know of the family come from? I mean I’m not anti-family, I like my family, but but where does it really come from, this this you know, absurd focus on it and the rejection of of sexuality that doesn’t lead to family

[01:42:33] Brook: you know automatically. It it There’s something very

[01:42:38] Nikos: actually it’s interesting

[01:42:39] Brook: question.

[01:42:40] Nikos: Hoppe is definitely has a His current wife was not his first wife, let’s put it this way. So I wonder what this would mean to the family and kin covenant, which later he described as the libertarian order. So he would be physically removed from the covenant now that he’s with his wife and they have this nice hotel in Turkey, this would mean he’s out of the covenant.

[01:43:07] Brook: I guess so. I I I don’t know He didn’t mention divorce in the list of things he disapproves of. But notice that the list he of things he disapproves of is his list. It it’s not based on reality. It’s not based on some moral standard. It’s not based on I mean maybe divorce is included, maybe divorces out, because he’d got divorce, so divorce is okay. you know

[01:43:27] Nikos: wh what is hedonism? I mean, in a way, divorce means I want pleasure from this woman rather than from this woman. So why is this not hedonism?

[01:43:37] Brook: Well, it’s only hedonism based on what the king decides hedonism is. I mean that’s the essence of kingdom. But he’ll decide well because he’s got a vested interest in keeping his kingdom. So he’s not gonna be nasty about definition of hedonism. He’ll only define hedonism in a objective good way because he’s a king and king’s good. King’s good

[01:44:01] Nikos: We don’t call it kingdom, we call it covenant.

[01:44:03] Brook: Covenant. I mean covenant also, you know, is a biblical word. It it it comes from yeah. And and notice what the Jews you know what the Jews have to do? Because they signed a covenant with God. How do they sign the covenant with God?

[01:44:19] Nikos: You tell me.

[01:44:20] Brook: So so you know what the act of of engaging in the covenant with God is?

[01:44:25] Nikos: No.

[01:44:26] Brook: It’s circumcision.

[01:44:28] Nikos: You.

[01:44:29] Brook: Oh, absolutely. You signed it with blood. So circumcision is the covenant with God That is the act that binds you to God. intense enough that would not be important enough. Abraham was circumcised, I think, at a at a pretty late age. Imagine not

[01:44:55] Nikos: something I didn’t need to know an hour before I go to sleep.

[01:45:00] Brook: You can have nightmares about your covenant with you. Well, you’re not a Jew, so what do you care? , you know, I have the nightmares because I have this covenant with God that I didn’t choose and that was w that was signed in my blood from a particular area of my body that that should not have been bled, put it lightly. So so yeah not not not good. Not good All right. You know, biblical, the Bible is important. It’s good for people to know this stuff. This is this is the book at the base of the Judo -Christian whole thing And when they use words like covenant, that’s what comes to my mind. Well

[01:45:37] Brook: covenant with God. The Jews have a covenant with God, which is that’s why you have that’s why you get circumcised All right. Jennifer, can you discuss the group ownership idea with how American American natives were in their Americas? The new people couldn’t go anywhere because the natives claimed to own every square inch of the continent. Is that a parable there? I I mean I don’t know if it’s a parable because I mean I mean it’s interesting because from my understanding the native Indians didn’t really even have a concept of ownership. So it’s not like they really thought everything was owned.

[01:46:22] Brook: You were going onto their grazing land. you know which which you know and they and they they were gonna take you out there there wasn’t i there wasn’t a concept of this of property rights what constitute violations how we deal with violations of property rights There was you’re a stranger, you don’t you know we’ve always grazed here, we’ve always walked over there, therefore it it’s the equivalent of ours, even though we don’t really have a concept for that. You can’t I mean you can’t own property you don’t use. I mean even even when you buy something If you don’t use it like land, if you don’t use it for X number of years, if you abandon it, then

[01:47:11] Brook: you know it stops being yours. That’s recognized in the law today. In America, there’s such a thing as abandonment. If you abandon property, it stops being yours. You don’t own property just because you walk through it Just because you travel through it. You have to mix, you literally have to do something with it. You know, and this is why what’s interesting about Rand ‘s definition of rights, rights are freedoms of action. You know, and and and property is the product of action. The product of action It’s not in and of itself. It’s because you acted. So that’s what you’re free and you’re free to act on your property.

[01:47:57] Brook: So You know, the whole conception of rights, there’s no such thing as I mean, there’s group ownership only in the sense of a corporation only in a sense of of some kind of contractual agreement. But even a contract, let’s say, let’s say we had a let’s say there’s a corporation and they say we only sell stocks to Catholics. And if you stop being a Catholic, you have to sell your stock. You can’t enforce a contract like that. That’s a non-enforceable contract You cannot enforce you cannot dictate the ideas that people hold in their heads. You can dictate the actions, but you can’t dictate, you know, you can say

[01:48:42] Brook: you forfeit the the stock if You steal, you forfeit the car the stock if I don’t know you do something, right? But you can’t say you forfeit the contract because you change your mind. You have certain ideas I mean, I’m interested in anybody can think of an example where that would be valid. I’ll have to think about it All right. so I don’t know. I I don’t think the the ownership I’m not sure it’s the same idea. And and we’d have to think look more about what Hoppe means by covenant and what do these communities look like and if there’s anarcho so-called anarcho-capitalism. Why would you have a community, right?

[01:49:34] Brook: I mean there’s all kinds of legal entities over one community. The whole idea of anarchy is there’s more than one police force in one community. So is there more than one covenant in one community? How do you define that? you know what’s outside of the community, what’s inside the community. I mean there’s a lot of questions you would have to ask even to figure out exactly what he means by it. I think it’s all corrupt, but to to actually dig into what he means by it, I think you’d have to ask a lot.

[01:50:01] Nikos: I’ll direct to people where it is where he has this discussion in democracy the god that failed. It’s around page two hundred and something, so this would be the chapter on the chapter on On government and oh wait. Weird. On the errors of classical liberalism and the future of liberty Anyway, it’s around page 200. You’ll find it you’ll find it somewhere there.

[01:50:40] Brook: Okay. all right. remote remote. Remo asks, best movie starring Christian Bale and how many stars?

[01:50:53] Nikos: The third Batman Seven out of ten. The first Batman seven six to six point five Batman returns six and the big sword. Eight for his performance, six for the Keynesian premises.

[01:51:19] Brook: Yeah, I mean I’m just looking at a list of his movies. But this is iconic and acclaimed movies. So yeah, I mean the the the Dark Knight trilogy, he’s exceptional in it. I think he’s very good in it you know, let’s see The Prestige. He’s very good in the prestige and I like that movie. So it’s another, it’s probably another seven on on in the movie list. and and he’s very good in it. you know he’s good in the big short. Ford vs. Ferrari, he’s pretty good in that movie.

[01:51:57] Nikos: Oh yeah, yeah, he’s good.

[01:51:59] Brook: That’s a good movie. It’s also another seven I think in terms of movies. And and then a movie that I really like that is underrated, I think, out there is a movie called Empire of the Sun. And it turns out that He he was a ch he was the child star in that movie. So he is he was the child actor in Empire Sun. I didn’t know this, I’m just reading it here he played the he played the lead character of a child who is a survives the Japanese attack. He’s a English or American who lives in China when the Chinese Japanese attack and he lives he goes to concentration camp the kind of camps that the the Japanese set up.

[01:52:46] Brook: And it’s it’s a very, very it’s a Stephen Schwelberg movie. I think it’s one of his best movies. I haven’t I usually it’s not listed, but it’s a very good movie. , it’s a very good movie. recently I like them in there was a movie called The Amsterdam, kind of a weird movie, which I liked. Yeah, I mean he’s a good actor. He’s a good actor, but but his he he really shines in the Batman movies. But I think all those others, I think Ferrari, Ford vs. Ferrari is very good. Yeah.

[01:53:18] Nikos: And in the other where he plays the boxer, that’s also a good one.

[01:53:22] Brook: The fighter?

[01:53:23] Nikos: Yeah, one yeah, one of these, yeah.

[01:53:25] Brook: Yeah, and Prestige. I don’t know if you ever saw Prestige.

[01:53:28] Nikos: I haven’t seen

[01:53:29] Brook: But the Magician. It’s a good movie.

[01:53:31] Nikos: I’ll I’ll have to take it out.

[01:53:32] Brook: He plays the two magicians, rival magicians. in the na I think in the nineteenth century, said in the nineteenth century, it’s really good all right. let’s see. Neo, how can Israel allow Arab leaders in the government? If they cite an existential threat, if they cite an existential threat from Arab nations, do these leaders put Israel first? So you know they’re not gonna be in the government. So I mean it’s really stunning. I haven’t commented on this because the results as I reported them yesterday were not real. I I warned you about exit polls and I warned you doubly about Netanyahu. I I told you he would all

[01:54:20] Brook: he always outperforms the polls and he has blown away the polls. He’s way outperformed the polls. But what’s really outperformed the polls and outperformed history is the Arab vote. The two Arab political parties in Israel have 19 mandates. It’s almost twenty that’s almost fifteen percent or it’s it’s more than fifteen percent of the Israeli parliament will be Arabs, Arab political parties, not just Arabs. One of the political parties, which is more of a Islamist political party in the sense of religious, and the other secular nationalist Arab political party, which is more socialist-Marxist. and

[01:55:01] Brook: and and they they have nineteen votes and i I mean I’m gonna say a lot more about that next show I have because there’s a lot to say about that. It’s an interesting phenomenon. But I think the fact that you have two Arab parties that gain 19 vote 19 votes. I I You know, again, it’s an election. You can vote for who you want to vote, and Israel is a free country. But the fact that these parties are so bad, they’re both bad. Is a failure of the Israeli state. The Israeli state has failed to assimilate the its Arab population. It has failed to address their needs, their legitimate needs, for example, for safety and security, crime in the Arab community.

[01:55:53] Brook: is is is much much higher than the Jewish community, partially because it’s not policed and and the police don’t have the resources to deal with it because the state allocates it towards the Jewish communities. They’ve alienated through you know racist rhetorics of people like Ben Griel. So the the the the Israeli state has failed its Arab citizens. And the what you saw in this election, stunningly, I mean, was the Arabs basically saying enough’s enough. And going out into polls and voting. And turnout in the Arab community was unprecedented. I mean, it’s probably over 80% of eligible voters voted.

[01:56:38] Brook: And they voted for people who they believe will stand up for them. I don’t think they care about Marxism or this or that, but they voted for people who they believe will stand up to to get their security and to and to stop their disc the discrimination against them in property sales and discrimination against them in education because it exists And and how Israel deals with this, because a big chunk of Israeli population will just evade that fact. you know, ignore it and and and but You know, and a lot of this is a result of Ben Gvir. Ben Gvir has brought them out. They hate him justifiably. And he brought them out.

[01:57:16] Brook: So Will they be in the next government? I doubt it. The next government is going to be led by Netanyahu. He won, right? His political party is the largest. what combination it has, I I I think it’s gonna be the combination that I actually have been advocating for. That is a center right combination. I think that’s the only viable combination. I think People like Lieberman and Bennett and Eisenkot are gonna have to suck it up and they’re gonna have to be junior partners in a Likud-led government. And Netanyahu is gonna have to suck it up and not have the ultra-orthodox and the religious fanatical nationalists on his side.

[01:57:59] Brook: And you’re gonna get actually Other than the fact that Netanyahu this e you know one of the theories is they’re gonna cut a deal. Here’s the deal. The deal is they’re gonna make Netanyahu president. They’re going to convince the existing president, which is ceremonial role, to leave early. They’re going to all agree to vote for Netanyahu as president. He leaves the political stage that way, but he remains immune from persecution, and he gets the ceremonial you know, role of respect and now they can form a central right government and nobody has violated their commitment not to be under Netanyahu.

[01:58:40] Brook: So that’s one Now, I will believe for a second Netanyahu is going to go for that, but I think that’s one of the plans that people are scheming around. But I think at the end of the day, you’ll have a Netanyahu-led government. that is right of center, maybe without the ultra-orthodox, you know, with some kind of deal cut between the center right political parties you will not have a government with 19 Arab well, it’s not gonna be 19 at the end because they’re counting soldier votes now and believe me, the soldiers are not voting for the Arab parties. So they’ll probably land up with 17. and an exact distribution to be determined.

[01:59:15] Brook: But you won’t have seventeen members of the Israeli parliament sitting in a government. That will not happen.

[01:59:22] Nikos: In the unlikely situation when there’s gonna be a second election, go and bookmark people that video that Jaron made the clip out of the show where he talks about each and every party, what it represents, who will cooperate with whom. I watched this twice and I kept notes and this is how I could follow the exit polls and I could follow the results. That was you did you anyway do it, but this was God’s work for us

[01:59:49] Brook: Good. All right, Kim, thank you for the sticker. Jeremy, $50. Thank you, Jeremy, for the sticker. And wait a minute. I I I West at $100, right? I saw that. Yeah, Wes, thank you for the $100. Really appreciate that. So thank you, Wes. Thank you, Kim. Thank you, Jeremy. And thank you, Bonnie. All right, I’m gonna speed it up here because I need to leave soon. Hoppe is understandable as a German, but what made Rothbard so hateful? Much of Rothbard’s work is so good, I find it puzzling. Well, I mean he’s a Rothbard is a is a good economist. He makes some really, really important observations economically, and he’s a good critic

[02:00:38] Brook: of kind of the state, the the welfare state, the regulatory state from an economic perspective. But Rothbard is more ambitious than just being an economist. This is the problem with all these Austrian economists. They’re good economists, Mises included, Hayek included. But when Hayek goes into social sociology and philosophy and history, he’s terrible. Oh he’s conventional, put it that way. When Mises goes into philosophy, he’s Kantian. And when Rothbard goes into philosophy, he’s just awful. He’s a subjectivist. So what makes them hateful Is that they get sucked into a you know philosophical discussion that they that they have

[02:01:30] Brook: no clue about. And look, and and and this is the other thing that’s true, I think, of Rothbard. At some point, and maybe this is their motivation from the beginning, I don’t know, but at some point, hate becomes the dominant feature of everything that they hold. They’re motivated by hate, and hate of the state is is is really what’s driving them. And and maybe there’s a deeper hate, but let’s let’s just say hate of the state So everything is now through the prism of hatred of the state. And the best states of the United States and Israel and Western Europe, they must be the worst. So if you hate the state and there’s some good states

[02:02:09] Brook: you know, successful states. You hate them more than any other state. So everything then gets funneled through this prism of hatred. And and I think you can explain a lot of of of Rothbard’s, you know, he he he he wants to form an alliance with the left, right, in the 60s It’s the radical left because

[02:02:29] Nikos: he has an alliance with a Maoist party and he tries to persuade the Maoists while rent control are bad. But they agree on the Vietnam War.

[02:02:39] Brook: Because they agree in the Vietnam One, they hate America, right? They hate the state. And then he has an alliance with the paleo right because You know, they hate the state. And and so it’s it’s always what unites people around Rothbard is hatred of the state. Not , you know, we want to make the state better, not we want more freedom, not no, hatred of the state. We we want to abolish the state. And that’s what drives him, and that’s what makes him ultimately hateful, is the fact that he hates, that he’s motivated by hatred.

[02:03:09] Nikos: The other day I wrote on Twitter there are two types of people who can become a libertarian. The one is I love humanity so much that I want to see it flourish in freedom. The other is I hate the world so much I want to show it the finger, and libertarianism is a vehicle for this hatred that I have and for my contrarianism.

[02:03:28] Brook: Yeah, and I think that’s right. And I think Rothbard is the finger, right? Philip, thank you for your work. Hoppe is terrible. Yes, he is. Thanks, Philip. Cook, go pistons. No, no, no.

[02:03:43] Nikos: What did I tell him last year? The Pistons are doing great in the regular seasons, right? Wait to see them in two rounds in playoffs. They didn’t last for two rounds in the playoffs.

[02:03:52] Brook: Yeah. Well I shouldn’t talk ’cause my Celtics didn’t last one round in the playoffs. Remo, best movie starring Richard Gere I would say Primal Fear with Edward Norton. God, I can’t remember Primal Fear.

[02:04:10] Nikos: Not an officer and a gentleman.

[02:04:12] Brook: That’s a fun movie. It’s a fun movie. all right, let’s see.

[02:04:18] Nikos: Oh, and also unfaithful. He he plays the role of the cocked guy very with with much dignity.

[02:04:25] Brook: Well, I mean there’s which is one of the biggest flops in cinema history. Terence Malik massive well no, Days of Ham’s daughter flop Days of Heaven is a really good movie. it’s visually stunning. So if you want to see a movie that’s visually stunning with Richard Gere in it, very little dialogue because the whole story is told through visuals So it’s a it’s a really, really beautiful movie from 1978 called Days of Heaven. And if you know anything about Terrence Malik, his m movies are always worth watching even when they’re super weird. This one’s not weird, it’s just it’s just stunningly beautiful

[02:05:03] Brook: he did American Gigolo, he was good in that in 1980. Officer and Gentleman was fun. Pretty woman. He was good in Pretty Woman. Primal fear. I don’t remember Primal Fear. I’m sure I saw it, but I don’t remember it. He was in Chicago. yeah, I mean, I can’t say there are any great movies among these. pretty well, I mean pretty woman’s fun and all these movies he’s good in. I I he’s just not He’s not a great actor. He’s not one of those iconic actors, I don’t think. Yeah, I’m sure there are others. so Let’s see if I ask for a complete list. All right, and and we need a all right days of heaven I said

[02:05:56] Brook: American Judy Reported but breath breathless. Okay. The Cotton Club is pretty good there. what else? He did a lot of movies. God. A lot of movies.

[02:06:11] Nikos: Wasn’t he also a Buddhist? There was a time when being a Buddhist was fashionable.

[02:06:15] Brook: Could be. He did Red Corner? He did the Jackal. , those were also pretty good. Chicago was when he was older. God he did a lot of movies. Some of these I’ve never even heard of, never mind, never seen. So probably not very good movies. Yeah, I think I think we hit the peaks. All right. Thank you, Remo. Friend Harper, is this one of the best arguments for non-initiating force out there that isn’t objectivism? No, it’s not an argument. It’s a silly syllogism that is I is is is not related to reality. So there is there’s no argument there. Not that I can tell. So no, not in my view. It’s an attempt.

[02:07:09] Brook: Hell hell Wolf for Liberty. Hoppe ‘s actual teacher is Jugend. Habermas, who devoted who developed discourse theory, which is the intellectual ancestor of argumentation theory Which is what you said, right?

[02:07:25] Nikos: That’s literally what I said. Yes. But Hoppe still today, when he talks about argumentation ethics He recognizes the contribution of Habermas and of a second person who is not that well known and he was not part of the Frankfurt School. And this is why yesterday on Twitter there was a bit of drama between people who said it’s critical theory who is to blame for Hoppe’s and Holocaust stuff and then some leftist Professor who actually has debated Jaron some years ago, Matt McManus. He said, no, this is ridiculous. You cannot blame critical theory for hoppe.

[02:08:05] Brook: Yeah. Ryan says, great show, guys. Thank you. Thanks, Ryan.

[02:08:09] Nikos: Thank you.

[02:08:10] Brook: Jamie from Canada says, do you think the fact that Alex Epstein has received money from fossil fuel companies ruins ruins or limits his credibility, why or why not? No. I mean he is defending fossil fuels, they should pay him. Absolutely they should pay him. He is doing he is doing work that benefits them, a trade, right? I I don’t think it ruins his credibility because it doesn’t it doesn’t I mean he presents facts. He presents arguments. He presents evidence. He wrote a whole book. If somebody wants to refute the book, refute the argument, not I I don’t think getting money from a source makes you

[02:08:51] Brook: you know I get money from the Iron Rand Institute. Does that make me, I don’t know, incapable of talking objectively about Ayn Rand? I I have to defend her because I get money from them No, I mean the reason I get money from them is because I actually defend nine rants. So so they have a strong interest in in in in in paying me. So No, I think the whole idea pharmaceuticals pay doctors and therefore doctors are biased you know Yeah, some some people are motivated by money above all and you have to so but yes, but then you can catch them on the fact that they make lousy arguments and you can challenge them and see that they’re shallow.

[02:09:31] Brook: But who else would pay Alex if not the fossil fuel industry? And good for the fossil fuel industry for doing it. And good for Alex for taking the money. I mean I always say people say, Oh, you’re just a a mouthpiece for the billionaires You’re probably on the payroll and I go, I wish. I mean w if there’s a billionaire out there, I am happy to be, you know, to take your money and let the world know that I’m taking your money and I’ll defend you and and I’ll defend you better than anybody else. but these are ideas that I hold because they’re true ideas, not because you’re giving me money.

[02:10:03] Nikos: The only thing that can hurt someone’s credibility is being wrong.

[02:10:07] Brook: Yeah. Real Spark says, please talk about the the head-on train crash in Spain. I mean this is a huge tragedy. 60 plus people are dead. maybe many more. We we don’t know yet. This is a second train wreck I think this year in in in Spain with major casualties. you know I’m tempted to say Atlas is shrugging in the sense that this is what happened when the when the state runs things and and this is a socialist government and that’s probably true. I’d have to do a little bit of research to validate that, but I’m I’m pretty sure Yeah, the the the state is screwing up the rail system. but it’s you know it’s it’s it’s horrible and

[02:10:48] Brook: and and and tragic and I you know where I can say this is what happens when the state runs things, but you know, in in China they have electric trains, they have the same kind of fast th trains and the state has a role and they don’t have these accidents or maybe they do. I’d have to do more research about the relationship between train crashes and state regulations and the correlation between them. But it does feel like an Atlas Shrugged moment, sadly.

[02:11:17] Nikos: The only time I’ve been in the last many years in a protest was in a very massive protest in Greece some years ago After a similar and even more tragic train accident, because the omissions from the state and the continuous omissions still today are so mind-boggling that it’s worth taking on the streets for that.

[02:11:39] Brook: Yep. Udika says, dear Yoran, I’m still to hear from you concerning the product I’m developing for YBS. I’ve sent you a follow-up email. check for the name. I’d appreciate that meeting soon. Yeah, I mean I’m I’m traveling for the next month. So but i nothing’s gonna happen before Thanksgiving in America, which is late November I just d don’t have the bandwidth to do anything given the travel and the amount of lecturing I’m doing and trying to do shows and all of that. So I I’ve seen the email. I will respond to it. It’s in my It’s in my list to respond to, but it’s just gonna take time. It’ll probably be late November, early December before I get back to you

[02:12:22] Brook: But I appreciate I appreciate you developing something. Roland, how does he even arrive at the idea that hedonism are bad for the libertarian order? I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. Well the libertarian order is related to family and to the family unit and I you know I don’t know. You know, maybe maybe I don’t know if you have more to say about that. But

[02:12:45] Nikos: what he would say no no I’m just talking about A covenant of people who like family values for whatever reasons.

[02:12:52] Brook: But it’s about libertarian order.

[02:12:56] Nikos: Like again, don’t try to find answers when they’re not there. It’s not that it’s somewhere there and we didn’t find it. It’s You could say also it’s intuit some libertarians. I’m not they are into into intuitive libertarians. That’s how they would describe themselves We kind of get that liberty is good and violating other people’s rights is not good.

[02:13:18] Brook: Yep. Enric, since you mention a corporation to a collection of people, what is idea of corporate personhood like the corporation can initiate or defend a lawsuit? Well it’s basically i it it it’s not a person I think it’s wrong to think of it in terms of corporate personhood. I have a whole course on this you can find it online by the way but the idea is that the corporation is an amalgamation of people and the corporation in their name, in the name of the shareholders, can sue somebody else and person can sue the corporation. What he’s basically suing are the owners of the corporation. But these owners are being represented in the

[02:14:04] Brook: lawsuit. Their agent is the corporate entity. So there is no corporate personhood. There’s nothing beyond corporations don’t have rights other than the rights that they get from representing people right individuals. And again, there’s a whole there’s a whole course on the corporation that’s available out there. All right, Cook. But the ANCAP agree with objectivism like 90% of stuff can’t we just get along? it turns out it’s a lot less than 90 You know, maybe it’s a lot less than 10. they don’t agree with us almost on anything at the end of the day.

[02:14:43] Nikos: And again, notice free speech, which supposedly come on, we all agree on that. Turns out you don’t have free speech in your own ha home if it’s in the wrong covenant.

[02:14:53] Brook: Yep. Yes. And and and think about not just freedom of speech, freedom of action in your own home. You you can’t you can’t engage in homosexual activity. you know in your own home according to open right

[02:15:12] Nikos: or maybe you can if you are quiet and they they can’t hear you

[02:15:15] Brook: if you’re high

[02:15:16] Nikos: literally

[02:15:17] Brook: If you hide it, yes. Mary Aline, based on what’s been said, libertarians remind me of medievalists. arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pen, totally detached from reality. Yeah, I mean that’s rationalism. There’s definitely a relationship between different rationalists

[02:15:37] Nikos: Though to be fair, there are many libertarians, even anarcho-capitalists, who disagree with the whole physical removal and covenant. Covenant stuff. And there are actually even and there are also libertarians who are even worse, like the ones who say if you leave your kid to a park and you shout to the people, hey, I’m leaving my baby here, you don’t violate anyone’s rights. I think that that was actually Rothbard.

[02:16:04] Brook: Yep. All right. Thank you, Mary Aline. Soteric dichotomy, patience, and trademarks. Patents and trademarks are manageable, but copyright lasts so long. Could abandonment apply when firms achieve franchises of murkant merchandise for decades. Well, I mean even there it only gets renewed for these very long times that you described If the business takes action to renew it, a lot of these copyrights have indeed been abandoned, not been renewed, and as a consequence expire way before the kind of 80 years or 90 years that exist today. But look, the eighty or ninety years is a consequence of of cronyism.

[02:16:49] Brook: I mean the the original law does not does not have you know, that kind of light li that come time span. That is a consequence completely of in this case It’s called the Disney law, right? Walt Disney, the company, lobbying to get to get these things extended. I I don’t know I don’t think it’s particularly rational to extend extend the you know the the the copyright laws to the extent that they indeed have been extended. All right. Let’s see. Lone dissenter. The argument against force is that it severs man’s organ of survival from the activities of its survival. Yes, no word salad is one of the best arguments.

[02:17:33] Brook: No word salad is yes, I agree with you. It’s in terms of the Best argument argument. The question was asked earlier. All right, last question. an anom ananomalous. A conflict of interest is a big topic these days. I think it is an overused concept. At what point is someone genuinely guilty of conflict of interest? Is it a valid concept? Many calls for recruisal. No, I mean I I I think it’s almost always not a valid concept. Almost always It is it is used as a vague accusation against somebody who’s doing something legitimate. You know, there there’s always a conflict of interest. I mean, they’re conflicts of interest all the time

[02:18:15] Brook: in a sense that my interest is not the same as yours, whether it’s a that’s a conflict differs. Now, if you engage in behavior, the i or or you advocate for ideas you don’t actually believe in because you’re getting money from somebody or because I don’t know you you you you you you so you engage in lying because you’re gonna become rich by by being a liar you know the it’s conflict of interest is too mild of a description of what you are right so yeah I I I I think it’s it’s a it’s a way to undermine Look, the way conflict of interest is used today, if there’s a monetary interest, you have a conflict of interest.

[02:19:01] Brook: If you have a monetary interest in advocating for some kind of idea or product, there’s a conflict of interest. That’s absurd, right? But that’s because they hate the profit motive. That’s because they hate monetary interest. That’s that’s that that’s the you know that comes from the hatred of Of money, of of self-interest. Alright guys, I have to run. Thank you, Nikos. Thank all the super chatters. you will we will have another Nikos you’re on a Nikos show November 8th. that’ll be from home and then there’ll be a week up and then two weeks later we’ll have another show. Next show is on a Suez Crisis.

[02:19:42] Brook: And that’ll be on November 8th. So looking forward to that. Have a great week, everybody, and week and a half before we see you again. And Nikos, I’ll see you in a week and a half. And then in San Francisco.

[02:19:56] Nikos: Thank you.

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Kinsella 2009Stephan Kinsella is a libertarian writer and retired patent attorney in Houston, Texas. He has published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics such as intellectual property law and international law. His publications include Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020), and The Universal Principles of Liberty (2025).

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