From my tweet:
That said, the question of Brexit it seems to me is a different one. I was leery of Brexit because one thing I like about being in the US is any young person in any state has the whole country open to him–to move to to work—and this was what a young British person had with the EU. He could move to and work in Spain or France or Amsterdam whatever if he wanted to. Sort of like in the US. So if I was a young person in Britain I would have opposed Brexit. Yes, yes, despite all the problems with centralization and Brussells.
That said, the question of Brexit it seems to me is a different one. I was leery of Brexit because one thing I like about being in the US is any young person in any state has the whole country open to him–to move to to work—and this was what a young British person had with the EU. He could move to and work in Spain or France or Amsterdam whatever if he wanted to. Sort of like in the US. So if I was a young person in Britain I would have opposed Brexit. Yes, yes, despite all the problems with centralization and Brussells.
nb @GabbSean— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) October 17, 2026
I mentioned my thoughts on this to Hoppe at PFS earlier this year and he said well but you don’t need the EU and centralization to have such mobility rights; this can be done by treaty. Of course this is right but as a practical matter that was not a likely result of Brexit and in fact did not happen and probably will not. (See Grok summary.)
Relevant
- The Prophetic Dr. Hoppe on the Rise of the Phoenix (StephanKinsella.com, October 7, 2008). Discusses and quotes Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s “Banking, Nation States and International Politics: A Sociological Reconstruction of the Present Economic Order,” Rev. Austrian Econ. 4 no. 1 (1990), also in EEPP)), including his prediction of a U.S.-dominated world paper currency (the “Phoenix”)
- The Undeniable Morality of Capitalism (StephanKinsella.com, July 22, 2016). Section on Chapter 3 of Hoppe’s The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (“Banking, Nation States, and International Politics”), summarizing the monopolization of money and banking and the tendency toward a one-world paper currency, with the relevant quoted passage.
- KOL085 | The History, Meaning, and Future of Legal Tender (Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Crypto-Currency Conference, Atlanta, 2013; transcript). References Hoppe’s analysis and notes his hypothesis of a future U.S.-dominated UN currency called the “Phoenix.”
Transcript of Rothbard’s Remarks
[59:18]
Q: How do you view the coming integration of the European economies [into a united Europe]?
A: Well, that’s interesting. It’s kind of a mixed bag because the press, the media, hoopla it up as being a great thing because it’s like a giant free-trade area, free-market area, which in a sense it is. It would supposedly be free movement of capital and labor and goods within Europe.
The problem is, however, they’re also building up a giant bureaucracy in Brussels. They’re also fostering more statism within the countries. For example, the countries in Europe which have low tax levels are being urged by the Brussels establishment to increase their taxes so as to equalize with other countries, you see. So you have a tax increase in this stuff.
Plus, you have a very dangerous situation, namely the European Monetary Unit, with the European Central Bank looming up. A European Central Bank, of course, is much worse than having no European—just having either seven or eight central banks. It’s much worse than having one giant central bank, which is an inflationary cartel of the whole European structure.
Plus the fact that the Keynesians are still in power. Okay, for the Keynesians—the Keynesian dream, and Secretaries Baker and Brady—I mean Baker is a Keynesian, okay, the whole Keynesian government. And so what they want, the Keynesian dream, is to have a world—a great objective from Keynes on down—is to have one world central bank and one world monetary unit that should be issued by the central bank, one world paper money. And then you have a world reserve bank issuing world paper, and everybody can inflate together. You won’t have any problems with losing gold, losing dollars, worrying about exchange rates. Everybody will inflate together, have one world inflation—managed, of course, brilliantly by the world economists. And then, of course, you have a one-world result: one world runaway inflation, which would be really, really horrendous, much worse than the Argentinian runaway inflation.
So that’s the Keynesian dream: that one managed world currency and one managed world central bank. I don’t think they’ll get it because there’s a lot of national sovereignty jealousies here. But I mean, that’s always the threat. So the threat of a united Europe is to have a European central bank. Unfortunately, Mrs. Thatcher is against it, probably because she has monetarist economic advisors. The one good thing about monetarism is they’re opposed to a Keynesian world central bank. So anyway, that’s the—so it’s sort of a mixed bag, you know, if it’s good in some sense and bad in others.
Older tweets
@ThomasEWoods This is one reason I was kind of against Brexit. If I were in Europe or UK I would like the ability to have freedom of travel, trade, job mobility, between the UK and Europe. that’s might be lost or hindered now. So that’s a downside. There are upsides, of course.
— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) September 8, 2022
@Kinsellas @RuthLeaEcon Despite being an anarchist decentralist, the prospect of Brexit still makes me sad. ☹️
— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) July 29, 2019
