Critiqueing Hoppe's Monarchy-As-Lesser-Evil Argument From Another Angle

Most market anarchists have mostly likely heard of Hans Hoppe's argument that monarchy is preferable to democracy because a "private" owner of the state has an incentive to preserve the "capital value" of the state, and will therefore allegedly be more restrained in their oppression of their subjects. Not long ago, Roderick Long brought up an interesting parallel to Hoppe's argument in the context of chattel slavery, and used it as a point against Hoppe's argument. In a nutshell, Hoppe's argument mirrors a paternalistic argument for chattel slavery, I.E. that a "private" slavemaster has an incentive to take care of their slave so that they are productive. All based on the general theory of time preference.

Let's think more deeply about this premise via a parasite metaphor. What is the interest of a parasite? To reap as much from their host as possible. However, the relationship between a parasite and its host has complications: if the parasite kills its host, it no longer has a source and dies if it doesn't find a new one. Hence, it is actually in the interest of the parasite to maintain a certain balance in which they are able to perpetually live off of the host without killing it. It against the long-term interest of the parasite to reap too much too quickly.

I maintain that this is analagous to both the "private slavery" and "private monarchy" questions. In the long-term, a conservative policy in which the subject is kept at a sufficient level of health necessary to continue being able to milk the most productivity from them is the most efficient and sustainable way to rule them. So what Hoppe ends up proving is not necessarily that a monarchy is inherently less exploitative than a democracy, but that a monarchy is actually the most efficient and sustainable form of rulership (which isn't a good thing if you want to oppose rulership). From the standpoint of the subject, they are only "taken care of" as a pretext to them providing productivity that will be seized from them in the future.

Stephan Molyneux, in one of his more interesting positions, once made a similar line of argument about minarchist capitalism (I don't recall exactly which podcast or video it is from). The idea is that the relative non-intervention of small/minarchist governments entails a period of productivity, that is generally a pretext to a later period of growth in government in which that productivity is seized to provide the resources necessary to maintain a large military-industrial-complex and welfare-state (it's interesting to note that in a strange roundabout way, Molyneux is actually fairly closely paralleling Marx here).

The common thread that runs through all of these examples is that a low time preference and conservative approach presents the conditions upon which to sustainably and efficiently milk the most out of the victims. This is actually a "smart" strategy for parasites/slavemasters/rulers, not something to hold up as a pragmatic lesser evil! The subject is only given more lenience earlier on so that it can be steadily taken away from them as time goes by and so that they function as a reliable source of input for the ruling individual or group. It does not prove as an apriori law of praxeology that a "private" and conservative form of domination is inherently more tolerable or less objectionable.

It should be noted that I am accepting Hoppe's own economic assumptions (namely, time preference) to refute the conclusion that he draws from them. Let's concede Hoppe's contention that the "private" owner of the state has an incentive towards a low time preference. The proper response is that what follows, by the very logic of time preference, is that they have a more vested personal interest in preserving the state, precisely because it is their property. And this doesn't really mean the well being of the subjects of the state, but the stability of the state itself. In a sense, Hoppe's theory refutes itself, since it's the "capital value" of the state that the owner is primarily interested in.

The notion that "private" forms of control are inherently a "lesser evil", or even a non-issue entirely, does not logically follow from accepting the general economic theory of time preference. If anything, Hoppe is abusing a valid economic conceptual tool to legitimize an ideological presupposition, out of a zeal to oppose democracy. Even if we grant him the benefit of the doubt and don't claim that he intends to legitimize monarchy (which isn't that much of a stretch given the context of his statements), the function of Hoppe's argument is a misleading pragmatic-propertarian argument in favor of monarchy. But it proves no such thing. If it proves that monarchy is preferable in any sense at all, it proves that it is preferable only from the standpoint of the monarch, who personally reaps the benefits of a thrifty investment strategy in the state.