Comments Elsewhere

Kinsella wants to know what, specifically, Ghertner would disagree in in Hoppe’s comments pasted above. I don’t know about Micha, but as for myself there are so many places that I don’t know where to start. More or less arbitrarily, here’s one passage that struck me as, frankly, particularly laughable:

Accordingly, when the welfare state has imploded there will be a multitude of “little” (or not so little) Calcuttas, Daccas, Lagoses, and Tiranas strewn all over Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. It betrays a breathtaking sociological naivete to believe that a natural order will emerge out of this admixture. Based on all historical experience with such forms of multiculturalism, it can safely be predicted that in fact the result will be civil war.

For starters, I deny that there is such a thing as a “natural order;” I think the notion, at least as Hoppe deploys it, is dangerous, anti-human nonsense. (The most important part of our nature as human beings is our capacity for creating things anew and making and remaking our social relationships.) Maybe you could explain what you think a “natural order” means, Stephan, and why you think we should aim at getting one to coalesce.

For the follow-up, I had a good hard laugh when Hoppe predicted civil war inevitably following from the formation of ethno-linguistic enclaves—in Switzerland—and accused his opponents of a “breathtaking sociological naivete.” Switzerland is, in case you haven’t noticed, already a multi-ethnic, polyglot society; it has, compared to the rest of Europe, been remarkably peaceful and prosperous for over 700 years. While we’re at it, somewhere around 20% of the population are already resident foreigners or temporary foreign workers. Somehow, the Swiss seem to manage. This has a lot to do with tolerance, military neutrality, and an intensely decentralist political system, and very little to do with ridiculous notions like a Swiss “national identity.” (There is no Swiss nation at all.)

So why does Hoppe believe that the formation of new ethno-linguistic enclaves in Switzerland would inevitably lead to civil war when Switzerland has been a loosely-affiliated collection of ethno-linguistic enclaves for 700 years? He doesn’t say. It is, apparently, supposed to be taken as more or less self-evident; certainly anyone who doesn’t buy it is accused of “breathtaking sociological naivete.” Yet the facts are already on the ground. Res ipso loquitor.