Read DemocracyThe God That Failed Online
Authors: Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Consequently, by increasingly relieving individuals of the responsibility of having to provide for their own health, safety, and old age, the range and temporal horizon of private provisionary action have been systematically reduced. In particular, the value of marriage, family, and children have fallen, since one can fall back on "public" assistance. Thus, since the onset of the democratic-republican age the number of children has declined, and the size of the endogenous population has stagnated or even fallen. For centuries, until the end of the nineteenth century, the birth rate was almost constant: somewhere between 30 to 40 per 1,000 population (usually somewhat higher in predominantly Catholic and lower in Protestant countries). In sharp contrast, during the twentieth century birthrates all over Europe and the U.S. have experienced a dramatic decline—down to about 15 to 20 per 1,000.
39
At the same time, the rates of divorce, illegitimacy, single parenting, singledom, and abortion have steadily increased, while personal savings rates have begun to stagnate or even fall rather than rise proportionally or even over-proportionally with rising incomes.
40
Moreover, as a consequence of the depreciation of law resulting from legislation and the collectivization of responsibility effected in particular by social security legislation, the rate of
crimes
of a serious nature, such as murder, assault, robbery, and theft, has also shown a systematic upward tendency.
In the "normal" course of events—that is with rising standards of living—it would be expected that the protection against social disasters such as crime would undergo continual improvement, just as one would expect the protection against natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes and hurricanes to become progressively better. Indeed, throughout the Western world this appears to have been the case by and large—until recently, during the second half of the twentieth century, when crime rates began to climb steadily upward.
41
39
See Mitchell,
European
Historical
Statistics
1
750-1970,
pp. 16ff.
40
See Allan C. Carlson,
Family
Questions:
Reflections
on
the
American
Social
Crises
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1988); idem,
The
Swedish
Experiment
in
Family
Politics
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990); idem, "What Has Government Done to Our Families?"
Essays
in
Political
Economy
13 (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1991); Charles Murray,
Losing
Ground
(New York: Basic Books, 1984); for an early diagnosis see Joseph A. Schumpeter,
Capitalism,
Socialism,
and
Democracy
(New York: Harper, 1942), chap. 14.
4I
See James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein,
Crime
and
Human
Nature
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), pp. 408-09; on the magnitude of the increase in criminal activity brought about by democratic republicanism and welfarism in the
course of the last hundred years see also Roger D. McGrath,
Gunfighters,
Highway
men,
and
Vigilantes
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), esp. chap. 13; idem, "Treat Them to a Good Dose of Lead,"
Chronicles
(January 1994).
To be sure, there are a number of factors other than increased irresponsibility and shortsightedness brought on by legislation and welfare that may contribute to crime. Men commit more crimes than women, the young more than the old, blacks more than whites, and city dwellers more than villagers.
42
Accordingly, changes in the composition of the sexes, age groups, races, and the degree of urbanization could be expected to have a systematic effect on crime. However, all of these factors are relatively stable and thus cannot account for any systematic change in the long-term downward trend of crime rates. As for European countries, their populations were and are comparatively homogeneous; and in the U.S., the proportion of blacks has remained stable. The sex composition is largely a biological constant; and as a result of wars, only the proportion of males has periodically fallen, thus actually reinforcing the "normal" trend toward falling crime rates. Similarly, the composition of age groups has changed only slowly; and due to declining birth rates and higher life expectancies the average age of the population has actually increased, thus helping to depress crime rates still further. Finally, the degree of urbanization began to increase dramatically from about 1800 onward. A period of rising crime rates during the early nineteenth century can be attributed to this initial spurt of urbanization.
43
Yet after a period of adjustment to the new phenomenon of urbanization, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, the countervailing tendency toward falling crime rates took hold again, despite the fact that the process of rapid urbanization continued for about another hundred years. And when crime rates began to move systematically upward, from the mid-twentieth century onward, the process of increasing urbanization had actually come to a halt.
It thus appears that the phenomenon of rising crime rates cannot be explained other than with reference t
o the process of democratization: by a rising degree of social time preference, an increasing loss of individual responsibilit
y, intellectually and morally, and a diminished respect for all law—moral relativism—stimulated by an unabated flood of
legislation.
44
Of course, "high time preference" is by no means equivalent with "crime." A high time preference can also find expression in such perfectly lawful activities as recklessness, unreliability, poor manners, laziness, stupidity, or hedonism. Nonetheless, a systematic relationship between high time preference and crime exists, for in order to earn a market income a certain minimum of planning, patience, and sacrifice is required. One must first work for a while before one gets paid. In contrast, most serious criminal activities such as murder, assault, rape, robbery, theft, and burglary require no such discipline. The reward for the aggressor is immediate and tangible, whereas the sacrifice—possible punishment—lies in the future and is uncertain. Consequently, if the social degree of time preference were increased, it would be expected that the frequency in particular of these forms of aggressive behavior would rise—as they in fact did.
45
42
See J. Philippe Rushton,
Race,
Evolution,
and
Behavior
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995); Michael Levin,
Why
Race
Matters
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger,1998).
43
See Wilson and Herrnstein,
Crime
and
Human
Nature,
p. 411.
44
Essentially the same conclusion is also reached by ibid., pp. 414-15:
As a society becomes more egalitarian in its outlook, it becomes skeptical of claims that the inputs of some persons are intrinsically superior to those of others, and thus its members become more disposed to describe others' output as unjustly earned. There can be little doubt, we think, that the trend of thought in modern nations has been toward more egalitarian views, buttressed in some instances by the rising belief among disadvantaged racial, ethnic, and religious minorities that the deference they once paid need be paid no longer; on the contrary, now the majority group owes them something as reparations for past injustices. Of course, persons can acquire more egalitarian or even more reparations-seeking views without becoming more criminal. But at the margin, some individuals—perhaps those impulsive ones who value the products of an affluent society—find that value suddenly enhanced when they allow themselves to be persuaded that the current owner of a car has no greater (i.e., no more just) claim to it than they do Data on changes in internalized inhibitions against crime are virtually nonexistent. . . . [However,] one tantalizing but isolated fact may suggest that internalized inhibitions have in fact changed, at least in some societies. Wolpin finds that in England the ratio of murderers who committed suicide before being arrested to all convicted murderers fell more or less steadily from about three out of four in 1929 to about one in four in 1967.
45
On the relationship between high time preference and crime see also Edward C. Banfield,
The
Unheavenly
City
Revisited
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), esp. chaps. 3 and 8; idem, "Present-Orientedness and Crime," in
Assessing
the
Criminal,
Randy E. Barnett and John Hagel, eds. (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1977). Explains Banfield
(The
Unheavenly
City
Revisited,
pp. 140-41):
The threat of punishment at the hands of the law is unlikely to deter the present-oriented person. The gains he expects from the illegal act are very near to the present, whereas the punishment that he would suffer—in the unlikely event of his being both caught and punished—lies in a future too
distant for him to take into account. For the normal person there are of course risks other than the legal penalty that are strong deterrents: disgrace, loss of job, hardship for wife and children if one is sent to prison, and soon. The present-oriented person does not run such risks. ... he need not fear losing his job since he works intermittently or not at all, and for his wife and children, he contributes little or nothing to their support and they may well be better off without him.
Conclusion:
Monarchy,
Democracy,
And
The
Idea
Of
Natural
Order
From the vantage point of elementary economic theory and in light of historical evidence, then, a revisionist view of modern history results. The Whig theory of history, according to which mankind marches continually forward toward ever higher levels of progress, is incorrect. From the viewpoint of those who prefer less exploitation over more and who value farsightedness and individual responsibility above shortsightedness and irresponsibility, the historic transition from monarchy to democracy represents not progress but civilizational decline. Nor does this verdict change if more or other indicators are included. Quite to the contrary. Without question the most important indicator of exploitation and present-orientedness
not
discussed above is
war.
Yet if this indicator were included the relative performance of democratic republican government appears to be even worse, not better. In addition to increased exploitation and social decay, the transition from monarchy to democracy has brought a change from limited warfare to total war, and the twentieth century, the age of democracy, must be ranked also among the most murderous periods in all of history.
46
See also Wilson and Herrnstein,
Crime
and
Human
Nature,
pp. 416-22. Wilson and Herrnstein report of indicators for young persons becoming increasingly "more present-oriented and thus more impulsive than those who grew up earlier." There is some evidence that this is true. In 1959, Davids, Kidder, and Reich administered to a group of institutionalized male and female delinquents in Rhode Island various tests (completing a story, telling the interviewer whether they would save or spend various sums of money if given to them) designed to measure their time orientation. The results showed them to be markedly more present-oriented than were comparable nondelinquents. Fifteen years later, essentially the same tests were given to a new group of institutionalized delinquents in the same state and of the same age. This group was much more present-oriented and thus much less willing to delay gratification (by, for example, saving rather than spending the money) than the earlier group of delinquents. Moreover, the more recent group frequently mentioned spending the gift money on drugs (nobody suggested that in 1959) and never mentioned giving it to somebody else (several had said they would do so in 1959), p. 418.
46
On the contrast between monarchical and democratic warfare see Fuller,
The
Conduct
of
War,
esp. chaps. 1 and 2; idem,
War
and
Western
Civilization
(Freeport, N.Y.:
Books for Libraries, 1969); Michael Howard,
War
in
European
History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), esp. chap. 6; idem,
War
and
the
Liberal
Conscience
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1978); de Jouvenel,
On
Power,
chap. 8; William A. Orton,
The
Liberal
Tradition
(Port Washington, Wash.: Kennikat Press, 1969), pp. 25ff.; Ferrero,
Peace
and
War,
chap. 1; see also chap. 1 above.
Thus, inevitably two final questions arise. The current state of affairs can hardly be "the end of history." What can we expect? And what can we do? As for the first question, the answer is brief. At the end of the twentieth century, democratic republicanism in the U.S. and all across the Western world has apparently exhausted the reserve fund that was inherited from the past. For decades, until the 1990s boom, real incomes have stagnated or even fallen.
47
The public debt and the cost of social security systems have brought on the prospect of an imminent economic meltdown. At the same time, societal breakdown and social conflict have risen to dangerous heights. If the tendency toward increased exploitation and present-orientedness continues on its current path, the Western democratic welfare states will collapse as the East European socialist peoples' republics did in the late 1980s. Hence one is left with the second question: What can we do
now,
in order to prevent the process of civilizational decline from running its full course to an economic and social catastrophe?
Above all, the idea of democracy and majority rule must be delegitimized. Ultimately, the course of history is determined by
ideas,
be they true or false. Just as kings could not exercise their rule unless a majority of public opinion accepted such rule as legitimate, so will democratic rulers not last without ideological support in public opinion.
48
Likewise, the transition from monarchical to democratic rule must be explained as fundamentally nothing but a
change
in public opinion. In fact, until the end of World War I, the overwhelming majority of the public in Europe accepted monarchical rule as legitimate.
49
Today, hardly anyone would do so. On the contrary, the idea of monarchical government is
considered laughable. Consequently, a return to the
ancien
regime
must be regarded as impossible. The legitimacy of monarchical rule appears to have been irretrievably lost. Nor would such a return be a genuine solution. For monarchies, whatever their relative merits,
do
exploit and
do
contribute to present-orientedness as well. Rather, the idea of democratic-republican rule must be rendered equally if not more laughable, not in the least by identifying it as the source of the ongoing process of decivilization.
47
For a revealing analysis of U.S. data see Robert Batemarco, "GNP, PPR, and the Standard of Living,"
Review
of
Austrian
Economics
1 (1987).
48
On the relation between government and public opinion see the classic expositions by Etienne de la Boetie,
The
Politics
of
Obedience:
The
Discourse
of
Voluntary
Servitude
(New York: Free Life Editions, 1975); David Hume,
Essays:
Moral,
Political,
and
Literary
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), esp. Essay 4: "Of the First Principles of Government."
49
As late as 1871, for instance, with universal male suffrage, the National Assembly of the French Republic contained only about 200 republicans out of more than 600 deputies. And the restoration of a monarchy was only prevented because the supporters of the Bourbons and the Orleans stalemated each other.