Crime, Governments, and Psychopathology from a Praxeological Perspective

Alessandro Fusillo

Alessandro Fusillo is an attorney in Italy and president of the Italian Libertarian Movement.

Introduction

A few years ago, my wife asked me what I felt knowing Hans Hoppe personally. I answered that it is like knowing Plato or Aristoteles personally and having the occasion to pick their brains over a glass of wine. Except, Hoppe is a sharper and more interesting thinker.

My encounter with Hans-Hermann Hoppe happened by chance. I had been invited to the 2016 edition of Anarchapulco through an American friend. Shortly before the start of the conference, Jeff Berwick interviewed me on his YouTube channel1 and I talked about the only way to make one’s job as an attorney at law compatible with a statist system where, willing or not, you always end up being another cog in the machinery of the Leviathan, namely undermining the system, never accepting contracts from public entities, and fighting to defend liberty and to circumvent the absurd laws of the existing legal regime. If the law is perverted, as Bastiat said,2 our mission as lawyers is to oppose the perversion. The interview caught Stephan Kinsella’s attention, and this is how I became one of the regulars at the annual Property and Freedom Society conference in Bodrum, the finest libertarian conference.

That said, honoring Hans-Hermann Hoppe and trying to write something original in his fields of interest is a daunting task but his books, articles, and speeches are an inexhaustible source of inspiration. My starting point is the opening remark from Hoppe’s book “Der Wettbewerb der Gauner” (The Competition of the Rogues): “Many people who have come to know and appreciate the benefits of competition in the market system believe that competition can cure all things. However,this is not the case. Just as competition in the production of good things makes things even better, competition in the production of bad things makes things even worse.”3 The scope of this article is the attempt to analyze the incentives to engage in crime from a praxeological point of view and the consequences of the incentive structure. Why is crime so popular and why are we immersed in a social environment where most relationships take the form of a criminal zero-sum-game? Economy is the science of human action, but normally criminal actions are either neglected, because economists prefer to analyze how markets and prices work, or they are overlooked because government intervention in the economy is not perceived as a form of criminality. The result is that “criminal economy” is not a field of great interest. Neoclassical economists who decided to investigate it end up describing, in terms of graphs and equations, platitudes like the fact that criminals balance costs and benefits of their criminal activity, that the higher the possibility of being caught the lower the crime rate, that an aggressor cannot employ all his resources to attack.4 Mathematical analysis of human action is a useless heuristic instrument.

Political means and economic means

Human condition is characterized by scarcity. In the final analysis time is the ultimate resource and, although this disproves the Malthusian fears about overpopulation and depletion of natural resources,5 comprehension of the human condition entails the consciousness that time is limited for everyone. Even in an imaginary situation where there is abundance of all resources, still it would be necessary at least to choose how to employ time to extract the different resources that make life better.6

In his study about the nature of the state Franz Oppenheimer made a distinction between the economic means which is the employment of one’s labor for the labor of others and the political means which is the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others.7 Labor is of course another way to refer to time. What Oppenheimer defines as political means should be called crime, which is the fraudulent or violent appropriation of another person’s time. It may range from the extreme case of murder where the remaining time is cut short forever by the assassin to the lesser hypotheses of the thief or the fraudster who take away private property that had been established previously by mixing not so much one’s labor, following the famous Lockean definition,8 but time to external factors. The natural law definition of crime, hence, is that of an action that constitutes a negation of the fundamental right of self-ownership, which is the exclusive right of control over time. That criminal law went astray from this basic definition of crime was clear since the very beginning of legal theory9 as the lawyers and experts in jurisprudence distinguished between mala in se and mala prohibita, the former being the actions which are forbidden according to natural law and the latter the ones that are simply prohibited by a certain law and that would be otherwise legitimate because they do not infringe on anyone’s time and self-ownership.

But aren’t all crimes simply the expression of certain transient social conditions, beliefs, and values that could change in time and allow for a different consideration of individual actions? Although such a consideration of criminal law is frequent it is nonetheless logically impermissible. A society devoid of objective rules of behavior could not ascertain the truth which, in social matters, can only be researched and found dialectically under the precondition of the equal recognition of the disputants as self-owners.10 Equality and respect for self-ownership and the exclusive individual right of control over time are the logical preconditions for the discovery of truth employing human logic. This makes a libertarian ethic objectively necessary and avoids the establishment of arbitrary and transient social rules. In fact, this is what happened time and again during history and still happens today. If any conviction is permissible to establish the rules that are needed to solve conflicts over scarce resources, then nothing can be objectively opposed against the rule of the gods or their anointed kings, against the will of the majority, the dictatorship of the proletarians, the supremacy of the Arian race, and the recent religious convictions of woke culture and climate change. And, beyond the ideological superstructures of the moment, any social system could be reduced to “might is right”.

Incentives for Criminal Activity

The logical and ethical impermissibility of criminal behavior notwithstanding, there are strong incentives to engage in such activities. Compared to the universal necessity of labor and exchange, crime appears as a comfortable shortcut. The would-be criminal sees the violent or fraudulent appropriation of other people’s resources as a simpler and easier way if compared to the inevitability of having to serve his fellow human beings with a product or service that they consider valuable and that they are willing to pay for.11 Cooperation means the willing exchange of time where both parties to any transaction project their final condition as more desirable if compared with the starting position. This evaluation is subjective and is to be found in any human activity, even in those which are characterized by gratuity. The donor derives a satisfaction from transferring his property title to someone else; solidarity is as much an incentive as profit. Voluntary transactions benefit all participants.

In contrast to this, criminal activity is always a zero-sum game. The advantage of the criminal corresponds to a loss by the victim of the crime. Even worse, the easier the violent or fraudulent appropriation of other people’s property for the criminal, the lesser the value that he attaches to the product of his crime. Thus, crime not only entails an unvoluntary transfer of property but also an asymmetric destruction hereof where the loss of the victim is even bigger than the advantage of the perpetrator.

Crime and Psychopathological Personality

The criminal’s outstanding features are the lack of empathy and the fixation on individual profit. For the attributes that are normally considered typical of the entrepreneur, rugged individualism, and exclusive profit motive, are what describes the personality of a criminal. Of course, there are criminals also in the business world12 but this represents an exception. Further, what is usually considered a form of business criminality, tax evasion, is simply a form of self-defense against a violent aggressor. The ordinary and prevalent mode of social interactions is that of cooperation and solidarity. The market is often depicted as the place where egoism runs roughshod on the relationships that are to be found in the small groups that constitute the starting point of human history.13 Quite on the contrary, it is a social mechanism that allows perfect strangers to interact peacefully realizing reciprocal gains.

Further, whereas the “normal” personality all too often falls prey to abstract reasoning and hypostatization14 the criminal has the capacity to see through the so-called institutions and take stock of the relations of wealth and exploitation which are often hidden for most persons by a veil of ignorance and illusion. The psychopathological criminal sees only his profit or gain; the incentives that move his actions are extremely simplified. The normal person seeks to realize goals which go beyond the accumulation of wealth and power. Values as cooperation and even self-sacrifice, e.g. for the wellbeing of the offspring, are distinctive features not only of the human beings but also of other primates.15 The psychopath, on the contrary, doesn’t share these common values because his quest is only the search for wealth and power. Paradoxically, this makes the criminal a sharper thinker and enables him to pursue his scopes ruthlessly, at the cost of cheating, lying, and murdering. Obviously,there are degrees of psychopathological personalities: in criminology there is an overall distinction between violent criminals and criminals that aren’t willing to go beyond stealing and robbing, maybe using but never making true the threat of violence. The most successful criminal, however, is the most ruthless, the one that shows less scruples. In the competition of the rogues16 the winner is always the worst.

Increasing Marginal Returns for Criminal Activity

No matter how easy the act of appropriation, a distinctive feature of criminal activity are the ever-increasing marginal returns for any additional unit of appropriated goods or services. This helps to explain the existence of a ranking of the criminals according to the increasing success in their undertakings.

The petty criminal is equivalent to the hunter and gatherer who lives from hand to mouth and has no possibility to plan for the future. The little thief or fraudster just sees the immediate result of his crime and his interest is entirely absorbed and satisfied by the object hereof: the robber goes away with the money that he stole from his victim and is contented with it. In the realm of the economic means increasing production, efficiency, and technology makes the accumulation of capital possible and determines the slow process of civilization that goes hand in hand with the lowering of time preference. The lower the time preference the more ambitious the projects that can be performed. Criminal activity denotes an evolution that can be compared to the lowering of time preference and that explains the growth of the criminal organizations and the accumulation of power as compared to the accumulation of capital.

One of the certainties that the criminal must face is the reaction of his victims. The more successful the criminal the fiercer the resistance that he will face. Typically, the resistance to crime takes the form of organized resistance through the setting up not only of physical structures as walls, barbed wires, and fences but also of protection agencies. Self-defense can and often is organized collectively and is the cause for the development of protection services.

The reaction to the existence of these protection agencies is akin to the lowering of time preference in the field of normal economic activity. The wise criminals will set aside at least a part of his loot to defend themselves against law enforcement by hiring lawyers, building safe and effective means of escape, and hiding the proceeds of their crimes where they cannot be found. It is a common experience of any criminal defense attorney that successful robber bands always save a part of the spoils to avoid being caught, to pay for the trial’s expenses, to make life in prison more bearable for the ones who have been arrested, and to provide for their families. Occasional cooperation for one or more crimes soon becomes institutional with the building of permanent criminal organizations. The individual thief, robber, or murderer, who, if he worked alone, would reap all the benefits of his crimes for himself, willingly surrenders part of his autonomy and booty because he expects a competitive advantage from being part of a bigger organization not only in his competition with other criminals who exploit the same basin of victims but also in overcoming their reaction.

The same incentive structure that makes for the passage from the petty criminal to the member of a criminal gang is also responsible for the formation of criminal cartels. The gangsters vying for the same group of victims can choose to fight each other or they can agree about their spheres of influence. Both solutions, which are the lesser versions of war and diplomacy, have been tried and are commonly observed and the clever way out of a continuous warfare between gangs is the creation of cartels. For these not only can make sure that the exploitation of the victims takes place in an orderly fashion, but they are also able to oppose an effective resistance to the law enforcement organizations.

Exactly as it is reasonable to implement the passage from petty criminal to gangster, the way of dealing with law enforcement and resistance by the victims can take different forms. First, there will be a technological competition between criminals and victims; the more effective the defense systems the more powerful the means to overcome them. Second, the efficient dealing with the legal system is another fundamental strategy. Third and foremost, exactly as the gangs have an incentive to come to terms among themselves, they can conceive the idea to buy their way into the legal system of resistance against crime and become its owners.

From Crime to Legitimacy

The biggest problem for any criminal organization is the criminality itself, the illegality of their activity and the strong motive for the victims to resist the systematic exploitation of their property and time. The other human beings know instinctively that criminal activity goes against the nature of man as a self-owner that is part of a structure of spontaneous social cooperation based on individual freedom and private property. Hence, the biggest problem for any criminal is his classification within a range of antisocial behavior that makes resistance, self-defense, and social disapproval a likely outcome of the criminal activity. The passage from criminality to legitimacy is the crucial paradigm shift that leads to the implementation of criminal organizations whose power and influence increase exponentially. The key to realize this paradigm shift is the exploitation of the errors of hypostatization and abstract reasoning. If the criminal organization manages to establish itself as an institution that is necessary or works for the common good, the tendency will be to overlook the individual criminal and consider the abstract institution as a person.17 Human beings need shared stories and traditions to keep societies together. The successful criminal is a talented storyteller who lacks empathy and hence can lie without remorse and constructs a narrative that makes him the representative of an abstract institution that must be obeyed “for the greater good”. If this trick succeeds, the criminal organizations exit the shady area of crime and assume the denomination of states or governments.

The way how this is achieved can vary over time and space, but the common pattern is that criminal organizations at a certain point in time achieve their passage into the legal system that becomes their property, making resistance by the victims not only futile but even prohibited by the same law whose original scope was to protect self-ownership and equality. One of the commonest developments is the passage from nomadic predators to military elites of nobles or conquerors. Among the earliest forms of criminal activity there was the formation of nomadic robber nations who roamed the countries and sometimes the continents in search of lands, riches, and people to enslave: examples hereof are as different as the Roman Empire, The Mongol Empire, and the Vikings. At a certain point of their historic development these highly efficient and militarily skilled gangs of robbers understood that there is a competitive advantage in remaining in the conquered lands as lords. Refraining from stealing everything and murdering or enslaving everyone in the conquered nations allows for a constant revenue and not an occasional and destructive exploitation. The nomadic or foreign robbers install themselves permanently in the vanquished areas as a military elite that affirms the right to exploit the inferior subdued populations owing to their superior military might and success in battle. Soon the residential robbers also morph into protection agencies that have a strong motivation to protect the victims of their own systematic criminal activity from competing robber gangs that are interested in conquering the same lands. So, the Romans defended the territories of the empire from the incoming barbarians who represented a more primitive stage of the same robbing criminal activity that was the main business of the Romans centuries before the barbaric invasions.

A more modern and yet partly unrecognized transformation from gangsters to government officials is the taking over of existing legal structures—often those that resulted historically from the development from nomadic predators to residential military elites—by very powerful criminal organizations. The examples are highly controversial and should be taken with a good dose of openness to critical evaluation but they are hard to deny. Successful drug cartels managed to hijack entire governments and to buy presidents, judges, and legislators to make them compliant to their interests. The famous drug cartel leader Pablo Escobar allegedly offered the Colombian government to pay off more than 10 billion US$ of his country’s public debt in exchange for a modification in Colombia’s extradition laws.18 The landing in Sicily was twice made possible (in 1860 and in 194319) by the cooperation of the mafia whose connection both with the CIA and the Italian government still must be investigated but is a proven fact. Powerful figures that are in a grey area between crime and legitimate business like the robber barons, the Russian oligarchs, bankers, and big pharmaceutical firms can be described as owners of governments and international organizations.

One of the most striking examples of the transformation of crime into legitimacy is the development of fractional reserve banking.20 The act of the banker (depositary) who took the monies of his clients (depositors) to loan them for an interest to other clients slowly passed from being a crime to general acceptance to an official sanction by law that makes the bankers debtors of the restitution of a loan and full owners of the depositors’ monies. The term bankruptcy is related to the Italian “bancarotta” which means broken bank. In the Middle Ages bankers who could not redeem the deposits were subject to harsh criminal and symbolic punishments like the breaking of the bank where they counted the money. It was crystal clear that the appropriation of the depositors’ funds was a form of theft.21 The final development of the fractional reserve banking is our modern financial system where money is conjured out of thin air without even the effort, as Milton Friedman allegedly put it,22 to take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink, and make the combination worthless. Further, criminal counterfeiters as the central bankers are celebrated as saviors of the economy that they supposedly boost with the money they print. The systematic theft through inflation is praised and considered as legitimate and beneficial.

Another effective way to achieve the passage from criminal to legitimate sovereign and ruler is the establishment of protection rackets and the alliance with classes that can reap benefits from using—or sometimes owning—the governmental protection racket.23 In the development of the governments as institutionalized criminal organizations that operate under the protection of legitimacy it is unsubstantial or simply a matter of point of view who owns the state. You could look at the beneficiaries of the protection racket as clients or as owners of the government24 using their officials as puppets or employees. A modern example comes to hand: the clear impression is that Western governments are owned by big corporations (pharmaceutical industry, weapons industry, financial sector in the hands of a few banking families) and that the empty rite of elections and appointment of prime ministers and presidents is performed only to convey the impression that everything is in good order and that the states as the people of the different nations know them from propagandistic history books actually exist. It is a common phenomenon. When the Roman Republic collapsed, emperor Augustus, who wielded the real military power, left the structure of the republic in place. The senate continued to be convened for hundreds of years, every year new consuls were elected,25 every new emperor pretended to derive his powers from a fictive lex de imperio, official propaganda passed over the message that the new ruler had brought back the old order. Soon real relations of power became evident and a kleptocracy of military officials not only owned the government and changed emperors when they refused to please their demands, but was able to ruin the empire extracting huge amounts of money and impoverishing the productive classes until the Roman state collapsed under its own weight.26

The passage from robber to king, from gang of criminals to oligarchy, nobility, or democracy solves the biggest problem that any criminal faces, resistance from the victims. Abstract thinking and hypostatizing the government as if it were a personal entity together with an efficient narrative, fear of a common enemy, and the idea that government is the sole protector against any risk that may appear convenient to secure power extinguishes the tendency by the victims of the crimes to defend themselves. It is a sort of gigantic Stockholm syndrome, at least for the great majority of the simpletons.

International Law, Warfare, International Organizations

Other than the community of the governments’ victims, the states live in a condition of anarchy, i.e. there is no superior authority which enjoys a monopoly of violence27 and decision making28 in case of conflicts between themselves. A similar pattern evolves as in the relationship between criminal gangs. The most primitive, costly, and ineffective way to solve conflicts is war. Exactly as a successful mafia family has a keen interest on expanding its territory and base of exploitation, states have an incentive to acquire bigger territories and to have access to a bigger number of subjects29 whose wealth and resources can be accessed.30 However, wars of conquest and expansion will encounter the resistance of competing governments which defend their basin of extraction. This is one of the reasons why governments time and again manage to present themselves as protectors from external enemies.

Now, whereas it is true that war, as Randolph Bourne famously said,31 is the health of the state, yet it puts the very existence of the state at risk because it could entail the destruction of a state and its substitution with another. This is why incentives to go to war are low whenever there is a ruling elite interested in maintaining its property on a certain territory and population.32 On the contrary, a democratic caretaker of a government who reaps only the benefits of the usufruct hereof will be highly interested in going to war, even if this could lead to the destruction of the government that he temporarily owns. The vanquished king loses his kingdom forever, the president, even if he ruins his own country, is sure to accrue personal benefits that outweigh the risks which, anyway, are run by other people.

On the other hand, since victory in war depends on bigger resources, liberal countries are likelier to win and to adopt a warlike attitude because they can count on a stock of wealth that is not accessible to dictatorships and tyrannies that hamper their subjects’ economic freedom and capacity to produce goods and services. This is why in the business of war liberal democracies where economic freedoms are more protected tend to be more aggressive and successful in wielding international violence.

These obvious facts notwithstanding, war is a dangerous undertaking and the government gangs have also a strong incentive to find an agreement. As the drug cartels can strike deals on their respective zones of influence, international law is the solution for conflicts between states. Clausewitz’ famous phrase that war is the continuation of diplomacy with other means still holds true. Violent confrontation tends to be an extreme measure.

The other tendency is that of cartelization. Weak governments and states have an incentive to enter international organizations that can afford them protection from possible aggressions from other states and more efficient means to oppress and exploit their subjects. International organizations like the European Union or unions of states like the USA, for example, protect governments from the possibility that their citizens vote with their feet leaving a country that is perceived to be too oppressive or exploitative. Seeing how government officials from different countries voluntarily surrender their nation’s sovereignty to foreign interests usually stirs indignation and amazement but it is perfectly understandable from the point of view of a psychopath. The Italian or German people may be attached to the idea of their nation, but this is not the case with the criminals who manage to climb the ranks up to the highest possible echelons of power. They have a clear view of the scope of their political action and follow the pattern of the wise gangster who has an advantage in entering a cartel of gangs. The final development is one world government.

This development, however, contains the seeds of its own collapse. The owner of a criminal gang that encompasses the whole world is bound to have a complete knowledge of everything and, most important, to use this knowledge efficiently.33 This is impossible, even allowing for the most refined artificial intelligence system, because if it were possible to know everything, still the future would be unknown. The emperor of the world must necessarily fail because he must face the praxeological truth that universal knowledge is precluded, and human choices are unpredictable. This is a glimmer of hope in a world where crime is the commonest and most successful activity.

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1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq2UhC6w7go

2 Frederic Bastiat, The Law (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, Dean Russell trans. 1950 [1850]; https://fee.org/resources/the-law), p. 5.

3 Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Der Wettbewerb der Gauner (Berlin 2012), p. 23.

4 Gary S. Becker, “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach,” J. Political Econ. 76, no. 2 (Mar–Apr., 1968): 169–217; Isaac Ehrlich, “The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: A Question of Life and Death,” The American Economic Review 65, no. 3 (Jun., 1975): 397–417; idem, “Crime, Punishment, and the Market for Offenses,” J. Economic Perspectives Vol. 10, no. 1 (1996; https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.10.1.43): 43–67; M. R. Garfinkel, S. Skaperdas editors, The Political Economy of Conflict and Appropriation (Cambridge University Press 2009).

5 Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource (Princeton 1981).

6 Saifadean Ammous, Principles of Economics (2023), chapter 3.

7 Franz Oppenheimer, The State, New York 1926, p. 25; Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, The State.

8 John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (1690).

9 Aulus Gellius, Noctes atticae, VI, IV, 45; A. D. Greenfield, Malum Prohibitum, American Bar Association Journal 7, no. 9 (Sep. 1921): 493–95

10 Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property,” in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 1993; www.hanshoppe.com/eepp); see also Murray N. Rothbard, “Beyond Is and Ought,” Liberty 2, no. 2 (Nov. 1988; https://perma.cc/8LZR-DN6Y; also https://mises.org/library/beyond-and-ought): 44–45, p. 44.

11 Frank Chodorov, The Rise and Fall of Society (1959; https://mises.org/library/book/rise-and-fall-society), p. 94.

12 P. Babiak-R.D. Hare, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (2009).

13 Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Short History of Man: Progress and Decline (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2015; www.hanshoppe.com/shm ; D. Graeber, D. Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021).

14 Ludwig von Mises, The Ultimate Foundations of Economic Science (1962), p. 78; Giampiero De Bellis, Magic Words and the Fallacy of Hypostatization (2013; https://polyarchy.org/basta/sussurri/hypostatization.html).

15 F. De Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist (2013).

16 Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Der Wettbewerb der Gauner (Berlin, 2012).

17 E. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (1957), explores the slow personification of the office of the king (crown) until it became an abstract entity separated from the individual office-holder.

18https://thefactbase.com/pablo-escobar-offered-colombia-nearly-10-billion-usd-to-pay-off-the-country-s-debt-if-they-would-change-the-country-s-laws-of-extradition/

19https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/how-mafioso-lucky-luciano-helped-the-allies-invade-sicily-in-1943/

20 J. Huerta de Soto, Dinero, crédito bancario y ciclos económicos, Madrid 2009, 7ma ed. 2020, p. 35 ff.

21 C. Cipolla, Il Fiorino e il quattrino, Bologna 2013; G. Villani, Cronica, Torino 1991. It may be a coincidence, but the plague that visited Europe and Florence in 1348 came shortly after one of the biggest banking crises in human history.

22https://www.anquotes.com/milton-friedman-quotes/

23 C. Tilly, War Making and State Making as Organized Crime, Part II, Chapter 5, in: P. Evans-D. Rueschemeyer-T. Stockpol editors, Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge University Press 1985.

24 Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket, 1935.

25 J. Dale Davidson, W. Rees-Mogg, The Sovereign Individual, 1999, p. 57.

26 Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute 2009), p. 768; Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed. (1957), p. 468.

27 M. Weber, Politik als Beruf (München und Leipzig 1919).

28 Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Economy, Society, and History (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, Auburn 2004; https://www.hanshoppe.com/esh); Lecture 7, Parasitism and the Origin of the State.

29 Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Short History of Man: Progress and Decline (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2015; https://www.hanshoppe.com/shm/), Chapter 3; idem, “The Origin and Nature of International Conflict,” https://mises.org/podcasts/imperialism-enemy-freedom/origin-and-nature-international-conflict.

30 Persons are wealth, this is why in czarist Russia the estate of the nobles was calculated in souls, the number of serfs that could be exploited by the feudal overlord; Tolstoy, War and Peace, Part I, Chapter 7.

31 Randolph Bourne, War Is the Health of the State (1918, republished by Anecdota Press 2015).

32 Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy, the God That Failed (New Brunswick, 2001): p. 34.

33 F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” The American Economic Review 35, no. 4. (Sep. 1945): 519–30.

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