Friday, May 3, 2013

This has been discussed many times before and by many people (Eric Hoffer, Thomas Sowell, Robert Nozick), but Hans-Hermann Hoppe has a great essay explaining why most intellectuals (especially those called by Robert Nozick, "wordsmith" intellectuals) hate free markets and love the state.

The money quote:


There are almost no economists, philosophers, historians, or social theorists of rank employed privately by members of the natural elite. And those few of the old elite who remain and who might have purchased their services can no longer afford intellectuals financially. Instead, intellectuals are now typically public employees, even if they work for nominally private institutions or foundations. Almost completely protected from the vagaries of consumer demand ("tenured"), their number has dramatically increased and their compensation is on average far above their genuine market value. At the same time the quality of their intellectual output has constantly fallen. 
What you will discover is mostly irrelevance and incomprehensibility. Worse, insofar as today's intellectual output is at all relevant and comprehensible, it is viciously statist. There are exceptions, but if practically all intellectuals are employed in the multiple branches of the State, then it should hardly come as a surprise that most of their ever-more voluminous output will, either by commission or omission, be statist propaganda. There are more propagandists of democratic rule around today than there were ever propagandists of monarchical rule in all of human history.


But follow the link and read the whole thing.

2 comments:

Francis W. Porretto said...

Hoppe remains one of the foremost intellectuals of our time.

John said...

Yes, right up there with you, Fran.