The State as a Criminal Institution

Hoppe: War and aggression are costly. States go to war because they can, via taxes, pass on the cost to third parties who are not directly involved. By contrast, for voluntarily financed companies war is economic suicide. As a private law subject the state too will, like all other security providers, have to offer its customers contracts that can only be changed by mutual agreement, and which in particular regulate what is to be done in the case of a conflict between itself and its customers, or between itself and the customers of other, competing security providers. And for that there is only one solution acceptable to everyone: that in these sorts of conflicts not the state, but an independent third party decides – arbitrators and judges who in turn compete with each other, whose most important asset is their reputation as keepers of the law, and whose actions and judgments can be challenged and, if need be, revised, just as anyone else’s can be.

via Obsessed by Megalomania: Interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

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