Of late I’ve begun to realize how amazingly insightful David Hume was on several important issues:
- Hume recognized the importance of scarcity in the definition of what property is. Austro-libertarian political philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe relies heavily on this aspect of property in chs. 1-2 of A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, far more explicitly than previous political theorists. Even Rothbard and Mises did not focus as intensely on this crucial issue. (See my post Hume on Intellectual Property and the Problematic “Labor” Metaphor.)
- Hume recognized that Locke’s use of “labor” in his homesteading argument was really just figurative and that no assumption of labor-ownership is needed for Locke’s homesteading argument to work. Without the Lockean labor confusion, much of the intellectual case for IP evaporates (and we might have avoided the spread of the labor theory of value that infects Smithian economics and Marxism). (See my post Hume on Intellectual Property and the Problematic “Labor” Metaphor.)
- His recognition of the is-ought gap. Writes Hans-Hermann Hoppe: “one can readily subscribe to the almost generally accepted view that the gulf between ‘ought’ and ‘is’ is logically unbridgeable.” (A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, p. 163.)
- His explanation that the state is able to maintain power only because most people give it their tacit support. (See Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, p. 179.)
- His insight that any supply of money is optimal, also a key Austrian insight. (See Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, p. 194; Block & Barnett, On the Optimum Quantity of Money.)
- His realization that you could never empirically observe causation. As Hoppe writes, citing Hume: “there exists no ‘band’ that one could observe to connect visibly certain variables as causes and effects.” (A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, p. 124; see also The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, pp. 289, 298.)
Update: See also Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s brief discussion of Hume in the video clip below.
Stephan is an attorney and libertarian writer in Houston, Director of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (C4SIF), and the founder and editor of Libertarian Papers. His most recent book is Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (co-editor, with Jörg Guido Hülsmann; Mises Institute, 2009).
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Meh.
Great post! I love Hume. Also his “problem of induction” point pre-refuted positivism and was cited by Mises. And Hume was a great advocate of free trade and hard money.
Hoppe and Hume (youtube)
“•His insight that any supply of money is optimal, also a key Austrian insight. (See Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, p. 194; Block & Barnett, On the Optimum Quantity of Money.)”
Block & Barnett, On the Optimum Quantity of Money:
“Thus we again arrive at a fork in the road, facing two possibilities. First, the free market is inefficient, i.e., it allocates some of the new or extant gold to a valueless use as money, when it could and should have diverted it to a valuable use in jewelry or contacts, and this after first allocating other scarce resources to mining and refining, or to the conversion, thereof. Or, second, Mises and Rothbard are wrong. It staggers the (individualistic) mind to think that people would voluntarily commit valuable resources to the creation of socially-valueless goods.”