Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Who is he: Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe is the author of eight books – the best known of which is Democracy: The God That Failed – and more than 150 articles in books, scholarly journals and magazines of opinion. As an internationally prominent Austrian School economist and libertarian philosopher, Dr. Hoppe has lectured all over the world and his writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

In 2006 Dr. Hoppe was awarded the Gary S. Schlarbaum Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Cause of Liberty, and in 2009 Hoppe received the Franz Cuhel Memorial Prize from the University of Economics in Prague. On the occasion of his 60th birthday, in 2009, a Festschrift was published in Hoppe's honor: Joerg Guido Huelsmann & Stephan Kinsella (eds.), Property, Freedom and Society. Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Hoppe's personal website is www.HansHoppe.com. There the bulk of Dr. Hoppe's scholarly and popular writings as well as many public lecture recordings are electronically available.

Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe believes the traditional, pre-modern state-form is that of a (absolute) monarchy – and that this is a clear improvement over modern-day regulatory democracy. In the modern era, monarchy has been criticized as being incompatible with the basic principle of "equality before the law."

True, under democracy everyone can become king, so to speak, not only a privileged circle of people. However, functional privileges and privileged functions exist. Public officials, if they act in an official capacity, are governed and protected by "public law" and thereby occupy a privileged position vis-à-vis persons acting under the mere authority of "private law."

In particular, public officials are permitted to finance or subsidize their own activities through taxes. That is, they are permitted to engage in, and live off, what in private dealings between private law subjects is prohibited and considered "theft" and "stolen loot." Thus, privilege and legal discrimination – and the distinction between rulers and subjects – will not disappear under democracy. Even worse, under a monarchy the distinction between rulers and ruled is clear. Under democracy, the distinction between rulers and ruled becomes blurred. Such controversial views have made Dr. Hoppe one of the leading free-market thinkers in the world today as well as a lightening rod for criticism.

Background: Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe was born in 1949 in Peine, West Germany, studied philosophy, sociology, economics, history and statistics at the University of the Saarland, in Saarbruecken, the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, in Frankfurt am Main, and at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Hoppe received his doctorate (Philosophy, 1974, under Juergen Habermas) and his "Habilitation" degree (Foundations of Sociology and Economics, 1981) both from the Goethe University in Frankfurt.

In 1985 Dr. Hoppe moved to New York City to work with Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), the most prominent American student of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973). In 1986 Hoppe followed Rothbard to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he served as Professor of Economics until his retirement in 2008.

After Rothbard's death, Dr. Hoppe also served for many years as editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics and of the interdisciplinary Journal for Libertarian Studies. Hoppe is a Distinguished Fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in Auburn, Alabama, and founder and president of the Property and Freedom Society. Hans-Hermann Hoppe currently lives with his wife Dr. Guelcin Imre, a fellow economist, in Istanbul, Turkey.

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