Palmer continues repeating the assertion that the work published by the LvMI is "an embarassment". In particular, he thinks Hoppe's work is "an embarassment". At one point in the past, he argued that Prof. Hoppe's claim that "on a free market, all unemployment is voluntary" was an embarassment to Austrian economists. Stephan Kinsella responded by quoting a statement of Ludwig von Mises saying the same thing. Palmer then facetuously accused Kinsella of an "appeal to authority" (http://tinyurl.com/ba5e4) Also, in that regards, see *The Ludwig von Mises Legacy: A Reality Check* by J.H. Huebert (http://tinyurl.com/d6kjz).Palmer replies:
And Mr. Heinrich, be careful of what you quote, since the quotation from my personal correspondence of a few years back with the odd Mr. Kinsella contains quite a few of those little dots [...]. The claim that in a free market all unemployment is voluntary is not a tenable thesis; insisting that it must be true because Mises said something that could be interpreted that way is mere evidence of cultishnes, and nothing more.Now as even Heinrich's summary makes clear, and as Palmer well knows by now (as I have explained it to him numerous times), I did not insist that the comment about voluntarly unemployment is true because Mises said it, as anyone of even normal intelligence can understand (in fact, I do not believe I have ever stated that I do even fully agree with Hoppe and Mises here).
As I have explained repeatedly, I was simply showing Palmer's assertion was ridiculous--that Hoppe's comments were an embarrasment to Austrian economics. If they are perfectly consistent with the explicit views of the preeminent Austrian as expressed in his magnum opus, well, then Palmer's critique is inexplicable. The real truth is that when I pointed out this statement it embarrassed Palmer and it nailed his ass. Does anyone doubt that when he saw the Mises quote that was in line with what Hoppe said, Palmer thought, "Oh shit. I wish I would have not picked that example."--?
He was cornered and like a cornered animal, he stupidly fought harder. Since I had him dead to rights, he had no real defense but to lie and claim that I was acting cultlike in appealing to authority. I was not appealing to authority, and Palmer knows it. He used a ridiculous example that made him look like the ass he is when I pulled out the Mises quote, and he is desperate to cover it up.
As he wrote, "If you're right, then so what? Is that an argument? If you're right about this, then Mises was wrong. Is that so hard to accept?" I never said Mises or Hoppe were right. I was not appealing to authority at all, except to show that the view in question was also held by the most prominent Austrian, and therefore was, umm, Austrian, or hardly an embarrassment to Austrianism.
I can just imagine Palmer's reaction when he saw I had found a quote of Mises that says EXACTLY what Hoppe said, that Palmer had criticized in his pompous fashion. I bet his little eyes bugged out. Ha ha ha ha ha.
Palmer also calls me "odd." He just embarrasses himself by such comments. What he finds is odd is someone who is intelligent, articulate, successful, not a loser, not a religious nut, and who also has a sense of humor--and who does not take him seriously. He just can't fathom that, so oddly arrogant is he. I decided to tease him by making fun of his hypersensitive, ridiculous PC standards--he and his ilk call anyone who sneezes a bigot--by asking if he had ever used the word "bigger"; because if so, that is just one letter away from the n-word, so he is a semi-racist. Obviously the point is to make fun of his stupid accusations of bigotry etc. Yet he feigns innocence, ominously intoning that something must be seriously wrong with me to fixate on the word "bigger"--even doing me the favor of banning me from his smearblog for doing this.
What is truly odd is someone like Palmer--who is objectively odd, given the things I have heard about him and that he has manifested--thinking he is in a position to call me odd. I someone like Palmer did not think me odd, that's probably when I would start worrying.
Coda:
The sad, pathetic, monomaniacal Mr. Palmer has a final comment on the thread:
"That goes for simply accepting as truth everything said by Mr. Kinsella. My advice is that you be more careful about labelling someone a liar based on one person's heavily edited extracts from personal correspondence to which you have no access."
Hmmm, let's see. Now Palmer tries to deflect from the clear case that shows he's a buffoon by pointing to the fact that his comments were from a private email and that ellipses were used.
Palmer the shell of a human (as someone called him) published the following comments:
...Skousen made subtle reference to ... Hoppe's failure to understand fundamental Austrian economic principles, such as the role of time in economic adjustment. "As the editor of this volume, I have to admit that I do not agree with everything Professor Hoppe presents as Misesian economics, even in this significantly revised chapter. For example, I have serious doubts about his claim that market unemployment is 'always voluntary.' Certainly, permanent unemployment is always voluntary in the unhampered market, but a dynamic market is constantly generating temporary unemployment that requires time to correct." ... One could go on with examples of how Hoppe and the Mises Institute have proven embarrassing to the Austrian economists by whom they claim to be inspired .
What is Palmer saying here? He trots out Hoppe's view about unemployment being voluntary on an unhampered market, an then says he says, "One could go on with examples of how Hoppe and the Mises Institute have proven embarrassing to the Austrian economists by whom they claim to be inspired". One "could go on" with examples implies there are other examples--in addition to the one just given--that show Hoppe is embarrasing to Mises (the economist by whom he claims to be inspired). So Palmer is clearly stating, in published writing (not in private email), that Hoppe's view about voluntary unemployment is an ebmarrassment to Mises.
Now, it so happens Mises said exactly the same thing. There can be zero doubt that Palmer was unaware of Mises's views here, or he would not have chosen such an embarrassing example that makes him look like a moron with an vendetta.
Silly Tom Palmer ridicules some of us for believing in --gasp--limited federal government and enumerated federal powers. He repeatedly jumps to the libelous conclusion that anyone who says that, say, the Civil War was unjustified under the Constitution, or that states have a constitutional right to secede, are neo-confederate apologists for slavery pining for the antebellum south. And yet, some of Cato's own people, notably the brilliant Gene Healy, hold the same view, and you don't hear Palmer slandering him. Hmm, could it be--double standard, Mr. Palmer? Coward. Worm.
And he snidely attacks Hoppe's "argumentation ethics" defense of rights, arrogantly dismissing it with a flourishing wave of the hadn--"For the new prophet arrives, who teaches the truer version of that truth, while others have fallen away: say, Hans-Herman Hoppe, who has "proven" that merely to open your mouth to contradict him is to affirm what he believes, and therefore to contradict yourself. Presto! A new prophet." And yet, Cato's Roger Pilon, has promoted a similar defense of rights based on Alan Gewirth's Principle of Generic Consistency (as I have explained here); yet you don't hear Palmer snidely attacking Pilon's (great) work. Again: a sniveling, ignorant, dishonest coward with an axe to grind. Palmer has revealed himself time and again to be an utterly disgusting human being. For him to call me "odd," I take as a compliment.
Finally, numbnuts Palmer says:
There is no comment section at lewrockwell.com or at antiwar.com, where people might defend themselves from the outrageous claims or distortions served up by Rockwell, Raimondo, and their merry band of kooks and crackpots.First, Rockwell and Mises Institute have nothing to do with antiwar.com. Second, Palmer conveniently omits to note that the Mises blog does have comments.
Palmer apparently has no qualms about revealing that he has zero integrity and that he is an unfair, nasty person. What is interesting is that he adopts this arrogant pose, as if he is somebody important. That is what is truly amusing. Not content to be a plodder, he must make a name for himself by becoming the smearblogger nonpareil!
2 comments:
You also hav eto love how he accuses me of being naive for arguing the Civil War wasn't about slavery.
Even in the declaration of secession (S. Carolina) he links to, slavery is only talked about in one paragraph.
The reality is, there was no danger of slavery being ended by the North. In fact, Lincoln promised to leave the institution undisturbed. Even during the war, he wrote that freeing the slaves was not an objective, and he only cared about "saving the union". So much for the moral high-ground.
When he finally did issue the Emancipation Proclamation, it only freed slaves in territories he *didn't* control; it was, in other words, nothing other than a strategic move.
The reality of the matter is, in fact, that slavery was safter *in* the union than out of it; this is because if the Southern States had been allowed to secede peacefully, the Northerners would no longer be bound by the Fugitive Slave Act, and slavery would decay away.
But, no, Palmer and his worshippers will have none of that. Anyone who supports Southern secession, apparently, is a bigot and a racist. Apparently, opposing the murder of 620,000 Americans isn't reason enough. Other silly arguments were proposed on Palmer's blog, such as that they can't "secede to preserve slavery". These and similar arguments have been easily refuted by DiLorenzo in _The Real Lincoln_ (a book I doubt Palmer's read, despite criticizing DiLorenzo). Summarily: (1) The South was not seceding to preserve slavery -- slavery was in *no* danger from the North, and was in fact (ex-ante) safter inside the union than outside of it; (2) Such an argument would also undermine the legitimacy of the Revolutionary War.
Palmer then brings up his tired "arguments" against Prof. Hoppe's argumentation ethics. Prof. Hoppe's argument does not claim to show that anyone who opens their mouth to engage in argumentation agrees with Prof. Hoppe; it claims to show that one cannot justify aggression by argumentation, due to performative contradiction. It is quite possible to disagree with Prof. Hoppe's argument, and there are many who do, including Friedman, Murphy, Callahan, Machan, and so-on and so-forth; but yet not engage in the obnoxious tripe argument of Palmer.
If slavery was a cause of the Civil War, then why would Lysander Spooner (an abolitionist) have supported the Confederacy? Why would Robert E. Lee (who had already freed his slaves) command the southern armies? Of course slavery played a roll in leading to the war, but so did tariffs and many other things. I suppose that Lysander Spooner and Walter Williams (who favorably reviewed DiLorenzo's book) are just bigots then.
I do believe that anyone had the right to forcibly free a slave provided force was only used against the individual or individuals doing the enslaving and that the force was the minimal amount necessary for freeing the slave. However, as history shows, the Union didn't simply free the slaves then leave the South free to govern themselves. If the war were about slavery, then the Union would have been content to allow the South its independence after freeing its slaves. Furthermore, as the majority of southerners didn't own slaves, there is no reason to deny the non-slaveholding individuals the right of self-government.
As far as Hoppe's "embarassing" statement, it strikes me as perfectly logical. The voluntary unemployment would result because an individual cannot find work that would pay what he considers a suitable wage. However, the individual could be employed if he were willing to work for a substandard wage. Of course, in a free market, the wages will generally be suitable because of competition for workers, who being will generally be more scarce than the needed labor for the various industries since the industries are directed by diverse consumer demands.
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