The experience of teaching the Mises Academy classes was amazing and gratifying, as I noted in my article “Teaching an Online Mises Academy Course.” This and similar technology and Internet-enabled models are obviously the wave of the educational future. The students received an in-depth, specialized and personalized treatment of topics of interest to them, with tests and teacher and fellow student interaction, for a very reasonable price, and judging by their comments and evaluations, they were very satisfied with the courses and this online model. For example, for the Hoppe course, as noted in A Happy Hoppean Student, student Cam Rea wrote, about the first lecture of the course:
Move over Chuck Norris, Hans-Hermann Hoppe is in town! The introduction to “The Social Theory of Hoppe” was extremely thorough. I, a relative newcomer to the Hoppean idea, was impressed by Stephan Kinsella’s introduction to the theory. Mr. Kinsella hit upon all of those who came before Hoppe, and how each built upon another over the past two centuries. In other words, as Isaac Newton stated, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Hoppe is the result thus far of those who came before him in the ideals of Austrian Economics and libertarian principles. Nevertheless, Hoppe takes it much further as in the Misesian concept of human action and the science of “praxeology”, from which all actions branch in life.
Overall, the class was extremely enjoyable, the questions concrete, and the answer provided by Mr. Kinsella clear and precise. Like many others in the class, I look forward to more. So tune in next Monday at 7pm EDT. Same Hoppe-time, same Hoppe-channel!
There were also rave reviews given by students of the other courses.
Professor Hoppe was the keynote speaker at the recent, very successful Australian Mises Seminar, 25-26th November, 2011, held in a private club in the Sydney CBD. Various posts about the event, and the videos released to date (which are in 1080p HD), are linked below.
Some more reports on the seminar and related posts:
The Seminar Guide at http://www.mises.org.au/programme.pdf, or here, a beautifully produced, 108-page programme, full of nice pictures and illustrations of Mises, Rothbard, and others, inspiring quotes, and an overview of the seminar. The main reason for its length is that it contains “Pre-Seminar Reading” (A Primer on Austrian Economics by Jonathan M. Finegold Catalan; the second chapter of Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s book Economic Science and the Austrian Method, on On Praxeology and the Praxeological Foundation of Epistemology; Anatomy of the State by Murray N. Rothbard; and What Libertarianism Is by Stephan Kinsella);
A podcast by some of the organizers discussing the Seminar may be found here;
The Mises Seminar, from Thoughts on Freedom, Australian Libertarian Society Blog;
Professor Hoppe spoke at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies on November 9, 2011. The four videos (two lectures with Q & A, one interview, and one seminar with discussion) are below:
The author Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the translator Emanuel-Mihail Socaciu, and the former president of the Mises Institute, Dan Cristian Com?nescu, comment on the significance and ideas of “A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism”, and the legacy of the private Mises Seminar in Bucharest. The comments are followed by questions from the audience.
At the invitation of the Ludwig von Mises Institute Romania, on November 8-11, 2011, Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe visited Bucharest for a series of events celebrating 130 years since the birth of Ludwig von Mises and 10 years since the foundation of the Romanian Mises Institute.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe gives a speech on Entrepreneurship with Fiat Property and Fiat Money in the Aula Magna of the Romanian-American University in Bucharest, and answers questions from the audience.
At the invitation of the Ludwig von Mises Institute Romania, on November 8-11, 2011, Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe visited Bucharest for a series of events celebrating 130 years since the birth of Ludwig von Mises and 10 years since the foundation of the Romanian Mises Institute.
There is a very interesting five part interview (a sixth part is forthcoming), Journey into a Libertarian Future: Part V – Dark Realities (see Part 1, Part 2,Part 3, and Part 4). It’s by Andrew Dittmer, who recently finished his PhD in mathematics at Harvard. Dittmer extensively quotes Hoppe’s writing from his Democracy book in this interview.
Professor Hoppe’s article, “Entrepreneurship With Fiat Property and Fiat Money,” was published today on LewRockwell.com, and is based on a speech first delivered at the Edelweiss Holdings Symposion held in Zuerich, Switzerland, on September 17, 2011.
Update: Republished in Mises Daily on Nov. 18, 2011.
Professor Hoppe’s article, Why Mises (and not Hayek)?, was published in Mises Daily today. It is based on a speech delivered at the Mises Institute Supporters meeting, September 19-23, 2011, Vienna, Austria.
Professor Hoppe taught five classes at the Mises U 2011 in Auburn, Alabama, this past July, including his great speech The Science of Human Action, which kicked off Mises U (his other Mises U 2011 lectures are here). In this speech, Professor Hoppe discusses his intellectual biography and relationship with Rothbard, as well as the Austrian approach and methodology. While he was in town, Jeff Tucker conducted a fascinating interview with him (see video below). In this wide-ranging interview, Professor Hoppe discusses in more detail the history of his intellectual odyssey from leftist to Misesian-Rothbardian, his various books, various topics such as German reintegration, the centralizing effects of constitutions (including the US Constitution and EU), why states with more liberal economies are more imperialist, the interesting and heretofore undisclosed story of exactly how communist policies in East Germany led him to discover Mises, and more.
As announced on B.K. Marcus’s post at the Mises blog today (see below), the Hoppe festschrift that Guido Hülsmann and I edited, Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Mises Institute, 2009), which was already available in PDF and print, is now available in a free epub format as well. Kindle and other ebook formats should be available soon. The festschrift was presented to Professor Hoppe, just a month or so before his 60th birthday, at a private ceremony on July 29, 2009, in Auburn, AL during Mises University 2009 (see Hoppe Festschrift Published). Pictures from the ceremony are embedded below.
Property, Freedom, and Society: Marzipan in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Also, as I noted in Book Review of Hoppe Festschrift, David Howden wrote an excellent review of the festschrift in New Perspectives on Political Economy. And, as I noted in that post, and in Bodrum Days and Nights: The Fifth Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society: A Partial Report, as a piece of Festschrift trivia: at the recent Property and Freedom Society conference in Bodrum, Turkey, a guest presented a festschrift-cake he had had made in Estonia, entitled “Property, Freedom, and Society: Marzipan in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe,” which was served as part of the dessert at the closing banquet.
In the magnificent Peter Sellers film, The Mouse That Roared, the strangely English-speaking Duchy of Grand Fenwick, a tiny nation between France and Switzerland, defeats the United States in a rather bizarre nuclear stand-off.
Will another such Duchy, the tiny Italian town of Filettino, similarly defeat the horrible coerced agglomeration known as Italy, inside the even more horrible coerced agglomeration known as the European Union?
We can but hope.
For Filettino has declared its independence from Rome, in a bid to emulate San Marino, Monaco, the Vatican City, and Andorra (and I suppose the Cantons of Switzerland itself, when they shook off the First Reich of the mass murderer Charlemagne, and his rotten Holy Roman Empire).
Obviously, we will see if Filettino’s independence lasts, or if it is just another political stunt, but it is an interesting event to witness nevertheless. For when in the future we look back from ‘Hoppe World’ and work out how we got there, historians will regard such incidents as being symptomatic of a wider terminal malaise of coerced collectivism:
Last year I presented four Mises Academy Mises Academy courses:
