Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s battle with the PC gate keepers
By Anarcho-Viking
Trouble with the thought police
In 2004 during a lecture on money and banking, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe provided an example of how the concept of time-preference plays a major role in the economy, local as well as global. The illustration given by Prof. Hoppe became a national controversy, and was used by the left-wing opinion molders in an attempt to hound the Austro-anarcho-capitalist academic out of polite society, and to consequently destroy his career. The case presented by Hoppe, and that caused the outcry, was hardly controversial at all. We will get to the actual case soon, but let us first clarify what the definition of time-preference is, and why it is such an important component as part of economic analysis.
Time-preference and the Austrian school
The level of time-preference an individual has, is measured by the degree to which that individual is willing to postpone present consumption in favor of the future, delayed gratification of greater benefits than what consumption right away would provide. A trivial, yet classic example of degree of time-preference, can be seen in the experiment of giving a child the following option: Either receiving one cookie right now, or waiting 30 minutes and receiving two cookies. The child’s present desire to consume usually trumps the willingness to await delayed gratification, and hence we conclude through praxeological deduction that children on average have a higher degree of time-preference than more mentally mature persons. The price paid by giving up present consumption in exchange for future value of a good or service must mean that the expected future psychic revenue is greater than the present psychic revenue generated by consuming instantaneously. Nobody would prefer to consume later should the act of consuming generate the same satisfaction today as it would a year from now. Continue reading “Understanding Time-Preference vs Being Homophobic”
