[Aurelius]

"Every sequence of empirical events is compatible is compatible with any number of rival, mutually incompatible interpretations."

You could not be more wrong in your you remark concerning this statement. This is a very import and fundamental truth; practically a tautology. Alternative explanations for such "sequences of events" are offered all of the time. One can not be proved "right" and the other "wrong" simply "from the facts". I don't share Hoppe's confidence that "theory" can clear up the matter beyond all doubt; it can certainly contribute to our judging the relative plausibility of two competing interpretatations.

[beckett]

Hoppe wants us to believe that consensus building among peers (i.e., democracy) leads to war more inexorably than other forms of government, for example absolute monarchies. In fact the exact opposite is true, as the long record of empirical data that "historians qua historians" have compiled shows incontrovertibly. His statement that "...democracy virtually assures that only dangerous men will rise to the top of government" indicates that he either prefers to ignore or he hasn't the foggiest idea how leadership manifests itself. In the halcyon "secessionist" utopia he envisions the men (and women) who slug it out for leadership positions will have the same "dangerous" attributes leaders have had from time immemorial.

Hoppe's system, a castle in the sky worthy of Rousseau, Marx or Heidegger, will not alter the nature of the men and women who populate it any more than the reckless ideas of those three "thinkers" created a "noble savage," a "new soviet man," or an "Aryan übermensch." Jefferson captured the problem quite well when he wrote in 1798, "let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." The Constitution--a document created by consensus and legitimized by the ballot.

As I said, Hoppe is a wack-job.