Chris, all;   Yes, chris, thats a gem of wisdom. It should be in
the New Bible Of The West.  Of course, he may mean something
other than you think he does. He assumed that the people in
government wouldn’t do exactly the same thing. And that’s the
problem. Starting in 1913, they did. They created the income tax
scheme, and fiat money, and the central bank, and they soon made
the senate popularly elected instead of appointed by the states.
This made government into a a bank with bankers (politicians)
who had the very same interests as did selfish bankers: self
promotion.  The problem of any human cooperative endeavor is to
extend the time preference of the individuals involved. This is
Hoppe’s basic insight into government: that we must have kings
because only kings who are thinking about the long term future
consider the state as property, and treat it as something to be
handed over to next generations. Everyone else is incentivized
to be opportunistic traders, without protecting the institutions
of cooperati