This a long essay covering the same material as Hoppe's best work, Democracy: The God that Failed. In order to shorten it, little justification is given for his assertions, and for someone who isn't already a Rothbardian/Hoppean/Anarcho-Capitalist, it may be hard to accept these assertions without justification. However, it does accurately summarize the AC perspective on politics, although it doesn't go into enough detail on how to get from the status quo (large democratic states) to this end state. The audiobook is decent but I'd prefer it be read by Hoppe himself.

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This is a fitting essay (70 pages) to read during an election year. In his essay, Hoppe argues that democracy was really a bad idea and things were much better under feudalism with the aristocrats in charge. He feels that "the entire history we are told and taught in schools and standard textbooks, which presents democracy as the crowning achievement of human civilization, is just about the opposite of the truth." Hans-Hermann Hoppe is "an Austrian school economist and libertarian/ anarcho-capitalist philosopher" As an Autrian/libertarian, Hoppe's libertarian hammer makes every problem seem to stem from the Austrian nails of anti-statism and the sacredness of private property. .

His views are overly simplistic in many ways since he sees the dark ages representing the natural order to things since "everyone is bound by ONE law, (b) there is no law-making power, and (c) there was no monopoly on who people could choose to judge disputes. His view of the dark ages ignores the fact that people in villages could not travel to other villages due to the difficulties of transportation resulting in a very limited choice of judges being actually available. Hoppe also simplistically feels that AL disputes will be about property ignoring the fact that two people in a dispute might have a dispute about who they want to choose for a judge.

Kings eventually seized power and started creating laws and imposing taxes. Because the King's legitimacy stemmed from an appeal to the people, this evolved later towards democracy. Hoppe does not like Democracy as a system that allows anyone to create laws which he feels leads an elite to define laws that benefit the elite. Hoppe feels that this is worse than democracy.

Although the book and its thesis is entertaining, the whole thesis seems rather shallow - it all sounds more like a theory out of the ivory tower than a thesis developed from historical evidence. The theories of taxation, as explained in David Graeber's "Debt: The First 5000 Years" are better grounded with evidence when he explains that property taxes were valuable because it regularly confirmed the property owner's right to the title.

the book is published by the Libertarian Mises Institute and has the major advantage of being inexpensive. ( )