State in the 3rd Millennium
according to Hans Adam II
Hans Adam II is the sovereign of Liechtenstein, a rural micro-country of 30,000 inhabitants without any large city or resources. He led it from post-war poverty to the current per capita GDP of $184,000.
In 2009, he published The State in the 3rd millennium which traces political history, and presents his recommendations. His recipe is self-determination and decentralization, and patient defense of the common weal in spite of special interests.
World history of Liechtenstein
Human history begins 2 million years ago with Homo erectus
Agriculture only develops in the fertile crescent and Turkey 12,000 years ago, it is the first civilizational revolution (the second being the printing, the third industrialization)
A political organization already exists for savage people, with a chief, and a shaman. Religious legitimization of the monarch is an essential phenomenon for human societies.
Agricultural society: citizen-soldier for small states. Large states often prefer not arming or training the villeins to allow better control. Agriculture requires a lot of manpower for plowing, seeding and harvesting, but little besides. It is necessary to find ways to occupy the villeins: construction of castles, roads and bridges.
The Greeks distinguished monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy, depending on the number of people who claim sovereignty.
A cycle exists between the three regimes, which degenerates from monarchy to democracy and lead to anarchy and the emergence of a new monarch
Anti-religious currents appeared in the 18th century. The less religious man is perhaps more educated or more intelligent, but he is more individualistic and has fewer children.
Religion can no longer be a source of legitimization for the sovereign, and some agreement between executive power, administrative oligarchy and the people must be found.
Democracy and self-determination
Direct democracy is required for the exercise of power to be democratic. A unique executive representative like a president is an elected monarch for a few years.
The monarchy in some countries has been stripped of its political role. The monarch is forbidden expressing a political opinion. When King Baudouin of Belgium refused for ethical reasons to ratify a law, he was declared incapable for a day and another person signed in his place against his will. The royal family is attached to the government but prohibited to interfere with politics. This condemns the family to a paradoxical existence. Paparazzi are spying on European royal houses since the 1950s. All this has made a marriage to a family royal unattractive for quality people. The head of government is de facto the monarch. He is elected for a fairly short period of four or five years.
The Liechtenstein has a law of the princely house which dated back to 1606 until it was updated recently to regulate the prince's deposition by the princely family in case of incapacity. The prince is sovereign. The People have the possibility of requesting a referendum to change the regime to a Republic. They can also request secession at the municipal level.
The appointment of judges and the deliberation of laws to Liechtenstein allowed Prince Hans-Adam to see how the sausage is made, according to him, neither the production process nor the result is appetizing.
Self-determination: the secession of Soviet republics was possible according to the constitution of Stalin, but this right did not exist in practice. It later became unconstitutional, but was de facto possible in 1991.
Secession is attractive for large subregions, and can give rise to the oppression of a minority in this large territory.
The francophone majority in Quebec wanted to take the entire province, including natural resources in the North, although they are a majority only along the river. The power of self-determination must be given to a level as local as possible to avoid the creation of minority pockets without representation.
The welfare state: it aims to create paradise on earth. Paradise on earth, if created, is only for a minority
Redistribution allows social justice, why a Bavarian father should pay the retirement of a child without children in Berlin. Should we not ensure solidarity at the local level, or if not, should we not redistribute to obtain social justice worldwide?
Prescriptions
Reform agenda:
Funded pensions
Labor reforms
Recentralize solidarity
Transport: Too many roads, not enough railways, too much ineffective intervention of the State.
Financing: taxes must not alter behaviors, VAT to finance regalian functions (justice, foreign affairs), direct taxes (land, income) for local governments. VAT can be put at a rather high single rate, variable rates are clientelist and ineffective. Direct taxes follow an identical formula for consistency. The rates are different, reflecting different social choices. This does not cause migration because personal preferences and attachment to a community model is in practice more important than to optimize within a few percentage points.
Currency: we used the Swiss FR, a metal currency project (gold) was under discussion, or a metal currency would be produced with a 90% reserve in precious metals and certain parity at a basket of reference currencies. Note that the Swiss franc was pegged to the dollar and therefore to gold until 1973, and the Prince writes before the appearance of Bitcoin.
Conclusion
This book articulates ideas that I would attribute to James Burnham, Eric Hoffer, Eric von Kuehnhelt Leddihn, Francis Fukuyama, Mansur Olson, Douglass North, Charles Tilly, James M Buchanan and Hans Herman Hoppe. If there are no references to this work, it is shorter than the works of these authors, its tone is realist, inspired by the study of the history and political practice of the prince.
If he is lenient in his judgment towards Woodrow Wilson whom he wants to cast as a pioneer of self-determination, another author like Graham Wallas in 1904 already explained that the Nation state system that the United States is still trying to replicate in the rest of the world perhaps applies in certain homogeneous countries unified by the Napoleonic War but not in the Balkans, in Africa or in Central Asia, or the creation of large nation states implies the oppression of minorities.
His policy has led to the GDP of the country at 187,000 dollars per capita, while Germany stagnates at $48,000 per inhabitant. This should allow him to be as disdainful of Western regimes with inept policies as they were towards popular democracies in the 1970s. However, the prince carries a moderate judgment concerning liberal democracies. He notes however that they flout the self-determination of their own population and create social insurance systems which destroy local mutual aid mechanisms.
This allows him to voice an opinion nearer the sphere of consensus than that of libertarians such as Hans Herman Hoppe, and to be more influential.