Kai H. Kayser, MBA, Mphil
Portugal. Dec 10, 2025.
- QUICK OVERVIEW
- THE LEFT
- CONSERVATISM
- AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS
- ANARCHY / APARACTONOMY
1. QUICK OVERVIEW
Ordering political views and leanings into left and right is dysfunctional because it confounds the fact that left and right are parallel views that both embrace governmental control. The two are virtually indistinguishable at their extremes: in rhetoric, catchphrases, aesthetics, economic collapse, corruption, suppression of dissent, and psychopathic embrace of violence. The actual opposite of totalitarianism is anarchy, and between these poles are conservatism, monarchy, theocracies, libertarianism, minarchy, and the myriads of further ideological models.
The underlying question is which system is best suited to create a society that is fair, just, and most beneficial for as many people as possible. The way our human mind works in finding that answer was molded by our ancient struggle for survival, which we aced through division of labor. Collectivists see the answer to every problem in collective effort, and for good reason – it empirically works. But it doesn’t work always, and that’s where individualism comes in: while 10 men are stronger than one, 100 much stronger, and 1000 vastly superior in strength, these 1000 strong men mean nothing when a solution is needed that doesn’t require strength. Competence, knowledge, and creativity are individual traits and not collective efforts.
That is why collectivists, both left and right, demand a strong and competent leader at the helm whose wisdom and insight must be obeyed at all cost. Individualists counter with a strong argument: no human can ever possess all knowledge and wisdom, so instead we need every single person to become as smart, self-responsible, and autonomous as possible instead of blindly obedient to and dependent on leadership.
These two opposing positions have plenty of rational arguments, and that is why so many people prefer a compromise that is supposed to combine the best of both sides. Democracies were born out of that idea. However, an often-overlooked fact is that size does matter greatly; scaling changes parameters to the point of failure – although the actual problem is not large-scale organization per se (which many companies have applied very successfully, e.g., Toyota, Amazon), but coercive central planning of an entire society. When companies scale up they often crash (e.g., Enron, Kodak) because they don’t have the knowledge and technology necessary – for countries such tools do not exist. Zooming out, one sees that all political systems are actually oligarchies, prone to corruption and require constant adaptation to persist, while never achieving perfection. Systemic perfection is a theoretical concept that works within isolation, as in computer simulations and algebraic equations. Reality, however, is far too complex and fast-changing to make any large-scale planning attempt feasible.
That means that while a single organization like a bakery may work highly efficiently with one all-deciding boss and three quasi-powerless assistants, the same model scaled to a country with 400 million inhabitants will lead inevitably and at stunning speed into collapse. Our “almighty” baker man has the expertise and experience to produce the right products for a specific customer base; he knows well enough what to serve and in what quantities, and he treats and reimburses his assistants fairly enough for them to keep helping him. Once an assistant thinks, “The old baker is a fool, I can do it better,” and starts his own bakery, time will tell if he was indeed right in his assessment.
Comparing tiny bakeries with entire economies is silly – that is actually the point. Underlying principles are similar, and often even the same, because in either case we are looking at ORGANIZATIONS. Governments are organizations, businesses are organizations, and so are soccer clubs, insurance companies, hospitals, and every other component of human society today. But scale changes everything. A successful baker man is already facing a multitude of tasks; it is a surprisingly difficult undertaking, and therefore we don’t see bakery millionaires at every corner all over the world. How exponentially more difficult, then, is running a supermarket chain, let alone an entire country? A bakery needs to know and cooperate smartly with supply and demand, calculate costs, potential sales and ideal price ranges, while offering added benefits like convenience or tribal belonging; and even if all that is done and implemented correctly, the overall market must allow customers to be able to afford the offered baked goods while not too many competitors rush into the market. Most bakers barely get by, facing crushing competition from large supermarkets; in recent decades we have seen a stunning number of bakeries shutting down.
That’s a lot of detail, but for a good reason: organization doesn’t mean automatic success. Planning is crucial but has realistic and ever-changing limits, and that is directly related to size and scale. Furthermore, no political system can survive without a functional economy. The economy is arguably the absolute societal and organizational priority! When central planning meets economics, collapse is the inevitable consequence – empirically proven.
2. THE LEFT
Who is “the left”? Interestingly, today mostly intellectuals and academics. Originally a worker’s movement, it was soon taken over by intellectuals like Marx, Lenin, Mao, or Kim Il-sung. Actual workers and especially farmers have struggled with socialist and communist ideas and their central planning. Intellectuals, on the other hand, were and are fascinated by leftist ideologies although they should have the insight to realize that collectivism is a double-edged sword, that individual efforts are crucial for societal and economic progress, and that freedom and the three basic human rights – life, liberty, and property – are the very foundation for any functioning culture to thrive.
Why would such vast numbers of intellectuals push for central planning, collectivism, and authoritarian systems? While a definitive and all-encompassing answer is not possible, one can observe in general:
- education creating education
- conceptualism
- higher purpose
and the three are strongly intertwined.
When humans try to solve a problem, they typically first analyze it in order to separate the irrelevant from the important factors – prioritization. This tends to work very well and therefore became the modus operandi of higher education. The more complex issues are, the better analysis and prioritization seem to work – until they don’t. At some point there are simply too many factors, too many variables and unknowns for humans to handle. Eventually quantum computing and advanced AI might break through these barriers, but for now analysis and prioritization work only in limited settings, so we learn to limit settings and create isolated system frames, especially in academia. Positivism, rationalism, and conceptualism are all hallmarks of academia. Despite the best efforts of realists, empiricists, chaos theory, systems theory, complexity theory, and many other attempts at breaking these molds, academia still prefers to stick to its guns: isolation and linear mathematics.
Because they work! Although only on paper. And that modus operandi gets passed on, infecting and limiting the minds of generation after generation of society’s supposedly brightest thinkers. They prioritize themselves and their linear, oversimplified models while reality keeps ignoring academic rationalism.
If we put 10 humans on an island with ample potable water and perfect temperatures, enough flora and fauna to feed them, we have the perfect academic setting to argue that socialism and communism is the best system to implement and that capitalism would only create inequality, hatred, and chaos. In all likelihood – which means in theory. Because we immediately assume that these 10 people are either 5 compatible couples, 10 asexual loners, or 10 orgiastic polyamorists who all cooperate flawlessly (hunting, building shelters, growing food, making clothes, etc.) with each other due to the necessity of efficient survival. Just blending out sexuality is already insane, as most friction will obviously start from there. Then we must further assume the ten are truly nice – no psychopath among them, no dark tetrad traits, no envy, no malice… oh boy. Nobody rubs anyone the wrong way, no accidental bullying, no inadvertent insults, stupid jokes, no mood swings, no bad days… come on!
However, if we cut out human nature and the unpredictable reality that these ten individuals will face – storms, disease, parasites – we can indeed argue that socialism and communism would work better for these ten. With ten people, capitalism seems a bad idea because one or two would strive hard to excel and outsmart and out-innovate the others into severe frustration. In a group of ten it’s hard to shine, but smarter to assume a low profile and contribute equally; harmony is more efficient in such a limited scenario. The second we re-introduce human reality, for example by asking whether procreation is possible, we arrive at completely different results with different short- and long-term consequences. If we assume 5 men and 5 women, all fertile, we are possibly looking at the end of socialism on the island because now the best compete for the best; we get perfect capitalism as the men try to impress the women utilizing their skills and talents, while the women will try to choose or be chosen by the potentially smartest, most capable, strongest, or otherwise most desirable man. For keeping the competition clean we would need 5 women with vastly different priorities and 5 men to match each.
The longer one thinks about the 10 people on the island, the less it works to argue any superiority of a collectivist or leftist system. We would need 10 robots on a space station with endless power supply to make it work sustainably for an extended period of time.
But academics don’t train that way; at the end of the day they do what is necessary to get the grants and funds for their research and careers, which is much easier in a strictly regulated statist system than in a free market. For academics, a strong government that redistributes the working people’s wealth into education and academia is the most comfortable solution – of course they embrace collectivist ideology.
Noteworthy: leftist governments have failed 51 times. The only “successful” attempt was in China, from Deng through Jiang to Hu, all utilizing a quasi-capitalist economic model – but discontinued under Xi.
3. CONSERVATISM
Conservatives will so far have nodded a lot in agreement. But the following will change that. While not only leftists but even conservatives themselves define conservatism as the opposite of the left, they are not. “Left–right” is a terminological classification that comes from the seating order of the French parliament of the 18th century, and from a leftist’s view all that is not left is right. However, the real issue is collectivism vs. freedom, and that shows particularly well when looking at the vast interchangeability of left and conservative policies today: abortion, gun control, nuclear energy, solar and wind energy, taxation, or funding Ukraine against Russia. Leftists are simply more vocal in their demands and more radical in taxation and regulation, but conservatives always get there too – just slower. While most conservative parties bring home votes with their Christian or traditional talking points, they are taxers and regulators and pile precarious public debt on the shoulders of future generations. Which conservative party has actually abolished a central bank, taxation, or deregulated gun laws in the last 150 years? Conservatives do not stand for individualism or the three basic human rights – life, liberty, and property – they are simply less radical and much slower collectivists compared to the left. They may be the lesser evil, but they still run on wars, inflation, debt, and governmental control, while wearing a religious or traditional make-up.
4. AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS
The three chapters above have already made the Austrian economic view quite obvious through the prioritizing of the economy in the societal order, the strong emphasis on human impact, and the rejection of taxation and regulation as beneficial necessities. We mentioned how left and right are parallels in their collectivist efforts to minimize individual rights for the strengthening of government. Austrian economics opposes that approach, which is remarkable considering that the Austrians are a school of economics and not a political party or ideology. No other school of economics has been similarly vocal in rejecting political systems while simultaneously being rejected by all established parties. Keynesian economists, on the other hand, have been embraced by both left and conservative parties and leaders. That is no coincidence: if a government wishes to plunge a nation into debt, it can argue only with Keynes – not with Mises, Hayek, and even less with Rothbard or Hoppe. The idea that debt is not just occasionally an acceptable risk but a generally good idea is ludicrous, yet so is arguing for a just war or beneficial inflation. We need to see a sad but empirical truth: repeating a lie loud and often enough doesn’t make it right, but accepted. When governments wish full access to citizens’ wealth and property, they implement taxes, regulations, leverage fiat-currency-induced inflation, and then go wage wars – for the greater good, in the name of God, or to protect our democracy.
Austrian economists like to calculate accurately and will point out the errors in debt-driven economic models and central banking, which explains the lack of enthusiasm from governments for Austrian economists. In the long term, debt and inflation have dire consequences, but governments prefer the short-term benefits. Mixed economies can postpone crisis for decades and achieve high average living standards, yet Austrian theory empirically observes inevitable distortion, malinvestment, and eventual crisis if intervention keeps growing – which it historically always does.
5. ANARCHY / APARACTONOMY
Unsurprisingly, Austrian economists reject big government, deep states, and authoritarian systems, and tend to be libertarians, minarchists, or even anarchists. There are plenty of misunderstandings surrounding these terminologies, so let’s clear them up:
Libertarianism comes from the Latin LIBERTAS – freedom. Libertarians stand for individual rights and small government, reduced to keeping order and safety without redistributing wealth, or at least not in large amounts. Such governments are also called “night-watch governments” and essentially organize policing, military, and courts.
Minarchists are libertarians who want to make sure government is truly minimized. That sounds redundant, but there are many libertarians who accept and even promote taxation and regulatory interference by government, and even justify governmental military spending and wars. Minarchists are much stricter in such matters. In general: libertarians want liberty, minarchists want minimal government.
The libertarian argument that government works inefficiently and private efforts yield far better results holds true for EVERYTHING, not just the most cited issues like education, housing, or healthcare. Therefore the anarcho-capitalists formed as the more logically stringent libertarians, arguing that government doesn’t work at all; private enterprise does everything better, cheaper, and more efficiently – including police, courts, and military. Anarcho-capitalists are free-market absolutists who wish to remove governmental interference completely so society can benefit the most from the self-organization of free markets.
While arguing in flawless logic, neither Rothbard nor Hoppe found the wider acceptance they deserve. That has to do with established powers keeping anarcho-capitalists out of academia and media, but also with the term itself. Anarchy and capitalism are two badly distorted concepts – anarchy being equated to chaos and capitalism misunderstood as cronyism or consumerism. Actually, anarchy is Greek for “no government” and capitalism describes “free-market enterprise.” When combining the two we have a stateless society with a free market in which all transactions and exchanges are voluntary and without violent enforcement. Critics continue to ignore Hoppe’s arguments regarding feasibility and keep falsely claiming government is needed to prevent monopolies, while monopolies only happen due to governmental regulations. In free markets without governmental interference large corporations can’t suppress competition through lawfare, lobbyism, and unfair national and international treaties.
In full agreement with anarcho-capitalism and Hoppe’s private-law society, aparactonomy¹ (from Greek ἀπάρεκτος “undisturbed” + αὐτονομία “autonomy”) goes further and envisions stateless nations that uphold law and order through a constitution that embraces the first 6 amendments of the US Constitution through Hoppe’s private-law system. To allow and support innovation and technological progress, a society needs maximum freedom where companies and private people can invest as they see fit without taxation and authoritarian interference; where communities form based on their personal preferences and values, each individual can find their place, opt for a different one, or found a new community, ensuring absolute religious and ideological freedom. Within an aparactonomous nation there would be left-wing communities, different languages and beliefs, but they could not usurp power and establish rule over the other communities because all citizens would be armed (or at least allowed to be so) to defend their rights, freedoms, and property. In an aparactonomous society patriotism, cultural or religious beliefs are fully acceptable and a matter of the many co-existing and non-violent communities, making aparactonomy an inherently diverse and pluralistic system that still supports traditional values – which is widely seen as impossible and mutually exclusive.
¹ Kayser, Kai H. (2025). Aparactonomy. DOI: 10.62891/39006333
