I agree with much of what Hoppe says except for some important generalizations. Kings tended to make transfer payments flow in only one direction and were universally theft prone. From King John of England and fr. to King William of Orange, they tended to lard their coffers as their personal fiefdom and rob the people blind for egotistical wars of conquest. Treasuries were mostly pawned to make war. Occasionally, as with Phillip of Spain, conquest yielded a profit and ruined the economy, paradoxically. In addition democratic governments, while they tend to flood the country with poor immigrants indiscriminately as a source of votes and taxes, do in fact, in their sometimes errant way, plan ahead many years. Their main error is to imagine that catering to populist socialist demands almost exclusively, that they will better society the most. However, their catering to these demands is rather strange as they rarely cultivate beggars in their retinue. Most politicians garden parties do not include the homeless as honoured guests. My suspicion is that it never will routinely.
All emperors were aware of the mob of the poor and catered to them as much as they thought was wise. Overfeed them and it was a dangerous precedent for times when you could not. Underfeed them and they were a terror to be reckoned with. In addition too luxuriant and too little industrious a middle class and the country became soft and defenseless.
All leaders cater to the powerful and the rich as source of armies, money to build armies and corruption to buy votes.
The quandary is how to build a democratic system that is relatively immune to corruption of the ignorance of the elected unwise and the greedy and venial and does not suffer the captivation of an immovable and equally corrupt civil service. My only solution would be to make all civil service jobs limited to ten years and all legislative jobs limited to seven, with one years' training. Eliminate the vote and have all legislators selected by lottery from a pool of perhaps one million competetent people. Servitude would be mandatory, with recission punishable by fine, and be very well compensated with pension.
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