When I was a young articled clerk with firm of London solicitors, I was involved, at some length in what turned out to be fruitless legal action against a notorious slum landlord called Nicholas Hoogstraten. Fruitless, because every time I went to Court to enforce against him, he simply disappeared behind a kaleidoscope of dummy front companies and aliases. He was as elusive as the morning mist.
Still, what I learned about him from the file notes left an indelible impression on me that was stirred again today when I heard that Hoogstraten has been convicted of manslaughter and now faces the possibility of a life sentence. In 1999 he ordered two of his henchmen to attack a former business associate who was threatening to sue him. They killed him. The jury accepted Hoogstraten’s plea that he never ordered the man’s death, he merely wanted them to rough him up and frighten him. The two hit-men were convicted of murder.
Hoogstraten is the nearest thing to a Bond villain that I have ever actually encountered. He could have sprung, fully-formed, from the fevered mind of a Hollywood script-writer; arrogant, sneering, dapper, ruggedly handsome, enormously rich, wickedly cunning and mind-bogglingly ruthless. He built his property empire on the back of intimidation, violence and outright theft. Every plausible account I have read of him paints a picture of a swaggering ego that was not just prepared to use violence to get what he wanted but actually enjoyed using the violence. The fear he engendered seemed to actually turn him on.
Whilst undoubtedly possessed of high intelligence and great business acumen he was flawed by an arching contempt for his fellow men and almost insatiable desire to hold power over them. A man of such single-minded malevolence that he appears to have scarred all who ever came into contact with him.
And, now, it’s all over.
But why is this a Libertarian view? Because there is apparently no end of people, mostly (but not exclusively) on the left who are convinced that we Libertarians admire and wish to emulate characters like Hoogstraten. That when we call for an end to state intervention and regulation it is because we want the Hoogstratens of the world unshackled and free to wreak whatever havoc they choose; that when we speak of free markets, what we really mean is freedom for Hoogstraten and his ilk to use their wealth and power to stomp on anyone who gets in their way. For socialists of all stripes, Hoogstraten is capitalism made flesh.
Wrong. Dead wrong.
Libertarianism is not, and never has been, about money or its pursuit. Money is incidental. It is about empowering ordinary people to take control of their own lives and arrange them in ways that best suit them. It is about the sanctity of contract, the endless possibilities of voluntary arrangement and real wealth to be found in reputation, decency, civility and honour. All these things are a anathema to men like Hoogstraten.
It is also well worth pointing out that Hoogstraten built his empire and wreaked his worst havoc at a time when there was far greater state intervention in the property market than we have now and where the laws and regulations protecting tenants in rented property were far more draconian. Yet none of this stopped Hoogstraten or even slowed him down. He simply possessed the insatiable will to drive under, over and through them.
Ultimately, there is no surefire way to stop the Hoogstratens of this world. They are like a malevolent force that nature throws up at us every now and then. But a far surer method of cutting them down to size is to build a strong civil society where people actually care about what happens to their neighbours and have a stake in their neighbourhoods and where toxic bullies like Hoogstraten are kept in check or run out of town on the end of a pitchfork.
