Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Immigration for sale?
After a vile debate about immigration, Becker posts a great column on his blog! Yes, immigration should be open for business - everywhere. The fact that a country/society doesn't allow free immigration doesn't automatically mean that it is a totalitarian or a unfree society. And Becker should know about discrimination, getting into Academica in the 50ies when there were quotas on how many Jews a faculty could have... (His dissertation "The Economics of Discrimination" is greatly recommended.)
The Hoppe debate
Unfortunately, some parts of the libertarian spectrum of blogs, have a hard time with deontological reasonings. The otherwise much brilliant Cato fellow Tom G Palmer has been fuming over Hans-Herman Hoppe's texts on immigration and the right for a society to limit it. (This has probably more to do with Hoppe's unfortunate, and plump, remark about the fact that Palmer is gay, than with the political theory Hoppe is advancing.) But many libertarian bloggers followed Palmer, like Swedish blogger Johan Norberg (see his entry on Wednesday 29/9/2004), most famous in the U.S. for his superb book about globalism - In Defense of Global Capitalism, followed suit to proclaim that Hoppe is a bigot. Along with the internal libertarian debate there where debates over Hoppes tenure at UNLV. This whole ordeal soon turned out to be labeled the Hoppe Hysteria at UNLV. Famous bloggers at The Volokh Conspiracy wrote about Hoppe and his teaching. But apparently - Hoppe also have students who like his classes.
About immigration
Hoppe's argument is that in a time of welfare states, any immigrant that wants to enter a country, should have to pay for the "full costs" for his/her entry. Becker's argument follows the same line of reasoning (see above).
I wonder what Palmer will say about it. Because in this case, sad to say, Palmer is just making more harm by using ad hominem arguments. As in the case with this newly released book on American history.
Funny thing - Palmer - who is accusing Hoppe of attacking his person instead of his politics, is himself attacking the authors (of the book mentioned above) instead of their research.
Well, well, back to the sandbox. Initially this post was about economics, and the wonderful science of Gary Becker. I would like it to end like that too - so, here it goes again:
