The fear that some nativists express that an influx of foreigners will change their culture for the worse expresses a lack of confidence in the virtues of their existing culture and a failure to imagine how their culture might be enriched, rather than despoiled, by encounters with other cultures.
Author: Robert Higgs
Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute and Editor at Large of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, the University of Economics, Prague, and George Mason University. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.
Counterfactual Concession to the Looters
With regard to government planning and the implementation of plans: Mises said there is a calculation problem; Hayek said there is a knowledge problem; I say there is a crime problem.
Congenial Communications—Another Miracle of the Market
Through the ages, many observers have noted how markets promote peaceful and mutually enriching dealings among people of varying languages, customs, religions, and backgrounds. Voltaire’s account of this matter is a classic. I rediscover this time-honored truth virtually every day while living in Mexico.
Trump’s Trade Policy—A Reductio ad Absurdum
Let’s consider the president’s trade policy in, as it were, its very best light. Suppose, then, that the government succeeded in eliminating the trade deficit entirely. Residents of the USA would continue to sell huge quantities of goods to foreigners but buy nothing at all from foreign sellers. The trade deficit would be not only diminished but wiped out and replaced by a huge trade surplus. Trumpian triumph!
You Can Fight City Hall, but You’ll Almost Certainly Lose
One of the chief reasons why almost every regime in the world has converged to a system of participatory fascism is that this system creates or retains a great variety of institutionalized opportunities for the state’s victims—who compose the great majority of the people—to challenge the state’s exactions and to “make their voices heard,” thereby gaining the impression that the rulers are not simply oppressing and exploiting them unilaterally but involving them in an essential way in the making and enforcement of rules.
You Don’t Make the Tax Laws, but You Do Pay the Taxes
One thing is certain: virtually nothing in the tax code is there by accident. Every incomprehensible provision is there to serve the interest of someone who made it worthwhile for a politician to direct his staffers to put it there at an opportune point in the legislative process.
Community, True and False
I distinguish true community and false community. The line that separates them is the locus of points at which people bring government compulsion to bear to compel those who disagree with them to fall into line or suffer punishment, the line that separates those who recognize and respect everyone’s natural rights and those who do not.
Does Ideological Dystopia Await Us?
Imagine a world in which the great majority has no respect for facts or for truth of any sort, where ideological convictions rule almost everyone’s understanding of the world, where truth has become an endangered rhetorical species on the brink of extinction. In such a world, facts would still exist, of course, and true propositions would still stand in stark contradiction of false ones, but hardly anyone would care.
My Personal Trade Deficit Is Killing Me – or So Trump Would Have You Believe
I am running a terrible trade deficit with the local Mexicans. I keep giving them pesos, and all they give me in return are delicious foods and very helpful labor services from time to time. As President Trump would tell you, this is an awful situation for anyone to be in.
Tariffs Cause Americans to Accept Inferior Deals
This is how tariffs work. They make superior offers less desirable for buyers by making them more costly. The result is that buyers end up with goods and services that, absent the tariff, they would not want to buy.