Immigration laws don’t merely allow discrimination; they require it. As the result, such laws are deeply anti-meritocratic. Employers may be allowed to hire the best citizen for the job, but not the best person.
Tag: world
Liberty in America During the Great War
There’s always plenty for libertarians to complain about in our troubled world, but in many respects, things could be much worse. I’m thinking particularly of how the U.S. government punished dissent before, during, and even after America’s participation in World War I. Although it will be a few years before we observe the centenary of…
The World Would Be a Great Deal Better
I’m not a moral philosopher or a theologian. I was once a half-decent economic historian, but that’s another story. Anyhow, I’m going to offer you a few words of unsolicited moral advice along with some observations on the nature of the world in which you live. You may not need this advice, in which case I apologize for bothering you, but it’s clear that many people do need it.
I Kinda Understand Ancestor Worship Now
I remember first hearing about the ancestor worship practiced in some world cultures. I was bemused – clearly this was a silly superstition – one of the sillier religious beliefs that wasn’t mine. But now the phenomenon of ancestor worship is starting to make a little more sense as I get older.
The Fearful Millions
A group of several thousand Central Americans continues to make its way slowly toward the USA. The people who compose this unarmed group consist in large part of women and children. As their difficult journey continues, many are giving up in exhaustion or losing hope and dropping out, long before they reach the U.S. border, where they hope to apply for admission as refugees.
Against Veneration
I have close friends who venerate Adam Smith, John Rawls, Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan, John Maynard Keynes, Ayn Rand, John Stuart Mill, Ludwig von Mises, Paul Samuelson, Deirdre McCloskey, Elinor Ostrom, Hannah Arendt, Alexis de Tocqueville, David Hume, Murray Rothbard, Paul Krugman, or Thomas Jefferson. This veneration of the Great Names mystifies me on two levels.
Propping Up State Violence
Libertarian anarchy, which grew out of classical liberalism and pushed it to its logical conclusion in favor of the complete privatization of economic life and the phasing out of the state, continued for a long time to be as cosmopolitan as its antecedent doctrine. But in recent years some anarchists have been misled by twisted and fantastical constructs to suppose that so long as states persist, they ought to employ their powers to keep migrants out and preserve some sort of imagined national cultural purity.
Keep Some Self-Sufficiency In Your Life
I used to dream about becoming “self-sufficient” – growing and making most everything myself. And I put in a good amount of daydreaming time and real work toward that, raising all kinds of poultry, growing a garden, reading books on farm skills. Then I learned economics.
On Charity
I have never felt any particular pull toward giving money to charity. I don’t give money to beggars and panhandlers, and I don’t give money to relief funds. Why not? I’m not entirely sure.
Bullying and Free Association
One of the biggest problems with discussions on “school bullying” is that we define bullying differently than we would in other situations. It makes it so we analyse it from a different perspective, a perspective that fundamentally disrespects the pain of children. Bullying in the adult world is called; battery, assault, robbery, harassment, kidnapping, false imprisonment, etc. In the child world we call it, bullying … do you see a problem?