Russ Roberts interviews Bryan Caplan on the case for open borders. The challenge with making that case is that anything other than xenophobia is counterintuitive.
Thorfinn suggests that if the U.S. overspends on health care, it also overspends on education.
America spends far more on education that would be “accounted for” by this simple regression model. Yet we don’t see a great deal of worry on where this excess spending is coming from, or where all the waste is in College education.
Well, some people think there is waste in both places. And speaking of Robin Hanson, he writes,
I think a lot of today’s political disputes come down to a conflict between farmer and forager ways, with forager ways slowly and steadily winning out since the industrial revolution. It seems we acted like farmers when farming required that, but when richer we feel we can afford to revert to more natural-feeling forager ways. The main exceptions, like school and workplace domination and ranking, are required to generate industry-level wealth. We live a farmer lifestyle when poor, but prefer to buy a forager lifestyle when rich.
I am not sure that I buy this as a political story. It seems to me that most of my friends on the left still live by bourgeois values.
READER COMMENTS
MernaMoose
Oct 6 2010 at 4:36am
The challenge with making that case is that anything other than xenophobia is counterintuitive.
Okay, I can’t keep my mouth shut on this one.
In fact, the strongest arguments for restricting immigration have absolutely nothing to do with xenophobia. I’m a bit surprised to see you taking such a cheap shot, as I’ve come to expect better than that from you.
Unless you’re an anarchist….in which case this whole debate is so much wasted time and effort.
Anarchists are frequently dishonest when it comes to their true motivations and intentions — because they know, if they told the bald truth, the vast majority would reject their positions out of hand. Hence anarchists resort to non-intellectual jabs like “well you’re just a racist”.
Nothing like impeaching the opponent’s character to avoid having to debate the issues at hand.
The vast majority of the population are not anarchists — and they’re right about that too, whatever else they may be wrong about.
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