Hallman Criticizes Hoppe

I’ve not run across Andy Hallman before. But he posted a blog entry today that is critical of Hoppe entitled A Libertarian Against Free Immigration.

Andy States

Neither in this section nor anywhere in the book does Hoppe ever stop to consider that the “millions of third-world immigrants” would be much better off under free immigration. Granted, we should consider the effect of potentially large mass migrations on all the people affected by them, such as the people paying for the welfare state. But to totally ignore the fact that millions of people would almost certainly be better off from the policy is hard to understand, to put it mildly.

When the retort to this, is that they would be better off at other peoples expense – people who did not make the decision voluntarily to aborb that expense. If the wealthy world gave all it’s riches to the poor world, then the poor world would be better off, but there would rapidly cease to be a wealthy world.

The correct answer is to export the technology of our institutions for a PROFIT, which would create long term prosperity for the third world, AND the first world. Because it is institutions that create prosperity, in particular, institutions of truth telling.

Too few people remember that the Russians, recognizing their inability to govern themselves, asked the Danes to come govern them. One of the better decisions in political history.

I responded too broadly for the simplicity of the article. Andy makes a number of errors, the fist is the christian error of giving away what is not his to give, because he did not earn it, the second is more complex, which is not understanding the short and long term costs, and the third is a misunderstanding of the problem of political economy that Hoppe is answering:

Hi,

I think you’re confusing multiple concepts. The Hoppe/Rothbard system is just that, a system of interdependencies. It’s an attempt at an explanatory theory based upon an analysis of an ethics of property. (Which Rothbard attributed to natural law and Hoppe to a variant of natural law using a different method of proof (argumentation). Hoppe is answering the problem of maintaining a CIVILIZATION, and the retention of freedom within a civilization, and the quality of life that comes from freedom. (Freedom to DO something, not freedom FROM something – other than violence and coercion.)

In your analysis above, you are saying that SOME benefits come from taxing immigrants in the short term. But you have not answered the cost of those immigrants, both in the short and long term. And failing to do so is why you are making such a hasty conclusion.

Hoppe, and Weber and others (myself included) would argue that time preference (shorter and higher, versus longer and lower) is part of the division of labor in society, as well as an indicator of class. Time preference may not be a preference but a bias, as it’s a very likely a statement of at necessity. Since humans have different abilities to forgo gratification, since it requires more knowledge and greater intelligence to make longer forecasts, since we learn at vastly different rates, since goals are transmitted intergenerationally, and most importantly since habits and production processes with different periodicity appear to be cognitively incommensurable, it is NECESSARY that we form a division of knowledge and labor in society because it’s all we CAN do, as people with unequal ability. Even if we can educated some people to have increasingly lower and longer time preferences, we cannot teach everyone to have the longest time preference, because they are not able to achieve it, and the division of labor and knowledge appears to require different time preferences.

Since the nobility as a class profits from ‘owning society’ it has the longest and lowest time preference. Hoppe himself has that time preference – because like everyone back to the Greeks, we are trying to solve the problem of politics – cooperation rather than conflict. THe assumption here, which appears to be justified, is that a society with longer time preference accumulates all forms of capital for longer term use and creates a more prosperous society that is DURABLE. THis also brings into question whether property rights perpetuate across generations, which would be necessary if a society is to accumulate social order as one of the forms of capital.

It’s not uncommon to make a mistake on the value of immigration, because the debate is still open on immigrants. If you immigrate talent (like we did from europe after the fall) then you benefit because you did not pay to create it, and did not take the common with the elite. But if you immigrate talent, even for jobs that your people do not want to do, and especially if they have values that conflict with the values that made your civilization possible, it’s not clear at all that immigrants are a value. In fact, it appears that they’re no different from printing MONEY and inserting it into your economy. No small number of great thinkers have worked on this problem and there is no consensus.

However, Hoppe might answer, (and I would) that you cannot have facts without a theory. And unless you can explain the theory which your facts supposedly support, then there is no way of knowing that you’re talking about the same problem, you’re just using CORRELATION, not CAUSATION. (This is the premise of the Mises->Rothbard->Hoppe argument.)

Hoppe is giving us a theory of human cooperation and social order.

In my own work I agree with Hoppe. I have altered his argument slightly to additionally rely upon calculation and incentive, and added group behavior to it, to better support less individualistic assumptions about human nature which works against the market as much as it works in favor of property. But this is an improvement upon Hoppe’s work, not in any way a refutation of it.

The point is, that you don’t refute a Hoppian argument (which is a christian noble’s argument about civilization as much as it is a rothbardian middle class argument about individual rights) with a short term utilitarian expression of tax revenues, because either you are unknowingly supporting his argument, or you haven’t espoused a theory sufficient to compete with the broader theory, and instead are arguing irrelevant and perhaps unrelated facts, that can only be made relevant by the elucidation of a replacement theory. At the very least, you may be describing NOISE not SIGNAL (see Mandelbrot and Taleb) without such a broader theory. (Which is what you’re doing, really, but that’s part of your intellectual development just like it was for the rest of us.)

And your theory would have to say that you agree with the USE of GOVERNMENT VIOLENCE to steal property, potential, and freedom from the current citizens of your country to give to immigrants for the sole purpose of empowering government such that it can profit from violating those rights, whether it be out of ignorance, or (as Rothbard and others have stated) because of a misguided application of Christian egalitarian principles, or because of a human foible that makes us feel good about being charitable with public property because we get a social and emotional benefit,a s well as temporary status increase, from giving away what is not ours to give.

I’ve tried to lay out a line of reasoning for you in short form, but may not have succeeded. If not, I’ll try to answer what I can for you. Having spent most of my life trying to find an answer to the problem of society, I think hoppe has taken it the farthest.

If you assume that we should and can burn accumulated social capital in an effort to make current life better for the global underclass, then you are operating by different PREFERENCES, not by different TRUTHS. And truths are what make argumentative persuasion possible, But you MUST be taking from your citizens, and from their ancestors, to redistribute to your immigrants.

THe arguments about productivity increases of immigrants are NOISE if they impose longer term costs on the social order. They are not SIGNAL. They are temporary fluctuations gained by arbitrage, and the theft of property from citizens, not trends to be extrapolated, and upon which we can make value judgements about a theory of political and social economy that is yet to be stated except as a set of “Derivations” (Pareto), or more abstract metaphysical assumptions about the nature of man, or cognitive biases due to incomplete knowledge of human social processes (Popper). For example, what is the cost of making it affordable for your children not to have jobs in their teens, and thereby learning work habits prior to entering the adult work force (the cost of prolonging childhood)? What is the cost of a 20% minority that does not integrate? Or one that proposes a different system of laws? Or one that does not value freedom?

All costs are just the choice between one set of costs and another. But those costs have long term consequences. And the measurement of alternate timelines is extremely complex.

Cheers.

PS: I have a google alert for all articles referencing Hoppe, so that I can educate people about his work, and that’s how I found your posting.

Moreover, neither Hoppe, nor rothbard (nor mises, popper, hayek or Parsons) have answered the problem of the costs of creating property in the first place, and the opportunity and time economies. Rothbard’s analysis is specious because the island does not exist, and violence over property is rife and most often between groups, not individuals in the same tribe or family. The question is, “why don’t I kill you if you if you take my stuff”, or “why don’t I kill you if you take my opportunities away”.