April 26, 2005
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An
Anthem For The Immigration Reform Movement?
After Reading Rubenstein, A Doctor
Pleads For A Hoppe Strategy
From: Paleolibertarian Physician
It is frustrating to read
Vdare.com
author after
Vdare.com author propose that the government
should ride in on its white horse and rescue us from the
influx of illegal immigrants while procuring
handouts for our own citizens. This is just a variation
on the same old pipe dream of every right wing socialist
disaster of last century.
I was motivated to write after reading
Edwin S. Rubenstein's well-intentioned
article concerning foreign physicians in America. I
couldn't help but think, "score another one for
Professor Hans Herman Hoppe!" who has
correctly diagnosed the Death of the West as the
outcome of faith in government intervention in place of
reliance on the free market and the
natural order that arises from the sanctity of
private property. Rubenstein's article serves to
illustrate that conservatives and immigration reformers
have undertaken a complex and contrived strategy doomed
to failure.
As Mr. Rubenstein correctly states, government has
limited the number of spots in medical school but funded
many more residency training spots. Where will these
extra doctors come from?
Other countries, of course.
He then goes on to suggest, correctly, that "the
market for doctors is distorted by public policy."
But then, apparently with a straight face offers
allocating more money for
domestic physicians who already work in a bloated,
subsidized industry that consumes 14% of GDP.
The reality is that
doctors have secured a cartelized monopoly through
government limitations on medical school admissions.
In addition, government welfare programs and regulations
have created an
unsustainable open ended obligation to provide
scarce resources.
I want to make this perfectly clear: intervention in
the free market in health care in the name of
"standards" and "rights" has made us
vulnerable to immigration. The take-home message for all
conservatives should be that intervention in the free
market is the root of the problem and tweaking the
system with policy change will not work!
It may seem too great an obstacle at first glance but
demanding freedom is easier and more realistic than
controlling the problem from centralized Washington.
If
conservatives employ the strategy of demanding
handouts like Mr. Rubenstein, rather than relying on the
natural order of property and the
free market, then kiss the West goodbye.
Our best hope of
controlling immigration is grass roots protection (e.g.
the
Minutemen) and local/state enforcement. Hoppe
provides the proper
theoretical framework. In fact, I think this will
end up being the new states rights issue.
Decentralization and immigration reform have a destiny.
It’s obviously starting
to happen, but no one is really saying it overtly.
Peter Brimelow writes:
I'm particularly sorry to
see this letter because I do try to ride a surreptitious
free-market herd on our very
diverse group of immigration reformers. I read Ed’s
article to mean that the government should (a) not
intervene (b) if intervening at all, should shift from
the demand to the supply side. That's surely arguable.
Ed’s fundamental point, of course, is that the
government is distorting the market for doctors and
creating the demand for immigrants.
