Question For Bryan Caplan Libertarians: Should Australians REALLY Sell Out Their Country?
09/14/2013
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One more on Australia.

Australia’s population is 22.3 million. Her land area is 2.97 million square miles. That’s a population density of 7.5 per square mile—extraordinarily low for a developed country. Compare the U.S.A. at 83.5, Germany at 583.

There are some qualifications to be added, of course. Much of Australia is waterless desert. Still, there’s plenty of room.

A lot more than there is in China, for sure. Population density in the People’s Republic is 361 to the square mile. For metropolitan China—that is, if you subtract out Tibet, Eastern Turkestan, and Inner Mongolia, whose base populations are non-Chinese—the figure is somewhere north of 600, comparable to Germany or the U.K. (680).

Just bear those numbers in mind while reading this post by the Australian traditionalist blogger Oz Conservative.

Locals wanting to buy a home in Sydney face a problem. They have to compete now with very large numbers of overseas investors, particularly from China . . .

Open-borders libertarians like Bryan Caplan are keen to tell us that transactions involving land or real estate are an entirely private matter, no different from the purchase/sale of any other goods.

How exactly should we expect that philosophy to work out in the China-Australia case? Are Australians supposed to be outbid by foreigners in their own country?

 

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