And the most direct way to get from the status quo to a free society is to abolish the welfare state.
To be sure, a case can be made that unassimilated immigrants undermine social cooperation and undermine democratic political accountability (the populist argument) as well as increase the burdens of the welfare state on the economy, as a common language and certain shared cultural norms in a given locality (i.e. a locality has a distinct national identity) make possible a community of common discourse that greatly facilitates cooperation. But the national argument only begs the question of why social cohesion--not only between native-born and immigrants, but also among different native-born groups--has broken down under the modern welfare state. What contemporary populists have failed to grasp is that the welfare state is just as much a problem for maintaining cohesion among the native-born as it is for assimilating immigrants, just as Friedman failed to grasp that immigration merely accelerates the capital consumption associated with welfare statism.
The actual problem here is that state promises of economic security and state prohibitions on private discrimination eliminate most of the incentives one has in a free society to voluntarily adjust one's language and behavior to facilitate cooperation with other members of one's community and the incentives one has to invest in future economic productivity. Unless it is willing to permit the nation it rules to fragment into warring tribes, such a state must ultimately step in to censor "hate" and dictate what linguistic and cultural conventions must be observed by everyone. Even then, such a state can't really contain the culture wars it sparked, nor can it prevent an economic collapse as the stock of capital goods is exhausted.
What makes you think the better system will win. Argentina has defaulted over and over and they continued to double down on the same big government policies. Why would you expect any different here?
Its interesting to see how things have changed since 1999.
The supposed stabilization of government spending under Reagan didn't last and is much higher now. The likely force being that immigrants moved the median voter to the left.
We more or less did give up on the War on Drugs, and now everyone seems to not like the new legalization world.
School vouchers got passed in some places, but only through right coded culture war means.
The existence of welfare does not deter me from favoring open borders. I want open borders; I don't want welfare.
Let them both try to coexist (they can't) and may the better system win.
And the most direct way to get from the status quo to a free society is to abolish the welfare state.
To be sure, a case can be made that unassimilated immigrants undermine social cooperation and undermine democratic political accountability (the populist argument) as well as increase the burdens of the welfare state on the economy, as a common language and certain shared cultural norms in a given locality (i.e. a locality has a distinct national identity) make possible a community of common discourse that greatly facilitates cooperation. But the national argument only begs the question of why social cohesion--not only between native-born and immigrants, but also among different native-born groups--has broken down under the modern welfare state. What contemporary populists have failed to grasp is that the welfare state is just as much a problem for maintaining cohesion among the native-born as it is for assimilating immigrants, just as Friedman failed to grasp that immigration merely accelerates the capital consumption associated with welfare statism.
The actual problem here is that state promises of economic security and state prohibitions on private discrimination eliminate most of the incentives one has in a free society to voluntarily adjust one's language and behavior to facilitate cooperation with other members of one's community and the incentives one has to invest in future economic productivity. Unless it is willing to permit the nation it rules to fragment into warring tribes, such a state must ultimately step in to censor "hate" and dictate what linguistic and cultural conventions must be observed by everyone. Even then, such a state can't really contain the culture wars it sparked, nor can it prevent an economic collapse as the stock of capital goods is exhausted.
What makes you think the better system will win. Argentina has defaulted over and over and they continued to double down on the same big government policies. Why would you expect any different here?
Its interesting to see how things have changed since 1999.
The supposed stabilization of government spending under Reagan didn't last and is much higher now. The likely force being that immigrants moved the median voter to the left.
We more or less did give up on the War on Drugs, and now everyone seems to not like the new legalization world.
School vouchers got passed in some places, but only through right coded culture war means.