If you can hold your nose long enough to wade through the swamp of hateful bile in Tom Palmer’s latest hissy fit against Hoppe, as noted below by Stephan Kinsella, there are some remarkably illogical and stupid arguments.
He claims that Hoppe is a pure burden on the taxpayers of Nevada since UNLV is a state school. But as my old friend Walter Williams has pointed out, state employees like himself provide a service — they teach economics, help direct masters and Ph.D. theses, and interact with students — in return for their paychecks. (And Hoppe is eminentlyqualified to teach economics, unlike Palmer).
Furthermore, I think it’s correct to say that every single academic who is affiliated with Cato is a state employee as well. Grove City College and Hillsdale College are the only two schools in America that have never received taxpayer subsidies; all others are either state funded or state subsidized to some degree. If Hoppe is a hypocrite for working at a state school, then so is virtually every single academic who has ever been associated with the Cato Institute. And as Kinsella points out, Cato employees use state roads and sidewalks, benefit from government police and fire protection in Washington, D.C., and many no doubt send their children to public schools or state-subsidized univesities. Does this mean we should ignore all of Cato’s criticisms of the state? It would if we follow Palmer’s “logic.”
6:33 pm on September 24, 2004
