I saw this written by a friend of mine on Facebook and was wondering if anyone can corroborate this with links to Hoppe's actual writings and what do people think about this:
Hoppe's argument is that public property is NOT unowned, that it IS owned by the taxpayers, and that therefore, the taxpayers have a right to bar anyone from immigrating whom they please, because immigrants must travel on public roads. Open immigration, where immigrants can use public roads, is tantamount to "forced integration", no different than the Civil Rights Act's forcing restaurants to serve blacks against the will of the private restauranteur. I recall a conversation I had with someone about a Bar-Ilan professor who expelled a student from his class for not wearing a kippah. Bar-Ilan is a private university, and according to its by-laws, all male students must wear a kippah. But somewhere objected that Bar-Ilan receives taxpayer funds, and therefore ought not be allowed to discriminate. I retorted that when the Israeli government takes half your money and redistributes it, then even private universities really have no choice but to accept government funds. After all, their tuition-paying students have only half their money left, and cannot afford to pay full-tuition to a university that refuses government funds. Meanwhile, Walter Block recently argued in class that if the state of Louisiana extends the Second Amendment to all public property, this ought to include Loyola University, because even though Loyola is private, it receives government funds. Block's position is thus diametrically opposed to mine. Returning to Hoppe, Hoppe specifically singles out Block as disagreeing with him on immigration. Block takes the position that public property is unowned, and that immigration must therefore be unlimited. Hoppe retorts that as the States expands itself and makes more and more of the world public, the private sphere grows smaller and smaller. If we limit freedom to the private sphere, then freedom will shrink out of sight. (I personally recall the fact that the Soviet constitution promised freedom of religion in all PRIVATE venues. Problem was, in a socialist country, private venues are hard to come by.) Therefore, Hoppe says, the government should restrict immigration AS IF all public property were private. So we see that Hoppe's argument on immigration is essentially the same as my argument on universities, and both are opposed to Block's arguments on immigration and universities.
My response:
But why are the roads owned by the state, and what does their ownership by the state mean if the state itself believes that it represents the people? Why leave it at immigration and not all laws? The state has a right to tell people not to drive on the public roads while wearing blue shoes. It presumably cannot tell people not to wear blue shoes on their private property, but it can restrict blue-shoed people's movement through the country, just like it can restrict immigrants' movement through the country (unless they jump from one piece of private property to another). Finally, the state can define all land as its own property, with everyone holding non-allodial titles. And then decide that humans can do whatever the state wants on its property. The initial presumption -- that the state owns the land or the roads -- remains to me unproven. How did it come to own them? Why should we agree with the view that it owns them? How does that view make sense? > Hoppe retorts that as the States expands itself and makes more and more of the world public, the private sphere grows smaller and smaller. If we limit freedom to the private sphere, then freedom will shrink out of sight. (I personally recall the fact that the Soviet constitution promised freedom of religion in all PRIVATE venues. Problem was, in a socialist country, private venues are hard to come by.) Therefore, Hoppe says, the government should restrict immigration AS IF all public property were private. That doesn't make any sense. Let us assume that all property, including human bodies, were private — and owned by the state. There is one part of that sentence which makes sense, but the second (after the dash) does not.
But why are the roads owned by the state, and what does their ownership by the state mean if the state itself believes that it represents the people?
But I have raised this issue before: why not think of the state as a corporation (I use this term in a loose way) that has come to own the land (it has a better claim on it than anyone else) both through its physical claim on it and through improving it (definitely covers the roads).
Hoppean solution is good for pragmatic reasons. He argues that in monarchies kings have motivation to increase capital value of their kingdoms because kingdoms were their property. Democratic government doesn't own state,so it doesn't have motivation to increase capital value,but rather to bribe people in order to win next elections. It would be better if democratic governement will think like model king. It would then agree to immigration of productive individuals and prohibit immigration of criminals etc.