Idle questions
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 15 years ago, in 2009, on the World Wide Web.
Here’s regular Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist and occasional libertarian Vin Suprynowicz, in a recent column against so-called Political Correctness
in American Universities:
Internationally renowned Austrian economics professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe used a standard textbook example of investment time preferences in a classroom lecture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, a few years back, pointing out that gay couples often invest with shorter time horizons[*] because they are less likely to have children to profit from investments that mature after they’re gone.
— Vin Suprynowicz, las Vegas Review-Journal (2009-06-07): Discussing guns dubbed
academic misconduct
Actually, what happened is that, in a lecture on time-preference in economics, Hoppe listed homosexuals alongside small children, muggers, murderers, rapists, and democratically-elected politicians, as an example of a group of people whose supposedly high time-preferences supposedly led to destructive or antisocial behavior.
Suprynowicz describes this as a standard textbook example of investment time preference.
That’s a claim that makes me curious. Is it really? Can anyone name at least one college economics textbook in common use that cites homosexuals as an example of a group characterized by high time-preferences?
* Actually, the lecture had nothing especially to do with investments
or investing
in the conventional sense of the word. Hoppe’s examples of actions driven by high time-preference included consumption of snack foods, muggings, rape, and tax increases. On the whole sorry, stupid affair see Jason Kuznicki (2005-02-12): Last Words on Hoppe and GT 2005-02-08: Hoppe and Churchill: On the Justice of Strange Bedfellows.
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Much appreciation. It is only our silent sanction which allows a ‘libertarian’ to be counted as such while advocating this kind of bigoted illiberalism:
I don’t have the time at this moment to discuss this issue at length, but what Rad Geek just said needs to be said. Often. And most importantly, by those with the stature and philosophic training necessary to do so successfully.