Open Borders is a Moderate Position

Conservatives and conservative-libertarians often argue to libertarians that border restrictions are not anti-freedom any more than keeping intruders out of your house is anti-freedom.

Which of course implicitly relies on the notion that the country is collectively owned like a house. Sounds like the ‘socialism’ they claim to abhor.

If my neighbor fills up his house with foreigners and reduces my property value, then I have been harmed.

If your neighbor fills up his house with citizens and reduces your property value, then you have been harmed. Perhaps one should address the actual problem rather than use it as an excuse to abrogate people’s rights thousands of miles away.

Or we have traffic laws because somewhere around 5% of people are sociopaths and will run over you at an intersection.

It may surprise you to learn that sociopaths aren’t swayed by traffic laws. We have traffic laws so everyone understands the common conventions in using roads. People generally obey those traffic laws because people are generally sociable and cooperative.

Is you Facebook group more like your house or country?

1. If its like your house you own it…and can give your consent at will.

2. Since it is a group, one might expect to have other members. Those members should have some collective say over who joins.

Your position on immigration is that the collective has no rights its allowed to enforce and members have no obligations to the collective will. Is this a sustainable entity.

1. Would you kick people out if they pretended to for open boarders but then posted something you disagreed with? Should your group have the right to do this? under what theory of property can you kick out an existing member(owner)?

Just trying to understand you points.

Bryan I don’t think you’re a libertarian, I think you are an anarchist. If democratic will can’t curtail some of your rights then why have any majoriterian decision making at all?

bobby,

Activity that affects your property values may make you worse off but that doesn’t justify government action in itself. But put that aside.

If your neighbor fills his house with members of a disliked group, some people may lower their bids or withdraw entirely from the market to buy your house. When the government restricts immigration, this also reduces the number of potential bidders for your house. Until you know which effect is larger, you can’t even say whether open borders would harm you or benefit you relative to the status quo.

bryan, traffic laws actually make it easier to run somebody over. If traffic laws weren’t in place, the only way to run somebody over without being convicted of homicide or manslaughter would be to demonstrate self defense, which would be nearly impossible. Under traffic laws, one can also say that the pedestrian had negligently entered the driver’s lane when the driver had the right of way, and the driver would’ve had extreme difficulty avoiding the pedestrian. Without traffic laws, a person who has extreme difficulty not killing somebody is considered to be recklessly endangering others and therefore would be convicted of manslaughter for running the pedestrian over who ran out into the middle of a highway.

Matt H, joining the group seems most comparable to granting citizenship, which is a separate issue from open borders. And people who aren’t members of the group should still be able to use services not provided by the group, right? You’ll probably say dividing things up in that way would be much too difficult, but 60% of federal spending consists of the military (mostly useless to everybody including immigrants), social security (easily kept from immigrants), and medicare (also easily kept from immigrants). Then after that are mainly welfare services for the poor such as food stamps and medicaid which can also be easily controlled. The biggest item in state spending is education by far (also easily kept from immigrants). Unless of course, the group collectively owns your house. But that seems like a stretch.

David C, to elaborate on your point regarding Social Security/Medicare, not only is it easy to prevent people from acquiring benefits without paying into the system, it is already being done today. You need to pay into the Social Security system for 40 quarters (i.e. 10 years) to be eligible for retirement benefits. Disability and survivor benefits qualify on a sliding scale, based on age. This is all true whether you are a native or a foreigner.

In all cases, to be eligible for any Medicare benefits, you either need to be a US citizen or be a legal permanent resident who has continuously resided in the US for at least 5 years. And some parts of Medicare impose the 40 quarter payroll tax requirement on top of this qualification, so you can’t get all Medicare benefits unless you meet both sets of criteria.

The welfare state catastrophe argument is one that is routinely trotted out against open borders, but this is something that we already have a good deal of empirical knowledge about. There is no evidence at all that immigration poses an existential fiscal threat to any state. There’s plenty of literature out there studying the fiscal impacts of immigration, across a variety of welfare systems, visa systems, and economies. The consensus of economists who’ve studied this is that immigration is somewhere between a fiscal neutral and a small fiscal positive.

Face it, the critics’ logos were way more witty and memorable than your team’s pious logos from Dullsville.

Instead of running all the clever people out of your contest you should have simply selected two winners: one, however stodgy*, that best matched your stated criteria; and one that best represented your opponents. You needn’t have paid any prize to the dark-side winner. Then a good time would have been had by all!

You might even have wished to adopt one of the critics’ double-entendre logos. If you had studied the science of propaganda you would know that the important thing is to get something memorable, and if a visual pun helps in that respect it is better than something uninteresting even if it seems impious.

*Or however much a crypto-swastika.

#2 is the open borders views: Individual property owners, not the government, have the right to decide whether or not to host foreigners.

I don’t think people would have the same objections to “open borders” if immigrants each had to be invited by individual citizens who then assumed full responsibility and joint liability for all their actions. There are people who object to work visas and other types of invited immigration, but I think they’re a minority of the public, and a minority of the anti-open-borders group.

Mostly what is objectionable — to me, at least — is the uninvited illegal immigrant. Sure, once he’s flouted our laws and shown up on a street corner somewhere, he can probably cadge a job off of someone because Americans are basically nice. But no one invited him in. He just showed up and camped in the lawn, and none of the residents could bring themselves to shoo him away. We had someone like that at my condo. But we had him removed eventually. 尊王攘夷.

I generally dislike comparisons between homes and borders. There are important differences between a household and a country. The most important of which is the fact that my home and everything in it is my personal property, whereas my country is a vast landmass almost none of which I own or claim any right to control.

If the immigration restrictionist position is that they do, in fact, wish to control those resources, then that is obviously an anti-liberty position and the problem is much deeper than merely immigration in isolation. How much of a country’s resources do people feel entitled to control in absence of actually owning it?

A house is not a country, but it is certainly a house.

As it stands, immigration law doesn’t just control membership in the nation. It also controls what citizens can do with their actual houses and actual offices.

…the structure that makes that control possible leads to well-defined property rights for individuals.

The structure that makes that control possible leads to the securing of well-defined property rights for individuals. The control does not lead to the rights. Indeed, North Korea does a great job of controlling the commonly held resources, but it neither recognizes, secures, nor leads to well-defined property rights for individuals.

It’s hard to see how this could be intrinsically anti-liberty.

It’s anti-liberty to use this control to violate property rights — which is exactly what the government does when it prevents you from housing or employing people on your property solely due to where they happened to have been born.

Brian,

With whom I choose to sign a contract is not typically the purview of the commons. Because the legal questions surrounding immigration only really address this one point, it is quite obviously not a matter for collective input. At least, not if you believe that contracts are a private matter, as I do.

I mean, think about it. What if I could vote you out of the country? Would I have a right to do it, even if a majority of Americans supported that idea?

Aren’t moderate ideas necessarily popular?

So open borders were moderate in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries? But they are extremist in the 20th and 21st?

Maybe it’s the people, not the idea, that have become extremist.

Here’s hoping the ‘nation is a house’ fallacy is finally beginning to be disabused.

@Brian,

Can you cite an example of a ‘contract involving public goods’?

MikeP,

You say “The structure that makes that control possible leads to the securing of well-defined property rights for individuals. The control does not lead to the rights.”

I agree. What I said was meant to be shorthand for your more detailed wording. Thanks for the clarification.

You also say “It’s anti-liberty to use this control to violate property rights.”

I agree that it can be anti-liberty to use this control, but it’s not intrinsically anti-liberty, which is what I said.

All contracts to buy or use property come with conditions, which are often meant to ensure the fullest use of the property. For example, when you purchase a ticket at an amusement park for the use of their equipment for a day, they can still require you to stand in line a wait your turn. This is doen to ensure that all those with similar contracts (tickets) are able to use the equipment.

Since no private property can be used or accessed without some use of the commons, restrictions on the use of the commons will indirectly restrict the use of your own property, but these restrictions are far from being anti-liberty if they ensure, as with amusement park lines, that access to private property is maxmized.

Finally, you say “which is exactly what the government does when it prevents you from housing or employing people on your property solely due to where they happened to have been born.”

Immigration law puts no significant restriction on your ability to house a foreigner. They can come over as tourists and stay with you if you like. You are also free to employ them whenever you like–you just have to set up your business in THEIR country. If you insist on housing or emplying them in THIS country, you are already proposing that they get to use the commons. Since you do not own the commons as an individual, you cannot give them use of it without the consent of those who do control the commons–your fellow citizens. Consequently, your fellow citizens have the right to place restrictions on your (and your guest’s) freedom to use the commons to ensure the use by all.

Open Borders sounds like a radical idea. I wouldn’t use that term. However, when I take the time to listen carefully to Bryan Caplan’s positions on this issue, I find myself in agreement.
Of course, some people might find these words radical: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No mention of borders there. It is noteworthy that immigration restrictions were not imposed by the Unites States until 99 years after Thomas Jefferson penned our Declaration of Independence.

You prove too much…

You confuse proving too much with refuting an argument that claims too much.

When someone equates a 10-person landowning partnership with a nation and asks where it breaks down, you answer.

your argument works against any constraint proposed by the majority.

My argument works against any constraint proposed by the majority as the owner of all property being considered. That was the proposition I responded to. My argument in no way denies the authority of the government to propose constraints based on something other than property rights in the entirety of the nation.

Managing a public resource according to the rule of “maximum liberty” is seldom in the interest of the people that use that resource. A public manager placed in charge of a swimming pool would never consider the rule of maximum liberty over the pool to best serve the interest of the public.

We can argue that public resources shouldn’t be public. That doesn’t mean that leaving them as if they were unowned is a good idea.

Presumably, if we believe these resources should not be public, then we believe that for a reason. Namely, we believe that the private administration of resources such as roads would lead to an order that better serves the welfare of sympathetic human groups (I do not care about all humans equally, nor do I think one should. I hold some regard for every human, but more for those that share my chosen values and are able to strengthen and enrich their presence in the world. I’m not too sympathetic towards cannibals, for example. Although they are human, we don’t see eye to eye).

If resources are not in our preferred private configuration, that does not mean they should return to the law of “maximum liberty”. Rather, they should be placed in the care of an intelligent manager, someone who governs the resources in the best interests of those same groups.

Just because your local swimming hole is owned by the city government doesn’t mean that teenagers should be allowed to host drunken orgies in the kiddie pool after dark.

MikeP,

You say “We had to destroy access to private property in order to maximize it?”

Who said anything about destroying access? If you think this addresses any point I made, you’re not paying attention.

You also say “Restrictions on the use of those rights of way are restrictions on the fundamental property rights themselves.”

Nonsense. Requiring people to drive only on the right side of the road is a restriction on fundamental property rights? Most restrictions on roads (to use only one narrow example) have no impact on property rights whatsoever. You keep making very broad statements that are clearly wrong.

Finally you say “But government does not own the rights of way and cannot legitimately forbid travel along it except to protect a compelling public interest.”

Good, we finally agree. Thanks for saying what I’ve already been arguing. Likewise, the government does not own ANY of the commons and should not restrict its use without a compelling public interest.

This is therefore true of immigration as well. But it also implies that, GIVEN A COMPELLING PUBLIC INTEREST, government CAN restrict immigration. It therefore also follows that border restrictions cannot be considered fundamentally immoral or unjust, as Caplan wants to argue. Restrictions of this kind are permissable and even morally required as long as there exists a compelling public interest.

Please understand that I am not arguing for immigration restrictions–merely pointing out that the authority to restrict borders is as legitimate as the authority to restrict ANY part of the commons, and that this authority is accepted by all except anarchists.

@Brian

Firstly, my problem is that most of the arguments against relaxed immigration do not actually defend a ‘compelling public interest’. There’s a lot of noise about ‘use of services’, and ‘eroding culture’, but I’ve not seen many of the issues presented take into account the adaptability of either the immigrant or the native population. There does not appear to be much threat, frankly, to the native population, therefore it is not compelling (to me, at least). Whatever ‘threats’ there might be, they do not appear to me to be nearly as threatening to life and limb as the threats which tend to face immigrants in their home countries.

(+1 to LD Bottorff who provides an example of one of the few honestly compelling positions, and why the State restricting immigration can ultimately fail at solving the potential problem).

And secondly, that last sentence is what makes this a moral issue. The State may claim the power to authorize entry, but such a claim is morally wrong, just as it was morally wrong for States to enforce Slavery. In both cases the freedom of a human being is arbitrarily limited. In 1840’s American South, I would guess that owning humans was a keen public interest (if you asked white landholders). Therefore, in the South, one would likely find a huge amount of public support for the States enforcement of laws regarding slavery. But was that authority moral, right or good in an ultimate sense? I do not believe so.

There is no danger to our ‘culture’ or ‘institutions’. There is no threat to native’s liberty, private property rights, or freedom of association. There are some marginal and minor inconveniences to native populations in the wake of relaxed immigration. None of us will face ignominious demise. None of our lives will be dramatically stripped of prosperity, property or liberty. Nor will such things erode, for even a minority, over time. There is no comparison to the negatives that we *might* face, and the dangers and depravity many immigrants actually face, without the ability – due to our border restrictions – to choose a better life.

I would not dismiss the importance of culture too easily, and nor would I dismiss the danger to it posed by large amounts of immigration. The work of Robert Putnam shows that multicultural societies have reduced social trust, even within social groups. Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart” shows the effects – a decline of the non-governmental social organizations that libertarians count on to provide order and safety in absence of government programs. These include reduced participation in fraternal and political organizations, reduced volunteering and serving on the PTA, and even a decline in the family itself. As the country becomes more multicultural, the elites who can afford to do so retreat into their bubbles, and the healthy social values of society retreat with them.

Culture is a public good, maybe the most important of them all. A country that follows libertarian immigration policy will not be libertarian because liberty is harmed by atomization. People demand food, shelter, safety, and a future for their children. People with strong culture – including many layers of social institutions outside of government, have a low demand for government. Atomized (individualized) people live on the edge of great risk, and turn to the government in fear.

If you want to roll back government in America, reverse the trend of single parenting. The children of two parents do better in school, commit less crime, and are less likely to be poor. The voting demand for “freedom” and “small government” comes mostly from two parent families. Yet today, the two-parent family is approaching the minority, at only 60%. A single parent family is vulnerable, not self-sufficient, and demands government goods.

Libertarianism is individualistic, which is necessarily atomistic, breaking apart social trust. Libertarianism begins with the proposition that there are no differences between human populations, if it considers humans in groups at all! Population is just a single variable in an equation, call it N. N can raise or lower, and that is it. We might summarize this model with a bastardization of Wheeler’s quote about black holes – “humans have no hair”.

A cure for this viewpoint is to read more history than economics. History teaches us that wealth accumulation and technology accelerated in some cultures and not others. Peoples living close to each other can have vastly different cultures, and we owe a lot of the modern world specifically to the merchant cultures of the Dutch and the English. The accumulation of wealth depends on social trust, on people meeting each other and swapping ideas, forming friendships, partnerships, and clubs. When those that can afford to retreat into suburban bubbles, I feel that is bad for the future.

@guthrie

No. The problem is that the formation of social structures intermediate between the state and the individual is correlated with cultural homogeneity. Multiculturalism leads to a retreat from the public sphere and even a reduction in trust among one’s own cultural group. Again, this is from Putnam and Murray.

Whether anarchy is paradise or horror largely depends on the level of structure of the preexisting culture, whether it is a sandbox or an oak tree. I am certain that Mormons and Jews would easily survive and thrive in event of a catastrophic collapse in government. I am equally certain that secular liberal individualists, the most electronically connected and physically isolated generation in the history of the world, would wither away like a plant with shallow roots in a Summer drought.

The post-libertarian awakening is triggered by the realization that good governance cannot be boiled down to a set of simple rules that abstract away human variation. Some groups may well mix, and even complement each other nicely, while others may not. It is a sad awakening, a dark enlightenment, because humans want to believe that all of the world is as knowable as the basic laws of Physics. But if that is not the world we have been given, then it is a dangerous delusion. Libertarians have forgotten that the study of social reality is a *dismal science*, seduced by the appeal of easy answers.

@Jack Crassus,
I agree with your critique of libertarianism that it disregards the culture. Actually, it disregards the political nature of man, and culture is only one component of the equation.

The political nature of man divides mankind into different nations and thus relative to me, other men are either neighbors (i.e. sharing same culture or moral premises) or strangers (not sharing moral premises).

I can talk with my neighbor, can argue with him since we share moral premises. But with one that does not share moral premises, how can I talk?

Libertarianism entails or demands that we have no neighbors, that it is wrong to envision a moral consensus around us. That is, it’s a philosophy suited to a frontier but not to a city.