Today’s my birthday, and I have so much to celebrate. Foremost on my mind: My first graphic novel, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, is finally available for pre-order for the insanely low price of $13.99! And it would really make my birthday if you pre-ordered right now… for yourself and anyone else in your life who’d appreciate it.
I had a good feeling about this project from the beginning… and then I got my absolute first choice for artist, Zach Weinersmith of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. I’ve never had more fun writing a book, and I hope readers can feel the joy. Because this isn’t a conventional political book of anger and enemies. It’s a book about a tremendously underrated economic and moral opportunity that decent people of every description can and should embrace.
Open Borders is a non-fiction graphic novel. If you’re unfamiliar with the genre, picture a comic-book documentary. While the form is light-hearted, the content is thoroughly researched and carefully documented. I strive to steelman the critics. I’ve got chapters on all the leading objections to open borders: economic, fiscal, cultural, and political. The book has a major section on immigration and IQ, and discusses ancestry research in detail. I argue with Milton Friedman on immigration and the welfare state, Socrates about Western civilization, and Mark Krikorian about backlash.
While the book is packed with arguments, you can easily read it cover-to-cover (minus the References) in two fun-filled hours. Indeed, out of all my books, Open Borders delivers the most information per minute of reader time. How is this possible? Because combining words and pictures allows me to communicate far more economically than I can communicate with words alone.
Who’s the target audience? Everyone from curious laymen to researchers specializing in immigration. And due to the format, “laymen” even includes precocious kids as young as seven. I’m not kidding: My youngest kids kept reading it over my shoulder as I was writing it.
False modesty aside, the book is funny. Professional humorist Zach Weinersmith helped me with my jokes, and added many of his own to the script. Insiders will find some extra amusement when they meet Weinersmithified versions of real-world characters like Mike Huemer, Michael Clemens, Alex Nowrasteh, and Fabio Rojas – not to mention my whole family. And despite my personal lack of religiosity, I even managed to work two lively Bible stories into the narrative.
Above all, I consider Open Borders the most persuasive book I’ve ever written. I know what I’m advocating is radical and scary. I know I bear the burden of proof – and I gladly accept it. I know that political discourse has gone from bad to worse over the last decade. My goal, however, is to be part of the solution. I don’t want to demonize, humiliate, or “call out” people who disagree with me about immigration. I want to listen to them, answer their objections to their own satisfaction, and be friends. An impossible dream? Probably. But Open Borders is me doing my best to make that dream a reality.
P.S. Here are two of my favorite pages.
READER COMMENTS
Niko Davor
Apr 8 2019 at 12:03pm
Reading Caplan’s 2014 post debating Krikorian, there are some very strong and obvious counter arguments:
7d. This is really a cheap shot. People, regardless of immigration background, want to move to the high opportunity growth areas.
8. By this logic, selective government universities are “anti-student”. Caplan has strongly endorsed universities moral right to exclude students on any terms they want for any reason they want without owing anyone an explanation. I’ve read Caplan’s “Case Against Education”, but Caplan does endorse and defend the university’s inherent nature as an exclusive social culture.
I’ve pre-ordered the book on Amazon. Amazon lists an October 29 delivery date; is that wrong? The pages shown feature old arguments I’ve heard repeated quite a bit. I hope to hear some actually new arguments in the full book.
Nicholas Conrad
Apr 8 2019 at 3:25pm
Happy birthday Brian! Just pre-ordered the hardback edition.
Geoffrey N Brand
Apr 8 2019 at 3:44pm
Just ordered.
Happy Birthday.
Thaomas
Apr 8 2019 at 4:28pm
I realize that you almost certainly did not write the blurb:
But I think it is seriously misleading. First the argument for more immigration has always been about benefiting US residents. Most economists, at lease, also recognize that the additional benefit to the immigrants themselves ought to be part of our judgement. One only needs to be “humanitarian” enough not to let hostility to immigrants cloud the economic arguments for more.
On the other hand, I doubt that you have made a convincing case for unrestricted immigration. It would be such an out of sample estimate and counter to the intuition that although the returns to more immigration are positive at today’s levels and those of recent decades, there could be diminishing and possible eventually negative returns to immigration.
Tim Van Allen
Apr 9 2019 at 1:25am
“Respecting people’s right to live and work where they want”
Where does this right come from? You just assume it as a basic ethical principle, but this has never been an accepted ethical principle in any culture, for very good reasons. Labeling people who disagree with you as “morally obtuse” isn’t an argument.
“Open borders will unlock unprecedented abundance by freeing global labor markets”
You can’t unilaterally free global labor markets by opening US borders. You’re conflating two very different things. Open borders for Western societies is not global open borders. Global open borders would not generate abundance, but it’s not even on the table, so it’s irrelevant. Unilateral open borders allows closed border countries to dump unwanted people on open border countries.
Stephen Lynx
Apr 9 2019 at 4:43pm
Immigration is a privilege, not a right. The immigrant didn’t pay taxes to the nation he is immigrating to. He didn’t help putting the nation in a place where he would want to immigrate to it. You can’t just wave your hands and say “we owne people”. Immigration, as any other policy, should benefit the people who work for the greatness of the nation first and foremost.
Benjamin Cole
Apr 9 2019 at 10:18pm
There seems on irresistible urge to sacralize immigration, in Western academic circles.
Scott Sumner has penned in these pages that the US is so bad at building infrastructure that it shouldn’t even try. I guess that is a libertarian viewpoint, btw, and certainly the US is not building much.
Net, the US appears able to produce no more than 800,000 to 900,000 housing units a year.
So, where to put another 100 million people?
I will say this: if we can get rid of the minimum wage and open up the borders, I think we can install AOC in the White House as soon as she meets the Constitutional minimum-age qualification.
And we will deserve her.
IronSig
Apr 10 2019 at 11:01am
B.Cole, you seem to be conflating America’s private sector with the snarled corruption of public road construction.
There’s some missing steps in your logic that ending minimum wage mandates and allowing anyone without a disease or record of serious crimes (rape, theft, murder) to come work and/or live in America will lead to Pres. O-C. If you think that these will prime voters to consider more socialized consumption or just prefer the Congressgal’s superficialities in the White House, I’d like to directed toward your evidence.
So far, you’re not persuasive to a guy trying his best to think of unintended consequences in Caplan’s preferred reform.
John Gault
Apr 10 2019 at 12:58pm
Ironsig. There isn’t a true public road construction in this country anymore. It’s all been privatized and it is corrupt. Ex. Massachusetts big dig or the bridge to nowhere. And where in any of this text are there limitations/criteria on open borders immigration. By the very nature of it there effectively aren’t any boarders. So you are for this and that is fine but your insertion of your own narrative into Mr. Coles response is disingenuous.
Thomas Sewell
Apr 12 2019 at 3:24am
Judging by the current population of immigrants, surely some of those 100M people will be construction workers?
The U.S. can build as much housing as there is demand for and is legally allowed. There is also plenty of room. This is a ridiculous argument against legal immigration.
Christopher Moore
Apr 11 2019 at 2:47am
Although I disagree with you, I’m really only ordering this book so I can hear an intelligent person’s argument rather than left-wing demagogues.
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