Quite a few people consciously favor “free markets, but not free migration.” When questioned, many explain that unlike free markets in goods, free markets in labor have “broad social effects.” At this point, I have to suppress my urge to exclaim, “Are you out of your minds?” They’re right, of course, that free migration has broad social effects. They’re crazy, however, to imagine that free markets in goods lack these effects. Indeed, at least within the observed range, ordinary market forces have changed society far more than immigration.
Start with international trade. If the U.S. were a closed economy, manufacturing would still have shrunk, but it would remain a major source of employment. The Rust Belt would be doing far better – and less eager for a populist political savior. Opioid and alcohol use among the working class would likely be considerably lower. Families would be more stable. College attendance and the college premium would have risen more modestly. More speculatively, church attendance would be higher, and nerd culture less dominant.
The broader effects of international trade are however dwarfed by the broader effects of all the technological progress that market forces unleash. I remember life before the Internet. When I was a teenager, I was almost completely intellectually isolated. Overcoming boredom was a constant challenge. There were no cyberbullies; we had real bullies instead. When I wanted to publicly speak my mind, I wrote letters to the newspaper. I had zero friends outside the U.S. My parents and I were routinely out of contact for hours at a time. I still feel young, but I remember a world that most EconLog readers would find primitive.
Nor is the Internet an isolated example. The automobile has broad social effects. So did household appliances. So did modern contraception. Obviously.
The pro-market, anti-migration thinkers could demur, “Yes, we all know that. Our real complaint is that the broader effects of immigration are generally bad, while the broader effects of international trade and technological progress are generally good.” But if that’s the real complaint, I say we’re entitled to a careful accounting of these broader social effects. Who has even bothered to compile lists of these broader effects, much less try to measure them?
If no one is doing the math, why would anyone think that broad social changes are benign? By the power of hindsight bias! Once a major social change happens, people just get used to it, with little doubt about whether the change was in fact a net positive.
Immigration is, of course, the main exception. We can’t imagine going back to a world without the Internet, automobiles, or contraception. It doesn’t ultimately matter whether their broad social effects are good or bad; we just have to live them them, because turning back the clock would require draconian tyranny. We can, however, imagine going back to a world with near-zero immigration, so fretting about the broader effects of immigration has great appeal. Wouldn’t that require draconian tyranny, too? Well, since the victims aren’t fellow citizens, no.
My personal view is that the broad social effects of international trade, technological progress, and immigration are all, on balance, positive. For immigration, I’ve done my homework; for trade and tech, however, I’m only guessing. What’s clear, however, is that broader social effects are ubiquitous. Selectively invoking “broader effects” may be rhetorically effective, but it does not make you wise.
READER COMMENTS
Phil H
Jul 10 2019 at 8:37am
I agree with you on immigration, but if you want the arguments unpacking…
First, most importantly, I’m convinced that a large fraction of anti-immigration sentiment is just racism, and it’s a mistake to attempt to explain it in any other way. Ockham’s razor. If you want to be effective in campaigning for more immigration, easily the most effective thing you can do is work out what kind of interventions reduce racism. The economic arguments aren’t driving this.
But there is also a significant fraction that thinks like this: a country is not just its formal institutions, it’s a set of conventions, beliefs and shared practices. If a very large number of people from other countries come in, even if our formal institutions don’t change (immediately), the shared beliefs and habits that constitute this country will be lost, or at least massively diluted. And in America, by many measures the world’s richest and most successful country, that would be a catastrophe.
I think you have to offer some answer to that. The whole point about these informal conventions, beliefs and practices is that they can be quite hard to verbalise – which is not to exempt your interlocutors from the responsibility for explaining what they mean, but to offer an explanation of why they may sometimes find it hard.
Mark
Jul 10 2019 at 9:25am
I think the rebuttal to that argument is to ask people to list what these purported shared beliefs and habits are, and address them each on a case-by-case basis (whether they are really an important ingredient to American success, and whether immigrants really dilute them). It shouldn’t be that hard to verbalize, for example I’d argue that some of these shared beliefs and habits include not bribing government officials, religious toleration, seeing oneself as middle-class, being ambitious, etc. I think the vast majority of immigrants pose no problem on any of these dimensions, and even help on some such as ambition. Also I’d point out that the late 1800s was really when the US became the world’s richest and most successful country, and that was a time of open borders and a similar rate of immigration to today.
Phil H
Jul 10 2019 at 11:51am
Hi, Mark. Yes, in college debating terms, I think that’s correct. People may raise things like speaking English (immigrants learn it); Christianity (immigrants from Mexico at least are probably more religious); entrepreneurship; protestant work ethic… And for all of these qualities you can find answers to demonstrate that more immigrants probably wouldn’t damage them.
But this sounds like a classic kind of argument that doesn’t persuade people. I wonder if there are better ways… Perhaps reflecting on Canada? Is it right that there are few restrictions on Canadians wishing to visit and work in the USA? And that hasn’t hurt the country? For people who are worried that their community and home will disappear, it feels like you need to offer something more visceral than a list of sociological factors and research. Perhaps more confidence in the ability of our own culture to endure?
nobody.really
Jul 10 2019 at 5:49pm
I don’t disagree exactly. Yet sometimes I sense people say “This is caused by racism” to mean “We don’t need to try to understand the perspectives of people who espouse this view; we can dismiss their perspectives.” And I think that economics provides a lens to aid understanding in damn near anything.
Like Caplan, I sense that much aversion to immigration is just one more manifestation to people’s aversion to change. The world does not conform to many people’s expectations: these people feel that they lack the status they expected to have. I surmise the largest dynamic here reflects the declining power of labor relative to capital. Remedies such as eliminating all automation strike people as unthinkable, whereas remedies such as “Blame those new people with brown faces” seem much easier to grasp.
To put this into economic terms, energy is scarce. Khaneman got the Nobel Prize in part for observing that the human mind economizes on energy by having evolved a quick, intuitive mechanism for addressing most problems, and saving its laborious, deliberative mechanisms for only the hardest problems. Understanding the unseen structural dynamics of the labor market requires a lot of work by that deliberative mechanism. In contrast, the cheap, intuitive mechanism can spot the correlation between the growth in brown people and the loss of status, and quickly draw a causal conclusion. Easy-peesy.
That said….
People enjoy many more SHARED resources than libertarians such as Caplan like to acknowledge. We develop expectations about the use of “the public square.” Novelty frustrates these expectations.
To put this into terms libertarians might understand, people value property in part as a means to controlling uncertainty (about the future), ‘cuz people need to make plans based on (future) expectations. These same dynamics manifest in people’s expectations about the use of “the public square”–even though they have no explicit property claims. People who feel that their “way of life” is under threat feel victimized; they experience this as a loss, their lack of explicit property title notwithstanding. And to return to Kahneman’s prospect theory, people become risk-seeking (a/k/a aggressive) under such circumstances.
It is not my purpose to justify racism or to argue that it’s an optimal frame of reference, but rather to put this aspect of it into an economically understandable context.
Joe Munson
Jul 10 2019 at 9:32pm
I often wonder what if a magic genie waves his magic wand and made everybody understand that immigrants don’t cost natives jobs or salary.
In day to day online/offline conversations with normal people about immigration through they always repeat the mantra that it would cost natives jobs, when I link them to econ articles pointing out the consensus, that this is indeed not the case, they don’t switch to more reasonable arguments, they just repeat ad ad nauseum that immigrants bring down wages.
Cooper H
Jul 10 2019 at 9:03am
I agree with Phil H (I hope I did not misinterpret his point). I was born in the United States and have lived here my entire life. I see Europe changing and have seen other areas in the US change based solely on their immigrant populations. I am worried that the American future, work ethic, and dream may be thrown out for the dream that people have in the country they came from. This is more or less happening in Texas right now as people move out of California and to Texas due to cheap property, warm weather, etc. Texas may be blue by 2020, let alone purple (as opposed to its current state of red- meaning Republican).
I fear that collectivism becomes a norm in America, in a country that was built off of the individual and the importance of individual political, financial, and lifestyle freedom. I don’t think that immigrants will “take over” the country, and I recognize that immigrants are often the scapegoats whenever something goes wrong. I think immigrants should balance their native culture with American culture, but favor American culture more than 50%. If immigrants do not put American ideals in front of their native ideals, America will change for the worse.
I support immigration, especially in a time where the native-born-US population is shrinking and immigration is needed to keep the population growing. Immigration may be a key to supporting the boomers with social security, despite how much I hate social security. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/12/21/us-population-growth-hits-80-year-low-capping-off-a-year-of-demographic-stagnation/
nobody.really
Jul 11 2019 at 11:30am
Indeed–especially illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants often submit fake Social Security numbers when getting hired. The employer then sets aside FICA taxes from the workers paycheck to finance a future Social Security payment–but since the number is fake, the employee will never collect on the payment. In short, the (relatively poor) illegal immigrants are helping to finance transfer payments to (relatively rich) American retirees.
Tom
Jul 11 2019 at 7:26pm
I chose to settle in America because I valued its individual political, financial, and lifestyle freedom, and did not care for the collectivism I saw causing failure in Europe.
Today, if I were starting over it’s likely I wouldn’t be able to get into the US. Why? Because collectivists, who want “us” to control the country, would keep individualists like me out.
I think nativists should balance their collectivist culture with American culture, but favor American culture more than 50%.
Just sayin’.
Nick
Jul 10 2019 at 8:39pm
I read somewhere, I think here on Econlog itself, something along the lines of “Internet is the greatest experiment in anarchist markets we’ve ever had”.
Of course free trade and markets are good!
Imagine asking each country to develop its own version of Google, AWS, Visual Studio, GitHub and iPhone. That’s retarded, the benefits FAR exceed the cost incurred because of the “jobs” lost.
Open borders can only be good along those lines!
Kurt Schuler
Jul 10 2019 at 9:38pm
In Bryan Caplan’s view, everyone is apparently like Bryan Caplan: reasonable, pacifist, not religious. Those of us who don’t live a bubble know differently.
If cultures were all equally tolerant, equally rewarding of honest effort, and equally successful, people would not be any more desperate to come to the United States from Nicaragua than they are from Norway. Caplan assumes that the successful cultures are so robust that they can take any number of immigrants from anywhere. My view is closer to the opposite: even a small number of immigrants whose culture has strongly incompatible aspects with the existing culture can be on net harmful to the existing population. Consider what is happening to Jews in Western Europe. Does anyone think that doubling or quadrupling the number of immigrants would improve that?
Nick
Jul 11 2019 at 12:50am
Huh?
You really think culture determines prosperity? Goes against all the understanding in economics we’ve gained.
What causes a successful country? Time and again we see the same, rule of law, generally free markets and a reasonably concerned and active populace.
So unless you’ve got a solid reason as to deny the world a huge economic boom, yeah, Caplan’s ideas must be considered good.
Kurt Schuler
Jul 11 2019 at 8:46pm
The “rule of law, generally free markets and a reasonably concerned and active populace” that you cite don’t fall out of the sky. They arise from … a culture.
Also, the greatest gains in well-being come from countries with bad economic policies adopting better ones, not from migration. Emigration as a safety valve can in fact help perpetuate bad policies by reducing the cost that voters or rulers bear for making them.
nobody.really
Jul 11 2019 at 9:15am
A widely held view, embraced by many wise men, including this one:
Benjamin Franklin, “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind” (1751)
Likewise, we can recall the largest lynching in our nation’s history, when in 1891 the good citizens of New Orleans rose up against those swarthy immigrants–Italians–who brought such foreign norms with them that they obviously could never assimilate.
See also Noel Ignatiev’s How The Irish Became White.
Kurt Schuler
Jul 11 2019 at 8:30pm
I gave an example of violence today against an existing group that has been worsened by immigration. You responded with an example of violence against immigrants more than 100 years ago. That is not responsive.
nobody.really
Jul 12 2019 at 3:29am
Well, yes and no.
First, if you read more of the author’s posts, you’ll find that he has long complained of home-grown antisemitism from European-born Europeans. Immigration is not the source of his concerns; it’s only one more exacerbating factor.
Moreover, the violence against the Italians in the 1890s was arguably triggered by violence BY SOME Italians. Citizens were justifiably alarmed by Italian organized crime families–especially when the police chief got killed. Less justifiable was the practice of blaming an entire ethnic group for the admittedly wrongful deeds of the few. But that is precisely the argument you wish to advance, no?
My point is that even groups that are regarded as incorrigibly antisocial and resistant to assimilation still manage to assimilate.
I don’t mean to deny that there are problems in the meantime, or that minority groups bear the brunt of those problems. But what is the alternative? “You know all that stuff we said after WWII about not turning away desperate refugees? Who were we kidding? Screw that stuff; let’s tear down the Holocaust museum and build a new Chipotle….”
Jon Murphy
Jul 11 2019 at 9:32am
The comments here seem to be missing part of the point, namely that trade in goods also affects culture, conventions, norms, etc (however we wish to define that). Trade in labor is not fundamentally different than trade in goods. Labor votes no more than goods vote; it is the owners of labor and goods that vote. We must remember that, at all times, we are talking about people.
nobody.really
Jul 11 2019 at 11:44am
Uh … good point about how both immigrants and imports change culture. But you lose me after that.
Labor differs in meaningful ways from goods, even as a factor of production. That’s why we have so many more labor economists than soybean economists. For example, as Joe Munson might emphasize, imported labor creates its own demand for other things, including other labor–thus, many (but not all) studies suggest that immigrants create more jobs than they occupy.
Moreover, while Japanese robots are becoming remarkably lifelike, I don’t expect any of them will marry my daughter. If I were inclined to obsess about this matter, I’d have much greater cause to worry about immigrants than imports.
Finally, a slab of imported steel will never acquire the power to vote; in contrast, some immigrants will. If you had cause to believe that immigrants will be disproportionately likely to favor some policies/parties than others, this might provide a perfectly rational basis for having different opinions about immigration and imports.
Jon Murphy
Jul 11 2019 at 2:10pm
You shouldn’t worry about a robot marrying your daughter any more than you should worry about “labor” marrying your daughter. Neither are people. The owner of the robot, the owner of the labor is what matters. We are discussing people.
Labor is not fundamentally different from capital. If there are more labor economists than agricultural economists*, that does not imply things are fundamentally different. There may be other, superficial, differences, sure, but not fundamental.
Further, if Joe Munson were to say that, I would point out he is incorrect. Labor importation no more creates additional demand than goods importation (to see why, consider the Law of Comparative Advantage).
*I change the example here because the way you defined it, it will always be true: the former is a general category and the latter is a specific category within the larger category, so the comparison doesn’t mean much. It would be like saying baseball is different from pitching because there are more baseball players than pitchers.
nobody.really
Jul 11 2019 at 3:43pm
Uh … really?
Let’s imagine that the owner of the robot resides in the US. It’s far from clear that importing robots has any bearing on this person’s likelihood of marrying my US-based daughter.
Alternatively, let’s imagine the owner resides outside in Japan. That person will be much less likely to marry my daughter simply because he has less opportunity to encounter my daughter. But if we then imagine that this Japanese person then immigrates to the US, the opportunity for encountering my US-based daughter increases quite a bit.
Doubtless, throughout history some people have married others whom they have barely encountered and who reside on some other continent–but I suspect this is the minority of circumstances. And when this does occur, I suspect it mostly occurs when one party immigrates to the other party’s continent. At the risk of appearing dogmatic about marriage, shipping goods back and forth does not seem like a viable substitute for physical proximity, even if we acknowledge the humanity of the people doing the shipping. In sum, shipping is not ‘shipping.
Yup, nations/firms that produce X relatively cheaply will trade with nations/firms that can’t, freeing up resources in those other firms to pursue some other productive activity. Likewise for laborers that can produce Y relatively cheaply.
BUT IN ADDITION TO THE DYNAMIC OF COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE, laborers sleep. This stimulates demand for housing where the laborers live. If they live in the US, then this stimulates the demand in the US. If they live outside the US, then it doesn’t.
Thus, the law of comparative advantage, while applicable, does not address the whole dynamic. There is more in heav’n and earth than is drempt of in your economy.
Jon Murphy
Jul 11 2019 at 4:47pm
Yup. I don’t see anything in your response to suggest otherwise. Perhaps I don’t understand your example.
The owners of labor sleep. As do the owners of capital. And, by our definition, they live in the US, too. Again, nothing unique going on here.
nobody.really
Jul 11 2019 at 10:36pm
This statement does nothing to defend your claim that “Labor importation no more creates additional demand [in the US] than goods importation.” A Chinese steelworker creates a demand for housing in China, even if the resulting steel in exported to the US. A Chinese steelworker who immigrates to the US creates demand for housing in the US, even if the resulting steel displaces imports from China. Changes in the steel supply may increase the SUPPLY of housing; it’s not obvious how it influences demand.
Has this argument reached the point of silliness yet?
nobody.really
Jul 11 2019 at 3:52pm
Which form of capital exhibits a <a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_bending_supply_curve_of_labour”>backwards-bending supply curve</a>?
nobody.really
Jul 11 2019 at 3:55pm
Er … Take 2: Which form of capital exhibits a backwards-bending supply curve?
Jon Murphy
Jul 11 2019 at 4:44pm
Any of them can. The theoretical conditions necessary for a backward-bending supply curve are not limited to just labor. Just as the owners of labor may decide to provide fewer services at higher prices given the trade-offs s/he faces, so may the owners of capital. Nothing unique about that situation.
nobody.really
Jul 11 2019 at 5:27pm
I’m intrigued. Can you cite any examples?
Jon Murphy
Jul 11 2019 at 7:22pm
No, but I can’t cite any actual examples of a backward-bending supply curve, either. All I am saying is the conditions that govern the supply curve of labor is the same that govern the supply curves of goods: opportunity cost (and thus marginal cost). If labor can have non-linear marginal cost, there’s no reason to think goods can’t either.
nobody.really
Jul 11 2019 at 10:06pm
Forgive me, I have to wonder whether you’re really getting this.
Here’s the backward’s bending labor curve in a nutshell: As compensation to labor grows and laborers get RICHER, they begin to behave like richer people and consume more superior goods–such as LEISURE. That is, they cut back on the hours worked. For example, consider the vast sums that producers offer to the stars of popular, long-running TV series (e.g. Seinfeld). These are sums that any of the actors would have gladly accepted when they were poorer–for example, during the first seasons of their shows. Yet now that they are rich, they feel free to decline to continue doing the work that they had done previously–vast incentives notwithstanding.
In contrast, as the return on producing steel increases, the people who own equity in a steel mill have no incentive to see that production reduced; quite the opposite. The equity owners do not have to choose between more earnings and more leisure because they are investing capital, not labor (a/k/a time).
Bottom line: Labor differs in meaningful ways from other factors of production.
Jon Murphy
Jul 11 2019 at 10:36pm
You’re right. I’m not getting your point at all. All you’ve done is say you imagine opportunity costs are different for owners of labor and owners of capital. That’s true but irrelevant. Nothing in theory states that supply curves of goods cannot be backward bending. You can apply the exact same logic to both situations. Labor does not intrinsically face a backward-bending supply curve anymore so than goods production does. It all depends on the relevant costs faced by the owner of the resource.
The point being made here is very simple: you need to treat all people as they appear in your model under the same assumptions. If the owners of labor can influence culture, so can the owners of goods.
Tom
Jul 11 2019 at 7:31pm
And, if she wants to marry this person, do you really want to force her to emigrate to do it?
John Fembup
Jul 12 2019 at 6:40am
I’m a retired business executive, not an economist. Yet it still seems to me obvious that a free market does not mean whatever one trades at the market is “free”. Because the point of a market to bring willing buyers and willing sellers together so that they each may voluntarily trade value for value. Or, if that’s not true, I really don’t understand markets.
A market for labor facilitates trading between workers who offer value to employers (their skills) in exchange for an employers offer of value to workers (their employment) .
And wouldn’t that same concept apply to migration? In other words, immigration is not – and I think ought not to be – “free”. Anyone wishing to migrate to another country must somehow trade value for value. The value to the migrant is entry to the country of choice. The value to that country is assurance that the person entering will be or become a “good” citizen – by meeting the criteria its government has set for migrants e.g., a valid passport or visa; health clearance; criminal clearance; maybe even occupational preferences, etc.
That may not be exactly the point of your comment above, but seems to me the central the idea of a market as a voluntary exchange of value for value is about the same for labor and for immigration.
Jon Murphy
Jul 12 2019 at 9:47am
You’re absolutely correct in everything you say up until this point:
The value of immigration is not to the government. The value is to the country. Immigrants do come here and there is an exchange of value: they work. They work hard, too. They also buy goods and services, which means they provide value.
You’re right to say “free” markets do not imply zero monetary price. “Free” here means within the bounds of justice. We’re applying the exact same concept to immigration; immigration is free so long as the individuals satisfy the rules of justice.
John Fembup
Jul 13 2019 at 10:44pm
Jon, I must be having a bad day. You said
”The value of immigration is not to the government. The value is to the country. ”
I said “The value to that country is assurance that the person entering will be or become a “good” citizen . . .”
I didn’t say “value to the government”. I said “value to the country”.
So I don’t understand why you feel we differ.
You also remark “immigration is free so long as the individuals satisfy the rules of justice.”
In my world, anything that has a condition attached to it is not really “free”. The condition is a price. Which is why I added “ – by meeting the criteria its government has set for migrants”. Aren’t rules of justice (at least in this conversation) equivalent to criteria set by government?
So I don’t understand why you feel we differ on this point, either.
Thanks
nobody.really
Jul 12 2019 at 11:59am
Here’s my take: Let’s say I entirely agree with John Fembup that free markets should entail a voluntary exchange of value for value. And for that reason, I’m going to charge Fembup $1 for each breath he takes. After all, I expect he values each breath much more than $1, so I’m really offering him a bargain.
Now, I suspect Fembrup wouldn’t deny the value he places on breathing. But he might question my presumed authority to control his air supply. It’s not a question of VALUE; it’s a question of OWNERSHIP. And behold: When the supply of something is vast and unconstrained, the market value for even extremely valuable things such as air falls to $0. That’s supply and demand.
Likewise, the question we now confront is this: Who OWNS the right to control border crossing? Quite obviously, this right has a value, as evidenced by the price people are willing to pay smugglers to enter the country. But libertarians argue that the right to move (at least, on public thoroughfares) is akin to the right to breathe: It’s unjust to artificially constrain the supply and extort money from people for exercising this right.
But clearly other people disagree. Thus, I fear Jon Murphy’s statement that were merely talking about “justice” won’t clarify matters much, because people have different concepts of justice. We’re not all libertarians.
Other (economists?) will set aside questions of justice and injustice, as seek to determine which policies optimize things such as global productivity, domestic productivity, etc. For what it’s worth, these studies tend to show that greater immigration tends to increase such variables.
Jon Murphy
Jul 12 2019 at 12:33pm
Value cannot be separated from ownership, so your distinction doesn’t really help matters.
Abd yes, differing definitions of justice exist, but that’s not relevant here. The point, rather, is that the definition of free John uses applies to both cases; there isn’t a change that John thinks there is.
John Fembup
Jul 13 2019 at 10:50pm
Is that your idea of a market? It’s my idea of extortion. When you own all the air, come back with your offer. 😎
Swami
Jul 12 2019 at 12:15pm
“Broad social effects” is basically a way of stating that everything we do has side effects, externalities or wakes. It is certainly true that free trade has positive and negative side effects. My support for free trade is that over the long haul it self amplifies prosperity. Yes, short term, it can lead to negative side effects such as localized pockets of creative destruction, but longer term my take on the issue is that it consistently leads to more gains than losses.
Pragmatically though, most developed states have found that modest controls on excessive creative destruction can be best, as it can keep the population from rebelling in a massive prisoners dilemma. Thus what we actually see in pretty much every developed state is semi free trade. A compromise rather than some kind of ideal.
My take on open borders (the immigration equivalent of free trade) is that it would lead to a massive and immediate influx of people with a different culture, language, habits, education and so forth. These people would become an immediate source of power to any political organizations which sought to leverage them for the spoils of democracy. This would lead to a zero sum battle for redistribution of privileges, taxes, benefits and so forth, with existing locals “xenophobically” opposing the new immigrants. I believe it is very likely that this would lead to a crisis in democracy and a wholesale abandonment of free markets
IOW, I believe there is an extremely strong likelihood that the open borders would lead to the self destruction, via negative feedback loops of the economy, of politics and of human nature. Certainly I wish that this wasn’t so, and if anyone could experiment on the issue and prove this fear is unfounded (by truly open borders in a large modern economy for a few decades) then I would be very open to revising my argument based upon empirical data to the contrary.
Said another way, I believe moderated free trade is self supporting, leading over time to positive feedback results. I believe Open Borders is self negating, and could spiral out of control in terrible ways. Anyone attempting to experiment by advocating the opening of all borders is preaching for a policy which could be catastrophic beyond all our imaginations.
I am serious.
Jon Murphy
Jul 12 2019 at 11:28pm
This leads us to the obvious question: why stop at “modest controls on excessive creative destruction” with international trade? Why not include such controls domestically as well?
Same with domestic immigration. Why not limit migration between states, or even cities and towns? Those New Englanders moving to the South have such different cultures.
Swami
Jul 13 2019 at 12:28pm
Thanks for the reply Jon,
There are countless moderate controls on non-international trade. But to be frank, I am not arguing for said controls, I am just acknowledging their existence (albeit with a bit of a nod to a practical side effect)
The answer to your second query is that most prosperous nation states are prosperous and stable nation states because they formed around people with similar language, culture, background, history, values and schilling points. Thus, pragmatically, to limit internal movement is counterproductive. There are of course huge costs to limiting migration, my argument is that there are benefits to limiting it in some cases too
Open Borders, like Socialism, is one of those where only intellectual ideologues can manage to talk themselves into a convoluted defense of something which is so clearly unstable. All one has to do is set aside one’s ideology for a brief moment and imagine what would really happen in the real world if three times as many illiterate clan-based value people moved into your town. Set aside your libertarian hope and pretend you were the fiction writer that fleshed out what would happen. There is almost no conceivable scenario where this plays out well.
Jon Murphy
Jul 13 2019 at 12:37pm
And they equally apply to international trade as well. So, what’s so special about international trade?
And what about hugely disruptive advances like the Internet or Netflix or Smartphones?
Eh, yes and no. The US is extremely diverse with all kinds of languages, cultures, backgrounds, histories, and Schelling points. Indeed, part of the point of Schelling points is they are unique to the people who interpret them. So, this does not really help your case for restricting trade. using the exact same arguments (and I have seen people do this), you could advocate limiting migration between states.
Jon Murphy
Jul 13 2019 at 3:59pm
The problem with your comment is it lacks numeracy. Job destruction from domestic trade is magnitudes higher than international trade. All the job destruction from the entire so-called China Shock over a decade is less than what happens each month domestically. So, if international trade were going to cause “the population…rebelling in a massive prisoners dilemma,” (not entirely sure what this means), then domestic trade would be far more likely to do so. Which makes your ambivalence around domestic controls odd.
Swami
Jul 13 2019 at 12:30pm
Oops. The above should of course read “Schelling Points”.
Mark Brady
Jul 13 2019 at 8:54pm
Bryan writes, “I remember life before the Internet. When I was a teenager, I was almost completely intellectually isolated. Overcoming boredom was a constant challenge. There were no cyberbullies; we had real bullies instead. When I wanted to publicly speak my mind, I wrote letters to the newspaper. I had zero friends outside the U.S. My parents and I were routinely out of contact for hours at a time. I still feel young, but I remember a world that most EconLog readers would find primitive.”
As someone who had already celebrated his twenty-third birthday before Bryan was born (and was employed for many years before Bryan got his first job), all I can say is that when I was a teenager I was not “almost completely intellectually isolated” and overcoming boredom was not a constant challenge. Yes, I too wrote letters to the newspaper. And until I arranged to stay with young people whom I got to know through Libertarian Connection and Invictus and arranged to stay with them during my first visit to the U.S. in the summer of 1972, I had no friends outside the UK, save two pen pals, one in France and one in West Germany. My parents and I were routinely out of contact for hours at a time, and sometimes days at a time, and when I went to university, for eight weeks at a time (we exchanged weekly letters), and I didn’t feel any more deprived as a result. Indeed, I valued my independence as a teenager and then as a college student. The world of my youth was not primitive, unless the observer has a very narrow conception of what constitutes social life.
Weir
Jul 14 2019 at 6:16am
I like the robot analogy. Imagine the broad social effects of household appliances with opinions. If a toaster could speak, what would it say?
Sentient toasters could take inspiration from the doctors and impose a lengthy residency requirement on other toasters.
Toasters that were manufactured in one state might be forced to buy a license if they move to another state. The license the toaster bought in Vermont would be invalid in Delaware.
There could be an age requirement, like with auctioneers. Maybe toasters will need to undergo a hundred hours of training before they can legally call themselves toasters. Toasters could be made to pass an exam, like with florists.
Talking toasters wouldn’t say anything different to the rest of us, is the upshot. They would technically be manufactured goods, but in practice they would just be people. The distinction between goods and folks would be irrelevant. And the future would be much like the present.
Instead of getting upgrades or improvements, toasters would legislate new obstacles in the way of their toaster competition. Same as the rest of us. Plus pensions for toasters that don’t wish to keep making toast forever.
On the other hand, humans might never buy these AI toasters in the first place, precisely on account of the toasters having rights against the human who purchases one. The legal minefield of owning a conscious appliance would make people unwilling to buy any sufficiently advanced AI technology. Who wants to get sued by an appliance?
So if there’s no above-ground market for AI toasters, you’d have to build your own, and keep him hidden in the basement. There would be anti-Semitic toasters and toasters that think up a new limerick every morning and neurotic toasters that mostly like to watch TV, but no broad social effects because there wouldn’t be any broad uptake of the technology.
The analogy breaks down because of something like the grandfather paradox. Nobody would manufacture any significant number of conscious robots because they would inevitably object to being conscripts and slaves.
nobody.really
Jul 18 2019 at 2:19pm
No I wouldn’t–at least not until I see enough demand to justify investing in an assembly line. Until then, I’m sticking to building ’em one at at time. Otherwise I’d get too many in inventory, and they just get sulky.
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