“We wanted workers, but we got people instead.” This line from Max Frisch didn’t just give George Borjas the title of his most recent book. At last Friday’s immigration conference in St. Cloud, Borjas declared it his all-time favorite immigration epiphany. The point, he explained, is that immigrants aren’t just machines that produce stuff; they have broad social effects on our culture, politics, budget, and beyond.
Borjas is right, of course. In fact, he doesn’t go far enough. After all, even machines aren’t just machines that produce stuff. They too have broad social effects on our culture, politics, budget, and beyond. If you look closely at any major technological development, you can justly say, “We wanted tech, but we changed society instead.”
Consider cellphones. When they were first introduced, you might picture them as more convenient phonebooths. But they’ve revolutionized not only our society, but our psychology. Many human beings now interact with their phones more than they interact with fellow human beings; go to any public place and you will see this to be true. Even when we are talking to fellow human beings, cellphones have changed the tone and tenor of our conversations. When I casually chat with my friends, for example, we often fact check each others’ assertions. And cellphones are crucial for social media, which has dramatically swayed not only public discourse, but elections and policy. Without Twitter, would Donald Trump’s candidacy even have been able to get off the ground?
When driverless cars come, they’ll disrupt our whole society again. Commuting time will plausibly skyrocket, especially in high-rent areas. If you can relax – or even sleep – in your car, why pay $1M for a tiny apartment downtown? Indeed, once you get rid of the driver’s seat, we’ll probably turn cars into small motor homes, so “living out of your car” could become an alternative lifestyle rather than a tale of woe. And what will happen to all the truck drivers, taxi drivers, Uber drivers, and delivery drivers?
Still not convinced? I trust you’ll admit that nuclear technology did more to the world than slash electric bills.
Verily, we wanted tech, but we changed society instead.
How should you react to this truism? You could say, “Duh, everybody knows this already.” That’s my knee-jerk reaction to Frisch’s quote, too. But both “duhs” are too dismissive. “Obvious once you think about it”≠”Obvious.”
What else is there to say?
1. You could retreat to agnosticism. “Well, there are direct economic benefits, plus an array of intangible social effects. We don’t know how to measure these intangibles; we don’t even know if they’re good or bad.” This is basically what Borjas said about immigration in his Friday talk. There’s no reason we couldn’t generalize it.
Reaction: Philosophically, agnosticism of any kind is incoherent sophistry. We always have some information. We can and should combine this information with common sense to form reasonable guesses about whatever question is on our minds. Crucially, “information” includes psychological evidence about the errors to which the human mind is prone. And one of the best ways to keep your guesses reasonable is openness to bets.
2. You could start by measuring the direct benefits, then see if any of the broader social negatives are plausibly in the same ballpark. If not, the standard conclusion still goes through despite the complexity of the world.
Reaction: Once you factor in the value of time, this is typically the best approach for laymen. It’s a quick way to resolve a wide range of policy disputes, especially if you embrace some version of weak deontology rather than consequentialism.
3. You could try a lot harder to study the measurement of so-called “intangibles.” This might require a massive research program to fill in the enormous gaps in our knowledge. Or perhaps if you play around on Google Scholar, you’ll discover that many researchers have already measured the stuff you imagine “no one knows.”
Reaction: This is the best approach for experts. If you do good work and/or publicize it, you also help laymen reach the truth with modest mental effort. So earn your paycheck!
Whatever you conclude, know that immigration is nothing special. Everything has broader social effects. These complexities are no reason to defer to popular prejudice, which is what I suspect Borjas hopes we’ll do. Instead, these complexities are a reason to think broader and work harder to get the best answers we can.
READER COMMENTS
Lant Pritchett
Feb 11 2019 at 11:17pm
Of course the real import of that statement is “We wanted workers but we got people who weren’t German instead.” Or “We wanted workers but we got people who aren’t like us and we don’t particularly care for instead.” After all, of course you got people, the point is those people were “them” and not “us.”
Thaomas
Feb 14 2019 at 1:48pm
Germany and Europe in general is not as well prepared as the US is to turn “them” into “us,” granted that their migrants are more culturally distinct that those that have come to the US, so the task was somewhat more difficult and labor markets — more rigid in Europe that the US — added to the difficulty. Unfortunately the hostility to immigration by US “conservatives” is chipping away at the US advantage.
Niko Davor
Feb 15 2019 at 1:04pm
You’re right. Many Germans want to keep their identity, culture, and legacy and exclude “other” identities, cultures, and legacies. They are correct to recognize that those things are being deliberately and aggressively undermined and they try to oppose it.
To demonstrate my Caplanian “Ideological Turing Test”, I believe I can represent that side of this argument accurately and convincingly:
The Open Border position is that a host people in a nation, such as the traditional Germans, don’t have a moral right to preserve their identity, culture, and legacy through the traditional means of having exclusive exclusive nation states and governments or by discriminating among those who move there. The value of a people keeping their identity, culture, and legacy is hard to measure. Or maybe it’s value is zero. Or maybe even negative when you consider the measurable economic benefits of undermining it.
ok. It’s quite normal for most regular humans to have a drive to preserve their identity, culture, and legacy. Obviously ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural, and national identity are the primary identities considered in the immigration debate.
Consider that a core piece of the university system is to preserve the identity, culture, and legacy of the university system elite. Tyler Cowen defended Harvard University elite admission practices, “Step back from the emotions of the current debate and start with the general point that social elites need to replicate themselves, one way or another. Otherwise they tend to fade away;”
So, the university elites have a valid need to preserve their identity, culture, and legacy, but the regular people of Europe or the United States do not?
Caplan has inconsistently endorsed the idea of “separation of school and state”. He’s absolutely said that phrase, I’ve read most of “The Case Against Education”. But I’ve also seen him endorse the premise that universities have full right to exclude whomever they want to exclude on whatever terms they choose and don’t owe others explanations or justifications for their exclusion. And if they want to go to great lengths to enshrine their identity, culture, and legacy over others, they are free to do so. Of course, universities like Harvard are considered “private” but realistically they are funded primarily through the state and receive lots of government special privilege, status, and even roles in running government.
Mark Bahner
Feb 12 2019 at 5:14pm
I won’t even “admit” that nuclear technology slashed electric bills. Certainly not in the United States, anyway. In the U.S., electricity from nuclear has never exceeded more than approximately 20 percent of all electricity produced. And it’s never been substantially lower in cost than other sources of electricity (such as from electricity from coal and natural gas).
James
Feb 13 2019 at 11:40pm
In order to reach a conclusion about the price impact of an energy source that provides only a small amount of the energy in an economy, you must first have a position on the elasticity of demand for energy from all sources.
If the demand curve for energy is very inelastic, even a small increase in available energy from nuclear production would result in a much lower price as compared to the scenario without nuclear energy.
Mark Bahner
Feb 19 2019 at 12:05am
That’s only true if the available electrical energy from nuclear production is much lower in cost than other sources that could supply that energy. Electricity from nuclear has never been substantially cheaper than coal…and later natural gas.
Floccina
Feb 15 2019 at 2:43pm
That’s my understanding too, that nuclear has never been the cheapest way to get electricity, though it is the cleanest and probably the safest. I do not think elasticity saves it either, possibly if you take out the environmental costs of coal and NG you can get there.
A Country Farmer
Feb 13 2019 at 3:16am
Conceptualizing Huemer’s work as “weak deontology” is fascinating! That might be worth diving deper into.
mike davis
Feb 13 2019 at 10:15am
I don’t know if this is one of those things you said in the debate or something you thought about in the Uber after it was over and I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s a good thought. Still is there a transcript or a YouTube?
Hazel Meade
Feb 13 2019 at 10:21am
Even better:
We wanted to have children, but we got these long-haired hippies instead.
People aren’t EVER exactly what you want them to be.
Thaomas
Feb 13 2019 at 6:16pm
We wanted workers but, even better, we got people too!
Yes, I can conceive of immigrants arriving in such numbers and from such culturally different places as to start interfering with assimilation (that’s why I am a conservative about experimenting with truly open borders), but surely that number is far more than the numbers that are currently arriving or have historically arrived from the Americas and Asia, particularly if we made an effort to recruit more of the worlds “best and brightest.”
E. Harding
Feb 13 2019 at 11:05pm
Caplan, this is not the argument you want. The “people, not merely workers” argument is straightforward. The effects of letting certain people into the country are as predictable as they are significant. The logical outcome of your argument is the “precautionary principle” and stifling innovation. You might not like this conclusion, but it is an inevitable one.
“Whatever you conclude, know that immigration is nothing special.”
Uh, yes it is. Florida is a very different state from what it used to be.
MarkW
Feb 14 2019 at 7:30am
Uh, yes it is. Florida is a very different state from what it used to be.
Yes, Florida is very different — its population has more than quadrupled over the last 50 years. It went from half the size of Ohio to larger than New York. But domestic — not foreign — immigration is responsible for the vast majority of that population explosion.
That said, every state is a very different place than it was 50 years ago. New industries have been born while others have withered, populations have migrated to metro areas while small rural towns and counties have stagnated and shrunk. And social mores have changed dramatically. Women entered the workforce en masse — a profound change. Immigration has had very little to do with any of it.
Hazel Meade
Feb 14 2019 at 11:42am
I would venture a guess that most immigration is actually a rather <i>conservative</i> force in terms of culture. Ask yourself what you think the biggest changes in American culture are in the last 50 years. Greater tolerance of gays, less religiosity, social justice movements – these aren’t coming from recent immigrants, but new generations of native born children. Hispanics are quite conservative in terms of social values, family structure, and religious participation. So are many Asian immigrants, including Arabs, Indians and Chinese. Organic cultural change swamps out immigration by a large margin, IMO.
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