The obvious response to this argument is: The revealed preference of the natives is for living where they are currently living. Moving to another place would therefore obviously be a reduction in their quality of life -- if it weren't, they would have already moved. Therefore, why should the natives endure a reduction in their quality of life simply due to a influx of immigrants into their preferred location?
And if you do, that’s good for you. But would you want to move to North Dakota simply because of the influx of people coming in to where you had previously been perfectly happy, and which now leaves you with no choice?
It does seem reasonable to want less immigration because otherwise you will have to move away to a place you like a great deal less, and to do so well before you actually move. It seems like one would notice the problem and try to avoid it before pulling the trigger and moving.
Right. But Caplan’s position is that he is actually in favor of unlimited immigration/open borders. He says if immigration changes the situation of where you are, such that “North Dakota” becomes more appealing, then you should simply move there.
I’d rather keep the situation where I’m at relatively stable, such that North Dakota never becomes more appealing by comparison.
This nonsense on open borders has gone on way too long. It is getting embarrassing.
Every reasonable person with an open mind can envision at least some scenarios where unlimited immigration would be horrible for the native residents. Let me help by some examples:
1) If so many people moved into your community that they voted in policies which you find abhorrent or unacceptable such as higher taxes, sharia law, rent control, etc.
2) If people come in for welfare benefits (such as the free health care 14 states provide immigrants). And you have no reasonable way of denying them to act as free riders undermining your community and increasing your taxes.
3) If people came in with higher rates of crime (see Europe).
4) If people come in and are moved to the front of the line for hiring and college admission due to diversity beliefs in those running (or is it ruining?) those institutions. Thus moving you and your family to the back of the same line.
5) If so many people arrived that they slept in the streets, crapping on sidewalks and spreading disease.
If those don’t work at turning on the shining light of obviousness, how about recalling the American Indians? How do you think open borders worked out for them?
My point is not that any of the above are guaranteed to happen or even likely. I am arguing that they are logically possible, and thus to have unlimited faith in open borders is absurd. There are at least some situations where there is too much of the wrong type of immigration and you and any other reasonable person would demand it to stop.
Feel free to respond, Dr Caplan. You have an open minded audience on this substack. I bet you ten dollars that you can’t convince us of your views.
Yes, but overall GDP goes up. Therefore good for EVERYONE (...on average).
It takes extremely high IQ to come up with such idiocy as Caplan blurts out from time to time on this Substack. I suspect he's really just looking for surefire trap to get commenters to say something "racist' so he can 1) pounce, and 2) try the same trick on Mark Krikorian.
Ya think Doctor Who might lend us the Tardis for a little bit? We could send Caplan to his choice of (by then) European hell-holes (hopefully the USA under Trumps II through XIV had better sense). Brian'd come back with plenty to think over with that mass of neurons of his, along with an apology dearly owed to Krikorian (who could use some TLC these days).
Asking people to uproot their lives and move somewhere else is a pretty huge ask, probably even more so for the kind of people who don't like the change immigrants represent
There's no "ask" at all in Caplan's world. As in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, the mass immigration policy comes down from on high against the express wishes of the populace, and the peasants simply have to make the best of the whirlwind loosed upon them. Pitchforks and torches are in the offing.
Detroit. Massive urban de-migration post-1967 riots (but why?). Re-migration (in relatively small numbers) only in the last 5-10 years. Or in microcosm, the Dearborn suburb where mass immigration and concentration of Muslims has displaced the native almost wholly white population (thanks to Mayor Orville Hubbard and his infamous fire department "inspections") to the lily-white north and northwestern leafy suburbs. Again, why?
the nativists believe they have an inviolable preferred access to the best real estate in their country by virtue of an implicit intergenerational contract
I don't agree with them per se, but it is a reasonable and coherent world view that goes beyond surface economic interests
This seems like a very weak argument to me, one that ignores the large costs of moving.
Imagining a similar case, imagine you start to get lots of mice moving into your house. You don't like it, and see it causes problems. Do you move immediately, or do you start taking steps to limit the number moving in and remove the ones currently there?
There is a trade off, and as the costs of your preferred outcome goes up you are going to note the costs and argue against them, and if it is a large difference in preferences it is likely to go on for a long time before you decide to the preferred outcome has changed.
(I would also note that people do in fact seem to be leaving areas with high immigration, such as California and other cities, although I don't know if the correlation there is strong.)
The obvious response to this argument is: The revealed preference of the natives is for living where they are currently living. Moving to another place would therefore obviously be a reduction in their quality of life -- if it weren't, they would have already moved. Therefore, why should the natives endure a reduction in their quality of life simply due to a influx of immigrants into their preferred location?
White flight clearly has happened in Britain. People absolutely do move to avoid living amongst immigrants.
But would you want to move to North Dakota?
And if you do, that’s good for you. But would you want to move to North Dakota simply because of the influx of people coming in to where you had previously been perfectly happy, and which now leaves you with no choice?
It does seem reasonable to want less immigration because otherwise you will have to move away to a place you like a great deal less, and to do so well before you actually move. It seems like one would notice the problem and try to avoid it before pulling the trigger and moving.
Right. But Caplan’s position is that he is actually in favor of unlimited immigration/open borders. He says if immigration changes the situation of where you are, such that “North Dakota” becomes more appealing, then you should simply move there.
I’d rather keep the situation where I’m at relatively stable, such that North Dakota never becomes more appealing by comparison.
How do you square this with the issues we're seeing in Sweden and Denmark?
This nonsense on open borders has gone on way too long. It is getting embarrassing.
Every reasonable person with an open mind can envision at least some scenarios where unlimited immigration would be horrible for the native residents. Let me help by some examples:
1) If so many people moved into your community that they voted in policies which you find abhorrent or unacceptable such as higher taxes, sharia law, rent control, etc.
2) If people come in for welfare benefits (such as the free health care 14 states provide immigrants). And you have no reasonable way of denying them to act as free riders undermining your community and increasing your taxes.
3) If people came in with higher rates of crime (see Europe).
4) If people come in and are moved to the front of the line for hiring and college admission due to diversity beliefs in those running (or is it ruining?) those institutions. Thus moving you and your family to the back of the same line.
5) If so many people arrived that they slept in the streets, crapping on sidewalks and spreading disease.
If those don’t work at turning on the shining light of obviousness, how about recalling the American Indians? How do you think open borders worked out for them?
My point is not that any of the above are guaranteed to happen or even likely. I am arguing that they are logically possible, and thus to have unlimited faith in open borders is absurd. There are at least some situations where there is too much of the wrong type of immigration and you and any other reasonable person would demand it to stop.
Feel free to respond, Dr Caplan. You have an open minded audience on this substack. I bet you ten dollars that you can’t convince us of your views.
Yes, but overall GDP goes up. Therefore good for EVERYONE (...on average).
It takes extremely high IQ to come up with such idiocy as Caplan blurts out from time to time on this Substack. I suspect he's really just looking for surefire trap to get commenters to say something "racist' so he can 1) pounce, and 2) try the same trick on Mark Krikorian.
Ya think Doctor Who might lend us the Tardis for a little bit? We could send Caplan to his choice of (by then) European hell-holes (hopefully the USA under Trumps II through XIV had better sense). Brian'd come back with plenty to think over with that mass of neurons of his, along with an apology dearly owed to Krikorian (who could use some TLC these days).
Asking people to uproot their lives and move somewhere else is a pretty huge ask, probably even more so for the kind of people who don't like the change immigrants represent
There's no "ask" at all in Caplan's world. As in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, the mass immigration policy comes down from on high against the express wishes of the populace, and the peasants simply have to make the best of the whirlwind loosed upon them. Pitchforks and torches are in the offing.
Detroit. Massive urban de-migration post-1967 riots (but why?). Re-migration (in relatively small numbers) only in the last 5-10 years. Or in microcosm, the Dearborn suburb where mass immigration and concentration of Muslims has displaced the native almost wholly white population (thanks to Mayor Orville Hubbard and his infamous fire department "inspections") to the lily-white north and northwestern leafy suburbs. Again, why?
the nativists believe they have an inviolable preferred access to the best real estate in their country by virtue of an implicit intergenerational contract
I don't agree with them per se, but it is a reasonable and coherent world view that goes beyond surface economic interests
Do immigration restrictions in the US cause unemployment in the countries from where there would have been emigration to the US?
This seems like a very weak argument to me, one that ignores the large costs of moving.
Imagining a similar case, imagine you start to get lots of mice moving into your house. You don't like it, and see it causes problems. Do you move immediately, or do you start taking steps to limit the number moving in and remove the ones currently there?
There is a trade off, and as the costs of your preferred outcome goes up you are going to note the costs and argue against them, and if it is a large difference in preferences it is likely to go on for a long time before you decide to the preferred outcome has changed.
(I would also note that people do in fact seem to be leaving areas with high immigration, such as California and other cities, although I don't know if the correlation there is strong.)