I agree regarding the importance of culture within a country, and how immigration can warp that. Honestly, the culture of many Americans is worse than the culture of many immigrants by my lights, but that doesn't mean that we should not worry about foreign cultures and how those interact with ours.
I found myself quite swayed by Caplan's keyhole exceptions, if I am remembering how he used the phrase correctly, regarding limiting access to welfare and other benefits as a condition of entry. I think that solves the (questionable) worries about immigrants sponging off the system, while at the same tending to select for better culture, as only those who are interesting in working are likely to show up. Plus, I suspect it would make them a lot less inclined to support a welfare state for others, moving the national culture in a direction I prefer. (My wife is an immigrant, and she has exactly zero sympathy for illegal immigration after how miserable her immigration process was; she views them as roughly jumping the line ahead of everyone else who is willing to follow the rules.)
However, as Klein points out, I am not at all sure that is how it would work in practice, especially as migrants are already not allowed many social benefits programs but seem to collect the benefits just the same.
Still, I am down for much more immigration, particularly if we can limit the downsides and keep out the murderers. If we can't, we need to limit immigration to the point where we can keep out the murderers and crazies pretty well. Possibly those two priorities are not compatible for our government. however.
Libertarians often talk about the wisdom of crowds. They hate public officials deciding what is right, and like individuals with skin in the game deciding what's right.
In every single place in the world today undergoing mass immigration the response from the locals is "NO!" Locals in Europe or America. Locals that are white, hispanic, or black. Locals on the border or locals in big liberal cities. People with skin in the game absolutely do not believe that trillions of dollars in value are being created by open borders. Across continents, races, politics, etc.
The most recent example in the USA is the complete success of the migrant busing program. In response to the failure of the federal government to secure the border the people that had to deal with its costs sent migrants to far away lands that had strong opinions about the border basically being open but didn't have to deal with the fallout. The arrival of a small fraction of those migrants in liberal cities caused them to declare a state of emergency, shuffle the arrivals along as best they can, beg for more not to be sent, and capitulate to the demands of the border cities. El Paso recently agreed to stop the migrant buses now that the federal government will agree to deport asylum seekers back to Mexico.
Governors in Texas and Florida are about to sail to easy re-elections mostly because Open Borders drove former immigrant Hispanics in these areas to massively shift in favor of the GOP because it promised to close the border. Democrats seeing a mid-term wipeout due to losses amongst these Hispanics are crying uncle.
If you can't sell immigration to co-ethnic former immigrants, maybe you just don't understand immigration.
What is the difference between "cocksure" and the near equivalent "confident?" I think "cocksure" implies a rapid and largely unwarranted determination of the correctness of a held position, while "confident" does not. Given that Prof. Caplan has studied this issue in depth for many years and published a highly footnoted book on the subject, I'm surprised Prof. Klein favors the more pejorative and inappropriate term.
Bryan, you have chosen to build your life in an effectively closed-borders, selective environment, namely George Mason University. A university selects some smart fraction and excludes everyone else. This is certainly true for students and exceptionally true for faculty.
Your university and many others have extremely strong selection for youth, intelligence, rule-following, and socio-economic status. I would argue that this selection is central to the recipe for success of a university. Yet, university folk would scream to the high heavens about bigotry if a country ever tried to select people 1/10 as much as any good university does.
I admire you greatly -- you are one of the brightest lights of our age -- but on this topic I find you to be extremely hypocritical.
Sweden still has one of the most liberal migration systems, I mean regarding labour immigration since it is almost open borders/free immigration. This is sadly gonna change with the new right-wing government with support from the far right. However, more people as liberals and libertarian left-wingers should fight for global free movement based on global digital citizenship.
Bryan does tend to focus on U.S. policy, with relatively little attention to the rest of the world. *In the U.S.* women are not treated less fairly than men, *the U.S.* is so big and rich that it can and should absorb unlimited immigration, etc. This is not really objectionable--one must limit one's subject matter--but taking a broader perspective might reveal some limitations on his discussion of the U.S. case.
So, Klein, you are not opposing Open Borders, just advocating for a "careful rollout" of the policy: doing it at a "refrained scale" and speeding it up once we can be sure the sky is not falling on our heads.
I can live with that. Even been damn cocksure that the policy will be great for humankind.
And you can rest assure nothing terrible is going to happen. Afterall, the whole country is fully open to Californians and New Yorkers, and we have managed ...
What stops us from being invaded in the open borders scenario? I mean, the Chinese or Russian soldiers could just walk in, right? But then, the Chinese could easily send enough people to simply outvote us in some future election too, no fighting needed.
As much as I am a passionate libertarian and (on some days) anarcho-capitalist, I have also learned from Conservatives that gradual change is how societies develop best.
So, as US emperor, I would liberalise immigration considerably, see how that goes for a few years, fix systems that break, and deal with unforeseen consequences. Then, knowing more from experience, probably do another round of liberalisation, and continue that cycle as long as it seems meaningful.
That may end with completely open borders, or it may come to rest earlier. What matters is that it's a process of *learning* and adjusting as you go.
I think what Klein means is that he used to be a liberal in general but switched to some kind of Groucho Marx free-market conservatism = "freedom for me and my own group" style of politics. Mass migration/immigration is a very arbitrary term because humans are not a mass and because different individuals have different psychological relations to numbers.
I agree regarding the importance of culture within a country, and how immigration can warp that. Honestly, the culture of many Americans is worse than the culture of many immigrants by my lights, but that doesn't mean that we should not worry about foreign cultures and how those interact with ours.
I found myself quite swayed by Caplan's keyhole exceptions, if I am remembering how he used the phrase correctly, regarding limiting access to welfare and other benefits as a condition of entry. I think that solves the (questionable) worries about immigrants sponging off the system, while at the same tending to select for better culture, as only those who are interesting in working are likely to show up. Plus, I suspect it would make them a lot less inclined to support a welfare state for others, moving the national culture in a direction I prefer. (My wife is an immigrant, and she has exactly zero sympathy for illegal immigration after how miserable her immigration process was; she views them as roughly jumping the line ahead of everyone else who is willing to follow the rules.)
However, as Klein points out, I am not at all sure that is how it would work in practice, especially as migrants are already not allowed many social benefits programs but seem to collect the benefits just the same.
Still, I am down for much more immigration, particularly if we can limit the downsides and keep out the murderers. If we can't, we need to limit immigration to the point where we can keep out the murderers and crazies pretty well. Possibly those two priorities are not compatible for our government. however.
Libertarians often talk about the wisdom of crowds. They hate public officials deciding what is right, and like individuals with skin in the game deciding what's right.
In every single place in the world today undergoing mass immigration the response from the locals is "NO!" Locals in Europe or America. Locals that are white, hispanic, or black. Locals on the border or locals in big liberal cities. People with skin in the game absolutely do not believe that trillions of dollars in value are being created by open borders. Across continents, races, politics, etc.
The most recent example in the USA is the complete success of the migrant busing program. In response to the failure of the federal government to secure the border the people that had to deal with its costs sent migrants to far away lands that had strong opinions about the border basically being open but didn't have to deal with the fallout. The arrival of a small fraction of those migrants in liberal cities caused them to declare a state of emergency, shuffle the arrivals along as best they can, beg for more not to be sent, and capitulate to the demands of the border cities. El Paso recently agreed to stop the migrant buses now that the federal government will agree to deport asylum seekers back to Mexico.
Governors in Texas and Florida are about to sail to easy re-elections mostly because Open Borders drove former immigrant Hispanics in these areas to massively shift in favor of the GOP because it promised to close the border. Democrats seeing a mid-term wipeout due to losses amongst these Hispanics are crying uncle.
If you can't sell immigration to co-ethnic former immigrants, maybe you just don't understand immigration.
Will Garrett Jones' "The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left" get a review on Bet On It?
What is the difference between "cocksure" and the near equivalent "confident?" I think "cocksure" implies a rapid and largely unwarranted determination of the correctness of a held position, while "confident" does not. Given that Prof. Caplan has studied this issue in depth for many years and published a highly footnoted book on the subject, I'm surprised Prof. Klein favors the more pejorative and inappropriate term.
Bryan, you have chosen to build your life in an effectively closed-borders, selective environment, namely George Mason University. A university selects some smart fraction and excludes everyone else. This is certainly true for students and exceptionally true for faculty.
Your university and many others have extremely strong selection for youth, intelligence, rule-following, and socio-economic status. I would argue that this selection is central to the recipe for success of a university. Yet, university folk would scream to the high heavens about bigotry if a country ever tried to select people 1/10 as much as any good university does.
I admire you greatly -- you are one of the brightest lights of our age -- but on this topic I find you to be extremely hypocritical.
Sweden still has one of the most liberal migration systems, I mean regarding labour immigration since it is almost open borders/free immigration. This is sadly gonna change with the new right-wing government with support from the far right. However, more people as liberals and libertarian left-wingers should fight for global free movement based on global digital citizenship.
Bryan does tend to focus on U.S. policy, with relatively little attention to the rest of the world. *In the U.S.* women are not treated less fairly than men, *the U.S.* is so big and rich that it can and should absorb unlimited immigration, etc. This is not really objectionable--one must limit one's subject matter--but taking a broader perspective might reveal some limitations on his discussion of the U.S. case.
So, Klein, you are not opposing Open Borders, just advocating for a "careful rollout" of the policy: doing it at a "refrained scale" and speeding it up once we can be sure the sky is not falling on our heads.
I can live with that. Even been damn cocksure that the policy will be great for humankind.
And you can rest assure nothing terrible is going to happen. Afterall, the whole country is fully open to Californians and New Yorkers, and we have managed ...
... so far.
I think this is a very interesting discussion, and I thank both for their contributions.
What stops us from being invaded in the open borders scenario? I mean, the Chinese or Russian soldiers could just walk in, right? But then, the Chinese could easily send enough people to simply outvote us in some future election too, no fighting needed.
As much as I am a passionate libertarian and (on some days) anarcho-capitalist, I have also learned from Conservatives that gradual change is how societies develop best.
So, as US emperor, I would liberalise immigration considerably, see how that goes for a few years, fix systems that break, and deal with unforeseen consequences. Then, knowing more from experience, probably do another round of liberalisation, and continue that cycle as long as it seems meaningful.
That may end with completely open borders, or it may come to rest earlier. What matters is that it's a process of *learning* and adjusting as you go.
Open to what? Formal trade in licit goods and services? Direct and portfolio investment? Labor? Two outta three?
Complicated formulas by this Klein guy. True freedom knows no quotas and formulas to let peaceful people live their lives wherever they want.
The attribution here makes it look like Bryan authored the post. It should be clearer these are Klein's words.
I think what Klein means is that he used to be a liberal in general but switched to some kind of Groucho Marx free-market conservatism = "freedom for me and my own group" style of politics. Mass migration/immigration is a very arbitrary term because humans are not a mass and because different individuals have different psychological relations to numbers.
Speaking about Arpi, the guy is a right-wing collectivist. https://glibe.substack.com/p/white-racial-self-interest-is-racism