Moller Responds on Immigration
Part two of Dan Moller’s response to my analysis of Governing Least:
Immigration
I agree with Caplan that we should have high levels of immigration for both moral and self-interested reasons, and that a great deal of resistance to this traces back to confused zero-sum thinking about trade and jobs, or to xenophobia. The point where we may disagree is this: I don’t think libertarianism (or its core ideas and values) entails open borders. Reasonable people who take seriously individual rights, limited government, and the rest, can favor borders and some restrictions on immigration, depending on the particulars.
Consider Island, a small country off the US coast. Over the years, American tourists enjoy visiting Island. Gradually, their influence becomes more and more pronounced, to the point that Island starts to lose its language (French, perhaps), American missionaries introduce what Islanders view as false gods, etc. I disagree that the people of Island have no recourse for meeting what they will see as an unwelcome threat. I don’t think it’s true that Island must accept a kind of hostile takeover by Americans. I think this is true even intranationally–if the Amish want to stay Amish, they don’t have to accept a mass influx of Brooklyn hipsters, supposing they have legal means of preventing this, and that their reasons are good ones. It would be hard to believe in freedom of association and think they did.
Of course, none of this is to speak to the present-day US, and I agree with a great deal of what Caplan says about the moral imperatives of benefiting and being benefited by immigration. Obviously the US and Island are quite different. But the Island case suggests to me, again, that libertarian values don’t entail open borders.
The post Moller Responds on Immigration appeared first on Econlib.
The usual fallacy. The writer neglects to mention the process by which these 'Americans' overtake 'Island'. If the underlying legal system on Island is one of private property and free trade then the only way the inhabitants of Island can be overrun is if they choose to sell their property to Americans, to willingly do business with and otherwise associate with them.
All legitimate complaints about immigration in the real world come down to the tragedy of the commons. The important question is how, by what legal mechanism, the people of Island should be able to manifest their preferences. The evidence of history is clear: private property and free trade work best.
All brands of collectivism, such as that embedded in 'Island starts to lose its language' boil down to an implicit justification of force by some over others. I grew up on a small island where people speak English. Long ago people there spoke French. But there isn't a single person who has ever been forced to speak a language they would rather not speak. And there isn't a single person now who sees himself as an outsider to the Anglophone world: English is as legitimately the language of my home island as French ever was.
And what is a language anyway? English now is very different to the English spoken 1000 years ago. Elders of every generation complain about the subtle changes they witness emerging among the young. I doubt the writer would describe that process, even if it were very fast, as problematic. But that's only for semantic reasons: we still call it 'English'. That's collectivism in a nutshell: it's all about superficial semantics, not actual living people.
So for all the Open Borders folks, how is that working out for the UK, France, Sweden, and Canada?