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.
Amen! The hypothetical island is undergoing gentrification by willing islander participants. The only coercion is Moller wanting islanders who don't like it to prevent other islanders from engaging in mutually beneficial trade with willing non-coercive outsiders.
USA immigration policy is not analogous to Island because Island is "small" and the USA is massive. There is little to no meaningful sense that immigrants moving to some other part of the country impacts my "right" to association in the manner it would on island. Telling other communities 100s or 1000s of miles away from me who they are allowed to associate with seems obviously antithetical the libratarian values.
I think that this author is getting at a way of looking at this issue that I have been toying with.
"Culture" -- and I am using this term in the broadest possible way to mean the habits and norms of a particular time and place -- is a positive or negative externality. We all know that cultural differences exist and that they matter both in terms of the quality of life and even in terms of economic and political performance. (In fact, it is always amazing to me that nearly all libertarians subscribe to the Dierdre McCloskey view that the "great enrichment" resulted in large part from a cultural change, yet many of these same libertarians deny the importance of cultural differences in immigration policies.)
If culture is a positive or negative externality, then the usual economic arguments for supporting or suppressing it apply. These arguments would justify, inter alia, limits on the total amount of immigration, selectivity in immigrants, and a legal and normative emphasis on integration.
I'd love open borders, but not with all the enticements government hands out. This has been brought up over and over again, and I have never seen any open borders proponent addressing the problem.
If immigrants had to depend on themselves, family, friends, and community for assistance; if we were basically back in a pre-1920 regime, I would be all in favor of hard-working immigrants who want a better life by the sweat of their own brow.
We don't have that. Too many immigrants get room and board, cash, health care, and other welfare at taxpayer expense, their criminal records are erased, and the government waives future crimes. The government resettles them willy-nilly without the host communities getting any say. And the government flies in refugees who don't want to be here and don't like the communities they are dumped in.
This is not immigration. This may as well be importation.
Why do you "open boarders" people never address this problem? This is not how you build up credibility, win friends, or influence enemies. It is how you convince people you are not serious and not to be trusted.
Fair enough, but that's a problem with welfare, not immigration per se. The argument you are making boils down to equivocation between 'welfare recipient' and 'immigrant'. Using the welfare problem to justify prohibiting free association with regard to immigrants is no different to using it to justify prohibiting free association with regard to locals. You presumably wouldn't justify prohibiting black Americans from having children on the grounds that black Americans are disproportionality likely to be on welfare.
By the way, Bryan Caplan himself has addressed this in great detail.
No, it's a problem with open borders aficionados who refuse to discuss the issue. They pretend if they just ignore it, it will go away.
Your attempt to make this a racist issue shows you to be the racist who thinks black children grow up to be on welfare. What a despicable person you are.
There's a world of difference between adults coming here for instant welfare at my expense and children being born who are not likely to end up on welfare even 18 years later, no matter what your bigotry leads you to believe.
"No, it's a problem with open borders aficionados who refuse to discuss the issue. They pretend if they just ignore it, it will go away."
But Bryan wrote a book about this. and we're discussing the issue now.
"Your attempt to make this a racist issue"
I didn't. My point is that redistribution is the problem regardless of nationality of the recipient.
"There's a world of difference between adults coming here for instant welfare at my expense and children being born who are not likely to end up on welfare even 18 years later, no matter what your bigotry leads you to believe."
You're missing my point. You were/are equivocating between 'immigrant' and 'adults coming here for instant welfare at my expense' but they are no more the same category than black Americans and welfare recipients are.
If you think there *should* be a welfare state, but just for locals, then ok. I would take it further and say there should be no welfare state at all. But if you think it's wrong to use collective notions to justify prohibiting individual liberty – and your reply to my other comment gave me the impression you do – then you should recognise that that is exactly what you are doing when you suggest that I should be restricted in my freedom of association with a foreigner in case some other foreigner takes welfare.
And besides. Isn't it simpler to address the ROOT issue? The root issue here is welfare, not immigration. You said it yourself: "I'd love open borders, but not with all the enticements government hands out."
You brought up race, not me. My first reaction was to wonder what branch of woke racism you subscribe to.
Don’t bring up race and pretend you didn’t. Don’t switch to nationalism and hope no one notices. That’s another woke trait, blaming everyone else for your faults.
If you’d wanted to discuss Bryan’s book, you would have, instead of veering off into race and nationalism.
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.
Amen! The hypothetical island is undergoing gentrification by willing islander participants. The only coercion is Moller wanting islanders who don't like it to prevent other islanders from engaging in mutually beneficial trade with willing non-coercive outsiders.
So for all the Open Borders folks, how is that working out for the UK, France, Sweden, and Canada?
It has worked out pretty well for the USA.
USA immigration policy is not analogous to Island because Island is "small" and the USA is massive. There is little to no meaningful sense that immigrants moving to some other part of the country impacts my "right" to association in the manner it would on island. Telling other communities 100s or 1000s of miles away from me who they are allowed to associate with seems obviously antithetical the libratarian values.
I think that this author is getting at a way of looking at this issue that I have been toying with.
"Culture" -- and I am using this term in the broadest possible way to mean the habits and norms of a particular time and place -- is a positive or negative externality. We all know that cultural differences exist and that they matter both in terms of the quality of life and even in terms of economic and political performance. (In fact, it is always amazing to me that nearly all libertarians subscribe to the Dierdre McCloskey view that the "great enrichment" resulted in large part from a cultural change, yet many of these same libertarians deny the importance of cultural differences in immigration policies.)
If culture is a positive or negative externality, then the usual economic arguments for supporting or suppressing it apply. These arguments would justify, inter alia, limits on the total amount of immigration, selectivity in immigrants, and a legal and normative emphasis on integration.
I'd love open borders, but not with all the enticements government hands out. This has been brought up over and over again, and I have never seen any open borders proponent addressing the problem.
If immigrants had to depend on themselves, family, friends, and community for assistance; if we were basically back in a pre-1920 regime, I would be all in favor of hard-working immigrants who want a better life by the sweat of their own brow.
We don't have that. Too many immigrants get room and board, cash, health care, and other welfare at taxpayer expense, their criminal records are erased, and the government waives future crimes. The government resettles them willy-nilly without the host communities getting any say. And the government flies in refugees who don't want to be here and don't like the communities they are dumped in.
This is not immigration. This may as well be importation.
Why do you "open boarders" people never address this problem? This is not how you build up credibility, win friends, or influence enemies. It is how you convince people you are not serious and not to be trusted.
Fair enough, but that's a problem with welfare, not immigration per se. The argument you are making boils down to equivocation between 'welfare recipient' and 'immigrant'. Using the welfare problem to justify prohibiting free association with regard to immigrants is no different to using it to justify prohibiting free association with regard to locals. You presumably wouldn't justify prohibiting black Americans from having children on the grounds that black Americans are disproportionality likely to be on welfare.
By the way, Bryan Caplan himself has addressed this in great detail.
No, it's a problem with open borders aficionados who refuse to discuss the issue. They pretend if they just ignore it, it will go away.
Your attempt to make this a racist issue shows you to be the racist who thinks black children grow up to be on welfare. What a despicable person you are.
There's a world of difference between adults coming here for instant welfare at my expense and children being born who are not likely to end up on welfare even 18 years later, no matter what your bigotry leads you to believe.
"No, it's a problem with open borders aficionados who refuse to discuss the issue. They pretend if they just ignore it, it will go away."
But Bryan wrote a book about this. and we're discussing the issue now.
"Your attempt to make this a racist issue"
I didn't. My point is that redistribution is the problem regardless of nationality of the recipient.
"There's a world of difference between adults coming here for instant welfare at my expense and children being born who are not likely to end up on welfare even 18 years later, no matter what your bigotry leads you to believe."
You're missing my point. You were/are equivocating between 'immigrant' and 'adults coming here for instant welfare at my expense' but they are no more the same category than black Americans and welfare recipients are.
If you think there *should* be a welfare state, but just for locals, then ok. I would take it further and say there should be no welfare state at all. But if you think it's wrong to use collective notions to justify prohibiting individual liberty – and your reply to my other comment gave me the impression you do – then you should recognise that that is exactly what you are doing when you suggest that I should be restricted in my freedom of association with a foreigner in case some other foreigner takes welfare.
And besides. Isn't it simpler to address the ROOT issue? The root issue here is welfare, not immigration. You said it yourself: "I'd love open borders, but not with all the enticements government hands out."
You brought up race, not me. My first reaction was to wonder what branch of woke racism you subscribe to.
Don’t bring up race and pretend you didn’t. Don’t switch to nationalism and hope no one notices. That’s another woke trait, blaming everyone else for your faults.
If you’d wanted to discuss Bryan’s book, you would have, instead of veering off into race and nationalism.