“No human being has ever crafted a perfect sphere, yet many products become more useful as they get closer to spherical.”
It is sad that Bryan refuses to take his own sage advice / use his own excellent logic here on the topic of open borders.
In the real world of rich welfare states, literally open borders is not practical and net a bad idea for the people currently living in those states.
Allowing *much* more legal immigration than we do now, though - especially for the U.S. - is a wonderful idea that would help humanity and the societies that allowed it.
Yet Bryan insists on letting his advocacy of the theoretical perfect get in the way of the excellent, and on the margin driving people away from the latter with his zealous advocacy of the former.
And the situation is perhaps more extreme than this.
Consider: more or less the US immigration system has been fixed in its present form in the past 40 years, with the exception of the fact that under some administrations there were programs like DREAM that were meant to assist people who were in the US already but who were there illegally. It was very rare for any changes to be proposed by members of the legislative branch in a serious way (e.g., not 'a bill with five endorsements'). The most radical proposal that was close to passing was the 2013 "Gang of Eight" bill that would have... increased the number of green cards available by 25,000. There is not some significant reform around the corner which an economics professor had impeded by publishing a graphic novel about open borders.
I don’t argue with anything but your over dramatic last sentence.
All I’m saying is that by pushing a bad proposal that people properly reject, on the margin he is not helping to achieve the very good (imperfect sphere of a lot more legal immigration) by pushing for what he claims is the best.
Surely someone who reads an economic blog can understand the concept of marginalism.
Partly because fully open border given a welfare state IS objectively a bad idea, and most people recognize that.
Partly because he insists people don’t have a right to maintain their own culture, which most people disagree with him on (you can decide whether he’s right or wrong. This one is not absolute, but I more disagree with him than agree).
And so it puts off people in the middle who might be open to a lot more legal immigration than now who don’t want an unlimited floodgate.
The role of an intellectual is not to moderate their views to appease a public.
Politicians sometimes need to moderate their views to get elected.
Think tanks must moderate their views to raise money.
But an individual person has no such moral responsibility. In fact an individual person has the moral responsibility to speak the truth.
We are asked here to imagine a person who has read Bryan's books, thought of them, has read the chapters where Bryan Caplan offers moderate 'keyhole solutions' for restrictionist concerns, and then deecided: "I am so repulsed by this that I will now become a radical restrictionist". This person does not exist.
Or there might be a person who is approacihng the topic of open borders in bad faith: he sees a person who is advocating literally Madisonian open borders (i.e., advocating, like James Madison, that in peacetime the government has no legal or moral authority to control migration), and decides that *any* moderate reform should be opposed as a step towards this. But such a person cannot be reached by logical debate of any kind. (That is not to say this person is stupid - perhaps they have moral and intellectual priors we do not share).
I think Bryan uses the idea of “open borders” as a way to promote vigorous debate, forcing the most difficult immigration questions into the open air. Figuratively open borders might be just fine.
I agree that he would indeed be “fine” with figuratively open borders as an outcome.
But a) that’s not the way he advocates or debates, and what’s relevant here is b) I’m far from the only one who believes that his extreme advocacy reduces the probability of “figuratively” open borders - i .e. much more legal immigration - rather than increases it.
You may want to look at Yale Brozen’s Is Government the Source of Monopoly? (Cato, 1980), if you haven’t already. As I recall, Brozen’s empirical investigation found only one durable nationwide monopoly that was not government-granted or protected: Alcoa. That seems to fit your repaired version of Rothbard particularly well. Free-market monopoly need not be impossible by definition; the stronger argument may be that durable monopoly without government privilege is empirically extremely rare. Brozen’s evidence might therefore strengthen the historical section of your paper.
I don’t think the example of selling additional time for the same amount of money demonstrating horizontal demand curves works. You could just as easily explain the phenomenon as you insufficiently negotiating pay rates, and maybe the buyer would have paid you more for the previous hours but it was too much hassle to negotiate.
The #2 critique is valid but I think it is also one that has been incorporated into mainstream theory (it might even predate Rothbard within mainstream theory). Reading through Tirole's classic IO book for example you get a lot models that show exactly that.
“So while Rothbard’s most original contribution to monopoly theory is wrong, bordering on crackpottish, his pro-market, anti-government vision is fundamentally sound and wise.”
This is great and should be the pull-quote for the entire piece.
The strongest argument for elimination is the public choice one that the politicians and government functionaries deciding what is and is not antitrust are self interested.
[For the record, I probably would not eliminate all of it, but I’d eliminate an awful lot, and yes would probably prefer zero regulation to what we have now, if those were the only two choices.]
“No human being has ever crafted a perfect sphere, yet many products become more useful as they get closer to spherical.”
It is sad that Bryan refuses to take his own sage advice / use his own excellent logic here on the topic of open borders.
In the real world of rich welfare states, literally open borders is not practical and net a bad idea for the people currently living in those states.
Allowing *much* more legal immigration than we do now, though - especially for the U.S. - is a wonderful idea that would help humanity and the societies that allowed it.
Yet Bryan insists on letting his advocacy of the theoretical perfect get in the way of the excellent, and on the margin driving people away from the latter with his zealous advocacy of the former.
And the situation is perhaps more extreme than this.
Consider: more or less the US immigration system has been fixed in its present form in the past 40 years, with the exception of the fact that under some administrations there were programs like DREAM that were meant to assist people who were in the US already but who were there illegally. It was very rare for any changes to be proposed by members of the legislative branch in a serious way (e.g., not 'a bill with five endorsements'). The most radical proposal that was close to passing was the 2013 "Gang of Eight" bill that would have... increased the number of green cards available by 25,000. There is not some significant reform around the corner which an economics professor had impeded by publishing a graphic novel about open borders.
I don’t argue with anything but your over dramatic last sentence.
All I’m saying is that by pushing a bad proposal that people properly reject, on the margin he is not helping to achieve the very good (imperfect sphere of a lot more legal immigration) by pushing for what he claims is the best.
Surely someone who reads an economic blog can understand the concept of marginalism.
I don't see how this follows.
Partly because fully open border given a welfare state IS objectively a bad idea, and most people recognize that.
Partly because he insists people don’t have a right to maintain their own culture, which most people disagree with him on (you can decide whether he’s right or wrong. This one is not absolute, but I more disagree with him than agree).
And so it puts off people in the middle who might be open to a lot more legal immigration than now who don’t want an unlimited floodgate.
The role of an intellectual is not to moderate their views to appease a public.
Politicians sometimes need to moderate their views to get elected.
Think tanks must moderate their views to raise money.
But an individual person has no such moral responsibility. In fact an individual person has the moral responsibility to speak the truth.
We are asked here to imagine a person who has read Bryan's books, thought of them, has read the chapters where Bryan Caplan offers moderate 'keyhole solutions' for restrictionist concerns, and then deecided: "I am so repulsed by this that I will now become a radical restrictionist". This person does not exist.
Or there might be a person who is approacihng the topic of open borders in bad faith: he sees a person who is advocating literally Madisonian open borders (i.e., advocating, like James Madison, that in peacetime the government has no legal or moral authority to control migration), and decides that *any* moderate reform should be opposed as a step towards this. But such a person cannot be reached by logical debate of any kind. (That is not to say this person is stupid - perhaps they have moral and intellectual priors we do not share).
I think Bryan uses the idea of “open borders” as a way to promote vigorous debate, forcing the most difficult immigration questions into the open air. Figuratively open borders might be just fine.
I’ve heard and read him debate this.
I agree that he would indeed be “fine” with figuratively open borders as an outcome.
But a) that’s not the way he advocates or debates, and what’s relevant here is b) I’m far from the only one who believes that his extreme advocacy reduces the probability of “figuratively” open borders - i .e. much more legal immigration - rather than increases it.
In that case, carry on Bryan! Everybody in American (worth keeping here) wins.
Then go in peace, my brother.
You may want to look at Yale Brozen’s Is Government the Source of Monopoly? (Cato, 1980), if you haven’t already. As I recall, Brozen’s empirical investigation found only one durable nationwide monopoly that was not government-granted or protected: Alcoa. That seems to fit your repaired version of Rothbard particularly well. Free-market monopoly need not be impossible by definition; the stronger argument may be that durable monopoly without government privilege is empirically extremely rare. Brozen’s evidence might therefore strengthen the historical section of your paper.
I don’t think the example of selling additional time for the same amount of money demonstrating horizontal demand curves works. You could just as easily explain the phenomenon as you insufficiently negotiating pay rates, and maybe the buyer would have paid you more for the previous hours but it was too much hassle to negotiate.
The #2 critique is valid but I think it is also one that has been incorporated into mainstream theory (it might even predate Rothbard within mainstream theory). Reading through Tirole's classic IO book for example you get a lot models that show exactly that.
“So while Rothbard’s most original contribution to monopoly theory is wrong, bordering on crackpottish, his pro-market, anti-government vision is fundamentally sound and wise.”
This is great and should be the pull-quote for the entire piece.
I kept waiting for the critique of government monopoly.
Would you support eliminating all antitrust regulation? What are the strongest economic arguments for and against?
The strongest argument for elimination is the public choice one that the politicians and government functionaries deciding what is and is not antitrust are self interested.
[For the record, I probably would not eliminate all of it, but I’d eliminate an awful lot, and yes would probably prefer zero regulation to what we have now, if those were the only two choices.]