Why should we support property rights?
Easy, relatively correct answers:
- Data: It seems to work to increase prosperity, and a rising tide seems like it really does lift all boats. Therefore for any society that I am in, or any society I am concerned about the general welfare of...I should advocate property rights. There is no known system that makes the poorest members of a society more better off over time than do property rights.
- Freedom: All known leader-selection processes select for the amoral/actively immoral leaders (as judged by any extant moral framework besides might makes right). Any approach that removes decisions from central authority, and distributes to is a good one. Mob rule may or may not compare favorably to evil autocrats (fewer genocides, anyhow), but it certainly ain't much better. Property rights is both better than mobs and better than autocrat decisions over time in almost 100% of cases...therefore we should support it if we are allowed to participate in the property-ownership business, or if we are disinterested observers preferring maxU.
- Conservativism: Don't break shit that works Especially the important stuff. This is highly underappreciated by all non-conservatives.
- Fairness: Bob built wealth in circumstance Y. If you politically switch circumstances to circumstance X ( < Y), then, you're pre-empting Bob's decision...(and screwing with the likelihood of future Bob's creating wealth).
Reasons that fail fast:
- It's morally right. Under what model -- we've largely established on this blog that: ∀u ∈ y'all : u cannot justify your moral position as socially prescriptive.
- It benefits those excluded from the society, or from the market. It doesn't.
- Just deserts -- at 95% fidelity, the only factor involved in deserts and the modern world is being born in the right place. SOME folks (Bezos? Brin? Gates? Jobs?) appear to have been irreplaceable. Also, there are immigrants. Everyone else...we have our wealth/standard of living 98% because we're lucky to have been born where we were born, or our parents were good country-pickers...and maybe 2% because of your talents. Someone else could, and probably does do almost exactly what you do...You're replaceable, and most of what you have is good luck on your part, having been born into a good society (immigrants win on moral status here, but found isn't MUCH better than born into for just desert).
So...how do you justify the existence of a status quo that screws a set of people to those people? Usually, you don't. Might makes right, full stop.
So...back to Caplan's question...who is screwed worse...peaceful immigrants who'd like to work in the USA without welfare, or historical Jim-Crow suffering blacks?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again...you have to treat immigrants as massively subhuman in your moral calculus to be. Or you can just be human...naturally anti-foreign ... and make up reasons why you are after the fact.
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The only justification for restricted immigration to my mind is this: if allowing large scale immigration will change the nature of the population such that the conditions that created the wealth that makes it such an attractive destination such that it can no longer provide wealth and a good life for anyone, we are not only screwing the descendants of the immigrants, but the descendants of those who created that wealth.
"So...back to Caplan's question...who is screwed worse...peaceful immigrants who'd like to work in the USA without welfare... "
Do you have some heretofore secret data showing the strong libertarian bent of immigrants? Do you actually believe that if immigrants to the US were political allies of libertarians that libertarians would reject them? You claim not to be a statist; why do you use liberal shaming language to argue for the importation of people that you already know will use their vote to increase welfare and racial carve-outs? Do you secretly want a more intrusive federal government?
"Historical Jim-Crow suffering blacks"
In what countries are blacks doing really well compared to in the US? France, England, Mexico, somewhere in Africa?
perfidy's suggestion sounds like instances of the Conservativism and Fairness principles.
What do you want? Any morality discussion must start with this. Because it's the only thing that's real. It makes all BS clear itself. Then we can talk policy.
You want economic growth? You want the USA's total GDP to go up?
Then lure high IQ immigrants from all the world, and pauperize/enslave the left half of the Bell Curve. You'll have amazing growth.
You want, in an utilitarian fashion, to lower the total amount of suffering of humanity? Immigration is a very ineffective way of accomplishing that. Yeah you might help a few people come to the US to make a buck. But luring high IQ immigrants also impoverishes their home country by depriving them of social capital.
The most effective way of lowering total suffering is to make the third world stop breeding. Less people, less suffering. Because they don't have the capability to stop suffering themselves.
Those who argue against immigration care about the integrity of the nation, i.e. the integrity of the culture. Immigrants wreck that. They bring their own. Which conflicts with the old culture. Which has to compromise. Means it dies. So we don't like it.
What do you want? Any morality discussion must start with this. Because it's the only thing that's real. It makes all BS clear itself. Then we can talk policy.
You want economic growth? You want the USA's total GDP to go up?
Then lure high IQ immigrants from all the world, and pauperize/enslave the left half of the Bell Curve. You'll have amazing growth.
You want, in an utilitarian fashion, to lower the total amount of suffering of humanity? Immigration is a very ineffective way of accomplishing that. Yeah you might help a few people come to the US to make a buck. But luring high IQ immigrants also impoverishes their home country by depriving them of social capital.
The most effective way of lowering total suffering is to make the third world stop breeding. Less people, less suffering. Because they don't have the capability to stop suffering themselves.
Those who argue against immigration care about the integrity of the nation, i.e. the integrity of the culture. Immigrants wreck that. They bring their own. Which conflicts with the old culture. Which has to compromise. Means it dies. So we don't like it.
you have to treat immigrants as massively subhuman in your moral calculus to be.
Huh? I think you left off a noun at the end there.
I agree with Perfidy, but mostly I am against our current immigration policy on more or less might-makes-right grounds. This is my country because I inherited it; it is private property and I don't want to share with just anyone. That I did little to earn my patrimony is immaterial; what matters is that those who chose me wanted me to have it.
I am not against immigration, though. I think the USA should auction off immigration rights to high bidders. With properly designed credit, a responsible USG could be making on the order of $1 million per immigrant.
Of course, the existing bloated progressive USG is not responsible, and would never do such a thing. But a sovcorp would.
Onlytradeoffs,
I see my current options as the fascist party of the left, and the fascist party of the right. I really don't see how adding immigrants makes much difference at all. Certainly, it's well known that the added immigration and racial mix is a major part of what's kept the USA from drifting norweigian in its socialism...
The diversity is a major component of why many Americans don't think in crazy we-speak like the europeans, japanese, and other homogenous cultures do.
Against a perfect world...maybe a problem. Against the real world...not even sure of the sign if the net effect. It's not like immigrants, low IQ, or low education folks vote.
Spandrell,
1. Goal first. Well said.
I want a veil-of-ignorance Rawlsian positive, where roughly everyone gets absolute positives, and the benefit to the downtrodden is mildly preferred over the benefit to the already well-off. More or less the same as anyone looking at politics from a Rawlsian veil of ignorance would.
I think your data on immigration is simply wrong. Wealth is very simply the best way we know to improve outcomes...and taking a dude from Haiti, having him work in the USA for 20 years, and make 20x what he would have in Haiti, while returning 1/3 of it to haiti to support relatives...huge net value.
The best way to lower total suffering if you're a buddhist is for everyone to stop breeding: no people, no suffering.
I believe that your population line is also factually wrong. If you're trying something close to a Max-U, the Julian Simon approach of less idiotic government, but more people is clearly the right path. Population density leads improvement in QoL statistically across history. More people is BETTER, if the government isn't totally f'd up.
Leonard,
thanks grammar catch. I was trying to back-reference the question two lines before, but failed.
I'm firmly opposed ot the might-makes-right line...which is why the question comes up.
2. There are 2 sides to the immigration goal-debate.
A. improve the US
B. improve net welfare throughout the world
I'm addressing B, and you're addressing A.
I also believe that (regarding A.) the economists' statistical analysis captures more of the reality of immigration (immigration is a net positive, across all factors, for locals in the short and medium term) than does the conservative/ reactionary/ hbd anti-immigrant theorizing. However, that's a different discussion, and would like to skip it here...
Perfidy,
Well-said. I've historically been inclined to support caps on immigration at the maximum historical rates of something like 1% per year...or (better) to support non-voting, no-public-assistance immigration. Citizenship by soil is pretty right out for me as well.
If you support caps - what sort of caps are you willing to impose? Lottery, selective admittance based on IQ or IQ proxies, by country of origin, some mix?
If we only let in 3 mil or less, that's a lot of people we are 'treating as sub-human' by slamming the door in their face saying that they are either too unlucky, too stupid, or too brown.
I could argue that an immigration restrictionist position could be reduced to an anti-immigration position with a small exception for really nice smart people that look like us.
And btw, I would just like to vent and say that I really hate google's captcha system that makes me enter nonsense twice.
perfidy,
I take as given that all 3 primary political positions have core brilliance:
Liberty is better than constraint.
The poor/weak should be helped.
Don't break shit.
Unfortunately there's no formulaic way to maximize the value of all 3 assertions. However, one can kep all 3 in mind when trying to design policy.
Conservativism places the don't break shit constraint on policy, and it's a doozy. But the ethical analysis of the plight of the deserving poor (kids born in Haiti, Bolivia, or North Korea) also strongly constrains in the other direction. It's obvious (to me) that we should NOT ignore either issue.
Yes, 3M immigrants is a limited number.
Yes, auctioning off 4m citizenships a year could bring in, easily, $100B (50K per). However...that ignores the plight of the poor.
If we auctioned 1m citizenships/year ($100K + per, near guaranteed) ...granted another 1m by desert (read: political favors...maybe also including anyone who earns a doctorate in STEM in the US), and had an open lottery for another 1m (pure transfer, if those are saleable)...we might get something that is ethically better than now, but still within the realm of what is good for the USA.
It's the other way around. Improved QoL gives people more disposable income with which they had children.
China in 1850 wasn't wealthier per capita than in 1600.
Or England, for that matter.
It's not about amount of people. It's the quality of the people. Haitians might rather not breed if they want to be able to make a living in their own country.
Spandrell,
I recognize the common belief that I have it backwards. I also have read Julian Simon's analysis of the situation in which he persuasively presents the statistics that say that everyone else has it backwards. Population density CAUSES prosperity. Have you read his work (Ultimate Resource 2?)
Ironically...
Property dissolves the immigrant question.
For the sake of argument, imagine there's no such thing as a boat, and Mexicans have to go through Texas.
The owner of Texas says they can't.
California can't have Mexicans. Full stop.
If instead the owner of Texas says Mexicans are welcome, then responsibility for the consequences - all the consequences - falls on their head. (If they don't, then != property.) And whether they like the consequences or not is up to them, and it's really nobody else's business. Business literally, in this case.
Moreover, in the case of strongest property rights, someone will try it. If Texas is improved by immigration, then everyone will open their borders. If not, then the potential immigrants will have to solve their own problems instead of crying to Daddy...but at least have a clear role model.
"Population density CAUSES prosperity."
I can derive this from near-first principles. But it's not quite density, per se, except through economies of scale. Rather it is communities of innovation-class brains. Basically they have to be able to find each other and bounce ideas off each other.
E.g. what happens when Einstein is born to a 150-person hunter tribe? Fuck all, that's what. Einstein needed Annalen der Physik, which needed in turn a community to sustain it, even if he's able to come up with SR entirely by himself.
Additionally, more innovators is always better.
Julian Simon wasn't talking of Bangladesh. Or Indonesia. It's not pretty.
Hell, even China is crap because of the overpopulation. China with 400 million people would be paradise.
You can't talk about population just like that. There's different kinds of people. Some are the ultimate resource. Some others are the ultimate leech.
Not all humans create wealth.
Spandrell,
Julian Simon WAS talking/did talk Bangladesh (Most population dense country in the world). If you compare Bangladesh to India, along with all the other pairwise comparisons you can do...
for any two locations that are similar, increasing population density increases the probability of per capita economic growth.
A lot of population dense countries are very poor, which confuses people. If you look at very poor countries, the more population dense countries get better economic growth, when correcting for other factors.
Alrenous,
Less so than you think. It's not quite universal, but highly common that property agreements have Easements, which permit public use of some land for travel as needed.
The problem (that I was trying to noodle through in the original post) is that when we say property rights...we are making a positive claim against people to (not) behave in certain ways...and I'm not convinced that we've got the moral authority to do so...or more specifically that they have the moral duty to not ignore us.
Property rights are derived...and the derivation is not absolute, but contextual on the situations of the participants.
If they lack a moral duty to not ignore us, we lack a moral duty to not ignore them. It doesn't matter if immigrants are non-human or not because there's no reason to avoid the might==right default.
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