Assertion:
People in America believe more in open borders the more the following is true:
1. They treat impact on non-Americans as carrying roughly equivalent moral weight to impact on Americans.
1.1 Their moral tastes are lower on the grouping axes (Purity, Loyalty, Authority).
1.2 They are higher on the (group-independent) human-freedom axis (Liberty).
2. They believe that the benefits to the immigrants are much higher than the costs to the natives.
And the converse. People are opposed to open borders the more they:
1. Think some groups deserve special moral weight (people like me, people who live in America).
2. They believe that the costs to the natives are not much lower than the benefits to the immigrants.
#1 is not debatable...it's a moral taste argument. The is/ought gap is still as wide as ever.
So the argument has a quite narrow flow. What are the costs and benefits?
The entire anti-immigration argument on this blog can be summarized:
- Immigration hurts natives more than you are giving credit.
- Natives take precedence
- The benefit of immigration to the immigrants is absurdly high
- Native liberty only takes a little precedence. (Hans + stealing bread?)
The anti-immigrationist argument over the last few years is..."I'm not interested (A), I'm interested in (1). Let's talk about that instead."
I think the Caplans and Aretaes of the world could be convinced that immigration restriction had some redeeming qualities rather than being near the top of the greatest Western government evils of the modern era (with Obama's drones, non-defensive wars, the Drug War)...if the immigrationist (A) were addressed directly. Talking about (1) simply isn't very persuasive, because it doesn't hit what we see as the crux of the issue.
Similarly, in my last 3 years of blogging, I've never seen an anti-immigrationist even care much about the pro-immigrationist central issue (A). The only topic under discussion is (1). If we immigrationists are to be persuasive at all, we have to address (1).
Anyhow, the blog that's discussing this stuff better than, but on the same side of the issue as I am is here.
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42 comments:
1. They treat impact on non-Americans as carrying roughly equivalent moral weight to impact on Americans.
Okay (sort of) as a starting framework - I'll acknowledge that when advocating controlled immigration the practical result is to treat some people as carrying less 'moral weight' - but it omits/glosses over some very important questions:
'Impact' of what? by whom?
Perhaps these questions are unimportant to open-borders folks. I think what you're missing here is that they are central to controlled-immigration folks.
Why does the US government exist? Does it exist to maximize the utility function of the world? Should the US government be equally concerned with the welfare of a random Bangladeshi as a random Bangor, Maine resident? Is that what you think it is supposed to do? Is that the principle that you think should guide its actions? Is it to such an end that the People of the united States (implicitly) empowered and constituted the Government of the united States?
Let me stipulate that no one person is more 'morally weighty' or whatever, than any other. But what on earth does that have to do with what the US government should do about things? Other people have other governments. Americans have the US government.
Government is not a universal moral-optimizer. That is not the role, function, or purpose of government and never has been. People who speak otherwise just seem confused.
Reading over open-borders opinions, I can only wonder why on earth the US government should exist at all - given what you (apparently) think its priorities ought to be. Why should I, as an American, even want a US government in the first place? It doesn't seem to be in my interest to have one. And government is a power-monopolizer so the onus is especially on you, as a self-proclaimed libertarian, to explain why I should be ok with all this. Do you have an answer to that?
RWCG,
I thought you knew I was an anarchist.
What rcwg said.
A. The benefit of immigration to the immigrants is absurdly high
Again, Aretae, this is a basic wealth re-distribution argument. Do you really expect to win this in the long run? "The benefit of wealth re-distribution to the recipient is absurdly high." Am I suppose to roll over and accept this? Am I suppose to lay down and let wealth re-distributors piss all over me? "The benefit of moving a homeless person into Aretae's house is absurdly high for the homeless person." Do you find this persuasive? "The benefit of immigration to Muhammad Atta is absurdly high." Yes, this is a true statement, this is a fact, so Aretae is compelled to support open immigration. Enjoy the flames.
You are apparently an anarchist until it is time for the government to support the goals of your tribe.
Around here, the immigrants get gov't backed loans for disadvantaged minorities to set up fronts for laundering drug money.
So which political battle do we fight: immigration, or welfare payments? I can only fight one at a time, so I have to prioritize my fights.
RSF,
It's a basic liberty argument.
Are we justified in restricting folks natural freedom to move about/exit? If this has a minor impact on their well-being, then it's a minor liberty constraint. If our restricting their liberty effectively cuts their lifetime income by 90%...this is an enormous liberty concern.
I don't want active behavior, active giving. I want us to stop hiring our government thugs to do evil stuff.
RSF,
I agree re: prioritization.
I think that the welfare payments are a smaller problem than immigration restrictions.
In a fight between opposition to the industrial-prison drug-war system, opposition to killing brown people in faraway places, and immigration, I have a hard time choosing.
Welfare? Comparatively small beans...though it's done so badly.
RSF,
"You are apparently an anarchist until it is time for the government to support the goals of your tribe."
And which tribe is that? I don't have a tribe.
It is not a "natural freedom to move about/exit" when they move into a particular polity. It is not a natural freedom for someone to move into your house: there are certain pre-requisites. If the immigrants meet the prerequisites, fine.
You play the "non-tribe" card too much.
Aretae's is the tribe of high achieving, upper socio-economic strata knowledge workers that are able to avoid interacting with the sourer fruits of low skill immigration policy.
I think that the welfare payments are a smaller problem than immigration restrictions.
Okay, but the skew of welfare in attracting immigrants negates the gains from immigration.
For that matter, I haven't seen any great gains from the last 30 years of relatively open immigration to this country: a few athletes, some entrepreneurs. Big whoop. Meanwhile, economic growth: low; gov't spending on means tested welfare payments: awfully high.
Tribe = folks who you identify with, folks whose opinions count when you decide what your opinions are.
"Are we justified in restricting folks natural freedom to move about/exit?"
Yes/no.
Please stop mixing the two.
I am justified in restricting another person's movement into my land.
I am not justified in restricting another person's movement out of their land.
(These would be the same in a world with only two pieces of land, but that's very far from the case.)
Thanks! I'm the creator of the site you link to and one of the bloggers. Just FYI, the site has a lot of content in addition to the blog posts; it's a blog-cum-website.
I've added a link to your blog post on the "external coverage" page here.
Lurking Apple,
I think this is the interesting part of the argument.
If consider the world as having 2 locations:
(a) places where the kleptocratic government screws the citizens very badly.
(b) places where it doesn't screw them that badly.
We're pretty close to the place you're talking about.
Also...I'm mostly good with the "my land" line, so long as we're talking individually owned land, no group ownership, no corporate ownership, and there's room for homesteading.
By what basis other than personal preference do you weight the personal freedom axis so much higher than the others? I asked this in the other thread, as well. If these moral faculties exist in humans to one degree or another, might they have some purpose - dare I say, some *utility*? And if they are to be discarded or given no weight, should we not treat individual liberty the same, or does that one have a unique and special moral weight?
And further, while I can grok the upside of someone moving here - for them - that movement here can and does cause harm to people here. If that harm is less than the upside for the immigrant, it is still harm, and you seem to wave that away entirely.
And lastly, if a group of anarchists bought land in, say, Detroit and built a community there because the land was cheap - created something of value - would they want to allow a bunch of miscreants to move in to their community? One miscreant might benefit greatly. But in a small community, the tipping point beyond which the presence of sufficient numbers of people that didn't share the ideals of the founders would wreck the community, and remove or undermine its ability to provide wealth or personal satisfaction for anyone.
On what basis - property rights, freedom of association? would that community be justified in limiting movement in? Ever?
I thought you knew I was an anarchist.
Actually you often speak of 'left-libertarianism'. But ok. Yes, I agree that a logical result of applying your principle is anarchy.
But not only. After all, another logical result is stereotypically-"neocon" style interventionism. Why?
Imagine Joe Dictator of Dictatoria is threatening the people of the U.S. Okay, so it's the job of the US government to defend US citizens against his attacks. But wait! He's also threatening, like, England. And of course he also harms the people of Dictatoria. Shouldn't the United States government not only repel his attacks in the defense of the US people, but unseat him as well and install a decent government over Dictatoria? Why not? For the US to do anything else would be to treat people with different 'moral weight' would it not?
Result: "neocon"ism.
I think the real result of trying to apply this principle consistently is a schizoid politics that sometimes embraces anarchy, sometimes big-government interventionism. In short, incoherence.
"Also...I'm mostly good with the "my land" line, so long as we're talking individually owned land, no group ownership, no corporate ownership, and there's room for homesteading."
You may want to have a clause there about how an individual can't own more than a certain amount of land, either, for cases such as the Queen of England who owns several countries. Somehow I don't think you meant to make the case that only an absolute monarchy can restrict immigration in a morally acceptable way. ;-)
That said, fuck all the ownership clauses, the first. I expect that banning group or corporate ownership will result in a legal distortion where groups put land in a figurehead's name and get the figurehead to swear mickle oaths and sign contracts with nasty penalties regarding use of the land.
And after said distortion, then we're over to the case about restricting a single person from owning more than X amount of land, and RSF's redistribution objection comes up.
"The benefit of moving a homeless person into Aretae's house is absurdly high for the homeless person."
and
"Surely the millionaires have no use for more than X amount of money - we should tax all wealth past Y / all wealth past Z at 100%, and redistribute it to the poor!"
Second, fuck your ownership clauses once again for the implied anti-tribal totalitarianism: Aretae isn't part of a group, so nobody else should be allowed to act like they're part of a group either!
Lurking Apple,
Are you suggesting that a principle of valuing individual liberty is deeply incompatible with groupism?
I suspect that I agree with you. Eventually you need to pick one, and stop pretending to be concerned about the other.
RWCG,
I think you have the order of events backwards. I, like most libertarians, am first opposed to the use of (initation of) force (force or trade are the two choices) to get what you want. Government is, 100% of the time, an instrument of force. Even when it gets you what you want.
Neocons think that initiating force against locals is justified for a higher cause of decreasing the force against others. I am opposed to initiating force.
What I'm pushing is very simple: Lets not have our government actively aid anti-liberty efforts, especially at the cost of liberty at home.
It's a consistent position...and pro-immigrationism is a consequence, not a premise.
Aretae,
What traits would a group have to exhibit for you to want to restrict their immigration into your neighborhood?
Meh,
I don't think in those terms.
Did you mean to ask: What characteristics would an individual need to have for me to want to prevent him or her from moving next to me?
Aretae,
No, I mean "immigrate to your neighborhood." You're arguing with Americans that they are dog-kickers if they don't embrace the movement of non-Americans into their neighborhoods. Because what open borders would mean for me is that a LOT of low-IQ, clit-excising, redistributionist, free-speech hating Somalis would immigrate to a medium walk from me. And the Americans who argue with you are envisioning those who will immigrate to their neighborhoods.
So, since you don't have a good way to read the minds of each immigrant to your neighborhood, are you saying that you won't take into account average differences? If a batch of people were to immigrate frame a region where child rape were normal to your neighborhood, would you be against it? (I can make up other examples.)
If you're an anarchist, you want no government force whatsoever. I don't see the point of singling out immigration laws for special critique. All laws are invalid.
Assuming you're really some kind of 'anarcho-libertarian', there are times you're ok with government force. The most basic starting point is defense of US citizens against the initiation of force by Foreign Aggressor.
But if you accept that minimal government function**, my point is that your 'equal moral weight' principle would require the US government to defend ANYONE anywhere from Foreign Aggressor's initiation of force. Including the citizens of whatever country he's the autocrat of....in other words, it requires neocon-style interventionism.
An alternative is to recognize that the 'equal moral weight' concept makes no sense as a guiding principle for a nation-state's government. That is simply not why they exist; it's not part of their mandate.
**if not let me know, because then this whole conversation really is moot.
"Are you suggesting that a principle of valuing individual liberty is deeply incompatible with groupism?"
No, I'm suggesting that your principle of individual liberty is starting to look incoherent, for instance because your application of valuing individual liberty is destructive of other people's individual liberty. You want to ban other people from forming groups and having the group treated as a single entity for convenience. This hardly seems like a "where my nose begins" issue that violates your liberty. How do you argue that it does?
If you argue that it's risky because of the potential for groups to get abusive, once again, the same goes for any individual amassing large amounts of money.
And elsewise, who would you have doing enforcement? If people decide to band together and sign contracts to behave as a group, the signers have a very simple Schelling point for punishing a defector and appealing to others for support. If you want to break up the group or annul their internal agreement, wouldn't you need a powerful group of your own?
Another angle:
Can I get restrictive covenants back?
If I could, I'd be significantly more accepting of having the government cease its migration control functions.
As it is, your 'anarchism' is taking an issue where the government has seized control of local rules down at the city, street and house levels. It federalized them, and now you want the government to stop applying the federal rules. Federalization of those rules annoys me... but the net effect after your proposal would be that the government banned individuals from putting certain clauses in the sale contracts of their property.
I don't see the point of singling out immigration laws for special critique
Because the negative impact is so large.
What traits would a group have to exhibit for you to want to restrict their immigration into your neighborhood?
Speaking for myself, I'm ok with restrictive covenants, if all of the property owners agree.
By what basis other than personal preference do you weight the personal freedom axis so much higher than the others?
Valuing the group access at the expense of the freedom access leads to war and crime. We can agree to respect each others freedoms, and get along fine. We can't agree to victimize each other to benefit our relatives and get along fine.
You want to ban other people from forming groups and having the group treated as a single entity for convenience.
Where does he say this?
Where does he say this?
Extrapolated from "no corporate ownership, no group ownership" earlier in the comments thread.
In retrospect I may have misunderstood that and I should ask for clarification.
From Aretae:
"Also...I'm mostly good with the "my land" line, so long as we're talking individually owned land, no group ownership, no corporate ownership, and there's room for homesteading."
Is this meant as a general anti-groupist position on corporate ownership of anything or just corporate ownership of land?
I've been mostly out of pocket for a few days, and still am, but I have a moment....
It was a general anti-groupist position on land.
I am further, and unrelated to my anti-groupism, substantially anti-corporate, with my specific complaint being limited liability of any sort. See: Ted Kennedy and the girl he killed. Police officers who shoot unarmed kids. The CEO of Exxon around the time of the Valdez oil spill. etc.
LA,
Restrictive covenants with long time-frames would have Jews still prohibited from living through much of the country.
If the covenants are reviewed and mutable (as per homeowners associations in Texas or Apartment Owners' Covenants in NYC/LA) and hopefully sunsetting, I have very little issue with them apart from disliking them.
If the covenants are about what folks DO in public, I have extra-little disagreement. No music audible from the sidewalk besides Opera. No covered faces in public in the neighborhood. No bathroom accoutrements as planters. No non-working cars parked on streets or in driveway? No smells (besides Texas or Carolina barbecue) detectable from neighboring houses. All legit.
If the covenants are about WHO someone is: must attend church X; must not attend church Y; black only; chinese prohibited; jews prohibited; Then I usually find the restriction morally problematic. However, that doesn't mean I'd support its being illegal. On the other hand, I would likely support a campaign to villify/shame them.
Also, I personally avoid HOAs with substantial prejudice.
RWCG,
1. What Alex said: there's greater and lesser injustice. There's greater and lesser harm. Immigration is on the top 3(?) greatest liberty-constraining harms to people both by impact and quantity affected. As before, drug war and offensive wars are the other 2.
2. There is a utilitarian calculus, that you wish to use, that goes quite substantially against the basic libertarian mantra: The government is the problem, NEVER the solution. Your neo-con line violates that prime libertarian directive. Now, if we ignored the prime directive, and gave up our libertarianism, we might start thinking like the neocons. But we'd probably give up the pro-liberty absolutism long before then.
Perfidy,
as always, great questions.
1. The moral faculties are the moral faculties. Why do I weight sweet stuff so much higher than sour stuff while my wife likes sour stuff more? Pure personal preference. Likely built-in.
2. I believe that in small tribes of 150 in the ESE (or in the poorer parts of modern Africa/India/Arabia), or in Viking culture, the moral faculties have a very clear, valuable purpose. This is all that's required for them to exist, if my math works out.
I believe that in a not-as-poor feudal society, as per what we saw up into the 1800s in most European places or Communist countries, they are somewhere near free (mild benefit to mild cost). If they're not selected against in the feudal world...they should persist.
However, in a market-oriented society (last 50? years), with substantial real freedom, I think they are a large cost.
3. On average, an average immigrant is normally counted as being a small economic benefit to the country as a whole, with some subgroups maybe negatively impacted (and maybe not). The political opinions of the immigrant are measured to not be substantially different over time from natives. There are costs AND benefits to locals, and it's highly non-obvious that the costs are higher, when you go about trying to measure these things.
4. Your last question, of course, is the hard one. Are you suggesting a pro-American-liberty purity test with lie detection for entrance to the USA? Anyone opposed to basic american freedoms (Arms, Speech, 10th Amendment?) gets no citizenship/vote? I'm in, except that the test will be corrupted in roughly 20 minutes by pro-arms control, anti-federalist state department officials.
4) You agree that limited immigration is good. Me too. But you are apparently okay with unlimited immigration.
???
1. Fair enough re: prioritizing the perceived harm you argue against. I guess I just meant to say that if you're genuinely an anarchist (which I'm still not clear about) and seek no-government, there is little common ground for discussion of immigration policy - immigration is the least of our disagreements.
2. There you go shape shifting between libertarianism and anarchy again - which are you, just so I understand? I don't see how a libertarian could endorse the idea that government is 'never' the solution, because if that's really the case one should be an anarchist not a libertarian. ('never the solution' = shouldn't exist). Change 'never' to 'rarely', perhaps? So yes, I do come from a POV according to which government should exist and do some basic things. If you don't, then again, we have so little common ground that immigration policy only scratches the surface.
Best,
RWCG,
My preference is strictly anarchic. I think government is an evil. And not a necessary one.
However...anarchy is a long ways from here. So as a nearer-horizon, I think a lot like a libertarian, and prefer to shrink the government as far as it can go.
And...as a left-libertarian, I am most concerned about those aspects of government which primarily hurt the poor and disadvantaged. Issues like Social Security being a transfer from the poor to the middle class...the drug war...limited liability in government and corporations preventing the people responsible for screwing things up from being answerable to we schlubs. Those kinds of things. Oh...and immigration.
2. It's not uncommon among libertarians to claim that the nature of government is such that using government to solve problems is (nearly) universally unwise. Government has a ratchet built-in. Anywhere near where we are...we ought to oppose government programs rather indiscriminately...and oppose new and extra ones even more.
RWCG,
And, specifically under the heading of "I'm wrong a lot", especially about new things...
For the forseeable future, there ain't much difference between the minarchists and anarchists. We want less government. Whether we think the end state is better as none, or just almost none is a debate for a long time from now. The vector we need to chase is pretty clear.
RSF,
1. I feel like I'm chasing a moving target.
2. We had the discussion before, in the comments on this blog. Unlimited immigration could potentially kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. That's bad.
The US has done fine before with ~1% of population immigrating per year...which is somewhere between a doubling and a tripling of current immigration rates. That's an improvement over today.
I'm not so libertarian as to fail to understand the conservative virtue of prudence: if you do unprecedented stuff, don't expect it will all work out well.
And I'm not so libertarian as to fail to understand the progressive virtue of compassion: the poor/weak/etc. count in our moral calculus, and a lot.
The challenge is in finding a balance.
The libertarian and progressive positions (should) both agitate for MORE immigration.
The conservative position agitates for not TOO much.
And then there are technical details to work out.
As per our last conversation on the details...My (painful to my liberty-leaning and poor-caring side) policy recommendation would be to put us at 1% of population (3M) per year, and measure the effects closely, so as to determine how easy it is to go higher.
So as a nearer-horizon, I think a lot like a libertarian, and prefer to shrink the government as far as it can go.
Fine, but once you start basing your reasoning explicitly on things like 'government is NEVER the solution', you have let your sights drift upward to that farther target that you have. Which I don't. Hence we won't find common ground or be able to agree on things like immigration policy, understandably.
Re: hurting 'the poor and disadvantage', I would ask: *which* poor and disadvantaged? All else equal I am less concerned about the effect of the US government on the poor and disadvantaged of, say, Swaziland than on the poor and disadvantaged of the US. Often, this is precisely the locus of disagreement between myself and open-borders advocates. Including you?
Best
If government charity was totally replaced with private charity, I predict much of that private charity would go "close to home" as it were, and that's fine.
...policy recommendation would be to put us at 1% of population (3M) per year, and measure the effects closely, so as to determine how easy it is to go higher.
You are still making no distinction about quality of immigrants.
One percent is too high.
My usual question: who will enforce this? What does enforcement look like? Who/how are disagreements settled?
Sorry to be trollish about it, but I don't think you would enforce any immigration restrictions. You'll talk a good game until the time comes.
USG is increasingly illiberal, and practises central social planning through welfare (carrot) and strict limits on rights-to-exclude (stick). USG is running higher levels of immigration than most citizens would prefer, as are the European countries in its sphere of influence. The University and media line is that mass immigration is a good thing.
It would seem, then, that USG is pro-immigration, particularly of Third World peasants. In fact, it invites just enough of the Third World population per annum to keep voter-resentment simmering without it bubbling over.
If he takes out his Pollyanna brain and swaps in his adult one, this should concern the average "libertarian". If existing USG sees fit to keep its borders as open as practicable (to Helots and Dalits), might this not suggest that, in the real world (where life is not fair, and policy is not made solely on the basis that it's nice to be nice) mass immigration is unlikely to further the cause of rebooting or reforming USG to make it more libertarian?
Admittedly, Aretae is not an influential person. But to the extent that the blogosphere does have some small influence on future political trends and activities, to advocate open borders shall not nudge the future in the direction of benign governance.
Apart from the fact that USG is electing a new citizenry, ornery Americans feel especially threatened by mass immigration because they have no legal means to keep immigrants and people of different races away from themselves. If restrictive covenants and every other kind of racialist contract and refusal to do business with brown people were legal, an influx of Mexicans would be out of sight and out of mind. This is easier the more libertarian the government: the fewer government jobs, services and institutions there are, the more difficult it is for someone to live where the local population does not welcome them.
That is, unless the balance of public opinion in the States is such that legalised racialism would be unsustainable due to the non-violent sanctions of other economic actors. I find this unlikely, because most Americans (as Aretae says) are not all that disinclined to group-ism—much less so racially diverse immigrants (i.e. I doubt that the average Somali immigrant would feel moral outrage at being excluded from living in certain areas, if that were legal, and would most likely make use of this freedom himself).
Again, let’s be realistic: until it is rebooted, reformed or replaced, USG is very unlikely to enforce racialist contracts or permit non-violent racialist exclusion. It is already funnelling masses of Dalits into the States. So when immigration-advocates announce that in addition to open borders, they also think that restrictive covenants et al should be legalised, this does not reassure anyone. “Who? Whom?” is the usual order of things—“Should” requires a great deal of scrutiny, because often things that “should” happen, don’t.
What about mass immigration under a benign, light-touch, reformed USG? I still think it unwise. My idea of conservatism is different to Aretae’s, perhaps because I perceive the felicific calculus to be dominated by existential risk and the singularity. The job of the utilitarian is to make sure that humans or transhumans successfully give rise to a friendly superintelligence, before or instead of wiping themselves out. It seems to me that to invite 3 million peasants into the States per annum is far more likely to hinder than help the country’s scientific progress, social trust and political stability, even if only a little, compared to which (given the stakes) any immediate humanitarian benefit is negligible. Don’t mess with First World civilisation! The exception is if American public opinion were overwhelmingly in favour of mass immigration at the time, such that closed borders were a threat to USG’s legitimacy—not very likely.
Who will enforce this? What does enforcement look like?
USG will enforce it, of course. We all know about the wonderful and trustworthy USG. If USG thinks 4 million Mexicans would be OK, By Jove! it must be true.
Just look how good it is at measuring the effects of regime change, central banking, state education &c.
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