Immigration restrictions are the modern day slavery

Bryan Caplan has convinced me that supporting open borders--all the way, no restrictions--really is the right thing to do. Also, the fact that he has convinced me proves the point he was making in this post, where he compares the defense of open-borders to abolitionism:

The obvious moral objection is that comparing slavery and immigration restrictions is absurd hyperbole. But it's absurd hyperbole to call this apt comparison "absurd hyperbole." Yes, enslaving a Haitian is plainly worse than forbidding him to accept a job offer anywhere on earth except Haiti. But they're both dire harms. How would you react if the world's laws barred you from every non-Haitian labor market on earth? With weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Paradoxically, you might say, it's precisely Caplan's doctrinaire attitude that gradually made me reconsider the facts and adopt my present position. This corresponds with what he says further down: "Moderates are better at bargaining with people holding preferences fixed. Abolitionists are better at changing preferences." It also helps when the abolitionist is a highly well-informed economist.

I'm not sure why Caplan uses Haiti as his illustrative example every time he talks about the issue, but he really can get the point across. Immigration restrictions constitute one of the gravest injustices of our time, one which reinforces global social hierarchies--the poor remain poor while the rich remain rich--for no good reasons that cannot be addressed in other, more humane ways. This essay has pretty good answers to all the standard objections, particularly the ones which come from the right of the political spectrum.

Common political wisdom would suggest that the left is more naturally receptive to immigration, but I'm not so convinced. My guess is that in the long run, the left will have difficulty with truly open borders, precisely because of the difficulties presented in running a welfare state while letting everyone in (a classical right-wing objection to open immigration, to which the libertarian can reply, "Oh, well!"). And if what Caplan reports about the inverse relationship between diversity and redistribution is true, good old European socialists may be the last to embrace open borders.

As for me, I've come to see this as a plain implication of the existence of universal human rights. It comes down to a really fundamental question about the purpose of democratic governments. I don't believe that we can prohibit the movement of foreigners--of individual human beings who happen not to be born in our country--in the name of democracy, that is in the name of protecting our own interests. Indeed, when a country excludes certain people from immigration, it doesn't protect anyone's property, it only forces people not to exchange, and therefore not to mutually benefit from one another. For each immigrant you deport for trying to work in the U.S., you also deprive an employer of an employee he wanted to hire.

And this is a moral issue. If it were only a matter of economics, I think the empirical evidence might still make me an open borders libertarian, but the issue is far more urgent than that. There are people all around the world who could make a better life for themselves and their families if they had the freedom to move somewhere else. We need to let that happen. The first step is being convinced if the desirability of that goal.

I haven't thought what the next step might be, but I'm sure that will come.

Bryan Caplan on immigration restrictions

This guy is fantastic.

It's a long video, so here's a brief synopsis: Most of the arguments against free immigration are based on claims that are at best exaggerated. Moreover, even if we accept all of the reasons usually given, there are cheaper and more humane ways to deal with the problems mentioned. For instance, if we're concerned about immigration lowering wages (which doesn't happen to any significant extent) or about immigrants soaking up welfare benefits (which really aren't that much to begin with) there is a simple solution: charge a flat fee for immigration (say, $30,000), or have a higher rate of taxes (say, an extra 10%) on immigrant workers. These suggestions are just concessions, of course. The real point is this: once a reasonable person has heard the facts, there really is no moral reason why he should oppose open immigration.

Irrational Voters

Here's an entertaining talk (part 1 of 6) from Bryan Caplan on "The Myth of the Rational Voter":

The overall point is troubling, but not unexpected: yes, it does actually make a difference how uninformed the public is about political matters. For instance, Caplan cites research showing that anti-market bias is markedly more prevalent among voters who are less informed about the facts. Those who count as "informed" here are of course not universally libertarian free market ideologues, but there are things on which people educated in certain areas can actually agree, regardless of ideology. (One comment I found interesting, but again not surprising, was that most economists are moderate Democrats, who believe in many free market policies in spite of their left-wing views.) As a result of the gap between informed and uninformed, many people support irrational policies (for instance on tariffs or what have you) even when they hurt us.

If you get to the end, you'll hear him start to talk about prescriptions. One idea is to have voters tested on basic knowledge before they vote. I understand why this is controversial, although I think people are a little too biased against this. Another idea is to "work on our communication skills"--for Caplan, this means that economists in particular should work on making basic economics presentable to the public. I grow weary of this idea. It's something we in the academy talk about endlessly, but we have very few concrete ideas about how to do it. Just as there are very few incentives for the average person to learn what experts know, so there are also very few incentives for academics to go out of their way to make key ideas popular.

In the long run, we absolutely do need ways to limit democracy. There is no question that if popular ideas are always allowed to become policy, democracy will ruin itself. In my opinion, this strengthens the argument for limited government. The argument goes like this:

1. If people are to have government ruling over them, it ought to be by the people's consent. That is, it ought to be democratically chosen.
2. If a society is going to be healthy, it must be protected at times from imposing its own irrational beliefs on itself.
3. Therefore, a healthy society ought to have a democratically elected government which is limited in its powers.

If we reject point (1), we end up with authoritarianism. If we reject point (2), we end up with chaos. The average American believes very strongly in point (1), but many people are eager to reject point (2), which ironically leads to more and more coercive actions by government.