The bleeding heart's dilemma

In a recent "Intelligence Squared" debate, Bryan Caplan gave his classic argument in defense of the statement, "Let anyone take a job anywhere." You can read his opening statement here. If you know Caplan, you know the moral force his argument has: immigration restrictions are violent means by which people in rich countries prevent people in poor countries from reaching their potential and bettering their own existence. If you believe that all the people of the world have equal moral value, then there simply is no moral defense of this practice.

Where, then, is the conflict, particularly from someone on the left? Someone on the right, after all, can claim unapologetically to be a nationalist, to think that by virtue of where he is born he is indeed entitled to certain priviliges, and perhaps even to think that his culture is inherently superior to and must be protected from others. People on the left would (rightly) think this view is awful. None of these things can justify immigration restrictions for a liberal.

There are two things that I noted in the arguments of the opposition, particularly coming from Kathleen Newland, as well as from the audience's questions. One is a subtle tribalism, which creeps in without ever being named. Whereas some might be openly nationalist, there is a different form of tribalism which protests, "We haven't done enough to take care of our own, how can we possibly take in others?" The underlying assumption is that merely coming to work in the U.S. would be impossible; you must also join our system, depend on our government benefits, receive our public education, and so on.

The second is a not so subtle nationalism. Newland is so frank as to say that part of a government's job is to be biased in favor of its own people. In other words, egalitarianism be damned--nation states are more important than human rights. I could be wrong, but I rather thought Newland was coming from a point of view typical on the left, namely that the role of the state is to embody the will of the people. And therein lies the dilemma--the will of the people is really quite often in conflict with the idea of human equality.

Caplan calls his position basic human decency. I think that's unfair, but only because our instincts are so biased against decency. His "basic human decency" is actually a moral tradition built up over thousands of years of civilization--but that's competing against hundreds of thousands of years of tribal existence, in which loyalty to the tribe was essential for survival. The concept that everyone within the tribe is equal may come naturally to a lot of us, but the concept that all humans are equal is still as radical an idea today as it ever was.

But the left claims to champion this idea. The only problem is that it can't champion the equality of all human beings and the sacredness of nation states at the same time. Either anyone should be allowed to take a job anywhere, or not. Let's just be honest about why the left could not bear to allow this: then they would actually have to see the poor. And it would be the truly poor, not just the statistical bottom 10% in a wealthy, developed nation. It would be the truly poor from all over the world coming into this rich, blessed nation with the hope of making a better a life for themselves. The sight of them all would simply be too unbearable. It is better to force them to suffer at home than to come here and make us feel guilty for not having the resources to take care of them all.

In other words, it's paternalism or bust. The best we can do for the rest of the world is develop those other nation states (whose very existence was in many cases forced by the West) so that they can support the population living there with services which meet Western standards. If those nation states won't listen and won't reform, then shame on them. And too bad for the poor, who continue to toil for $1 a day.

The fact is, Caplan is really asking us to stretch our morals to their limits. The prospect of witnessing a flood of foreigners is instinctively horrifying, not always because of the fear of what is different, but rather because of the sorrow of seeing others who are so much less well off. Do we really want to live in a country with millions and millions of the world's poor, working on wages we find obscenely low, even if it means they have a chance of earning more than they could ever dream in their homeland? It is, after all, our own country.

My contention is that the left ought to give up this "paternalism or bust" attitude. It is far too convenient to insist that others ought to change their government, and then everyone would be fine. The truth is, we have no moral reason to keep people out, only excuses which come from our instincts. If we really believe in human rights, we should also accept the right of people to start from much less than what we have and work their way up--even if that means doing so in our own neighborhood. And that might mean a lot of sad things. It might mean watching people stumble and fall. It might mean watching people live without all thoese benefits we take for granted. It might mean watching people struggle with basic things like language and literacy. And it would all be right there for us to see with our own eyes.

Of course, poverty exists already in the U.S., as it does in all countries. The reaction that the left expressly desires to cultivate against poverty is one of anger and revulsion. We should not tolerate poverty. I find it bizarrely sickening to think that this revulsion at the sight of poverty could be a reason to lock more people in it.

I'm picking on the left wing here because of their tendency to think of themselves as moral guides on this issue. They're for immigration reform, certainly. They believe we should naturalize all the undocumented Americans who have been in the country living as productive members of society for years. They believe they are being sensible in all of that. But they are unwilling to accept the ultimate conclusion of their humanist principles, which is that there is simply no excuse for any restrictions on who can immigrate to the U.S. in the first place.

A Milton Friedman Disneyland

The Boston Globe reports on a smart, idealistic plan for relieving poverty in the third world--with a remarkably right-wing feel.

Paul Romer, an economist from Stanford, has decided to leave his tenured professorship to defend an idea he calls "charter cities." Basically, it means Western nations would buy (or maybe rent, to be more accurate) cities from third-world countries, put in our own form of government, and see if we can't spur economic growth that way.

"Unemployed workers and frustrated entrepreneurs from the host country would flock there for the opportunities; international firms would be drawn by the combination of First World stability and cheap labor. And from these nodes, money and expertise, laws and norms would spread throughout the rest of the country and, potentially, the developing world. Ultimately, their work done, the cities would revert to local control."

It's classic free market economics. Quality tends to propagate through the mechanism of competition. As you see potential customers flocking to a different city, chances are you will make an effort to improve your business, to give people a reason to stick around.

Of course you know what detractors will say. Those inclined to view everything in terms of power struggle will cry, "Colonialism! Imperialism!" Admittedly, there is a sort of "pragmatic paternalism" (from the article) about this whole plan. But I find it refreshing to hear a bit of free market idealism these days.

“I hope he’s right, I’m rooting for him,” says Elliott Sclar, a professor of urban planning and international affairs at Columbia University. “But history is littered with visions like this.” Romer’s charter cities, he argues, are “almost a kind of Milton Friedman Disneyland.”

And who says Milton Friedman's dreams can't come true? I think that if we really want to something about the enormous gap between rich and poor, it wouldn't hurt to try something logical.

Central to Romer’s proposal, no matter what the exact structure, is the belief that the developed world has lessons to teach poorer countries about how to deter violence, spur trade, incorporate new technologies, and train a workforce, and that we shouldn’t let political correctness blind us to that fact.

I'm sure this sounds really arrogant to someone who wants it to sound arrogant. But it's not; it's just a simple fact, as factual as me saying that I know way more math than all of my freshman calculus students. It doesn't make me a more valuable person, but it does mean they're better off coming to my class than not coming.

To me this plan contains a perfect concoction of pragmatic idealism, something I find lacking in today's political arena. I believe every person of every origin has the potential to display his own creativity in whatever form that may take, and contribute to a global, interconnected economy. And I think we can allow people to do that if we implement the right policies.

Aid programs today, [Romer] argues, think too small - they aim simply at keeping people in poor countries alive, or at making their farms more productive or their schools marginally less bad. They don’t dare to try to actually vault them into prosperity and growth, and they ignore many of the ambitions of the inhabitants, especially the young ones

“These kids don’t want to use a foot treadle generator to produce their own light to read books, they want to write apps for the iPhone,” says Romer. “And they’ll never be able to do that if they can’t go live in a major modern city.”

“Small isn’t beautiful,” he says. “Small is condescending.”

I agree. And I have to say, I'm inspired.