Of course, for competition to really work out, immigration should not be regulated.
How does this follow? Unless I’m having a severe case of reading misapprehension, this is equivalent to arguing that there should be a market in housing because competition between landlords will result in good housing with reasonable rents—and then adding, as if it were obvious, that for competition to work out, landlords should not have any rules for screening potential tenants.
You know, unless you’re willing to live in open sea or in space or in Antarctica, you can’t possibly emigrate from a country without immigrating into another one.
Which is a reason why landlords aren’t analogous with countries. If you don’t like your landlord, you can (in principle) buy your own house, become homeless, live with your parents, etc.; whereas if you don’t like your country, even if your country allows you to leave, if you don’t find a country that allows you to enter you’re out of luck.
I have no real ideological objection to immigration regulation but it seems that at the moment it is a big barrier to making governments really competitive among each others. If there were many charter cities within a relatively small area, I guess it wouldn’t be an issue if some of them had stricter immigration rules. My personal guess is that governments with lighter immigration control would be the most successful (that was the case of the US a few decades ago) but I’d be happy to be proved wrong. As long as there is a realistic option for citizens to move from one government to the other, competition will work.
How does this follow? Unless I’m having a severe case of reading misapprehension, this is equivalent to arguing that there should be a market in housing because competition between landlords will result in good housing with reasonable rents—and then adding, as if it were obvious, that for competition to work out, landlords should not have any rules for screening potential tenants.
I think his point was more like ‘the landlords / cities must allow people to freely leave.’
Wouldn’t that be a lack of regulation on emigration, not immigration?
You know, unless you’re willing to live in open sea or in space or in Antarctica, you can’t possibly emigrate from a country without immigrating into another one.
Solvent’s point is that there’s a difference open immigration:
‘the landlords / cities must allow people to freely enter.’
and open emigration:
‘the landlords / cities must allow people to freely leave.’
Which is a reason why landlords aren’t analogous with countries. If you don’t like your landlord, you can (in principle) buy your own house, become homeless, live with your parents, etc.; whereas if you don’t like your country, even if your country allows you to leave, if you don’t find a country that allows you to enter you’re out of luck.
I have no real ideological objection to immigration regulation but it seems that at the moment it is a big barrier to making governments really competitive among each others. If there were many charter cities within a relatively small area, I guess it wouldn’t be an issue if some of them had stricter immigration rules. My personal guess is that governments with lighter immigration control would be the most successful (that was the case of the US a few decades ago) but I’d be happy to be proved wrong. As long as there is a realistic option for citizens to move from one government to the other, competition will work.