Open borders is a terrible idea and could possibly lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it.
EDIT: I should clarify:
Whether you want open borders and whether you want the immigration status quo are different questions. I happen to be against both, but it is perfectly consistent for somebody to be against open borders but be in favor of the current level of immigration. The claim is specifically about completely unrestricted migration as advocated by folks like Bryan Caplan. Please direct your upvotes/downvotes to the former claim, rather than the latter.
I’m not clear on whether it’s actually a good idea, but if Bryan Caplan’s arguments are the best available, it’s definitely a horrible idea. He sidesteps all the potential problems without addressing them, or in some cases draws analogies that, when actually considered properly, indicate that it would be a bad idea.
Actually here I disagree. There are many counterarguments listed on the Open Borders site, and for that I give him credit. Especially as he actually attempts to engage with racialist arguments, rather than dismissing them.
I remember at one point encountering the Open Borders site, considering that it sounded like a pretty good idea, then reading through much of the site and becoming decreasingly convinced as I read the specific arguments, which consisted of more holes than solid points.
Recently, it’s come up again, specifically in an interview with Caplan which was going around (I saw it via Kaj). Again, I was initially intrigued by the idea, but the more I saw of the actual arguments, the weaker they seemed. He seems to routinely deflect the significant concerns with non-denials and never actually address the pragmatic reasoning against it.
There are many counterarguments listed on the Open Borders site, and for that I give him credit. Especially as he actually attempts to engage with racialist arguments, rather than dismissing them.
I’m not sure if it’s a technique worth crediting. There are voting trend issues with Hispanic immigrants that do not boil down to paranoid delusions about the Reconquista, and there are arguments regarding crime and immigration that are strongly and obviously distinguishable from sending every African-American person—including those innocent of any crime—out of the country. I’m hard-pressed to believe those arguments were selected for any reason but their weakness and unpalatability.
I personally favor reduced barriers to immigration (outside of a criminal background check and unique person identification, the modern limits are counterproductive at best), but writing up the worst arguments against that belief doesn’t really strengthen them.
Ebola is an example of a locally-originated virulent existential threat open borders fail to contain, biological, social or otherwise. Controlled borders, despite all the issues, at least can act as an immune system of sorts.
Define “controlled borders”? In the “open borders” context the debate is usually about residency and citizenship restrictions, but in the context of ebola those don’t matter; tourists and airline workers and cargo ship crews and so on all carry diseases too.
I’m sure Bradford isn’t the greatest place to live, but (1) it’s better than many US inner cities, (2) the UK seems quite far from collapse, and generally (3) “such-and-such a country allows quite a lot of immigration, and there is one city there that has a lot of immigrants and isn’t a very nice place” seems a very very very weak argument against liberal immigration policies.
“such-and-such a country allows quite a lot of immigration, and there is one city there that has a lot of immigrants and isn’t a very nice place” seems a very very very weak argument against liberal immigration policies.
On the other hand, “such-and-such a country allows quite a lot of immigration, and the niceness of a city inversely correlates with the number of immigrants there” is a stronger argument. Especially if I can get an even stronger correlation by conditioning on types of immigrants.
It’s far from clear that the central premise is correct. (Cambridge has a lot of immigrants and I think it’s very nice. I’m told Stoke-on-Trent is pretty rubbish but it has few immigrants. Two cherry-picked cases don’t tell you much about correlation but, hey, that’s one more case than bramflakes offered.)
The differential effects of immigration within a country might look different from the overall effects on the country as a whole. (Toy model, not intended to be a description of how things actually are: suppose some immigrant group produces disproportionate numbers of petty criminals and brilliant business executives; then maybe areas with more of that group will have more crime but by the magic of income tax the high earnings of the geniuses will make everyone better off.)
For some people—I am not claiming you are one—the very fact that a place has more immigrants (or more of particular “types of immigrants”, nudge nudge wink wink) makes it less nice. Those who happen not to feel that way may have a different view of the correlation between niceness and immigration from those who do. To take a special case, the immigrants themselves probably don’t feel that way, and for some who favour liberal immigration policies the benefit to the immigrants is actually an important part of the point.
To take a special case, the immigrants themselves probably don’t feel that way,
Actually they probably do. That’s why they immigrated in the first place.
and for some who favour liberal immigration policies the benefit to the immigrants is actually an important part of the point.
Well it’s remarkable how strong a correlation there is between one’s support for immigration and how strong a bubble one has around oneself to protect oneself from them. Look how many of the most prominent immigration advocates live in gated communities.
I can think of reasons why someone might migrate from country A to country B other than preferring country B’s people to country A’s.
[EDITED to add: Maybe I should give some examples, in case they really aren’t obvious. Country B might have: a better political system, less war, more money, better treatment for some group one’s part of (women, gay people, intellectuals, Sikhs, …), less disease, nicer climate, lower taxes, better public services, better jobs, better educational opportunities. Some of those might in some cases be because country A’s people are somehow better, but they needn’t be, and even if in fact Uzbekistan has lower taxes because it has fewer Swedes and Swedes have a genetic predisposition to raise taxes, someone migrating from Sweden to Uzbekistan for lower taxes needn’t be aware of that and needn’t have any preference for not being around Swedes.]
how strong a correlation there is [...] how many of the most prominent immigration advocates live in gated communities.
I am interested: How strong, and how many? Do you have figures?
(And how does it compare with how many of the most prominent advocates of anything you care to mention live in gated communities? The most prominent people in any given group are more likely to be rich, and richer people more often live in gated communities.)
In any case, assuming for the sake of argument that there is indeed a positive correlation between being “protected” from immigrants and supporting letting more of them in: I don’t understand how your reply is responsive to what I wrote. It seems exactly parallel to this: “Many people advocate prison reform for the sake of the prisoners.” “Oh year? Well, a lot of those people prefer to live in places with lower crime rates.” Which is true enough, but hardly relevant. There’s no inconsistency between wanting some group of people to be better off, and having a personal preference for not living near a lot of them.
Rich people are more likely to advocate open borders.
Again, I’d be interested in the statistics. (That isn’t a coded way of saying I think you’re wrong, by the way. But I’d be interested to know how big the differences are, whether it depends on what you mean by “rich”, etc.)
Mark Zuckerberg [...] Bryan Caplan
I’m not sure why this is relevant. I’m guessing that both of those people advocate open borders, but surely the absolute most any observation of this form could show is that there are at least two people in the world who advocate open borders for bad reasons, or advocate open borders but are terrible people, or something. How can that possibly matter?
and even if in fact Uzbekistan has lower taxes because it has fewer Swedes and Swedes have a genetic predisposition to raise taxes, someone migrating from Sweden to Uzbekistan for lower taxes needn’t be aware of that and needn’t have any preference for not being around Swedes.
Of course, one consequence of this is that if enough Swedes migrate they’ll destroy the aspect of Uzbekistan that attracted them in the first place.
In any case, assuming for the sake of argument that there is indeed a positive correlation between being “protected” from immigrants and supporting letting more of them in: I don’t understand how your reply is responsive to what I wrote. It seems exactly parallel to this: “Many people advocate prison reform for the sake of the prisoners.” “Oh year? Well, a lot of those people prefer to live in places with lower crime rates.” Which is true enough, but hardly relevant. There’s no inconsistency between wanting some group of people to be better off, and having a personal preference for not living near a lot of them.
It is hypocritical in the original sense of the term, the one from which the word’s negative connotations derive, i.e., a leader who insists that the group make sacrifices for the “greater good” without participating in those sacrifices himself.
they’ll destroy the aspect of Uzbekistan that attracted them in the first place.
Until the number of Swedes in Uzbekistan is extremely large, it’ll presumably still be better than Sweden in that respect.
It is hypocritical in the original sense of the term
That doesn’t actually seem to be the original sense of the term, at least according to my reading of the OED, but I don’t think it matters. Anyway, let’s suppose you’re right and some advocates of liberal immigration policies are hypocrites in that sense. I don’t see how that’s evidence that the policies are bad, nor do I see how it’s responsive to what your comment was a reply to (namely, a claim that many people advocate liberal immigration policies for the benefit of the immigrants).
I’m still curious about “how strong, and how many”, by the way. I assume, from what you said on this point, that you have figures; I’d love to see them.
Country B might have: a better political system, less war, more money, better treatment for some group one’s part of (women, gay people, intellectuals, Sikhs, …), less disease, nicer climate, lower taxes, better public services, better jobs, better educational opportunities.
Other than climate and to some extent money and war and disease, these mainly depend on which kind of people Country B has.
I’m being flippant of course. I didn’t intend it as a serious argument.
Quick response:
1) You cannot compare the UK’s cities to the US’ cities because the US has a 14% black population and the UK does not. “Inner city” is a codeword for the kind of black dysfunction that thankfully the UK does not possess.
2) The UK is not close to collapse because we don’t have fully Open Borders yet. For all its faults, the EU’s migration framework isn’t quite letting in millions of third-worlders yet.
3) Of course.
If you don’t mind, I don’t want to get into a lengthy debate on the subject.
The difference is only apparent; both societies have treated their nonwhites like trash. The British Empire merely avoided its “dysfunction” problem at home by outsourcing it to India.
Then why, despite the xenophobic laws of the 19th and early 20th centuries, are East Asians a dominant minority in the US? Why, despite a millenium of antisemitism, are Ashkenazim getting 27% of Nobels and making up about quarter [edit: not sure of exact number] of US billionaires?
White people have treated all nonwhites like trash at some point or another, yet there’s a giant variation in outcomes. Racism as an all-powerful explanation of black dysfunction is untenable.
White people have treated all nonwhites like trash at some point or another
I think that most peoples have treated some other tribe as trash at some point or another. The particular case which prompted this response was the English and the Irish, but the list of examples is very long.
Collapsing civilisation as we know it is presumably not a bad thing if you think that our current civilisation is fundamentally unjust or suboptimally allocates resources based on arbitrary geographic boundaries.
Open borders is a terrible idea and could possibly lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it.
EDIT: I should clarify:
Whether you want open borders and whether you want the immigration status quo are different questions. I happen to be against both, but it is perfectly consistent for somebody to be against open borders but be in favor of the current level of immigration. The claim is specifically about completely unrestricted migration as advocated by folks like Bryan Caplan. Please direct your upvotes/downvotes to the former claim, rather than the latter.
[Please read the OP before voting. Special voting rules apply.]
Current levels of immigration are also terrible, and will significantly speed up the collapse of the Western world.
Citation required.
I’m not clear on whether it’s actually a good idea, but if Bryan Caplan’s arguments are the best available, it’s definitely a horrible idea. He sidesteps all the potential problems without addressing them, or in some cases draws analogies that, when actually considered properly, indicate that it would be a bad idea.
I particularly like how he manages to switch between deontology and consequentialism in the same argument.
Actually here I disagree. There are many counterarguments listed on the Open Borders site, and for that I give him credit. Especially as he actually attempts to engage with racialist arguments, rather than dismissing them.
I remember at one point encountering the Open Borders site, considering that it sounded like a pretty good idea, then reading through much of the site and becoming decreasingly convinced as I read the specific arguments, which consisted of more holes than solid points.
Recently, it’s come up again, specifically in an interview with Caplan which was going around (I saw it via Kaj). Again, I was initially intrigued by the idea, but the more I saw of the actual arguments, the weaker they seemed. He seems to routinely deflect the significant concerns with non-denials and never actually address the pragmatic reasoning against it.
I’m not sure if it’s a technique worth crediting. There are voting trend issues with Hispanic immigrants that do not boil down to paranoid delusions about the Reconquista, and there are arguments regarding crime and immigration that are strongly and obviously distinguishable from sending every African-American person—including those innocent of any crime—out of the country. I’m hard-pressed to believe those arguments were selected for any reason but their weakness and unpalatability.
I personally favor reduced barriers to immigration (outside of a criminal background check and unique person identification, the modern limits are counterproductive at best), but writing up the worst arguments against that belief doesn’t really strengthen them.
Hey, it’s a step up from denying outright that certain types of immigrants will commit more crimes. A lot of people have drank that Kool-Aid.
Why do you believe this? Countries with the most liberal immigration policies today don’t seem to be on the verge of collapse.
Ebola?
Ebola is more an argument for colonialism than against open borders but let’s not be picky.
Ebola is an example of a locally-originated virulent existential threat open borders fail to contain, biological, social or otherwise. Controlled borders, despite all the issues, at least can act as an immune system of sorts.
Define “controlled borders”? In the “open borders” context the debate is usually about residency and citizenship restrictions, but in the context of ebola those don’t matter; tourists and airline workers and cargo ship crews and so on all carry diseases too.
Yes I agree, I was just being facetious :s
You should visit Bradford someday.
I’m sure Bradford isn’t the greatest place to live, but (1) it’s better than many US inner cities, (2) the UK seems quite far from collapse, and generally (3) “such-and-such a country allows quite a lot of immigration, and there is one city there that has a lot of immigrants and isn’t a very nice place” seems a very very very weak argument against liberal immigration policies.
On the other hand, “such-and-such a country allows quite a lot of immigration, and the niceness of a city inversely correlates with the number of immigrants there” is a stronger argument. Especially if I can get an even stronger correlation by conditioning on types of immigrants.
Stronger, yes. But …
It’s far from clear that the central premise is correct. (Cambridge has a lot of immigrants and I think it’s very nice. I’m told Stoke-on-Trent is pretty rubbish but it has few immigrants. Two cherry-picked cases don’t tell you much about correlation but, hey, that’s one more case than bramflakes offered.)
The differential effects of immigration within a country might look different from the overall effects on the country as a whole. (Toy model, not intended to be a description of how things actually are: suppose some immigrant group produces disproportionate numbers of petty criminals and brilliant business executives; then maybe areas with more of that group will have more crime but by the magic of income tax the high earnings of the geniuses will make everyone better off.)
For some people—I am not claiming you are one—the very fact that a place has more immigrants (or more of particular “types of immigrants”, nudge nudge wink wink) makes it less nice. Those who happen not to feel that way may have a different view of the correlation between niceness and immigration from those who do. To take a special case, the immigrants themselves probably don’t feel that way, and for some who favour liberal immigration policies the benefit to the immigrants is actually an important part of the point.
Actually they probably do. That’s why they immigrated in the first place.
Well it’s remarkable how strong a correlation there is between one’s support for immigration and how strong a bubble one has around oneself to protect oneself from them. Look how many of the most prominent immigration advocates live in gated communities.
I can think of reasons why someone might migrate from country A to country B other than preferring country B’s people to country A’s.
[EDITED to add: Maybe I should give some examples, in case they really aren’t obvious. Country B might have: a better political system, less war, more money, better treatment for some group one’s part of (women, gay people, intellectuals, Sikhs, …), less disease, nicer climate, lower taxes, better public services, better jobs, better educational opportunities. Some of those might in some cases be because country A’s people are somehow better, but they needn’t be, and even if in fact Uzbekistan has lower taxes because it has fewer Swedes and Swedes have a genetic predisposition to raise taxes, someone migrating from Sweden to Uzbekistan for lower taxes needn’t be aware of that and needn’t have any preference for not being around Swedes.]
I am interested: How strong, and how many? Do you have figures?
(And how does it compare with how many of the most prominent advocates of anything you care to mention live in gated communities? The most prominent people in any given group are more likely to be rich, and richer people more often live in gated communities.)
In any case, assuming for the sake of argument that there is indeed a positive correlation between being “protected” from immigrants and supporting letting more of them in: I don’t understand how your reply is responsive to what I wrote. It seems exactly parallel to this: “Many people advocate prison reform for the sake of the prisoners.” “Oh year? Well, a lot of those people prefer to live in places with lower crime rates.” Which is true enough, but hardly relevant. There’s no inconsistency between wanting some group of people to be better off, and having a personal preference for not living near a lot of them.
Rich people are more likely to advocate open boarders.
As for prominent people: Mark Zuckerberg bought the four houses surrounding his own “because he wanted more privacy”. Bryan Caplan prides himself on the bubble he’s constructed around himself.
Again, I’d be interested in the statistics. (That isn’t a coded way of saying I think you’re wrong, by the way. But I’d be interested to know how big the differences are, whether it depends on what you mean by “rich”, etc.)
I’m not sure why this is relevant. I’m guessing that both of those people advocate open borders, but surely the absolute most any observation of this form could show is that there are at least two people in the world who advocate open borders for bad reasons, or advocate open borders but are terrible people, or something. How can that possibly matter?
Of course, one consequence of this is that if enough Swedes migrate they’ll destroy the aspect of Uzbekistan that attracted them in the first place.
It is hypocritical in the original sense of the term, the one from which the word’s negative connotations derive, i.e., a leader who insists that the group make sacrifices for the “greater good” without participating in those sacrifices himself.
Until the number of Swedes in Uzbekistan is extremely large, it’ll presumably still be better than Sweden in that respect.
That doesn’t actually seem to be the original sense of the term, at least according to my reading of the OED, but I don’t think it matters. Anyway, let’s suppose you’re right and some advocates of liberal immigration policies are hypocrites in that sense. I don’t see how that’s evidence that the policies are bad, nor do I see how it’s responsive to what your comment was a reply to (namely, a claim that many people advocate liberal immigration policies for the benefit of the immigrants).
I’m still curious about “how strong, and how many”, by the way. I assume, from what you said on this point, that you have figures; I’d love to see them.
Other than climate and to some extent money and war and disease, these mainly depend on which kind of people Country B has.
″… niceness of a city inversely correlates with the number of immigrants there”
Ask any Native American, ho ho.
I’m being flippant of course. I didn’t intend it as a serious argument.
Quick response:
1) You cannot compare the UK’s cities to the US’ cities because the US has a 14% black population and the UK does not. “Inner city” is a codeword for the kind of black dysfunction that thankfully the UK does not possess.
2) The UK is not close to collapse because we don’t have fully Open Borders yet. For all its faults, the EU’s migration framework isn’t quite letting in millions of third-worlders yet.
3) Of course.
If you don’t mind, I don’t want to get into a lengthy debate on the subject.
I am quite happy not to have a lengthy debate with you on this topic.
The difference is only apparent; both societies have treated their nonwhites like trash. The British Empire merely avoided its “dysfunction” problem at home by outsourcing it to India.
Then why, despite the xenophobic laws of the 19th and early 20th centuries, are East Asians a dominant minority in the US? Why, despite a millenium of antisemitism, are Ashkenazim getting 27% of Nobels and making up about quarter [edit: not sure of exact number] of US billionaires?
White people have treated all nonwhites like trash at some point or another, yet there’s a giant variation in outcomes. Racism as an all-powerful explanation of black dysfunction is untenable.
I think that most peoples have treated some other tribe as trash at some point or another. The particular case which prompted this response was the English and the Irish, but the list of examples is very long.
A non-representative event happened and was blown out of proportion by media.
What event are you talking about? If you mean the Pakistani rape gang, that was Rotheram, not Bradford.
Collapsing civilisation as we know it is presumably not a bad thing if you think that our current civilisation is fundamentally unjust or suboptimally allocates resources based on arbitrary geographic boundaries.
I’ll take both of those over the Camp of the Saints.