Tuesday, February 14, 2017

The Open Borders Question, Part 2

HC has responded to my post, The Open Borders Question.  My comments are in blue- RW 

Thank you for your excellent response. I do recognize that you aren't for "open borders." I think we differ on what to do now that we have them.

My counter:

Uncontrolled (by private property owners, or those who claim the US territory to be THEIR property, aka, FedGov) immigration I believe leads us away from liberty.
 Briefly:

Increased demand for government.


A good case in point is that if we had enforced the immigration laws, and as a regular policy deported violators, we would have fewer attempting to enter illegally, and thus we would not have such a demand by the polity for a "wall." I agree with Hoppe that the most important thing a wall will do is keep the cows ON the farm, not foreign cows off of it. So the State creates a problem and then "fixes" it such that we are worse off.


This I consider what I have called an ass-backward libertarian position. The problem is the non-libertarian position of a government building a wall.  The solution presented is to add a layer of government: Non-libertarian deportations. I reject the "increase government to shrink government" theory. The libertarian position should be to shrink government period.

"Democracy" and the Common Law.


I think this is hugely important. While I think "democracy" is a terrible scam, I do believe that the "common law" is where the PPS rubber must eventually meet the road. Sure, a person can go 100% PPS personally and refuse to interact with others on any terms but their own; perfectly acceptable! But to the extent that people with different tastes and abilities choose to interact, torts settled by a jury of your peers is the most reasonable, organic, adaptable, and dispersed/devolved way of dealing with problems. So if some group just arbitrarily forces your community to accept outsiders (which, in practice, is what is happening) then they destroy your ability as a community to self-police in your own style.


"Torts settled by a jury of your peers is the most reasonable, organic, adaptable, and dispersed/devolved way of dealing with problems," says who? This is the position of a central planner who thinks he knows how things must be done. There can be many ways to resolve conflicts. Arbitrators resolve cases without juries every day.

This is a view from a statist position:,"So if some group just arbitrarily forces your community to accept outsiders." But the problem is the state. It is the government that doesn't recognize private property and holds the position that private property is subject to rules of the government overlord. 

Under PPS a group could buy up property in a "community" and prevent all, none or some from entering. Arbitrary force comes about because of government, not in a PPS.

The issue of democracy is somewhat moot to me philosophically, because someone's vote a thousand miles away should have no power over me directly, but in the world we actually live in we can see that it is in fact a policy of some in government to literally import a "new people" who do not support individual rights and "Western"-style freedom. And unfortunately their votes WILL affect me. As a practical matter I think it would be better to allow people in based on their belief in a PPS more than their desire and ability to perform useful labor. After all, freedom leads to prosperity; hard work can take you either way.

Government should allow in people based on their belief in PPS?  Where exactly are all these people who believe in PPS? What about people who have never heard of PPS (there may be a few) but act in a manner that is consistent with PPS, that is, they desire to come here work hard and not cause trouble?

So there are a lot of different fixes, and I agree that empowering a domestic Gestapo to ask for papers is B.A.D. How about I humbly suggest that, if we must keep welfare and democracy, we increase legal immigration and let immigrants vote, BUT don't allow access to welfare until the third generation. So you have to pay for it but don't get it. That would both influence the type of people who would want to come, and it would build pressure to eliminate welfare. And this could be sold to voters, both "bigoted" and "liberal."

Legal immigration is handing out papers so that someone can say, "Papers please."

This is government technocrat talk here: Too afraid to call for serious abolition of parts of the state, There are plenty of technocrats in government and at beltarian think tanks who hold the same positions. They ultimately serve the state. We don't need more of them. We need people who are willing to advocate bold Ludwig Erhard steps.

Of course on our PPS island, Mr. Wenzel, there would be only voluntary charity and voluntary "courts" whose decisions are either submitted to, or the accused can just be blackballed by the community if they refuse judgment. But I digress.

Again, thanks for your time and efforts.


Thank you for your thoughts HC such discussion is extremely important. Such discussion is the only way we will ever get to a PPS.

12 comments:

  1. --- it is in fact a policy of some in government to literally import a "new people" who do not support individual rights and "Western"-style freedom. ---

    Importation of refugees and immigration are NOT the same thing. Immigrants come to a country voluntarily, with the expectation of increasing the number of profitable exchanges. Refugees are people running for their lives. The motivations and expectations are totally different. Unfortunately Trumpistas don't see a difference between the two.

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    1. You neglected to mention that refugees entering the USA often are such due to US federal government foreign policy. This alone could be considered deliberate since the foreign policy represents a series of choices some people in the government made.

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    2. Re: Jimmy Joe Meeker,

      I neglected nothing. I said "importation of refugees." Only the government can import refugees.

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    3. The government first needs to create refugees to import.

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    4. Re: Jimmy Joe Meeker,

      That IS true. That was an intelligent point. But then conflating that with immigration is wrong, don't you agree?

      I do not favor the active importation of refugees, since such action entails forcing them into communities through resettlement policies without the benefit of voluntary agreements, something that is not fair for the communities and the refugees themselves. Such resettlement policies have socialist undertones. If refugees were brought, accepted and lodged by private individuals only, out of charity or humanitarian feeling, then that would be an entirely different matter, because such actions are voluntary and peaceful, but that is not what government is doing.

      As you can see, I can perfectly make the distinction between immigration and "refugee resettlement". I don't conflate the two concepts.

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  2. Suppose we allow in 3 billion from the 3rd world, will that bring us closer to a libertarian society?

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    1. I've got a question for you:

      Suppose your government that you love allowed this to happen, they have this authority now, and immediately grand visas to every citizen of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia and all peoples living in Africa.

      Would you question it's legitimacy, and view the PPS as proposed by Wenzel as a better alternative?

      From where I'm sitting, it's much more likely that this will happen under the statist government border schemes, and not in a PPS as described by Wenzel. Even if right now, you love Donald Trump and want to close the borders, there's no guarantee that they'll stay closed forever.

      Or are you motivated by something other than practical concerns, perhaps?

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    2. @icognost

      I actually disagree with you. I don't think it's likely at all that the state would allow immigration on a massive scale. For one, it to some extent answers to the people, most of whom harbor anti-foreign bias. Secondly, more people means more mouths to feed and more demands, messing up "the plan" (there's a reason that Bernie Sanders is anti-immigration.) Third, relative to the private sector the state is very poor when it comes to productively utilizing new talents, so there's much less incentive there.

      In a PPS, by contrast, we would likely see a more patchwork jurisdiction, and it would only take a single property owner to extend your hypothetical invitation to immigrate. As someone who favors increased immigration and expanding options for human develop generally, I view this as a positive. But to someone who has the express goal of imposing segregation on a continent-sized territory, the state may be their ideal means.

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    3. It's an interesting hypothetical I think. The kind of migration we're talking about here is one way, say from the third world to the US, but often not the other way. In a lot of ways, this is due to the governments in one place or another, you can see why someone would want to run from Venezuela or Cuba for instance, although there's nothing there that is preventing those people from having a great country to live in, outside of their government.

      I think in a PPS society, you'd see a lot of patchwork jurisdictions like you say, and a lot of migration in all directions, not just the one way migrations caused mainly by government failure in economics or government wars. So, my point was that this one way migration would more than likely happen under government rule, because that's the only way I could see it happening, not that it was a likely event.

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    4. I favor a PPS. I expect most PPSs would control immigration. Neither of you answered my question.

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    5. The smallest PPS is the household. Every household controls "immigration." When some PPSs get together and form a community, they will not stop controlling "immigration." When all land is privately owned, each owner will act as his own border patrol. So I agree with PH on the outcome of a PPS. But "control" is not the same as "prohibit." Each PPS would allow onto his/its property those who are acceptable to the PPS, whether as workers, lodgers, friends, trading counterparts, etc.

      But my answer to PH's question is "That's a non sequitur." A libertarian society is not characterized by any particular immigration policy, and letting in three billion people from the third world has no bearing on whether we get closer to a libertarian society; a libertarian society is characterized by private ownership and the consequential freedom of association. We could let in three billion from western Europe and be no closer to a libertarian society.

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  3. HC's argument is really no different from GW Bush's "we need to abandon the free market to save the free market."

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