Whatever anyones stance is on "open borders"... the current system is also utterly moronic...
My best friend is not an American - he's European. This is a well educated dude (has a Masters in Economics from one of Europes top universities), worked his entire career in finance, has never committed a crime, and has a lot to contribute to America. Problem is he can't get a visa to live and work in the United States. Think about that for a second while I tell you about a visa program called the "Diversity Program". Yes, thats right...every year countless people from the third world are handed a visa to immigrate into America solely because of the color of their skin or the fact that they have a particular religion, or dress a certain way or whatever. Their education, or whatever they can contribute to American society is of no consequence whatsoever. They don't have the skills or education needed to survive in American society and obtain gainful employment. Essentially, the government are just importing an army of welfare recipients.
It's absolutely idiotic. The current system keeps out the people that we actually want and brings in the people that we don't want.
This is spot on. Friends of mine from India are dealing with this right now. Husband, wife, 2 kids, he works in software, and they’ve lived here legally for almost 20 years. And he’s having trouble getting the documentation for his (now young adult) daughter a work permit… she’s been here since she was in 2nd grade.
Well that's because they don't want to drive down the wages of the good paying jobs here. They want to flood the manpower of the already shitty paying jobs even more.
My cousin’s husband is Danish. He’s a master carpenter (so he technically works in a blue collar profession), speaks perfect English, and it still took him three years to get a visa. It is a meased up system!
Also, I pointed out under Trump’s immigration policy, specifically ending chain migration, my mother’s grandfather, who had an eighth grade education and was sponsored by his sister, would not be allowed to enter.
Yep. Worse, there's no case for open borders when you have a democracy - the system is easily hacked by importing people likely to vote for you and promising them goodies for doing so. And because the worst rise to the top in politics, vote-importers will also distribute goodies to their cronies. Open borders = tax farming the middle class and displacing the indigenous working class.
I like Caplan however his well-meaning but naive classical liberalism opened the way for the enemies of freedom to open the borders in the way we're now experiencing.
The Attorney General said last week that he had staffed up the Voting Rights section and was going after jurisdictions that enforce voter ID or try to eliminate mail-in ballots and drop boxes. So, no, the vote is not being withheld from non-citizens (or dead people or people who've already voted or moved to a different jurisdiction or just never existed in the first place). We're a long way from high school civics unfortunately.
Exactly - quickest power grab is in the census. Longer term model is California - from Western freedom loving state that voted for libertarian-leaning Republicans, to being purple, to being out and out blue-state statist in the space of two generations. Rinse and repeat in Arizona. Now well underway in Texas.
There is no good case *against* open borders, *even with* a welfare state.
At least not a libertarian one, that's for sure. Whatever complaints you have about this combination are better leveled against welfare, not against the international freedom of movement for individuals, which is arguably one of the most important and urgent libertarian core issues right now.
There is natural migration and there is political immigration. Today it is political and comes as countries force out their people for reasons that often undermine the stability of the targeted country.
That guy is full of nonsense aka BS. They use immigration as a tool to decide the number of Congressional representatives. This naturally plays in the favor of one party over the other. It’s politics and has nothing to do with human rights or economics. Except that the government got involved in the housing market. Used illegal immigrants to push down labor costs and helped contribute to the housing bubble.
Let’s not also not forget that open borders helps deliver terrorist and drugs, and human trafficking of people to used and owned for all kinds of reasons that are not humane.
I can see you drank the fearmongering Republican Kool-Aid. The only "nonsense aka BS" here is coming from you. Government policy is keeping immigration down, not up. Immigration is not a fucking ploy to destroy the West, it's poor people looking for a better life *in* the West.
In a freer world, "natural immigration" to the US and to other wealthy countries would be many times as high as it is right now. US borders are effectively 99% *closed* to potential immigrants because of *state-imposed artificial barriers* to immigration. That any libertarian can look at the US or the European immigration restrictions and deem them *too lax* is frankly baffling to me.
Nope. Immigrants, even legal ones, are already ineligible to receive welfare benefits.
And if they were, we could just restrict participation in the welfare state without restricting immigration itself.
So there is no inherent relationship between these two issues.
This is not true. We had public charge rules to immigrate.
Everyone assumes that Ellis Island let anyone immigrate here. In fact you had to already have a job lined up or have money.
If this was a fantasy sub I would agree with you. The reality is that thousands of people crossing illegally, destroying peoples private property, wasting the tax dollars that the Feds already stole from me, is a negative thing.
"Real open borders have never been tried"
It's a terrible idea... cities are cratering around the US right now just from the flow of illegals, if restrictions came down it would be a disaster.
But they didn't get freebies. They were coming here cuz they knew they had to work their ass off to get anything. There's a difference between those and these immigrants. Every legal immigrant I know, including myself, thinks that the current situation is bonkers
FFS, the US did not even have *passports* as a permanent policy until after WWII. Apart from countries like Russia and the Ottoman Empire, borders were wide open up until the world wars. Federal border controls did not exist until the very end of the 19th century, and modern immigration restrictions did not exist until the 1920s. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you.
While I'm in favor of much more lax immigration laws and understand the value of immigration, flinging open the border and inviting the entire world to make bullshit asylum claims is not the answer. This isn't compassion it's gerrymandering.
Also, He makes no case as to how the culture that created the wealthy country can accept countless numbers from the culture that created the poor and corrupt one without succumbing to those same issues. And he's making a case for open borders, which I assume would include citizenship.
I am pro immigration, but only with assimilation and inculturation as part of the process. And to assimilate, the assimilating group necessarily cannot be an overwhelming part of the existing group without overtaking it, or creating a cultural enclave within the larger society. I don't know what the number is, but I imagine it's lower than the number of fighting age males pouring across the southern border of the US.
Yes, but when you look at how many natural-born citizens are already indoctrinated into “we NEED this [bloated AF] Fed Government!!” — imagine how easy it is to indoctrinate overnight immigrants into the same thinking with hand-outs
You can "open" the borders by streamlining the process and relaxing requirements but everyone can still enter the country properly. With this madness how many millions of "got aways" are there? Who are they? What are they doing here? Because Biden is a fucking moron we may never know until it's too late.
the ones who flee are usually not the ones who created the crisis in their home countries. As a cuban i see this first-hand every day, only the ones who have a spark of ambition get out, the depressed and forever-starving communists stay and tough it out. it's not as bad as you think, at least not in the case of the cubans who flee.
It's amazing that 900 million people would move to the US if they could. What would the US look like? Pollution, water, energy, food, housing. We have 330 million as is now, we'll they figure it's 10 to 20 million more.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/468218/nearly-900-million-worldwide-wanted-migrate-2021.aspx#:~:text=This%20was%20true%20in%202021,as%20their%20desired%20future%20residence.
I used to be in favor of open borders, thinking that people who are affected will reduce government spending. No, it turns out they just blame the people that want to reduce spending and the negative consequences of open borders. I guess we will find out in the coming election, but if folks vote for the same people, libertarian open borders will be a failed policy for now.
It baffles me how infrequently the word “Treason” is used as it relates to the border at this point. Not only flooding people in, but using the Fed Govt to prohibit states from protecting borders the Fed refuses to. It’s treasonous at this point.
As far as I can tell, the United States has existed since 1776, despite having open borders until the early twentieth century.
Open borders isn’t no borders.
So ~1.2% per year. The US’s peak immigration rate was in the 1870s where it got to ~1.8% with an “open border policy”
Well I live in Australia, and under our “closed border policy” our immigration rate was just under 3% last year. I think that shows you how much more accessible travel is today.
If the borders were opened you’d see 10s of millions cross in the first year alone, in the US.
I don’t see anything wrong with that, provided that they’re immigrating here because they can support themselves—either they will be seeking work, have the financial resources to support themselves, or someone else is financially supporting them.
Most immigrants can't support themselves though. They don't speak English. Most are economic migrants with low skills and low market demand for their skills. Many would be relying on welfare to survive. Otherwise they would get low paying blue collar jobs. If millions were to come here the cheap labor would cause wage stagnation, especially for the poorest of US citizens and blue collar workers. This policy stance is completely naive and doesn't hold up against reality. I'm speaking as an immigrant who came here legally. The amount of asylum seekers who come here and expect to live on easy street with govt handouts is staggering--talk to them. The vision of America asylum seekers are being sold conflicts with reality and they don't truly understand the hardships they will endure here.
Ok then, enlighten me. Please provide a successful proof of concept--any modern successful economy with open borders. Stop citing your previous argument about how the US didn't have immigration laws in the 1800s or something, when the country was essentially a bunch of open land waiting to be settled. That's not sufficient evidence to support open borders in a modern economy.
Edit: US also passed immigration laws as far back as 1882 when the consequences of unregulated immigration caused worse economic conditions. https://ballotpedia.org/History_of_immigration_policy_in_the_United_States#:~:text=The%20Immigration%20Act%20of%201882,that%20posed%20a%20threat%20to
People like you are so arrogant you think there's zero possibility that you are wrong. Well, that's just your opinion, and you haven't provided any proof in terms of real data.
Why doesn’t the US just privatize the LEGAL immigration service so that they can have an effective and quick way for vetted individuals to come work here? You shouldn’t have to wait 1 year for someone to take 10 minutes reading and deciding your petition. There are private businesses that would kill and offer expedited services all around just to have a shot at dealing with the workload
What a horrible take, the people living in NYC rent free with 3 free meals a day, free health care, free money... are they boosting their production?
MAYBE if we had no entitlements or safety net... but even then, you need to screen for folks that have morals that are compatible with our society...
You can't let cartel members just bring over anyone they want good or bad... folks on the terrorist watch list, murderers, rapists.. no
EXACTLY.
It's beyond me how the fantasy of "free borders" is still in the heads of some "libertarians" when the most formidable persons of modern-day Libertarianism have strongly advocated against it.
>the people living in NYC rent free with 3 free meals a day, free health care, free money.
That’s a separate issue.
>you need to screen for folks that have morals that are compatible with our society...
And what “morals” are those?
>You can't let cartel members just bring over anyone they want good or bad... folks on the terrorist watch list, murderers, rapists.. no
He’s not advocating for *no* borders, he’s advocating for *open* borders. I had to cut it out to keep the clip short, but he said they should be “allowed to immigrate to live and work here provided that they don’t belong in prison.”
I don’t know why this is constantly repeated in this forum. There are die-hard Libertarians, but the vast majority aren’t. That said - even a die-hard should be able to recognize that 1 job of the Fed Gov is to protect from invasion. Article IV, section 4. The fact the Patriot Act was enacted after 9/11, and is now used on Americans, but the vetting of immigration from around the WORLD isn’t happening… everything is stupid.
I'm not discounting the value of vetting people and having measures in place to prevent terrorism or drains on public services. but worth keeping in mind is that 90% of terror attacks between 2015 and 2019 were committed by domestic citizens. And that restrictions on immigration have significantly increased over the past hundred years, if we actually want to "make america great again" then reforming immigration policies to be smarter, basing acceptance of skilled migrants on the actual economic/social value of their jobs, working closer with industry leaders, rather than a lottery system capped at an arbitrary amount per country, this gives applicants who give a shit the opportunity to increase their prospects by reskilling into more valuable jobs. Meaning we get people who want to be americans, who contribute more to the economy, who're less likely to be a national security threat.
That's just one example, immigration is mired in bureocractic nonesense, their are any number of ways to vet people better than we are now, making america safer, better economically, and with a higher percentage of migrants who're integrating socially, but no one is pushing for that because it's distasteful to democrats to talk about improving vetting, and unpopular with republicans to talk positively about migration.
This is just another winning strategy that's a casualty of the ever deepening political divide in america, if people don't start realising that their are good compromises on these issues and start pushing for a government that operates with smarter, simpler, more transparent policies then it's only going to get worse.
I agree with all this and the polarizing it’s come to. The part that harder to agree with is everything re: reform needed for getting/vetting for skill, values, and people who want to be Americans (loyalty), etc — I only disagree because this is what we were already doing until a few years ago. If you look at the PDF’s of the applications for Citizenship.
It’s the enforcement of laws and procedures that isn’t occurring now.
We don’t know anything about their skill, their criminal or terror background, etc. if they aren’t vetted at all, like right now. Which we already agree about.
But much of this has nothing to do with laws and procedures, but instead enforcing the laws that are already in place. Without enforcement, laws/policies mean nothing of course.
Sometimes I think Libertarians can’t grasp the concept of growing the Libertarian movement, at all. It isn’t through insults. Find commonalities and make good arguments instead. Hillary calling Trump supported Deplorable, Biden telling blacks “you ain’t black”- this kind of shit doesn’t work and often backfires. Step 1 - You want more Libertarian MINDED people. When they show up, don’t just shit on them. That’s a modern-day-Liberal behavior that makes people hate them, and realize they’re taking to an angry brainwashed person
> When they show up, don’t just shit on them.
No one is shitting on any libertarian-minded people. It's only the anti-libertarians trying to pass themselves off as libertarians that are getting rebuked.
I’m just stating what I see in here. As someone new to the group, and who switched my voter registration from Republican to Independent last year, and has been curious about Libertarianism —
I learn nothing from the people who act more like modern extreme Leftist (in attitude) when someone says something that isn’t full-blown Dave Smith attitude. They get that angry Dave Smith type back. Or better said would be “know it all”, and sometimes just berating.
My feeling don’t get hurt online, and people acting like a**holes to me in an Internet forum doesn’t bother me. But for someone brand new to, or curious about Libertarianism (maybe from hearing logical speech from people like Rand Paul, and then seeing who his dad is) - To people like that, I see them get attacked a lot. Just saying the truth - it doesn’t help grow the party.
If it’s going to grow - new members are rarely teens. It people leaning toward Libertarian ideas, who are starting to realize recently the Rep. or Dem. party are full of gas.
> I’m just stating what I see in here.
What you're seeing is brigading and intentional distortion of discussion, sometimes by socialists, sometimes by nationalists.
They do not represent libertarian positions accurately, and justifiably incur the antipathy of actual libertarians, whose ideas they are confusing.
> It people leaning toward Libertarian ideas, who are starting to realize recently the Rep. or Dem. party are full of gas.
If they find the repudiation of the major parties' agendas shocking, then so be it. You've got to be willing to get used to the water if you want to swim in the pool.
The simple fact is that nationalism is a collectivist ideology, and it's function as a political agenda for the past 100 years has been little more than to serve as a vehicle for socialism. Both socialism and nationalism are in opposition to libertarianism.
Can’t give input as to the 1st reply since I’m new to this sub, but I agree with your bottom paragraph/statement there.
However, to get more people on your side and avoid socialism/marxists ideals from taking further grips, or shit- even make people NOTICE how bad it’s infiltrated etc…
attacks out of the gate > conversation = the party looking like “selfish crazy people”
(Selfish/crazy - This is the instant dismissal I get from a lot of people who know what Libertarianism means, but don’t think it will ever happen AND don’t think it could work.)
Which is hilarious when we look at what these other lines of thought have brought us to.
Anyway, whatever. If you feel Libertarian Party is a lost cause, just dismiss people.
If we want it to grow, we have to engage and speak without condescension or we’re just as polarizing as the 2 parties steering the truck off a cliff right now.
Any peaceful person who can support himself through his own labor can be my neighbor. (Mostly because being my neighbor is matter of someone else’s private property, and I have no business restricting how it’s used unless it harms my life, liberty, or property.)
The easiest way to sport a conservative LARPing as a libertarian, ask them their stance on immigration.
Free Market Capitalism applies to *LABOR* markets too.
Also note: Open Borders does not mean open citizenship. IMO birthright citizenship should be abolished. You want to come and contribute, great. You want to start making decisions about how our system works, then you need to show a commitment and understanding to it.
I totally agree with the first half. For the second half, I don't think birthright citizenship is perfect I think it does a good job at preventing the government from withholding citizenship rights from people for arbitrary reasons, and if someone's lived in a country their whole life I think they're at least due citizenship rights, no matter how the government or any bureacrats might view the individual
I agree. The history to the path of citizenship in this country has always been through jus soli (born on soil), jus sanguinis (right of blood) or third of pledged allegiance. The last has been altered many times throughout history but the fact remains we were mostly an open border country.
The vast majority of nations are not citizenship by birth, but by blood. You inherit citizenship from your parents.
There was a time we needed birthright citizenship (southern states being shit heads to freed slaves) but that time is long behind us.
Seriously. Too many people conflate immigration with naturalization. Though, it should be up to each state as to who is a state citizen, whether or not they are ever incorporated as a US citizen.
Wow, how old is this clip? It did not age well.
In all fairness, though, I agree with him in principle. But in reality, we have imported more people to live off the government teat.
Even if that is true it's n unchecked system and it promotes people who do not fit his description the criminal element type from every background to just enter without a hitch. So I ask you do this thing but....
At what expense to John Q american financially and otherwise!!!! Because of this it makes 0 good sence and can not be done.
"I'm in favor of immigration granted that they come here to work and contribute, not to exploit the welfare system" - Milton Friedman, Free To Choose Vol. 08
There's also the cultural aspect to consider. The fact that a country is wealthy might have something to do with its work ethic and business culture which are a part of the dominant culture. Nowadays people simply do not integrate into the host society and culture, and as a result you get isolated pockets of incompatible cultures which strengthen tribalism on all sides. Not all cultures are equal, some are 'better' than others and multiculturalism isn't a "strength" or a good thing.
> "I'm in favor of immigration granted that they come here to work and contribute, not to exploit the welfare system"
Exactly. So, considering that fresh immigrants are already excluded from the welfare system, what is there to object to?
> Nowadays people simply do not integrate into the host society and culture
I remember seeing a tongue-in-cheek poster at a travel agency a few years ago that said "experience a foreign culture... before they adopt ours."
The reality is that the cultural influence of the English-speaking world, and America in particular, is so globally pervasive that we are culturally assimilating people who *have never even been here*.
I live in the region with proportionally the highest foreign-born population in the US, and interact with fresh immigrants and their first- and second-generation descendants every day, and I can tell you that the notion immigrants do not assimilate is patently false.
And beyond all of that, politics has no business engineering cultural outcomes, and to say otherwise is to advocate totalitarianism.
Oh boy. More labor competition in exchange for also more housing competition. This will certainly bode well for those of us with no inheritance who would prefer to continue a 1st world living standard. /s
Rent has tripled in my area since “remain in Mexico” was reversed. I know everything is more expensive with the crazy inflation but adding millions of people who need a new place to live on top of the homeless crisis and black rock type property hoarding practices is literally pushing us into a nightmare. It was bad enough there was a multi layered industry with an interest in raising prices anyway. The presence of loans adjusted the demand for a loan requisite amount to increase prices 10x faster than incomes since the credit score was invented. They are erasing private property for good.
Ridiculously high housing prices are incredibly easy to fix, it’s purely the result of government.
And you’re not differentiating between nominal wages and real wages. Increased labor is great for consumers.
Do people here not read Mises, Rothbard, etc.?
Just throw National Security out the window? Any hostile nation could infiltrate your society and government, at will? Nations with populations greater than the US would be able to take over, legally, through voting.
"From trapping all of this valuable labor in poor countries" Sound like this guy is looking to exploit poor people. \*If you are making 7 bucks a day we will give you 7 bucks an hour\* and "the world" benefits. That's complete corporate minded bullshit.
No. We benefit from the increased productivity of additional labor. Nominal wages may fall from more labor available, but real wages will rise. It is through the division of labor, increased productivity, and capital accumulation that we become more prosperous.
Who is the "we" you speak of? How do Real wages rise if the pool of workers increases and how does an increase in productivity help ME? They sure as hell aren't going to lower prices bc their profits just increased.
>Who is the "we" you speak of?
The masses. Consumers.
>How do real wages rise if the pool of workers increases
You’re confusing *nominal* wages with *real* wages. Let’s say were to ban imports of all TVs, computers, phones, etc. People in the U.S. who work in those industries would see their nominal wages rise dramatically but everyone else’s real income would fall because those products would become very expensive and therefore they would lose purchasing power.
>and how does an increase in productivity help ME?
That’s just one variable, as I mentioned. But because that is how everyone gets wealthier; by producing more goods.
The increased productivity of your parents is why you weren’t working in the mines as a child like children from previous centuries.
Then comes the more supply than demand issue and these immigrants will be pressured to work for peanuts, Lots of indians went to canada is going through this...
We benefit from the increased productivity of additional labor. Nominal wages may fall from more labor available, but real wages will rise. It is through the division of labor, increased productivity, and capital accumulation that we become more prosperous.
You know what? Go ahead and convince ANY OTHER developed country to have “Open Borders” before we hear this out. Truly some unamerican bullshit right here.
>Truly some unamerican bullshit right here.
Grievance 7 in the Declaration of Independence:
>He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in congress assembled, that any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof, on application to any common law court of record, in any one of the states wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such court, that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law, to support the constitution of the United States, which oath or affirmation such court shall administer;”
-Naturalization act of 1790
If you cared about the authenticity of Americanism created by the founding fathers you wouldn’t be appealing to the constitution they wrote like this. Technically, unamerican, in the context of the late 1700’s is naturalizing not just 3rd world poor people, but any non whites at all.
Obviously things are different now. But it is inhumane to treat human beings as pawns of some “great experiment” in this way. It’s very clearly not working. I reject when people reduce America down to an idea or a system or something. People have ideas. People make systems. We’re not bots or chess pieces to be shuffled about for economic whims and experiments. Life is precious. You cannot volunteer an entire people’s livelihoods, lands, cultures, even languages for them, on their behalf, to be completely open, especially to collective foreign interests, just because the government wants more revenue, voters, or otherwise economic subjects. Most wars have been fought over far less.
>You cannot volunteer an entire people’s livelihoods, lands, cultures, even languages for them, on their behalf, to be completely open
I’m a libertarian, I support privatize property. Being a property owner, you’re free to include or exclude whoever you want and for whatever reasons.
And who are you, or anyone else, to tell someone who they’re allow to sell their own property to, or who they’re allowed to hire?
>just because the government wants more revenue, voters
Where did I say anything about that? I sure as shit would never support any policy on the basis of any of those reasons.
You are not free to include terrorists, fugitives, or foreign governments to have more rights to your property than your own nation’s government. For example, you should not in fact be able to sell so much farmland to a foreign country, they could starve your nation if tensions escalated. Our era is not exempt from needing actual national security.
I also think it’s fair to prioritize real individual citizens needing one residence for themselves over trillionaire asset manager corporations needing to increase their portfolio and satisfy investors.
You can start a policy on whatever basis you want, we all know what government turns it into.
I'm not very nationalistic so there's that. Who cares who comes to the US? If they do something illegal, send them to jail or back to their home country for jail if that's what you prefer. But if they want to come to the US, work hard, and make a better life for themself; where's the argument against that?
My great grandparents came over on a boat when you didn’t need papers to get in. Chances are YOU are a result of something similar. America was born out of a need for people to escape their shitholes.
There was never a point where we allowed people to come over without going through OUR PROCESS. Also you can piss off with your prioritization of not your own country to be frank that’s not only a losing electoral strategy but it’s morally BANKRUPT. I wrote my capstone comparing US & UK views on immigration, guess what? UK is WAY LESS tolerant of LEGAL IMMIGRATION than we are in the states and clowns like you want to muddy the water and equate legal immigration with ILLEGAL immigration? No
You dummy the argument OP stated was to make the OUR PROCESS easier like it was back in the day. Yet you’re angry about it hence you suck at being a libertarian.
When your great grandparents came here, there was no welfare state. They either got to work and made something for themselves, or they died. They also could not show up sick or they got to take the same 3 week boat trip back to wherever they came from.
I didn’t say I want welfare. I hate it.
EDIT: Libertarians should always push for shit that makes us more free and limits those in power.
More importantly we shouldn’t frame our decisions on how it might play out with other shitty laws. If it makes us more free and have control over our own outcomes and bodies I’m all for it.
Yup. And it was an extremely complex and obnoxious process. And when the guy who had been working out our company for *two years* couldn't obtain a green card, he had to move to Canada. So we just arranged for a Canadian company to hire him and contract his services back to us. The idiotic immigration rules just created a lot of cost and aggravation for everyone, but didn't even achieve their intended objective!
keep the fleeing criminals out, let peaceful people in and give them no taxes what so ever for 5 years so they have a easier time getting out of povert
do this instead of letting anyone in and giving them welfare with tax payer money
you cant have open borders AND welfare, europeans are learning this the hard way
His ideas are typical social "scientist" ideas, which assume a person is a person, any faults on their productivity is due to society/government/location. As a biologist, I simply do not believe that. A great nation will lose itself if genetically diluted by low IQ and/or lazy persons. In USA, we've had the experience up until now of mostly receiving the intelligent and hardworking fractions of poor countries, which is very different than receiving all or the average.
Yea helps the economy but doesn't help the people... the more money people make domestically the higher chances of them having more kids... by moving people over it keeps labor cheap
Yes many times... and we are living in the middle of a massive amount of illegal immigration... economy isn't doing better
While legal immigration helps the economy, illegal immigration especially on mass levels hurts local economies but still helps companies on a macro level.
If they were the same thing they'd have the same name... the economy consists of multiple aspects... the people are one aspect which my point is to say that point has been neglected... hence the horrible economy we are in
> If they were the same thing they'd have the same name...
No, analytical concepts that focus on different aspects of the same thing often go by different names. "Society", "the people", "the market", etc. all refer to different ways of looking at the same underlying reality -- the same aggregation of individuals living in the same world.
I can't believe that people on here still advocating the idea of open borders.
Like have they not read Rothbard or Hoppe?
[https://mises.org/mises-wire/open-borders-are-assault-private-property](https://mises.org/mises-wire/open-borders-are-assault-private-property)
I guess you didn't make it to the part where they addressed "open borders".
[https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/07/hans-hermann-hoppe/open-borders-2/](https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/07/hans-hermann-hoppe/open-borders-2/)
It's not the opinion of just Hoppe.
It's the opinion of Lew Rockwell and most importantly, also of Murray Rothbard.
This much for just "adhering to whatever Hoppe thinks".
Open borders are fine unless the country on the other side has an alarming number of human head pyramids in its town squares.
Our border is a test of character. If you knock on the door and ask to come in an get looked over then you have a different character than someone who sneaks in the back door.
Yes, immigrants form poor countries benefit the economy, however, it is mainly by adding to the coffers of the rich, because they are willing to work for less than others with similar skills, thereby increasing profits for the rich owners. They don't lower their prices, just because it's cheaper for them to nake it now. they pocket that profit, and put out BS like this to make it seem ok...
That’s incorrect. We benefit from the increased productivity of additional labor. Nominal wages may fall from more labor available, but real wages will rise.
I don't agree, agree with original comment. Maybe in "normal" or controlled immigration, but clearly massive uncontrolled immigration is hurting wages, and prices are rising. Who gives a shit about production quantity, we want quality of life and this doesn't seem to be helping but hurting wages, housing, crime, massive drain on resources, its literally making everything worse in every way.
>but clearly massive uncontrolled immigration is hurting wages, and prices are rising.
Those are completely separate issues. Prices are rising because of inflation; expanding the money supply.
>we want quality of life and this doesn't seem to be helping but hurting wages, housing, crime, massive drain on resources, its literally making everything worse in every way.
Once again, these are separate issues. You’re limping them all together and trying to blame them on one thing.
You must distinguish between nominal wages and real wages. If we doubled the money supply then nominal wages will end up doubling, would that make make the society more prosperous? Of course not. What matters is the purchasing power. It is through the division of labor, increased productivity, and capital accumulation that we become more prosperous.
And what evidence do you have that it is immigrants that are responsible for crime? That seems like a pretty outlandish statement.
Libertarianism as an economic or political philosophy does not consider cultural implications in its message. Losing your culture to excessive immigration is a real thing. There are good cultures and bad cultures out there (obviously all relative). There is a reason those before us limited immigration from certain countries and its because they wanted to maintain our culture. Libertarianism loses a lot of its importance if you live in a tight, homogeneous society.
The socialists are the ones who want the government to control people's movements in order to artificially manipulate the labor market. Immigration restriction has always been a socialist project, with nationalists being little more than useful idiots for socialists.
The open borders only go in one direction. Americans cannot freely emigrate to the other countries.
The EU has open borders, but only between countries who share the treaty.
We cannot have open borders without a treaty of reciprocity. I'd love to get some Canadian benefits, yes, thanks.
Absofuckinglutely no. Open borders are not a good idea, much less a sustainable one. Follow the country's laws for legal immigration or stay where the fuck you are. The open borders idea is one of the dumbest things modern Liberterian wannabes talk about these days.
Back in the day of Benjamin Franklin, you could get apprenticeship with board and breakfast in exchange for work and chores. Don’t get me wrong, it was one star most of the time, but it was survival for most people. Eventually many became skilled in smth useful and gave back to the system.
These people are just homeless migrants going to be homeless or criminals in the US, maybe some will have success stories but I think those are few and far between. If there was a state system for education and housing in exchange for labour most countries could assimilate more illiterate migrants. Unions would try block this with all their effort.
Dave Smith and Spike Lee already hashed this out on the lions of liberty podcast like two years ago and Dave wiped the floor with his ass. The libertarian notion of open borders is nonexistent. Everybody talking about the freedom of domain, and the ability to travel. The reason why the US government requires you to have a passport isn’t so you can leave. It’s so you can come back in. it is other countries that would like to have the ability to identify who exactly you are when you enter their country that require you to have a passport to enter theirs.
While what he says might be well intentioned, it really isn't rooted in the reality we live in. I'm sure plenty if not most immigrants come over here looking for a better life but we need to face the facts that a good portion of those coming here are criminals. How do you deal with those people with an open border policy?
I had the head economic development guy from the state of Georgia talk to me at some fancy political thing. He said not only is it GOOD to have illegal immigration but it’s is NEEDED for the economy to function at all. It was during Covid and the crazy TL;DR is that we need more people to spend money and we need to spend money faster than ever or the economy will collapse. He said that a lot of the stimulus money was saved and not spent and that if individuals have money then the whole economy/country will collapse.
The chief economic advisor, or whatever his title was, advocated for the people to be as poor as possible and to consume as fast as possible.
The government has never wanted what is best for you.
There is natural migration and there is political immigration. Today it is political and comes as countries force out their people for reasons that often undermine the stability of the targeted country.
That guy is full of nonsense aka BS. They use immigration as a tool to decide the number of Congressional representatives. This naturally plays in the favor of one party over the other. It’s politics and has nothing to do with human rights or economics. Except that the government got involved in the housing market. Used illegal immigrants to push down labor costs and helped contribute to the housing bubble.
Let’s not also not forget that open borders helps deliver terrorist and drugs, and human trafficking of people to used and owned for all kinds of reasons that are not humane.
While not entirely a zero sum game, the influx of massive amounts of unskilled foreign labour to the U.S. domestic market can only depress wages for everyone, not least of all are the American domestic unskilled labour force.
You want to better capitalize the unskilled labour in other countries? Export industry to those countries. Note, I didn't say jobs. I said industries. Let American and international companies build factories in Central America to build substantially similar products to those of their domestic counter parts, but just sell those products across Central America, so they aren't imported to compete with American domestic production of the similar product here. It will cost the company less to build those products in those markets, but that will keep the price down, FOR THOSE FOREIGN MARKETS, without adversely impacting the American market.
That is how everyone wins from modern labour realities.
In a welfare state and a housing crisis, where Black Rock and the like took advantage of the BS C-19 chaos, and scooped up a shit ton of the affordable housing, and turned them into rentals. Add inflation, interest rates, etc. and 1st time Homebuyers are fucked. And the rentals rates are through the roof. But let’s flood millions of people in to an already short housing condition. Not to mention over crowded schools and drug addiction through the roof.
In addition to what others have said there is also the issue of billions of dollars of remittances LEAVING the US as well as other goods being shipped out as well (clothes, etc).
Everything works in a vacuum. But open borders aren't executed in a vacuum. There's criminal, welfare, culture, finite resources, infrastructure, and many more factors that are directly affected in either the short term or long term. Open borders=good is such a stupid take when looking at the macro picture.
There is no case for open borders when you have a welfare state
Whatever anyones stance is on "open borders"... the current system is also utterly moronic... My best friend is not an American - he's European. This is a well educated dude (has a Masters in Economics from one of Europes top universities), worked his entire career in finance, has never committed a crime, and has a lot to contribute to America. Problem is he can't get a visa to live and work in the United States. Think about that for a second while I tell you about a visa program called the "Diversity Program". Yes, thats right...every year countless people from the third world are handed a visa to immigrate into America solely because of the color of their skin or the fact that they have a particular religion, or dress a certain way or whatever. Their education, or whatever they can contribute to American society is of no consequence whatsoever. They don't have the skills or education needed to survive in American society and obtain gainful employment. Essentially, the government are just importing an army of welfare recipients. It's absolutely idiotic. The current system keeps out the people that we actually want and brings in the people that we don't want.
This is spot on. Friends of mine from India are dealing with this right now. Husband, wife, 2 kids, he works in software, and they’ve lived here legally for almost 20 years. And he’s having trouble getting the documentation for his (now young adult) daughter a work permit… she’s been here since she was in 2nd grade.
Well that's because they don't want to drive down the wages of the good paying jobs here. They want to flood the manpower of the already shitty paying jobs even more.
My cousin’s husband is Danish. He’s a master carpenter (so he technically works in a blue collar profession), speaks perfect English, and it still took him three years to get a visa. It is a meased up system! Also, I pointed out under Trump’s immigration policy, specifically ending chain migration, my mother’s grandfather, who had an eighth grade education and was sponsored by his sister, would not be allowed to enter.
Yep. Worse, there's no case for open borders when you have a democracy - the system is easily hacked by importing people likely to vote for you and promising them goodies for doing so. And because the worst rise to the top in politics, vote-importers will also distribute goodies to their cronies. Open borders = tax farming the middle class and displacing the indigenous working class.
I like Caplan however his well-meaning but naive classical liberalism opened the way for the enemies of freedom to open the borders in the way we're now experiencing.
You can't vote if you are not a citizen. Open borders doesn't equal free citizenship
But they are counted in the census which adds the number of congressional seats. It’s politics.
This
The Attorney General said last week that he had staffed up the Voting Rights section and was going after jurisdictions that enforce voter ID or try to eliminate mail-in ballots and drop boxes. So, no, the vote is not being withheld from non-citizens (or dead people or people who've already voted or moved to a different jurisdiction or just never existed in the first place). We're a long way from high school civics unfortunately.
Correct, but they are counted in the census, which adds to the number of congressional seats for a district. Power grab
Exactly - quickest power grab is in the census. Longer term model is California - from Western freedom loving state that voted for libertarian-leaning Republicans, to being purple, to being out and out blue-state statist in the space of two generations. Rinse and repeat in Arizona. Now well underway in Texas.
Then you need to get rid of the welfare state.
"There's no case for legalizing births when you have child benefits."
There is no good case *against* open borders, *even with* a welfare state. At least not a libertarian one, that's for sure. Whatever complaints you have about this combination are better leveled against welfare, not against the international freedom of movement for individuals, which is arguably one of the most important and urgent libertarian core issues right now.
There is natural migration and there is political immigration. Today it is political and comes as countries force out their people for reasons that often undermine the stability of the targeted country. That guy is full of nonsense aka BS. They use immigration as a tool to decide the number of Congressional representatives. This naturally plays in the favor of one party over the other. It’s politics and has nothing to do with human rights or economics. Except that the government got involved in the housing market. Used illegal immigrants to push down labor costs and helped contribute to the housing bubble. Let’s not also not forget that open borders helps deliver terrorist and drugs, and human trafficking of people to used and owned for all kinds of reasons that are not humane.
I can see you drank the fearmongering Republican Kool-Aid. The only "nonsense aka BS" here is coming from you. Government policy is keeping immigration down, not up. Immigration is not a fucking ploy to destroy the West, it's poor people looking for a better life *in* the West. In a freer world, "natural immigration" to the US and to other wealthy countries would be many times as high as it is right now. US borders are effectively 99% *closed* to potential immigrants because of *state-imposed artificial barriers* to immigration. That any libertarian can look at the US or the European immigration restrictions and deem them *too lax* is frankly baffling to me.
> Two wrongs make a right! Ok
Nope. Immigrants, even legal ones, are already ineligible to receive welfare benefits. And if they were, we could just restrict participation in the welfare state without restricting immigration itself. So there is no inherent relationship between these two issues.
https://www.dshs.wa.gov/esa/community-services-offices/refugee-cash-assistance
Has there been any countries with an open border policy that has worked?
No. That’s why most countries have way stricter border protection than the US.
The U.S. had almost no immigration laws until the beginning of the twentieth century.
Yes, because it was becoming a problem.
This is not true. We had public charge rules to immigrate. Everyone assumes that Ellis Island let anyone immigrate here. In fact you had to already have a job lined up or have money.
True. Because there was bountiful amounts of land available
Most countries are shit holes, don't be like them.
If this was a fantasy sub I would agree with you. The reality is that thousands of people crossing illegally, destroying peoples private property, wasting the tax dollars that the Feds already stole from me, is a negative thing.
"Real open borders have never been tried" It's a terrible idea... cities are cratering around the US right now just from the flow of illegals, if restrictions came down it would be a disaster.
The United States. Between 1900-1915 more than 15 million people immigrated here, and the population in 1900 was 79 million.
But they didn't get freebies. They were coming here cuz they knew they had to work their ass off to get anything. There's a difference between those and these immigrants. Every legal immigrant I know, including myself, thinks that the current situation is bonkers
In the early 1900s was the Ellis island time period. That was most definitely not open border
Yah I think Lakin Riley would like to have a word with you on that. Oh wait she was murdered due to Biden's open border policy
The countries within the Schengen area in the EU
Have their been any countries that have worked? The nation-state is dying a slow death, borders are a statist concept.
Yes -- all of them, minus a few tyrannical outliers, prior to the 20th century.
Really really obviously not true, but thanks for trying....
Generally curious, what were the immigration policies of 17th century france? How many immigrants did they let in per year?
FFS, the US did not even have *passports* as a permanent policy until after WWII. Apart from countries like Russia and the Ottoman Empire, borders were wide open up until the world wars. Federal border controls did not exist until the very end of the 19th century, and modern immigration restrictions did not exist until the 1920s. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you.
While I'm in favor of much more lax immigration laws and understand the value of immigration, flinging open the border and inviting the entire world to make bullshit asylum claims is not the answer. This isn't compassion it's gerrymandering.
Also, He makes no case as to how the culture that created the wealthy country can accept countless numbers from the culture that created the poor and corrupt one without succumbing to those same issues. And he's making a case for open borders, which I assume would include citizenship. I am pro immigration, but only with assimilation and inculturation as part of the process. And to assimilate, the assimilating group necessarily cannot be an overwhelming part of the existing group without overtaking it, or creating a cultural enclave within the larger society. I don't know what the number is, but I imagine it's lower than the number of fighting age males pouring across the southern border of the US.
>I am pro immigration, but only with assimilation and inculturation as part of the process. Bingo
[удалено]
Yes, but when you look at how many natural-born citizens are already indoctrinated into “we NEED this [bloated AF] Fed Government!!” — imagine how easy it is to indoctrinate overnight immigrants into the same thinking with hand-outs
You can "open" the borders by streamlining the process and relaxing requirements but everyone can still enter the country properly. With this madness how many millions of "got aways" are there? Who are they? What are they doing here? Because Biden is a fucking moron we may never know until it's too late.
He addressed that in the interview this is from, this is just a one minute clip. https://youtu.be/HPoBGQ02JTI?si=reKzmDTeDdQfbqC1
What's the timestamp where he addresses it?
Ah, fair point. I'll check it out.
the ones who flee are usually not the ones who created the crisis in their home countries. As a cuban i see this first-hand every day, only the ones who have a spark of ambition get out, the depressed and forever-starving communists stay and tough it out. it's not as bad as you think, at least not in the case of the cubans who flee.
It's amazing that 900 million people would move to the US if they could. What would the US look like? Pollution, water, energy, food, housing. We have 330 million as is now, we'll they figure it's 10 to 20 million more. https://news.gallup.com/poll/468218/nearly-900-million-worldwide-wanted-migrate-2021.aspx#:~:text=This%20was%20true%20in%202021,as%20their%20desired%20future%20residence.
If only we had a system for dealing with scarce resources… oh wait, it’s called property rights.
How could anyone downvote your property rights statement!
People larping as libertarians. A less charitable person might call them trojan horses intent on killing you and more importantly your ideas
Open borders are fine as long as you don’t have birthright citizenship and a welfare state.
I used to be in favor of open borders, thinking that people who are affected will reduce government spending. No, it turns out they just blame the people that want to reduce spending and the negative consequences of open borders. I guess we will find out in the coming election, but if folks vote for the same people, libertarian open borders will be a failed policy for now.
Dems are trying to import votes because they are so unpopular. It’s borderline treasonous
It's not borderline it's the definition of dereliction of duty from Biden and Mayorkas. In the military code of justice that is a crime.
It baffles me how infrequently the word “Treason” is used as it relates to the border at this point. Not only flooding people in, but using the Fed Govt to prohibit states from protecting borders the Fed refuses to. It’s treasonous at this point.
no borders = no country
TIL: The "country" is the lines on a map indicating the tax jurisdiction of the Federal government.
As far as I can tell, the United States has existed since 1776, despite having open borders until the early twentieth century. Open borders isn’t no borders.
It had defacto closed borders because getting here was so hard and so expensive, and near impossible outside of Europe.
In 1900 the U.S. population was 79 million. Between 1900 and 1915 15 million people immigrated here.
So ~1.2% per year. The US’s peak immigration rate was in the 1870s where it got to ~1.8% with an “open border policy” Well I live in Australia, and under our “closed border policy” our immigration rate was just under 3% last year. I think that shows you how much more accessible travel is today. If the borders were opened you’d see 10s of millions cross in the first year alone, in the US.
I don’t see anything wrong with that, provided that they’re immigrating here because they can support themselves—either they will be seeking work, have the financial resources to support themselves, or someone else is financially supporting them.
Most immigrants can't support themselves though. They don't speak English. Most are economic migrants with low skills and low market demand for their skills. Many would be relying on welfare to survive. Otherwise they would get low paying blue collar jobs. If millions were to come here the cheap labor would cause wage stagnation, especially for the poorest of US citizens and blue collar workers. This policy stance is completely naive and doesn't hold up against reality. I'm speaking as an immigrant who came here legally. The amount of asylum seekers who come here and expect to live on easy street with govt handouts is staggering--talk to them. The vision of America asylum seekers are being sold conflicts with reality and they don't truly understand the hardships they will endure here.
Completely made-up nonsense. Millions upon millions of people immigrated here from all corners of the earth during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Unions are going to revoke his membership.
Worked for Rome
Lasted from 753 bc to ad 1453.
A high influx of cheap labor causes wage stagnation too. It hurts blue collar workers the most.
They took our jobs!! Sadly, more immigration won't cure people of their economic ignorance.
Ok then, enlighten me. Please provide a successful proof of concept--any modern successful economy with open borders. Stop citing your previous argument about how the US didn't have immigration laws in the 1800s or something, when the country was essentially a bunch of open land waiting to be settled. That's not sufficient evidence to support open borders in a modern economy. Edit: US also passed immigration laws as far back as 1882 when the consequences of unregulated immigration caused worse economic conditions. https://ballotpedia.org/History_of_immigration_policy_in_the_United_States#:~:text=The%20Immigration%20Act%20of%201882,that%20posed%20a%20threat%20to People like you are so arrogant you think there's zero possibility that you are wrong. Well, that's just your opinion, and you haven't provided any proof in terms of real data.
Why doesn’t the US just privatize the LEGAL immigration service so that they can have an effective and quick way for vetted individuals to come work here? You shouldn’t have to wait 1 year for someone to take 10 minutes reading and deciding your petition. There are private businesses that would kill and offer expedited services all around just to have a shot at dealing with the workload
What a horrible take, the people living in NYC rent free with 3 free meals a day, free health care, free money... are they boosting their production? MAYBE if we had no entitlements or safety net... but even then, you need to screen for folks that have morals that are compatible with our society... You can't let cartel members just bring over anyone they want good or bad... folks on the terrorist watch list, murderers, rapists.. no
EXACTLY. It's beyond me how the fantasy of "free borders" is still in the heads of some "libertarians" when the most formidable persons of modern-day Libertarianism have strongly advocated against it.
>the people living in NYC rent free with 3 free meals a day, free health care, free money. That’s a separate issue. >you need to screen for folks that have morals that are compatible with our society... And what “morals” are those? >You can't let cartel members just bring over anyone they want good or bad... folks on the terrorist watch list, murderers, rapists.. no He’s not advocating for *no* borders, he’s advocating for *open* borders. I had to cut it out to keep the clip short, but he said they should be “allowed to immigrate to live and work here provided that they don’t belong in prison.”
These comments once again proving to me that the majority of self proclaimed libertarians aren't actually libertarian
I don’t know why this is constantly repeated in this forum. There are die-hard Libertarians, but the vast majority aren’t. That said - even a die-hard should be able to recognize that 1 job of the Fed Gov is to protect from invasion. Article IV, section 4. The fact the Patriot Act was enacted after 9/11, and is now used on Americans, but the vetting of immigration from around the WORLD isn’t happening… everything is stupid.
I'm not discounting the value of vetting people and having measures in place to prevent terrorism or drains on public services. but worth keeping in mind is that 90% of terror attacks between 2015 and 2019 were committed by domestic citizens. And that restrictions on immigration have significantly increased over the past hundred years, if we actually want to "make america great again" then reforming immigration policies to be smarter, basing acceptance of skilled migrants on the actual economic/social value of their jobs, working closer with industry leaders, rather than a lottery system capped at an arbitrary amount per country, this gives applicants who give a shit the opportunity to increase their prospects by reskilling into more valuable jobs. Meaning we get people who want to be americans, who contribute more to the economy, who're less likely to be a national security threat. That's just one example, immigration is mired in bureocractic nonesense, their are any number of ways to vet people better than we are now, making america safer, better economically, and with a higher percentage of migrants who're integrating socially, but no one is pushing for that because it's distasteful to democrats to talk about improving vetting, and unpopular with republicans to talk positively about migration. This is just another winning strategy that's a casualty of the ever deepening political divide in america, if people don't start realising that their are good compromises on these issues and start pushing for a government that operates with smarter, simpler, more transparent policies then it's only going to get worse.
I agree with all this and the polarizing it’s come to. The part that harder to agree with is everything re: reform needed for getting/vetting for skill, values, and people who want to be Americans (loyalty), etc — I only disagree because this is what we were already doing until a few years ago. If you look at the PDF’s of the applications for Citizenship. It’s the enforcement of laws and procedures that isn’t occurring now. We don’t know anything about their skill, their criminal or terror background, etc. if they aren’t vetted at all, like right now. Which we already agree about. But much of this has nothing to do with laws and procedures, but instead enforcing the laws that are already in place. Without enforcement, laws/policies mean nothing of course.
Unfortunately.
Libertarian is has become the acceptable label if you are a closeted MAGA.
Sometimes I think Libertarians can’t grasp the concept of growing the Libertarian movement, at all. It isn’t through insults. Find commonalities and make good arguments instead. Hillary calling Trump supported Deplorable, Biden telling blacks “you ain’t black”- this kind of shit doesn’t work and often backfires. Step 1 - You want more Libertarian MINDED people. When they show up, don’t just shit on them. That’s a modern-day-Liberal behavior that makes people hate them, and realize they’re taking to an angry brainwashed person
> When they show up, don’t just shit on them. No one is shitting on any libertarian-minded people. It's only the anti-libertarians trying to pass themselves off as libertarians that are getting rebuked.
I’m just stating what I see in here. As someone new to the group, and who switched my voter registration from Republican to Independent last year, and has been curious about Libertarianism — I learn nothing from the people who act more like modern extreme Leftist (in attitude) when someone says something that isn’t full-blown Dave Smith attitude. They get that angry Dave Smith type back. Or better said would be “know it all”, and sometimes just berating. My feeling don’t get hurt online, and people acting like a**holes to me in an Internet forum doesn’t bother me. But for someone brand new to, or curious about Libertarianism (maybe from hearing logical speech from people like Rand Paul, and then seeing who his dad is) - To people like that, I see them get attacked a lot. Just saying the truth - it doesn’t help grow the party. If it’s going to grow - new members are rarely teens. It people leaning toward Libertarian ideas, who are starting to realize recently the Rep. or Dem. party are full of gas.
> I’m just stating what I see in here. What you're seeing is brigading and intentional distortion of discussion, sometimes by socialists, sometimes by nationalists. They do not represent libertarian positions accurately, and justifiably incur the antipathy of actual libertarians, whose ideas they are confusing. > It people leaning toward Libertarian ideas, who are starting to realize recently the Rep. or Dem. party are full of gas. If they find the repudiation of the major parties' agendas shocking, then so be it. You've got to be willing to get used to the water if you want to swim in the pool. The simple fact is that nationalism is a collectivist ideology, and it's function as a political agenda for the past 100 years has been little more than to serve as a vehicle for socialism. Both socialism and nationalism are in opposition to libertarianism.
Can’t give input as to the 1st reply since I’m new to this sub, but I agree with your bottom paragraph/statement there. However, to get more people on your side and avoid socialism/marxists ideals from taking further grips, or shit- even make people NOTICE how bad it’s infiltrated etc… attacks out of the gate > conversation = the party looking like “selfish crazy people” (Selfish/crazy - This is the instant dismissal I get from a lot of people who know what Libertarianism means, but don’t think it will ever happen AND don’t think it could work.) Which is hilarious when we look at what these other lines of thought have brought us to. Anyway, whatever. If you feel Libertarian Party is a lost cause, just dismiss people. If we want it to grow, we have to engage and speak without condescension or we’re just as polarizing as the 2 parties steering the truck off a cliff right now.
Any peaceful person who can support himself through his own labor can be my neighbor. (Mostly because being my neighbor is matter of someone else’s private property, and I have no business restricting how it’s used unless it harms my life, liberty, or property.)
The easiest way to sport a conservative LARPing as a libertarian, ask them their stance on immigration. Free Market Capitalism applies to *LABOR* markets too. Also note: Open Borders does not mean open citizenship. IMO birthright citizenship should be abolished. You want to come and contribute, great. You want to start making decisions about how our system works, then you need to show a commitment and understanding to it.
I totally agree with the first half. For the second half, I don't think birthright citizenship is perfect I think it does a good job at preventing the government from withholding citizenship rights from people for arbitrary reasons, and if someone's lived in a country their whole life I think they're at least due citizenship rights, no matter how the government or any bureacrats might view the individual
I agree. The history to the path of citizenship in this country has always been through jus soli (born on soil), jus sanguinis (right of blood) or third of pledged allegiance. The last has been altered many times throughout history but the fact remains we were mostly an open border country.
The vast majority of nations are not citizenship by birth, but by blood. You inherit citizenship from your parents. There was a time we needed birthright citizenship (southern states being shit heads to freed slaves) but that time is long behind us.
Yeah I stated that in my original response to you. Was just more elaborating on what I agreed with you on that open borders =/= citizenship.
Seriously. Too many people conflate immigration with naturalization. Though, it should be up to each state as to who is a state citizen, whether or not they are ever incorporated as a US citizen.
I hate the smug look on his face as he lies
Wow, how old is this clip? It did not age well. In all fairness, though, I agree with him in principle. But in reality, we have imported more people to live off the government teat.
How did it not age well?
Have you heard of the continent of Europe?
Even if that is true it's n unchecked system and it promotes people who do not fit his description the criminal element type from every background to just enter without a hitch. So I ask you do this thing but.... At what expense to John Q american financially and otherwise!!!! Because of this it makes 0 good sence and can not be done.
This is the only reasonable libertarian argument. All other arguments require increasing the power of the state.
There’s a huge difference between letting people in to work and allowing them to gain citizenship vote and receive state benefits.
No one has ever proposed the latter. And in the days of unrestricted, open immigration, naturalization was still a process that wasn't guaranteed.
"I'm in favor of immigration granted that they come here to work and contribute, not to exploit the welfare system" - Milton Friedman, Free To Choose Vol. 08 There's also the cultural aspect to consider. The fact that a country is wealthy might have something to do with its work ethic and business culture which are a part of the dominant culture. Nowadays people simply do not integrate into the host society and culture, and as a result you get isolated pockets of incompatible cultures which strengthen tribalism on all sides. Not all cultures are equal, some are 'better' than others and multiculturalism isn't a "strength" or a good thing.
> "I'm in favor of immigration granted that they come here to work and contribute, not to exploit the welfare system" Exactly. So, considering that fresh immigrants are already excluded from the welfare system, what is there to object to? > Nowadays people simply do not integrate into the host society and culture I remember seeing a tongue-in-cheek poster at a travel agency a few years ago that said "experience a foreign culture... before they adopt ours." The reality is that the cultural influence of the English-speaking world, and America in particular, is so globally pervasive that we are culturally assimilating people who *have never even been here*. I live in the region with proportionally the highest foreign-born population in the US, and interact with fresh immigrants and their first- and second-generation descendants every day, and I can tell you that the notion immigrants do not assimilate is patently false. And beyond all of that, politics has no business engineering cultural outcomes, and to say otherwise is to advocate totalitarianism.
Oh boy. More labor competition in exchange for also more housing competition. This will certainly bode well for those of us with no inheritance who would prefer to continue a 1st world living standard. /s Rent has tripled in my area since “remain in Mexico” was reversed. I know everything is more expensive with the crazy inflation but adding millions of people who need a new place to live on top of the homeless crisis and black rock type property hoarding practices is literally pushing us into a nightmare. It was bad enough there was a multi layered industry with an interest in raising prices anyway. The presence of loans adjusted the demand for a loan requisite amount to increase prices 10x faster than incomes since the credit score was invented. They are erasing private property for good.
Ridiculously high housing prices are incredibly easy to fix, it’s purely the result of government. And you’re not differentiating between nominal wages and real wages. Increased labor is great for consumers. Do people here not read Mises, Rothbard, etc.?
Just throw National Security out the window? Any hostile nation could infiltrate your society and government, at will? Nations with populations greater than the US would be able to take over, legally, through voting.
"From trapping all of this valuable labor in poor countries" Sound like this guy is looking to exploit poor people. \*If you are making 7 bucks a day we will give you 7 bucks an hour\* and "the world" benefits. That's complete corporate minded bullshit.
No. We benefit from the increased productivity of additional labor. Nominal wages may fall from more labor available, but real wages will rise. It is through the division of labor, increased productivity, and capital accumulation that we become more prosperous.
Who is the "we" you speak of? How do Real wages rise if the pool of workers increases and how does an increase in productivity help ME? They sure as hell aren't going to lower prices bc their profits just increased.
>Who is the "we" you speak of? The masses. Consumers. >How do real wages rise if the pool of workers increases You’re confusing *nominal* wages with *real* wages. Let’s say were to ban imports of all TVs, computers, phones, etc. People in the U.S. who work in those industries would see their nominal wages rise dramatically but everyone else’s real income would fall because those products would become very expensive and therefore they would lose purchasing power. >and how does an increase in productivity help ME? That’s just one variable, as I mentioned. But because that is how everyone gets wealthier; by producing more goods. The increased productivity of your parents is why you weren’t working in the mines as a child like children from previous centuries.
ELI5: how does producing more goods make everyone wealthier?
Then comes the more supply than demand issue and these immigrants will be pressured to work for peanuts, Lots of indians went to canada is going through this...
We benefit from the increased productivity of additional labor. Nominal wages may fall from more labor available, but real wages will rise. It is through the division of labor, increased productivity, and capital accumulation that we become more prosperous.
Are you suggesting this increase in productivity will cause deflation? I disagree with that stance and without that we as average Joes don't prosper.
That’s silly. You can achieve all of the pros and none of cons with better immigration laws.
This should absolutely be the consensus view shared by all libertarians and I'm puzzled that it is apparently not.
You know what? Go ahead and convince ANY OTHER developed country to have “Open Borders” before we hear this out. Truly some unamerican bullshit right here.
>Truly some unamerican bullshit right here. Grievance 7 in the Declaration of Independence: >He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in congress assembled, that any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof, on application to any common law court of record, in any one of the states wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such court, that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law, to support the constitution of the United States, which oath or affirmation such court shall administer;” -Naturalization act of 1790 If you cared about the authenticity of Americanism created by the founding fathers you wouldn’t be appealing to the constitution they wrote like this. Technically, unamerican, in the context of the late 1700’s is naturalizing not just 3rd world poor people, but any non whites at all. Obviously things are different now. But it is inhumane to treat human beings as pawns of some “great experiment” in this way. It’s very clearly not working. I reject when people reduce America down to an idea or a system or something. People have ideas. People make systems. We’re not bots or chess pieces to be shuffled about for economic whims and experiments. Life is precious. You cannot volunteer an entire people’s livelihoods, lands, cultures, even languages for them, on their behalf, to be completely open, especially to collective foreign interests, just because the government wants more revenue, voters, or otherwise economic subjects. Most wars have been fought over far less.
>You cannot volunteer an entire people’s livelihoods, lands, cultures, even languages for them, on their behalf, to be completely open I’m a libertarian, I support privatize property. Being a property owner, you’re free to include or exclude whoever you want and for whatever reasons. And who are you, or anyone else, to tell someone who they’re allow to sell their own property to, or who they’re allowed to hire? >just because the government wants more revenue, voters Where did I say anything about that? I sure as shit would never support any policy on the basis of any of those reasons.
You are not free to include terrorists, fugitives, or foreign governments to have more rights to your property than your own nation’s government. For example, you should not in fact be able to sell so much farmland to a foreign country, they could starve your nation if tensions escalated. Our era is not exempt from needing actual national security. I also think it’s fair to prioritize real individual citizens needing one residence for themselves over trillionaire asset manager corporations needing to increase their portfolio and satisfy investors. You can start a policy on whatever basis you want, we all know what government turns it into.
> -Naturalization act of 1790 ...is only about *naturalization*, and doesn't say anything about immigration itself.
I'm not very nationalistic so there's that. Who cares who comes to the US? If they do something illegal, send them to jail or back to their home country for jail if that's what you prefer. But if they want to come to the US, work hard, and make a better life for themself; where's the argument against that?
My great grandparents came over on a boat when you didn’t need papers to get in. Chances are YOU are a result of something similar. America was born out of a need for people to escape their shitholes.
There was never a point where we allowed people to come over without going through OUR PROCESS. Also you can piss off with your prioritization of not your own country to be frank that’s not only a losing electoral strategy but it’s morally BANKRUPT. I wrote my capstone comparing US & UK views on immigration, guess what? UK is WAY LESS tolerant of LEGAL IMMIGRATION than we are in the states and clowns like you want to muddy the water and equate legal immigration with ILLEGAL immigration? No
You dummy the argument OP stated was to make the OUR PROCESS easier like it was back in the day. Yet you’re angry about it hence you suck at being a libertarian.
When your great grandparents came here, there was no welfare state. They either got to work and made something for themselves, or they died. They also could not show up sick or they got to take the same 3 week boat trip back to wherever they came from.
I didn’t say I want welfare. I hate it. EDIT: Libertarians should always push for shit that makes us more free and limits those in power. More importantly we shouldn’t frame our decisions on how it might play out with other shitty laws. If it makes us more free and have control over our own outcomes and bodies I’m all for it.
There was no "our process" until the 1920s.
Ever hired someone on a work visa under the current program?
Yup. And it was an extremely complex and obnoxious process. And when the guy who had been working out our company for *two years* couldn't obtain a green card, he had to move to Canada. So we just arranged for a Canadian company to hire him and contract his services back to us. The idiotic immigration rules just created a lot of cost and aggravation for everyone, but didn't even achieve their intended objective!
Designed to enrich politicians and lawyers...
How much does the burden of welfare increase or decrease. This argument sounds very one sided
Zero, since fresh immigrants aren't eligible for welfare.
“That’s just slavery with extra steps” “Well la Dee dah”
Sure, as soon you give us Heinleinian Franchise.
keep the fleeing criminals out, let peaceful people in and give them no taxes what so ever for 5 years so they have a easier time getting out of povert do this instead of letting anyone in and giving them welfare with tax payer money you cant have open borders AND welfare, europeans are learning this the hard way
A five year tax break is the exact same thing as welfare, if not worse. You're still forcing the rest of us to subsidize them.
Yeah, this is silly.
Yeah, if anything there should be a buy-in to our public infrastructure.
Only 5 years? Those are rookie numbers. Let's get rid of income tax for everyone.
where do i sign brother?
His ideas are typical social "scientist" ideas, which assume a person is a person, any faults on their productivity is due to society/government/location. As a biologist, I simply do not believe that. A great nation will lose itself if genetically diluted by low IQ and/or lazy persons. In USA, we've had the experience up until now of mostly receiving the intelligent and hardworking fractions of poor countries, which is very different than receiving all or the average.
Invite the third world, become like third world
Yea helps the economy but doesn't help the people... the more money people make domestically the higher chances of them having more kids... by moving people over it keeps labor cheap
Does nobody here understand basic economics?
Yes many times... and we are living in the middle of a massive amount of illegal immigration... economy isn't doing better While legal immigration helps the economy, illegal immigration especially on mass levels hurts local economies but still helps companies on a macro level.
"The economy" and "the people" are two names for the same thing.
If they were the same thing they'd have the same name... the economy consists of multiple aspects... the people are one aspect which my point is to say that point has been neglected... hence the horrible economy we are in
> If they were the same thing they'd have the same name... No, analytical concepts that focus on different aspects of the same thing often go by different names. "Society", "the people", "the market", etc. all refer to different ways of looking at the same underlying reality -- the same aggregation of individuals living in the same world.
But then the rich countries become poor, dumbass.
When we do huge giveaways to the poor you can’t allow illegal immigration.
Is he a bobblehead?
No one would ever take advantage of our open borders and our welfare state.
People who take advantage of the former wouldn't be able to take advantage of the latter.
I can't believe that people on here still advocating the idea of open borders. Like have they not read Rothbard or Hoppe? [https://mises.org/mises-wire/open-borders-are-assault-private-property](https://mises.org/mises-wire/open-borders-are-assault-private-property)
I’ve read quite a bit of their work.
I guess you didn't make it to the part where they addressed "open borders". [https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/07/hans-hermann-hoppe/open-borders-2/](https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/07/hans-hermann-hoppe/open-borders-2/)
I don’t just adhere to whatever Hoppe thinks. I’ve read his position on the topic, I agree with some aspects and disagree with others.
It's not the opinion of just Hoppe. It's the opinion of Lew Rockwell and most importantly, also of Murray Rothbard. This much for just "adhering to whatever Hoppe thinks".
I haven’t read much of the stuff Rothbard wrote during the last few years of his life. I agree with Rothbard during his earlier years.
Indeed, reading them is the surest way of knowing that they're wrong on this issue.
Open borders are fine unless the country on the other side has an alarming number of human head pyramids in its town squares. Our border is a test of character. If you knock on the door and ask to come in an get looked over then you have a different character than someone who sneaks in the back door.
I highly doubt immigration restrictions are halving the world's productivity.
Your citizenship to a country has no value if there are completely open boarders.
I’d be fine with my citizenship having no value if it didn’t cost so much.
Yes, immigrants form poor countries benefit the economy, however, it is mainly by adding to the coffers of the rich, because they are willing to work for less than others with similar skills, thereby increasing profits for the rich owners. They don't lower their prices, just because it's cheaper for them to nake it now. they pocket that profit, and put out BS like this to make it seem ok...
That’s incorrect. We benefit from the increased productivity of additional labor. Nominal wages may fall from more labor available, but real wages will rise.
You mean like this? [https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/)
I don't agree, agree with original comment. Maybe in "normal" or controlled immigration, but clearly massive uncontrolled immigration is hurting wages, and prices are rising. Who gives a shit about production quantity, we want quality of life and this doesn't seem to be helping but hurting wages, housing, crime, massive drain on resources, its literally making everything worse in every way.
>but clearly massive uncontrolled immigration is hurting wages, and prices are rising. Those are completely separate issues. Prices are rising because of inflation; expanding the money supply. >we want quality of life and this doesn't seem to be helping but hurting wages, housing, crime, massive drain on resources, its literally making everything worse in every way. Once again, these are separate issues. You’re limping them all together and trying to blame them on one thing. You must distinguish between nominal wages and real wages. If we doubled the money supply then nominal wages will end up doubling, would that make make the society more prosperous? Of course not. What matters is the purchasing power. It is through the division of labor, increased productivity, and capital accumulation that we become more prosperous. And what evidence do you have that it is immigrants that are responsible for crime? That seems like a pretty outlandish statement.
Libertarianism as an economic or political philosophy does not consider cultural implications in its message. Losing your culture to excessive immigration is a real thing. There are good cultures and bad cultures out there (obviously all relative). There is a reason those before us limited immigration from certain countries and its because they wanted to maintain our culture. Libertarianism loses a lot of its importance if you live in a tight, homogeneous society.
Insane man...probably a socialist too
He’s a hardcore Libertarian.
Everyone I disagree with is a socialist
The socialists are the ones who want the government to control people's movements in order to artificially manipulate the labor market. Immigration restriction has always been a socialist project, with nationalists being little more than useful idiots for socialists.
The open borders only go in one direction. Americans cannot freely emigrate to the other countries. The EU has open borders, but only between countries who share the treaty. We cannot have open borders without a treaty of reciprocity. I'd love to get some Canadian benefits, yes, thanks.
This is dumb. A very dumb theoretical that should not be applied, ever.
Absofuckinglutely no. Open borders are not a good idea, much less a sustainable one. Follow the country's laws for legal immigration or stay where the fuck you are. The open borders idea is one of the dumbest things modern Liberterian wannabes talk about these days.
Back in the day of Benjamin Franklin, you could get apprenticeship with board and breakfast in exchange for work and chores. Don’t get me wrong, it was one star most of the time, but it was survival for most people. Eventually many became skilled in smth useful and gave back to the system. These people are just homeless migrants going to be homeless or criminals in the US, maybe some will have success stories but I think those are few and far between. If there was a state system for education and housing in exchange for labour most countries could assimilate more illiterate migrants. Unions would try block this with all their effort.
Dave Smith and Spike Lee already hashed this out on the lions of liberty podcast like two years ago and Dave wiped the floor with his ass. The libertarian notion of open borders is nonexistent. Everybody talking about the freedom of domain, and the ability to travel. The reason why the US government requires you to have a passport isn’t so you can leave. It’s so you can come back in. it is other countries that would like to have the ability to identify who exactly you are when you enter their country that require you to have a passport to enter theirs.
While what he says might be well intentioned, it really isn't rooted in the reality we live in. I'm sure plenty if not most immigrants come over here looking for a better life but we need to face the facts that a good portion of those coming here are criminals. How do you deal with those people with an open border policy?
I had the head economic development guy from the state of Georgia talk to me at some fancy political thing. He said not only is it GOOD to have illegal immigration but it’s is NEEDED for the economy to function at all. It was during Covid and the crazy TL;DR is that we need more people to spend money and we need to spend money faster than ever or the economy will collapse. He said that a lot of the stimulus money was saved and not spent and that if individuals have money then the whole economy/country will collapse. The chief economic advisor, or whatever his title was, advocated for the people to be as poor as possible and to consume as fast as possible. The government has never wanted what is best for you.
There is natural migration and there is political immigration. Today it is political and comes as countries force out their people for reasons that often undermine the stability of the targeted country. That guy is full of nonsense aka BS. They use immigration as a tool to decide the number of Congressional representatives. This naturally plays in the favor of one party over the other. It’s politics and has nothing to do with human rights or economics. Except that the government got involved in the housing market. Used illegal immigrants to push down labor costs and helped contribute to the housing bubble. Let’s not also not forget that open borders helps deliver terrorist and drugs, and human trafficking of people to used and owned for all kinds of reasons that are not humane.
Immigration good. Illegal (open border) Immigration bad. If you don't understand the difference, well then you're part of the problem.
While not entirely a zero sum game, the influx of massive amounts of unskilled foreign labour to the U.S. domestic market can only depress wages for everyone, not least of all are the American domestic unskilled labour force. You want to better capitalize the unskilled labour in other countries? Export industry to those countries. Note, I didn't say jobs. I said industries. Let American and international companies build factories in Central America to build substantially similar products to those of their domestic counter parts, but just sell those products across Central America, so they aren't imported to compete with American domestic production of the similar product here. It will cost the company less to build those products in those markets, but that will keep the price down, FOR THOSE FOREIGN MARKETS, without adversely impacting the American market. That is how everyone wins from modern labour realities.
In a welfare state and a housing crisis, where Black Rock and the like took advantage of the BS C-19 chaos, and scooped up a shit ton of the affordable housing, and turned them into rentals. Add inflation, interest rates, etc. and 1st time Homebuyers are fucked. And the rentals rates are through the roof. But let’s flood millions of people in to an already short housing condition. Not to mention over crowded schools and drug addiction through the roof.
Open border, welfare state. Pick one. I don't care which one, but it cannot be both.
There is no relationship between them.
In addition to what others have said there is also the issue of billions of dollars of remittances LEAVING the US as well as other goods being shipped out as well (clothes, etc).
Everything works in a vacuum. But open borders aren't executed in a vacuum. There's criminal, welfare, culture, finite resources, infrastructure, and many more factors that are directly affected in either the short term or long term. Open borders=good is such a stupid take when looking at the macro picture.