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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   21700 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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I've always thought libertarian support for open borders was a pretty natural extension of their skepticism of government generally. The government is incompetent to run businesses. The government is incompetent to run society. But the government is competent to decide who should be allowed to enter a certain geographic area and under what conditions? Seems implausible.

Keep in mind that voter sentiment has often wanted far less immigration than the government has allowed.

In the US, government incompetence on border control results in something closer to open borders, not closed ones.

Plenty of libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists and desire some level of state control of our borders.

I consider this a good practical argument, and specifically something I have said before.

"It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state" -- Milton Friedman

We have a welfare state now. Not just the obvious transfer payments, but highly progressive taxation along with government services provided evenly or even disproportionately to the poor.

That's a problem with a welfare state, not a problem with open borders.

Why does the arrow only go one way in your equation?

I mean, yea. Lots of libertarians are also anti-welfare state. Following from similar principles of government incompetence.

Yes. And after they entirely abolish the welfare state I'll be open to considering an increase in immigration levels.

Given, however, that we're stuck with the welfare state, it makes sense for a libertarian to oppose a move to open borders.

Or even better, support open borders because the inconsistency means one of them will have to collapse, and since you're supporting open borders the welfare state will be the one that ends up shattered.

  • -10

But they'll impose ruinous confiscatory taxes on people like me before the welfare state collapses.

This is my problem with accelerationism. I suppose it could "work" for some understanding of "working". But it has a decent chance of also breaking the mechanisms that allow me to easily obtain food, live in a society that doesn't routinely engage in horrific mass slaughters, etc.

The inconsistency, my tiresome burdensome friend, means the country will eventually collapse. This will indeed collapse the welfare state, and borders will be a matter for the various successor states. But nothing so clean as a collapse of the welfare state leading to more freedom; instead, we'll get greater and greater authoritarianism and redistribution until the debt finally comes due.

There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.

And more importantly, my children live here. And hopefully, my children’s children.

The welfare state will eventually collapse of its own accord, and it won’t be pretty when it does. All open borders accomplishes is hastening that collapse and making things worse in the meantime. As Trump said, Mexico (et al.) aren’t sending their best.

I would hazard a guess that illegal immigration selects mostly for the best, hardest working, and most ambitious members of the working class, even if lots of criminals and randos get swept up along with.

Maybe my small sample size is skewed. But I would say that the illegals I’ve known who came here a couple of decades or more ago are hard-working, ambitious, and respectable. The second generation is a mixed bag: some are model citizens (including one whom I greatly respect), but far too many are net negatives to society, content to commit petty crimes, soak up government handouts, and, especially among the women, jump on the “we need compensation for putting up with this racist and sexist American society” bandwagon. I don’t know if that’s due to regression to the mean, poor cultural influences, or some other factor, but it’s a pattern I’ve noticed. In addition, more recent illegal immigrants haven’t really impressed me. Again, though, my sample is small and may be skewed. Considering your location and general line of work, I’m sure you interact with far more illegals than I do.

My experience of the children of illegals has been mostly very negative, as you note, but I’ve never personally met a first gen illegal who didn’t seem selected for being harder working and more ambitious than the norm wherever he came from. I’ve definitely heard illegals stereotyping centracos(from south of Mexico) as worse immigrants(lazier, more criminally inclined, that sort of thing) than Mexicans, but I don’t know how much of that is just ‘the next village over is our ancient enemy’ brought across international borders. I’m sure that there are plenty of immigrants who are bad people that I would not want to live around, but that has not been my dominant experience.

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