I agree with almost all of this. The only part with which I'd quibble is where you claim that my "value judgments... don't have any firm basis in reality." On the contrary, value judgments are almost all ultimately rooted in reality, because embedded in our value judgments about how the world ought to be are empirical beliefs about how the world actually is. It does not follow that a value judgment can be "wrong," but it is true that the empirical beliefs upon which a value judgment is based may be wrong, and if a person comes to recognize this, they will often alter their value judgment as well.
You seem to recognize this towards the end of the paragraph, so I'm not even sure that we actually disagree on this point. I suspect that if we do, it's "just an argument over semantics."
Yeah, I agree.
I can't speak for Hoppe, but I do want the government to require everyone else with few assets to be either sponsored or deported. That would make this a MUCH nicer place to live, in my opinion. (Note that my belief about the desirability of this policy hinges on empirical beliefs about what it will cause the world to look like.)
Okay, so suppose 250 years ago, someone came across some completely unused land in the US. They then "homesteaded" it by turning it into a small farm. Suppose they then passed it on to their children, who passed it onto their children (and so on). They don't have much money, but there's no evidence that they will resort to crime. Don't you think they have an ethical claim to the land? If they don't have the required assets and can't find a sponsor, wouldn't it be unethical to deport them?
Also, would the amount of assets be fixed? Some people can do far more damage with their crimes (someone with a drug company for example could potentially kill tens of thousands of people) than others.
"My favorite analogy for official authority is the stellar cycle. If the authority of government is the temperature of the star, and the size of government is the size of the star, Washington is easily identifiable as a red giant, like Betelgeuse - enormous and cool.
For former libertarians, such as myself, this inverse relationship is critical. The paradox is that weakening government makes it larger. At least, to a libertarian, this seems like a paradox. Once it seems quite natural, you may no longer be a libertarian."
I don't think this holds up to the empirical evidence. Countries with no military, for example, tend to have relatively small governments. I think size of the country might be a better identifier for smaller governments, although there are exceptions there too.
Immigrants have a smaller impact on elections per capita than native-born citizens because they vote at a lower rate. However, it is simply not correct to conclude from this fact that immigrants "seem to have a pretty small impact," because their effect has been the largest in those places where they are most heavily concentrated, and their numbers continue to grow. As this happens, we can expect the California effect to spread.
California helps your case, but states like Texas flipped the other way despite a massive number of immigrants coming in (last voting for a Democrat in 1976). States like New York are extremely authoritarian without the immigration problem. I would have to see a study in order to be convinced that it's a large impact, perhaps comparing cities with high immigration and low immigration, correcting for other policies the states pushed through before the immigrants came.
I hope you'll believe me when I say that I am by no means ignoring these other effects. As a point of fact, I have literally used these precise points to argue in favor of open borders less than a year ago. I have since been persuaded that I was wrong to.
Here is a blog post addressing the other effects in question. Key quote:
"This argument is so freaking Mad Max that I actually quite like it. Burn down the world and you take the welfare state with it. Yeeaaaahhhhh! (I’ll leave it to more responsible voices to point out any possible flaws.)"
I think the blog post does not answer my criticisms sufficiently. On competition:
Consider two companies: Effective Inc. and Loserbum Corp. Both have very different corporate cultures, adequately reflected in their names. Under market conditions, Loserbum Corp. either learns some lessons from Effective Inc., or it goes under. Net benefit or no great loss to the world in either case.
But along comes Caplan, to bawl out the stockholders, management, and other employees of Effective Inc. “You monsters! Don’t you care at all about the guys at Loserbum Corp.? They have the same moral status as you, don’t you know? Here’s the true, radical free-market plan: All managers and workers of Loserbum get to enter your company, work there, introduce their business strategies and working practices,until we reach equilibrium. Equilibrium is what markets are all about, see? Sure, Effective Inc. will degenerate significantly, but imagine all the utility gains of the poor Loserbums! It all comes out in the wash.” But … but … countries aren’t companies. Well, maybe not exactly, but they’re competitive institutions, or at least, the more they are, the better they work. The most important thing is true equally of both — to the extent they are able to externalize and pool their failure, the less they will learn.
Caplan was not talking about competition between pieces of land, but competition between governments. Let's use the blogger's framework and consider the US government a company, just for the sake of the argument. As the blogger pointed out, the US company does not wish to allow anyone to work for the US government who wants to. That's the case now, and would be the case under open immigration. But the US company does want as many customers (taxpayers) as possible. A smart restaurant doesn't have signs saying "Whites only" and a smart government doesn't have a sign saying "US born people only (or approved non-US born)." No, they should want more people paying for their services. Whether they are "loserbums" or not, a company generally prefers more customers. Now, it's true there are some exceptions to this example; some places only accept people that dress nicely, some clubs are very restrictive, etc. But in general, this example points more to an open immigration policy working than a closed immigration policy.
Furthermore, this is an incredibly weak example, and doesn't even hit the whole competition argument. Not only are more people free by moving to live under the freer government, the less free government also wants to attract the person back. And the government is not the only service provider in the country. By allowing someone to move here, they also get to pay for thousands of other services and work for thousands of different companies,
voluntarily. So, open immigration would be like forcing one company (the US government) to allow a certain group of customers, while closed immigration would be like freeing the one company (the US government), but forcing every other company not to hire or accept a certain group of people.
"Although poor immigrants are likely to support a bigger welfare state than natives do, the presence of poor immigrants makes natives turn against the welfare state. Why would this be? As a rule, people are happy to vote to “take care of their own”; that’s what the welfare state is all about. So when the poor are culturally very similar to the rich, as they are in places like Denmark and Sweden, support for the welfare state tends to be uniformly strong.
As the poor become more culturally distant from the rich, however, support for the welfare state becomes weaker and less uniform."
This argument is so freaking Mad Max that I actually quite like it. Burn down the world and you take the welfare state with it. Yeeaaaahhhhh! (I’ll leave it to more responsible voices to point out any possible flaws.)
The blog post doesn't address "any possible flaws" in this argument. It seems to throw it out without considering it. Your response is much more interesting:
Because I see myself as a somewhat responsible person, I'll take this opportunity to say that I do not think destroying social capital and trust are good things, even if they result in less overall support for welfare. I would much rather live in a place with high social capital/trust + welfare than a place with low social capital/trust - welfare. Moreover, the welfare is likely to continue anyway, especially as the number of welfare-supporting immigrants begins to overwhelm the number of welfare-opposing natives.
I don't think immigration destroys social capital or trust, except maybe on a per capita basis. But someone's trust for someone already here wouldn't change, or perhaps might even increase. Only the trust for the immigrant would be low. But, if we're worried about the immigrant, then I think it's clear that despite the low trust for him, he is better off here than in his previous country. And, as they are here longer, they become part of the population, and I'm guessing their political views move more toward the norm (as the children and their children are integrated into the society). Remember, almost everyone here today is descended from an immigrant who came in recent centuries. While I do think this alone may cause a slight increase in welfare in the long term, I think the other pressure (competition between governments) pushes it in the opposite direction.
Have you read much Friedrich List? No? I can't recommend him highly enough. Google Books is your friend here - go!
I'll look into him. Do you have a specific book in mind?
You are plainly a pretty smart guy, and I respect your opinion. However, I am also a pretty smart guy, and I happen to think the precise opposite. Perhaps if we were to exchange explanations for our beliefs, one of us might be persuaded to change his mind. Does that strike you as possible?
Yes. My above points (especially #3, quoted again below) were my reasoning behind this assertion. The blog post didn't address #3, and you just responded by referring to Friedrich List (which will take some time to get through, and I'm not sure which of his works would have the answer to my point, if it even exists in his works). It would be helpful if you quoted or pointed me to the relevant passages
Why only focus on political changes here? Currently there are massive restrictions on the labor market. Imagine if there was regulation only allowing a certain number of cars to enter the US from other countries per year. Suppose also that local car owners often donated to pro-free market candidates. If we only look at the political change of ending this regulation, yes, it is quite possible that ending this regulation would cause more anti-free market candidates to be elected. But we're also ending an anti-free market policy by allowing cars to enter (meaning people are able to use their property more freely by being allowed to buy foreign cars). Being able to hire foreign labor and to invite people I like onto my property is of far bigger importance than being able to buy a foreign car.
Forget about destroying your ethics system - I'd like to return to your initial claim, which I disputed:
"You don't gain the right to use violence against an innocent person just because the government is using violence against you."
It seems to me that in the quoted paragraph above, you are conceding that this is not in fact correct. On the contrary, you may very well gain the right to use violence against an innocent person if the government (or some other person/entity) is using violence against you. No?
No, I don't think you gain the right. If, for example, I saved the world and didn't need to kill any innocent people to do it, the vast majority of people would see it as wrong for me to kill someone after this. But if I killed the same person in order to save the world, most people wouldn't see it as wrong. The killing in of itself is still an ethical negative, but it being necessary to the stopping of a much larger aggression may make the total act (
not just the killing) an ethical positive. So, while you didn't gain the right to kill someone, it is possible that you avoided giving other people the right to retaliate after committing the act.
