Open Borders

I explicitly want all three things you list. I also would like to see Open Borders ;) https://openborders.info For psychedelic drug decriminalization: the alternative is status quo, which results in tremendous amount of suffering (thousands of people in jail who are then disenfranchised by their "criminal" record). You vaguely gesture at the possible good outcomes people like me want, but then boldly claim "that isn't the outcome [we] will get". I'm puzzled why you have such a pessimistic view of it all. Portugal decriminalized all drugs 20 years ago and they are doing great (by comparison to surrounding countries that have not). Assisted suicide has become legal in several countries with presumably no negative outcomes you are warning us against. UBI has been successful and loved by Alaskans for decades. What problems are you worried about?

Thanks, http://openborders.info looks like a great starting point.

This is a debate about morality, but one with real world consequences. I strongly believe some moral systems are superior to others. In the moral system of the mid-19th century U.S. South, it was moral and right to have slaves. Human beings could be property. Similarly, in the communist and some socialist moral systems, it is evil and immoral for me to, say, start a company, and make millions of dollars of wealth. I have to share the fruit of my labor with other citizens of my country who did not work hard, and who might have spent the time I was toiling on my startup, playing video games and watching Netflix. > you'll have to convince us it's not in our interest to do so Absolutely not. As long as your self-interest doesn't violate the rights of others, I fully respect. But the moment you want to oppress my freedom, for the sake of your self-interest, I say fuck you self-interest. I don't need to convince you of anything. Why? * Your same repugnant self-interest argument was used by slave owners. It wasn't in their self-interest to lose their free labor. It was economic disaster to relinquish slave labor. To quote, the Mississippi Declaration of Secession, it was "the greatest material interest of the world", c.f. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp * You have no right to dictate to me that I can only associate with you (i.e. whether in employment, friendship, marriage etc). I should be free to hire any one from any country as I see fit. Immigration…

perfect example of a keyhole solution. Also perfect opportunity to link to my favourite propaganda site [0] [0] https://openborders.info/keyhole-solutions/

Open borders are truly one of our civilization’s best low-hanging fruits. https://openborders.info/double-world-gdp/

I am not saying that and I think the only relevant change is welfare programs—which we can remove/limit for immigrants to stop it from being excessively costly. Tell me a relevant change that affects my case. Take a look at https://openborders.info for lots of reasons.

No, you're not alone. There's actually an entire page maintained by a few economists on the case for open borders: http://openborders.info

Compare http://openborders.info/ Especially `Dont’ Restrict Immigration, Tax It' (http://openborders.info/driti/) is an interesting policy tool.

I don't think even a significant fraction of the people over at http://openborders.info would describe themselves as anarchists...

I'll take the compliment. I recommend http://openborders.info/blog/welcome-to-open-borders/ for more, though my personal extremism is focused on http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/category/apartheid/

See http://openborders.info/blog/immigration-trade-and-reciprocity/ . In particular: "Now, the analogy between trade and migration is far from perfect. But I think that on the issue of reciprocity, the economists’ objection to mercantilist-style thinking in the trade context can be transferred to the migration context. In other words, unilateral open immigration generates net benefits, even if other countries don’t follow suit. Thinking of immigration law in reciprocity terms is fundamentally misguided."

The U.S. has a fixed capacity to absorb immigrants while integrating them into our culture I've heard this said before but never seen any data on it, though similar rationale was used in the Immigration Act of 1924: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924 , which helped condemn millions to death in Europe. Bryan Caplan makes the case for open borders here: http://openborders.info/bryan-caplan/ . Separately, his books, The Myth of the Rational Voter and Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, are both great, and full of brilliantly contrarian thinking.

I've been making this point for a while. In particular, there is pretty solid data showing that immigration drags down the average hourly wage, based on longitudinal data which excludes them: http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/immigrants_simpsons_paradox_gre… (The data compares the income of Americans to that of their parents, thereby excluding people who's parents are not Americans.) Note that this observation (by itself) is not an argument against immigration. http://openborders.info/compositional-effects/

I agree with your second paragraph, but not your first. We all agree that the fact that a legal restriction was democratically approved absolutely does not make it moral (e.g., slavery). A nation doesn't have collective rights to do anything; the individual citizens have rights. And if a minority of citizens wants to welcome and employ immigrants in their home or town, there is a burden on the majority provide the same kind of overwhelming justification we require for other restrictions on rights (free-speech, taking of property, etc.) In particular, your suggestion that nations have rights to control immigration suggests it would be OK if nations had explicitly racist immigration policies; indeed we allow individual citizens to have racist policies for who they let into their home on account of that citizen's individual rights (even though we may strongly disapprove of those individuals). https://openborders.info/

"I have two Ivy League degrees. And I am on the verge of deportation." So you obviously deserve to come here, while the people living on $1 a day in extreme poverty and under oppressive regimes, they should be kept out? No, you didn't say all that, but I'm passionate about the cause of open borders (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/08/the_efficient_e.html, http://www.openborders.info), and I can tell you a lot of Americans think exactly that way - they have a poor understanding of economics and they imagine that importing relatively unskilled laborers into our country would somehow 'taint' or bring down our economy toward their levels of poverty. (See here: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you.html if you have yet to be disabused of this fallacy.) And your suggestion that you should be allowed in because of your degrees is suggestive of that kind of broken thinking. Productivity is the root of societal prosperity. And labor, whether skilled or unskilled -- in fact, especially unskilled labor -- is able to be much more productive when allowed to move to the first world. That extra productivity benefits everyone. Economists estimate, on average, that a move from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (open borders) would result in a DOUBLING OF GLOBAL GDP. That's an INSANE silver bullet. And most of those gains would go to the extreme poor: in fact, it would be by far the most effective step we could take to reduce extreme poverty -…

"It's fairly hilarious that he claims the current situation is "closed borders"." Most of the people who want to migrate are prevented from doing so by law. That's close to "closed borders". And he makes it pretty clear in the first paragraph that he's talking about restrictive immigration policies (including current ones), so the semantics on "open" vs. "closed" borders aren't the most relevant point. Regarding suppression of research: Richwine didn't have tenure. Prof. George Borjas hasn't been fired (or censured), but he has numerous influential publications on immigration and he calls for more restrictive policies. There are a lot of studies on the fiscal impact of immigration, and while many are positive or near zero, some are negative. If there's strong evidence of publication bias, I would be genuinely interested in seeing it. For what it's worth, I don't think Richwine should have been fired just for anti-PC stuff on IQ. But that's just Heritage's PR decision. IMO a more likely explanation is that economists have a consensus in favor of immigration liberalization as a pro-market policy. There is plenty of research on the issue that does indicate positive effects of immigration: http://openborders.info/economist-consensus/ Re favelas: Okay, it depends what you prefer, to be honest. If you care a lot about avoiding visible poverty in the First World, having open borders is a bad idea. If you care about reducing absolute global poverty, it's probably a very, very…

I've thought about this for a long time, as an American who twice lived overseas as a bona-fide long-term resident of another country. My wife, a first-generation immigrant to the United States, is just one of many examples of first-generation immigrants to the United States I know, from many countries. From the article: "George Mason economist Bryan Caplan, whose writing at EconLog inspired Naik's interest in open borders, has offered 'keyhole' solutions as a substitute for black and white, yes-or-no questions on immigration. 'If immigrants hurt American workers, we can charge immigrants higher taxes or admission fees, and use the revenue to compensate the losers,' Caplan wrote last year. 'If immigrants burden American taxpayers, we can make immigrants ineligible for benefits. If immigrants hurt American culture, we can impose tests of English fluency and cultural literacy. If immigrants hurt American liberty, we can refuse to give them the right to vote. Whatever your complaint happens to be, immigration restrictions are a needlessly draconian remedy.'" Further along in the article, what is to me the scariest possible outcome of huge immigration is mentioned: "Naik points out that 'political externalities' may be a major drawback of allowing anyone who wants to move to stable, wealthy nations to do so. Gallup polls have found that 700 million people would like to permanently move to another country, many of them from developing nations with failed political systems. If…

Bryan Caplan addresses this as one of his "keyhole solutions" to various perceived negative externalities: [0] > For instance, if the problem lies with migrant welfare use, the most keyhole solution-like approach is to change the rules, or enforcement of rules, surrounding migrant welfare use. Another option is open borders with a migration tax [1]. At the end of the day, I think that once someone adopts the mindset that, prima facie, it's morally wrong to deny people the right to move where they wish,[2] it becomes a lot easier to shift one's thinking away from "identify that there are hard problems and give up" to solving those problems. [0] https://openborders.info/keyhole-solutions/ [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2035616 [2] http://www.owl232.net/papers/immigration.htm

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124028/700-million-worldwide-desire-migrate… http://openborders.info/polling-data-on-migration/

This ignores the fact that new citizens are also workers and contribute to, rather than drain, the economy. Median estimates of the effects of opening world borders predict a doubling of GGP (Gross Global Product). http://openborders.info/double-world-gdp/

>"Try talking to any self professed libertarian about free movement of labor." Are you trying to imply that libertarians are inconsistent? There are plenty of libertarians who believe in open borders, Bryan Caplan being one prime example.[1][2] On the other hand, it is also perfectly self-consistent to believe that citizens of a country are entitled to liberties which are not guaranteed to foreigners. [1] http://openborders.info/bryan-caplan/ [2] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/10/caplan_on_immig.html