We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day Unless, of course, you are saying that people can freely come to these islands providing they are not ill, don’t ever require homes or need education then it is fine because these services are not benefits.
Pretty much, yes. I think that people should be able to freely come to these islands to earn a living, and then should be required to pay for their own housing, schooling, and healthcare in the free market when they need it. As should the natively born. The government spends huge sums of money on these things, and all three of them are worse in quality for almost everybody than they would be if the government did not spend any of this money.
– Michael Jennings, spelling out exactly what folks in these here parts most certainly do think.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Yes, but per person immigrants to England expect and, far more importantly, get public benefits with far more frequency per person on average than do the native-born. Shocking, I know.
frak… so what? Which bit about “we oppose so called ‘public benefits’ for everyone” was unclear?
Moreover, without the perverse incentives of ‘benefits’, a higher proportion of productive immigrants are motivated to come here.
Perry de Havilland,
Since none are so blind as those who refuse to see, I expect you to ignore or mock this point, but if you want smaller government, then you should want less immigration.
And I guess that’s the problem. I don’t mean this in a rude way, but it does seem that you are more interested in being technically correct from a libertian viewpoint than in actually shrinking government. If you ever consider trying to achieve the latter it might be worthwhile to confront that most unsavory of delusions: human neurological uniformity (per unqualified reservations).
It could be a case of correlation is not causation, but I have read that support for government handouts is reduced with increasing amounts of imagration. Even among earlier immagrants. So, perversly the way to eliminate welfare may be to throw open the borders, and wait for everyone to get fed up with imagrants coming for the benefits.
Nonsense. The regulatory welfare state in the UK was born, and is currently maintained, with the support of the very effectively propagandised white British mainstream. Moreover your desire to see less immigration obviously has nothing to do with reducing the size of the state but rather because…
… you are a racist.
A question that has always puzzled me about pro-benefit, pro immigration leftists. Such people typically react with shock and indignation to the idea that immigrants from much poorer countries than our own might be denied access to the ‘rights’ to healthcare, education and so on that modern welfare states have granted to citizens of western countries country, but that are often lacking in their own. They must realize however, that in granting those immigrants these rights they are reducing the wests capacity to absorb them by raising the cost of doing so. Given the massive superiority of economic opportunities in first world countries compared to third world countries, it strikes me that on average immigrants would still enjoy a dramatically higher standard of living in the west compared to their countries of origin. In essence leftists would rather massively improve the standard of living of a small number of immigrants rather than significantly improve the standard of living of a larger number. Given how frequently leftists cite inequality as a cardinal sin I would love for somebody to explain to me how this is justified in their world view. Does pointing this contradiction out make me a racist right-wing cave-man?
Perry de Havilland,
I guess I have a nasty habit of seeking out whatsoever is true, regardless of social condemnation/cultural disapproval.
One can judge others as individual human beings while also keeping an open mind to what evolution explains and science supports.
Given the culture of our time, I didn’t expect to be able to have a polite conversation with you. Oh well. Every era needs a sacred cow or three.
(comment deleted… racist troll, get lost)
Is there a full moon over there, or something?
Can’t we all just kiss and make up?
Let’s not go down the American route of never being able to discuss the idea that genes may cause differences. They do, or they wouldn’t be worth studying.
At the same time, they don’t determine people’s fate.
How about this agreement- that if Britain become an anarchocapitalist enclave, then the people who wanted to emmigrate to such an unwelfared country would be welcomed only with open arms, not open wallets?
(EDITORS NOTE: No. For a more full reply why I will NOT tolerate racist discussions on Samizdata, read this.
It should be possible to discuss racial genetics dispassionately and honestly in a public forum. But it is not. That is simply an empirically derived conclusion gained from running Samizdata for 10 years… it.can.not.be.done. Sorry but that is the inescapable truth. Racists are the perfect example of Churchill’s definition of a fanatic and unless you immediately show them the door, discourse in the comments section will quickly become untenable.
So Samizdata will continue to delete and ban racists every time they leave comments and no apologies will be made for that).
Well said, Michael. One of the things that really pisses me off is the “victim” culture mentality of a certain kind of self-styled working class white person who moans about all them smelly foreigners taking “our” benefits. As a libertarian, I’d prefer it if all people living here, apart from the truly destitute, did not live off taxes.
The saddest thing is the sense of entitlement in the two words “our benefits.”
it might be worthwhile to confront that most unsavory of delusions: human neurological uniformity
To be fair, this is one of the better ways of saying “I am a racist” that I have heard in some time.
wh00ps: “Our jobs” isn’t any better. And the fact that bogeyman immigrants are believed to take both at the same time is somewhat perplexing.
I like to sometimes phrase my position on immigration as “An employer should be allowed to employ anyone he or she likes, regardless of where he or she comes from”. People are often sympathetic to this point of view, especially if they have every employed anyone.
That said, although this is sometimes a useful way of presenting the argument, it is also much too narrow a way of putting it. The issue is about freedom, ultimately. You should be able to live and work where you like, and associate with whoever you like.
I think “Frak” has been reading Steve Sailer. I read Steve Sailer too, on a lot of subjects he’s quite interesting.
His view on race and that of the “Sailersphere” doesn’t make a great deal of sense though. It doesn’t make sense even if they’re right about intelligence. I’ll put myself in the position of god for this example…
Let’s begin by assuming they are correct and the natural order of IQ per race highest to lowest is asian, white, hispanic, black, aborigine.
The second key idea of these folks is that the economic and social success of a place is determined by average IQ. So, the west and asia are successful because their people are clever. This isn’t unreasonable.
Sailers proported conclusion from these two theories is that western countries should refusing to allow more immigration from the countries that hold the inferior races. That doesn’t follow. Let’s suppose that I am running the world for the benefit of the clever (something Sailer frequently attacks) in that case according to his theories it makes sense to refuse immigration from those other countries. But, it also makes sense to expel (or sterilise) the less intelligent within western countries. Let’s suppose instead I am running the world for everyone. In that case, why shouldn’t the less intelligent (no matter what their race) benefit from the products of successful societies by living in them? There is no reason why they shouldn’t.
Sailer and his followers are inconsistent. He attacks globalisation for reducing the income of less intelligent Americans. Why doesn’t he praise it for raising the income of others elsewhere? The answer is because a simple white nationalist hides behind the sophisticated human-bio-diversity proponent. He want’s stupid Americans to be well off, but he doesn’t care about people in other countries.
Do you require other countries to have the same policy towards immigration or are you advocating the unilateral adoption of your policy?
How about bi-lateral agreements?
How about both the UK and Somalia agreeing free immigration between the two countries?
It is naive to suggest that only the industrious Somalis would go to the UK.
The only way an open borders policy would work well is to restrict open borders to countries of similar culture whose immigration policies more or less mirror the UK’s.
That means countries that have had and benefitted from something like The Enlightenment, leaving dark ages theocracy behind and having an advanced appreciation of, and ability to use and modify when necessary, science and technology.
All else would be disastrous.
Michael: missed that one ;0)
James Strong – the only way open borders policy can work is with a complete removal of the welfare state.
It doesn’t matter whether only industrious Somalis arrive, since the non-industrious will not be in receipt of any handouts.
It doesn’t matter whether only those skilled in science and technology arrive, since there are jobs anybody can do and without the constrictions of a minimum wage (which I include as a part of the welfare state) it will be economically viable to employ anybody to do any job, and not preferential to only employ ‘illegals’ to do jobs which are simply not worth the arbitrary minimum wage.
I actually personally find the focus on “skilled” immigration that we have seen with bureaucrat driven immigration programs involving points systems and such to be highly counterproductive. Not that there is anything wrong with skilled immigrants, but the cliche of a poor but hardworking immigrant who gets a job of a waiter and ends up owning the restaurant and pushing his children to study hard and take advantage of the opportunities in the richer country he has come to, and whose children become doctors and engineers has a great deal of truth in it, and recent policy has tried to reduce this kind of immigration.
And I could say that one of the things that pisses me off is the mentality of a certain sort of white, self styled ‘libertarian’ who has their head jammed so firmly up their own arse that they can’t see daylight. But I won’t.
“I’d prefer it if all people living here, apart from the truly destitute, did not live off taxes.”
And wouldn’t that be wonderful. So if you happen to have access to a handy time machine, skip back to 1945 or so & campaign for a country fit for the grandchildren of heroes. The rest of us will carry on trying to cope with the reality we’ve ended up with.
In an earlier comment thread you said you’d ..lived in London, including some of its poorer bits, for nearly 20 years. And during that time my views haven”t changed…”. Quelle surprise! Remarkable how many manage to do that. Could have done so myself, living at the more salubrious end of Haringey. But I actually started off in a poor area of London, although I couldn’t go back there because it now only exists as a name on the map. What you find there is a South Asian enclave transported intact to the UK. So it does mean that I slot neatly in amongst those “self-styled working class” people who attract your derision. Can understand the resentment felt when their son & daughter in-law are paying a fortune renting a flat in the private sector & haven’t a prayer of ever affording to buy anywhere even vaguely close to their friends & relatives – you know that community thing that is so important if we’re discussing minorities. Have had their name on the council housing list for years & watch properties going to people with the airline labels still fresh on the luggage. Did you know that Housing Associations have had a policy of selling off the sort of properties that provide a couple of flats – usually a single bed & 2/3 bed under the same roof? The emphasis has switched to providing 4/5 bed dwellings for larger families. Wonder why? (That’s from the regional housing manager of one of the largest but don’t try & get an official quote on it.) I can sympathise with those who’re unfortunate enough to have to turn to the benefits system & then find that almost everyone handling their case is an immigrant. Do you wonder that they suspect they’re getting a raw deal? Find it hard to understand why their made to jump through hoops whilst the family over the road haven’t done a day’s work since they arrived in the country?
Also from the other thread:
“By the way, “bloke in Spain”, are you Spanish or a migrant? “
The cheap shot. Sure you’re not moonlighting from the Guardian?
Technically, I suppose I’m a French resident although I prefer to spend a lot of time here in the sun. Flandres has bloody awful winters. I very much regard myself as a guest in both countries. Living in either is a privilege. When I was looking for an apartment to rent down here I came across what seems to be a scheme by the local government to rent out apartments on ‘affordable rents’. That’d be about half what I’m paying. As far as I can establish it’s what they’re doing to utilise properties that have been repossessed as a result of the crisis. I didn’t try to obtain one & I wouldn’t expect to be given one – although I could, no doubt, arrange my affairs to qualify. Why? I’m not bloody Spanish, that’s why. I don’t expect handouts.
Last point. There’s been accusations of racism flying about. Looking back, the last white/brit girlfriend I had was somewhere in the early ’70s. Not counting the French ex-wife I seem to have sampled the wares of all five continents plus Australasia at one time of another, in colours ranging from deepest black, through brown, red, yellow to blue eyed Slav. The current partner hails from a S.American shanty town, is functionally illiterate due to absence of schooling & is a blend of at least three continents. I also love her to bits. So don’t try it on me.
Yes, I can why some employers might agree with this. But leaving aside security and cultural issues, how would the great mass of wage earners in developed countries benefit from being forced to compete on an open-borders basis with developing-world labour – aside from getting better restaurants to eat in?
Yes, I can why some employers might agree with this. But leaving aside security and cultural issues, how would the great mass of wage earners in developed countries benefit from being forced to compete on an open-borders basis with developing-world labour – aside from getting better restaurants to eat in?
Oh do go and pour yourself some more Sangria. Failing that, cool it or do the other thing, if you don’t mind.
You complain about the unfairness of getting housing in the UK. It is a big topic for a single comment, but as I keep saying, the problem is welfarism. And your statement that we cannot turn the clock back an instant in that regard is pure nonsense; reforms can and should be made. I don’t see why we have to cave in to those who would happily shut migration down. And although you give it a good effort, there are double-standards here, since no doubt some people in the countries where you live might resent your being there, however irrationally.
The only person being accused here of racism, by the way, is frak, who clearly is one and has now been shown the door, followed by a large bear.
James writes:
Leaving aside the rather snide point about restaurants (hardly a small part of say, the London economy, btw), let’s not forget that old friend, the Lump of Labour fallacy:(Link)
One thing to bear in mind is that an immigrant who is unable to obtain work in a place of origin is therefore having his/her talents wasted. So, if he/she comes to a new country and deploys those talents successfully, then the total sum output of the world, so to speak, goes up beyond what would have been the case otherwise.
And I could say that one of the things that pisses me off is the mentality of a certain sort of white, self styled ‘libertarian’ who has their head jammed so firmly up their own arse that they can’t see daylight.
Yes mate. You are quite right. I am a totally naive person who lives in a middle class, white enclave of London, never leaves it, has never seen another culture up close, never encounters anyone who is not like me other than when I go to an ethnic restaurant, and has unrealistic, romantic views about the world (or, as you put it, has his head firmly up his arse). You have me totally pegged.
Current’s comment is superb and nails exactly why I am so ambivalent about Sailer. Indeed this is why I think almost all discussions about racial genetics are based on a dishonest attempt to hide the actually objectives being sought.
So total world output goes up, but wages in developed countries go down as companies in these countries can now hire from a vastly increased pool of labour?
James, companies have been hiring from a vastly increased pool of labour already – by trade. The collapse of the former Soviet Union, the removal of some trade barriers by India, and China’s rise, have had this effect.
And we are told by opponents of free trade that the living standards of the West will be destroyed by all that “cheap” labour. That hardly seems to be borne out by the facts. Sure, some lowpaid locals will be pressured by a rise in competition for certain types of jobs, but the wealth created by all this trade opens up other opportunities, also.
If we follow your logic, you’d ban people from Essex from moving to London lest they force down wages via competition.
And what everyone seems to forget is that cheaper labour means cheaper stuff. That’s why me and my wife have six televisions, four computers and three smartphones between us despite us both earning low wages.
We both work for a rather large retail company that I will not name who makes a huge profit buying cheap things in the far east and selling them more expensively over here, the labour costs being low enough that shipping it (and these are large items mostly) halfway around the world still makes sense.
Well, I’m generally in favour of free trade, though I don’t think it’s been beneficial for the lower classes in wealthy countries. Complete freedom of migration would, I think, have a similar effect on the middle class in Britain, America and other such countries as free trade has had on the working class in these countries.
Aside from the fact that my original post was talking about the effects on wages and average income in developed countries as a result of mass migration from poor/developing countries, as opposed to regional migration within wealthy countries. Is this some kind of joke at Essex’s expense?
James, I strongly disagree. The US was built by migrants and is the richest nation on earth. Despite what fearnongers claim, I see no coherent logic in saying that migration crags down average incomes except in the very short run. Look at the story of Silicon Valley.
The same point applies to free trade and what are called disruptive technologies. The vast majority benefit, as campaigners for it in the 19th century realised.
The point about local movement inside a country is to illustrate the lump of labour error.
Well, I’m generally in favour of free trade, though I don’t think it’s been beneficial for the lower classes in wealthy countries.
Nonsense. Of course it has been beneficial, and primarily for the lower classes, as it drives down the cost of “stuff”. Even the poor have flat-panel TVs and video games. Free trade might drive down wages for certain marginal activities (to what those wages ought to be, without protectionism providing an artificial floor at the cost of everybody else), and it might lead a few businesses to move overseas, but what’s missing from that analysis is all the new jobs created domestically, both from the greater net wealth of the people and the in-migration of businesses for which the country is best suited. Any artificial method of maintaining wage levels (via a minimum wage, mandatory unionism, protectionism, etc.) is nothing more than a tax on everybody else. There is no economic justification for it.
The problem with anti-immigration arguments is that, even if we were to accept that immigration has negative effects on the incumbent population, they do not take into account the benefit to the immigrant of immigrating. Holding anti-immigration views makes you at best (in order of bestness; last worst): deluded, a collectivist, selfish, racist. Immigration lowers your quality of life? Tough shit; society isn’t organised around you.
It has been much commented that the problem with immigrants taking benefits is the benefits and not the immigrants. A much deeper, and slightly different, issue is that of public space. To the extent that we do not wish to do business with or socialise with immigrants, in an anarcho-capitalist society we could allow “clubs” to form that excluded whoever they wished. It could be bowling, a privately owned residential area (e.g. a compound), a restaurant. Of course, people would be free to do business with whoever they chose and there would be overwhelming financial incentives to being non-descriminatory (who would like to go to a restaurant that had a policy of only hiring native white English boys?).
The fact that there is so much public space, and regulations against descrimination, removes coping mechanisms. It is probably the case that people are frustrated by change and the unfamiliar, and by forcing them to face it full on it is likely that anxiety and anger will be created.
Further problems with public goods are free riding and tragedy of the commons effects. It is necessarily the case that an open public space that contains finite resources (open vistas, walking space) will produce lower per capita benefits the more people use them. (the technical definition of a public good is that it is non-rivalry in consumption and non-excludable; national defence is the Econ 101 example. A tragedy of the commons applies if a good is non-excludable but rivalry in consumption). It follows that by turning existing ‘commons’ into private goods, e.g. say Hyde Park was mutualised, with a fixed number of permanent memberships being sold, or doled out to the current population of Londoners, that could then be sold and traded freely, we solve the tragedy of the commons problem. This way you will also give the incumbent population a reason to welcome immigration, since it will increase the value of their share of scarce goods (e.g. Hyde park memberships, and of course property).
Well said Laird!
For most of the country’s history, the US has followed protectionist industrial policies, and at many times in it’s history enforced immigration restrictions of varying severity.
“….the living standards of the West will be destroyed by all that “cheap” labour. That hardly seems to be borne out by the facts. Sure, some lowpaid locals will be pressured by a rise in competition for certain types of jobs,..”
Jeez, you certainly do seem to have it firmly jammed up there. Must be hard breathing.
My last job, before I left the UK, the competition over the road were using Russian labourers & paying them £30 a day & the privilege to sleep on the floor at night. Would you do hard manual work for £30 a day? Expect your son to? Let’s take another European country, this time inside the EU. Average wage in Romania is about £100 per week (to be fair their purchasing parity is about x2 against the US). That’s about 1/4 of the UK so Romanians enjoy half the standard of living of Brits. (I’ve stayed in Romanian households & I wouldn’t reckon it’s that good.) Just arriving in the UK & getting a job on minimum wage makes a Romanian at the bottom of the heap markedly better off than at home. That’s just Europe. When you’re dealing with immigrants from Africa & S. Asia, what they’re content with is even lower. There’s Asian workers in the rag trade being paid under a tenner a day for piece work. Do you want everyone reduced to that level?
“I think that people should be able to freely come to these islands to earn a living, and then should be required to pay for their own housing, schooling, and healthcare in the free market when they need it”*
I’m in agreement with the above. I’d welcome the end of welfareism. But I can’t see how you get from here to there. What are you going to do when some Somali woman decides to drop a kid outside your door. Watch her give birth in the gutter, then sluice the afterbirth down the drain with a bucket of water? What do you suggest happens when Afghanis start putting up tents in your local park? Neither of these solutions to healthcare & housing would be unusual to the people concerned. That’s how they live back where they come from. I know the French have the stomach to kick ass. I watched them put the boot behind the Roma encampment near us. Do the Brits?
It’s be nice if we could have a smooth transition from the Welfare State to what we’d both like but who’s going to come out the primary losers as it contracts? The white working class because they’ll always tick fewer boxes than the newcomers. Would you accept a policy of outright discrimination? I thought not.
So you tell me how you’d do it whilst simultaneously allowing unlimited immigration.
*Incidentally, I took some time to think through how that could be enforced for new arrivals. Some sort of proof of assets needed before entry to show the entrant wouldn’t be a liability on the community? Then realised I’d come on a way to make a fortune. Simples. Stake the incomers with enough money to fulfil the requirement then debt bond them to repay the loan plus whatever rate of interest I fancied. Oh boy you’d see some results in the crime figures. What with enforcement of debt recovery, prostitution, drug dealing, etc etc, all of which I’d be raking it in from, the police’d wonder what had hit them.
Alas, the bigger effect is to drive down the wages that they have to earn to buy this stuff.
As Robert Feenstra noted in his 2004 work Advanced International Trade: Theory and Evidence: “for full time US workers, between 1979 and 1995 the real wages of those with 12 years of education fell by 13.4 percent and the real wages of those with less than 12 years of education fell by 20.2 percent. During the same period, the real wages of workers with 16 or more years of education rose by 3.4 percent, so that the wage gap between less-skilled and more-skilled workers increased dramatically.”
Or in Krugman’s more recent words (NYT, Dec 2007): “It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that growing US trade with third world countries reduces the real wages of many and perhaps most workers in this country. And that reality makes the politics of trade very difficult.”
Abolishing immigration controls completely, as most Samizdata writers seem to favour, would lead to more Americans higher up the earnings ladder facing these problems. I’m not sure that they’d be comforted by the fact that they were contributing to a more efficient division of international labour.
M:
And at other periods, it did not do so, certainly regarding immigration. The period before WW1, for instance, saw a large influx from places such as Russia, southern Italy and elsewhere; ditto various periods since the end of the Second World War (like the influx of immigrants from Asia). The movements into the US can be counted in the tens of millions at various periods.
Bloke in Spain: I’ll ignore your insults and make the point that your arguments against cheap labour coming to the UK could be used, of course, against cheaper goods imported here, etc. And Laird and others have pointed out what is wrong with this argument.
Yes, it is unpleasant for some people to see their wages undercut by others, but the effect overall is to increase the amount of stuff that gets produced; resources freed up get redeployed to making or supplying other things and services. You live abroad now: has it occurred to you that your ability to do this is in part down to the very free market that you seem to be complaining about?
My job could be made redundant by new technologies; does that mean I am entitled to ban an employer from using it? Of course not.
James: It may be that some wages of people of certain skill levels have been depressed by foreign competition, but then if a lot of consumer goods and other things have also gotten cheaper then you still haven’t shown that free trade makes people worse off and haven’t justified protectionism, given the many problems of trade controls, tariffs (which of course involve privileges for certain corporate interests, etc).
And of course what this all comes down to is a desire by some people to ban others from buying/selling whatever they want at prices mutually satisfactory to each other, on the grounds that some people feel rightly or wrongly that they lose out. In the end, you want to use the violence-backed power of a state to prevent me, say, from importing a cheap DVD player from China rather than the US because it might “harm” someone’s standard of living. You do rather overlook the fact that I ought to be able to buy from where I want.
Bloke in Spain: one final point on your suggestion of what people should do in entering a country. How would this have affected your own ability to live abroad where you do? You give the impression you left the UK due to some form of economic distress. Well, a lot of migrants move because of similar reasons.
If the immigrants you complain about cannot speak English all that well, I would imagine that they would be less able to tick the boxes as well as the locals. Mind you, given that some immigrants are better educated than the indigenous population, that might not be the case, but then again, if that is true, then the arrival of better educated people into this country is a good thing, even according to your own standards.
You are right that I would not accept a policy of outright discrimination, certainly not on grounds of race, etc. You got that right, maytey.
I’ve written one post that Johnathan Pearce liked, now I’ll write one I don’t think he’ll like…
I don’t think that there can be any doubt that competition between workers reduces wages. That is simple supply and demand, if labour supply increases then it’s price falls. As many here have pointed out in the very long term things are different. The combination of capital and labour becomes more efficient leading to greater output in the future. Initially that leads to greater profits for the owners of capital, but that in turn leads to greater investment.
I don’t want to rely too much on that argument. Let’s go back to the initial point about labour supply. Immigration barriers hold up wages for those within developed countries but they also hold them down for those outside of those countries. I don’t think this is morally justifiable (but see later for why this may not be relevant overall). Yes, I may want my children to have good jobs. But, that does not give me the right to exclude people from other countries in order to bring that about. From a utilitarian point of view it’s not justifiable unless we make the artificial presumption that those in developed countries enjoy their wealth much more than others. (Whether it’s justifiable from a natural rights viewpoint is something I couldn’t comment on).
In practice of-course we live in Democracies. The masses will not vote themselves into short-term poverty even if in the much longer-term they will benefit. They will demand that politicians keep immigration low. So, in some sense it’s a mute point.
However, there are good reasons to oppose immigration. “bloke in spain” mentions law and order, and I agree with him about that. In my analysis of the situation above I was assuming that there are no externalities to immigration, and of course there are. Immigrants may be criminals, they may put a strain on law enforcement agencies. One thing that I think libertarians often don’t realise is that this would be just as true if we had the kind of anarcho-capitalist world that Rothbard describes where each property-owner get to make his own law. If a large number of immigrant went to a place and started committing crimes then the private law enforcement agencies there would have to do more and therefore increase the charges to their customers. (This is presuming that fining criminals does not provide enough money to finance the increase in costs). In that case the customers may well tell the law enforcers to simply throw the immigrants out. I understand this is against Rothbard’s idea of an overall libertarian constitution, but clearly it may happen anyway. My point is that regardless of the structure of society criminals create costs. However, I’m not convinced this is an enormous problem, I think in practice it can be dealt with by tougher policing. If we allowed completely free immigration this may well be a major concern, but a great deal more immigration could be permitted without it really being an issue.
There is also the closely-related issue of whether it causes costs to civil-society. That’s a complicated issue. It may also be that having large numbers of immigrant minorities prevent efficient democracy since those people can’t understand a foreign political process well and that leads to forms of aristocracy. There is a debate there, but I’m not convinced about that.
There is one thing I really am worried about though… historically in the US immigrants have voted for parties that provide them with state welfare, which is what we should expect if we think about self-interest and group-interest. Rather than making a country more libertarian they make it less so. I think in the long-run this is probably more important than the long-run efficiency gains that can be obtained from a truly free market in labour.
So, I think we would be wisest to welcome modest amounts of immigration, but oppose large-scale immigration.
Current, I don’t actually “dislike” that comment; it is very well reasoned. I think what we are talking about here is the short run versus the longer run. In the very short run, if you, say, double the number of people trying to be bricklayers or plumbers in South London, then on average the prices they can command for their labour will fall, which will mean people have more to spend on other stuff, and eventually, leading to newer jobs elsewhere.
The problem is being able to convince those who feel they are being hurt that they can get a piece of the action and in a reasonable period of time. This is something that advocates of free trade like me understand; my worry is that it is all too easy to fall into the sort of lump of labour/fixed wealth fallacies that can be used to bash immigrants, or indeed, trade in general.
I wasn’t going to return to this because it started to look pointless. I’ll address why in due course.
“How would this have affected your own ability to live abroad where you do? You give the impression you left the UK due to some form of economic distress.”
Sorry but no prize. I gave up on the UK after the second vehicle in a year got stolen, yet another attempted mugging & the £150 a week congestion & parking charges to go to work every day. I realised I’d got enough money I really didn’t have to put up with it any more. Like I said in an earlier comment, I always regard being in someone else’s country as being a privilege not a right. Their house, their rules. I don’t really need to work but I like to keep occupied so I make sure I’m not stepping on somebody’s toes with what I do. There’s 26% unemployment here so I don’t deprive a Spaniard of a job. They’ve enough problems.
I’m losing interest because I haven’t heard a single constructive thought out of the lot of you. Mostly it’s just middle class intellectuals telling the proles what’s good for them. I might as well be reading the Guardian. Don’t know if any of you lot have noticed but every time it’s polled the majority plump for strict immigration controls. Or is democracy too rich a fare to stomach?
And some of the arguments!
“who’s going to come out the primary losers as it contracts? The white working class because they’ll always tick fewer boxes than the newcomers.”
& the response:
“If the immigrants you complain about cannot speak English all that well, I would imagine that they would be less able to tick the boxes as well as the locals.”
Do you really know so little about the system? That it’ll fall over itself trying to ensure that a newcomer gets every single thing going? They don’t need to speak English because the forms are available in languages most of us have never heard of. If they can’t read, a helpful claims officer will fill it in for them. It’s the Brit pensioner that gets to struggle unassisted through 26 pages of bureaucratic gobbledegook.
I agree with you lot on two things:
I detest the welfare state & have tried to have as little to do with it as possible.
It would be good to have freedom of movement between countries.
I believe that the welfare state as it exists is incompatible with free movement because effectively you’re signing a tab for the entire planet. Dismantling it would be wonderful but simultaneously retaining open borders would earn you a backlash that’d put an extreme nationalist government in power. You might not think that the white’s in the UK have any special attributes but they think they have. They still regard it as their country.
Rather than parade your lofty libertarian virtues why don’t you put your minds to some practical ideas that might just take the country from here to where you want to go? If you don’t your just pissing in the wind.
One last response to BiSpain, then I am going to give this up:
Your problem, as shown by this paragraph, is your concept of citizenship. If you pay taxes in Spain/wherever, or vote there, or have business and other interests there, then you are not just a guest, like a guest staying at the local Hilton. It sounds to me like you are trying to have your cake and eat it: you attack immigrants and yet you take advantage, as is your right, to move abroad and yet you claim there is nothing hypocritical in your case as you are a priviledged “guest”. Well, that’s very convenient for your argument, is it not?
Suppose all the immigrants you regard with such a baleful glare are also, on your terms, turned into “guests” (as they are in Germany). Perhaps that is what you should call for.
You have a decent point here:
I don’t doubt that there are officials who are trying, either out of misguided public spirit or whatever, to make things so easy for migrants that this pisses off the domestic population. That needs to be fixed.
Oh, there are all kinds of practical measures that a “lofty” person like me favours, such as:
No welfare benefits for any immigrant who has been living in a country for fewer than x years, for example. A track record of paying certain taxes for a certain period. Etc, etc. This could be done quite easily, even without a massive cutback of state welfare (which is desirable for other reasons, of course.)
Sorry things got a bit nasty on this board, BiS, but you did rather start things off via the passive-aggressive technique of accusing those who take the “lofty” line of having their “heads up their arse”.
On a broader point, I often note how those who slag off immigrants and the like will often be those who have emigrated themselves. It is not necessarily proof of double standards on their part, of course, but it is potentially so.
There is a good discussion of how “guest/sojourner” status can be addressed in Jim Bennett’s book, The Anglosphere Challenge. Worth a read.
I agree that there is no non-destructive way to allow unlimited immigration (which I’m all for in principle) while there is a welfare state in place, and while a real protection of life and property of all by the powers that be is non-existent. I also think that while the latter can be achieved almost tomorrow, the welfare state cannot and should not be deliberately dismantled all at once (of course it will be anyway through the means of the ongoing economic collapse, but that’s a different topic).