Bryan Caplan is one of the few pro-immigration activists who takes his arguments to their conclusion: open borders. He believes there should be essentially zero restrictions on migration; that more or less anyone should be free to move anywhere. Here’s how he
Caplan is a professed anarchist but he assumes incorrectly that if the Western governments control the roads, streets, parks, etc. in their respective territories, then these spaces are somehow owned by the world because these spaces are not directly owned by Individuals. However, as the libertarian philosopher Jan Lester explains in the linked paper below, all property not directly owned by the natives is held in trust for them by their governments. Therefore, they can choose via the ballot box to bar mass immigration because the roads, etc. are essentially their private property (or would be under a fully-privatized, libertarian anarchy). https://philpapers.org/rec/LESIAL
All of the same particular ethnic group makes the same argument; this is arbitrarily defined and valued, there is an equivalent to this that we accept, thus logically there should be no reason to not permit X. This applies to everything from politics, psychology to economics. I’d argue nothing is arbitrarily defined or valued, and even if something is arbitrarily defined, it does not need to be precisely defined to not do Z because we behave in approximate ways (heuristically) that are advantageous to our existence. The main premise is, we should not classify, categorize or discriminate against anything, which is logically an absurd presupposition. No system in reality works by being indefinitely open, there must be some boundary in which feedback loops occur, for there to be some construction of order; whether it be a nation, a group or a collection of cells. You don’t just let foreign material through your body passively because it decreases the stability of the system (I.e homeostasis), the same argument can made against the fluxes and flows of individuals. Distributing people and allocating them efficiently by their innate potentials is necessary. Otherwise we just get a free dispersion from high energy states to low (i.e. people with the abilities, aptitudes, mindsets and values that can maintain, sustain and develop civilization to those that can’t). The latter are categorically larger than the former. Thus his views are only applicable if every being was interchangeable in favoured attributes, then it would be immoral to disallow any beings from being imported. Even if such people could be “educated” and skillfully trained to the same level, it costs resources. Thus one needs to ask why it is necessary to expend resources to develop other peoples existences when there are an infinite supply of potential beings that come into existence that don’t like to live amongst their shared communities and won’t expend energy to better their own geographically similar areas. Also are nations really arbitrary or geographic borders? Landmasses are unlikely to be arbitrary as the people that historically originate from various locations descend from differently imputed values and skills, some such as “working on a mountain range” are not directly transferable with attributes such as “being able to live comfortably in high attitudes”. Even assuming these beings are interchangeable in qualities and landmasses are just arbitrarily defined, why would someone that be economically selfish want competition with diminished public utilities, housing, availability of opportunities or any other thing? Furthermore, shouldn’t the very best of such emigrants be developing their areas first. Most people that say they are pro have an agenda to push (minority dynamics) or do not live within the large boundaries of settled emigrants and thus do not feel their effects from second generation and later progeny, else their attitudes would change quickly if their community consisted purely of “economic migrants” from poor, desolate and impoverished areas (whom are neither the best nor brightest) relative to the indigenous native population.
You either have largely closed border to protect your national culture and ethno-racial makeup or you reject that vision and honestly accept the implications thereof.
If it really was just about "what side of the border you were born on" and nothing else, of course Caplan would be right, e.g. Canada and the US don't really need to enforce their border. But Caplan completely ignores that "the side of the border you are born on" is linked with characteristics like language, religion, and physical features and that these characteristics evidently are important to many people.
I'm not pro-immigration or anti-immigration per se. I'm against creating situations where ethnic conflict is likely to happen. Mass immigration of Ukrainians or Romanians into Britain is fine with me. They "look like" everyone else in Europe, which makes it a lot easier for them to identify with their host country's population.
Caplan is a professed anarchist but he assumes incorrectly that if the Western governments control the roads, streets, parks, etc. in their respective territories, then these spaces are somehow owned by the world because these spaces are not directly owned by Individuals. However, as the libertarian philosopher Jan Lester explains in the linked paper below, all property not directly owned by the natives is held in trust for them by their governments. Therefore, they can choose via the ballot box to bar mass immigration because the roads, etc. are essentially their private property (or would be under a fully-privatized, libertarian anarchy). https://philpapers.org/rec/LESIAL
All of the same particular ethnic group makes the same argument; this is arbitrarily defined and valued, there is an equivalent to this that we accept, thus logically there should be no reason to not permit X. This applies to everything from politics, psychology to economics. I’d argue nothing is arbitrarily defined or valued, and even if something is arbitrarily defined, it does not need to be precisely defined to not do Z because we behave in approximate ways (heuristically) that are advantageous to our existence. The main premise is, we should not classify, categorize or discriminate against anything, which is logically an absurd presupposition. No system in reality works by being indefinitely open, there must be some boundary in which feedback loops occur, for there to be some construction of order; whether it be a nation, a group or a collection of cells. You don’t just let foreign material through your body passively because it decreases the stability of the system (I.e homeostasis), the same argument can made against the fluxes and flows of individuals. Distributing people and allocating them efficiently by their innate potentials is necessary. Otherwise we just get a free dispersion from high energy states to low (i.e. people with the abilities, aptitudes, mindsets and values that can maintain, sustain and develop civilization to those that can’t). The latter are categorically larger than the former. Thus his views are only applicable if every being was interchangeable in favoured attributes, then it would be immoral to disallow any beings from being imported. Even if such people could be “educated” and skillfully trained to the same level, it costs resources. Thus one needs to ask why it is necessary to expend resources to develop other peoples existences when there are an infinite supply of potential beings that come into existence that don’t like to live amongst their shared communities and won’t expend energy to better their own geographically similar areas. Also are nations really arbitrary or geographic borders? Landmasses are unlikely to be arbitrary as the people that historically originate from various locations descend from differently imputed values and skills, some such as “working on a mountain range” are not directly transferable with attributes such as “being able to live comfortably in high attitudes”. Even assuming these beings are interchangeable in qualities and landmasses are just arbitrarily defined, why would someone that be economically selfish want competition with diminished public utilities, housing, availability of opportunities or any other thing? Furthermore, shouldn’t the very best of such emigrants be developing their areas first. Most people that say they are pro have an agenda to push (minority dynamics) or do not live within the large boundaries of settled emigrants and thus do not feel their effects from second generation and later progeny, else their attitudes would change quickly if their community consisted purely of “economic migrants” from poor, desolate and impoverished areas (whom are neither the best nor brightest) relative to the indigenous native population.
Easy. Education, investment, profession and resumé. Just like hiring.
I strongly agree with Caplan.
You either have largely closed border to protect your national culture and ethno-racial makeup or you reject that vision and honestly accept the implications thereof.
If it really was just about "what side of the border you were born on" and nothing else, of course Caplan would be right, e.g. Canada and the US don't really need to enforce their border. But Caplan completely ignores that "the side of the border you are born on" is linked with characteristics like language, religion, and physical features and that these characteristics evidently are important to many people.
I'm not pro-immigration or anti-immigration per se. I'm against creating situations where ethnic conflict is likely to happen. Mass immigration of Ukrainians or Romanians into Britain is fine with me. They "look like" everyone else in Europe, which makes it a lot easier for them to identify with their host country's population.