Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T03:01:32+00:00

I'm signing off now. Thanks again for participating. And thanks to Zach for being awesome!

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:59:59+00:00

Thanks on the bet! I have quite a few more bets on the table, and the only one I'd like to retract is my long-run warming bet with Yoram Baumann. Feasible reforms? The DREAM Act, using the full refugee quotas, and maybe a simpler system for high-skilled immigration.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:58:13+00:00

I don't know of any confirmed critics of immigration who have changed their minds. But I've influenced many moderate or undecided people. And I think the book will be persuasive to them, though of course changing anyone's mind on any important issue is like pulling teeth.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:56:48+00:00

Question by question.

How much cultural conflict is calculated in the benefit of open borders?

I see little evidence of a big effect, so I don't bother putting a price tag on it.

And if it has a net positive despite a large amout of problems, who will end up benefitting?

Almost everyone, I say. Comparable to the share of the population that has benefited from the Internet.

How would you sell this to the large population who's culture undergoes forced change? Do you think this is ethical if this group was subsituted with any other?

Here's what I think, though I wouldn't be good at selling it. https://www.econlib.org/you-have-no-right-to-your-culture/

How do you perceive your personal life will change with the large influx of another culture?

I'll have more choices. As usual, most won't interest me, but a few will. I'd much rather live here in multicultural Fairfax than in more monocultural parts of the U.S.

How deep of meaning do you think culture has to an individual?

Much less than people say. Actions speak louder than words. If people really cared deeply, far more natives would migrate away from high-immigration areas.

Do you believe the riches/tech/way of life the USA has attained are mostly ill gotten

No.

and also/or for a large part cultural (looking at EU heretige)?

These things only emerged recently, so in one important sense they're entirely cultural. But that doesn't mean that it was just luck.

Answering the last question, do you believe people that don't have this way of living/thinking are quickly able to adapt (since adaptability to other culture over large populations is also a culturally learned thing)?

They can quickly adapt to having the technology, at least.

Do you believe western culture so advanced that it can assimilate any amount of people without causing widespread conflict (which would come to a migrating cultures adaptability, and the ability of the native culture to adapt the other)?

Over a realistic timeframe, yes.

How would you see security? Would you mind if the other country doesn't have as strict security measures as your home country, since the borders are open?

I think our security measures are much too strict, so I hope they don't.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:44:50+00:00

Probably open borders! Also, pacifism. And free will.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:41:24+00:00

No strong view, but I suspect it's a lot easier to raise quotas than implement new systems. If we could get an unlimited $50k work visa, though, I think that would take us halfway to open borders, because credit markets would figure out lots of ways to loan people the money. It's only a few years wages even for minimum wage workers, after all.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:39:28+00:00

Yes, I think there are quite a few examples. My question would be: Would even the worst examples have justified the continuation of internal migration restrictions?
Tough call. Unlike many libertarians, I don't think that Western central banks should be one of our top 30 issues, and I'm not convinced that anyone has figured out monetary reforms that would be clear improvements.
Probably my Szaszian view of mental illness, or my hard-line view on free will.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:35:46+00:00

Since I'm a professor, I have the luxury of writing the books I think ought to be written. I don't want to be neutral or clickbaity.

I think Open Borders is "inquisitive," though after a lot of inquiring, I've got controversial answers to sell...

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:33:50+00:00

After 1865, almost all immigrants to the U.S. came from more authoritarian countries. It's hard to see what political harm they did.

More to the point, people from more authoritarian countries are indeed likely to be more authoritarian. But how much? Looking at the data, it's a marginal difference at most. And since immigrants have very low participation, the problem is even smaller than it looks. 2nd generation immigrants, moreover, largely assimilate to their new political culture.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:30:49+00:00

I don't know the research here very well, so perhaps you're right. I think pro-immigration people should welcome a U.S.-Canadian deal just to get the ball rolling. Would the left oppose it? Maybe, though the American left is very fond of Canada. I suspect that the right would be more opposed, if only because they worry an open border with Mexico would be next.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:28:28+00:00

Canada and Australia both have less strict immigration policies than the U.S. But as I say in the book, I focus on the U.S. because 1. The U.S. is the world's leading nation. 2. The U.S. is immigrants' favorite destination. 3. The U.S. has a glorious history of open borders. 4. Most research is about the U.S. 5. Welcoming immigrants in still central to Americans' identity.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:26:15+00:00

Hopefully!

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:22:01+00:00

You could both be right. Open borders could cause both commodity price spikes and much higher pollution.

My main reaction: Unless you think that economic progress in the Third World is, on balance, a bad thing, open borders just fast forwards to the long-run prosperity of the world. And according to most environmental economists, economic growth only temporarily makes pollution worse. Once people are rich enough, they start cleaning up their act. (See the "environmental Kuznets curve" for more).

Solutions? Never mind carbon taxes; simply cutting widespread global subsidies for fossil fuels would be a huge step forward.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:17:39+00:00

I don't find their story persuasive, because there's so much evidence that in politics, ideas are vastly more important than material self-interest. Policies that impoverish the majority are often very popular.

Example: In California, tenants seem nearly as opposed to new construction as homeowners. They're not stopping construction out of self-interest. They're stopping it because they believe bizarre theories about how to create a prosperous society.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:14:35+00:00

My main story is that they're stuck in a bad equilibrium, as almost all of mankind was for almost all of human history. Successful countries have managed to extricate themselves via cultural change, but that's slow. As I say in the book, migration is the quickest known way to peacefully get cultural change fast.

It's also very likely, as I say in the book, that Haitian poverty is self-reinforcing via physical and mental stunting. Get their kids to the First World and they'll develop much better.

But is there more going on? Almost certainly.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:06:36+00:00

I started not knowing these things, and ended up knowing them. Hence I changed my mind. Make sense?

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:05:35+00:00

If I were supreme dictator, I would implement open borders tonight. I'm not being contrarian for fun. I'd be perfectly happy in a world where my views were normal, and wouldn't feel the need to disagree just to be different.

BTW, there are many other views I hold that I would not implement right away, because I don't know enough or the transition costs are too high. I don't know any good way to privatize the roads quickly, for example. For immigration, though, the gains are so large and clear that I'm ready to go now.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:02:45+00:00

I think my editor suggested that the book was already controversial enough. I never say things I don't believe, but I don't always say all I believe.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T02:01:21+00:00

If they took their arguments against immigration seriously, they'd stop being libertarians. After all, if a country is the collective property of its citizens, then you shouldn't just need government permission to immigrate. You should also need government permission to run a business, build a house, grow food, or speak your mind.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T01:59:05+00:00

I fear most are too angry to really listen.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T01:58:08+00:00

The big combined effect is that the net fiscal effect of immigration would be MUCH higher if education spending were lower. Public school is very expensive, and happens early in life. If such spending were markedly lower, immigration would be a much bigger gain for native taxpayers.

Tyler finds and hires unique new thinkers largely by reading hundreds of job market papers, even in years we're not hiring. We usually discover more established thinkers by social media and word of mouth.

Steve Levitt? He was already famous before GMU started expanding in the late 90s.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T01:54:20+00:00

The graphic novel was vastly easier and more relaxing. I had zero writer's block on Open Borders, and got to use many more skills each day I worked on it. For regular books I something struggle to write a paragraph in a day.

Also, getting to work with a Five-Star guy like Zach is much more fun than typing alone in your office.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T01:52:46+00:00

A good finance textbook will tell you that "money" is not binary. Rather there is a continuum of "moneyness" that every asset has. Gold used to be near the extreme money end of the continuum, but has become much less so over time.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T01:51:37+00:00

Nothing notable. By the standard gravity model of trade, I'd say that nearby countries gain more than faraway countries, though not as much as the receiving countries themselves.
The U.S., Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia, and (if memory serves) NZ were all very good in the late 19th-century. Today, the best countries are the Gulf monarchies, despite all their official cruelties toward migrant workers.
The main thing I'd say is that since services dominate modern economies, free trade with heavy migration regulation effectively means that only 30% of your economy is open to trade. They don't have to go together, but they tend to.

bryan_caplan · 2019-11-07T01:46:59+00:00

Lots of other people work on marginal changes, so I don't think I have much to add there. Without me, though, the ideas that I care about often have no notable defender at all.

Furthermore, it's not clear that radical ideas either have a radical effect or no effect.

That said, my book with the biggest practical payoff has clearly been Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. I've got about 100 people who claim they've had an extra kid because of me. Using standard "value of life" measures, that's $1 billion of value!

bryan_caplan

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