I'm appalled at how many self-described liberals I know who consider themselves to be guardians of civil liberties not bat an eye to these restrictions. The matter of fact is that all the restrictions we put in place with respect to the free movement of peoples -- and the accompanying restrictions around employment, leisure, etc. -- are single-handedly the single biggest breach of human rights in the world. It is absolutely inexcusable that any person should "defend" any policy short of complete and total freedom of movement. I think this is the one thing that I believe in most strongly in all of my life -- I am confident that in the future -- perhaps many, many centuries from now -- we will look at these things with the same eyes with which we look at slavery in the past.
I support freedom of movement, but I also understand people's worries about unmanageable burdens placed on support systems for a nation's people. Of course, if there were no support systems this would be a moot point, and is one of the few counterarguments to, say, increased public healthcare or pensions, that made sense.
HN has a lot of proponents of universal basic income. Say a small country, maybe Iceland with only a few hundred thousand people, introduces a basic income of $1000 per month. For many people around the world that is an incredibly huge sum. How do you handle the millions that are likely to arrive to enjoy those benefits? Do you:
* Tell them they can come and live there but not claim it, effectively making them second class citizens?
* Bankrupt your government providing this benefit to people who are not initially contributing lots of taxes?
* Restrict entry to people who are probably going to be a net gain for your government's coffers?
Not to mention that when you see a large, _sudden_ influx of people with substantially different language and culture it can be a severe shock to the original inhabitants. I am ardently in favour of helping refugees but I can understand the challenges that occur when newcomers with different cultural norms become a significant part of a place's population. (Aside - it's kind of ridiculous that the US is squabbling about taking maybe ten thousand refugees from a place that they destabilized while Germany takes over a million)
I think you make excellent points. I think where we'd probably disagree is in how quickly (or easily) we'd reach some sort of equillibrium state.
You are absolutely right that countries which enjoy greater public benefits would likely enjoy a greater influx of people. But I disagree that that's necessarily a bad thing. I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as a free lunch. And if residents of Iceland make it so appealing to just live there without contributing to society, then I don't see how it is a (globally-speaking) bad thing to have migration make it so that enough people decide to move there to make it less feasible.
Let's not forget: The people supposedly moving into those economies would likely be fleeing oppressive regimes with very little economic opportunities. And, with free movement, it would become much harder to give away freebies, AS it would become much harder to become an oppressive government. Stories like Venezuela would be more hard to come by if people could simply leave the country more easily.
Just take familiar HN-turf: Software development. What do you think would happen if all Indian developers (many of whom are actually really, really talented), could just as easily apply for jobs in the US? Undoubtedly worse for US-based developers, right? And maybe there is some sense that such a massive disrpution should be avoided, at least "suddenly" as you say.
But now you multiply this across every industry, with all of their individual justifications, and what you end up with is with an ossified global society. We end up trying each to protect our pie (from crop subsidies on out), all perfectly justifiable. But, as a global community, we make it worse for all of us.
Just this week Elon tried to inspire us about the idea of an interplanetary species. It just seems inconsistent to me for us to dream about being a people who can travel freely to the stars, but that we need to ask permissions of random strangers to visit family members, to employ our talent productively far from where we were born, etc.
I think you raise really valid points. But in my eyes, those are issues to be dealt with in the pursuit of this ideal, not justifications on why it should not be pursued/is not feasible.
Thanks for raising some really valid counterpoints to my argument, while framing this as a contest of ideas and not people. I really appreciate it. I imagine others on HN do too.
Regarding "I don't see how it is a (globally-speaking) bad thing to have migration make it so that enough people decide to move there to make it less feasible." - to be honest I tend to agree in principle, but I worry that the practical effect would be far more negative. Making the decision to move less feasible seems to mean making the destination country less desirable, which sucks and is a bummer for those who live there. Then again, there's nothing fair about me being paid ten times as much as someone in India to work with databases. I just happen to like the stuff I can buy by making 10x as much cash.
I want to live in a liberal democracy with a high standard of living and low carbon emissions (so apartments close to amenities with lots of bike lanes and very few automobiles) with a steady or slowly decreasing population, because there are too many people in the world for it to support. If such a place existed (Denmark comes to mind, or perhaps Japan), it would probably be a desirable target for migrants from all over the world, which would strain the systems that could make such a place possible. How do you build schools to house families with 4+ children when your budget was built on the idea that you would need to build no more, or slowly downsize them with time? How do you allocate land?
>I want to live in a liberal democracy with a high standard of living and low carbon emissions (so apartments close to amenities with lots of bike lanes and very few automobiles) with a steady or slowly decreasing population, because there are too many people in the world for it to support. If such a place existed (Denmark comes to mind, or perhaps Japan), it would probably be a desirable target for migrants from all over the world, which would strain the systems that could make such a place possible.
Yes, but I think that's what happens at t=0. And I think that your preferences are probably widely shared by a large contingent of the world population. As it stands, those who enjoy it are either those who had the good fortune to be born in those societies, or those who manage to migrate there through some way or another. Yes, perhaps immigration initially makes it less feasible for those societies to continue operating like that, but it makes it MUCH more difficult to governments who don't support those policies from existing. That's the factor that I put a lot of faith in. The important factor in my eyes is not just the influx of immigrants, but the exodus which will force other countries and governments too look much more like the Danish one (in your example) if they are to survive.
Google and Facebook fight over employees, and the ultimate winners are engineers in place to be hired by those companies. Elsewhere in our economy and the world, we seem to understand that in competitive environments, "customers" win.
Within the US we understand that too! Just take all the states who try to entice businesses through tax policy, old people who move to warmer climates, etc. You don't hear nearly as much complaining about state and local politics (which accounts for a much larger swath of gov't spending than national politics) here in the U.S. And I think some of the issues you mention ARE present. There are municipalities and states that offer friendlier policies in one shape or another, and you do see athletes moving to Florida because of the lack of income tax, for instance. But I think those issues are far, far outweighed by what the country gains by having these "open borders" between the states.
I suspect we don't have more issues because if you don't like something about where you live, you move. This is one of the most distinct things about the U.S. with my experience overseas (I'm from Brazil originally).
For better or worse, accessing a modern economy there means living in one of two cities. Here? I can make a rich matrix of climate, culture, job environment, etc., and find a few candidate cities in which to live in. That's amazing. And I think that's how you get some pretty unique experiences -- Silicon Valley to NYC -- which are all world-class.
With respect to your housing point, I think you are right. But again, I see greater migration as a way to also solve those problems. The influx makes land and housing more valuable in Denmark, which in turns makes more development there more valuable and more feasible. And, conversely, makes places people are leaving less valuable and land there cheaper.
I see it as a way to equate opportunity over the world. And, like in the U.S., no doubt that the steady state will yield places that are very different from one another in terms of culture, or climate, or how it is run by their local government. But the threat of exit will be a great check on their ability to diverge from the will of and preferences of the people.
Fourth option would be to extend the benefit only to people who have a place to sleep at night, ie. house owners, renters, staying in a hotel etc. That places a natural limit on the number of people who can stay (the size of the housing stock), and doesn't present any problems for existing citizens or tourists.
You could combine this by aggressively deporting people found sleeping rough (which given the extreme cold in Iceland would also be helping them).
I think that's a clever solution short term, but long term the incentives would align to give rise to slums and ghettos.
If there are millions willing to enter the country and be granted a free income, then anyone with some capital has a guaranteed payday in hastily putting up the cheapest livable accommodations and renting it to these people.
You control that with housing / development controls, just the same as now. I can't fill my house with bunk beds and rent it to 10 people today. Nor can I build anything I want on land (even if I own it) without the permission of the council or government.
You're missing the fourth option, which is to continue providing benefits to everyone (including new immigrants), and raise revenue enough to cover the added expense. Spending more money didn't automatically equal bankruptcy, governments have essentially unlimited capacity to raise taxes and issue bonds.
Taken to the absurd extreme, you end up with a country where the amount going to social assistance equals the amount of spending within the country, and a tax rate of 100%. So, uh, communism.
If helping people is what we care about, perhaps we should consider whether unrestricted immigration or basic income/other welfare state policies will help more. From what I can tell, neither BI nor traditional welfare states can come even remotely close to the benefits of open borders. It kind of makes one wonder whether helping people is the real goal of BI proponents.
As for the "sudden influx," I think it's important to recognize what the real problem is. In Europe, Muslim immigrants seem to rape and commit other crimes a lot more than natives.
I say "seem to" because stats on this are notoriously hard to come by. For example, Sweden censors that data in their crime statistics. Similarly, various police agencies seem to ignore crimes in order to avoid seeming racist.
I suspect if Europe imported more peaceful immigrants, or even had a credible plan to handle this issue, the sudden influx would be less of a problem.
NYC and London have faced a sudden influx of foreigners over the past 15 years but no one really cares. Why worry about some Indian or Russian working at a bank, doing yoga after work and then going home?
'As for the "sudden influx," I think it's important to recognize what the real problem is. In Europe, Muslim immigrants seem to rape and commit other crimes a lot more than natives.'
A claim like that needs a lot more hard data than is available, both to support or refute. I'm not saying you're wrong or right, but regardless, noting the differences between the values of immigrant and native populations is worthwhile. I moved to Europe because I like the lifestyle here, so I'd be pretty upset if a bunch of Americans moved here and demanded all environmental protections be removed, mandatory paid holidays abolished, and turned every city into a wasteland of parking lots.
Regarding NYC and London, at least London certainly seems to have noticed the influx, in this case due to the large wealth (rather than poverty) of the newcomers:
> I suspect if Europe imported more peaceful immigrants, or even had a credible plan to handle this issue, the sudden influx would be less of a problem.
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? If the immigrants are all "some Indian or Russian working at a bank, doing yoga after work and then going home" then we're fine, but unrestricted immigration would mean accepting the violent criminals, or racists, or foreign agents under orders to move to strategic voting districts etc.
> From what I can tell, neither BI nor traditional welfare states can come even remotely close to the benefits of open borders.
Open borders make competition much more aggressive. A complete lack of competition is inefficient, but competition within borders is generally adequate for that, especially when the border is the size of the US or the EU.
Sufficiently aggressive competition produces local maxima. It means no one has any margins to invest in the future. It erodes the tax base because taxes have to come only out of discretionary income or people will starve, but with enough competition employers can pay subsistence wages. And consumers making subsistence wages are price sensitive which drives down the margins of businesses. This is all very "efficient" -- it's the thing competition is "good at" -- except that it means there is no money for people to go to college or do any R&D that won't pay out in the current fiscal year or anything like that.
Borders artificially reduce competition somewhat. That isn't always bad.
A basic income helps with this. It gives people unconditional money that they can use to escape the local maxima created by aggressively competitive markets. Then those people can go to college and invent medicines and technologies that benefit people on the other side of the border.
That works better than everyone being "equal" because everyone is making subsistence wages.
You seem to be suggesting that it's perfectly fine to have tremendous inequality (compare Dharavi to Baltimore) as long as it enables long term business investments.
Is there any reason why that argument doesn't apply to inequality within a country as well?
In particular, what about inequality caused by within country trade barriers?
> You seem to be suggesting that it's perfectly fine to have tremendous inequality (compare Dharavi to Baltimore) as long as it enables long term business investments.
Having some amount of inequality is the only way it's possible to have long term business investments -- or any investments at all. Because we need doctors, engineers and businessmen but also miners, truck drivers and janitors. These professions will never have equal status, and it will always take more resources to train an engineer than a janitor, but it isn't "fair" that one person gets to be the engineer while another has to be the janitor. Yet that unfairness is inherently necessary if we want to have engineers.
> In particular, what about inequality caused by within country trade barriers?
The goal is to have a moderate amount of competition. Too much and everyone is making subsistence wages and no one can afford to go to college (and your government has no tax revenue to subsidize it). Too little and the inequality becomes unnecessarily excessive (which is, among other things, inefficient).
Notice that there are two different kinds of competition here. Between employees we have quite enough already, because employees largely aren't organized. But competition between business entities is currently on the low side. Compare e.g. the market share of Facebook in the market for social media with the market share of an individual Facebook employee in the market for software developers.
So the questions have different answers. The sweet spot for employees seems to be no restrictions within the US/EU but restrictions between countries. For business entities even the trade barriers between countries seem to restrict competition too much. (Or at least, a lack of trade barriers doesn't inherently lead to ruinous competition there, because there are other factors inhibiting competition between businesses.)
But the EU has a population about twice that of the US. So why shouldn't we impose trade barriers within the EU to bring this awful competition down to American levels? Similarly, India should perhaps split herself into US-sized chunks, and Biharis shouldn't be allowed to migrate to Bombay? (Shiv Sena would love this.)
Similarly, as the US grows, shouldn't we start imposing internal trade barriers to keep our size down to the optimum?
This idea that there is some optimal size that just magically happens to correspond to national boundaries is belied by the fact that countries have hugely different sizes.
But India does have a problem with excessive competition keeping wages low. The rest of the EU might actually be better off with fewer countries in it (e.g. without Greece). Measures to keep the US population stable rather than growing could be beneficial.
And there are obviously political considerations. Nobody is going to let you carve up national borders over this, so we're stuck with the existing borders even if that isn't 100% perfectly optimal. Estimating the optimal size is going to be at the "orders of magnitude" level anyway.
For anyone unaware: note that the Daily Mail is the most openly xenophobic newspaper in Britain, and RT (Russia Today) is a state-funded propaganda TV network.
Russia has a clear interest in destabilizing the European Union. The Daily Mail's motive is less clear.
What is the relevance to this discussion? Are you actually asserting that the facts raised there are false, or are you simply trying to get people to dismiss true statements?
Both sources have such low credibility that they should be ignored. That doesn't mean they're wrong, but I don't think they lend any weight to your argument.
There's a good chance that anything on RT is either false or presented in a very misleading way - they are a propaganda outfit for the Kremlin after all.
There's no innate human right to freedom of movement within other societies.
Humans are individuals, individuals form into groups, and those groups when large and cohesive enough form into societies, civilizations, and now nation states. If those groups are to exist as a "group" they require these shared norms, values, culture to remain a viable group. If part of that culture is to exclude outsiders on the area of land on this earth that they control, then who is one individual or many individuals to say that this is invalid?
This presents a lot of opportunity for places like the United States where immigration and freedom of movement is more accepted - so you get more immigration and more growth. But that is something citizens of the US have decided, not external actors.
> There's no innate human right to freedom of movement within other societies.
Sure there is, at least if you acknowledge the notion of human rights in the first place. (There's no "innate human right" to not be tortured.)
Without governments, there is no impedance to freedom of movement. This isn't merely theoretical: as governments have become stronger and their reach extended across the globe, the ability to move freely has correspondingly decreased.
I don't think "human right" means what you think it does. Before governments, anybody could straight up murder anyone else, as long as they were ruthless enough to also murder anyone who might want to avenge the deceased. The world was a viscious place ruled by the strong, with no guarantees of anything. "Human rights" are something that didn't exist in the state of nature but were invented afterwards.
> I don't think "human right" means what you think it does.
This is a rude way of approaching a discussion. Don't make my assumptions about my knowledge.
A much better way of starting a discussion would be to state what you believe the definition of a human right is. There are in fact many different philosophical views on what human rights are, with many philosophers in fact arguing that their origin is in natural rights. [0]
> "Human rights" are something that didn't exist in the state of nature but were invented afterwards.
That's pretty much what is implied by my first line:
> Sure there is, at least if you acknowledge the notion of human rights in the first place. (There's no "innate human right" to not be tortured.)
I'm concerned about opening up the borders before we understand why some countries are corrupt and others aren't. In a place like the US, trying to bribe a police officer is unexpected, and everyone who gets involved in the situation ends up working to punish those involved in the bribery. In a place like Venezuela, bribing a police officer is expected, and everyone who gets involved in the situation ends up getting paid or threatened into supporting the status quo.
Corruption isn't the only cultural artifact that's under threat, but if we understand what's going on well enough, I'd be much more confident that opening the borders won't cause existential threat to what makes the host nations great.
That's a really interesting point. As an immigrant myself, I'd say that one of the objections to immigration (generally-speaking) which I find has the most sway is something along the lines that you have mentioned.
I genuinely believe that some of the "negative" things countries experience are directly related to certain cultural norms/values that many of their citizens may share, and that by moving to a different country, some of those values could also be embedded in the receiving country and similarly "pollute" it.
But I think that the answer to that is MORE immigration, not less. By restricting immigration, we're introducing small pebbles into the gears which allow people to find the best opportunities for themselves and their families. I think is it precisely those issues which allow public policies and cultural norms to distort so much. With MORE immigration, I think competition would very quickly weed out norms and practices which are inconsistent with a healthy and productive society. I think a story like Chavez's and Maduro's would be a lot more difficult to come by in a society where their citizens could not be forced to live under their regime.
More immigration will certainly help the countries like Venezuela, whose citizens can simply escape to better places.
But at the same time, it will be bad for the host countries whose social safety nets will be strained and whose citizens will now have to put up with masses with vastly different values. And the interaction will not always be pleasant (eg. Cologne incident in Germany earlier this year).
So my question to you is - why do you think its a better solution to improve condition of some societies at the expense of some other societies?
Immigration is a huge issue. It implies tremendous demographic and resource management, logistic, cultural chocks, including educational challenges.
Of course nations want to control borders. If you don't, you can't deal with the population flow and all of the above. And you need to deal with the above. Just hoping everything will be ok if you don't think about it is like hoping schools will be ok if we don't think about it.
And yet, for a long time in the past century, the U.S. dealt with a massive influx of immigration from all around the world, with all of the complications around culture, resource, and education that you mention. But it seems to me that it is one of the chief sources of the country's strength, no?
Yes, and you still had to present yourself at the border, with a passport, and be registered. Controlling immigration doesn't mean preventing people to get in, it means knowing who is coming in, and how many people, at which rate, so you can take decisions.
Besides, while it is a country strength, it did and still do have a cost. Whether this cost is worth the benefit is something you can only answer if you have metrics to do so, and illegal immigration make it hard to have those metrics, or change your policy to adapt to your new situation.
People always see immigrations as being a moral issue first, but it really is not. It has strong moral implications by nature, but it's first a management issue. Just like eduction, science, etc.
For a long time in the past century, the US didn't have any safety net. So whosoever came here essentially had to bootstrap themselves.
I believe you can have only one of the two - open borders, or social safety net. Having completely open borders with generous social safety net is mathematically impossible, unless you want to discriminate against the newcomers by denying them the benefits (which is, again, a bad thing according to many people).
> It is absolutely inexcusable that any person should "defend" any policy short of complete and total freedom of movement.
You've simply asserted this, without any explanation. Want to try giving an argument in favor instead?
In any case, it's not at all obvious to me. Let's say that I own a private piece of land somewhere. Shouldn't I be allowed to say how has the right to traverse it, camp on it, or build their homes on it? If I were forced to let anyone make use of it, I would say my rights were violated. How is immigration any different? We the citizens of country Alphastan collectively own our land and govern what goes on there. Why should we be _forced_ to let anybody tramp through it? How is that liberty, for us?
This is a very idealistic goal, but we still have no solution to issues like how the state would balance the books if the population is in constant flux. If the number of contributors suddenly decreases or the number of consumers of social services shoots up, then the state will simply go bankrupt.
If you allow total freedom of movement, you're basically creating a system similar to a business where you have zero predictability and control over your income and your costs.
In the US you are completely free to move and work in any state you want to (and a geography in the same order of magnitude of all of Europe), and it doesn't seem to cause the mayhem you suggest -- and mind you, most gov't spending takes place at the state and local level.
But you always pay taxes at the federal level, which distributes some of that income to states. Also the individual states have the mechanism to recover taxes you owe them from previous years and to pursue you for whatever violations you have committed. Additionally, state residence does exist as a concept and it is tracked in the form of state ids. It's true there are no borders but you are required to register where you live, you pay more tuition to state unis if you're not a resident of the state, etc. Just because there are no borders doesn't mean there's no control.
You can't really compare the US state system to different countries that are openly hostile or may not even talk to each other (e.g. US and Russia, or US and North Korea) and expect to have the legal cooperation that could enable freedom of movement.
>You can't really compare the US state system to different countries that are openly hostile or may not even talk to each other (e.g. US and Russia, or US and North Korea) and expect to have the legal cooperation that could enable freedom of movement.
That reveals a fundamental difference in how we see the world. The hostility which you mention is real, but I see it as a byproduct of the kinds of walls and separation we artificially place between ourselves. Let's not forget that same animosity existed between the U.S. and China, and more commercial relations reduced those tensions.
I fundamentally believe that the PEOPLE in the U.S., Russia, and yes, even the North Koreans, are fundamentally good. These artificial barriers we palce between one another create this us v. them environment, and that leads to this hostility.
How many times don't we hear complaints about "our jobs going oversaas," for instance? Mind you, many of the people voicing those complaints are also people who loudly advocate for increased job opportunities here at home. The lack of empathy for people in other nations is real. But it is created by these restrictions.
As the article states, there were no artificial barriers before 20th century. But we still had plenty of horrible wars. So I disagree with your premise that removing barriers will lead to more harmonious relations.
In fact, the barriers seems completely irrelevant to the relations between different societies. We have had atrocities without them or with them.
