Now, do I think open borders will happen?
No, certainly not any time soon. I think people are too racist, nationalistic, and anti-capitalistic to allow it to happen under current political conditions.
My main point is merely to argue that open borders would be good, and that everyone ought to support and advocate for it. But just because people should do something, doesn’t mean they will. The US should have abolished slavery without having a civil war; the South should have abolished Jim Crow without being forced by federal intervention.
I support anything that moves us closer in the direction of open borders, such as increased immigration quotas and bilateral open-borders agreements between developed countries.
My prediction is that, one day, we will indeed have open borders across the world—at around the same time every country becomes “developed”. Thus, we will have it precisely at the point where we don’t need it.
My hope is that we can get a little ahead of the curve. For instance, the extension in the European Union of open borders to Eastern Europe was/is a very positive development.
And I think “we shouldn’t support open borders because it would be unpopular and provoke a backlash” is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s the job of the people advocating for it to make it popular, e.g. by pointing out the benefits and refuting the economic fallacies upon which people think it would deprive them of their livelihoods—since people are quite reasonable, in my opinion, to oppose policies that would deprive them of their livelihoods.
I think we have some broad areas of agreement here, in that we both anticipate open borders in the future and see raised immigration quotas and bilateral agreements as being a good thing.
We may differ on the getting ahead of the curve aspect. You suggest that it is necessary to refute economic fallacies about open borders depriving people of their livelihoods, but at the same time open borders is supposed to pay its way by allowing us to pay less for manual labour, for example. That implies that people currently performing manual labour at higher rates will face a reduction in their pay or conditions, no? Or will it be compensated in some way?
The point is that, by moving people from places where they are economically unproductive—such as Haiti or the Congo—to places where they can be much more economically productive—such as America or Australia—the total amount of wealth, or the “size of the pie” can be increased.
To quote myself from just now in the SSC comments:
The nominal wages of (some) Americans may go down, but their realwages also go up insofar as everything they buy becomes cheaper. The nominal wage loss is one-time per-immigrant, but the real wage gain is compounded every year as the immigrants continue producing year after year.
As more and more workers leave Ethiopia (or wherever) to come to the United States, workers there become more scarce, causing wages to rise. Until eventually the point is reached where the wage gain from going to America isn’t worth the trouble of leaving.
You do have arbitrage in the price of labor, with the end result that there is, more or less, a single world price of labor (relative to skill). But you’re acting like that merely means that the price will move down in developed countries until it hits Ethiopian levels. No, at the same time, in less developed countries it moves up. And since the effect of this is to more efficiently allocate labor and thereby increase production, the result is not that American and Ethiopian incomes are averaged out at some medium level, but rather that real income goes up—and continues to go up.
[…]
Now, if all the additional immigrants as a result of a policy of free immigration came in one single year, there would indeed probably be a significant short-term drop in American wages until it was counterbalanced by the greater production. But if, as is more likely, they come over time, then as each new wave is coming to lower the nominal wages, the ones who have already come are already acting to push up the real wages.
And moreover, it’s very likely that the current residents of the countries into which people would immigrate would not be competing on the “bottom rung” with the unskilled immigrant labor. It’s much more likely that they would be hired in higher/managerial roles, or roles that interact with the public, while immigrants—especially the ones that can’t speak English—would tend to be put in lower-level roles. It has to be emphasized that the ability to speak fluent English is a major skill that native workers have and most potential immigrants don’t. For instance, you have the current dynamic in restaurants where you tend to have native-born people as the waiters and maîtres d’, and immigrants in the back washing dishes.
Now, you may justifiably say that this is not very fair in the cosmic sense. But if there’s anyone to whom it’s not fair, it’s certainly the immigrants, not the native workers.
Stuff gets cheaper, yes, but only for given types of stuff; what about land? People still need somewhere to live, even if food or manufactured goods are cheaper than they once were. And I still feel your are skirting around the fact that there will be job losses, it’s inevitable. Not everyone can become managers or reskill to write web apps or whatever, and they know that.
We could pareto-optimize. If immigration increases the pie, agree to redistribute the increases to bribe those who would suffer to accept the deal.
Assume four people: Adam, Steve, Peter and Paul. They initially start with 1, 20, 100, and 15 utility points.
Adam wants to move to Westonia where Steve, Peter and Paul live. Adam takes a low-paid job Paul was previously doing, for a total gain of +10 utility points and Paul loses 12 utility points. Steve gets +5 utility points from being promoted, and Peter reaps +20 utility points from economic growth. The new distribution is 11, 25, 120, and 3. Unfortunately moving to Westonia requires permission from 75% of the population, and Paul loses out on this deal so he votes against open borders.
If Steve and Peter agree to give Paul back the 12 utility points so that Steve gives 2 and Peter gives 10, nobody is worse off than they started with. This redistribution is less efficient, so Adam loses 2 points, Steve loses 1 and Peter loses 2 points from deadweight losses.
Ultimately Adam has 9 points, Steve has 22 points, Peter has 108 points and Paul stays with 15 points.
As rational economic actors, everyone will vote for this plan and benefit.
1 month ago · tagged #win-win is my superpower · 21 notes · source: voximperatoris · .permalink
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socialjusticemunchkin reblogged this from voximperatoris and added:I specifically made it so that Adam wouldn’t give any of the ones he gets except via deadweight, because it’s more fair...
voximperatoris reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin and added:Yes, this is the “keyhole solution” of “tax immigrants to fund a dole for unemployed natives”. Now, I’m opposed to this...
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neoliberalism-nightly reblogged this from argumate and added:I agree that prima facie it seems that the gains will be distributed more towards people who holds substantial amount of...
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