open borders

The blatant fascism of Bernie Sanders

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

Ezra Klein, a Bruin and also a journalist, recently interviewed Bernie Sanders, an American Senator currently challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democrat Party’s 2016 presidential nomination. Sanders is an old, extremely rich white man who describes himself as a “democratic socialist.” Check this out:

Ezra Klein: You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing …

Bernie Sanders: Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal.

Ezra Klein: Really?

Bernie Sanders: Of course. That’s a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. …

Ezra Klein: But it would make …

Bernie Sanders: Excuse me …

Ezra Klein: It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn’t it?

Bernie Sanders: It would make everybody in America poorer —you’re doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don’t think there’s any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don’t believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.

You know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today? If you’re a white high school graduate, it’s 33 percent, Hispanic 36 percent, African American 51 percent. You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids?

I think from a moral responsibility we’ve got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don’t do that by making people in this country even poorer.

There is much, much more stupidity here. The choice between Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders – who is supposedly the representative of a new Left – illustrates well why the American Right is currently the faction of Ideas. This is so stupid that I’m flabbergasted. I am literally flabbergasted.

There is no way this guy represents the future of the American Left. No. Way.

What would I ask the president in an interview?

Rick Weber Current Events, Politics , , , , , , , ,

My favorite podcast really hit the Big Time this week. Marc Maron interviewed President Obama last week and released the episode today. Marc Maron does a great job interviewing his guests but this episode is (naturally) pretty different. Obama mostly gives a lot of fluff, but he did make some interesting points on the role of political institutions in polarizing politics, as well as the role of [implicit] property rights in shaping political outcomes.

While I was waiting for this episode to be released I wondered what I would have done in Maron’s position. It’s tempting to say “just scream non-stop for an hour until the president agrees to be better.” But of course, that wouldn’t do anyone any good (although I think it would sell advertising on cable news). The question is then “how do I avoid throwing softballs, maintain a good conversation, and still nudge in the direction of change I’d like to see?”

One thing I think would be important were I in that position is to restrict the number of issues I bring up. The limits of human attention mean that we simply can’t handle more than a handful of things at once. Piling on all the issues and complexities of the world would only serve to reduce anyone’s ability to do anything positive. Another thing I think would be important is focusing on areas where we already mostly agree. Nobody over the age of 25 is likely to change their opinion on just about anything, so why waste your energy. That’s sunk ideology. And besides, even if you’re talking to a real piece of work, you have some obligation to do a good job of being a conversationalist, and focusing on differences is less likely to lead to a good conversation.

So what would I ask Obama in an interview?

  • What do you see as the path forward to immigration liberalization?
  • Will you please push for a bill that allows any law-abiding person to work in the United States without giving them access to the Welfare state? (I would word that differently if I were actually interviewing the president, but you get my drift…)
  • Would you please let Nassim Taleb explain his risk-management argument for climate change interventions? And can he please also be required to comment on his argument’s relationship to the Law of Unintended Consequences?
  • What is your favorite episode of South Park?

That third point should be at least a little bit controversial. I’m agnostic on whether there’s anything to be done about climate change (although I’m all for using it as an excuse to liberalize immigration for the world’s poor). I’m seriously skeptical of governments’ ability to do any good in that arena. I’d really rather not add fuel to the fire, but I think it’s important to raise the standards of debate, and I think Taleb’s argument* is the most sensible one. Not only that, it has wide applications that should push (benevolent/benign) politicians to support simpler rules and fewer interventions.

Oh yeah, and I’d ask him if he’s a secret gay muslim. (“Does your mom know you’re a secret gay muslim?” Anyone else remember playing that game?)

* Taleb’s argument goes roughly as follows: We face uncertainty, but there is a non-zero probability of a catastrophically bad outcome. Maximizing expected utility is not the appropriate risk-management strategy in this case. Our most urgent need (our highest marginal benefit course of action) is to eliminate the possibility of the catastrophic outcomes–and perhaps after that start thinking about maximizing expected utility. Essentially the argument is “don’t play Russian Roulette!” But an essential underpinning is that a probability distribution describing outcomes in complex systems often exhibits “wild randomness”. In contrast to the “mild randomness” of the normal distribution, in wildly random situations it’s difficult or impossible to even have an expected utility. The conclusion I would hope they would draw is that intervening in complex systems (and particularly creating new complexity through increased regulation and more tax loopholes) is best avoided, and particularly at the national level.

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Links , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
  1. Olivier Roy on Laicite as Ideology, the Myth of ‘National Identity’ and Racism in the French Republic
  2. Prague ’68 and the End of Time
  3. How To Spot And Critique Censorship Tropes In The Media’s Coverage Of Free Speech Controversies
  4. The Swamping that Wasn’t: The Diaspora Dynamics of the Puerto Rican Open Borders Experiment
  5. A Voice Still Heard: Irving Howe
  6. Borders and Bobbing Heads: Postcoloniality and Algeria’s Fiftieth Anniversary of Independence (so close, and yet so far…)
  7. The New Yorker on the recent scientific fraud, with its epicenter at my alma mater. (Delacroix remains startlingly relevant because of it.)

Mexican immigration and the Open Border: Mexicans Go Home and Mexican Kindness

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , , , ,

I just returned from a two-plus weeks stay in Mexico for the second time in less than five months. A couple of comments to add to my previous essay on Mexican underdevelopment. Plus, some unrelated political sociology comments.

In 2009, my friend and I published a long piece on Mexican emigration to the US in the libertarian periodical The Independent Review. (Nikiforov and I are both immigrants to the United States.) The article is entitled, “If Mexicans and Americans Could Cross the Border Freely (pdf),” and the full text is available through a link on this blog. In that article, we argued that we would all be better off if the southern American border were open to crossing by citizens of both countries with no expectation of a change in citizenship for either.

Well, the politicians did not listen to us then and their inattention led to the recent Republican fiasco whereas, President Obama used an executive order to more or less legalize five million illegal aliens, most of them Mexicans whereas, the Republican Senate called him out and ended up caving piteously. (Do you remember or have you already forgotten? Stupidly, Republicans tried to use the threat to de-fund Homeland Security at a time when aggravated terrorism news fill the airwaves.) As often happens, the Republican leadership confused the issue of constitutional principle with the substantive issue of limiting immigration. Myself, I would chose total firmness on the first and flexibility on the second, for fear of ending up the A.H., no matter what the outcome. The Republican leadership lost the constitutional arm wrestling and still ended up the A. H. Congratulations, guys!

Our article was long and intricate as is normal for a scholarly piece. Here are two highlights from that piece on which I wish to comment after my two recent stays in Mexico:

A We argued that Mexicans – who constitute the largest immigrant group to the US – should be given special treatment over other aliens. Several reasons for this: They are our close neighbors; they have been joined to us through NAFTA for now 23 years, insuring that our lives are tightly enmeshed economically. Then, because of a long series of past interactions some may find deplorable, Mexicans tend to make very good immigrants. Two reasons for this superiority, in turn. First, nearly everyone agree that Mexicans (in the US) tend to be very hard workers. Even their direct competitors in the work place tend to assent to this judgment. Second, sociologically, Mexicans make good immigrants because they are astonishingly familiar with our society, including with our institutions, before they set foot on American soil. In particular, Mexicans don’t find perplexing our fundamental constitutional principle of separation of religion and government. (That’s, as opposed to immigrants from other areas I could name.)

Nikiforov and I argued that Mexican citizens should enjoy unimpeded passage into the US, and the freedom to take any job for which they qualify, all without any path to American citizenship because, Mexicans already have a citizenship, that of Mexico. We point out that the European Union has used this model for more than twenty years and experienced few downsides. (The current ferment in Europe about and opposition to immigration does not involve neighbors from the EU, with one single exception I will discuss if someone asks me.)

B We proposed that many Americans would find it comfortable to spend their last years in Mexico because of a specific aspect of Mexican culture, to wit, contemporary Mexicans tend to be sweet in general and considerate to older people in particular.

This is what I found in twice two and half weeks in Puerto Vallarta in the pas five months that is relevant to these issues.

First, on the matter of Mexicans wanting to work in the US but not necessarily wishing to live there, we were much more right than we thought when we wrote about this. The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming that this would work. Everywhere I went in Puerto Vallarta , I bumped into people who knew some English that they had learned in the US, mostly as illegal immigrants here working at undesirable jobs. None of those people had been expelled, deported. All had returned to Mexico under their own power after saving some money. Thus, they had chosen to go home because it’s home, just as we predicted in the article.

One middle-aged man sticks to my mind, a taxi driver. He had stayed in the US (illegally) for several years. He had refrained from visiting with his family in Mexico for stretches of two or three years at a time to avoid being unable to return to the US. You might say that he was trapped in the US for longer periods than he wished because of our immigration laws. He finally decided to go back to Mexico and to his family for good after he had saved enough money to build a house for each of his three daughters. He specified that only one of the daughters was of marriageable age by the time he had the three houses standing. To my mind, this is an exemplary story of emigration/immigration. On my query, the man declared himself satisfied with his choice and with his life since his return from the US.

He was earning, driving a taxi, about 1/5 or less of what he earned in the US doing unpleasant work. He liked his job; he enjoyed returning to his family every evening; he liked the schools; paradoxically, he liked Mexican schools. (This is paradoxical because daily life in Puerto Vallarta, including in the schools is much more relaxed, much more genteel than what prevails in the US except in the most elite neighborhoods. In that part of Mexico, the bloody drug traffic-based blood-thirsty banditry is found strictly in the newspapers. It is not at all apparent in daily life. The quality of this daily life is at the antipodes of the impression of Mexico reaching us through the US media. Gangs are not in the school unlike in Salinas, California, for example.)

On point B, the attractiveness of Mexico to older Americans, I find that I tend to censor myself anytime I write about the topic because I fear appearing to be gushing like a teenage girl. During my last stay, of two and half weeks, I did not meet a single Mexican man, woman or child who was not completely pleasant except two. One was a taxi driver and he was morose but, that’s because he was drunk. (Nobody is perfect.) The second was a female merchant who acted displeased because I tried to bargain down an item in which I was interested. Another merchant – from whom I actually bought and whom I befriended – told me later that my bargaining had been reasonable and that the woman was undergoing a painful divorce. Mexico is not perfect and I may have looked like the woman’s soon-to-be ex-husband. You never know; these things happen.

Absolutely everywhere, my gray beard drew the kind of respectful behavior I don’t expect in the US. (And that I don’t deserve, to be honest!)

I can hear the snickering from here: “Of course, he stays in a tourist ghetto were everyone is occupationally obligated to appear nice.” No, I did not spend all my time there; I was forced to go out and I liked to go out. I found that everyone smiles a lot, including at each other, even among perfect strangers, that everybody ceded passage, that waiting lines are always orderly. Being a formerly great social scientist, I yielded, of course, to the temptation to conduct verbal experiment. Unfailingly, I made everyone I wanted to laugh at the drop of a hat. I mean small children, old ladies and adults of all sexes. (Yes, my Spanish is that good. Eat your heart out or learn to conjugate irregular verbs! Those are your choices. There are no others.)

Issue A and B are joined in the strangest way within my latest short stay in Mexico. Puerto Vallarta in the winter is swarming with Canadians. Their flight from the cold may have a great deal to do with this fact but it has a virtuous side-effect. I suspect many flew in to warm up and ended up warmly loving Mexicans for the reasons I depicted above. They beat Americans at it, in that city, at least. Oh, and the only sullen faces around Puerto Vallarta all belong to them. It became a game of pop-sociology for me: guessing from afar who was American and who was Canadian. It soon become embarrassingly easy: The Americans are the loud ones who say hello and who laugh easily. (Besides, I think the presence of Canadians explains much of the bad food there.)

After this last experience, I am very tempted to start a new racist fad: Speaking ill of and persecuting Canadians. It could be fun and they are not (yet) a federally protected minority.

From the Comments: Mass Migration and Open Borders

Brandon Christensen Comments , ,

Fears of mass migration are overblown. Each person who migrates must cover certain costs – one must abandon one’s social network, often must abandon property, must fund transportation and the transition.

For instance, when I crossed America from Pennsylvania to California, I had to pay for transportation expenses, the first month’s rent, a security deposit, and other expenses. Migration, whether within or between countries, tends to be self-limiting.

This is from papalibertarian. Check out his blog. I am still ambivalent about the whole open borders project. Of course I support freedom of movement for individuals (“labor”) to cross arbitrary borders, just as I do for goods (“capital”). Papa L’s comment only bolsters my support for open borders, but what about the people who don’t migrate?

What about the people who, for all the reasons Papa L describes and more, cannot migrate?

Federation or some other form of political union answers this question much better than mere open borders. Think about the old couple in California who would like to move to Mexico because of its lower cost of living. Under open borders, they can do it but they wouldn’t have many rights (tit-for-tat and all that). If that old couple migrated from California to Oregon they’d still have all their rights. Why shouldn’t they have these rights simply for migrating from California to Sonora? Federation would strengthen migrants’ rights whereas mere open borders would only grant migrants the ability to cross borders.

I suspect many open borders advocates are incrementalists, so I can’t fault them for not answering my silly questions, but I do hope that they come to see open borders as an incremental phase leading to a much more politically integrated world (as well as economically and socially integrated).

What’s wrong with migrating?

Michelangelo Landgrave Culture, Liberty, Religion , , , , , ,

This is a response to Irfan Khawaja over at the Policy of Truth blog.

I am of Jewish descent. I am not a Jew; I was baptized a Catholic as a baby and have no plan to convert in the foreseeable future. I am nonetheless of Jewish descent. My paternal grandfather is a rabbi and my cousins from that side of the family are Jews.

My family patriarch migrated from Germany to Mexico during the turn of the 20th century. He migrated long before the Holocaust, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was motivated to migrate to escape prosecution in Europe.

I also have slaves in my family tree. My great grand mother (Or was it great great? I forget.) was a black Cuban and my parents thought I might be born with dark skin. Blacks, for those who are keeping score at home, are not native to Cuba. Slavery in Cuba did not end till 1886. My great grandmother migrated to Mexico to escape prosecution in Cuba.

I myself migrated to the United States at the age of two. I might have been born in Mexico, but I was a libertario at birth. I loved Mexican food but that was not sufficient reason to stay in a country with such a poor conception of personal liberty. So I kissed my mother good bye, packed my bags, and crossed the border. I ended up settling down in Los Angeles, where I could have Mexican food and liberty.

What I am getting at here is that there is nothing wrong with migrating.

Had I stayed in Mexico I would likely be dead now. If a cartel member asked me to pay protection tax I would have refused and instead given him a speech on why we should legalize drugs. My town of birth, Morelia, is one of the capitals of the drug trade so you can imagine how long I would have lasted.

Had my great grandmother stayed in Cuba she would have to live with left over discrimination against slaves and their descendants. Worse still her descendants would be living in Castro’s Cuba!

My family patriarch might have survived the Holocaust if he had stayed in Europe. Or he might have been baked.

I agree with Irfan Khawaja that one should be assured of their personal safety and liberty regardless of any incidents of birth. I also agree with him that Benjamin Netanyahu, current Israeli Prime Minister, is wrong to urge European Jews to migrate to Israel. Israel is hardly a safer country for Jews than Europe.

Where I disagree is that I see nothing with migrating or urging others to migrate in pursuit of safety or liberty. There are times when one should hold strong and defend themselves. There are also times when one should realize that your neighbors are bigots and they won’t stop being bigots during your lifetime. If you can improve your quality of life by migrating, why not do so?

For any European Jews who might be reading this: forget about Israel and come to the United States! Specifically come over to my hometown, the San Fernando Valley.  The San Fernando Valley is a lovely community within Los Angeles. The original Karate Kid series, and countless other films, take place in the Valley. The film industry is actually located in the Valley, not Los Angeles itself. Best of all, the valley is filled with Jews. My undergraduate university, Cal State Northridge, has one of the largest concentration of Jews in America. Did I mention that there is plenty of Mexican food to go around?

I’ll be honest, there are some drawbacks to the valley. We are ruled over by the incompetent authorities in Los Angeles city hall and attempts to form our own city have been thwarted over the years. Real estate prices are also high. Despite this though I love the valley and welcome others to migrate there if their current home is undesirable.

How the Left Failed France’s Muslims: A Libertarian Response

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links, Politics , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Walden Bello, a sociologist in the Philippines, has a piece up over at the far-Left Nation titled “How the Left Failed France’s Muslims.” As with everything Leftist, it was packed with mostly nonsense coupled with a couple of really good nuggets of insight. The nonsense can be explained by the Leftist urge to attribute grand theories that don’t involve an understanding of supply-and-demand to problems dealing with oppression. Below is a good example of another weakness of the present-day Left:

Failure of the French Model of Assimilation

In the “French model,” according to analyst Francois Dubet, “the process of migration was supposed to follow three distinct phases leading to the making of ‘excellent French people.’ First, a phase of economic integration into sectors of activities reserved for migrants and characterized by brutal exploitation. Second, a phase of political participation through trade unions and political parties. Third, a phase of cultural assimilation and fusion into the national French entity, with the culture of origin being, over time, maintained solely in the private sphere.”

What the technocrats didn’t face up to was that by the 1990s the mechanism sustaining the model had broken down. In the grip of neoliberal policies, the capitalist economic system had lost the ability to generate the semi-skilled and unskilled jobs for youth that had served as the means of integration into the working class for earlier generations of migrants. Youth unemployment in many of the banlieues reached 40 percent, nearly twice the national average. And with the absence of stable employment, migrant youth lacked the base from which they could be incorporated into trade unions, political parties and cultural institutions.

Impeded by ideological blindness to inequality, political mishandling of the Muslim dress issue and technocratic failure to realize that neoliberalism had disrupted the economic ladder to integration, authorities increasingly used repressive measures to deal with the “migrant problem.” They policed the banlieues even more tightly, with an emphasis on controlling young males—and, most notably, they escalated deportations.

Notice how Bello doesn’t challenge the fact that the French government has a model for integrating human beings into a system it assumes is already in place? That’s the problem in Europe (and Japan/South Korea), but instead of acknowledging this – or even recognizing it as an issue – Leftists throw in terms like “capitalist economic system” and “neoliberalism” to explain away the failures of the French state’s central planning efforts. Naturally the real threat according to Bello is a Right-wing populism rather than the widespread, unchallenged belief (including by Bello) that government can assimilate one group of people with another in stages.

Just keep government off the backs of people, and they’ll associate in peace (peace is not the absence of conflict, of course, but only the ability to handle conflict through peaceful means, such as through elections or boycotts or marches or consumption). Does this make sense? Am I being naive here?

Ceding power to a central government in order to integrate immigrants into a society in a manner that is deemed acceptable to the planners is going to cause conflict rather than temper it. Planners are beholden to special interests (this is not a bug of democracy but a feature; ask me!), and they cannot possibly know how their plans are affecting the individuals being planned for. Immigrants, left largely to their own devices (which include things like communities, religion, and creativity), are beholden to their own interests (again, which include things like communities, religion, and creativity). Which way sounds less likely to cause resentment all around? Again, am I being naive here? Am I knocking down a straw man? Is this really how European governments approach immigration and assimilation? Is this really how the US approaches immigration and assimilation? These are genuine questions.

An even bigger question remains, of course: how can Europe better assimilate immigrants? Open borders, discussed here at NOL in some detail (perhaps better than most places on the web), is one option, but in order for open borders to work you need political cooperation, and political cooperation means more than just cooperation on matters that interest libertarian economists. Thus, I argue for federation instead of plain ol’ open borders. Another option would be to have governments in Europe cease planning the lives of immigrants for them. This option is a very viable short-term policy that probably does not get the attention it deserves because Leftists are currently unable to see the forest for the trees. Exposing neoliberalism and capitalism is, arguably, more important than petty day-to-day politics after all.

Local Citizenship

Michelangelo Landgrave Liberty , , , , , , , , ,

In his latest blog over in Openborders.info, my usual stamping grounds, Nathan Smith discusses the need for citizenship to be voluntary. I agree with Nathan Smith wholeheartedly here. What value is citizenship if a man is forced to have it? A fellow citizen is someone you should be willing to share a meal with during the bests of time. A fellow citizen is someone you should be willing to trust in the trenches during times of war. A meal is never pleasant when your company is forced to be there, and I for one wouldn’t want to fight alongside an unwilling ally.

If citizenship is to be voluntary however the offer of citizenship should also be voluntary.  That is to say that a polity should be able to decide who it wishes to offer citizenship to. United States immigration law currently adds new citizens without much consultation to current citizens on whether they wish to accept newcomers. This is a plain violation of the right to free association.

It is for this reason that I disagree on granting US citizenship to its current illegal alien population. It is true that on occasion a majority of the US public favors granting a pathway to citizenship to the illegal alien population, but even during the best of times a substantial portion are opposed to it. I cannot see a justification to force someone to associate with another in political union when alternatives exist. To be fair, I also oppose granting citizenship to newborn babies regardless of whether their parents are recent Pakistani migrants or from Nebraska.

I favor instead replacing national citizenship in the United States with local citizenship. Cities are small enough that disgruntled minorities can easily move to somewhere more favorable to their views. City formation is also fluid enough that they can be broken up much more easily than their larger counterparts.

By no means is my proposal to radically change citizenship. The concept of citizenship was born in the Greek polis, and carried into the modern era through the Italian city-states and, to a lesser extent, the Swiss cantons and the Hanseatic League cities. Movement towards local citizenship would be the return to tradition, not a departure from it.

It was only after the French Revolution that we saw the rise of national citizenship as an idea in the western world. Arguably in the United States local citizenship was important up till the passage of the 14th amendment, which allowed the federal government to effectively nationalize citizenship.

We can already see early signs of local citizenship regaining popularity. In my home city of Los Angeles local citizenship is offered to residents who can prove they have a ‘stake’ in the future of the city. Stakeholder status is independent of migrant status and allows one to both vote and run in local elections. Stakeholder status can be achieved by showing that one lives, works, or owns property in Los Angeles.

Article 9, Section 906 of the Los Angeles City Charter readers:

“(2) neighborhood council membership will be open to everyone who lives, works or owns property in the area (stakeholders);”

In New York State there is a proposed bill, ‘The New York is Home Act’, that would grant New York state citizenship to those who have paid state taxes, have no substantial criminal record, and lived in the state for a certain number of years. This proposal is independent of one’s federal migration status.

The European Union also offers a model on how local citizenship can exist in union with federal citizenship. I favor this model the least as the EU regulates the obligations of member states towards federal citizens so heavily that the difference between local citizenships are becoming increasingly marginal. I fear that the ultimate outcome will be that, as in the United States, federal citizenship in Europe will simply become national citizenship.

My ideal world is composed of three pillars (1) local citizenship, (2) open borders, and (3) a common market. Cities could elect who they wish to grant the privilege of being involved in political life, and individuals themselves would be free to decide which city, if any, they would wish to join. There would still be those who felt they were being forced to politically associate but, an open borders regime coupled with fluid city formation and a common market, should allow this number to be minimized.

In his latest blog post on world government Brandon Christensen implicitly discusses world citizenship. I have previously aired my disagreement with Christensen on the issue of world government, but feel obliged to point out that the matter of citizenship is also one of the areas that leave me skeptical of world government. Namely my concerns are that:

(1) World citizenship would force all of humanity to associate politically, even if we rather not.

(2) World citizenship would create free rider problems among political actors. Why should one forgo the costs of becoming informed on political issues if their marginal effect on world issues is close to nill? Meanwhile larger governments, even if initially federal in nature, have a nasty tendency to increasingly take over local affairs. We need only look at the progression of transportation and education in the United States from being local affairs to federal ones.

On my to do list is to explore what the optimal amount of citizens is and a more detailed response to Christensen on the issue of world government. On the off chance that I should die before I can write the latter response, let me state for the record that I am actually quite supportive of international agreements such as NAFTA that bring us closer to a common market. I am even in favor of formalizing the loose federation that composes the western world. Where I stray is that I prefer an international order where powers like the Chinese and Russian spheres are strong enough to compete with the west.

P.P.S. I offer apologies if I drop off here and there. I lurk the consortium daily, and if I don’t reply it is because I’ve not yet mastered time management as well as others.

What does the Obama administration hope to accomplish?

Michelangelo Landgrave Current Events, Law, Politics , , , , , ,

It is widely believed that the Obama administration will extend deferred action to include a significant portion of the United States illegal alien population following Labor Day. Some analysts are estimating that as many as five million illegal aliens will be provided some form of amnesty. I am skeptical this is the case, and believe it is more likely we will see smaller actions taken. The executive branch has a high degree of freedom when it comes to applying immigration law, but there are limits. The President’s actions thus far have been made with the goal of getting Congress to pass immigration reform, and any future actions are likely to follow that trend.

Let us consider for example the announcement of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). DACA has provided temporary relief for half a million migrants in the form of work permits and legal presence. Perhaps more importantly it also strengthened a constituency that has a strong stake in seeing immigration reform passed by Congress. A cynic is tempted to say that the ultimate purpose of DACA was to create several thousand lobbyists.

Earlier this year the Obama administration also mused with the idea of extending the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program to include those who had received DACA relief. The MAVNI program allows those who enter it an opportunity to earn US citizenship by serving in vital military roles. The actual perquisites to join the MAVNI program are high and it is doubtful more than a handful of DACA recipients will ever earn citizenship in this manner. As it is clear that this program is of little practical use, why did the administration bother with it at all? I suspect it was because it was hoping to win over support for immigration reform from military constituencies.

The administration has also proposed allowing spouses of certain legal migrants to acquire work authorization. Here too the idea is better in principle than actual practice, as only spouses of H-1B visa holders already in the process of gaining permanent residency are eligible. It is clear that the purpose of this proposal had more to do with gaining support among skilled migrants and their employers than it was about actually providing relief.

Opponents of increased immigration may consider the above actions to be instances of executive abuse, but they are all minor compared to what the Obama administration could do.

The Obama administration could, for example, lower the threshold necessary for a waiver of inadmissibility to be approved. A significant portion of the illegal alien population would be eligible to readjust their legal status either through their family connections to US citizens or by employer sponsorship, but they are barred from doing so because they have accrued unlawful presence. A waiver of inadmissibility is an existing process that pardons said unlawful presence, and it may suffice for the Obama administration to instruct US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to be more generous when it decides whether to grant the waiver. Allowing illegal aliens to attain permanent residency and citizenship via this method would be a significant departure from past executive actions by providing long term relief.

The Obama administration has previously altered how the waiver of inadmissibility is granted by allowing it to be filed inside the United States instead of requiring applicants to do so in a consulate abroad. I am therefore skeptical that the administration is not aware of how relatively easy it would be to use the existing system to grant massive relief to the illegal alien population.

Furthermore I doubt the administration wishes to grant deferred action for a large portion of the illegal alien population as it may then find a decreased willingness to include a pathway to citizenship as a perquisite for immigration reform. Prior to DACA’s announcement there was broad support for passing a version of the Dream Act, but said support was lost as many saw DACA as being a de facto Dream Act. Few people know or care about the marginal differences between the two and many have perceived DACA as being sufficient. A large expansion of deferred action for the illegal alien population may, in the short term, provide them relief at the expense of making others perceive that there is no need for further action to help them. It may also lead to the current pro-immigration reform coalition to break apart and make it more difficult to increase the number of legal immigrants.

Liberalization of immigration law paradoxically makes it more difficult to find support for fully open borders. How much support would there be for open borders if all one had to do to legally enter a given country was sing the national anthem and pay for a ten dollar entrance visa? I suspect under such loose regulations the desire for open borders would be restricted to a handful of individuals interested in it on philosophical grounds.

The Obama administration cannot create any new pathways to citizenship for the United States’ illegal alien population. Nor can it create new pathways for legal immigration. It can however provide relief for the illegal alien population and ease the process for legal immigration. I doubt it will though, as its goal is to get Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform with as few as possible executive orders.

Thoughts on climate change

Rick Weber Current Events, Economics, Politics , , , , , , , , , ,

Last week I heard a sermon on climate change (no, it was an actual sermon). I’m roughly agnostic on the existence and degree of climate change, but I err on the side of assuming it is a large problem of externalities with no obvious property rights solution and will have costs. And I think that under those assumptions there is an important moral element to it. With that in mind, below are some of my thoughts on the weak points of the sermon:

1) Authority is only a starting point; we cannot defer ultimate responsibility to authority. If an expert or someone I trust tells me something about X, and I don’t have any prior knowledge about X, then I believe them. In the case of global warming there are two basic sorts of information you will get from information: a) diagnosis (temperatures could rise X degrees in the coming century), and b) prescription.

The climatology involved in a) is well above my pay grade, and so rather than undergo the costs of informing myself on the existence or importance of climate change, I just figure the truth is somewhere in the middle of what reasonably informed people say and instead focus my effort on my areas of comparative advantage. Now the actions in b) are typically about reducing waste and that’s well within the realm of economic thinking, so I’ll comment on that!

1b) Blindly deferring to authority to assuage your guilt is wrong and bad. Someone says you should drive an electric care to save the environment? Don’t do it before thinking through the matter, this is a big decision for most people. Where’s the energy coming from to power that car? (Coal. That is burned hundreds of miles away from your car… that’s like having a car with a hundred mile long drive shaft.) How much energy and material does it take to make the car? (Hint: look at prices.)

2) It’s called climate change, not climate universal and uniform worsening. If climate change means a warmer climate for Canada and Russia, that will come with extended growing seasons and savings on winter heating costs. Burma? It’s probably going to suffer a lot. Climate change will surely have the biggest impact on the poorest people in the world, and this is where I see the real moral issue because…

3) We can respond to climate change in a way to reduce suffering. Specifically, we can open borders. First off, that would increase human well being, with an enormous benefit to the world’s poorest people. Second, the effects of climate change won’t harm the poor as much as they could. Is climate change still a bad thing if we do this? Sure, but if a building is burning, why not help people get out?

Loose ends:

Should I recycle everything? Only if it will actually help. Recycled aluminum is chemically identical to virgin aluminum and uses fewer resources to produce (which is why it’s cheaper!). Recycling paper creates a lower quality product, uses a lot of energy and creates pollution.

Paper bags are brown, that’s good, right? Plastic bags are almost ethereal; they use a fraction of the material per unit of carrying capacity resulting in big savings. Yes, there are offsetting costs to using plastic, but it isn’t as simple as “this brown, it must be natural and therefore good!” And while we’re on the topic, brown M&Ms are stupid. There’s a layer of white sugar between that brown outer layer and the actually brown chocolate. Brown M&Ms are as unnatural as any of the other colors.

Should I buy local? Maybe if you live in California, but not if you live in Massachusetts. The biggest environmental impact of food is growing it; plowing fields, planting, watering (outside where the water could just evaporate!), and harvesting use a lot more energy than transportation. So if you live in a place with poor growing conditions, then buying local only does more harm. That said, fresh food tastes better, so by all means pay the cost if you value the flavor, just don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re reducing energy usage by doing so.

Consider opportunity cost and present value! So you’ve got a solar panel and now electricity is free for the next 20-30 years! Or you’ve installed new modern insulation for your home. Or you bought a car that costs less to run (and you’ve promised not to increase your usage). But at what cost? If your solar panel used 40 years worth of energy to build and install, then you’ve done more harm than good. And you’ve done that harm upfront. Even if one of these investments has a positive return (it saves more resources than it uses), you should still consider whether it’s a good investment. We don’t have unlimited resources, and that means that if you spend $10,000 on insulation that will give you a 0.4% ROI then you’ve given up the chance to invest that money into something that will generate more good.

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Links , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is the 69th installment of ‘Around the Web’. Giggity!

  1. guaranteed income vs. open borders; Economist Kevin Grier weighs the options
  2. How poverty taxes the brain; A sexy-sounding female gives us the low-down
  3. The origins of Northwest European ‘guilt culture’; Evolutionary anthropologists are so, soooo cute
  4. The ‘thoughtful libertarian’ subreddit; Finally!
  5. Is Christmas efficient? Only an economist (Tyler Cowen) could ask such a thing
  6. God, Hayek and the Conceit of Reason; Concise essay by Jonathan Neumann in Standpoint
  7. Milton Friedman’s 1997 musings on a common currency in the European Union: The Euro: From monetary policy to political disunity

What was the world’s reaction to Kristallnacht?

Brandon Christensen History , , , , , , , , ,

Der Spiegel has a fascinating article on the reaction of European diplomats to Kristallnacht. Among the gems:

The diplomats almost unanimously condemned the murders and acts of violence and destructions […] Many diplomatic missions were already in contact with victims because men from the SS and the SA, Nazi Party officials and members of the Hitler Youth were also harassing foreign Jews who lived in Germany […] Although there was some looting, many diplomats, like Finnish representative Aarne Wuorimaa, reported on “withering criticism” from members of the public. According to Wuorimaa, “As a German, I am ashamed” was a “remark that was heard very frequently.” However, the reports generally do not delve into whether the critics fundamentally rejected the disenfranchisement of the Jews in general or just the Nazis’ brutal methods.

Again, read the whole article. It’s absolutely fascinating. One thing the article just barely touches on, but highlights well (if you know what to look for) is what foreign governments didn’t do. Der Spiegel, a center-Left publication, highlights the lack of sanctions and other diplomatic posturing, but this is, in true center-Left fashion, complete garbage. If you read the article closely you can see what the world should have done. Indeed, you can see what the world should have been doing all along. It is a testament to not only libertarianism’s moral clarity but also the creed’s humility. Observe:

Most of all, however, the borders of almost all countries remained largely closed for the roughly 400,000 Jewish Germans.

This is an important fact. Der Spiegel implicitly recognizes it, too, but the article fails to elaborate any further upon it, as if the benefits of open borders and their ability to ward off tyranny speaks for itself. The lack of open borders, of course, coincides nicely with the policies of Franklin D Roosevelt and his fellow fascists. Closing off the borders to immigration and arbitrary numbers of goods and services is a cookie cutter example of authoritarianism.

This brings me to my Tuesday morning rant: I can’t stand the fact that libertarians are proud of their ignorance in regards to what they read. I can’t count the number of times a libertarian has disparaged a center-Left outfit (to name one example) because he doesn’t agree with it. Libertarians should be reading everything and looking for the libertarianism inherent in it. When the libertarianism is found, point it out. If it cannot be found, point out the inherent authoritarianism in it (Dr Gibson always provides excellent examples in this regard). But do not avoid reading it simply because you do not agree with it. Ignorance, after all, is no strength.

Hermanos*

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , , , , , ,

This is a story about Mexicans but before I get to the topic, I need to make small political commentaries.

Most of the time, I abstain from describing myself as a libertarian for several reasons. One is the current and recent libertarian leadership that I can’t stomach. Another, possibly more durable set of reasons for my reluctance is that I am keenly aware of the contradictions between some of my positions and because some of my positions are incompatible with fundamental libertarianism. Incidentally, I am not the only libertarian (small “l”) with such contradictions in his heart; I just have the great merit of being aware of the fact. (If I say so myself.)

One of my un-libertarian positions consists in repeating without hesitation that every national society has a moral right to control its borders. We can’t just have different kinds of people bringing unchecked into this society their habitual laziness, for example, or their propensity to disorder, and worse, their concept of order, or again, their ethical idea of the proper relationship between religion and government. (Feel free to put national names and other stickers on each of these four categories.) The fact that I am an immigrant does not make me more mindlessly “tolerant” on such issues. On the contrary, I believe I am better able than most native-born Americans (or than all of them) to judge that those who live in this society, such as it is, are exceptionally lucky. Not that it’s that hard to figure out, at any rate. Poor people from everywhere want to move here but also many prosperous people from prosperous countries. Millions have voted with their feet. Even more millions are trying to, many at great cost to their safety.

Among the latter, of course, are many Mexican nationals. I have argued elsewhere (pdf), in the Independent Review, that the Mexicans should be given special treatment by American immigration laws. With my co-author, fellow immigrant Sergey Nikiforov, I have argued that the key to an overall solution to the problem posed by Mexican illegal immigration specifically lies in the separation of freedom of movement from citizenship. This, for both Mexicans and Americans. I also argued, in that article, that Mexicans, our next door neighbors, should receive special treatment, privileged treatment, treatment over and better than that we extend to other foreigners. And no, it is not the case that “foreign” is a dirty word. And, as some wit remarked years ago, about the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs, and I wish it had been me: “If they want to have affairs, they can damn well have them at home!”

Not much more than a couple of years after our article was researched and prepared, we learn that net illegal Mexican immigration into this country probably approximates zero. (That’s illegal Mexicans coming in minus illegal Mexicans leaving the US.) The current worldwide and American economic crisis is of course a sufficient explanation for both changes, for the decrease in comings and for the increase in goings of Mexican illegals. Incidentally, the fact that illegals are leaving in large numbers pretty much gives the lie to the idea, lamentably common in conservative circles, that they cross the border mostly to take advantage of our social services. In this country recently, jobs have dried up while social services have expanded but Mexican illegals are still leaving. Ergo, they were not here for social services but for jobs. As Nikiforov and I argued all along, they come to work. Since they are mostly young, while they are in the US, many also commit crimes, as the young tend to do everywhere, and many mate and have children, as young adults do everywhere. All this criminal activity and all this productive mating places a burden on social services of course. It’s a normal burden, not the parasitic blood-sucking in some conservatives’ nightmares. If all works well, some of those Mexican illegals, or many, stay here, they pay taxes here for a long time and they support my adult children later with their Social Security contributions.

Notwithstanding the sufficiency of the economic crisis explanation, there is an alternative explanation to the quick reduction in the in- flows of Mexican nationals across our southern border. Or rather, there are two explanations that combine to produce this decrease, aside from, independent of, the American economic crisis. First, Mexican fertility rates have declined precipitously to the point that they now approximate American rates. On the average, Mexicans have only slightly more children than do Americans and the trend is downward. Secondly, after many years of severe economic trouble, Mexico is finally achieving the kind of economic growth that is considered normal at its moderate level of development. The latter is of course systematically higher than American economic growth. After a severe contraction in 2009, Mexico achieved a mean GDP growth of 4.2 for the past three years, 2012 included, against 2.2 for the US.

Now, I want to evoke a subjective side of Mexican immigration. Namely, I want to assert that Mexicans make very good immigrants to this country (This, even if like most immigrants in the past, they tend to vote Democratic at first.) And then, I make the specific claim that Mexicans, illegals as well as legal immigrants, contribute a high degree of graciousness to American culture, a culture produced largely by the grandchildren of the English, Germans, Irish, Poles, and Slovaks. (See what I mean?)

Here are some reminders about Mexicans in the US:

Mexicans work hard. Everyone agrees on this even those who suffer most from their presence as job competitors. Unlike some European immigrants for example, they don’t ask for directions to the welfare office a couple of days after they arrive. They come from a work-oriented culture, like American culture used to be many years ago.

Very poor Mexicans are more socially acceptable, less socially disruptive than equally poor native-born Americans. There are Mexican “homeless” encampments on my river. You never hear about them. You would have to know they are there. You can’t say the same of Anglo homeless squatters in Santa Cruz. (Some kill people, not many, just some.)

Mexican immigrants arrive here well informed about American institutions, about American culture, about American habits.

Mexicans immigrants come from a country rent and terrorized by the blowback of our war on drugs. Yet, they have the good grace never to mention here that we are nearly entirely responsible for the horrors their country has to suffer on account of our stupid policies. I mean, of course, that if the US announced the legalization of all drugs, the massacres, the beheadings, the cutting off of hands and feet would stop in Mexico within weeks or days. I am simply assuming that making the supply of a product in high demand illegal is certain to make the product prodigiously profitable. Hence the bloody turf wars among Mexican suppliers. Legalize or ignore drugs; let the price of marijuana drop to where it belongs, somewhere between the prices of tobacco and of carrots. The massacre in Mexico will stop.

Mexicans are also courteous and endlessly gracious, in my considerable and lengthy experience. Below are three illustrations.

There is an old-style diner I frequent about once a week for breakfast. (I have immortalized it in a story: “Radio Free Santa Cruz” published in le libertarian periodical Liberty.) I go there often, usually thrown out of bed by the insomnia that plagues the aged who feel guilty for old but good reasons they may not want to go into publicly lest they be charged with bragging. The same crew of two Mexicans is always in the kitchen. It’s an open kitchen. You can see them and you can hear everything they say. No matter how early I get there, I find these two guys guffawing and joking loudly. That’s often in the middle of breakfast rush-hour. This is worth commenting on because, the world over, cooks are given a pass for being assholes at the height of their rush-hour. The rule does not apply to Mexican cooks. If you don’t believe me lend an ear next time you are in a cheap restaurant. In California, that’s an easy study because all cooks in such restaurants are Mexicans, have been for ten years or more. (Some are legal immigrants!)

One slow day, my wife and I enter a small Mexican-owned shop on the edge of town. My wife is from India. She is looking for tropical fruit that are still uncommon in mainstream grocery stores, in the years right after the signing of NAFTA. Her attention gets drawn to a cinenovela being played on a TV set hanging from the shop ceiling. Observing that she is craning her neck, the young man behind the counter brings a box for her to stand on. His buddy who has been hanging out in the shop with him approaches and offers my wife his hand to help her climb on the box. The guy has dark skin and very short hair. He appears to be somewhat over twenty-five. Intricate tattoos sally forth from the neck opening of his shirt and climb all over his neck in thick masses and then curl into the external faces of both his ears. There is only one place in the world where you can afford the time and the expense of such dense tattoo-art: prison. The thought imposes itself on me inexorably: This young Mexican jailbird is much better bred than all the white middle-class young of the same age we know. Of course, I will be accused by the pedantly naïve of “generalizing.” Not so; as soon as you open your eyes a little, you will observe that, in California, people with Spanish last names and skin a shade darker than average are systematically more polite than the rest of the population. As I write this, I am trying to gather some recollection of one rude Mexican or child of Mexicans I have met. I come up empty.

Now, in connection with the next story I have to say something quick and historical about myself: I was born in Paris, France. When I was two, the soldiers who marched down the Champs-Elysees were not French. How do I know? The French are incapable of orderly goose-stepping.

There is a woman in her late twenties who works as a cashier in a pan dulce bakery I patronize every so often. She has grown on me. The reason is that early in our fleeting relationship, she discovered that I was a special kind of Anglo, one who actually understands Spanish and who actually speaks reasonably well. This is a digression: California is full of people who have taken multiple vacations in Mexico and who brought back fluency in how to say, “Two more beers, please,” and, “Where is the restroom?” They are gringos who embarrass the local Mexicans who don’t know how to let them know politely that their’s, the Mexicans’ English, is much more serviceable than their’s, the gringos’ Spanish, and that therefore they, the Anglos, should keep their primitive Spanish where it belongs, in their back-pockets, for a dire emergency.

So, anyway, soon after discovering my comparative fluency (comparative!) the young cashier began addressing me casually as “tú.” This flatters me, of course, because California Mexicans, as is the wont of immigrants in many places, mark their belongingness with each other through the use of a familiar form of address. Mexicans who would go on calling each other, “Seňor” and “Seňora” in Vera Cruz or in Guadalajara all their lives, instantly begin using the “tú” when they live in a sea of gringos. The young woman does me honor whenever she returns change addressing me the same way, as if I were one of her affectionate uncles, for instance. And yes, I understand that she may be simply engaging in a commercially valid practice. All the same, she does not call “tú” others who look like me.

And, it’s time to say that my grand-daughter often accompanies me to the pan dulce shop. It’s true that her looks may have facilitated this process of instant assimilation. I don’t want to tell here this long and interesting sub-story but the child, three at the time, is no more related to me by blood than say, a gopher. Instead, she is very pretty (I may brag since we are not genetic kin) in a bronzed sort of way that might well look Mexican to a Mexican eye. At any rate, I often enter the pan dulce shop with the child in tow. She is smart, talkative and loud, like Grandpa, and she wins hearts everywhere she goes (also like…). So, anyway, one day, I show up at the shop without that beautiful child.

“And where is the little one?” asks the young cashier.

“Oh,” I say, “she is with her Mom.”

“I see,” retorts the cashier, “she is with her mother one week and with you the other week.”

“No, no,” I exclaim, “she is not my daughter, she is my grand-daughter!”

The young woman raises her head, looks at me intently. I swear, disappointment in me is written all over her face.

What’s not to like?

* brothers