CAPLAN FAILS TO JUSTIFY OPEN IMMIGRATION (*HIGHLY UN-PC PAINFUL TRUTH WARNING*)

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/06/six_theses_on_e.htmlBRYAN CAPLAN FAILS TO JUSTIFY OPEN IMMIGRATION

(*HIGHLY UN-PC PAINFUL TRUTH WARNING*)

1) Do a group of people have the right to exclusion? To deny trade, habitation, and spatial access, to others based upon some property of the others’ group?

Moral norms, traditions, and even differences in language and ability impose a cost on groups. Morals are largely expressions of property rights, and differences in morals are expressions of conflicting property rights. Norms are a form of shareholder property in themselves. So differences in norms impose costs on both sides and in many cases constitute attempts at fraud and theft.

For example, I regularly write about the difference between Bazaar Ethics and Warrior Ethics, and how externalities and implied warranty are a product of high trust warrior ethics and not a property of low trust Bazaar Ethics. And a high trust society is very rare, and very complicated to build. It’s also very productive and innovative. But it requires that sellers exhibit symmetrical transparency, be constrained from imposing external costs and required to provide limited warranty.

While I’m a pretty big fan of Brian’s I just see this post on immigration as yet another attempt to express jewish cultural bias as a truth or moral principle when it’s just a byproduct of the fact that jews are a diasporic people with a small population and the memes, morals and narratives of a diasporic people that are unable to hold land, when land holding is necessary for the establishment of norms and formal institutions, and land holding is necessary in order to enforce the right of exclusion, in order to reduce the costs of cooperation.

So no, immigration poses high costs on host countries and peoples where there is a high trust moral code including a requirement for symmetric honesty, warranty, and a prohibition on external involuntary transfers, a nuclear family, with a homogenous language.

I realize that this is a painful truth. But it is a truth none the less.

2) Secondly, norms are not governed as brian suggests by extreme examples. This is just faulty logic in the extreme. In fact, using extreme conditions as examples of norms is the source of most false criticism of moral statements using moral dilemmas – which turns morality into a victorian parlor game.

I agree with Brian on a lot of things. But on this topic both his argument and it’s justification are nonsense. People have the right of excluding in both personal and political spheres. They must have it. They demonstrate it. And it’s the only way to force people to adopt high-trust norms.