(FB 1548706830 Timestamp)
By Eli Harman
I was just reminded of an old argument of Bryan Caplan’s.
One argument he makes for open borders involves a hypothetical. Say one of us went to Haiti, on an aid mission or something. When they were done and ready to come back, we tell them “no, you can’t come back. You have to stay in Haiti.” That would be a dick thing to do to one of our own, argues Bryan Kaplan, and therefore it’s a dick thing to do to Haitians too.
The difference, of course. Is that in the one case, we are inflicting the shittiness of Haiti on one of our own, by denying their request to return. While in the other case, we are PREVENTING Haitians (who are not our ingroup) from inflicting the shittiness of Haiti on ALL of our own, by denying their request to enter. So they are not in any way, shape, or form, equivalent cases.
This is an example of casuistry (sometimes known as “pilpul”) improperly reasoning from a specific case to a general rule, in this case a bad rule that accomplishes parasitic and destructive ends desired by Bryan Caplan for malicious reasons (Bryan Caplan is by his own admission, scared of majorities and reflexively desires to undermine and attack them. He is a majorityphobe. But Bryan Caplan’s insecurities and ethnic fragility inpose no obligations on us to cater to them.) Casuistry (“Pilpul”) is the cornerstone of their arts of deception and their parasitic group evolutionary strategies.