A Libertarian Argument For Strong Border Policy
The open border policy that many libertarians support continues to baffle me. Do they not understand the implications of such a policy in today’s political environment? Do they not understand that we are in an era where some people vote money out of others’ pocketbooks? Do they not understand that in a social welfare system, the more poor people, the greater the tax burden on everyone else? Do they not understand that the lower per capita income is the larger the welfare state will grow? And that the larger the welfare state grows, the harder upward mobility will become? Yes I agree that a strong border policy isn’t necessarily a libertarian position. But are you so wedded to principle that you will cling to it as you openly invite and foster the growth of the Nanny State?
Positions such as these are one of the reasons I’ve chosen to call myself a classical liberal. To me the term not only implies the dedication to life, liberty, and property that we share with libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, but also the knowledge that while not good, a state is necessary. Laws are necessary. And that sometimes compromises must be made to better protect those rights we hold so dear.
I’ll concede that if we lived under a perfect libertarian system, if our government still resembled that envisioned by the framers, that there would be less need for a closed border (but there would still be a need for immigration control). But such is not the case, and in this world even stronger border controls than a libertarian government would call for are necessary. And as such, we must recognize that in this less-than-ideal current form of government, sometimes counterintuitive positions must be taken. This was the basis for my essay on Liberty in a Statist World.
So lets go back to the basics. We aren’t anarcho-capitalists. Therefore we all acknowledge that the state does have a legitimate role in society. I like Chris’ list the best. It’s more or less what I ascribe to as well. All of us are going to agree with most of that list, so let’s leave minor quibbles aside. Most of what a state should do is distributed equably among the people. Roads, the court system, etc. The state is funded through taxation. Obviously, this state needs borders. A line of demarcation in which services are paid for and rendered. For this state to be just, it goes without saying that the zone of taxation and the zone of services must be perfectly overlapping. There are basically two competing forms of taxation: income and consumption taxes. Currently we operate under an unconstitutional income tax system. Most of us favor a consumption tax. But that has its own problems. In the situation like we have, where a sizeable proportion of a certain immigrant population’s paychecks are sent out of the state, that means that this money is exempt from taxation. I feel it’s a relatively minor foible, and at any rate, it isn’t the system we operate under so let’s move on.
Any income tax that isn’t a flat fee is by its nature progressive. Whether it’s a flat percentage or a ridiculously progressive rate (like the system we currently have in place), the more you earn, the more you pay. Yet under a libertarian government, you don’t necessarily receive more in government services. Rather than worry about how fair such a system is, let’s move on to the basic realities of a government so funded. Government spends roughly the same amount of money on each person, yet it receives more from some, less from others. An influx of people on the lower end of the scale means that the per capita revenue and thus per capita expenditure drops considerably. A general raise on taxation rates would thus become necessary to maintain the same level of government service. And under a welfare state as the United States is (43.5% of government expenditure goes to social welfare), the more you make, the more you pay, yet the less you receive. Since government can’t tax those who receive welfare and medicaid benefits, increases in taxation would be borne fully by a relatively small proportion of the population. I developed this idea more fully, with better examples in The Economics of Illegal Immigration.
Moving on from an economic perspective, lets turn to equality. Being fully committed to the idea of negative rights, we are the only political ideologies fully wedded to the idea of equality. But in this day, equality of opportunity has been replaced with the idea of equality of outcome. Such is the political climate, like it or not. And it will only become worse. Whether it’s college admissions and courses being less dependent on test scores and more on waffling ‘qualitative’ factors, or how many black actors there are in sitcoms, sometime before I was born it was decided that equality can only be measured through proportional representation in every part of the human condition.
We are importing a population that is by and large uneducated. That doesn’t speak English. And where many show no desire to. Into this home environment children will be born. And more children per family than their native counterparts. Will these children do as well economically and academically as the native population? Doubtful. And so the hue and cry of ‘racism’ and ‘prejudice’ will be raised. A generation from now Sharptons and Jacksons with latinized names will rise up, speaking to cultural identity that their only path to ‘freedom’ lies in increased governmentally-sanctioned privilege. Privilege that will come at the expense of freedom and opportunity for all other races. And in this political climate, they will be all too successful.
Let us not forget that when the modern left redefined rights as privilege, stealing from us the title ‘liberal’, the very word that defines us, they changed the nature of American politics. They changed our nation from one that defended our inalienable rights to a tool by which one party gains advantage over another. They created a political machine in which people vote to take away the rights of others to further their own desires.
Even in a minarchist country, where there would be no welfare state, no juggernaut of privilege encroaching upon our very liberty, we must yield to basic economics. A state can only be maintained so long as the proportion of people who pay less than the average taxation amount are balanced by those who pay more. Or even those most minimal of government services we believe necessary will find themselves compromised.
This is a world in which benevolent dictatorship does not work. This is a world in which democracy is our best tool. A world where documents as strongly worded as the constitution find themselves to be as fragile and brittle as the parchment they’re written on. The greatest threat to our liberty is an oppressive majority. And it is that which you would usher in with your open borders.
For the nth time I ask the simple question: if the tax structure works in the manner that you suggest, and if the unwashed lazy majority are in charge, why have we spent the last 3 decades in an economic condition in which the gap between rich and poor is growing? Why has the top 20% of all Americans gained wealth at a rate that far exceeds the rate of economic growth generally and even further exceeds the growth of wealth for the rest of us? If the economy works as you and other conservatives believe I do not think that this would or could be the case.
There is a leak in the boat somewhere…
Comment by intellectimpure — July 26, 2006 @ 5:29 am
There’s no causal link between the nature of a progressive tax system and what you just said. None at all. In a progressive tax system where government expenditure is spread equitably, everything I said holds true.
I didn’t argue anything about wealth creation and the tax system, merely that if some pay more than others, than if those who pay less grow in size, there’s less to go around per head. Basic math.
What happens when you add back in all the social services people get? What happens to the wealth gap when you include subsidies on everything from college education to food to medical care? If you want to talk about ‘income gaps’ and be honest about it, you have to factor all that in as well. As an example, I was ineligible for college grants because my parents made too much money. Many of my friends on the other hand got 5, 10, 15, even 20,000 dollars a year in college grants (free money not loans). Add that onto their household income, and that gap starts to shrink a bit doesn’t it?
Comment by IndianCowboy — July 26, 2006 @ 5:52 am
“shrink a bit” is an accurate portrayal. Even at the top of the ‘free money’ 10k for a few years is a pitance compared to income inequality.
Comment by intellectimpure — July 26, 2006 @ 7:45 am
and again, how is that relevant to the post? It isn’t.
Comment by IndianCowboy — July 26, 2006 @ 8:40 am
Oh, it’s not. I just followed the links to some of your libertarian buddies and got pissed off at them.
Comment by intellectimpure — July 26, 2006 @ 8:57 am
I’m curious. How do you distinguish the positions you take from pure and simple elitism?
Comment by Rick — July 26, 2006 @ 9:05 am
Narrow focus on the gap between rich and poor precludes us from seeing that in the past 30 years the lot in life of those “below the poverty line” has improved greatly, and easily competes with previous notions of middle class privilege. The gap does not concern me. Productivity does. Standard of living does. The span of liberty does. The “equality of opportunity” mentioned above is more important to me than the necessarily obtuse “gap”.
I believe that everyone within our borders deserves to enjoy our rights. I do not believe that those within our borders deserve to enjoy the privileges doled out to some paid for with money yanked from my paycheck on the threat of force. I support a wall preventing people from eating of my substance and I support a wall preventing people from blowing me up.
Where’s the issue?
Comment by Josh Poulson — July 26, 2006 @ 9:27 am
The same issue as always: the assumption that there is anything resembling “equality of opportunity.”
In addition to that I am still absolutely confounded by the fact that in our horrible statist social model country that the rich are doing so well. Aren’t your theories predicated on the redistribution of wealth HURTING the wealthy? Please show me how that is happening.
Please also expound on “neccessarily obtuse.” A snarky phrase does not do a lot to forward your arguement. It mostly assures me that you are emotionally invested.
Comment by intellectimpure — July 26, 2006 @ 9:36 am
At the risk of feeding the troll…
Income inequality is expected in a strong (statist) government. Everyone always gets the priviledges they can afford. The wealthy can afford more. Redistribution will NEVER hurt the wealthy, they can buy their way out of it for the price of a few politicians. It only hurts the middle class, increasing the (gasp) gap between the wealthy and the rest. Duh.
For a gratuitous on-topic comment, I’ve always been a bit put off by the libertarians who put their idealism and philosophy ahead of practicality. Yes, human rights are rights possessed by all humans. Yes, all current governments routinely violate those rights. But you won’t accomplish anything useful by trying to remake the country in the shape of your philosophy and dogma. The Constitution defines a form for the state. You must practice your libertarian ideas within the confines of the Constitution, else you are guilty of attempting to remake the country to fit your philosophy, and I constantly hear people objecting when Christians or others do the same thing.
Once you’ve granted the existence of a state, all the ‘all people have the right to live where they want, so borders have no right to exist’ type of arguments no longer have standing. They might be true in an ideal sense, but they have no point of application.
I don’t know that I would call the arguments presented in this post ‘libertarian’ arguments. But they are common sense arguments identifying causes and affects.
Comment by DaveTucents — July 26, 2006 @ 10:56 am
Analysis of the gap between the wealthy and the poor is an oversimplification of a grand parade of economic factors. In a world of limited resources there will always be a gap between those with a lot and those with less of those resources. The question is always more complicated than “Hey! There’s a gap and it’s bigger using some flawed metric I’ve chosen.”
Comment by Josh Poulson — July 26, 2006 @ 11:20 am
Analysis of the gap between the wealthy and the poor is an oversimplification of a grand parade of economic factors. In a world of limited resources there will always be a gap between those with a lot and those with less of those resources. The question is always more complicated than “Hey! There’s a gap and it’s bigger using some flawed metric I’ve chosen.”
I can agree with all of that except possibly the last sentence.
The grand parade of economic factors that you mention if examined would indicate that there has been a long and rich history of the efficacy of wealth redistribution…from the poor to the rich. The little bit of wealth redistribution that libertarians decry pales in significance when compared with the flow of money going the other direction.
Tucents, please get your definitions right, I am a non-libertarian jerk, not a troll.
Comment by intellectimpure — July 26, 2006 @ 11:57 am
I don’t think you’ve proven your assertion that there has been a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich.
In contrast, I feel there has been a history of wealth creation (innovation creates new products and markets) and the distribution of that wealth has “raised all boats” poor and rich alike.
Asserting that today’s poor are equivalent, or worse off, than the poor of 30 years ago, on this basis, is unfounded. Most are wealthier than they have been, and that trend will, in all likelihood, continue.
Comment by Josh Poulson — July 26, 2006 @ 12:04 pm
I agree that the poor now enjoy a lifestyle that is much better than the poor in the past. I agree that the standard of living has improved accross the board.
The most amazing redistributor of wealth to date and the one that is mostly responsible for the gap, and I say this with no actual research involved, is interest. Examine the gap and who is going which direction and you will quickly see it has to do with whether you are paying interest or collecting interest. Great thing about interest, for the rich, is that it is income derived from absolutely no value added and no effort and that is leaving out the convenient fact that there is no social security tax paid on interest income which results in a total tax rate on that income that is very low compared with income derived from work.
Let’s talk about affirmative action for a while. It has been helping the haves for genereations. It’s called Yale.
Give me a no frills comsumption tax with loopholes closed and I will shut up.
Comment by intellectimpure — July 26, 2006 @ 12:11 pm
“Give me a no frills comsumption tax with loopholes closed . . .” A sensible statement. Credit where credit is due.
Comment by Tom Anger — July 26, 2006 @ 12:24 pm
Great thing about interest, for the rich, is that it is income derived from absolutely no value added and no effort
Bull. Interest is gained from lending money. That money has to be earned somehow. Whether it’s work, or whether it’s being a good steward of that money. You don’t think it takes effort to ensure that your investments (i.e. who you lend to) make money? Have you ever tried?
Give me a no frills comsumption tax with loopholes closed and I will shut up.
The FairTax. Look into it.
Comment by Brad Warbiany — July 26, 2006 @ 12:29 pm
Interest is value given in the future for value received today. It is interest that has spurred the capital investment responsible for the economic explosion of that past few centuries.
Where the problem lies is when people borrow money not to generate wealth but rather to support a lifestyle. In such a situation they are not just throwing the money away that it costs to be “in style” but future money as well. It is a bad decision on that basis. However, no one makes such a decision without also having in mind whatever value they might derive from being “in style”.
Returning to the topic at hand, illegal immigration is caused by the massive and immediate increment in quality of life one garners just by crossing the border and being here. People would rather be poor and undocumented here than documented and legal in some other country. If that’s not an indicator that “gap analysis” is an insufficient tool to understand the immigration issue, I’m not sure what is.
I’m sure that someone will bring up my insular and jingoistic narrow focus on the poor of just this country now…
Comment by Josh Poulson — July 26, 2006 @ 12:37 pm
Josh, let me be clear in case you missed an earlier comment: I am not actually reacting to IC’s post on immigration. As I said earlier I was reading the post and started clicking on the links to crazed libertarians and got pissed and pretty much hijacked the discussion. So no, I am not actually trying to discuss the ‘gap’ as an explanation for illegal immigration.
Jigoistic? I love to say it but it is not needed here.
Brad, you apparently did not read ‘for the rich’ in my blurb about interest. In fairness I will amend my remark from ‘derived from absolutely no value added and no effort’ to ‘derived from minimal value added and little effort.’
B
Comment by intellectimpure — July 26, 2006 @ 12:50 pm
Intellectimpure:
Please define “gap”, as in between rich and poor. Please define what you mean by “wealth”, i.e., do you mean income? Assets? A Yale degree? Please provide authentication for your “facts” that: 1)the “gap” (as defined) has grown over the last 30 years and in fact exceeds what it was in, say, 1910, and 2) that the rate of the growth of the wealth of the “wealthy” (which you define as the top 20% of the population) has grown faster than the economy. As I understand it, only about 10% of the population have income of more than $100,000/year - hardly what one would consider filthy rich and not even rich unless that income is derived wholly from investment. So I think many of those 20% would be truly surprised to discover they are “wealthy”. Thus, we really need to understand who you mean by “middle class” and who you mean by “rich”.
What happens if you actually define “wealthy” and then find your percentage of the population and then trace that population’s percentage increase in wealth?
Please provide facts to dispute my understandings that: (1) the overwhelming majority of people in this country are “middle class”; and (2) the highest 10% of income earners pay more than 70% of the country’s taxes.
As for interest, who “collects” interest? Do you mean people who have government bonds or CD’s? And what do you mean by no “value added”? Does a landlord add value? Does a banker? Does John Kerry? When you lend or invest, you put your money at risk and are paid commensurately with the risk. The risk you take enables companies to pay workers wages and benefits and expand to pay more workers wages and benefits.
The social security tax argument borders on the frivolous since the theory that justifies it is that it is enforced savings that will be returned to people in their retirement years and not tax money that goes to the government never to be seen again. If you dispute that, then I assume you are in favor of getting rid of it in favor of private retirement funding.
What’s your problem with Yale? Your grasp of economics leads me to suspect you must have gone to Harvard. Let’s try clarifying and substantiating your assumptions and see how your arguments fare.
Comment by cpbrooks — July 26, 2006 @ 1:09 pm
Two problems with Yale: Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Another two: George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Comment by Josh Poulson — July 26, 2006 @ 1:26 pm
You forgot John Kerry.
Comment by intellectimpure — July 26, 2006 @ 1:29 pm
Well, if you’re gonna go obscure then I’d have to add Gerald Ford to your John Kerry. Or even William Howard Taft.
Comment by Josh Poulson — July 26, 2006 @ 1:33 pm
intellect, my position has always been that the ’social model’ hurts the poor. The rich will be rich. The poor don’t have to be.
Comment by Administrator — July 26, 2006 @ 5:10 pm
To comment on this “gap”. I believe that while the gap between class income has grown, overall share of wealth has stayed roughly the same. This, coupled with the reviously mentioned increased standard of living make the “gap” somewhat unimportant in determining “equality of opportunity” , no?
Comment by Bret — July 26, 2006 @ 5:16 pm
Just how out of touch are you people? Josh just helped me demontrate the fact that equality of opportunity is nonsense. The role call of Yalie Presidents and almost presidents proves my point that equality of opportunity is nonsense.
I don’t actually make any claims that the gap means anything in particular other than making the contention of the libertarians that current tax policy is a stumbling block to achieving wealth. It’s a lovely theory but I still see the ranks of the statistically upper percentiles getting richer.
Comment by Intellect Impure — July 26, 2006 @ 5:21 pm
To answer your first question, I’m completely out of touch.
Second, I think that most classical liberals would argue that the current tax policy acts as a stumbling block to the middle class, not to the already wealthy. This has been mentioned already.
Third, I challenge your assertion that the rich are actually taking larger share of the wealth. I think you’re confusing income with wealth.
Fourth, I apologize for partaking in the blatant hijacking of this thread.
Comment by Bret — July 26, 2006 @ 5:28 pm
“The poor shall always be with you.” That isn’t a good thing, but a reality, and no system will ever eradicate poverty. But it is useful to note that while we have poverty in this country, we do not really have starvation. We take an incredible standard of living for granted, naming impoverished what for much of the world is the norm.
On the borders issue there is one thing that we could do…that we used to do…that would go further in eradicating many of the problems that are cropping up today. Prevent all access to our nation’s social services (the welfare state, or whatever you want to call it) unless one is legal.
In Europe, the social system is so all-encompassing that immigrants can easily remain in there own little subsections of society, interacting little with the dominant culture. They do not have to work. There is little integration. And what we get in result is a wave of violence affecting most of Europe. I’m looking for the link, but there was some research linking this not to inherent differences among the predominantly muslim youth involved, nor to reactions against explicit racism, but to the lack of integration brought about by the welfare state.
So the commission or whatever it was that put together this report looked to America who has a long history of open immigration and little violence. They determined it was due to the fact that we did not help our immigrants beyond what local churches and other organizations did to help out. They were expected to make their own way, and for the most part they did. (They didn’t figure the mafia and all that in, I don’t think). Anyway, most of our problems with immigration have increased as our social benefits to them have increased because we increasingly allow them to remain as strangers in the land.
Some who wish to integrate find our desire to “help” cumbersome. Many Mexicans do not want their children taught in bilingual classrooms and the state goes to great expense trying to convince them that it is in their child’s best interest to be taught in a Spanish classroom.
Comment by Dana — July 26, 2006 @ 8:49 pm
This isn’t the link I was looking for, but it is a good one, none the less. Europe’s Politics of Victimology.
Comment by Dana — July 26, 2006 @ 8:59 pm
[...] Indian Cowboy makes A Libertarian Argument For A Strong Border Policy. Read it for yourself; he does make some good points on why opening the borders now may well be a recipe for disaster. [...]
Pingback by Carnival of Liberty LVI - Homeland Stupidity — August 1, 2006 @ 8:21 am
“The open border policy that many libertarians support continues to baffle me. Do they not understand the implications of such a policy in today’s political environment?”
Well, we believe we have a pretty good grasp of the implications. That’s why we advocate it.
“Do they not understand that we are in an era where some people vote money out of others’ pocketbooks? Do they not understand that in a social welfare system, the more poor people, the greater the tax burden on everyone else?”
You are confusing two separate issues. Our current welfare system is an injustice. It would be an injustice if there was no immigration. Our current immigration system is an injustice. it would be an injustice if there was no welfare state. You will not get rid of one injustice by increasing the other. Going beyond principles, it just won’t work tactically. You only end result will be an increase in injustice.
“We are importing a population that is by and large uneducated.”
That’s a bit of an unevidenced assertion. Do you have evidence that they are any more uneducated, on average, than natives, on average, in the same economic group?
“That doesn’t speak English. And where many show no desire to. Into this home environment children will be born. And more children per family than their native counterparts. Will these children do as well economically and academically as the native population?”
Why? A case could equally be made that such isolated groups would natuarally communicate more with each other, meaning that the children receive more attention their parent compared to natives.
“Doubtful. And so the hue and cry of ‘racism’ and ‘prejudice’ will be raised. A generation from now Sharptons and Jacksons with latinized names will rise up, speaking to cultural identity that their only path to ‘freedom’ lies in increased governmentally-sanctioned privilege. Privilege that will come at the expense of freedom and opportunity for all other races. And in this political climate, they will be all too successful.”
Well, if we get obbessive about “Americanizing” them, and go stormtrooper on their community in an effort to fight illegal immigration, that’s exactly what will happen, and with good reason.
“Even in a minarchist country, where there would be no welfare state, no juggernaut of privilege encroaching upon our very liberty, we must yield to basic economics. A state can only be maintained so long as the proportion of people who pay less than the average taxation amount are balanced by those who pay more. Or even those most minimal of government services we believe necessary will find themselves compromised.”
While I disagree with this statement, let’s take it as a stipulation. Fine. That’s another problem you would face with no immigration (people don’t like to pay taxes.) To try an solve this supposed problem by support the hugely illiberal monstrosity known as our modern immigration system, or something worse, shows a distinct lack of imagination.
“This is a world in which benevolent dictatorship does not work. This is a world in which democracy is our best tool. A world where documents as strongly worded as the constitution find themselves to be as fragile and brittle as the parchment they’re written on. The greatest threat to our liberty is an oppressive majority. And it is that which you would usher in with your open borders.”
That’s ridiculous. An oppressive majority is what we have now. They’re white, and they’re families have been here on average more than a century. Open immigation couldn’t make the situation worse than it already is, and such a libertarian concept might attract a better (more libertarian) type of immigrant.
Comment by John L Robinson — August 1, 2006 @ 2:20 pm
[...] I’ve presented the political and economic arguments for why we need tougher border control before, so I’m not going to go in near as much detail this time around. [...]
Pingback by The Liberty Papers»Blog Archive » Damage Control: Why We Need To Lock Down The Borders — November 29, 2006 @ 7:22 am
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