40 thoughts on “Moral intuition vs. tradition”

1. The engineering problem should be focused on those areas of our lives that are much needed but do not readily scale, the ones where assets and economic activity are closely attached to time and place, such as time based services and physical locations for living and working. After all, who really feels as though they have the coordination of free market activity for their time priorities? Who feels good about home ownership meaning living fifty years next to a single family of generational descendants who have never gotten along with one’s family? Ownership of property and applied knowledge need to become more flexible. If caring, sharing and ownership flexibility aren’t integrated into these very real scarcity points, societies end up trying to destroy the spontaneous coordination that evolves from the economic activities which would otherwise widely benefit from scale.

2. I don’t think Caplan practices “moral intuition” and I don’t think “tradition” is the main/only way to positive-sum outcomes in greater-than-Dunbar society (> 150 people).

   I think Caplan discounts change-control as an important mechanism to prevent unexpected outcomes from overwhelming expected ones. There is nothing wrong with Caplan’s Open Borders idea except for the lack of a plan that can be incrementally implemented with strong feedback controls to guard against unexpected consequences.

   The exact same argument can be made for Kling’s UBI proposal though he does emphasize incremental implementation strategies much more.

   One can have a healthy respect for change-control, unintended consequences, and the limits of human agency without being beholden to tradition. They seem to be independent in my mind.

   • This is overly charitable to Caplan.

     There have actually been quite a few real-world implementations of immigration policies far more liberal on key dimensions than the US status quo; the three examples that have proven to be the most stable and prosperous are Svalbard, the UAE, and Singapore. But in all of these cases, there is a very strong force which fulfills the same function as conventional immigration restrictions: -20C winters in Svalbard, multigenerational restrictions on social rights in the UAE, and consistent expulsion of pregnant guest workers in Singapore. The essentially-scientific method by which Singapore arrived at its current policy—including inviting Caplan himself to present his case!—is also worth noting.

     Contrary to claims that “open borders has never been tried”, this area of policy space has already been subject to considerable exploration, and it’s safe to conclude that a country like the US or UK, which lack both the hostile external conditions of Svalbard and governments which can credibly restrict immigrants to second-class status for multiple decades (and yes, it’s probably a good thing on net that our government can’t do this), is better off following the less radical example of Canada/Australia/NZ.

     And this is before we take into account our extraordinary success at facilitating economic growth directly in the Third World. The direct improvement in living standards that a low-skill Third World immigrant gains from moving to a typical wealthier country is mostly a one-time shock. In contrast, the ~6% annual growth rates across ALL the largest Third World countries (China, India, Indonesia), comprising more than half of its entire population, are compounding to deliver the same benefits >30x more efficiently than brute force immigration. (Chinese growth will of course slow a bit over the next few years as the US and others redirect help to governments and countries with less-conflicting values; I don’t think this is ultimately a problem.)

     Caplan has been made aware of all this on plenty of occasions. He simply ignores it and continues to beat up on strawmen.

     • Holy smokers, I seem to have missed a widespread frustration with Caplan’s position on Open Borders.

       I agree with your criticism of Caplan, Christopher, minus the simmering frustration. I don’t think I was being overly charitable. Your detailed examples can be condensed to “Caplan doesn’t consider realistic implementation details” which is what I am saying too. I was being critical, just not overtly mean, and I was trying to enumerate his implementation shortcomings: 1. change control, 2. feedback loops, and 3. unintended consequences.

       Ultimately Caplan is promoting more liberal immigration policy by making us think about the most liberal immigration policy possible, Open Borders. It may be a schtick as Jeff R says below, but I’m not convinced it is purely moral and devoid of rationality.

       If you and I agree that the US policy would benefit from the adoption of more liberal Canada/Australia/NZ-like policies, why is the discussion of Open Borders a strawman? For me it was a useful mental exercise to consider the proposition. Why not hassle-free immigration between the Anglosphere (US/UK/CA/AU/NZ)? Can Canada support urban growth rates equivalent to China’s? How/where/how would Canada get the immigrants required? Would Canadian culture fundamentally change with mass immigration from S. Asia, S.E. Asia, and E. Asia? Will the U.S./Mexican border ever be as uncontroversial as the U.S./Canada border? I’m not sure I would have asked those questions if only considering tweaks to New Zealand’s point system. So my thanks to Caplan, regardless of his moral motivations/inclinations.

       • I did not say discussion of open borders was a strawman. I said Caplan beats up strawman objections to open borders while systematically avoiding the points like the ones I mention, some of which have been brought up by many, many other people over more than a decade.

         This is not plausibly a matter of innocently overlooking some details. And it’s not like the people bringing these things up are all nobodies that can reasonably be dismissed by a noise filter.

         Also note that he continues to demonize the Republicans who are proposing a move to Canada/Australia/NZ-style policies today.

         There is a point beyond which behavior moves out of the principle of charity’s zone of validity. It takes quite a bit to get there, so it’s understandable that you haven’t yet seen enough information to realize that my conclusion is plausible. I simply recommend that you dig deeper, while standing by what I’ve said barring a miraculous conversion on his part to Gwern-style admission of mistakes.

         • Just a note to say that I endorse Christopher Chang’s comments on this. Caplan’s open borders advocacy is intentionally obtuse.

     • Dr. Chang,

       Bryan Caplan addresses your concerns and examples squarely in his essay (Vipul Naik, co-author), “A Radical Case for Open Borders,” chapter 8 in Benjamin Powell, editor, The Economics of Immigration (Oxford U. Press, 2015), pp. 180-199. An ungated typescript is available at the link below:

       http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.697.8305

       Here are pertinent excerpts:

       “Let us concede for the sake of argument that holding all other policies fixed open borders would impoverish low skilled natives, sharply raise crime rates, break the budget, destroy the welfare state, or unleash populist policies. Migration restrictions would remain a needlessly cruel and costly way to handle the critics’ concern. Why? Because each of these problems has a ‘keyhole solution’—a remedy tailored to handle the alleged problem while leaving the world’s borders open to peaceful migration. […]

       Instead of rejecting open borders, then, critics should embrace a package of open borders combined with other policy reforms. Suppose you think that open borders would be awful for low skilled natives. Once you grant immigration’s overall economic benefits, the logical solution is not exclusion, but redistribution. Government could impose immigrant entry fees and surtaxes, then use the proceeds to compensate native workers with a monthly check, a lower marginal tax rate, a payroll tax exemption, or a bigger Earned Income Tax Credit. Analogous policies could be used to deter crime; immigrants could post a ‘crime bond’ when they enter the country, knowing that they forfeit the bond if convicted of an offense.

       If you fear immigrants’ fiscal effect, the natural solution is, in the words of Alex Nowrasteh and Sophie Cole (2013), to ‘build a wall around the welfare state, instead of the country.’ In short, selective austerity. Government could give immigrants reduced benefits, make them ineligible for specific programs, or exclude them entirely. This selective austerity could last for a decade; it could stand until the immigrant pays $100,000 in taxes; it could be lifelong. The fiscal burden of immigration is not a law of nature. It the result of deliberate—and malleable—policy. […]

       Controlling the political effects of immigration is especially straightforward. If you really worry that immigrants vote the wrong way, don’t let them vote. In the current regime, permanent residents already wait many years for citizenship. The delay could easily be extended or made permanent. Alternately, immigrants might gain voting rights after paying $100,000 in taxes. While there is no solid reason to expect immigrants to vote for disastrous policies, it is far better to let them in and deny them the vote than exclude them as an act of pre-emptive political self-defense. […]

       [C]ountless ‘keyhole solutions’ already exist in the United States and around the world. Legal immigrants to the United States face deportation for even minor non violent infractions such as marijuana possession. China’s hukou system for intranational residency restricts internal migrants’ rights to collect government benefits and vote. In Singapore and the UAE, guest workers have very limited legal rights. Even Sweden, a country with strong pro migrant sentiment, makes migrants wait five years for citizenship. 87 Open borders is perhaps an impossible dream, but keyhole solutions are already a concrete reality.” (typescript, pp. 24-26)

       • Did you actually read my points?

         • Yes. Caplan’s & Naik’s points might not persuade you, but are pertinent to the concerns and examples you raised. Has Caplan really ignored your concerns? People can reach different conclusions in good faith.

           I would add that Caplan has addressed also your point about China (your final paragraph in your first comment). In a nutshell, he makes a case that China’s experience, too, provides evidence that greater openness in migration can be a boon. Massive internal migration (thanks to substantial relaxation of restrictions in the hukou system) has greatly helped to fuel economic growth in China, even though China has great demographic diversity. Previously, cities and rural areas in China were like separate countries, with closed borders.

         • You realize that my points refute theirs more than the other way around, right? (Which is bizarre, given that you tried to select a passage that responded to mine.)

         • Dr. Chang,

           In my judgment, your points don’t refute Caplan and Naik more than the other way around.

           I see two main unsettled empirical issues:

           1) Is partial globalization (largely free movement of capital and goods, without free migration), better overall than full globalization (largely free movement of capital, goods, and labor)?
           As I noted in a separate comment, Michael Clemens & Lant Pritchett make the case for much more migration. I trust Clemens & Pritchett more than Borjas, but the current state of research is not dispositive!

           2) Would regulated migration without numerical restrictions (i.e., a policy regime that Caplan calls ‘open borders with keyhole solutions’) be a politically feasible, stable policy regime in prosperous democracies? My intuition is yes, but several commenters here are thoughtful skeptics.

         • (i) Low-skill immigration to Western democracies has catastrophically low political efficiency, relative to (ii) the standard package of policies now employed to facilitate economic growth directly in India/Indonesia/etc. There is no pressing need to solve this “problem”, because (ii) achieves the stated economic goals.

           This is not complicated.

         • Tyler Cowen has been using the phrase, “The Great Forgetting” to describe the resurgence of advocacy of bad old leftist interventions in the marketplace, many of which had been at least somewhat abandoned. ‘Forgetting’ because the advocacy is either being made, or silently acquiesced to without objection, by those who, well, “ought to know better”, that is, be familiar with both the well-established arguments and the ample evidence of negative experiences produced by those past intervention.

           In other words, “The Science Was Settled!” and the new advocacy doesn’t even both trying to refute or engage with it, so much as just appear to ‘forget’ all that established knowledge exists.

           Well, no big deal perhaps, if one could just refresh their recollection by repeating that knowledge. Alas, that’s not very effective, which is why the tone of lamentation is justified.

           That’s because what goes along with The Great Forgetting is “The Great Ignoring” (alternatively, “The Great Derping” per Noah Smith) – which is when advocates are presented with valid, rigorous, and strongly dispositive counterarguments, over and over again, and then simply ignore those points and go on like a broken record, not updating any priors, and simply repeating their initial arguments as if they require zero revision or finesse in light of those counterarguments, or like they were ostriches with their heads in the sand with their eyes and ears blocked.

           Which by itself is bad enough. But of course it’s even worse when one is making a case for one’s position that purports to comprehensively address all the opposition’s points in the actually existing discourse and debate on the subject, but instead presenting a fake Potemkin version of that debate, leaving out the hard stuff, and putting only strawmen into the mouths of your opponents so you can easily knock them down.

           In the legal world, if the other party makes an argument in their motion and you totally ignore it, instead choosing to respond to weak arguments your opponent didn’t make, that would be called ‘malpractice’ (ineffective, incompetent), and furthermore, if you insisted that your brief was responding to all the arguments made by your opponent, and only those actual arguments, then your integrity would be drawn into question and you could become liable for contempt for unethical conduct and lack of candor towards the judge.

           Unfortunately, and for whatever reason, The Great Ignoring is an apt description of the character of most Open Borders advocacy.

       • I think Caplan’s treatment here remains glib. Caplan deals with the (obvious) objection that his proposed keyhole solutions are not politically feasible or sustainable with in two paragraphs:

         First paragraph: Keyhole solutions rarely win over critics of immigration. While they would work in theory, they are politically impossible – mere daydreams unworthy of serious consideration. Strangely, though, the same critics willingly debate a far more fantastic proposal: open borders itself. If you can imagine the political landscape changing enough to make global open borders a reality, what is so
         implausible about pro-native redistribution, selective austerity, or voting limits?

         Do I need to note that this is completely non-responsive? It is very hard for me to read the bolded portion (my emphasis) as a good faith argument.

         Second paragraph (the one you quote): The deeper problem with critics’ incredulity, though, is that countless “keyhole solutions”
         already exist in the United States and around the world. Legal immigrants to the United States face deportation for even minor non-violent infractions such as marijuana possession. China’s hukou system for intranational residency restricts internal migrants’
         rights to collect government benefits and vote. In Singapore and the UAE, guest workers have very limited legal rights. Even Sweden, a country with strong pro-migrant sentiment, makes migrants wait five years for citizenship. Open borders is perhaps an impossible dream, but keyhole solutions are already a concrete reality.

         I do not think this paragraph should give anyone confidence that keyhole solutions are likely to be sustainable in the US under an open borders scenario. We have referenced two tyrannies, Signapore (whatever we want to call it), and in Sweden, *exactly* the kind of fake keyhole that would to irreversible political change under a true open borders scenario.

         • +1

           If there’s anything as politically untenable as voting restrictions in this country, I can’t think what it might be. But according to Caplan “you just have to expand your mind, dude!” Yeah, that’ll do it.

   • Disagree. I think Caplan’s shtick is all about moral indignation. He’s constantly going on and on about the moral abomination of immigration restrictions and drawing analogies between immigration laws and theft, kidnapping, slavery, yada yada yada.

     • Jeff, yes, he has moved in that direction, as reality has made it increasingly difficult for him to fool people with economic arguments.

       • Dr. Chang,

         Given that you believe Bryan Caplan is trying to fool people with economic arguments, I refer you to research by distinguished economists Michael Clemens & Lant Pritchett. See, for example, their article, “The New Economic Case for Migration Restrictions: An Assessment,” Journal of Development Economics 138 (May 2019) 153-164.

         Here is a link to an ungated typescript of the article:

         http://ftp.iza.org/dp9730.pdf

         Here is the abstract of the typescript:

         “For decades, migration economics has stressed the effects of migration restrictions on income distribution in the host country. Recently the literature has taken a new direction by estimating the costs of migration restrictions to global economic efficiency. In contrast, a new strand of research posits that migration restrictions could be not only desirably redistributive, but in fact globally efficient. This is the new economic case for migration restrictions. The case rests on the possibility that without tight restrictions on migration, migrants from poor countries could transmit low productivity (‘A’ or Total Factor Productivity) to rich countries — offsetting efficiency gains from the spatial reallocation of labor from low to high-productivity places. We provide a novel assessment, proposing a simple model of dynamically efficient migration under productivity transmission and calibrating it with new macro and micro data. In this model, the case for efficiency-enhancing migration barriers rests on three parameters: transmission, the degree to which origin-country total factor productivity is embodied in migrants; assimilation, the degree to which migrants’ productivity determinants become like natives’ over time in the host country; and congestion, the degree to which transmission and assimilation change at higher migrant stocks. On current evidence about the magnitudes of these parameters, dynamically efficient policy would not imply open borders but would imply relaxations on current restrictions. That is, the new efficiency case for some migration restrictions is empirically a case against the stringency of current restrictions.”

         On migration policy, Clemens & Pritchett are much closer to Caplan than to George Borjas.

         • Clemens is part of the problem, not part of the solution. As it turns out, his arguments are ALSO refuted by what I’ve already written, and I’m hardly the only one to make these points.

           Another sanity check: Puerto Rico is a real-life example of open borders with the US. Every year, the comparison between Puerto Ricans’ trajectory vs. that of Chinese/Indians/Indonesians/etc., relative to the costs, looks even worse.

       • Dr. Chang,

         Readers will judge whether Michael Clemens is part of the problem or part of the solution. In my judgment, Clemens admirably exhibits the intellectual virtues or, as they say nowadays, ‘best practices’ in scholarship.

         Caplan & Naik address also issues of development, with specific reference also to Puerto Rico’s emigration:

         “Over a generation or two, poor countries could easily lose half their people and more than half of their most skilled and ambitious workers. But this is no more tragic than poor villagers exiting the backwaters of China and India. Development is ultimately about people, not places. And non migrants benefit, too. Remittances which already far exceed the flow of foreign aid start coming home almost immediately. Before long, successful immigrants start using their newfound business connections to develop their mother countries. Puerto Rico provides an excellent illustration. Over half of Puerto Ricans live abroad, but Puerto Ricans who stayed behind now enjoy a First World standard of living. (Footnote: The World Bank http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD/countries/PR?display=graph estimates the nominal GDP per capita in Puerto Rico at $27,000, comparable to Spain.” (Typescript, pp. 8 and 36)

         • John, the talk about Puerto Rico made me think of Curacao as a counter example of a small liberal nation (Dutch island off the coast of Venezuela) whose economic trajectory seems to be quite independent of its immigration policy.

           But I then realized that Curacao is struggling with Venezuelan refugees. So my question for you, do you think an Open Borders policy could transform Curacao into a Caribbean/Latin-American Hong Kong? Does geography and comparative advantage play no role? Would another Open Border island make a better Caribbean Hong Kong than Curacao? Could Puerto Rico jump in the race as a prototype for American Open Borders?

           I’m seriously interested in your thoughts. It seems like a good real-world example that pushes the limits of the Open Borders, say an order of magnitude increase in population from 160K to 1.6M in less than a generation.

         • You are completely ignoring the cost side of the equation, in what is supposed to be an economic discussion.

           The defining characteristic of Puerto Rico is how little was accomplished *per unit of political cost*, compared to what US-led trade/outsourcing/tech transfer/investment (or to use this blog’s terminology, guided advancement through increasingly efficient patterns of sustainable specialization and trade) WITHOUT mass immigration has accomplished across the majority of the Third World. The US electorate is has expressed about as much discontent with direct absorption of a mere ~40 million people as it has with its central role in uplifting >1 BILLION at a distance. Similar preferences hold across many other democracies.

           This massive difference in efficiency was less obvious in 2004, when Caplan started blogging about the subject, than it is now, with 15 more years of evidence that India/Indonesia/etc. can be uplifted in this manner. I’m aware of the human factors that prevent a field from updating efficiently on new information (even physics has infamous examples like the Millikan oil drop experiment), but at some point a scholar needs to at least stop doubling down after they have already been proven wrong. Caplan and Clemens fail this test.

     • When trying to deal with a valid opposing point to which one has no other good response, it’s very useful to simply insist that the position is obviously and terribly immoral while pretending that everyone shares some universal ethical calculus instead of admitting the claim emerges from the advocate’s idiosyncratic private morality.

     • Jeff R and Handle,

       Bryan Caplan might get it wrong about immigration policy, and he might hold idiosyncratic private moral views, but he systematically examines and marshals a daunting array of evidence and analyses in migration scholarship. Often, he calls attention also to evidence, mechanisms, or trade-offs that cast open borders in a negative light, because, as he likes to say, he doesn’t want to sugarcoat the policy.

       See, for example, the myriad references in Caplan & Naik; and, more recently, Caplan’s public lecture (largely a counterpoint to George Borjas’ public lecture) at the 2019 St. Cloud State U. Winter Institute:

       https://www.stcloudstate.edu/conferences/winter-institute/media.aspx

       The title of Caplan’s lecture—”Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration”—reflects also square attention to the best scholarship on all sides about migration.

       • References are no substitute for being consistent with, at the absolute minimum, recent-past data points.

   • If Bryan’s making people pay entry fees and surtaxes, that’s not open borders anymore. Same with his suggestion of a bond you have to pay at the border.

     It’s as if Arnold added means-testing to a universal basic income and kept calling it universal. Bryan’s entry fees and surtaxes aren’t different than regulations and barriers and controls.

     Instead of selecting for the poorest of the poor, this more restrictive policy would be linked to having skills and being able to save up the money for a $100,000 or $200,000 deposit, or having someone willing to invest in you and vouch for you as a productive and patient person who follows rules and pays his taxes.

     So why would you first fire all the agents at a country’s border and then re-hire them to again enforce border restrictions? Why not just say that these restrictions are restrictions, and these are the restrictions you agree with?

     If you’re going to argue that all restrictions are illegitimate, and that there can be no common ground with the brutal Canadians and the dictatorial Kiwis, then you shouldn’t end up imposing brutal Canadian policy after all.

     • > Bryan’s entry fees and surtaxes aren’t different than regulations and barriers and controls.

       I’m not sure Caplan is arguing that these are good policies. I think he is giving these as possible “keyhole solutions” for those who insist that specific externalities are unacceptable.

       I don’t think dirtying the purity of the Open Borders concept with restrictive keyhole solutions diminishes the idea. It is just a compromise but I do share your apprehensions.

       • Bryan’s talking about “a package of open borders combined with other policy reforms.” And his list of reforms includes restrictions.

         And if you don’t have enough money to pay his fees and surtaxes then Bryan has every reason to expect you will “vote for disastrous policies.” He wrote the book. It’s called The Myth of the Rational Voter.

         How can there be “no solid reason” as Bryan says? Bryan himself has said that “Myth of the Rational Voter earnestly defends the anti-democratic, pro-market vision of public choice that Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains falsely attributes to James Buchanan.” Correct. So how do we square that with the idea that the rational voter is alive and well, he’s just stuck in a third world country?

         Bryan’s list of reforms includes “a lower marginal tax rate, a payroll tax exemption, or a bigger Earned Income Tax Credit” and these are all good policies. But aren’t these the reforms that wealthy voters with a healthy stock portfolio are interested in? Not your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.

     • Weir,

       Bryan Caplan doesn’t advocate keyhole solutions. Rather, if I may build on RAD’s comment, Caplan is willing to countenance keyhole solutions, if these are the politically feasible alternative to the status quo. In other words, his first-best policy is open borders, and his second-best is what he calls ‘open borders with keyhole solutions.’

       Why does Caplan consider the second-best policy nonetheless a variant of open borders? …

       Because the specific keyhole solutions, which Caplan enumerates (entry fees, surtaxes, crime bonds, welfare restrictions, voting restrictions, citizenship restrictions), don’t de jure impose numerical limits on immigration.

       By contrast, U.S. policy since 1921 has imposed numerical limits on legal immigration. See the American Immigration Council’s outline of the current complex system of numerical limits, at the link below:

       https://americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/how-united-states-immigration-system-works

       The AIC states: “The Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), the body of law governing current immigration policy, provides for an annual worldwide limit of 675,000 permanent immigrants, with certain exceptions for close family members. Lawful permanent residency allows a foreign national to work and live lawfully and permanently in the United States. Lawful permanent residents (LPRs) are eligible to apply for nearly all jobs (i.e., jobs not legitimately restricted to U.S. citizens) and can remain in the country even if they are unemployed. Each year the United States also admits noncitizens on a temporary basis. Annually, Congress and the President determine a separate number for refugee admissions.”

       Of course, abstractly, the U.S. could set the entry fee or surtax so high, that few persons or none would find it worthwhile to seek an immigration visa. But that is not the policy space that Caplan (or anyone) has in mind.

       To be sure, as you (Weir) indicate, the keyhole solutions, politically calibrated, will have selection effects, will shape the composition of immigrants, and won’t induce as much immigration as pure open borders would. I surmise that Caplan (quite reasonably) is confident that the aggregate number of legal immigrants would greatly increase (compared to the status quo) even if there are keyhole regulations. The combination of (a) politically reasonable entry fees and immigrant surtaxes and (b) lack of numerical limits on immigration would produce much more immigration than the status quo does, because ‘the place premium’ is very high for potential migrants from poor countries.

       Here is a stab at a more precise, but unwieldy summary of what Caplan calls ‘open borders with keyhole solutions’:

       Migration without preemptive numerical limits, but with keyhole regulations designed to prevent (or to remedy) any negative economic, social, or political effects of immigration. Keyhole regulations would impose special obligations on immigrants; for example, entry fees to fund redistribution to Americans vulnerable in labor markets, bonds to deter crime, surtaxes to assure a positive net contribution to public finance, franchise and citizenship restrictions to prevent undue political influence, etc..

       Short version: Regulated immigration without numerical limits.

       • If one does not impose numerical limits on immigration, then by the usual economic logic of arbitrage, massive, native-population swamping numbers of people from poorer, low standard-of-living countries will quickly flood into developed ones until they become indifferent to migration, that is, until there is no more advantage to be gained and the average quality of life for similarly skilled workers has been levelled.

         Regulated vs. Unregulated alternatives of Open Borders makes no difference on this and related issues if there are no restrictive numerical limits.

         Literally no one expects that levelling to take the form of a dramatic and near-instantaneous rise in the standard of living in all poor countries, all the way up to the level of the richest countries and thus requiring triple or quadruple-digit real per-capita growth rates, so that there is no significant decrease at all in that standard for workers in developed countries. Quite the contrary!

         This is just like how absolutely everyone would enthusiastically rush to switch out mortgages financed at 25% interest, if suddenly there was some credit union previously restricted to only giving loans to its own major depositors and investors, now offering refinance to the general public at 3%. But what would actually happen is that the new supply of cheap credit would dry up right away and the new equilibrium would be at 24.99% interest, with the benefit for the group of people who formerly enjoyed 3% rates completely wiped out.

         The typical ‘response’ to this is to divert away from the weakness regarding the obvious and severely negative empirical consequences and is noticeably ‘progressive’ in its sanctimoniously scolding character, “Immorality! Evil! How dare you greedily and selfishly defend your underserved privilege for you and your posterity at the expense of those poor foreigners. Xenophobe! Racist! Bigot! Misanthrope! Nativist! How dare you be prejudiced in favor of preserving a particular culture and low rates of influex to ease assimilation and maintain a sufficient degree ot homogeneity and commonality to generate cohesion and widespread feelings of fraternity and solidairty!”

3. “But he does not start from where culture is.” I don’t know even know what that means.

   “Moral intuition is largely grounded in sub-Dunbar society.” That’s a claim, why do you believe this and what evidence do you have to support it? If anything, this claim seems obviously false to me. Suppose you could make 120 of your closest relatives $1000 dollars richer by brutally murdering 10 innocent people, is it permissible to murder them? My moral intuition says no, but that makes no sense if moral intuitions were based off of sub-Dunbar society.

   “Markets, corporations, and government are among these evolved institutions.” Imagine making this argument in the early 19th century. “Markets, corporations, government, and slavery are among these evolved institutions!” I don’t think you would go as far as to say that “evolved” institutions can never be wrong.

   “If you think that you can radically re-engineer society based on moral intuition, you risk taking us back to a primitive state.” Again, imagine making this argument back in the early 19th century. Are we more or less primitive now after the abolishment of chattel slavery?

   • Suppose you could make 120 of your closest relatives $1000 dollars richer by brutally murdering 10 innocent people, is it permissible to murder them? My moral intuition says no, but that makes no sense if moral intuitions were based off of sub-Dunbar society.

     Why would moral intuitions of a Dunbar society say it is permissible to murder 10 innocent people to make 120 of your closest relatives $1000 richer?

     • If moral intuition’s arise out of Dunbar’s number, then it seems as though I should only care about those actions which impact people socially closest to me. In other words, I should seek to benefit those socially close to me (under Dunbar’s number), even if this causes harm to those socially distant to me (over Dunbar’s number).
       I realize I should have said 10 innocent strangers, though I thought that was obvious from the context.

       • I figured you meant 10 people outside the Dunbar number band. If they are part of bands close to you, many of them won’t be complete strangers. Some may be in-laws (endogamy is hard when there are only 150 people in all age groups put together).

         If moral intuitions developed in such societies, there would certainly be less caring for those in other bands–but I see no reason why they would be thought of as totally outside the realm of moral consideration. Just as you would care more about your immediate family compared with others within the band, you would care more about those within the band than those outside. But it would be more a gradual drop-off of caring than a cliff.

4. There is a moral intuition? I doubt it.

   Cultural norms are efficient because they come with externals signs and indicators pointing to historical choices. We have a fear of authority, and that enforces some moral statutes, but it also uses external signals to maintain its order. The independent mind is greatly over rated.

5. By now most intellectuals know the “moral intuitions” / “common sense morality” game well enough to dismiss and ignore those sorts of claims.

   Step one: determine what you want the rules to be.

   Step two: backward calculate the various sets of ‘axioms’ and rules of logic which could generate that set of preferred rules by derivation, and which have some respectable amount of internal consistency and coherence.

   Step three: select the set which the most salient rhetorical power and persuasive traction in the current cultural moment among one’s target audience.

   Step four: hand-wave away all other actually existing common moral sentiments and intuitions as somehow mistakes or “not really” primary intuitions and thus ‘unworthy’ of inclusion in the set of axioms. Relatedly, at points where moral principles come into conflict in fuzzy, gray areas where they need to bend or break, always bias the decision between values in favor of protecting the derivation of your preferences, but without any good explanation.

   Step five: Exploit social undersirability bias by labeling any critics of your moral scheme as eliminative materialists and meta-ethical moral nihilists, which sets them up to become pariahs and puts them on the defensive since the public misinterprets the abstract, amoral, neutral, analytical perspective and identifies anyone who makes it with being an immoral person who is ok with slavery, murder, etc. and equivalent to being a member in good standing in the “Hitler did nothing wrong” crowd.

   Step six: Claim anyone who went through the identical process above, but had different preferences and thus picked different ‘axioms’ as being ‘obviously’ wrong.

   Ayn Rand went through the same, whole foolish exercise with Objectivism, going from her own presentation of a ‘derived’ stack of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics leading to policy.

   The modal moral intuitions and sentiments of any one community, time, and place are simply not suitable materials to mine for axioms to derive proofs for some kind of logically tight, consistent and complete, mathematical system of derived universal morality. It is even less appropriate to cherry-pick some over others to put a thumb on the scale and force a particular result.

   • Right on, dude. Thank you.

6. The big hypocrisy of Bryan Caplan is that his entire career is based in public government owned exclusive universities. He advocates no government privileged institutions, no member vs non member government segregated tribes and cultures, and moving to opt-in capitalist markets, for everyone except himself and his government privilege and tribe and culture.

7. You can have high levels of legal high skill immigration. As people note, Singapore does it. Canada/AZ/NZ sort of do it too, but they have the benefit of not sharing a land border with any poor places.

   I’m skeptical that this really matters much though. There are only so many high skill people in the world. Most don’t want to move from from first world countries to first world countries. You really only see a desire to move from third world countries to first world countries. But most countries with lots of high skill people are already first world, or will obviously be first world within a generation (sucks that Mao held so many back, but that was temporary).

   When it comes to low skill immigration Bryan either says:

   1) Let them in even if they trash the place (sometimes he says he WANTS them to trash the place, because he wants to live in a dysfunctional low trust society in the hopes that it might also take the government down with it).

   2) Let them in but make them a bunch of second class citizens on temporary work visas that have to go back home eventually (if they have to go back home, kind of seems to defeat the point).

   And of course he knows, and even admits, that #2 isn’t remotely feasible. The only countries that do it successfully are non-white quasi-dictatorships.

   How does Singapore keep illegal immigrants out? Malaysia is right there and poorer, why aren’t they crossing that thin slice of water? How does it keep its guest workers following all those keyhole solutions?

   Well, the punishment for illegal immigration is TORTURE (caning). Also a mandatory prison sentence and eventual deportation.

   The punishment for employing an illegal immigrant is similar.

   So we know HOW you can make such a keyhole solution work. Can you imagine a place like the US ever implementing it? Or are all these news reports about inhumane treatment of illegals on CNN part of my imagination?

   The position of the Democratic Party is basically that ICE should be abolished that there should be no enforcement of any immigration law, how exactly are keyhole solutions going to work then?

   Get real.

   • asdf,

     U.S. policy imposes (sharply disequilibrium) numerical limits, which induce potential migrants to shift to attempts at illegal immigration. As you note, Americans are divided about enforcement.

     By contrast, the keyhole regulations, which Bryan Caplan enumerates, don’t impose numerical limits on immigration. Instead, they impose special obligations on immigrants; for example, entry fees, crime bonds, and/or payroll surtaxes. Or they deny to immigrants the franchise and/or access to welfare programs.

     If we compare current immigration policy and a policy of keyhole regulations without numerical limits, two crucial empirical questions arise:

     1) Would the special obligations imposed by keyhole regulations induce a major shift to illegal entry (similar to the status quo)? If the answer is yes, then Americans probably would remain divided about enforcement of laws against illegal immigrants. If the answer is no, then ICE’s role, and attendant political division, probably would diminish.

     2) Would Americans then instead become deeply divided about keyhole regulations? My intuition is that special obligations, and special ineligibilities, under a policy of keyhole regulations without numerical limits, probably would be less divisive than is border enforcement of current policy based on (sharply disequilibrium) numerical limits. But I could be wrong!

Comments are closed.