Illuminate This
This is not the first time Daniel Larison has replied to a post of mine with a thought like this:
Mr. Wilkinson has successfully shown once again that he hates boundary maintenance–both of the physical and the metaphorical kind–and that conservatives favour it, which is why he isn’t a conservative. Very illuminating.
Apparently, Daniel thinks I spend a good deal of time saying nothing more substantive than that I do not agree with things I disagree with. It therefore strikes me as odd that Daniel’s posts in response to my vacuities are so long.
Anyway, I don’t think anyone who has paid attention to what I have been saying thinks I’m indiscriminately against boundaries. I’m against boundaries that do not make people better off. I like systems of private property — which include lots of boundaries — because the ability to exclude on this scale and in this way enables the ability to productively invest and coordinate, leaving most everyone better off over time. One can justify this system of boundaries to the least well-off by showing how it will tend to make them better off than the alternatives. It may not benefit them most, but they will be worse off without something like it. However, national boundaries are not like fences around parcels of property. And unlike local systems of property, the global system of exclusion through citizenships, visas, and borders has manifestly failed to make the world’s least well-off better off. On the contrary, it has trapped billions in miserable poverty. They have reason to affirm the terms of this system … why? If Daniel doesn’t think the suffering of billions counts as an argument against the current global system of exclusion by nationality, then what would? Anyway, it’s just dense to think my argument is a bit of autobiography explaining why I don’t identify as a conservative. My argument is that vast human suffering is caused by the systematic denial of the liberty of movement and association. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But it’s hard to come up with a less trivial claim.
Now, if Daniel does little more than tells us again and again that he is proud to be indifferent to suffering and injustice just as long as it takes place outside the coalitions in which he chooses (for whatever reasons) to embed himself, and that is why he is a conservative, well, that’s still pretty illuminating.
September 26th, 2007 21:43
Denying a poor 3rd world person US citizenship may make him worse off. So too, denying him access to your property makes him worse off. In the second case, the defense you would suggest for the institution of private property seems to be: “yes, but a system of private property, in the main, makes everyone better off.” Ok. But the defender of nationalism will argue that unitary nation states, in the main, make everyone better off. You may think the former claim true and the latter claim false, but that’s by no means obvious, and must be argued.
Indeed, there are many who think that nation states are crucial guarantors of systems of private property. If so, it seems you may find something to like about those national boundaries after all. Again, this may be wrong, but it’s hardly an unusual, unpopular, or unsupportable view. Why do you think it is mistaken?
September 26th, 2007 21:47
[...] Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 in politics, economics, immigration by Daniel Larison Apparently, Daniel thinks I spend a good deal of time saying nothing more substantive than that I do not agree with things I disagree with. ~Will Wilkinson [...]
September 29th, 2007 03:50
The reason that the poorest billion or two or more should affirm the regime of immigration restrictions is that it allows for progression of productivity, which is disfavored if labor is always available at the same or lower cost, any time there is occasion to increase production. If Yale had open admissions it would be unfavorable for new processes of production being invented there. If America had open admission, and by magic there were no hostiles even of the welfare-grabbing kind, the entire world would lose that portion of productivity increase which arises from the higher prevailing wages for menials and more-skilled here. If a rollback occurs from stagnation of technical progress, the infectious agents will change faster than medicine can counter them, and sweep through, taking out 90% even of vulnerable populations in the tropics. In any case loyalty is owed to the net taxpayer of our citizenry, when a foreigner comes in on net public subsidy, increasing the level of aggression here There is not moral interchangeability between citizen and foreigner. One proof of this is that treason, which is defined in the constitution, cannot be committed by a foreigner here, only by a citizen.
September 30th, 2007 00:14
Similarly, what do you think of this reasoning? The differentials in per capita production between the richest and poorest nations are of absolutely INDISPENSABLE importance for ages to come, to maintain the MOMENTUM of forward motion, of progress of civilization and especially technology. The more immigration the richest nations have which comes in at the same or lower wages, the more this will tend to take away from the momentum of progress in productive technology.
October 13th, 2007 14:21
Ben A has it right.
The claim that we should retain property rights but abolish meaningful national boundaries may not be trivial, but it sure is eccentric.
It’s worth noting that nation states organized around the western, democratic model have done a pretty uniformly creditable job of making people within their borders better off. When you have a system with diverse nations and diverse outcomes, it seems questionable to single out a shared trait–boundaries–as the explanation for all the bad outcomes and none of the good ones.