Mainstream libertarians (or orange line libertarians if you prefer) have been second to none in their enthusiasm for the President’s decision to officially endorse the bureaucracy’s long-standing policy of openly not enforcing US immigration laws.
I can’t seem to get past the absurdity of this situation. It’s ridiculous for someone like Yglesias to demand more immigration while constantly complaining about inequality. However, despite the fact that Yglesias’ positions are contradictory, it’s clear that it makes for him to hold both positions. His goal is to enact more progressive policies. Inequality justifies policy action and immigration creates inequality, therefore more immigration leads to more progressive policies and he wins.
It doesn’t make sense for libertarians to favor more immigration by any similar logic. Diverse societies are not societies with less government. Let’s try to follow orange line libertarian logic.
The mainstream libertarian plan to make the US more libertarian would seem to consist of the following steps:
1. Begin with the current US
2. Import lots of poor and uneducated Mexicans
3. ?
4. End with a much more libertarian US.
It would seem to me that step 2 would reduce the overall level of libertarianism in the US. Has any nominally Democratic country got more libertarian as it got more diverse and unequal?
Perhaps it’s just my cynical nature coming out, but I’m almost tempted to conclude that mainstream libertarians have no desire to actually get to step 4. Maybe the list should just end at step 2. From where I’m sitting, it seems that elite status whoring is much more important to them than increasing libertarianism.
Your humble blogger is a recovering libertarian. Part of the reason I’m no longer libertarian is that it’s a hopelessly ineffective movement. Even conservatives don’t celebrate this much when they lose (and that’s saying something).
Foseti 
I gather that our immigration bureaucracy, in true red giant state fashion, enforces the laws upon the would-be law abiding, but not against those on the margins. Ideally, loosening up immigration laws would lead to more intelligent and first world immigration, and more student visas.
Immigration reduces inequality. A very poor person moves to a wealthy country and becomes much better off. The people in the wealthier country are on average better off, and at worst only a little worse off. Unless you mean inequality within the national borders, in which case, that’s what you should say.
Singapore and Switzerland are diverse societies with less government. Until recently, so was the US. Lately we’ve gotten European levels of government and sclerosis with about the same diversity as before.
Step 3, though it would be better as step 2, is “dissolve the welfare state”. Nobody else has a plan that’s worth a crap either.
I suppose I’m not a mainstream libertarian, but it is clear to me that if all of the other policies were what I wanted, the best immigration policy would be open borders. Obviously, we all of the other policies are not what I would choose, so on that basis, we might talk about what the best immigration policy is, but the only person I’ve seen who’s had that conversation is Bryan Caplan, on econtalk.
Switzerland is diverse?
Christ the libertarian boiler plate on immigration is so fucking retarded.
Seems to me like Switzerland is a de facto apartheid state (at least when it comes to the 3 main ethnic groups). The Swiss ethnic groups stick to themselves, there are very few mixed German/French cities and the ‘border’ is not fuzzy at all, but quite sharp. For example, Bern is overwhelmingly German and Geneva is overwhelmingly French (Funny thing is, there is some multicultural vibrancy in CH – but the ‘vibrants’ are NOT other Swiss ethnic groups, but people of non-Swiss origin! (most of them from ex-Yugoslavia, I’d wager).
You’ll know which part of Switzerland you’re in by the language of the motorway/road signs. One moment the exit signs on the Autobahn say “Ausfahrt”, the next they say “Sortie”.
For the record, Switzerland and Austria are the most civilized countries I’ve ever been to. There is something about them that screams “order” (but it’s slowly fading away). Still, they seem to have kept a lot of their ancestral Germanic cultural outlook and work ethic (though I would assume things were even better before they got corrupted by American Universalism). I haven’t been to Singapore, Japan, or South Korea though, so I don’t really know if they’re even better.
Good luck immigrating to Switzerland as well. Talk about restrictive laws.
They make it very hard indeed to get citizenship, but it’s not so hard to work there. This is one of the compromise solutions that Caplan suggests in the podcast I referred to above.
The de facto segregation is why I brought it up. Our anarcho-tyrannical state would not allow us to do the same thing if we chose it for ourselves.
Singapore has less government?? And Switzerland is diverse??
Surely, you jest.
Culturally diverse: French, German, Italian and Romansh. My parents went to a Swiss expat function in the US. They said you could’ve drawn a line on the floor between the French speakers and the German speakers. My point being that they regard themselves as diverse. Why do you think they have the canton system in the first place?
Singapore has a less burdensome government than Greece or Indonesia or Malaysia, or the US for that matter, but I never said it was a libertarian paradise. It’s not.
And could you back up your claim that immigration increases inequality? Or will you amend it to the claim that immigration increases inequality in the destination country only? (And why we should care.) What other sorts of policies would you recommend on the basis of the fact that they would reduce inequality?
Yes. In the destination country inequality is increased. US citizens get poorer and some poor Mexicans get richer. At least until the US turns into Mexico and everyone is worse off.
Other than a few tokens, you think libertarians would have taken a hint by now from the fact that that their movement is whiter than a Mississippi country club.
I giggle a little when they say things like ‘____ group is starting to be attracted to libertarianism’, despite all of evidence to the contrary – almost exactly how Republicans scratch their heads why blacks and hispanics with their ‘strong family values’ never vote for them.
The libertarians I know are not necessarily pro-immigration, but anti-State. That is, we see the State as a criminal organization with no legitimacy. We also oppose aggression, that is the initiation of violence against innocent people. Since we believe that the State is illegitimate and that aggression against innocent people is wrong, we oppose immigration laws (and pretty much anything the State does).
Surely you must have noticed that certain populations would do better under such conditions than others, no?
And if you think otherwise, I hear you can live like a king in Mogadishu.
I am really disappointed with this response. I was hoping that being among the manosphere would lead to a much higher quality debate. I was expecting something like, “No, the State is legitimate and is not a criminal organization. Here’s why….” or “No, aggression against innocent people is justified and here is the justification.” It seems your answer is, “well, some people just need to be put in their place.” But does the State need to be the institution that does this? Do we need to legitimize evil in hopes that such evil will lead to lesser evil? Are there more peaceful ways to bring about the conditions which you seek?
I would stick around and debate, however, I have learned in my four years of blogging that anyone who brings up Somalia as a libertarian paradise is not yet ready to debate the philosophical roots of libertarian thought. Thus, I will leave you gentlemen to discuss your matters as you wish.
However, I will post a few links to the thinkers who influenced me. Perhaps some of you will find their arguments convincing. Others will not. But at least by reading these arguments and digesting them, you will know what it is you do not like about libertarianism.
Cheers
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/nock1.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/enemy-always-thestate.html
http://lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs180.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/nock/nock13.html
http://mises.org/daily/3660
http://mises.org/daily/2874
http://mises.org/daily/4784
You should more of the mises archive yourself. Your pro-immigration stance is much more compatible with Reason or Cato than with Mises.
[Brutus’] pro-immigration stance is much more compatible with Reason or Cato than with Mises. – Foseti
I can’t find anybody associated with Mises who opposes mass immigration. I’ve found several who support open borders. The only pro-Austrian economics anti-immigration person I can think of is Mencius Moldbug.
(I am no expert.) Who am I missing?
Brutus-
If you want to debate on the legitimacy of the state you can check out my post here and comment on it:
http://intellectual-detox.com/what-is-a-state/
Your belief in the State as “illegitimate” is no more debatable than the belief of Scientologists on extraterrestrian wizards.
Religion can’t be argued with. States exist for a reason.
Libertarianism is a deontological ideology for most Libertarians; starting with Lockean individual rights and reasoning from there. Furthermore, most Libertarians have drunk the democratic kool-aid, and believe it’s enough just to be right, and that the US/UK is naturally Libertarian, if only you had the right party that people could vote for.
As soon as you taint one of those things, you move out of the Libertarian bubble. Utilitarian Libertarians like David D. Friedman and anti-democratic Libertarians like Hans-Herman Hoppe actually talk some sense.
The Orange Line Libertarians struggle because they’re trying to get Gramscianism to work backwards, taking the Liberal status-quo and proposing changing one thing here and there. Libertarian Idealists are disgusted because they compromise over so much of Libertarianism, and the Elite are disgusted because they’re proposing undoing so much good work…
My words don’t do this fucking mess justice. Look at what happens when I try to explain (and then again) to Libertarians why it’s not working out for them.
Remember to check out the comments for bonus confusion: “What do you mean, Libertarianism doesn’t say what to do if there’s a foreign army in your country?”
I didn’t see any of your comments, sconzey, just a bunch of people who are really mad at Jonathan Jones. Unless you are Jonathan Jones.
That is my current theory: sconzey is Jonathan Jones. I will stick to it until the bitter end (or until someone corrects me).
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