Naive Libertarians

Posted: 6/26/2016

Introduction

First, of course, not all libertarians are naive.

Second, I find the name libertarian awful and appalling. It sounds infantile. How it ever happened that the leftists/socialists in the U.S. were able to claim the term liberal for themselves to fool everyone (at least once) is still a mystery to me. They are anything, but liberal!

Third, libertarians quite often appear to be quite unaware or ignorant of realities not unlike a fundamentalist or orthodox sect. Not infrequently, they appear to be uncompromising as if they were morally superior.

Fourth, I just read this article Immigration Is a Fundamental Human Right published by the Foundation for Economic Education (Don’t get me wrong, many of their articles are great, just not this one. :-) ). Even if this article was not written by a libertarian or even if the FEE were not a libertarian think tank, then I still would say a libertarian would argue along similar lines.

This blog post is not about refugees fleeing from armed conflict like war. This article is more about individuals seeking better economic opportunities for themselves and their families beyond their current location.

Immigration As An Example

Yes, immigration is a fundamental human right, however, it is an individual human right. Therefore, libertarians also tend to argue for open borders to human mobility.

Once tens or  hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals decide to migrate (mass migration) from one country to another within a short span of time (e.g. less than a year, a year, or a few years), it becomes a whole different issue.

For as long as we have still very different or drastically changing economic systems or environments on this planet, mass migrations will remain a common and, I am afraid, often unpredictable phenomenon.

Libertarians try to counter e.g. that welfare states could introduce e.g. time limited exclusion or restrictions to welfare entitlements for immigrants (as does the above article). This might dispel to some extent the widely held, controversial fear that migrants are at least partially motivated by welfare entitlements. Well, this is perhaps not a bad solution, but it is not sufficient.

Any country accepting migrants would probably still need quotas to manage the flow of immigrants. This aspect of the immigration issue will likely not be addressed by libertarians and was not addressed at all by the above article about immigration. How to define such quotas is a thorny or controversial issue itself, should they be based on e.g. the health and/or age of the migrant, country of origin, professional skills or any combination of conceivable, reasonable criteria etc.

From a perspective of individual freedom, the least controversial selection criteria of an immigration quota system would be health and age of the migrant in combination with random drawing. Selection criteria like country of origin or professional skills introduce bias/distortion or worse allows the government to select “winners” according to some probably misguided goal or fancy of the time.

Unfortunately, the U.S. has evolved a very convoluted and complicated system of immigration for the past 100 years or so.

Other, related issues: 1) Are accepted migrants allowed to settle anywhere they like or not