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A Libertarian Stand On Immigration: Refugees and Migrants In A World Of Government Meddling
Submitted by Per Bylund via The Mises Institute,
[Updated Author’s Note: The issue of immigration has only become more pressing over the ten years that have passed since this article’s original publication. And, unfortunately, the libertarian movement has not reached a consensus on this issue.
But it should be easy, considering how government is at both ends of the problem: government is the number one reason people choose to escape their countries, whether because of governments’ war or devastating poverty due to the lack of opportunities in regulated markets; and government is the reason ordinary people, in a desperate state because their lives have been forcefully uprooted, have a hard time choosing where to lead their lives in peace. The desperation is due to the so-called “failings” of their own governments, and augmented by ours.
I too have fled my country, though not because I’m fearing for my life but because I sought a better life and greater opportunities. While the immigration issue generally focuses on people from poor countries with little skill or education, it is hardly the case that governments welcome people at the other end of the spectrum: the highly productive, highly educated, and hard-working. On the contrary, government is the least forgiving, least reasonable, and most costly when it deals with non-citizens — those who cannot hold government officials accountable in any sense and do not have a voice. This should make immigration a prime target for the libertarian argument for freedom, peace, and property.
Immigration Controls and the State
The pre-1914 world saw no immigration issues or policies, and no real border controls. Instead, there was free movement in the real sense; there were no questions asked, people were treated respectfully and one did not even need official documents to enter or leave a country. This all changed with the First World War, after which states seem to compete with having the least humane view on foreigners seeking refuge within its territory.
The “immigration policies” of modern states is yet another licensing scheme of the twentieth century: the state has enforced licensing of movement. It is virtually impossible to move across the artificial boundaries of the state’s territory in the search for opportunity, love, or work; one needs a state-issued license to move one’s body, be it across a river, over a mountain, or through a forest. The Berlin Wall may be gone, but the basic principle of it lives and thrives.
Immigration controls are not different from other kinds of licensing even though it has been awarded a special name. Licensing has the same result regardless of what is licensed: licensing of physicians causes poor health care at higher cost just as licensing taxi businesses causes poor and untimely service at high cost — licensing on movement means restricted freedom and higher taxes for people (whether “citizens” or “foreigners”). From a libertarian point of view it should be clear that all licensing needs to be done away with, including licensing for immigrants.
Yet the immigration issue seems to be somewhat of a divide within libertarianism, with two seemingly conflicting views on how to deal with population growth through immigration. On the one hand, it is not possible as a libertarian to support a regulated immigration policy, since government itself is never legitimate. This is the somewhat classical libertarian standpoint on immigration: open borders.
On the other hand, the theory of natural rights and, especially, private property rights tells us anyone could move anywhere — but they need first to purchase their own piece of land on which to live or obtain necessary permission from the owner. Otherwise immigration becomes a violation of property rights, a trespass. This is an interpretation of a libertarian-principled immigration policy presented by Hans-Hermann Hoppe a few years ago, which since then has gained increasing recognition and support.
To a non-libertarian bystander, the discussion of the two alternatives must seem quite absurd. What is the use of this libertarian idea of liberty, if people cannot agree on a simple issue such as immigration? I intend to show that the libertarian idea is as powerful as we claim, and that there is no reason we should not be able to reach consensus on the immigration issue. Both sides in this debate, the anti-government-policy as well as the pro-private-property, somehow fail to realize there is no real contradiction in their views.
The Open Borders Argument
The people advocating “open borders” in the immigration issue argue state borders are artificial, they are creations based on the coercive powers of the state, and therefore nothing about them can be legitimate. As things are, we should not (or, rather: cannot) regulate immigration. Everyone has a right to settle down and live wherever they wish. This is a matter of natural right; no one enjoys the right to force his decision upon me unless it is an act of self-defense when I am violating his rights.
In a world order based on natural rights, this would be true. It is a golden rule, a universal rule of thumb proscribing that I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone; if you attack me or try to force something or someone on me, I have a right to use force to defend myself and what is mine.
The problem with this idea is that it has too much of a macro perspective. While arguing there should be no states and therefore no state borders, it presents arguments with an intellectual point of departure in the division of mankind into territorial nationalities and ethnicity. It is simply not possible to make conclusions on immigration to, say, the United States, if we start our argument from the libertarian idea. What is “immigration” in a world with no states?
The Pro-Property Argument
A less macro view on immigration is taken for granted in the pro-property argument. Here, the individual’s natural right to make his own choices and his right to personal property is the point of departure. Since we all have in our power to create value through putting our minds and bodies to work, we also enjoy a natural right to do as we please with that which we have created and place ourselves wherever we have property owners or guests. Or, as Hoppe puts it, “[i]n a natural order, immigration is a person's migration from one neighborhood-community into a different one.”
Consequently, the immigration issue is in real terms solved through the many choices made by sovereign individuals; how they act and interact in order to achieve their goals. There can simply be no immigration policy, since there is no government — only individuals, their actions and their rights (to property). The “open borders” argument is therefore not only irrelevant, since it has a macro point of view; it also fails to realize property rights as a natural regulation of movement. Since all property must be owned and created by the individual, government cannot own property. Furthermore, the property currently in government control was once stolen from individuals — and should be returned the second the state is abolished since property rights are absolute. There is consequently no unowned land to be homesteaded in the Western world, and so “open borders” is in essence a meaningless concept.
Libertarian Utopia
Immigration will thus be naturally restricted in a free society, since all landed property (at least in the Western world) is rightfully owned by self-owning individuals. Just like Nozick argues in his magnum opus Anarchy, State, and Utopia, a society based on natural rights should honor property rights in absolute terms, and therefore the rightful owners of each piece of property should be identified despite the fact that humankind has been plundered by a parasitic class for centuries.
What is to be considered just property when the welfare-warfare state is eventually abolished is not at all clear. Can one take for granted that the subjects (citizens) of a certain state have the right to an equal share of what is currently controlled by the government? Are they, at all, the rightful owners to what they currently control with the state’s legal protection? If we intend to seek the just origin of property, we need to roll back all transactions until the times before the modern state, before monarchies and feudalism, and probably to a time before the city states of ancient Greece. If we do, how should we consider the produced values of the generations we’ve effectively dismissed?
There is probably no way to sort out this unbelievable mess along the lines of absolute property rights. It should be dealt with this way, but I dare say it will be a practical issue when we get to that point, rather than a philosophical one.
A State Immigration Problem
Another problem of immigration and property arises from the social welfare system financed by money extorted from citizens. With the open borders argument, private property rights might be undermined even further if immigrants are entitled to special rights such as housing, social security, minority status and rights, etc. Also, immigrants will automatically become part of the parasitic masses through enjoying the common right to use public roads, public schooling, and public health care — while not paying for it (yet).
The concept of private property rights seems to offer a solution to this, but it is not really a way out: it is not as simple as “private property rights — yes or no?” Private property rights is a philosophical position offering a morally superior fundamental framework for how to structure society, but it does not offer guidance in what to do with non-property such as that currently controlled by government.
It is deceivingly simple to claim all of the state’s subjects have just claims to “state property” since they are entitled to retribution for years of rights violations. This is, however, only part of the truth. It is also a matter of fact that all private production to some degree is part of the rights violation process, with direct state support through subsidies, tax breaks, patent laws, police protection, etc., or indirectly through state meddling with currency exchange rates, “protective” state legislation, through using publicly-owned and maintained property and services for transportation, and so on. There is simply no such thing as just private property anymore in the philosophical sense.
Therefore, it is impossible to say immigrants would be parasites to a greater degree than, e.g., Bill Gates: the Microsoft Corporation has benefited greatly thanks to state regulation of the market, but has also been severely punished in a number of ways. We are all both victims and beneficiaries. Of course, one might argue that forced benefits are not really benefits, but only one aspect of oppression. Well, in that case it would also be true for immigrants, who too are or will be victims of the state (but perhaps not for as long as you and I).
A Libertarian Stand on Immigration
We must not forget libertarianism is not a teleological dogma striving for a certain end; it rather sees individual freedom and rights as the natural point of departure for a just society. When people are truly free, whatever will be will be. Hence, the question is not what the effects of a certain immigration policy would be, but whether there should be one at all.
From a libertarian point of view, it is not relevant to discuss whether to support immigration policy A, B, or C. The answer is not open borders but no borders; the libertarian case is not whether private property rights restrict immigration or not, but that a free society is based on private property. Both of these views are equally libertarian — but they apply the libertarian idea from different points of view. The open borders argument provides the libertarian stand on immigration from a macro view, and therefore stresses the libertarian values of tolerance and openness. The private property argument assumes the micro view and therefore stresses the individual and natural rights.
There is no conflict between these views, except when each perspective is presented as a policy to be enforced by the state. With the state as it is today, should we as libertarians champion open borders or enforced property rights (with citizens’ claims on “state property”)? Both views are equally troublesome when applied within the framework of the state, but they do not contradict each other; they are not opposites.
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Was this written by a child or a mindless ideologue? Yes.
One reason people move from their country to ours is that their country is worse than ours.....for the moment anyways.
See this and other observations in next week's edition of Duh Magazine.
I never though of deliberately starting war as 'meddling'. Something a little more severe comes to mind - like wars of aggression, the ultimate crime against humanity. But maybe that is a little non-pc of me.
"Another problem of immigration and property arises from the social welfare system financed by money extorted from citizens. With the open borders argument, private property rights might be undermined even further if immigrants are entitled to special rights such as housing, social security, minority status and rights, etc. Also, immigrants will automatically become part of the parasitic masses through enjoying the common right to use public roads, public schooling, and public health care — while not paying for it (yet)."
This is half of the reason that central and south Americans are immigrating north illegally, and that ME are immigrating illegally to Western Europe. Yes, they want to escape wars ( started by us ), bad government, corruption. Yes they think there are better eduacation and employment opportunites. Yes they understand we have great social benefits that they will be entitled to the second they arrive wether they work or not, wether they pay taxes or not.
Open boarders are fine, IF we stop all the free shit.
Lets go back to a pre WWI, tax and benefit structure.
https://youtu.be/cCOLcMqdpls
First point of bullshit: the ideology presented is based on "natural rights".
Whenever I see that I know the debate is already over: http://www.spectacle.org/0400/natural.html
Second point of bullshit: governments are the main cause of war.
So drought-induced famine, overpopulation, private-sector specufesting and banking crises, resource depletion, all of that has nothing to do with it. IT'S THE GOVNIT!
No, the primary cause of war is a mass decline in living standards which is determined by population size, resources (transformed into goods and services) and the degree of distribution of those resources. Cause an increase in the ratio of population : available resources and standards of living fall, leading to war.
Can governments cause this? Yes they can, by choosing poor policies that cause rapid population growth (without an equivalent boost in goods and services), or by artificially restricting the flow of goods and services through plain bad management. But only a total simpleton thinks there's nothing more to the story.
Did the government put a gun to the head of the banking sector and tell it to speculate? No, it was lassez-faire that got us here, a lack of regulation. I'm supposed to believe that a financial crisis that kills wages, runs up huge debts and destroys living standards by inhibiting resource availability (can't consume what you can't afford), just like it did before WW1, is somehow all the govt's fault?
There's a clear link between El Nino cycles and conflict: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110824/full/news.2011.501.html It's not hard to understand why, this thing called food you see...GOVERNMENT!
IT'S ALL THE GOVERNMENT'S FAULT! The government is more powerful than the sun! More powerful than weather cycles! It's the government that causes finite resources to run out! It's the government that causes "animal spirits" to run up massive Ponzi-scheme bubbles! The government causes crop, livestock and human disease pandemics! We're running out of oil because of the government! The government overrides PHYSICS!!
Third point of bullshit: property rights exist independently of the State
No. They. Fucking. Do. Not. Property (as legally distinct from possessions) "rights" mean nothing without FORCE and little old you with your "I got mine" territory doesn't mean a goddamned thing when an organized gang overwhelms you. There is no "natural right" involved, there's just a person who arbitrarily says "this is mine" and if that person doesn't have the power to back up that claim with force then the "right" gets buried in a shallow grave alongside the claimant.
Groups are more powerful than individuals so if you want to have your defined property and expect to keep it, you better damn well hope you're part of a gang that defines and defends those very same delineations.
When the gang grows large we start to call it a State. Welcome to reality.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why Anarchism rejects the very notion of "property rights": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft!
The "State" and "Property Rights" are inseparable. You can't have one without the other and US Libertarians are deeply confused.
http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionB3
on your second point of BS.
name ONE large corporate organization that has survived WITHOUT government subsidies / assistance. Remove the government and they have to stand by themselves.
The government ABSOLUTELY encourages debt and speculation. They print debt backed money. They buy votes with corporate welfare, social welfare and warfare state. The financial sector is the most heavily regulated industry and yet it STILL causes significant damage to real people. Regulation as in a law in the book is not what you need. Regulation as part of a bureacracy is not what you need, what you need is MARKET regulation. Remove FDIC insurance, remove restrictions on private money, and the free market will determine the true value of the USD, US Treasuries and the solvency of banks.
on your 3rd point of BS.
Eminent domain. How is that different from a gang of thieves?
Apple, Exxon Mobil, Google, Microsoft, Siemens, Toyota, Chevron, Wal-Mart, Volkswagen, Nestle, Procter and Gamble, BHP, BMW, etc. All companies that have made a ton of money producing things that people want to buy. Are you actually saying that these companies could never have existed without government help?
Sure, it can be argued that they've all been on the receiving end of some sort of kickback at some point, but to say they survive / exist ONLY because of that assistance is something I reject. They're never going to say no to free money but that doesn't mean they can't survive without it.
Now if you want to talk AIG, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc then yes, they only exist today because of govt support.
On money, the govt doesn't print debt-backed money, that's a myth. The private banking system (shadow and traditional) creates debt-backed money when it extends credit. This accounts for 95-99% of all the "money" in the world. When govt's do print money, which is rare, it is debt-free (such as coins minted by Treasury), yet somehow all OECD governments have been hoodwinked into believing that they no longer have the power to do this. Instead the govt has to go begging to the market in TSY auctions to get money and what is received is private-sector-originated debt-backed money and an obligation to pay it all back to the financial sector with interest.
Historically the money that was used to buy US TSYs at auction was money that already existed in the financial system. That money came into existence when the private sector (households and businesses) borrowed it into existence, so no money was created when Treasury went to auction. Only since the financial crisis has this changed with Primary Dealers being able to finance TSY purchases with money borrowed under ZIRP from the Fed. Still, it's the TSY borrowing (indirectly) from the Fed to create money and the Fed is owned by private sector banks (its members) so it is stil the same private-sector creation mechanism, not a public-sector one.
Over time, the financial sector comes to own the govt because it's the financial sector, not the government, that creates almost all money.
The last time the American government actually printed its own money in a big way was under Lincoln in response to the banking sector charging insane interest as it attempted to profiteer from the Civil War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenback_(money)
On regulation of the financial sector. It doesn't matter if there are one million pages of financial regulation, the mass of paper means nothing if it is not enforced, which it is not. Regulation is only "heavy" if it is actually applied. The financial sector has enjoyed a spectacular free-ride for decades, they created an entire shadow-banking system to circumvent regulation of the traditional system, they've eroded, edited and removed any regulation that actually restricted profits via DC lobbying, they blew up the entire world economy and none of them are in prison. So "most heavily regulated industry" my ass. That regulation may as well just be blank sheets to be used as toilet paper. I repeat, regulation without enforcement is not regulating and no sector has enjoyed as much freedom from restraint as the financial sector.
As for "free market forces" fixing the financial system. There is plenty of merit to this, and I'm not opposed to the underlying intentions. However, history suggests caution. Consider what happened during the US period of "Wildcat Banking" between 1837 and 1862. Banks were free to create their own bank-specific money, leading to absolute mayhem for businesses. The average lifespan for a bank was five years, around half of all banks failed, meaning that businesses and individuals were left with piles of different currencies, none of which they could be sure would actually retain value. Banks (and currencies) constantly popped into and out of existence and it was impossible for individuals and businesses to keep track of it all. The subsequent chaos and economic harm was one of the primary drivers for establishment of a firm, single-currency national system, and when this eventually evolved into the Federal Reserve it was the banks themselves who pushed for it, not the government.
The key word here is collusion, and it happens in every competitive sector. When competitors agree to stop sniping at each other and collude, they realize that far more profitable looting is possible, so that's what happens time and time again, in airlines, in telecommunications, in oil and gas, in insurance and finance, in healthcare, etc. Collusions are a natural consequence of a totally unregulated (free) market.
The "free market" you want can only exist with heavy and strict regulation to prevent it evolving into monopolistic rent-seeking, which is another reason why US Libertarians are so confused when they rail against all regulation. The Germans call this regulated freedom "ordoliberalism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordoliberalism and it works pretty well for them.
On eminent domain. Yes, exactly. Gang of thieves. If the party on the receiving end is still a loyal member of the main gang, perhaps they'll be resettled / compensated, otherwise, it's time for them to go join a new gang.
Perhaps I'm overly cynics but the fact that congress does not issue money via the treasury seems not so much because they don't know they can as much as it is because they would then actually be responsible for the money they spend - and the populace would then be able to vote with their wallets. The private FED bankers, the career politicians, and the recipients of all this spending benefit from the current system. And this is yet another reason why an audit of the FED will never happen.
The sole purpose of govt is to pick winners and losers----period-----thats why its organized in the first place -to insure the haves keep their stuff.
From the first stick stuck in the ground to deliniate mine/yours upon the advent of agrarianism http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/yoeman/agri1.html govt was enforcement of the status quo---any thoughts of a different role for govt (benevolence, confering property rights, etc.) is a religion in which the state (govt) becomes the faux benefactor and the object of idolatry as the subject becomes the believer and the "faithful"--
Most things are quite simple if you stop having faith in the system.
govts are obsolete.
The bullshit is yours for even bringing the line "remove the government" as even a hypothetical proposal.
Who would be doing the removing? Who could remove a goverment?
Hint: Another goverment.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
It is impossible for humans to live without government. Any humans not living under a govenrment are at war between factions trying to become the government.
A state is just a tool. An organization. The real question is who controls the state and for what purpose.
In US the state is a tool of the capitalists = a fascist state. It’s not a democratic state or a state dependent on the will of the public. It’s a state solely controlled by money/fiat (legalized bribery). It’s been usurped by the interest of private property owners from the start.
The indoctrinated (always US-based) ZH-crowd that sees all state/statism as either ‘left-wing’ and/or ‘socialism’ shows an astounding lack of historical and philosophical insight. That argument would – by it’s “logical” extension – make all monarchies ‘socialists’ and ‘left-wing’ + a theological dictatorship like Iran’s should be considered ‘socialist’/’left-wing’ because it has a strong state(?). And a fascist state like US (dominated solely by capital interest) should be seen as socialist? A farce.
A state can be capitalist in the sense it’s supports, extends and secures the interests of a capitalist class (the owners of the economy/and at times the state itself – as many places around the world today). Since about everything of importance today (especially everything profit-generating) is privately owned by a tiny minority we have capitalism. Capitalism is defined by the private ownership of the means of production and a strong state does not necessarily change that.
The Framers have your third point covered. From the Claremont Institute:
"The Declaration's third self-evident truth answers the question, why do men establish government? The answer: to secure natural rights, or the rights people are born with. The Declaration implies that these rights are not secure outside of government."
Our liberties are derived from our natural rights but in the state of nature they don't mean much if evil men can deprive us of them by force.
Government is force... it secures nothing without wielding destructive power that threatens "natural" rights...
I wield destructive power when I drive my automobile but that doesn't mean that I cause destruction.
Every letter from the government involoves an implied or actual threat, it's true, but the balance men have to strike is giving enough power to government to protect our rights without giving away too much.
Think 1789 for an attempt to strike that balance. Think 2015 for a government over whom we have lost all control because we didn't give a damn when the Supreme Court detroyed that balance.
This is what was intended as an edit of the above:
The Framers have your third point covered.
From the Claremont Institute: "The Declaration's third self-evident truth answers the question, why do men establish government? The answer: to secure natural rights, or the rights people are born with. The Declaration implies that these rights are not secure outside of government."
Our liberties are derived from our natural rights but in the state of nature they don't mean much if evil men can deprive us of them by force. The great part about the idea of natural rights is simply to look at what we have before any government ever establishes a law so we're clear about the fact that government is necessary to protect our rights but it does NOT give us our rights.
I think you're almost right. The debate isn't over when someone mentions natural rights. It's over when you find out that the guy speaking about rights is a lunatic libertarian, if you'll pardon the redundancy. They pat themselves on the back about how principled they are compared to all other opportunists and hypocrites but they demand that borders be flung open and governments stop being governments precisely at the point that the state of nature returns. Germany will get 800,000 more Muslims soon and then another and another. They will DEMAND the property and degrade the other rights of the locals. The bleeping libertarians will swoon over the immigrants who come to degrade the host nation -- think rape, hand grenades, cars torched, crime, and typical Muslim bullshit -- but recoil in horror at the mere mention of the degradation aspect of what their "principles" lead to as the night the day.
God bless the Mises Institute for the light it sheds on government when it exceeds its basic role of protector and becomes nursemaid, pope, thief, and killer but on immigration all it serves up is moose pie left in the sun for a week.
"Anarchism rejects the very notion of "property rights" "
Anarchism. Now that is an "ism" which has a perfect record of failure for thousands of years, ergo has never contributed even jack sh*t to Civilization in all of recorded History!
Anyone else notice the hypocrisy of the Author, an Academic whose paycheck and platform is provided by a "State" run University?
Neverthelss, Thanks for that useless, utopian Tripe, Tylers.
Cheers,
S. Rex
Though partial to Anarcho-Syndicalism (which has current and historical working examples), I am not, nor have I ever been, an Anarchist.
Nowhere did I say I was. You constructed a straw man.
Totally lost me on this one. Babbling Bullshit.
A lot of the confusion started with Afroyim v. Rusk 1967. The author did not mention it but it is important to find the source of border and citizenship destruction.
http://www.lawnix.com/cases/afroyim-rusk.html
This nobody vagabond Afroyim travelled back and forth between continents all his life not knowing where he belonged and yet was able to get idiot American lawyers to change the entire system for his convenience.
Whodathunkit - a chosenite.
Nothing but nothing says "I'm an American" like voting in an Israeli election and serving (only) in the IDF.
Was this written in Amerinese?
This is the kind of horse shit that distracts the serfs from real topics.
Health Care, Retirement, Safety, Food, Clothing, Jobs, Education, ect...
Moar importantly! Open fucking borders!
You flee because you refuse to fight for freedom. Your ignorance betrays you.
Bingo.
This is hardly the right time to bring up board games.
Go back to whither you came.
.
Let's put it up for a vote: if you favor immigration you have to host the immigrant(s) in your own home for 2 years, file the legal paperwork, and line up a job for when they become a citizen - or they get shipped back.
If you aren't willing to host them in your own home you can't support hosting them in your country.
I wish wars would work like that too. If you think we should go to war with Russia get your wallet out, donate your kids and then suit yourself up. If they don't want to send their own kids, go themselves or start cutting really big checks then obviously it doesn't need to happen.
You can't have open borders when half the world is dire straitts from central planning induced poverty and war. Most Libertarians have read into the globalist literature and have been aware for quite some time the intention was to erase all of the worlds borders and create a big shit sandwich of globalism.
ok. thanks for the nits. whuddaya gonna do?
Hey!!! Ship them to Japan!
Lost me at Libertarian
It's the US-based version of 'libertarian' (i.e. the corporate controlled/Kock-sponsored version of the word).
For the real version: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/150-years-of-libertarian
That was the biggest pile of shit I've read in sometime. A libertarian wants reduced government and increased fundamental freedoms but by definition if one respects others property then one MUST respect other's boundaries, which means that we must protect our country from invaders who illegally cross those boundaries. What if an invading army crosses our borders and attacks our citizens? Does this mean we as libertarians lay down our arms and hug the invaders? WTF??? The US and EU are both under attack or should we say war? If we don't fight back and force the invaders back, we have been conquered by this invading army of people carrying babies has shields.
Not really. National borders are not at all the same as the borders of your personal property.
"Our borders", as if they are your property. A libertarian would never recognize such a concept as collective property or collective heritage.
Nations are not compatible with libertarianism. If you like your country, dont call yourself a libertarian. Make up a new label and label yourself with it, because words have meaning.
Ayn Rand herself liked the word "minarquist".
Right on cue, as the night the day, a libertarian will show up with arguments that fly in the face of 40,000 years of human history.
"Oh, but Ayn Rand said . . . ."
What arguments? You are getting a little defensive are you not?
I am not an advocate for libertarianism, though you seem to think i am. Im just describing what the concept is. It is ridiculous but should dbe described in a coherent way at the very least.
Theoretical libertarianism is not compatible with nation states, that never stops privileged people with first world problems to call themselves libertarian.
We can individually believe what we wish. Property rights are defined by our ability to defend them, either through our own individual force or that of an organized force of government. Borders and boundaries ultimately are defined by the laws of the particular country in which we reside. If we refuse to defend the borders of said country, then we refuse to defend the laws of said country, therefor property rights do not exist beyond our own imaginings.
We may think what we will of force, be it by individual or government, but force is nature, is life and our exercise of it will not only define our property AND our very right to exist.
But we can all agree to whine of its unfairness, and the good die young. The power to enforce fairness is always the path to absolute tyranny.
In a libertarian or anarchist society, security would be contracted for from capable services in a free market, either individually or as a group plan. Private property would be well protected, with hell to pay for violators.
What is the point of having a country if it has no borders?
The point is not to have countries, but jurisdictions.
In the middle ages there were no countries but there were armies and they ruled over whatever lands they could hold. People in a jurisdiction are protected by the local armed forces and pay tribute to them.
Think of a jurisdiction as an empire. Subjects of any empire, such as the USSR, the roman or bizantine empires, the islamic caliphate, the mongol empire, could freely move within it.
And away we go with the libertarian word games.
No such things as nations. Just ... um, "jurisdictions." Like with borders and stuff where you get your head chopped off if you and your pals decide to settle on the banks of the Tiber River.
Huns and Muslims rape, pillage, and burn in your country? Just exercising their natural rights to help themselves to what you've got.
You couldn't travel freely in the USSR. You lived where you had permission to live.
Agreed on the USSR, you needed permits, i guess they could be granted if you asked.
There is a big difference between a country an a jurisdiction, in that there is no emotional appeal to it, no concept of motherland. A state is a state and it taxes you for protection, so pick the one that bests suits you. People talk about their country and vow to defend even the parts they have never been to, but they dont so with jurisdictions.
Jurisdictions do not grant nationality, countries do. Countries control their borders in any way they see fit, jurisdictions only do so to protect the people living within it from invading hordes. This is not done out of benevolence, but because if the people are not protected they cant work nor pay taxes. Without taxes there is no army and no government. While we are at it, a jurisdiction could easily expel anyone, native born or not, if deemed a troublemaker. Countries cannot do so, because "nationality" sticks to you.
Its all very technical, international, rootless.. Thats how it was in the middle ages,
The nation state has been a recent phenomenon but borders are not unique to it. Every people drew some kind of a line. The medieval shire reeves (sheriffs) had bailiwicks (jurisdictions) which were different from the king's realm (jurisdiction) . Jurisdiction literally means where the law speaks, though it was the king's law that spoke in the shire, which the reeve enforced.
Your use of "jurisdiction" seems closest to "place" with a strange absence (or attenuation) of any ruler's authority, where in point of fact there was plenary authority backed up by a ruler, the legitimacy of whose rule depended on repelling invaders.
Ergo our own rulers are illegitimate, monumentally so.
I understand you're not a libertarian but you sound an awful lot like one....
Middle ages....a very good time in human history...yes.
The Anglo-Saxon kings had a powerful interest in knowing what the people were thinking. Subjects could initiate criminal proceedings at the meetings of shire. The defendant's reputation was like gold to him as juries of "oath helpers" would testify, not to culpability, but whether the accused was a trustworthy man. Without that affirmation, it was off to trial by ordeal. It put a premium on not being an anti-social moron. For ASM today, it's even better than a 24/7 pass. You rule.
There will be a reckoning. Probably not from the so-called forces of law and order, but from others of like mind. Al-qaida is apparently going to take after ISIS now, for example.
Straw man. Raping and pillaging are not natural rights.
Also, one may assume that a free man in a free society would not settle in a place known for not respecting natural rights, and forthwith get his head chopped off. If anyone did such a foolish thing, then he made a big mistake, like swimming with crocodiles.
True, but the "free man in a free society" obscures the problem for libertarians and their stupid ideas on immigration. The unfree man under the control of a free man at the head of a hostile army is one problem that they just assume away. We are all free, free, free and no other person who is free, free, free coming into our neighborhood is ever seen as any kind of a problem. Differences in culture and race are just not noticed.
The inevitable rape and pillage aspects of foreign invasion (military or with diaper bag) are what Lawrence Auster called the "unexplained exception" to liberal policies. White libs flee blacks like the plague but never stoop to explain how their actions fit with their beloved idea that all cultures and races are equal. Any "rough edges" around blacks, if acknowledged, are just temporary hiccups on the way to full functioning integration and harmony with whites. Sweet liberal ideas intact.
So with libertarians and immigration. They whine and moan about free men but are silent on the inevitable outrages by those lovely free men just aching to think like we do and fit into what we have. No borders! No borders! Prophylactic measures, like nations and borders, are scorned. No. It has to turn to crap right outside your gate before you can get together with your (metrosexual?) neighbors and kick ass locally. In your "jurisdiction."
Another attempt to drag this infantile dogma through an obstacle course of real-world issues. Truly tortured. Love it.
Who decides who owns what land in the absence of a state?
I'm as libertarian as they come and I see the necessity of a state. Libertarian is decidedly NOT anarcho-capitalist, and requires a state - a minimalist state, yet a state nonetheless.
Libertarianism is finally being exposed for the crap ideology that it is.
It's genesis was funded by money power operatives who are intent on casting a pall of confusion over the minds of sheeple. It is dialectic of the worst kind, offering a freedom schtick to those who cannot see through the veneer.
Yet, that same freedom that is offered comes at a price through usury on money, through manipulated prices on markets, through some sort of nebulous self governing law.
A good parasite will emit enzymes to control brain of a host. A really good parasite on humanity will have dialetics so that people are like a mouse between cat's paws.
The cat will bounce the people back and forth between its paws, but the brain is really the cat's.
The brain is an illuminist overlord cast which metastasized out of the old Jewish world government. It linked up with Rothschild, and grew into secret lodge socities. These socities are funded by usury out of finance. Their structure is Kabala, and before that Zohar mystery religion. It is no accident that it came out of Babylon, an ancient center where money control was first understood.
Man has been at war with his own psychopaths since the beginning of time. Money systems have allowed psychos to become powerful and hidden. In pre money evolutionary history, the psychos would be kicked out of the tribe.
The biggest problem facing man is how to bring money under control and make it lawful, to then strip the pyschos of their rent seeking gains.
LIbertarian psycho babble is a full on dialectic that says money should not be lawful, that instead it should be "credit" or "metal."
The true nature of money is not credit, nor is it metal. So, their babble, has as core ideology - a whopper of a lie, all intended to deceive.
A sovereign nation has its own lawful money, its own language, and its own borders.
sovereignmoney.eu
Fuck you, slaver.
"The biggest problem facing man is how to bring money under control and make it lawful, to then strip the pyschos of their rent seeking gains. "
"A sovereign nation has its own lawful money, its own language, and its own borders. "
I am destitute and alone and dispised in the land of my birth.
So few, such as you, have any understanding of how this terrible charade is played and what for.
I am cast into dilemma: MUST I abandon this realm and all I have known?
And how WILL you force sheep to become men? Will you refuse to herd them and utilize their value to not only profit but actually enhance their lives, or simply cast them to the wolves?
I have no answer but the question exists none the less. All approaches are loaded with pain death and destuction. The question comes down to what we each think to be justice.
True, in relation to the corporate-controlled/US-based version of the term.
Real libertarianism has, however, some intellectual weight, history and good ideas about how a future society could be organized in a more just/intelligent way: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/150-years-of-libertarian.
In the world where all property is privately owned, where does wildlife live?
I can anwser this properly; that is -honestly.
It is with those who honor wildness and wildlife.
It is with the unkempt and uncivilized.
It is with the Franciscan or more properly: Vronian.
My neighbors destroy the stray, the wild, the feral, kill the invasive, poison the rodents, poison the insects, pull up the weeds, opress their 'pets' and their 'children'. etc...
I am The Throxx Of Vron: I nurture ALL that my neighbor would destroy.
I understand and respect the FACT that the animals predate and have just prior rights.
Here are the weeds, the bird nests, the holes in the ground that the rodent runs down into, the rotten tree, the bramble, the tall grasses, the dead branch of pecking, the hole under the shed, the unkempt scrub, etc, etc, etc,...
The fisher cat, and the fox, and the bear, and the dear, and the groundhog, and the racoon, and the squirrel, and the stray cat, and the skunk, and the toad, and the wild turkey, and the .....
ALL: right here, right next to the mowed lawns they do not graze and rest upon.
HERE, NOW, I LOOK UPON MY BELOVED WITCO CARVING OF ST. FRANCIS, AND UPON MY FERAL FRIENDS/FIENDS THAT SHARE THIS PLACE... & WE HEAR THE INSECTS AND OWLS OUTSIDE....
...& ALL CONCEPTS OF 'CIVILIZATION' MEAN: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
VRON
Just pure VRON
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIoKAEErC_I
You make it so clear.
Nature has always been the same. Life has been a process of extinction, the weak perishing to the force of their superiors.
Should we revert back to dinosaurs? Is Jurassic Park your ideal? If so, it should be pretty apparent that force IS the only justice in life.
Cling to weakness and pacifism at your own risk. Justice will seek you out.
In the forest.
Great article Tyler.
I have been turning over this debate in my mind as of late as it has been brought to the forefront of political spotlight. Very succint and well presented.
Libertarian ideology is not in conflict with preventing illegal entry into the US. Guarding the nations borders falls well within the duty of the government to provide a national defense. Sending the military to meddle in other countries affairs across the planet is not a constitutional function. Allowing other governments to dispose of their human debris and potential opposition by dumping them in the US inhibits political reform within the illegal immigrants homeland.
A Fox News article just published showed that 87% of illegal immigrants and 72% of Legal immigrants are on some type of social welfare.
http://nation.foxnews.com/2015/09/10/report-87-illegal-immigrant-familie...
Even ending Government provided welfare programs will not entirely end the problem of discouraging unskilled benefit seekers from entering the country. Special interests, church groupo groups, businesses, and political parties will bring them in for their own purposes. After they're of no further use these groups will abandon them.
For a real libertarian there no states, only jurisdictions. The jurisdiction is not yours to decide who lives there.
PS, i´m not a libertarian, for those who like to keep it personal.
These refugees can be housed very close to their original homeland. We do not need to fly them here and basically let them go not knowing anything about their backgrounds (are they terrorists posing as refugees?) The media shows some women and children in the "refugee stories" but the VAST MAJORITY are young men. Some people are starting to ask questions and get suspicious.
Click the link to see what the Saudi's could do -- but are doing nothing. This is really freaking unbelievable.
https://youtu.be/hl_62qogKx4
lives have been forcefully uprooted, have a hard time choosing where to lead their lives inpeace.
No.
They shouldn't have the right to just decide where they want to move in.
To invade other people's countries and fleece their taxpayers..
And bring their poisonous faiths and ideas with them.
Best part of the immigrants invading Europe are young men - many trained jihadis.
Who are nothing but stinking terrorists or cowards.
Leaving their womenfolk to endure and refusing to fight for their country.
They are collective scum.
Terrorist scum or cowardly scum.
My country is full of them already.
Get back and put things right don't come to my country and wreck that as well!!!!
They don't have a right to decide to live their lives where I am.
That's ten tons of commonsense but millions of Westerners don't know what you're talking about, including Merkel, Cameron, and Hollander. Sarkozy thinks it's your duty to breed with Africans in France.
Words like "lunatic" just are inadequate to describe what these people work for. It's deliberate, intentional, purposeful, planned destruction.
I used to think I was a libertarian - what ever that is. Now I think I am an anarchist -what ever that is.
Hope it means just leave me alone -don't need rules, government, taxes, or bullshit politicians
Understand how you feel. But then again, you'd always have to be rounding up your friends and neighbors to build roads, hospitals, dams, put out fires, etc.
Then again, the implication is that we'd all have a lot more friends and friendly neighbors, wouldn't we?
And then again, the folks who didn't feel like being friendly and helping out could just sit there... alone.
Solitary parasites.
We can all see the benefit in collectivized actions, just like with nuclear power. The problem is when that force is put to evil use...always in the name of our "best" interests.
It always comes back to individual actions. When We continually demand MORE from our collective muscle, we risk that muscle being turned back against us. WE enable this muscle through a series of small but consequential choices.
The voice on the other end of the line said: "You can dial 911 all you want, but nobody's coming."
Yours is the successful government of Somalia right now.
Hhhhh, if only people would be nice, these lovely theories would work!
I am of the fuck off we're full immigration position especially for economic opportunists and fifth column/trojan horse infiltrators
It seems here some have cognitive dissonance between being libertarian and right winger.
The true libertarian is FOR the free movement of capital, goods and persons.
The right winger is not (even if the right winger accept libertarian principle such as market economy and free market).
Big difference !
Back then it was true that anybody could have crossed Europe without all that shitty paper work but if the immigrant or a community done shit, they were kicked out ASAP ask Jews how many time they were displaced across history (and for the right reasons) !!!
Ask also Mozart when he done his concert in the whole Europe ! He even played in London and Paris !
But thank to Bitcoin, I can cross imaginary lines without having to show authority that I have more than 10,000 USD and those authority steal me a tax just for the right to leave !
Thing is ... Libertarians are Statists.
They share the same essential beliefs as do the commies, the socialists and the fascists. They all insist that they have the "right to take other people's stuff, using force". This is what defines them.
They have fewer excuses than the average dork, though. Libertarians absolutely grok the difference between "right" and "wrong" ... but lack the integrity to consistently choose "right".
I have a friend who claims to be a libertarian. I asked him what he believed and he's said several times...
I believe:
He didn't say:
I am rather naive and think everyone is a good person.
I am not aware that others will group together and take my stuff by force.
I am not aware America itself was taken from the indigenous population by the UK state.
Good points. The indigs also were into taking land and people from other indigs. One group of saintly indigs deprived a Jesuit of his property -- his lips.
Not taking you to task. Just fleshing out the indigenous population point.
No way, man. The indigenous people of the Americas were just a bunch of peace lovin' flower children livin' off the land. Then the blue eyed devils came and closed their continental commune of love.
No 3 ... it's all you need, I guess.
Plus a government.
Helpful. Lay out a shallow, stupid straw man "libertarian" position based on what "a friend" said. If that's all you have bothered to learn, which is, quite frankly, less than nothing, why post anything at all? There are many great books on the great questions and issues of liberty readily available.
Real libertarian solution to immigration: let the people decide on it thru referendum.
The Libertarian stand on immigration is determined by whatever contracts are formulated by private individuals. There is no government coercion in a Libertarian Ayn Rand-type state.
If private individuals want to fund and build a fence, then they are free to do that - with their own money.
There is no more an automatic government borrowing authority and gold and silver coin is the only money used. No more paper fiat money allowed.
Guns, the internet, shame and private contracts are the new methods that will replace government at all levels.
Government will no longer be used as a coercive force against the people benefitting a few criminals.
Boehner and the other GOP clowns will give those ideas an earnest 60 seconds of consideration in the Hill cafeteria before they go back to "governing."
Ayn Rand considered Libertarians and libertarians to be naive fools, and despised them one and all.
I think it is hilarious how many of you guys try to sidle up to some "Objectivist" materialist bitch who would've just as soon kicked you in the balls.
This seems to be an issue on which too many libertarians end up as the tools of global corporatism.
Borderless countries are for those whose only concern is money, or who affiliate themselves with no particular cultural identity, or who are clueless victims of the current anti-western cultural subversion and despise their own people and heritage. Anyone who wants any of the above running their country, or the world, deserves what they get. In a world such as that, "culture" will be determined by corporate interests alone, such as in most of the current condition of what was once the USA.
Leaving shit hole countries migrating to form new shit holes
The problem with immigration is that it is government subsidized in the form of direct welfare payments and official blindness with respect to compliance regulations because the illeagal's existence is officially ignored.
The result is that the native is displaced at work by an immigrant who is lower cost only by virtue of compliance blindness while simultaneously taxed to pay welfare to the the same immigrant who replaced him, but who officially does not exist in the work place.
And the two state parties are competing to be the first to allow those officially nonexistent foreigners to vote for expansion of this preferential treatment.
They need to reconsider...
...or hang. Either outcome is fine.
In the middle of a shit fight .... time out for 4 o'clock tea .... open borders .... no government thieving welfare ..... work and private charites ..... mostly family .... we wouldn't off shore if immigrants had to work ..... like in the old days .... of history .... was this article even written by a Libertarian ?
No borders means no property.
No property means no freedom.
Your freedom was already taken by government theft .... we would surpass China by far .... with cheap. sincere, hard working immigrants .... yearning to be free !
In the old days immigrants had to work so hard .... only the committed bothered coming .... and they earned their way into their new country !
when people are truly free...
As if "people" are stars on their own, up in the heavens shining bright, that live outside the planet's ecosystems.
People live in power constructs called tribes, nations, empires. They always have, as alone they can't survive. That's History's time line. Its indelible.
So freedom is a relative concept. And truly, truly, the Von Mises brigade never can understand that Geronimo was the LAST libertarian in the land of the free.
Now his successors, as political tribal leaders of the new race, love to talk about how they played baseball with his dug up skull; now reburied in some dark place; for initiating uber americans into the game of depriving OTHER people of their freedom. Its called the MIC/CIA's "best and brightest" strain.
That is an awesome defiency of not understanding historical context of societal evolution and not realising its the Hound dog that waggles the Market, (its anthropomorphic tail), and NOT the other way around.
Darwin needs to reeducate Von Mises that the Road to Serfdom of fellow traveller Hayek (as for Friedman and Greenspan) is paved with good intentions of "invisible hands" turning into "cybernetically guided hands" using HFT algos to protect their own Uber tribes by tilting the tables of Markets gone casino mad.
Now Humpty Dumpty of Market's TRUE libertarian mantra is all broken up; by those very "best and brightest" who played baseball with you know who's skull.
Native Americans were very tribal .... and brutal .... like ISIS !
ISIS IS the base line for social constructs. The power of the collective supersedes all other considerations, to the point of not only abandoning all values of evolved common decency, but absolute sacrifice of one's own life for absolute domination. Civilization in retreat. The "nuke it from orbit as the only way to be sure" mentality.
Thank you – a good read.
I will, however, ad some:
1. Darwin is the most intellectually misused person. His theories on evolution have been morphed into slogans: “Survival of the fittest” have been morphed into “dog eats dog”. If you actually read Darwin he was an intelligent man. What he found out was that biological systems developed in an interdependent way – what he meant with ‘fittest’ was not strongest, but best adapted (with the surrounding eco-system). In that sense we, as a species, are very badly adapted to survive. Especially because we chose not to acknowledge our potential as a social and intelligent species and instead celebrate the our most primitive attributes (greed/egoism, fear and violence).
2. Freedom is, in my book, equal opportunities to change the course of ones life. In a ‘libertarian’ (US-based/corporate-constructed version of the term) utopia of laisses-faire market economy, the (obvious) end-result will be the concentration of wealth and power by a small minority (very much what we see today). In the start there’ll be some sort of meritocracy, but slowly (through inheritance – unless there’s a heavy tax here, and I guess not ;-)) wealth/power will not be concentrated with the “best and brightest”, but with those with the “right” last-name. Opportunities follows wealth and power = fewer and fewer will be ‘free’.
3. Libertarianism is not a US-corporate invented ideology. The real libertarianism has very good ideas to how society could be organized in a more just, intelligent and social way: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/150-years-of-libertarian (and yes, I keep reposting this link – it’s important).
But again, thanks. Always enjoy your posts!
On Darwin : I did say he needs to "educate"...he was not just intelligent but a true genius!
And of course misquoted.
"Welfare is a shit magnet .... work is an opportunity !" Kchrisick
This drivel right here, articles like this from libertarians who don't know if they are coming or going, don't know if they want governemnt or anarchy, don't know if they should wear the red shirt or the blue shirt... pick a side already!
This is why Libertarians are never taken seriously and why you will never be considered a viable 3rd party, you people act and talk like children and then act like democrats too scared to defend yourselves on any one policy or position!! Grow up!
You libertrians are worse then Democrats and Republicans, atleast they have an agenda, libertarians just want to hate everything and everyone they think is against their idea of freedom.
When are you Rand Paul fanatics going to realize he is like Jeb, doesn't have a chance.
I've never seen so many descriptions and critiques of libertarian thought by commentators with nary a clue. Oh, sure, they all think that know what they're talking about, but to any serious thinker, including any who are not even libertarian, most of what's posted here is shallow and just plain wrong, exhibiting zero grasp of the ideas of liberty as a whole. Carry on.
Far too many words.
Here's the proper conclusion on "open borders" - not advisable in the real world since there is unlimited demand for "free" services, in welfare states (i.e., in most developed economies) those services are available, and most of the world lives in poverty and would love to obtain those services.
There, how obvious is that and how long did it take to read it? Sheesh...