To introduce the topic, I am a supporter of open-borders, and I am aware that there are differing perspectives on the issue of immigration among Austrian thinkers. That said, I have seen criticism of Ron Paul’s “anti-immigrant” stance in that it violates Austrian principles is un-Misesian. Of course, the biography page for Ludwig von Mises (written by Rothbard) on this site states that Mises “denounced…immigration restrictions”, so it would seem that this criticism would be justfied, however I’m stuck on a passage from the introduction to Omnipotent Government (1944):
However, it would be a fateful mistake to assume that a return to the policies of liberalism abandoned by the civilized nations some decades ago could cure these evils and open the way toward peaceful cooperation of nations and toward prosperity. If Europeans and the peoples of European descent in other parts of the earth had not yielded to etatism, if they had not embarked upon vast schemes of government interference with business, our recent political, social, and economic disasters could have been avoided. Men would live today under more satisfactory conditions and would not apply all their skill and all their intellectual powers to mutual extermination. But these years of antagonism and conflict have left a deep impression on human mentality, which cannot easily be eradicated. They have marked the souls of men, they have disintegrated the spirit of human cooperation, and have engendered hatreds which can vanish only in centuries. Under present conditions the adoption of a policy of outright laissez faire and laissez passer on the part of the civilized nations of the West would be equivalent to an unconditional surrender to the totalitarian nations. Take, for instance, the case of migration barriers. Unrestrictedly opening the doors of the Americas, of Australia, and of Western Europe to immigrants would today be equivalent to opening the doors to the vanguards of the armies of Germany, Italy, and Japan. There is no other system which could safeguard the smooth coordination of the peaceful efforts of individuals and nations but the system today commonly scorned as Manchesterism. We may hope— although such hopes are rather feeble—that the peoples of the Western democratic world will be prepared to acknowledge this fact, and to abandon their present-day totalitarian tendencies. But there can be no doubt that to the immense majority of men militarist ideas appeal much more than those of liberalism. The most that can be expected for the immediate future is the separation of the world into two sections: a liberal, democratic, and capitalist West with about one quarter of the total world population, and a militarist and totalitarian East embracing the much greater part of the earth’s surface and its population. Such a state of affairs will force upon the West policies of defense which will seriously hamper its efforts to make life more civilized and economic conditions more prosperous.
So am I missing Mises’ point, or does he seem to be arguing for the retention of immigration restrictions in the present because of other factors that must be first dealt with (much like Ron Paul has in regard to the welfare state)? If so, is the aforementioned biography incorrect, or did Mises change his mind at some point?
That said, I have seen criticism of Ron Paul’s “anti-immigrant” stance in that it violates Austrian principles
Austrian Economics is logically derived and it is not possible for acting humans to violate it. I think you meant libertarian principles.
Here’s my opinion on immigration: If you don’t want someone on your property, don’t let them come in. If you don’t want to do business with someone, then don’t.
Ron Paul was free-immigration, but he realizes that currently an open borders policy would lead to an extension of the government’s welfare program. George Reisman, in Capitalism, sums it up the best when he says that a free-immigration policy can only work in a country without welfare.
Well couldn’t open borders be seen as a economical way of destroying the state? More welfare, more taxation, less toleration. Also with a springing of multi-cultural sentiment, one could make the argument that one institution is incapable of representing such a wide base of opinion.
All the land is currently in public property, so open-immigration is just an invitation to consume all the capital in one massive tragedy of the commons.
Sure, and destroying our incomes in the meantime. I rather find another way to do it, instead of sacrificing my income for the “greater good”. In any case, if Robert Higgs and Ludwig von Mises are right then all States are moving towards the “crisis of interventionism” anyways.
That’s fine. You get my point though. Either way, my question is not whether the pro-immigration or anti-immigration position is correct. My question is how can Paul’s qualified anti-immigration position be called “un-Misesian” (as I have seen it), if Mises himself could accept qualified anti-immigration arguments (as seen in the quote)? Did Mises change his position on this issue to reject the quote above, or are critics just unaware of Mises’ actual view of the issue?
That much is understood. This mirrors Mises’ quote above that free immigration in the present political climate would be disastrous. But when Rothbard states that Mises “denounced […] immigration restrictions” here, was he ignoring Mises’ statement above, or did Mises change his stance at a later point?
Mises is saying that the Western, democratic, capitalist nations of the world in 1944 were right in restricting immigration from the Axis (and probably the Comintern) since a flood of Nazi-sympathsizing immigrants to the West could permanently ruin the prospects for liberty. In other words, you don’t want a flood of pro-totalitarian people flooding a democratic nation where there are rights to vote, free speech, assembly, etc., since those pro-totalitarian immigrants would inevitably use those powers against the democracy itself.
You have to remember that Mises was not a libertarian ideologue. He was an economist and he was interested in praxeology as a science. So here, Mises shows that yes, in fact, maybe we cannot immediately transfer from corrupt social democracies to libertarian havens. Perhaps transitionary periods of scaling down government and bringing liberty to the rest of the world are necessary.
Perhaps I wasn’t being clear with my question (or perhaps people have been responding without reading my question carefully [;)]). I fully understand what Mises said in this passage and why he said it. I’m well aware that Mises took the more utilitarian view while Rothbard tended to focus on natural rights. My question is in regard to Rothbard’s description of Mises, given the fact that I’ve only read a handful of each of their works.
From the passage quoted above, I see the following path of thinking:
Mises: “However, it would be a fateful mistake to assume that a return to the policies of liberalism abandoned by the civilized nations some decades ago could cure these evils and open the way toward peaceful cooperation of nations and toward prosperity.”
Observation: Seems to be saying that regardless of the theoretical arguments for liberalism, it won’t work in the current situation. (But should still be pursued, just without any expectation of achieving the intended results?)
Mises: “But these years of antagonism and conflict have left a deep impression on human mentality, which cannot easily be eradicated. They have marked the souls of men, they have disintegrated the spirit of human cooperation, and have engendered hatreds which can vanish only in centuries.”
Observation: Seems to say that not only will it not work in the current situation, but it won’t work until one or more centuries have passed.
Mises: “Under present conditions the adoption of a policy of outright laissez faire and laissez passer on the part of the civilized nations of the West would be equivalent to an unconditional surrender to the totalitarian nations. Take, for instance, the case of migration barriers. Unrestrictedly opening the doors of the Americas, of Australia, and of Western Europe to immigrants would today be equivalent to opening the doors to the vanguards of the armies of Germany, Italy, and Japan.”
Observation: Based on the previous two points, seems to imply that laissez-faire and open immigration are fine in theory, but should not be pursued in the real world.
What I’m questioning is why Rothbard states that Mises denounced immigration restrictions if he actually supported them, even if it was only due to present conditions. Yes, I’m aware that Mises criticized the idea of immigration restrictions in another time and another place, but if he supports them in the real world (and seemingly will for centuries until society is once again ready for laissez-faire), it would seem to me that that would classify him as anti-immigration.
The difference is (as far as I understand) that Rothbard argued for the real-world implementation of anarcho-capitalism while Mises seemingly only favors certain implementations (immigration in this case) in some other ideal situation. My question is that if Mises does not really call for open immigration, how can this be referred to as a denunciation of immigration restrictions? At best, this would seem to be no different than the common objection to libertarian thought that “that all sounds fine in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice”.
So, to get back to my original question, was Rothbard referring to some other instance where Mises actually denounced immigration restrictions in the real world? OR was Rothbard referring only to Mises’ theoretical arguments, divorced from real-world implications?
Well either throw the frog in boiling water or raise the temperature while it is in it. We’ve basically had 200 years of subtle intervention without a majority really caring about what happens. Crisis moments are when the status quo is truly questioned.
Perhaps your descent income is a simple reflection of the generous states protectionism. Such a luxury however cannot be said for those that are un-employed. There is a reason why a large percentage of our labor force comes from foreigners, whether domestically or externally. Perhaps all our incomes are in an un-natural condition. Maybe our incomes need to be balanced out, and our ridiculous cost of living with it.
The fact that there is unemployment is through no fault of my own (well, it is, but not voluntarily; well, maybe you’ll find some exceptions… but you get my point). Governments have been toppled before without the complete expropriation of my wealth. I don’t feel that it is necessary to “kill the beast” and simultaneously ruin my life.
I get you. I was just making a point that perhaps our comfortable salaries in this country are nothing more than an artificial bubble propped up by nationalistic protectionism. This act however of protecting our salaries has come at a steep cost. Cost of living is insanely high and much of our productivity is being moved outside of our borders.
No matter how hard you try, even coercively, you cannot force productivity to stay in your Nation. Protectionism harms some, and benefits others. It will drive out those that it harms. Since it’s out of the nations control they create various negative campaign’s to combat this problem. Take the “Built in America” campaign. Everyone thinks this is great as it boosts our domestic economy, in actuallity it makes us poorer as it undermines Ricardo’s law in trading with other nations. Our domestic products are unnecessarily expensive. By state power we support people to produce things in a less efficient manner, and punish external individuals who are producing things in a more efficient manner. We squelch natural resources in the process and raise the cost of living. Since cost of living rises due to various factors such as this in addition to other factors, like inflation, they also start raising the minimum wage which also causes additional harm. So it’s a perpetual error attempting to be corrected by other errors.
In our case it harms many business’s, and benefits a small minority.The labor protectionism is very intrusive to business operations in this country. Things like minimum wage for example. We outprice our own productivity. The result is what you see. Productivity moves out of the country, even though minimum wage is a form of protectionism. The LTV followers of the labor movement especially do not understand this.
To overly simplify the point, its the restriction on trade that causes the high costs.
“productivity” is a meaningless word. All the kings horses and all the kings men can’t change the fact billions of people live at a standard below the typical city dweller in antiquity. Further, it ignores cultural differences, expectations, and desires. Your notion of productivity is related to the flattening of human behavior that results from the materialistic notions of of the bankster’s usurious decisions regarding life. Only with a society saturated by debt can human behavior be quantified to a degree that “productivity” can be measured.
The United States of America went from a barbarian infested wilderness to the world’s foremost industrial superpower in a mere century, all with stringent protectionism is place. Your claim is baseless and flatly contradicts history.
If you mean that the various parasite classes of people will have to find a new host, then so be it.
Nothing is out of the control of a nation. You do not appear to subscribe to a definition of “nation” that recognizes the concept known as sovereignty.
Propaganda is a natural part of a complex society. That is not protectionism. And seriously, do you really think that if we banned the importation of automobiles tomorrow and foreign ownership of industry in the United States, not a single one of our 300 million citizens could figure out how to build a quality car at a profit? Obviously, the collapse of domestic industry is due to other factors, like national policies and usurious banking practices that favor this result.
The state exists to serve its citizens. The external individuals who are “punished” are often little more than slaves in foreign lands. As Oswald Spengler pointed out to us nearly a century ago, the collapse of Western Civilization was very much due to the personal dignity of the European artisan being replaced with the base desires of the the coolie. Your failure to understand the cultural aspects at work here will be yours, and every other globalists downfall. Civilization was not created to produce useless garbage for the masses to consume.
Natural resources are, umm, natural. As in finite and restricted by human ability in terms of their exploitation. That has nothing to do with anything you described previously. This particular point, as we shall see in coming years, will be the final nail in the coffin of internationalists like yourself. We have insufficient natural resources upon this planet to provide an American standard of living for 6 billion people. Economic models based upon utilitarian and materialistic principles of supply and demand will be useless in describing a successful state when resources scarcity has major destabilizing effects.
So, the end result of protectionism is all the productivity leaves the country, and you end up with a nation where everyone sits around and produces nothing?
Friend, you need to become part of a real community. Get off the internet. Learn how to do something “productive” . Your theory is completely preposterous, contradicts the entire history of civilized humanity since the time of Hammurabi, and particularly today - offers no guidance at all as to why the whole world is going to hell.
If a group of individuals can produce an object at a lower cost, and more efficiently using less resources then they are the party that needs to succeed. Overall they bring a greater wealth to the economy as a whole by using less resources and lowering the overall cost of the good for consumers all while providing greater abundance. Abundance not just in their own products but by other products, as the costs involved by those now less used resources also drop. With less demand on scarce resources production costs begin to fall, this paves a path of opportunity for new business’s now finding it feasible to produce. The overall economy grows, goods become cheaper, quality increase, and selection increases. This is deflation, an overall good thing for the economy.
If we support a less efficient producer then the overall costs are higher. The less efficient producer uses more natural resources causing all goods using that resource to rise. The competitive market rate for that resource also rises due to it’s additional use and all associated products also rise in price. This causes price inflation across the whole economy and makes consumers poorer. This is how you create an unhealthy economy.
If we leave capitalism alone and let it do it’s job it will flush out those less efficient producers, thereby creating a healthy economy, benefiting everyone. We do not want to support firms who produce objects that are not desireable by the consumer. Such firms waste scarce resources, causing the overall prices of all goods to go up. This is price inflation.
Protectionism does exactly this, it protects inefficient firms or firms producing things that consumers do not want.
So when I am referring to productivity I am referring to firms or individuals capable of producing the most while consuming the least. This is Lassiez Faire. It hardly qualifies as a useless term, and you did not really explain your reasoning behind that claim.
This is all the more reason to keep all of the Kings horses and men out of the business of trade and voluntary exchange amongst individuals. The only way to help global poverty is by increased productivity. We need additional abundance of cheap high quality goods. The more there is to go around the more there is for everyone. Does this make any sense? In other words, more is better, less is worse. Fairly simple.
I’m not sure how :bankster’s usurious" is relevant. You will also have to explain this in laymens terms. I don’t really understand what your saying. At any rate it seems somewhat non-sequitur.
Not true, productivity can be measured in any unit of exchange. But your statement has nothing to do with the law of comparative advantage or the benefits of the division of labor. Also, as a side note, units of exchange need not be backed by dept. Would you prefer we resort back to the barter system?
Go easy on the non-sequitur statements. You makes you appear antagonistic.
Two statements false here. First it was by breaking free of England’s protectionism when Americas sail of prosperity was set free. Secondly it was the massive accumulation of capital which brought forth the wealthiest nation on earth. Your statement of “Industrial Power” implies the accumulation of capital, this is inherent to capitalism. Free trade is the reason America prospered. Not protectionism. So you are wrong on both cases, in fact quiet the opposite is the case.
I am not sure if you realize this or not but many Austrian Economists are also secondly or even firsthand historians. It’s a side note but it is somewhat futile to dispute history with them. I’ll admit I am not history buff, but there are plenty others here. Some of them even right books.
Immigrants come here because there is a demand for labor. If there was no demand for labor they would not come. They do not come here for welfare. If that were the case we wouldn’t have seen the sharp decrease in immigration at the tail end of the housing bubble. But if your concerned with immigrants participating in welfare, well then thats an argument against welfarism, not against immigration. Be sure you understand what the actual problem is. In the case of being parasitic it’s the welfare thats the problem. A human actor only adds productive value to an economy. Welfare just subtracts a portion of his productivity making him less productive.
Just remove the welfare, problem solved.
Your right. I do not understand nor recognize the concept of a single monopoly claiming ownership of an entire geographical region of the earth. Then using violence to maintain it’s presence, and protect it’s ill gotten gains. I do not recognize the benefits of inside deals made through this coercive monopoly supporting inefficient business’s while valuable business’s are marginalized.
Ofcoarse they could profit from the protection racket that exists. But it would not be efficient and the cost of vehicles would be much higher, unecessarily so. Neighboring countries would be enjoying cheap automobiles while the states would not. Repeating this process across all sectors would be devistating.
What you have described is essentially Fascism, I am curious if you understand it’s concept. Also have you at all read up on the law of comparative advantage? If isolationism works then why trade with your neighbor at all? Do you truly wish to refute the wonders of the division of labor? Allow Mises to explain.
And yet sadly it does not? Economically it cannot, and morally it cannot. It has no method by which to accurately measure the performance of it’s services to it’s citizens. Without profit and loss it has no metric to measure from. In the presence of compulsion it has no economic calculation.
Cultural differences are besides economics. Cultural differences do not make a nation rich or poor. If anything it makes the world that much more rich, but National isolation due to cultural differences is a very irrational thing to do if our goal is to be wealth and live peacefully.
The cultural differences argument ultimately is empty. It has no weight and follows no reason.
They are also scarce. That is what I was attempting to get at.
It has everything to do with it. The point of economics is the efficient distribution of scarce resources to satisfy the greatest demand of needs amongst individuals. I am sorry you don’t understand that. I would recommend reading up on the subject before debating with people on an economics based forum.
This statement seems to agree with my entire thesis above. Allow me to re-quote myself. It’s a solid point and I thank you for making it.
I am almost certain you are confused. The market deals such factors easily. If a good is scarce or fluctuates it’s price and distribution will reflect that.
Essentially. And/or you create bubbles to get around that. Bubbles get paid for however in the long run.
Do not patronize me.
I am
Negative.
I consider myself a producer. My wages alone prove that. My savings seem to prove that I produce more than I consume.
It’s logically coherent and true. And explains entirely why the world is going to hell. Perhaps you should read a little bit about it.
On Ricardo’s law.
Are you one of those who takes offense?
I’d like to point out that your tone is clearly antagonistic. Do you have any reasoning or logic behind your dispute? Or is the weight in your argument only as large as the bare assertions themselves?. If we can progress in a more positive tone perhaps one of us would stand to learn something.
As far as economics goes, I highly recommend the following book to get you started.