If a small government or libertarian society supports no borders, is the result that there should be a world government then to do the tasks that are needed (even if they are limited)?
It seems like trying to have remove borders would result in centralizing power to have more power over more people instead of splitting or decentralizing power to those who semi-consent to the governing. What if all of North America was one huge government… would that be preferrable to each being their own country? It would mean that more people could freely vote in elections, go to schools wherever, work and live and have drivers licenses, etc. But is that really the way to approach individualism?
Also, how do you see America’s war with Iraq in terms of sovereignty. Should they, if they were strong enough, be able to boot us out, restrict immigration to the region, et al if they wish to? In fact the problem with Iraq may be that they have too much centralization going on and may be better as a split country into different factions (perhaps restricting some association between the regions until animosity dies down). It’s unknown how this would be done, but it would not just be a matter of limiting personal freedom for temporary safety (nor racism, eventhough different ethnic groups may exist). I think if they were allowed to do this freely… it would probably happen in very short order with little to no violence. Virtually no one in the world that I can think of wants eternal war or animosity. If a country wants to an isolated fascist dictatorship… or what about the Ayatollah… is it any of the US’s problem? Should the US smash their borders for them in order to promote “democracy” for all?
To the first bit, not sure why. All it means is allowing an individual to acquire property and contract for work/set up a business anywhere in the world they wish, provided they can find a someone willing to make the exchange, or in the case of open land, to homestead it. Libertarian governments presumably would not provide welfare, would not forbid the homesteading of open land and would hinder no trade. They would just provide law and order. The only borders would be property borders. Note that this is the libertarian position on what a state should do; it emphatically does not mean a libertarian government should force states to open their borders up.
I don’t see how opposition to political borders naturally leads to a world government at all. In fact, a world government would not get rid of political borders, it would merely create one gigantic political dominion around the whole globe. The natural conclusion of opposition to political borders is no territorial monopoly at all, I.E. anarchism. No borders does not mean centralization. Centralization merely implies a wider scope of borders. No, no borders implies radical decentralization in which territory is defined solely by justly aquired property. In a certain sense this actually increases the amount of borders (private property borders), but they are all independant from eachother and nowhere near as draconian as political borders.
How do we tell the difference between centralizing of states and association laws and the removal of borders (in the anarchist sense; that provides more rather than less autonomy)? Would the North American Union (hypothetical, not the actual plan) be good only for the purpose that it allows easier access to property rights in all the regions… even if it really is not remove the state from the equation (and the whole region has one giant government)?
Is an “anti-border” policy necessarily one in which is for decentralization? Is one following the other logically at all times?
It seems to me that if the whole world does not consent to no borders at the same time, this could be an easy scheme for a nation-state to consolidate more power from more tax payers. Perhaps in a few nation-states attempting to open themselves in certain ways to some surrounding countries but not all (for instance, the European union).
States facilitate an artificial level of integration with anti-discrimination laws (as applied to private property) and roads, as well as welfare provisions. Those must fall together with borders, or else it’s pointless. In this sense, a gradualist approach does not suggest itself. Open borders otherwise will just lead to more whining about immigrants destroying culture, the economy &c., i.e. a typical case of something being deregulated without everything else being deregulated as well, causing more problems than it solves.
Those ‘benefits’ apply to ‘true citizens’ as well as to ‘illegal immigrants’, so I don’t really see the point (of scapegoating immigrants). Libertarianism means no borders. Period.
It also means no minimum wage, no corporate welfare, no government ownership over roads &c. Either a cluster of related regulations must go together, or it is pointless to remove them at all, only one at a time. It is rarely so simple as “libertarianism means X no matter what.” Removing minimum wage laws whilst keeping labour markets otherwise cartelized is another example of counterproductive reforms, as is removing environmental regulation whilst courts refuse to enforce property rights as they should. All the relevant reforms must be applied to a particular area, and that is the proper libertarian response. I’m making an argument against the typical libertarian gradualist view of taking a piecemal approach, issue-by-issue.
Of course. Still there’s no connection between, say, open borders and scapegoating immigrants. The welfare state is a problem not related to open borders (except in the mind of nationalists and other ‘cultural conservatives’)
The illegals get around the minimum wage laws by remaining “illegal” (whether this is a legitimate term or not). If they were legal, wouldn’t they contribute to a less libertarian society? Shouldn’t we encourage them to stay illegal forever? Their “legality” is only in the eyes of the state, isn’t it?
There seems to be xenophobia on both sides (not just the conservatives). The liberals and conservatives both tend to be against outsourcing. Unions write racist claims about Japanese products. And everyone knows about the long tirades against Wal-Mart and Chinese workers. It seems to me that liberals see the immigrants as possibly coming here and being “saved” by our labor laws (even if they are worse off because of this legislation). And maybe they’ll bring in more bucks for the state.
By this same logic, recreational drugs should remain illegal because legalizing them would potentially yield tax revenue and increase regulations. Should libertarians therefore rally behind drug prohibition?
What I would encourage is helping illegal immigrants out as much as possible - illegaly. Hiring them, selling stuff to them, helping them get in, and so on. I would view this as part of an agorist strategy.
Their “illegality” would likewise only be in the eyes of the state. Legality and illegality isn’t how one should think of it so much as simple right and wrong or voluntary and involuntary.
You’re assuming the falacy of affirming the consequent. While advocates of world government advocate the elimination of political borders, the advocates of eliminating political borders do not necessarily advocate world governance. Ultimately, the pro-property rights position would be that all public land should be privatized/sold/homesteaded, and that private property owners would decide whether they want people on their land. The problem with closed-borders advocates is that they use the collectivist argument that the government owns all the property within its political borders, and thus has the power to regulate immigration into its political borders. Of course, the end result of this is that the government will use the old bait-and-switch technique, and set an emmigration policy.
Right. In short, closed borders advocates tend to engage in one of two fallacies (or sometimes both): (1) treating the state as if it were a legitimate private property owner over the entire territory or (2) treating the state as a commons in which all taxpayers are entitled to a quotal share. Both views inherently seem to legitimize the state and have some fairly absurd consequences if consistantly applied. No matter which way you slice it, the attempt to enforce such political borders would be to set a coercive and uniform standard with respect to the individual owners within it. Basically, to make discrimination mandatory for everyone within the territory (institutional segregation of a sort).
If drugs became legal but there were many regulations and taxes on them, I would advocate selling them illegally to get around these restrictions being as how these restrictions are in some way prohibiting consumers from getting what they want for what they wish to pay for it the same way the drug war is. I would advocate selling them in such a way that the state does not get any “revenue” from their sale. And that the consumers get what they want, of course.
In a way immigration is the same as drugs. Immigration is not illegal, but going over the limits set by the state are. There are plenty of legal immigrants and legal drugs (arbitrarily chosen as what is good for us), so going over that limit is what is illegal. So as long as taxes and regulations exist, it is still illegal in my opinion. The bar has just been moved. Since it is illegal to break those restrictions.
On another note, I feel the gay marriage thing in California is sort of stupid and probably deserves a similar civil disobedience (as I don’t believe it is more or less libertarian than outright ban). The whole thing seems to be trying to sap revenue for the state from gay couples through licensing and creating more mountains of bureaucracy for how the state can regulate gay couples, adoption (probably in the future), how children will be controlled, tax “benefits”, etc.
And even if I didn’t advocate such black market activities as I do with immigration and drugs, I suspect they would exist even still if the restrictions continued to interfere with the market demand for them. Which is why we are in this position to begin with. There is a demand for drugs that outweighs the danger premium of being arrested. There is a demand for below minimum wage labor. I think we can predict what will happen: immigrants will refuse to become citizens even if we somehow made it easier (in order to sidestep anti-market state regulations). And what people will pay for drugs will remain the same, causing them to continue to buy it on the black market if the regulations make these drugs are not profitable. The danger of being arrested being reduced may cause some to compromise, but it seems that people looking out for their own self-interest (or survival in the case of work or medicinal drugs) will do what it takes to get the things they want… laws be damned.
I agree that the regulations and restrictions constitutes quasi-prohibition or selective prohibition in and of itself. Especially stuff like licensing and quotas.
I tend to view immigration in terms of civil disobedience myself. I think that “illegal immigration” is merely an act of civil disobedience.