03.23.08

A Question for Critics of Ron Paul’s Critics, Part 3

Posted in Anarchy, Ethics, Terror, Rand, Feminism, Democracy, Left and Right, Left-Libertarian, No Borders at 10:43 pm by Administrator

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Now that Ron Paul’s candidacy is winding down, my debate with Walter Block over the analogy or disanalogy between Paul’s and Randy Barnett’s “deviations” no longer has much urgency (assuming it ever did), but let us proceed nonetheless.

Recap: last December I asked why Paul’s supporters downplay the importance of Paul’s deviations from libertarian purity (on, e.g., abortion and immigration – at least for those, like Walter, who agree with me that Paul’s positions on those issues are deviations) while on the other hand treating Barnett’s deviations (above all his support for the war) as a reason to deny his status as a libertarian at all. What justifies this disparity? (My own view is that both men’s deviations are sufficiently serious for me not to support either one for President [not that Barnett is running for President, but supposing he were], but that neither’s deviations disqualifies him from being considered a libertarian.)

Walter replied, I counter-replied, and Walter has now counter-counter-replied. (There’s also lively discussion in the comments section – over 50 posts and counting.) I hereby counter-counter-counter-reply.

1. Walter’s first point is that Barnett’s deviations are more serious than Paul’s: “I see bombing innocent children and adults as a far more serious violation of liberty than aborting fetuses, or violating the rights of people to cross national borders.” This is a bit oddly worded; since Walter agrees with me on the permissibility of abortion, then of course we can agree that bombing innocent people is a more serious violation of liberty than aborting fetuses, since we don’t regard aborting fetuses as a violation of liberty at all. Presumably Walter meant that bombing innocent people is a more serious violation of liberty than preventing women from having abortions.

Now perhaps Walter is right that bombing innocent people is a worse violation of liberty than preventing women from having abortions. But that’s still consistent with thinking that preventing women from having abortions is an extremely serious violation of liberty; and I think any libertarian who holds the position that Walter and I hold on abortion is indeed committed to regarding a prohibition of abortion as an extremely serious violation of liberty, far more serious than, say, drug laws or economic regulations. For a ban on abortion then counts as unrightfully forcing women to allow their bodies to be used as incubators – the moral equivalent of mass rape and mass enslavement. Taking into account the pain and risk involved in childbirth, an abortion ban also counts as the moral equivalent of mass torture. Is mass rape/enslavement/torture a less serious violation of liberty than mass murder? Maybe so; but it certainly counts as being in the same moral ballpark.

Now it is true, of course, that Paul favours returning the abortion issue to the states rather than imposing a federal ban on abortion. That certainly makes his position less objectionable than it would otherwise be. (For my views on how to weigh the merits of decentralism against the merits of striking down local oppressive legislation, see the second half of my LRC article on Kelo.) Perhaps Walter will say that’s enough to make the difference between purgatorio for Paul and inferno for Barnett. Well, suppose we stipulate that that is so. Still, we may also note that Barnett is an anarchist while Paul is not. So Paul supports, while Barnett opposes, what Walter and I will agree is the most anti-liberty institution on earth, unreformable, unsalvageable, an inevitable source of more war and oppression so long as it exists. So why isn’t that enough to lower Paul’s score and/or raise Barnett’s?

2. Walter’s second point is that abortion and immigration are more complex issues than war, and deviation on complex issues counts less against one’s libertarian credentials than deviation on simple issues – just as getting 2 + 2 = 4 wrong counts more against one’s credentials as a mathematician than getting the Pythagorean theorem wrong, or getting the ex ante benefit of exchange wrong counts more against one’s credentials as an Austrian economist than getting the business cycle wrong.

But first of all, it’s not obvious to me that war is a less complex issue than abortion and immigration. Now maybe this is charitable bias on my part toward my own past self: I started my libertarian career as a Randian, so while I was never guilty of the anti-abortion and anti-immigration deviations, I was once hawkishly deviant on the issue of foreign policy – yet I don’t want to deny my past self the title of libertarian. But to put my position less self-servingly, I would say that, having once been a liberventionist myself, I can understand the position from the inside and see how a libertarian could sincerely adopt it. (Just combine an empirically mistaken view about whether a certain use of force is actually defensive with a morally mistaken view about the requirements for permissible violence against innocent shields, and voilà.)

Consider Barnett’s defense of his position here. Is it mistaken? Yes, I think so. Is it so obviously, grossly mistaken that no intelligent libertarian could sincerely adopt it? I can’t see that it is.

But second, even if I were to grant that the libertarian case against war is much simpler and more obvious than the libertarian case against restrictions on abortion and immigration, I can’t see how that would establish that deviation on the former does, while deviation on the latter does not, disqualify the proponent from counting as a libertarian. Greater complexity of an issue may make deviation on that issue more excusable, but I didn’t think we were arguing about who is more blameworthy for a given deviation. Whether Paul and/or Barnett reached their mistaken positions through honest error, culpable intellectual negligence, or some combination of the two is not my concern; I’m not interested in passing judgment on their souls.

The question of how complex an issue is seems to me quite different from the question of how serious a mistake about that issue is. Yes, Walter cites some cases in which the two do go together; but they need not always do so. Getting the fuel mixture wrong in the space shuttle, for example, is a more serious error than misspelling the shuttle’s name on the side, even though the latter error is less complex and so easier to avoid.

Likewise, the libertarian case against abortion laws is surely more complex than the libertarian case against taxation (since the former, unlike the latter, requires assessing the moral status of the fetus); hence it’s much easier to show that taxation is inconsistent with libertarian principles than to show that restrictions on abortion are. But it doesn’t seem to follow that libertarian deviations on abortion are less serious than libertarian deviations on taxation. On the contrary, once we grant that a ban on abortion is a rights-violation, then it must be seen as a worse rights-violation than taxation, since it invades the victim’s very body and not just her external property. And likewise for the pro-life side: if I regarded abortion itself as a rights-violation, I would again have to take it as a worse rights-violation than taxation, inasmuch as murder is worse than theft. So although abortion may be an easier issue for libertarians to get wrong than taxation is, it’s still surely worse to get abortion wrong – whichever side one thinks of as getting it wrong – than to get taxation wrong.

3. Walter thinks the case for regarding a deviation as within rather than beyond the pale of libertarianism depends on whether the deviation is endorsed by prominent libertarian authorities. The argument seems to be mainly epistemological: if so authoritative a libertarian as X holds a certain position, we should be more cautious about rejecting that position, and so accordingly more cautious about how serious a deviation we take it to be. (One might also interpret Walter as offering a paradigm-case argument: if theorist X is a paradigm case of a libertarian, then we cannot treat a deviation held by that theorist as reason to deny libertarian status to holders of that deviation. I’m not sure whether Walter intends this latter argument as well.) Given Walter’s additional premise that anti-immigrationists like Murray Rothbard, Hans Hoppe, and Stephan Kinsella are “more deserving of the title of eminent libertarian theorist” than liberventionists like John Hospers and Randy Barnett, it follows that libertarian deviation on immigration must be more serious than libertarian deviation on war. (Walter is apparently not sure – nor am I – what Hoppe’s and Kinsella’s views on abortion are; it’s an issue that argumentation ethics doesn’t clearly address. K-dog, if you’re reading this, pray enlighten us.)

I’m not convinced. First, with regard to the epistemological argument, suppose it’s true that we should be more cautious about rejecting positions that the “big guns” of libertarianism defend; I would probably put less weight on this point than Walter would, but let’s grant it arguendo. Still I don’t follow the inference from being more cautious in labeling a position as a deviation to attributing a lesser degree of seriousness to those positions we do label as deviations. The strength or certainty with which we’re prepared to hold a position seems like a different matter from the content of the positions we hold. It’s not as though we have to hold extreme views with extreme conviction and moderate views with moderate conviction; on the contrary, we might well have grounds to hold extreme views with moderate conviction and moderate views with extreme conviction. Hence even if thinker X’s greater eminence over thinker Y gives us reason for greater caution in labeling one of X’s positions a deviation than in labeling one of Y’s positions such, if we do decide that X and Y are both guilty of deviations, I can’t see that our reasons for differential caution translate into reasons for regarding X’s deviations as less serious than Y’s.

As for Walter’s claim that Barnett does not count as “eminent,” this isn’t obvious to me. If Walter means “eminent” in the descriptive sense, meaning essentially “famous,” then I think Barnett probably counts as more eminent than, say, Hoppe and Kinsella, though probably less so than Rothbard. If Walter means “eminent” in the normative sense, meaning something like “important” or “deserving to be famous,” then Barnett surely belongs in the same tier of eminence as Hoppe and Kinsella. (I also don’t think the early, pro-immigration Rothbard can be less eminent than the later, anti-immigration Rothbard.) On behalf of Barnett’s claim to normative eminence, I would point to his excellent book The Structure of Liberty and articles on, for example, restitution, contract theory, and Spoonerite jurisprudence, as well as his marvelous two-part piece (Part 1; Part 2) in defense of anarchism. How, in light of these contributions, can we avoid acknowledging Barnett’s status as an eminent libertarian theorist? (I would make such a case for Hospers as well.)

As for the paradigm-case argument (if Walter means to offer one), Mises and Rand surely count as paradigmatic cases of libertarian theorists; yet Mises supported the Cold War, and Rand, though less hawkish than her current followers, held that any free or semi-free country has the right to invade any dictatorship, and that any innocent casualties in such an invasion are to be laid at the door of the invaded dictatorship, not the semi-free invaders. And then there’s Benjamin Tucker, a paradigmatic libertarian theorist for at least some of us, who defended U.S. entry into World War I. So deviation on war seems insufficient grounds for ejection from libertarian status.

In any case, I’m not sure how much should turn on whether a given position counts as within or beyond the pale of libertarianism per se; the main questions, as I see it, are a) is the position mistaken, and b) if so, is the mistake bad enough to warrant refusal to support a candidate? How bad a mistake is and how unlibertarian a mistake is are, after all, different questions. For example, someone who held that the entire human race should be exterminated, but favoured persuasive rather than coercive measures for achieving this, would be taking a worse position than someone who, say, endorsed copyrights, even though the former position has more claim than the latter to be consistent with the letter (though not the spirit) of libertarianism. Favouring voluntary extermination of the human race I would regard as a stronger reason not to support a candidate than favouring copyrights.

4. Walter closes by suggesting that he is “operating from a sort of agnostic point of view,” that of “a newcomer to libertarianism.” Okay, but in that case I have to ask: why is he doing that? After all, he’s not an agnostic; he appears to defend his positions quite forcefully, not tentatively or with one eye over his shoulder toward the eminent libertarian authorities (hey, I’ve heard him call Hans Hoppe a “pinko”! – this is not Mr. Quaking Deference); and he’s certainly less of a newcomer to libertarianism than I am.

5. Finally, I’m curious to know Walter’s opinion of Mary Ruwart’s candidacy. Ruwart holds (what Walter and I regard as) the right libertarian positions on foreign policy and abortion and immigration; plus she’s a generally radical libertarian, a proponent of Austrian business cycle theory, and an anarchist to boot. Does Walter agree with me that Ruwart’s candidacy is more deserving of libertarian support than Ron Paul’s?

Permalink 23 Comments

Ruwarchy!

Posted in Anarchy, Science Fiction, Democracy, Left and Right, Left-Libertarian, No Borders at 1:00 pm by Administrator

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

I note with interest that my old friend Mary Ruwart is entering the race for the LP nomination. Leaving aside the tangled question of whether electoral politics is an appropriate venue for libertarian activism (for the record, my view is that it shouldn’t be central but is not forbidden either), I have to point out that Mary is clearly a more acceptable candidate to those of a left-libertarian persuasion than is Ron Paul.

On such issues as abortion, immigration, punishment, plutocracy, constitutionalism, gay marriage, and patents and copyrights, her positions, while not always perfect, are at least broadly left-libertarian, while on the issues of foreign policy and the war on terror she’s actually more radically antiwar than Paul. Plus she’s even an anarchist, though she doesn’t trumpet it or use the term. Go Mary!

In not-especially-related news, I’m pleased to see that Ken MacLeod’s Fall Revolution tetralogy, the ultimate left-libertarian science-fiction epic, is being re-released in a two-volume edition.

Permalink 13 Comments

03.16.08

Walter Block Replies

Posted in Ethics, Feminism, Democracy, Left and Right, Left-Libertarian, No Borders at 8:16 pm by Administrator

Guest Blog by Walter E. Block

Why do I think of Ron Paul as a libertarian and support his candidacy for president (for purposes of the present discussion I will not distinguish between these) but do not consider Randy Barnett in this way? As Roderick very, very truly says, each of these men hold views incompatible with libertarianism. Why, then, such a sharp distinction between them on my part?

To wit, Paul is mistaken in his views of abortion and immigration, while Barnett is in error on war (I leave to the side federalism.)

There are several reasons for my judgment.

1. I regard questions of war and peace, offense and defense, as far more important to libertarianism than abortion and immigration. The essence of libertarianism is the non-aggression axiom (coupled with homesteading and property rights). I see bombing innocent children and adults as a far more serious violation of liberty than aborting fetuses, or violating the rights of people to cross national borders. If this were my only reason, I regard it is sufficient to distinguish between Paul and Barnett, accepting the former as a libertarian but not the latter.

2. My second reason is that I regard abortion and immigration as far more complex issues than the question of whether a person or nation is committing an offensive act of war or a defensive one. Roderick rejects this as irrelevant. I demur. Suppose we were trying to determine who is a mathematician and who is not. Candidate A does not know that 2 + 2 = 4. Candidate B knows that, but stumbles over the Pythagorean theorem. I regard the latter as far more complex than the former. I consider B more of a mathematician than A. It seems to me that if a putative libertarian (Barnett) cannot distinguish offense from defense in such a simple case as war, while Paul certainly can, even though he stumbles on the far more complex issues of abortion and immigration, then Paul is certainly more of a libertarian, or a better one. But, the difference in complexity between these two issues is so gigantic, this difference of degree is so great that it amounts to a difference in kind, that I am entirely comfortable in evaluating Paul as a libertarian, but not Barnett.

Let me try again on this point. Here are two statements to which all Austrian economists subscribe.

a. Voluntary trade is mutually beneficial in the ex ante sense

b. The Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) is correct

I regard (a) as exceedingly simple to grasp. The Austrian credentials of anyone who does not see this, that is, agree with it, are nil. I regard (b) as very complex. Austrianism consists of belief in scores of such claims. If someone agreed to all such claims except for (b), I would consider him an Austrian. Heck, even an Austrian in good standing. But, if he rejected (a) but accepted everything else, I’d think he was pulling my leg, so weird would this be.

In other words, complexity is not at all irrelevant to the issues which separate Roderick and me. Indeed, it is very important.

3. My supposed argument from authority: I regard my own views on abortion and immigration to be the correct libertarian positions (if I did not, I would change them). However, in my assessment, Murray Rothbard, Hans Hoppe and Stephan Kinsella are three of the most import libertarian theoreticians in all of history. They disagree with me on at least one and I think both of these issues. Thus, I am a bit more modest in my stance on abortion and immigration than I would otherwise be. However, I know of NO eminent libertarian who thinks that our war in Iraq is defensive.

At first blush, you are of course correct in asserting that this is circular reasoning on my part. For, I readily admit it, if there were some other eminent libertarian (hey, give me a break, I don’t count Randroids) who did take this view, he would be dismissed, forthwith, as a libertarian in my view. Come to think of it, I think that John Hospers takes this view. Well, scratch Hospers from the ranks not only of eminent libertarian theoreticians, but from being a libertarian at all.

And yet, and yet… How else are we to determine issues of this sort? Will you concede to me that Rothbard, Hoppe and Kinsella, completely apart from the present issues under discussion, are more deserving of the title of eminent libertarian theorist than are Barnett, Hospers and the Randroids? If so, does not your position give you pause for reconsideration?

Maybe one way to reconcile our differences is as follows. I am operating from a sort of agnostic point of view: even though I have strong opinions on abortion and immigration, I am assuming, not a God’s eye point of view, but rather the position of a newcomer to libertarianism, who doesn’t know which way to go on this question since libertarian leaders diverge. You, in contrast, adopt a more knowledgeable position.

Permalink 71 Comments

02.21.08

Sins of the Father

Posted in Anarchy, Ethics, Online Texts, Left and Right, Left-Libertarian, No Borders at 5:23 pm by Administrator

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Robert Higgs confesses a dark secret from his family’s past:

[M]y father had done something quite remarkable: he had left the sovereign state of Oklahoma, crossed the sovereign states of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, and entered into and established permanent residence in the sovereign state of California, all without the permission of any of the rulers of these states. Imagine that! …

Many of the Mexican children with whom I grew up might have told a tale similar to mine. The only difference would have been that for them, the origin of their migration to California happened to be not one of the states of the United States of America, commonly known as America, but one of the states of the United Mexican States, commonly known as Mexico. Was this difference important? If so, why? Do the lines that government officials draw on maps sever the heart of humanity?

Read, comme l’on dit, the whole thing.

Permalink 5 Comments

09.04.07

Contra Bruce Ramsey on Secession

Posted in Anarchy, Ethics, Left-Libertarian, No Borders at 5:24 pm by Administrator

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

For the first two rounds of my exchange with Bruce Ramsey on secession and emigration, see here and here. Now for the third round.

The September 2007 issue of Liberty published the following letter from me, along with Mr. Ramsey’s response. I wrote:

I suspect I am the “libertarian blogger” whose argument on behalf of secession Bruce Ramsey criticizes in “Pondering a Heap” (Reflections, August). Mr. Ramsey objects to my analogy between prohibiting emigration and prohibiting secession on the grounds that it ignores the difference between the consequences of a single individual’s action and that of many.

But I do not understand how the relation between emigration and secession suddenly becomes a difference between individuals and large groups. Is Mr. Ramsey assuming that emigrants will be few but secessionists many? If so, he offers no reason to follow him in this assumption.

And if he thinks it’s numbers that matter, does that mean that he would be happy to prohibit emigration if the number of emigrants were high enough? Presumably not; so it remains unclear why he rejects my analogy.

Nor does he offer any argument for his claim that anyone who defends secession must be uninterested in consequences. As an Aristotelean, I certainly think consequences are part, though not the whole, of what we need to take into account when framing moral and political principles.

To this Mr. Ramsey responded as follows:

Mr. Long recognized himself, all right. To compare secession to emigration is a neat lesson for a philosophy class, but as a practical matter the two are not as comparable as Long maintains. And yes, I am assuming that emigrants will be a dribble and secessionists a movement of mass.

The reason is that secession is the collective action of a political subdivision, one that thinks of itself as an independent nation, and this tends to take a significant group of people. And historically, I think of the 13 states of the Confederacy, from the United States; Norway, from Sweden; Singapore, from Malaysia; Slovakia, from Czechsoslovakia; Slovenia, Croatia, et al., from Yugoslavia; and the de facto secession of Taiwan from China. Unlike emigration, secession happens all at once and takes the physical territory with it. It involves issues that don’t come up with emigration, such as what becomes of the central government’s resources: would the gold in Fort Knox, for example, be Kentucky’s if Kentucky seceded? If Taiwan formally secedes, should it return the Chinese art taken to the island in 1949? If Quebec secedes from Canada, will it pay its share of Canada’s national debt? Would Quebec have the right to block the movement of people and goods between the Maritimes and the rest of English Canada?

I doubt Liberty would want to publish yet another round of relies and counter-replies, so I’ll respond here instead. Let me take Mr. Ramsey’s points in sequence.

“To compare secession to emigration is a neat lesson for a philosophy class, but as a practical matter the two are not as comparable as Long maintains.”

Mr. Ramsey has an odd conception of the relationship between philosophy and reality if he thinks something can be good in philosophy but impractical in reality. I regard philosophy as the steersman of life (philosophia biou kubernētēs), not an ivory-tower pursuit; hence if something is unworkable as a “practical matter” then it’s not “a neat lesson for a philosophy class.”

But Mr. Ramsey has done nothing to show that a right of secession is impracticable; all he’s pointed out is that its implementation is complicated. Well, sure. The abolition of slavery was complicated to implement too; does that mean it shouldn’t have been done?

“And yes, I am assuming that emigrants will be a dribble and secessionists a movement of mass.”

Even granting this assumption (which, as we’ll see, one shouldn’t), Mr. Ramsey still hasn’t answered my question: what if those seeking emigration were a mass? Would he then favour forbidding emigration or not? If he would, then he’s taking a creepier position than I suspect he’d want to take – effectively endorsing a Soviet-style Iron Curtain policy. Or if he wouldn’t, then he can’t consistently use the disparity in numbers as an argument against secession. So which is it? I still await his answer.

“The reason is that secession is the collective action of a political subdivision, one that thinks of itself as an independent nation, and this tends to take a significant group of people. And historically, I think of the 13 states of the Confederacy, from the United States; Norway, from Sweden; Singapore, from Malaysia; Slovakia, from Czechsoslovakia; Slovenia, Croatia, et al., from Yugoslavia; and the de facto secession of Taiwan from China. Unlike emigration, secession happens all at once and takes the physical territory with it.”

This response strikes me as an ignoratio elenchi. The reason that most historical cases of secession have involved large groups is that only large groups have had sufficient political clout to have a reasonable prospect of being allowed to secede. That’s why it tends to happen “all at once” if it happens at all. But I’m arguing for secession as a right, not a grudging concession. Hence under the policy I favour, counties, towns, neighbourhoods, and individual households would be permitted to secede. In short, the disparity in numbers between secessionists and emigrants is an artifact of the anti-secessionist policies I oppose, and so cannot be used as an argument against the right of secession. (And of course mass emigration is not exactly unknown to history either.)

“It involves issues that don’t come up with emigration, such as what becomes of the central government’s resources: would the gold in Fort Knox, for example, be Kentucky’s if Kentucky seceded?”

To repeat myself: I favour a universal right of secession, not just a right of secession for large entities. Hence if Kentucky seceded from the U.S., the owner of the Fort Knox gold depository (let’s stipulate for the sake of argument that the U.S. government is that owner) would be equally free to secede from Kentucky and attach itself to the United States. So what’s the problem?

“If Taiwan formally secedes, should it return the Chinese art taken to the island in 1949? If Quebec secedes from Canada, will it pay its share of Canada’s national debt?”

I don’t know, but a) these questions are no different in principle from questions of whether emigrants should have to pay back tax-funded benefits they receive, and b) surely the civilised way to solve such problems would be, not to forbid emigration/secession, but to sue the emigrant/secessionist in court for whatever goods or revenue she is alleged to owe. After all, if I think my neighbour owes me money and won’t pay, I hire a lawyer; I don’t barricade her house.

“Would Quebec have the right to block the movement of people and goods between the Maritimes and the rest of English Canada?”

If Mr. Ramsey is asking whether Quebec would have a moral right to do this, the answer is obviously no, since the whole point of my position is that no government has the right to block the free movement of people and goods across national borders.

If instead Mr. Ramsey is asking whether Quebec would be able to do this under a system of universal secession rights, the answer is almost certainly no again, since any part of Quebec would likewise be free to secede from Quebec; and if Quebec erected protectionist barriers, there would be a strong economic incentive for portions of Quebec to secede in order to attract the trade that would otherwise be blocked.

In short, it seems to me that Mr. Ramsey’s latest response still does not address my actual position or reply to my original argument.

Permalink 3 Comments

06.29.07

Benson, Borders, and Barsoom

Posted in Anarchy, Science Fiction, Online Texts, Left-Libertarian, No Borders at 5:26 pm by Administrator

Three pretty much unrelated items:

• Online excerpts from the opening chapters of The Enterprise of Law, Bruce Benson’s classic study of nonstate legal systems, are now available on the Mises site.
• Robert Dunn argues that declining Mexican fertility rates make illegal immigration only a temporary problem. (Conical hat tip to Tom Ford.) I have no idea if he’s right (and I don’t regard illegal immigration per se as a “problem” anyway), but it’s interesting.
• If you’re a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom stories, you might enjoy this screenplay for A Princess of Mars. No, this isn’t the screenplay for the John Carter flick that’s been flailing around in purgatory for the past few years; this version isn’t attached to any actual film project. But we can imagine ….

Permalink Comments

05.23.07

Immigration, Secession, and Taxation

Posted in Anarchy, Ethics, Democracy, Left and Right, Left-Libertarian, No Borders at 10:22 pm by Administrator

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

1. A frequent argument against secession is: What about the tax money that the rest of the country has invested in the would-be secessionist region for infrastructure, education, security, etc.? A region shouldn’t be allowed to secede until it first pays back the full costs of those investments.

Now many things could be said in response to this objection: do these investments really outweigh the costs, direct or indirect, that the larger unit has been imposing on the region? to what extent did the region voluntarily solicit these investments? and so on.

But I want to offer a somewhat different response. Suppose this argument is a good one. Then by the same logic it should be justifiable to forbid individuals to leave the country. Let’s say I want to move to Canada, and the U.S. government says, “Not so fast – we paid for part of your education, we’ve protected you from criminals and foreign invaders, and now you can’t leave the country until you first pay back our investment.”

Now some countries have indeed had just such a policy – the Soviet Union, for example. But nowadays hardly anyone, including opponents of secession, is willing to embrace the idea of forbidding emigration. So if a history of tax-funded investment isn’t legitimate grounds for forbidding emigration, why is it grounds for forbidding secession? What’s the difference? Why should the principle of “consent of the governed” apply in one case and not in the other?

If the claim to a return on tax-funded investment doesn’t justify a prohibition on emigration (and I agree that it doesn’t), I don’t see how it can justify a prohibition on secession.

2. A frequent argument against open borders (strikingly similar to the anti-secession argument above, though not necessarily offered by the same people) is: What about the tax-funded benefits, such as welfare and education, that immigrants become eligible to receive? So long as immigrants can draw on these benefits, don’t those who pay the taxes have the right to demand that immigrants be excluded from the country?

Here too, many things could be said in response to this argument: is the average immigrant really a net tax-recipient rather than a net taxpayer? and so on. But here too, I want to offer a somewhat different response.

Suppose this argument for forbidding entry by those who would probably become net tax-recipients is a good one. Why wouldn’t it be an equally good argument for deporting native-born citizens who are likewise net tax-recipients? Now most proponents of restrictions on immigration don’t favour deporting existing U.S.-born welfare recipients. But again, what’s the difference? How can the right of net taxpayers to defend themselves against net tax-recipients depend on where the net tax-recipients were born?

Just as in the secession case, so here, if tax-based considerations don’t justify compulsory emigration (and I agree that they don’t), I don’t see how they can justify compulsory non-immigration.

Permalink 16 Comments

01.14.07

A Question for Anti-Immigration Libertarians

Posted in Terror, No Borders at 6:45 pm by Administrator

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

I accept the traditional libertarian arguments for open borders. But I’m not going to rehash those arguments here.

Let me try a different tack.

Libertarian defenders of gun rights like to point out that gun control has often been a precursor to, because an enabler of, democide. When they are asked “do you really think our government poses that sort of danger?” they rightly remind the questioner that relatively benign regimes are sometimes succeeded by rather less nice regimes, who conveniently inherit a disarmed public, or at least a gun-registered public (so they know just where to go to round up the arms), from their predecessors. (Obvious example: the Weimar Republic.)

So here’s a reminder and a question for anti-immigration libertarians, and particularly for those who support the proposed U.S.-Mexican Border Fence.

A wall that can be used to keep people out can also be used to keep people in.

Do we really want to trust the U.S. government – meaning not only the present regime but all future U.S. regimes – with a tool of that nature?

Permalink 12 Comments

12.09.06

G. I. Justice

Posted in Anarchy, Ethics, Terror, Democracy, No Borders at 12:18 pm by Administrator

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

The government gives us our rights.

Or so many Americans have been taught to believe.

Now the authors of the U. S. Constitution were far from perfect – to put it mildly. But they would never have dreamed of claiming that they were giving people rights. Alexander Hamilton, for example, wrote that

natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice. Civil liberty, is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but is conformable to the constitution of man ….

The other framers expressed similar sentiments. But nowadays it’s common to hear that the Constitution “gives us” such rights as freedom of the press, the right to a jury trial, and so forth.

Not only does this doctrine promote the deification of the state as something beyond the bounds of ordinary morality, but it also helps to inculcate the idea that – since our rights are government issue rather than rights of humanity – those beyond our borders don’t have the same rights we do.

Which helps to explain this incident, in which U.S. troops in Iraq crush a taxi by driving a tank over it, in order to punish its driver for “looting wood.” There’s nary a sign in sight of any legal proceedings to determine what counts as looting wood, whether the driver was in fact guilty of this terrible offence, or whether destroying his only means of livelihood was an appropriate response. Nor is there any sign that he was allowed counsel on his behalf. Instead, the soldiers acted as legislators, prosecutors, judges, juries, and executioners, unprofessionally laughing and grinning as they indulged in wanton destruction.

Wouldn’t any one of those soldiers have been outraged if, back in the States, he had been accused of, say, shoplifting and, without any trial, some cops had simply settled things by torching his car?

Ah, but our rights come from the Bill of Rights, that magic piece of paper in Washington, and don’t apply to Iraqis (even though the alleged purpose of U.S. presence in Iraq is precisely to bring “democracy” and “freedom” to the Iraqis).

“But wait,” I may be told, “this is war. You can’t expect the application of legal niceties in wartime.”

But even leaving aside the awfully convenient doctrine that we can escape the burden of respecting people’s human rights simply by going to war against them – isn’t such a response an admission that U.S. troops are, indeed, at war with the Iraqi people? That admission seems to undercut the official story that the U.S. is a friend to the Iraqi people, that it has helped them establish a democratic government, and that it’s just there to help the new government keep the peace.

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