

Immigration Debate Won't End Without the Fall of Mercantilism - kevin_morrill
https://refer.ly/immigration-debate-won-t-end-without-the-fall-of-mercantilism/c/e99c459073ce11e2bfbf22000a1db8fa

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akavi
The fact that everyone would be broadly better off in the long run doesn't
change the fact trade and immigration barriers do indeed benefit the local
incumbents (At least on career (ie, decades) timescales). It's similar to the
idea that a monopoly is bad for the economy as a whole, but _great_ for the
monopoly.

Though I strongly support relaxing immigration constraints for principled
reasons, from a personal financial standpoint, it's almost certainly better
for me if no foreign programmer was ever allowed to work in the USA.

And that is why the debate will continue: Rational Self Interest (admittedly,
at the expense of the "greater good"), not economic misconceptions.

~~~
dmor
You're not even doing a good job being selfish, since you'd actually benefit a
lot more from more people having the opportunity to create value.

The "it is better personally for me" argument could also have been made
against women working in your role, or black people. Do you realize how
screwed up that line of thinking is?

~~~
akavi
> You're not even doing a good job being selfish, since you'd actually benefit
> a lot more from more people having the opportunity to create value.

Well, that's sort of the question, isn't it? Will the benefit I receive from
other people's production of value outweigh the devaluation of my own
productivity? I don't think there's an easy way to answer that, though my
suspicion is that there is a large number of people for whom the answer is no.

Note, I don't advocate this line of thought; I'm just saying that it's not
_irrational_ for someone to advocate it.

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SlipperySlope
Exactly!

Ideally, human rights should include ...

1\. The free movement of ideas

2\. The free movement of capital

3\. The free movement of goods & services

4\. The free movement of labor

Right?

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freefrancisco
I have two questions for the people commenting who think immigration barriers
actually benefit the local incumbents.

1) Since the economic argument for free trade applies to the labor market as
well, one cannot logically be an advocate of free trade and anti-immigration
at the same time. Do you maintain that free trade is actually bad for the
United States?

2) If free immigration between countries is bad, then it follows that it is
also bad between states, between cities, and between neighborhoods. Do you
believe that your state, your city, and your neighborhood would be better off
if there was a legal barrier to immigration at the state, city, and
neighborhood level?

~~~
mc32
2\. Not if there were reciprocity. Btwn states there is reciprocity. I can
move to RI and an RIer could move to CA without limit. Someone from the US
can't easily get a job in BR, for example, unless business could prove no
BRlian could do the job.

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peterjancelis
Free market immigration is neither open borders (forced integration) nor
closed ones (forced segregation). Social security impact of immigration falls
under forced integration.

I can't say it better than Hans Herman Hoppe: "First, with the establishment
of a state and territorially defined state borders, “immigration” takes on an
entirely new meaning. In a natural order, immigration is a person’s migration
from one neighborhood-community into a different one (micro-migration). In
contrast, under statist conditions immigration is immigration by “foreigners”
from across state borders, and the decision whom to exclude or include, and
under what conditions, rests not with a multitude of independent private
property owners or neighborhoods of owners but with a single central (and
centralizing) state-government as the ultimate sovereign of all domestic
residents and their properties (macro-migration). If a domestic resident-owner
invites a person and arranges for his access onto the resident-owner’s
property but the government excludes this person from the state territory, it
is a case of forced exclusion (a phenomenon that does not exist in a natural
order). On the other hand, if the government admits a person while there is no
domestic resident-owner who has invited this person onto his property, it is a
case of forced integration (also non-existent in a natural order, where all
movement is invited)."

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csense
Many people -- including a lot of economists -- inhabit an echo chamber where
"globalization=good, protectionism=bad" is a sacred dogma.

But the investor's investor, Warren Buffett, has said that tariffs would be
good for the US [1] [2].

Protectionism/mercantilism works, but what we have is a half-and-half system:
Goods, services, and capital can move relatively freely through US borders,
but labor cannot.

Throwing open our borders to trade -- Nixon's visit to China, NAFTA --
resulted in real US wages that have been stagnant for decades.

I.e., in many jobs, our workers are still competing against overseas workers,
without those workers physically moving to the US. Those third-world workers
don't have to worry about all the silly laws we have regarding minimum wages,
limited workweeks, child labor, environmental protection, workplace safety,
etc. If we want to keep those policies, and still have good jobs available to
our citizens, we have to ditch free trade.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_Certificates>

[2]
[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/11/10/352872/index.htm)

~~~
dmor
Buffett is a mercantilist, not a capitalist

~~~
csense
He invests his money in companies. I always thought that "capitalist" was
simply another word for "investor".

Edited grandparent to say "investor" instead. Happy?

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joshuaheard
This author has obviously never been to Latin America nor understands that
America is situated next door to a third world county. We limit immigration
for a reason, and it is not mercantilism. We limit immigration because
hypergrowth from third world immigrants hinders our infrastructure, which
gives us things like traffic, crowded emergency rooms, and high unemployment.

~~~
freefrancisco
I'm from Latin America, and I think you have the causality wrong. We don't
limit immigration because immigrants hinder our infrastructure, rather, our
infrastructure is hindered because we limit immigration. Smart people leave to
more immigration friendly countries and build infrastructure there, and the
people who would have come to our countries to build our infrastructure are
not allowed to come in.

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carsongross
The west (particularly the US, Germany isn't quite as stupid) has been playing
innocent globalist at the ongoing mercantilist game table for 30 years.
Western multinationals got labor and environmental arbitrage, Asia got the
middle class jobs. And here we are.

But, yeah, sure, _western_ mercantilism is the problem...

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mynameishere
_both the Republican and Democratic parties support the "protectionist"
policies_

...and I stopped reading. In fact, both parties are deadly committed to mass,
even endless, immigration. It's the people who oppose it.

