Utilitarian arguments are not always great, but it is a simple one here: I don't want these Arkansas guys as neighbors so I'm glad they have their own place far away from me.
These places generally attract trashy people. It was revealed recently that the guy who set up this community (Aarvoll) used to create porn with his (now ex) wife who he had 4 children with. I would not be surprised if the other people involved are freaks as well.
Maybe not, but it shows a sense of agency and commitment. Much more admirable than the people who think "white advocacy" is complaining on the internet.
I'm sympathetic in theory to the idea of national divorce, but I give it < 5% it would happen. For better or worse, most Americans are pretty attached to the USA as it is geographically.
It’s already happening and reborn neoliberals out here cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together and go back to prewar Classical Liberalism in a hopelessly fragmented and rapidly deteriorating society. Nothing sacred about the United States as presently constituted, its economy, form of government, and current borders. It’s become an empire as many other countries before it and will decline and eventually perish as all others have before and will in the future. The very economic and social policies advocated by neoliberalism are accelerating this process.
I didn't see the word "tribalism" anywhere in this article. Hmmm. Isn't tribalism the "natural" state of all people? "People like me." Back when I was working at AT&T I was the only anglo on a large team of Indians, Mostly good guys. But, joking about their daughters dating Americans of any color got them riled up. No, a good boy from India was the only option they wanted their daughters to have. And, they got wives from India. Tribalism is embedded in our genes.
Also, there's a fundamental question: what is white? Not an easy thing to figure out.
Indians are tribal about who they (or their kids) marry, and who they invite into their homes. Indians are not particularly tribal about who they work with or do business with, who lives in their neighborhood, nor who is part of their polity. Though on both these counts, Indians (in 2025) are getting closer to the mean (less tribal about coupling, more tribal about the other stuff), so inching toward western ways.
Is this thing distasteful to me? Ban it. Don’t let people do it. Force them to stop.
Is this behavior something I like? Encourage it. Maybe force it.
What differentiates “libertarians” from all others IMO are people who say “yuck, that’s awful behavior! But it doesn’t mean I get to force you to stop. It’s none of my business.”
Is a community based on exclusion specifically on race pretty gross? Sure. Doesn’t mean I have the right to stop them.
Hard no. You should not have to degrade yourself at the feet of skydaddy to secure basic freedom of association rights. And if you say "all you have to do is pretend," remember Kurt Vonnegut's saying "you are what you pretend to be."
They’re out there building their own (and new) thing that didn’t exist before. Power to them. Leave them be. Any other group associating by any other common trait or characteristic could have (and can) do the exact same thing if they so choose.
I disagree with Hanania on the immigration bit. One doesn’t have to be racist to support a regulated process of immigration. Just like any other “club”, club members get to decide who is allowed to join.
I think Richard's point is that a polity isn't like a club. If a club decides to change its rules by simple majority vote, that's things working properly. Almost no one thinks governments should be allowed to pass any law they want as long as a majority support it. That's why we have a constitution, courts, and separated federal powers.
Agreed. Minority rights are protected in manners that are separate from majority votes. But nowhere should there be an expectation by a foreigner of any right to be in any host country.
Right, you can't give non-citizens all the same rights as citizens because they don't have the same obligations. Pro-immigration folks aren't primarily (or shouldn't be) arguing that it's immoral, inefficient, etc. not to give rights to non-citizens. Rather, they argue that it's bad to needlessly prevent non-citizens from becoming citizens.
I think there's a clear pragmatic moral case for the US government prioritizing citizens over foreign nationals, but it's much less clear that there is a non-bigoted moral case for prioritizing current citizens over future citizens.
That is the judgement call. How high do you make the bar for citizenship, and in so doing, how much new citizenry do you seek?
I think you always prioritize citizens over “potential citizens”…since you don’t know how many of these potential citizens will pass that bar, or even will attempt to do so.
I'm suggesting that it's not a judgment call. If someone wants to join the United States, is willing to follow the law and pay taxes, and their joining is expected to be hugely beneficial for them and a net benefit for the country as a whole -- the mainstream economic story -- then what is the non-bigoted moral case for excluding this person? Either the social harm caused by an immigrant exceeds the sum of the social benefit and the large benefit they themselves experience, or we should let them in. The only obvious way around is to dispute the conclusion of mainstream economics, which as Mr. Hanania pointed out, the typical voter isn't in a position to do.
You can make a cultural argument (e.g. immigrants cause net harm by bringing their inferior culture with them), but it's tough to rationalize blanket immigration restrictions with this argument, unless you think that the average American is culturally superior to even the best and the brightest of the entire rest of the world.
You can appeal to the citizen vs. non-citizen distinction, but I again don't see how that helps. Disallowing someone from becoming a citizen on the grounds that we value citizens over non-citizens is circular.
And once they are a citizen, there's no distinction to be made except seniority. It would clearly be bigoted for descendants of 17th century British colonists receive preferential treatment over the descendants of Italian Americans whose ancestors immigrated a mere 100 years ago. How would this be substantively different than that?
Bryan Caplan often makes the argument for open borders based on the economic argument that it’s a net positive for humanity because any person who immigrates here will markedly improve their lives. That’s fine in a hypothetical borderless world of “one humanity”. But in a real world with distinct nations/countries/ entities, I’d accept your supposition….”if” the new immigrant would be a net benefit for the country. The “if” is the judgment call I refer to, since it requires at least some accounting of the cost-benefit of each new immigrant to the host country, and what metric to apply as the threshold for their acceptance . Whether immigration would be hugely beneficial for the immigrant, or not, is not really a concern for the host country.
And social harm would seem to me to be one such metric to consider. And I would look to England and other places in Europe in recent years as a cautionary tale of seemingly unchecked immigration and their effects on the social fabric. Admittedly, this may not be as black and white as GDP.
I would not suggest that the average American is culturally superior to the best of the world….but I would suggest it’s superior to a culture that foments and tolerates grooming gangs. So no, I would not suggest “blanket restrictions”, and I would support bringing the “best cultured”, however one is to adjudicate that. But I would suggest maybe passing on the grooming gang cohorts.
I absolutely think we should disallow some people from becoming citizens precisely because we value those who already are citizens. Club members get preferential treatment…it’s the perks of membership. And club members deserve to be shielded from new members who might detract from the quality of their experience. So yes, take the best and the brightest precisely because they add value for current members; and exclude the rest because they don’t (again going beyond just GDP).
I do agree that a citizen is a citizen is a citizen. That’s why the screening process for citizenship is so vital, because there are few checks and balances after that.
But isn't immigration restriction inherently restrictive of free association? It's basically governments telling individuals who they can and can't associate with.
I support some amount of immigration restriction today on practical grounds, but it's not ideal and I don't think we should have it in the future. Post-AGI when all the economic concerns of open borders are eliminated, people should be able to live wherever and with whomever, regardless of national identity.
It is somewhat restrictive, yes, but only insofar as the location of where your desired association occurs. If you want to associate with someone from country X, there is nothing preventing you from going to country X to associate with them (at least from this country’s POV; whether country X allows you in is for country X to decide).
If there is no restriction on immigration, then why have borders? Or “country”. I suppose that is the “humanist” POV….”we are all simply part of the human race”. I see no practical application for such a principle.
>If there is no restriction on immigration, then why have borders? Or “country”. I suppose that is the “humanist” POV….”we are all simply part of the human race”. I see no practical application for such a principle.
America had open borders before 1882, and open borders for everyone except Chinese before 1917.
I don’t know the precise historical reason why border policy changed in 1882 or 1917. But having changed, would there be a reason to revert back to a pre 1882 or pre 1917 position?
If Americans want to hire, rent to, or otherwise voluntarily associate with foreigners that's reason enough even if you don't consider the restriction on foreigners liberty.
But no country owes any duty to the “liberty” of non-citizens. In fact, non-citizens should only be allowed into a country at the pleasure of that country.
If you value freedom and autonomy, as I do, then any world where the places people can be and the people they can be with are restricted based on where someone is born is suboptimal.
Like I said, I'm not saying we should just go full open borders today. Cultures and peoples are very different and allowing all of them to live together where there's scarcity is asking for conflict. So on utilitarian grounds, it's probably fine to say no to open borders today, even if it restricts human freedom.
But extrapolate out to a world where we've achieved post-scarcity, which I think is happening sooner than most people think thanks to AGI (assuming it doesn't kill us all). In that world, how is it anything but a restriction on people's freedom and destiny to decide where they can and can't be?
I also value freedom and autonomy, but not as abstract concepts, and only in real world applications. With that in mind, there are limits to freedom and autonomy. My freedom to associate has to be weighed with the next guy’s freedom from such association. And vice versa.
I can’t speak to the future likelihood of a world without scarcity. But even with such an eventuality, abundance alone does not obviate a desire or preference for disparate culture, or traditions, or mores. Those are legitimate wants even in a world without unmet needs.
I agree with the first paragraph. Regarding the second paragraph, a couple things:
1. Open borders may reduce cultural diversity, but does that outweigh freedom of movement and association? It would seem to me that the pain caused by not being able to live where you want with whom you want is greater than the pain caused by not having enough cultural diversity in the world. And people generally care more about their own freedom to do these things than the abstract value of cultural diversity.
2. You can still have plenty of diversity under open borders. People have differences in their personalities and interests and they'll sort themselves into communities that align with those personalities and interests. This alone can can give us plenty of diversity in memes and mores. Think about the internet. It's essentially an open borders place. Anyone can go to any part of the online world they wish to go to (for the most part). And yet, we have a tremendous diversity of online communities with unique slang, references, memes, etc. Why? Because of self-sorting.
Re: 1. I really have no basis to speculate upon whether people would value the freedom to associate with non citizens more or less than their preferences for cultural diversity or autonomy where they live (in a hypothetical world of abundance and no unmet needs).
Re: 2. I agree the virtual world has open borders. But I see no reason to assume that the physical world would exhibit identical characteristics.
To put it as bluntly as possible, why does someone's desire to live across the street from me outweigh my desire that he not live across the street from me? Find me the citation in any of the great statements of human rights that says anyone enjoys the right to go anywhere they want and associate with anyone they please regardless of the rights of those already there to not associate with them?
I don't think AGI is going to create any more land, Unless it can convince us all to live on top of each other, there's going to be a certain amount of conflict.
I don’t see the “believing in borders is just obviously racism” argument. You claim that all cultures of the world are convening on America’s so the cultural objections must be baseless. But if all cultures were like America’s, ppl wouldn’t be risking their lives and leaving their families behind to get the hell out of those places to come to America. So that claim just seems obviously false. It actually seems obvious that much of the world is radically different from America. You also claim that even ppl from diff backgrounds assimilate into western culture in a few generations. Well first off that’s a long time. Ur sacrificing the optimal well-being of ur own kids and maybe grandkids. Look at the academics in public school districts where 200 languages are spoken (like Seattle) - very low. It’s not easy to teach quickly in 200 languages. How about the rape rates of males from Pakistan, Afghanistan? How many European women and girls should be raped in order for Europeans not to be told they’re racist, whilst they wait around for these men to assimilate to western values around rape? And even if u look ahead in time - some cultures assimilate and succeed rapidly no matter which country they immigrate to, while other cultures are at the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchies decades upon decades in every place they go to. The cultural and linguistic arguments also explain why there are diff countries that have the same race - like as an American, I don’t want to merge with Canada just bc they have the same race, nor would I want millions of Canadians running across our border just bc our economy is stronger. It’s got nothing to do with race. Brexit wasn’t about race - all the EU countries are majority white. Or take the EU generally - they didn’t just say “oh we’re all basically the same let’s just be one country.” They don’t feel they are all the same, and they have the same race and are all “western.” But tell a Frenchman that he’s culturally indistinguishable from a German or Pollack and see if he agrees. There are clear and strong cultural (and linguistic) differences between European countries, and each country’s desire to maintain its cultural identity as against other European countries is not about racism. Why can’t the same be true with America? Why can’t it be the case that ppl from diff cultures may have radically different…cultures? And that blending them all together might not always be optimal for everyone in every way - without skin color having anything to do with it?
People have a hard time saying yes they are racists, and they are doing nothing wrong. People want their morality tales to be simple and straightforward. Racism = bad. Racist does thing = bad. It causes cognite dissonance to recognize that sometimes unvirtuous people can do something good.
This seems to be to be just a form of the old American adage: ‘Live and let Live.’ I think we could all adopt a bit more of that attitude. We’re going to need it to get through this fraught moment without resorting to stupid violence and letting Trump rule us like a la Cosa Nostra crime family would.
In schools teacher would insist that if you invite more than half of class, you must invite all children in class. That rule is to prevent shunning.
Amish only enclave OK. Jewish only safe spaces - OK. White-only and Protestant-only Safe Spaces -OK. But no to Whites-only Enclaves or Christian-only Spaces.
Same reason to ban Shunning or Redlining. If more than 50% people is OK then it must be available to all.
Presumably the problem with shunning in a small class is that it leaves some unfortunate kid totally alone, but that's not a problem on a national scale.
You can always define whites or Christians in a slightly more narrow way to make them a minority. If excluding LGBT whites allows them to dip under the 50% limit then I guess you're suddenly OK with it, but is that more or less "shunning"?
There is a line drawing issue here - wouldn't the same logic apply to a group of 49% of people? I don't think there's anything magic about the specific 50% value, and 49% seems close enough to warrant the same kind of rule. But if so, then how about 48%? 47%? Et cetera all the way down to any arbitrary percentage.
I guess what I'd be interested in learning is what does being "white" mean to these people? Why do they feel like they need an enclave instead of where they were previously living? If it's for good reasons, then power to them. If it's for racism, then fuck 'em.
"Voters in Missouri and West Virginia try to tell New York City and San Francisco, who are welcoming towards new arrivals, that their preferences must be overruled in the name of national unity."
I don't think flyover state voters would care, if the new arrivals stayed in NYC or SF. Inevitably, a lot of them get fed up with unaffordable housing, crime, and mediocre schools, and they seek greener pastures. For better or worse, the sweet spot of affordable housing + low crime + ok schools is often white working class towns in flyover states. That's how my MIL's town in Iowa went from 75% white in 2000 to majority Latino in 2020 (nearly all 1st gen immigrants arriving from welcoming Southern California, not directly from Latin America). I know Hanania downplayed the economics angle, but when you introduce a lot of manual laborers into a town where the average person is a manual laborer (whether farm, factory, or Walmart) it tends to lead to resentment. When the people look different and speak another language, human nature tends to amplify that resentment.
>These analogies have all kinds of problems. A nation is obviously not private property. If it were, then American citizens themselves would have no rights whenever they found themselves outvoted. The majority could decide that since you are in “their” house, they can put any conditions they want on you living there. Anyone who does anything the government doesn’t approve of could be banned from public roads.
The logic here is obviously flawed. Citizens of liberal democracies have negative rights that can't be infringed upon by majority vote or the government, and are often offered protections that extend to them when they're living in foreign countries. The totality of these rights are not extended to non-citizens, especially not to immigrants who live in the country without the consent of the government. These rights are guarded in exchange for foregoing other freedoms. Your right to do want you want on private property is limited in all liberal democracies. As far as I know there are no libertarian paradises where you do can do anything you want at anytime as long as it doesn't violate NAP.
The only way this logic works is if you remove the citizen/non-citizen distinction and decide governments should offer these liberties and protections to any possible person who could at some point live in the United States. At which point, you can't--as you have done-- advocate for bombing people in other countries without due process. This is precisely the reason that killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was controversial.
> The only way this logic works is if you remove the citizen/non-citizen distinction and decide governments should offer these liberties and protections to any possible person who could at some point live in the United States.
No, you don't. You can preserve the citizen/non-citizen distinction for people present in the territory of the US while giving them all a core set of (human) rights and protections, and graded rights to different categories of non-citizens.
The US immigration program functions like this currently, and I don't see an intrinsic flaw in it (other than having rigid per-country immigration quotas, but that's a separate story). You have people living as students who are not allowed to work for pay, people working while not having the right to permanently reside, people having the right to permanently reside without the right to vote, etc. All of these visa-holders and immigrants voluntarily enter into a contract with the US government (and by extension with American society), which either party is free to dissolve at will.
Hanania argues for open borders on the grounds that a nation isn't "private property" like a house is, so there should be no popular will governing who is or isn't allowed into (or allowed to stay in) a country. I simply argue that people in liberal democracies have negative rights that can't be violated by slim majorities and that these rights don't extend to every possible person in the world who could enter the US. You, in reply to me, argue that governments have rights to enter into contracts with non-citizens (ok? this is an argument for our current immigration system, not open borders). In any case, if you like Hanania believe the majorities should have no say in immigration policy (and in your analysis the contracts between governments and non-citizens), how do these liberal democracies decide who to enter into contracts with?
Let's separate the question "how should a policy be decided" from "what's the right/ideal policy".
Let's also not conflate "majorities" having a say from the American body politic as a whole having a say on who gets to enter or immigrate to the US. The US body politic, through its elected legislature, executive, and permanent bureaucracy, determined the visa and immigration policies that currently prevail. The public did not debate the minutiae of these policies, and it's doubtful you could get an actual majority of Americans to assent to any of those simply because most of the public wouldn't have the attention span to collect and reason about the information that went into determining those policies. But Congress did extensively debate them, doing a lot of research in the process.
"Open borders" conjures up a vision of anarchy, so no significant proportion of the American public (nor the public of any country) will ever support it. Perhaps Hanania does support that, or perhaps he uses it as a rhetorical device for promoting skilled immigration and immigration for jobs that most Americans won't do unless offered astronomical wages, which is what he actually values (I value the skilled immigration part myself). The notion of country as "private property" is often used as a veto by immigration restrictionists to any kind of visa or immigration program, whose merits can only be reasoned about by Congressional committees, never "majorities of the public". Which is why the connotation of a country with property is unhelpful if you are an advocate for any kind of immigration at all (forget open borders).
>Let's separate the question "how should a policy be decided" from "what's the right/ideal policy".
Do you struggle with reading comprehension? The whole point of my comment was to take issue with Hanania's appeal to rights as the basis of an open borders policy. I point out that this is inconsistent with his purported beliefs (as of 2025) in liberal democracy and foreign interventionism. If he wants open borders he should just be an ancap like Bryan Caplan. For some reason, you think I should be debating you about the utilitarian argument for our current immigration policy, when neither Hanania's essay or my comment are about that.
>Perhaps Hanania does support that, or perhaps he uses it as a rhetorical device for promoting skilled immigration and immigration for jobs that most Americans won't do unless offered astronomical wages
Hanania believes in open borders or something close to it. I would suggest that if you're going to pay Hanania money every month to read his essays, you do the most basic thing and try to understand the arguments he puts forward and the positions he holds. When you start doing that maybe you can more meaningfully engage in the comments.
If you don't know that people use extreme versions of what they would be happy with as rhetorical devices in their advocacy pieces, you should lay off commenting for a while and do a lot of reading first.
You probably couldn't be bothered to get to the end of my comment, where I say clearly why your "country as private property" notion is extreme in itself because of how the public thinks and acts. A country can be considered to be collective property, but decisions about who comes or goes in it are not subject to the same intuitions (or decision-making process) as "real" private property where it's basically someone's personal opinion. Also, anything that is a meaningful fraction of the entire world's real estate cannot be considered to be private property of any kind, though it can be considered to be collectively held and governed by a designated group of people (citizens through their elected representatives).
Well.....perhaps it'll be pearls cast before a swine, but at least I tried.
Going to keep tapping that reading comprehension sign.
1) Again, you're paying money to this man for his essays. Go look at his conversations with Bryan Caplan. He supports open borders or something very close to it--ideally in a society with a nonexistent welfare state. For some reason you insist he generally supports your position of collective control of borders through representative democracy, when in reality he thinks its a fundamental human right to move wherever you want as long as it isn't private property.
2) Where do I argue in my comment that countries are private property? I take issue with the notion that ideas of majoritarian control over borders can be refuted because you can dismiss the argument that countries are "private property" and you can't vote out people.
My concern with the enclave is that the type of person who would want to live in this specific enclave is likely to have extreme psychiatric issues. While also being low IQ. Lots of people like this all banding together in one geographical enclave, without the buffer of outside influences, is bad news. You can easily picture situations that spiral to extreme abuse, terrorism, or mass psychosis.
I think it's far from obvious that this group is attracting unusually psychotic or stupid people. The US is full of groups with unusual beliefs and somewhat cultic behavior, but hardly any of them blow up government buildings or murder their neighbors.
Well, there are plenty of people organising around other principles, like religion, that might be similarly 'damaged' and no one does anything about it?
It also seems a bit weird to ban people from doing something based on some remote medical diagnosis by a layman?
This is autistic literalism. Let's say two enclaves suddenly form in America. The first is an Orthodox Jewish enclave. The second is some radical cult's enclave. While both might have a legal right to exist, the second one would elicit much more concern than the first. Why? Because people are allowed to use common sense to judge social situations.
Utilitarian arguments are not always great, but it is a simple one here: I don't want these Arkansas guys as neighbors so I'm glad they have their own place far away from me.
These places generally attract trashy people. It was revealed recently that the guy who set up this community (Aarvoll) used to create porn with his (now ex) wife who he had 4 children with. I would not be surprised if the other people involved are freaks as well.
Setting up ethnic enclaves isn't exactly Elite Human Capital behavior.
Maybe not, but it shows a sense of agency and commitment. Much more admirable than the people who think "white advocacy" is complaining on the internet.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GxSf1maaIAM9hgx?format=jpg&name=900x900
Fair enough. I disagree with what they're doing but they're not hurting anyone so I can't hate on them too much.
At the end of the day, modern “white supremacy” is nothing more than a giant scam.
They don’t want you or Hanania as neighbors either. We need to break up America anyway.
No, we can just coexist even if we don't like each other. That's freedom of association.
Coexisting in separate polities is the ultimate solution.
Have you heard of federalism? Or the concept of subsidiarity?
Yup, by golly, I sure have. It can’t exist in contemporary American society with under neoliberalism.
I'm sympathetic in theory to the idea of national divorce, but I give it < 5% it would happen. For better or worse, most Americans are pretty attached to the USA as it is geographically.
It’s already happening and reborn neoliberals out here cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together and go back to prewar Classical Liberalism in a hopelessly fragmented and rapidly deteriorating society. Nothing sacred about the United States as presently constituted, its economy, form of government, and current borders. It’s become an empire as many other countries before it and will decline and eventually perish as all others have before and will in the future. The very economic and social policies advocated by neoliberalism are accelerating this process.
I didn't see the word "tribalism" anywhere in this article. Hmmm. Isn't tribalism the "natural" state of all people? "People like me." Back when I was working at AT&T I was the only anglo on a large team of Indians, Mostly good guys. But, joking about their daughters dating Americans of any color got them riled up. No, a good boy from India was the only option they wanted their daughters to have. And, they got wives from India. Tribalism is embedded in our genes.
Also, there's a fundamental question: what is white? Not an easy thing to figure out.
Indians are tribal about who they (or their kids) marry, and who they invite into their homes. Indians are not particularly tribal about who they work with or do business with, who lives in their neighborhood, nor who is part of their polity. Though on both these counts, Indians (in 2025) are getting closer to the mean (less tribal about coupling, more tribal about the other stuff), so inching toward western ways.
Our gracious host already acknowledged that whiteness can be pretty vague and lies in the eyes of the beholder.
For almost everybody, morality means:
Is this thing distasteful to me? Ban it. Don’t let people do it. Force them to stop.
Is this behavior something I like? Encourage it. Maybe force it.
What differentiates “libertarians” from all others IMO are people who say “yuck, that’s awful behavior! But it doesn’t mean I get to force you to stop. It’s none of my business.”
Is a community based on exclusion specifically on race pretty gross? Sure. Doesn’t mean I have the right to stop them.
Many people can be libertarian by your definition in some aspects.
Eg few people want to ban others from eating yucky food.
Banning people from eating foods is a major pastime of busybodies everywhere and has been for thousands of years.
Or getting a questionable haircut or wearing ugly clothing.
These people need to come up with a religious justification fast. No one moaning about the lack of black Amish.
Hard no. You should not have to degrade yourself at the feet of skydaddy to secure basic freedom of association rights. And if you say "all you have to do is pretend," remember Kurt Vonnegut's saying "you are what you pretend to be."
Forget race, religion, and geographical origin: I want to belong to the community of *those who respect Freedom of Association*.
They’re out there building their own (and new) thing that didn’t exist before. Power to them. Leave them be. Any other group associating by any other common trait or characteristic could have (and can) do the exact same thing if they so choose.
I disagree with Hanania on the immigration bit. One doesn’t have to be racist to support a regulated process of immigration. Just like any other “club”, club members get to decide who is allowed to join.
I think Richard's point is that a polity isn't like a club. If a club decides to change its rules by simple majority vote, that's things working properly. Almost no one thinks governments should be allowed to pass any law they want as long as a majority support it. That's why we have a constitution, courts, and separated federal powers.
Agreed. Minority rights are protected in manners that are separate from majority votes. But nowhere should there be an expectation by a foreigner of any right to be in any host country.
Right, you can't give non-citizens all the same rights as citizens because they don't have the same obligations. Pro-immigration folks aren't primarily (or shouldn't be) arguing that it's immoral, inefficient, etc. not to give rights to non-citizens. Rather, they argue that it's bad to needlessly prevent non-citizens from becoming citizens.
I think there's a clear pragmatic moral case for the US government prioritizing citizens over foreign nationals, but it's much less clear that there is a non-bigoted moral case for prioritizing current citizens over future citizens.
That is the judgement call. How high do you make the bar for citizenship, and in so doing, how much new citizenry do you seek?
I think you always prioritize citizens over “potential citizens”…since you don’t know how many of these potential citizens will pass that bar, or even will attempt to do so.
I'm suggesting that it's not a judgment call. If someone wants to join the United States, is willing to follow the law and pay taxes, and their joining is expected to be hugely beneficial for them and a net benefit for the country as a whole -- the mainstream economic story -- then what is the non-bigoted moral case for excluding this person? Either the social harm caused by an immigrant exceeds the sum of the social benefit and the large benefit they themselves experience, or we should let them in. The only obvious way around is to dispute the conclusion of mainstream economics, which as Mr. Hanania pointed out, the typical voter isn't in a position to do.
You can make a cultural argument (e.g. immigrants cause net harm by bringing their inferior culture with them), but it's tough to rationalize blanket immigration restrictions with this argument, unless you think that the average American is culturally superior to even the best and the brightest of the entire rest of the world.
You can appeal to the citizen vs. non-citizen distinction, but I again don't see how that helps. Disallowing someone from becoming a citizen on the grounds that we value citizens over non-citizens is circular.
And once they are a citizen, there's no distinction to be made except seniority. It would clearly be bigoted for descendants of 17th century British colonists receive preferential treatment over the descendants of Italian Americans whose ancestors immigrated a mere 100 years ago. How would this be substantively different than that?
Bryan Caplan often makes the argument for open borders based on the economic argument that it’s a net positive for humanity because any person who immigrates here will markedly improve their lives. That’s fine in a hypothetical borderless world of “one humanity”. But in a real world with distinct nations/countries/ entities, I’d accept your supposition….”if” the new immigrant would be a net benefit for the country. The “if” is the judgment call I refer to, since it requires at least some accounting of the cost-benefit of each new immigrant to the host country, and what metric to apply as the threshold for their acceptance . Whether immigration would be hugely beneficial for the immigrant, or not, is not really a concern for the host country.
And social harm would seem to me to be one such metric to consider. And I would look to England and other places in Europe in recent years as a cautionary tale of seemingly unchecked immigration and their effects on the social fabric. Admittedly, this may not be as black and white as GDP.
I would not suggest that the average American is culturally superior to the best of the world….but I would suggest it’s superior to a culture that foments and tolerates grooming gangs. So no, I would not suggest “blanket restrictions”, and I would support bringing the “best cultured”, however one is to adjudicate that. But I would suggest maybe passing on the grooming gang cohorts.
I absolutely think we should disallow some people from becoming citizens precisely because we value those who already are citizens. Club members get preferential treatment…it’s the perks of membership. And club members deserve to be shielded from new members who might detract from the quality of their experience. So yes, take the best and the brightest precisely because they add value for current members; and exclude the rest because they don’t (again going beyond just GDP).
I do agree that a citizen is a citizen is a citizen. That’s why the screening process for citizenship is so vital, because there are few checks and balances after that.
But isn't immigration restriction inherently restrictive of free association? It's basically governments telling individuals who they can and can't associate with.
I support some amount of immigration restriction today on practical grounds, but it's not ideal and I don't think we should have it in the future. Post-AGI when all the economic concerns of open borders are eliminated, people should be able to live wherever and with whomever, regardless of national identity.
It is somewhat restrictive, yes, but only insofar as the location of where your desired association occurs. If you want to associate with someone from country X, there is nothing preventing you from going to country X to associate with them (at least from this country’s POV; whether country X allows you in is for country X to decide).
If there is no restriction on immigration, then why have borders? Or “country”. I suppose that is the “humanist” POV….”we are all simply part of the human race”. I see no practical application for such a principle.
>If there is no restriction on immigration, then why have borders? Or “country”. I suppose that is the “humanist” POV….”we are all simply part of the human race”. I see no practical application for such a principle.
America had open borders before 1882, and open borders for everyone except Chinese before 1917.
I don’t know the precise historical reason why border policy changed in 1882 or 1917. But having changed, would there be a reason to revert back to a pre 1882 or pre 1917 position?
If Americans want to hire, rent to, or otherwise voluntarily associate with foreigners that's reason enough even if you don't consider the restriction on foreigners liberty.
But no country owes any duty to the “liberty” of non-citizens. In fact, non-citizens should only be allowed into a country at the pleasure of that country.
If you value freedom and autonomy, as I do, then any world where the places people can be and the people they can be with are restricted based on where someone is born is suboptimal.
Like I said, I'm not saying we should just go full open borders today. Cultures and peoples are very different and allowing all of them to live together where there's scarcity is asking for conflict. So on utilitarian grounds, it's probably fine to say no to open borders today, even if it restricts human freedom.
But extrapolate out to a world where we've achieved post-scarcity, which I think is happening sooner than most people think thanks to AGI (assuming it doesn't kill us all). In that world, how is it anything but a restriction on people's freedom and destiny to decide where they can and can't be?
I also value freedom and autonomy, but not as abstract concepts, and only in real world applications. With that in mind, there are limits to freedom and autonomy. My freedom to associate has to be weighed with the next guy’s freedom from such association. And vice versa.
I can’t speak to the future likelihood of a world without scarcity. But even with such an eventuality, abundance alone does not obviate a desire or preference for disparate culture, or traditions, or mores. Those are legitimate wants even in a world without unmet needs.
I agree with the first paragraph. Regarding the second paragraph, a couple things:
1. Open borders may reduce cultural diversity, but does that outweigh freedom of movement and association? It would seem to me that the pain caused by not being able to live where you want with whom you want is greater than the pain caused by not having enough cultural diversity in the world. And people generally care more about their own freedom to do these things than the abstract value of cultural diversity.
2. You can still have plenty of diversity under open borders. People have differences in their personalities and interests and they'll sort themselves into communities that align with those personalities and interests. This alone can can give us plenty of diversity in memes and mores. Think about the internet. It's essentially an open borders place. Anyone can go to any part of the online world they wish to go to (for the most part). And yet, we have a tremendous diversity of online communities with unique slang, references, memes, etc. Why? Because of self-sorting.
Re: 1. I really have no basis to speculate upon whether people would value the freedom to associate with non citizens more or less than their preferences for cultural diversity or autonomy where they live (in a hypothetical world of abundance and no unmet needs).
Re: 2. I agree the virtual world has open borders. But I see no reason to assume that the physical world would exhibit identical characteristics.
To put it as bluntly as possible, why does someone's desire to live across the street from me outweigh my desire that he not live across the street from me? Find me the citation in any of the great statements of human rights that says anyone enjoys the right to go anywhere they want and associate with anyone they please regardless of the rights of those already there to not associate with them?
I don't think AGI is going to create any more land, Unless it can convince us all to live on top of each other, there's going to be a certain amount of conflict.
It can create new islands in the ocean and terraform other planets for us.
When it does, we can talk.
I don’t see the “believing in borders is just obviously racism” argument. You claim that all cultures of the world are convening on America’s so the cultural objections must be baseless. But if all cultures were like America’s, ppl wouldn’t be risking their lives and leaving their families behind to get the hell out of those places to come to America. So that claim just seems obviously false. It actually seems obvious that much of the world is radically different from America. You also claim that even ppl from diff backgrounds assimilate into western culture in a few generations. Well first off that’s a long time. Ur sacrificing the optimal well-being of ur own kids and maybe grandkids. Look at the academics in public school districts where 200 languages are spoken (like Seattle) - very low. It’s not easy to teach quickly in 200 languages. How about the rape rates of males from Pakistan, Afghanistan? How many European women and girls should be raped in order for Europeans not to be told they’re racist, whilst they wait around for these men to assimilate to western values around rape? And even if u look ahead in time - some cultures assimilate and succeed rapidly no matter which country they immigrate to, while other cultures are at the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchies decades upon decades in every place they go to. The cultural and linguistic arguments also explain why there are diff countries that have the same race - like as an American, I don’t want to merge with Canada just bc they have the same race, nor would I want millions of Canadians running across our border just bc our economy is stronger. It’s got nothing to do with race. Brexit wasn’t about race - all the EU countries are majority white. Or take the EU generally - they didn’t just say “oh we’re all basically the same let’s just be one country.” They don’t feel they are all the same, and they have the same race and are all “western.” But tell a Frenchman that he’s culturally indistinguishable from a German or Pollack and see if he agrees. There are clear and strong cultural (and linguistic) differences between European countries, and each country’s desire to maintain its cultural identity as against other European countries is not about racism. Why can’t the same be true with America? Why can’t it be the case that ppl from diff cultures may have radically different…cultures? And that blending them all together might not always be optimal for everyone in every way - without skin color having anything to do with it?
If universities can have non-white areas, what's the problem?
People have a hard time saying yes they are racists, and they are doing nothing wrong. People want their morality tales to be simple and straightforward. Racism = bad. Racist does thing = bad. It causes cognite dissonance to recognize that sometimes unvirtuous people can do something good.
In this case, it's not 'good'. It's just acceptable.
Just like Stalin eating potatoes isn't good. But it isn't evil either.
This seems to be to be just a form of the old American adage: ‘Live and let Live.’ I think we could all adopt a bit more of that attitude. We’re going to need it to get through this fraught moment without resorting to stupid violence and letting Trump rule us like a la Cosa Nostra crime family would.
I oppose White-only enclaves.
In schools teacher would insist that if you invite more than half of class, you must invite all children in class. That rule is to prevent shunning.
Amish only enclave OK. Jewish only safe spaces - OK. White-only and Protestant-only Safe Spaces -OK. But no to Whites-only Enclaves or Christian-only Spaces.
Same reason to ban Shunning or Redlining. If more than 50% people is OK then it must be available to all.
So, it's OK when whites become a minority? Because it seems pedantic to say they have to wait 15 years or whatever the current estimate is.
Presumably the problem with shunning in a small class is that it leaves some unfortunate kid totally alone, but that's not a problem on a national scale.
You can always define whites or Christians in a slightly more narrow way to make them a minority. If excluding LGBT whites allows them to dip under the 50% limit then I guess you're suddenly OK with it, but is that more or less "shunning"?
I think I like this argument, but I'm not sure.
There is a line drawing issue here - wouldn't the same logic apply to a group of 49% of people? I don't think there's anything magic about the specific 50% value, and 49% seems close enough to warrant the same kind of rule. But if so, then how about 48%? 47%? Et cetera all the way down to any arbitrary percentage.
I guess what I'd be interested in learning is what does being "white" mean to these people? Why do they feel like they need an enclave instead of where they were previously living? If it's for good reasons, then power to them. If it's for racism, then fuck 'em.
"Voters in Missouri and West Virginia try to tell New York City and San Francisco, who are welcoming towards new arrivals, that their preferences must be overruled in the name of national unity."
I don't think flyover state voters would care, if the new arrivals stayed in NYC or SF. Inevitably, a lot of them get fed up with unaffordable housing, crime, and mediocre schools, and they seek greener pastures. For better or worse, the sweet spot of affordable housing + low crime + ok schools is often white working class towns in flyover states. That's how my MIL's town in Iowa went from 75% white in 2000 to majority Latino in 2020 (nearly all 1st gen immigrants arriving from welcoming Southern California, not directly from Latin America). I know Hanania downplayed the economics angle, but when you introduce a lot of manual laborers into a town where the average person is a manual laborer (whether farm, factory, or Walmart) it tends to lead to resentment. When the people look different and speak another language, human nature tends to amplify that resentment.
"Per Capita" is fine for not wanting to live around Negroes, but not share of economic output.
Not sure what point you're trying to make.
>These analogies have all kinds of problems. A nation is obviously not private property. If it were, then American citizens themselves would have no rights whenever they found themselves outvoted. The majority could decide that since you are in “their” house, they can put any conditions they want on you living there. Anyone who does anything the government doesn’t approve of could be banned from public roads.
The logic here is obviously flawed. Citizens of liberal democracies have negative rights that can't be infringed upon by majority vote or the government, and are often offered protections that extend to them when they're living in foreign countries. The totality of these rights are not extended to non-citizens, especially not to immigrants who live in the country without the consent of the government. These rights are guarded in exchange for foregoing other freedoms. Your right to do want you want on private property is limited in all liberal democracies. As far as I know there are no libertarian paradises where you do can do anything you want at anytime as long as it doesn't violate NAP.
The only way this logic works is if you remove the citizen/non-citizen distinction and decide governments should offer these liberties and protections to any possible person who could at some point live in the United States. At which point, you can't--as you have done-- advocate for bombing people in other countries without due process. This is precisely the reason that killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was controversial.
> The only way this logic works is if you remove the citizen/non-citizen distinction and decide governments should offer these liberties and protections to any possible person who could at some point live in the United States.
No, you don't. You can preserve the citizen/non-citizen distinction for people present in the territory of the US while giving them all a core set of (human) rights and protections, and graded rights to different categories of non-citizens.
The US immigration program functions like this currently, and I don't see an intrinsic flaw in it (other than having rigid per-country immigration quotas, but that's a separate story). You have people living as students who are not allowed to work for pay, people working while not having the right to permanently reside, people having the right to permanently reside without the right to vote, etc. All of these visa-holders and immigrants voluntarily enter into a contract with the US government (and by extension with American society), which either party is free to dissolve at will.
Hanania argues for open borders on the grounds that a nation isn't "private property" like a house is, so there should be no popular will governing who is or isn't allowed into (or allowed to stay in) a country. I simply argue that people in liberal democracies have negative rights that can't be violated by slim majorities and that these rights don't extend to every possible person in the world who could enter the US. You, in reply to me, argue that governments have rights to enter into contracts with non-citizens (ok? this is an argument for our current immigration system, not open borders). In any case, if you like Hanania believe the majorities should have no say in immigration policy (and in your analysis the contracts between governments and non-citizens), how do these liberal democracies decide who to enter into contracts with?
Let's separate the question "how should a policy be decided" from "what's the right/ideal policy".
Let's also not conflate "majorities" having a say from the American body politic as a whole having a say on who gets to enter or immigrate to the US. The US body politic, through its elected legislature, executive, and permanent bureaucracy, determined the visa and immigration policies that currently prevail. The public did not debate the minutiae of these policies, and it's doubtful you could get an actual majority of Americans to assent to any of those simply because most of the public wouldn't have the attention span to collect and reason about the information that went into determining those policies. But Congress did extensively debate them, doing a lot of research in the process.
"Open borders" conjures up a vision of anarchy, so no significant proportion of the American public (nor the public of any country) will ever support it. Perhaps Hanania does support that, or perhaps he uses it as a rhetorical device for promoting skilled immigration and immigration for jobs that most Americans won't do unless offered astronomical wages, which is what he actually values (I value the skilled immigration part myself). The notion of country as "private property" is often used as a veto by immigration restrictionists to any kind of visa or immigration program, whose merits can only be reasoned about by Congressional committees, never "majorities of the public". Which is why the connotation of a country with property is unhelpful if you are an advocate for any kind of immigration at all (forget open borders).
>Let's separate the question "how should a policy be decided" from "what's the right/ideal policy".
Do you struggle with reading comprehension? The whole point of my comment was to take issue with Hanania's appeal to rights as the basis of an open borders policy. I point out that this is inconsistent with his purported beliefs (as of 2025) in liberal democracy and foreign interventionism. If he wants open borders he should just be an ancap like Bryan Caplan. For some reason, you think I should be debating you about the utilitarian argument for our current immigration policy, when neither Hanania's essay or my comment are about that.
>Perhaps Hanania does support that, or perhaps he uses it as a rhetorical device for promoting skilled immigration and immigration for jobs that most Americans won't do unless offered astronomical wages
Hanania believes in open borders or something close to it. I would suggest that if you're going to pay Hanania money every month to read his essays, you do the most basic thing and try to understand the arguments he puts forward and the positions he holds. When you start doing that maybe you can more meaningfully engage in the comments.
If you don't know that people use extreme versions of what they would be happy with as rhetorical devices in their advocacy pieces, you should lay off commenting for a while and do a lot of reading first.
You probably couldn't be bothered to get to the end of my comment, where I say clearly why your "country as private property" notion is extreme in itself because of how the public thinks and acts. A country can be considered to be collective property, but decisions about who comes or goes in it are not subject to the same intuitions (or decision-making process) as "real" private property where it's basically someone's personal opinion. Also, anything that is a meaningful fraction of the entire world's real estate cannot be considered to be private property of any kind, though it can be considered to be collectively held and governed by a designated group of people (citizens through their elected representatives).
Well.....perhaps it'll be pearls cast before a swine, but at least I tried.
Going to keep tapping that reading comprehension sign.
1) Again, you're paying money to this man for his essays. Go look at his conversations with Bryan Caplan. He supports open borders or something very close to it--ideally in a society with a nonexistent welfare state. For some reason you insist he generally supports your position of collective control of borders through representative democracy, when in reality he thinks its a fundamental human right to move wherever you want as long as it isn't private property.
2) Where do I argue in my comment that countries are private property? I take issue with the notion that ideas of majoritarian control over borders can be refuted because you can dismiss the argument that countries are "private property" and you can't vote out people.
Open borders means the streets/roads are owned communally by the entire world; in reality, they are rightfully owned by the natives.
This man is a moral and logical fool using sophistry to elevate his standing by confusing the easily manipulated. Ignore him.
My concern with the enclave is that the type of person who would want to live in this specific enclave is likely to have extreme psychiatric issues. While also being low IQ. Lots of people like this all banding together in one geographical enclave, without the buffer of outside influences, is bad news. You can easily picture situations that spiral to extreme abuse, terrorism, or mass psychosis.
I think it's far from obvious that this group is attracting unusually psychotic or stupid people. The US is full of groups with unusual beliefs and somewhat cultic behavior, but hardly any of them blow up government buildings or murder their neighbors.
Well, there are plenty of people organising around other principles, like religion, that might be similarly 'damaged' and no one does anything about it?
It also seems a bit weird to ban people from doing something based on some remote medical diagnosis by a layman?
This is autistic literalism. Let's say two enclaves suddenly form in America. The first is an Orthodox Jewish enclave. The second is some radical cult's enclave. While both might have a legal right to exist, the second one would elicit much more concern than the first. Why? Because people are allowed to use common sense to judge social situations.