More on Immigration

Despite being hammered on his Facebook page, or maybe as a result of such criticism, Judge Andrew Napolitano has continued to push the immigration issue. A column of his was published at LRC today that defends the right of individuals to move unhampered by the state.

He writes:

The right to travel is an individual personal human right, long recognized under the natural law as immune from governmental interference. Of course, governments have been interfering with this right for millennia. The Romans restricted the travel of Jews; Parliament restricted the travel of serfs; Congress restricted the travel of slaves; and starting in the late 19th century, the federal government has restricted the travel of non-Americans who want to come here and even the travel of those already here. All of these abominable restrictions of the right to travel are based not on any culpability of individuals, but rather on membership in the groups to which persons have belonged from birth.

He goes on to declare that:

Nativism is the arch-enemy of the freedom to travel, as its adherents believe they can use the coercive power of the government to impair the freedom of travel of persons who are unwanted not because of personal behavior, but solely on the basis of where they were born. Nativism teaches that we lack natural rights and enjoy only those rights the government permits us to exercise.

In addition to the standard argument raised by nativists — namely, “they’re stealing our jobs” — two points are raised. The first is: “We are a nation of laws, and they shouldn’t be allowed to break them.”

Okay. So what?

This argument begs the question of whether the laws are themselves just and worth having in the first place. It assumes from the outset that by virtue of being inacted, they should never be changed. It also implies that whomever passed these laws was infalible, and above criticism. It should be obvious that this is foolish.

The second such argument is: “A nation is defined by its borders.”

I tend to agree with this argument, though my view is probably more nuanced than that of your average Texas Minuteman. The way I see it, the borders of a country and the level to which they’re secured indicates a lot about the society within. A society that values personal liberty and embraces free markets should have an equally laissez faire approach to its borders.

On the other hand, a society that is unconcerned with civil liberties and has no appreciation for the market economy will tend to build walls and guard towers, and patrol them with armed guards. So the question one must ask is: do I want a free and open society where contracts and private property are respected, or a prison state marked by guard dogs and razor wire?

Which would you prefer?

A Curious Case Against Freedom

Just the other day I was listening to Roderick Long being interviewed by Lew Rockwell, and they discussed a speech that Long delivered some years ago at the Mises Institute. A transcript of the speech can be viewed here, and I highly recommend it. Rockwell mentions that Walter Block considers it one of the single best cases for libertarian anarchy, and while my experience is limited, it’s certainly compelling.

A point that Long doesn’t raise directly, and neither do audience members at the end, is the sort of backwards logic applied by some opponents of a free society. Minarchists and many libertarians commonly reject free market anarchism on the grounds that it would eventually lead to another state. In short, they fear such a political system would revert to a coercive state as the various protection agencies and arbitration services formed a cartel.

So essentially their argument boils down to: what we have now is unjust and inefficient, but because we may end up with something else that is unjust and inefficient, let’s stick with — more or less– the system we now have. In some ways this is analogous to: I’m uncomfortable in my current house, with all of its defects, but just in case I get another house with similar problems, I’ll stay put. This seems like a pretty shaky argument against a free society.

On Philanthropy and the Articles of Confederation

There was a short exchange between two readers of GoUpstate.com, a news outlet in Spartanburg, SC, over the topic of nullification. See here, here, and here.

Two things struck me about the second letter, the one opposing nullification. In his rebuttal to the nullification advocate, George T. Fain wrote that “South Carolina attempted a tariff nullification under Andrew Jackson in 1832, selfishly seeing the tariff’s impact on the state as more important than the nation’s welfare.” Got that?

If you’re opposed to being looted for the purpose of protecting uncompetitive firms’ failing business models, you’re selfish. But, if you’re the politically-well-connected owner of a large manufacturing company, and can successfully lobby for high tariffs that effectively rob a bunch of poor farmers, you’re a philanthropist concerned for the “nation’s welfare.” This is precisely the attitude Thomas Sowell was referring to when he wrote “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”

The second notable point Mr. Fain made was this:

The U.S. is a centralized government. The Constitution clarifies that laws apply to all states without the states’ right to approve/disapprove (except through congressional votes). If we wish to ignore this unity, we should return to the 1781-87 pre-constitutional Articles of Confederation, allowing states to act as semi-independent nations, going their own way, acting for their own benefit, without concern for the good of the whole nation.

Indeed, a return to the Articles of Confederation would be glorious in comparison to the Leviathan we now face. The two biggest faults with the Articles that students are taught in school is that they didn’t provide a central authority with war-making powers, or a means to impose taxes. Some flaw!

If only we could be plagued by such an institution unable to parasitically feed off our productivity and spread death and destruction to the ends of the earth. It would have been a far cry from a totally stateless society, but in comparison, a much better environment to live, work, and grow old.

What Contracts Are For

The good folks over at the I Bet Ludwig von Mises Can Get More Fans Than John Maynard Keynes Facebook page forwarded the following (paraphrased) question from a reader:

Land Owner A has a river flowing through his property. Land owner B lives downstream and relies on the flow of water for his livelihood. How might a free society resolve a dispute should Land Owner A decide to dam the river to build a power plant?

The answer is through a previously-agreed upon contract for water rights.

Prior to purchasing land downstream from a river head, a responsible buyer will first ensure that a contract is in place to guard his water rights. This not only protects his flow of water but might also protect the water quality from pollution. Should an upstream land owner decide to dam the river, he would first have to get permission to break the contract or buy-out those living downstream.

Disputes over contract terms, renegotiation, or anything else of that nature would then be handled by a third-party arbitrator. In this way there is no need for violence or coercion; just peaceful, voluntary coexistence.

Back to the Jungle?

By Murray Rothbard

[The following is excerpted from Chapter 6, Antimarket Ethics: A Praxeological Critique, from Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, Scholar’s Edition].

Many critics complain that the free market, in casting aside inefficient entrepreneurs or in other decisions, proves itself an “impersonal monster.” The free-market economy, they charge, is “the rule of the jungle,” where “survival of the fittest” is the law. Libertarians who advocate a free market are therefore called “Social Darwinists” who wish to exterminate the weak for the benefit of the strong.

In the first place, these critics overlook the fact that the operation of the free market is vastly different from governmental action. When a government acts, individual critics are powerless to change the result. They can do so only if they can finally convince the rulers that their decision should be changed; this may take a long time or be totally impossible. On the free market, however, there is no final decision imposed by force; everyone is free to shape his own decisions and thereby significantly change the results of “the market.” In short, whoever feels that the market has been too cruel to certain entrepreneurs or to any other income receivers is perfectly free to set up an aid fund for suitable gifts and grants.

Those who criticize existing private charity as being “insufficient” are perfectly free to fill the gap themselves. We must beware of hypostatizing the “market” as a real entity, a maker of inexorable decisions. The market is the resultant of the decisions of all individuals in the society; people can spend their money in any way they please and can make any decisions whatever concerning their persons and their property. They do not have to battle against or convince some entity known as the “market” before they can put their decisions into effect.

The free market, in fact, is precisely the diametric opposite of the “jungle” society. The jungle is characterized by the war of all against all. One man gains only at the expense of another, by seizure of the latter’s property. With all on a subsistence level, there is a true struggle for survival, with the stronger force crushing the weaker. In the free market, on the other hand, one man gains only through serving another, though he may also retire into self-sufficient production at a primitive level if he so desires.

It is precisely through the peaceful co-operation of the market that all men gain through the development of the division of labor and capital investment. To apply the principle of the “survival of the fittest” to both the jungle and the market is to ignore the basic question: Fitness for what? The “fit” in the jungle are those most adept at the exercise of brute force. The “fit” on the market are those most adept in the service of society. The jungle is a brutish place where some seize from others and all live at the starvation level; the market is a peaceful and productive place where all serve themselves and others at the same time and live at infinitely higher levels of consumption. On the market, the charitable can provide aid, a luxury that cannot exist in the jungle.

The free market, therefore transmutes the jungle’s destructive competition for meager subsistence into a peaceful co-operative competition in the service of one’s self and others. In the jungle, some gain only at the expense of others. On the market, everyone gains. It is the market—the contractual society—that wrests order out of chaos, that subdues nature and eradicates the jungle, that permits the “weak” to live productively, or out of gifts from production, in a regal style compared to the life of the “strong” in the jungle. Furthermore, the market, by raising living standards, permits man the leisure to cultivate the very qualities of civilization that distinguish him from the brutes.

It is precisely statism that is bringing back the rule of the jungle— bringing back conflict, disharmony, caste struggle, conquest and the war of all against all, and general poverty. In place of the peaceful “struggle” of competition in mutual service, statism substitutes calculational chaos and the death-struggle of Social Darwinist competition for political privilege and for limited subsistence.