Comments Elsewhere

Rikurzhen is confused about current immigration policy: “I would suggest that open borders, which closely approximates the current situation” (empahsis added). When every single person in the United States is legally required to prove citizenship in order to get a job, and several billion dollars are being spent every year on La Migra and the Border Patrol, and people are dying of exposure in the Arizona desert in order to evade the tender ministrations of border guards, you do not have a situation which “closely approximates” open borders.

Frank is confused about what “government force” means: “Except…open borders require government force (judicial activism, non-representative government, etc.,) to exist.”

Force is a simple notion and it has little to do with constitutional procedure. “Government force” happens when a law makes it so that someone from the government comes up to you with a gun or a club or a pair of cuffs, tells you to do something whether you want to do it or not, and threatens you with physical harm if you don’t comply.

It hasn’t got anything to do with checks and balances or how judges ought to read the law or how responsive legislators ought to the majority’s opinion on matters of policy. Those are all procedural issues worth talking about, but they are all about the best way to decide how force is used. They are not uses of force in themselves.

tc is confused about paleolibertarian claims: “Not quite. As some paleo-libertarians have pointed out, if every bit of land were private property and it was up to property owners to determine who can immigrate in, we’d probably see a lot less immigration. No doubt some people in Arizona would be willing to put up a privately funded fence along the border if they were allowed to.”

The Hans-Hermann Hoppe line on immigration is a lot of claptrap, but it’s neither here nor there. “Open borders” just means that no government force is used at all in a particular area (movement of people across borders and short-term or long-term settlement of immigrants). HHH doesn’t deny this: his case is based on the claim that forceful restrictions on property obtained through government force (such as tax-funded roads, seized “public” land, etc.) isn’t an objectionable use of government force–since it only approximates what he imagines a private owner of the land would do–not that open borders is government force somehow.

“Open borders” just means a free market in human movement. Nothing more and nothing less.