I am giving a talk today in which I point out that virtually every
moral theory implies open borders are moral and immigration controls
immoral. Here are the theories I deal with.
1) Natural Rights ala Nozick, Rand etc.
2) Utilitarianism
3) Contemporary redistribute the wealth liberalism (ala the John Kenneth
Galbraith quote mentioned earlier).
4) Analytical liberalism (Rawlsian veil of ignorance arguments.)
5) Christianity (kindness to strangers)
I think the arguments for open borders under each of these moral
theories should be pretty clear for list readers but I will spell them
out if anyone is interested. My point here is that this is all very
surprising. After all, these moral theories disagree on just about any
other issue! Each of these moral theories, however, has a univeralist
claim. That is, it takes equality seriously in some sense and does not
recognize the arbitrary and accidental place of birth to be
determinative in any important way which is why it supports open
borders.
Yet, despite the fact that these are all big-time moral theories the
implications are clearly not accepted by most people - or at least most
people are willing to ignore the implications. What does this tell us.
1) Moral theory counts for nothing, 2) We are still tribalist but are
working away from that, 3) We have the wrong moral theory. 4) ?
Alex
--
Dr. Alexander Tabarrok
Vice President and Director of Research
The Independent Institute
100 Swan Way
Oakland, CA, 94621-1428
Tel. 510-632-1366, FAX: 510-568-6040
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
