[extropy-chat] Economic consensus on immigration

[Anders Sandberg]

spike wrote:
> One aspect of libertarianism that I always choked on was the notion of
> open
> borders.  To this day I still can't quite see how such a policy could ever
> work.

I must admit I have the opposite problem. Why wouldn't it?

Of course, I tend to annoy my fellow Swedes by suggesting that it would be
a good thing to have a few hundred thousand Russians colonize our northern
inland and make it productive. (the usual rejoinder is that they wouldn't
want to)

Borders are so arbitrary. If they are a good thing, wouldn't it make sense
to add a few within current nations? If that is bad, why not remove a few
between nations? And if that is bad too, how come all nations have the
perfect size?

So far the history of the US and EU seems to suggest that borders are
fairly useless. They are not very good at keeping undesirables out or
desirables in. Mostly they serve as convenient expressions of legitimized
xenophobia.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University