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I'm appalled at how many self-described liberals I know who consider themselves to be guardians of civil liberties not bat an eye to these restrictions. The mat

I'm appalled at how many self-described liberals I know who consider themselves to be guardians of civil liberties not bat an eye to these restrictions. The matter of fact is that all the restrictions we put in place with respect to the free movement of peoples -- and the accompanying restrictions around employment, leisure, etc. -- are single-handedly the single biggest breach of human rights in the world. It is absolutely inexcusable that any person should "defend" any policy short of complete and total freedom of movement. I think this is the one thing that I believe in most strongly in all of my life -- I am confident that in the future -- perhaps many, many centuries from now -- we will look at these things with the same eyes with which we look at slavery in the past.

refriedbeans3 10y ago
There's no innate human right to freedom of movement within other societies. Humans are individuals, individuals form into groups, and those groups when large and cohesive enough form into societies, civilizations, and now nation states. If those groups are to exist as a "group" they require these shared norms, values, culture to remain a viable group. If part of that culture is to exclude outsiders on the area of land on this earth that they control, then who is one individual or many individuals to say that this is invalid? This presents a lot of opportunity for places like the United States where immigration and freedom of movement is more accepted - so you get more immigration and more growth. But that is something citizens of the US have decided, not external actors.
- kristofferR 10y ago
  > There's no innate human right to freedom of movement within other societies No human rights are innate though, they're all man made.
- morgante 10y ago
  > There's no innate human right to freedom of movement within other societies. Sure there is, at least if you acknowledge the notion of human rights in the first place. (There's no "innate human right" to not be tortured.) Without governments, there is no impedance to freedom of movement. This isn't merely theoretical: as governments have become stronger and their reach extended across the globe, the ability to move freely has correspondingly decreased.
  - kobeya 10y ago
    I don't think "human right" means what you think it does. Before governments, anybody could straight up murder anyone else, as long as they were ruthless enough to also murder anyone who might want to avenge the deceased. The world was a viscious place ruled by the strong, with no guarantees of anything. "Human rights" are something that didn't exist in the state of nature but were invented afterwards.
    - morgante 10y ago
      > I don't think "human right" means what you think it does. This is a rude way of approaching a discussion. Don't make my assumptions about my knowledge. A much better way of starting a discussion would be to state what you believe the definition of a human right is. There are in fact many different philosophical views on what human rights are, with many philosophers in fact arguing that their origin is in natural rights. [0] > "Human rights" are something that didn't exist in the state of nature but were invented afterwards. That's pretty much what is implied by my first line: > Sure there is, at least if you acknowledge the notion of human rights in the first place. (There's no "innate human right" to not be tortured.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_human_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_human_rights
CalRobert 10y ago
I support freedom of movement, but I also understand people's worries about unmanageable burdens placed on support systems for a nation's people. Of course, if there were no support systems this would be a moot point, and is one of the few counterarguments to, say, increased public healthcare or pensions, that made sense. HN has a lot of proponents of universal basic income. Say a small country, maybe Iceland with only a few hundred thousand people, introduces a basic income of $1000 per month. For many people around the world that is an incredibly huge sum. How do you handle the millions that are likely to arrive to enjoy those benefits? Do you: * Tell them they can come and live there but not claim it, effectively making them second class citizens? * Bankrupt your government providing this benefit to people who are not initially contributing lots of taxes? * Restrict entry to people who are probably going to be a net gain for your government's coffers? Not to mention that when you see a large, _sudden_ influx of people with substantially different language and culture it can be a severe shock to the original inhabitants. I am ardently in favour of helping refugees but I can understand the challenges that occur when newcomers with different cultural norms become a significant part of a place's population. (Aside - it's kind of ridiculous that the US is squabbling about taking maybe ten thousand refugees from a place that they destabilized while Germany takes over a million)
- ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
  I think you make excellent points. I think where we'd probably disagree is in how quickly (or easily) we'd reach some sort of equillibrium state. You are absolutely right that countries which enjoy greater public benefits would likely enjoy a greater influx of people. But I disagree that that's necessarily a bad thing. I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as a free lunch. And if residents of Iceland make it so appealing to just live there without contributing to society, then I don't see how it is a (globally-speaking) bad thing to have migration make it so that enough people decide to move there to make it less feasible. Let's not forget: The people supposedly moving into those economies would likely be fleeing oppressive regimes with very little economic opportunities. And, with free movement, it would become much harder to give away freebies, AS it would become much harder to become an oppressive government. Stories like Venezuela would be more hard to come by if people could simply leave the country more easily. Just take familiar HN-turf: Software development. What do you think would happen if all Indian developers (many of whom are actually really, really talented), could just as easily apply for jobs in the US? Undoubtedly worse for US-based developers, right? And maybe there is some sense that such a massive disrpution should be avoided, at least "suddenly" as you say. But now you multiply this across every industry, with all of their individual justifications, and what you end up with is with an ossified global society. We end up trying each to protect our pie (from crop subsidies on out), all perfectly justifiable. But, as a global community, we make it worse for all of us. Just this week Elon tried to inspire us about the idea of an interplanetary species. It just seems inconsistent to me for us to dream about being a people who can travel freely to the stars, but that we need to ask permissions of random strangers to visit family members, to employ our talent productively far from where we were born, etc. I think you raise really valid points. But in my eyes, those are issues to be dealt with in the pursuit of this ideal, not justifications on why it should not be pursued/is not feasible.
sametmax 10y ago
Immigration is a huge issue. It implies tremendous demographic and resource management, logistic, cultural chocks, including educational challenges. Of course nations want to control borders. If you don't, you can't deal with the population flow and all of the above. And you need to deal with the above. Just hoping everything will be ok if you don't think about it is like hoping schools will be ok if we don't think about it.
- ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
  And yet, for a long time in the past century, the U.S. dealt with a massive influx of immigration from all around the world, with all of the complications around culture, resource, and education that you mention. But it seems to me that it is one of the chief sources of the country's strength, no?
  - RestlessMind 10y ago
    For a long time in the past century, the US didn't have any safety net. So whosoever came here essentially had to bootstrap themselves. I believe you can have only one of the two - open borders, or social safety net. Having completely open borders with generous social safety net is mathematically impossible, unless you want to discriminate against the newcomers by denying them the benefits (which is, again, a bad thing according to many people).
  - sametmax 10y ago
    Yes, and you still had to present yourself at the border, with a passport, and be registered. Controlling immigration doesn't mean preventing people to get in, it means knowing who is coming in, and how many people, at which rate, so you can take decisions. Besides, while it is a country strength, it did and still do have a cost. Whether this cost is worth the benefit is something you can only answer if you have metrics to do so, and illegal immigration make it hard to have those metrics, or change your policy to adapt to your new situation. People always see immigrations as being a moral issue first, but it really is not. It has strong moral implications by nature, but it's first a management issue. Just like eduction, science, etc.
pzh 10y ago
This is a very idealistic goal, but we still have no solution to issues like how the state would balance the books if the population is in constant flux. If the number of contributors suddenly decreases or the number of consumers of social services shoots up, then the state will simply go bankrupt. If you allow total freedom of movement, you're basically creating a system similar to a business where you have zero predictability and control over your income and your costs.
- ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
  In the US you are completely free to move and work in any state you want to (and a geography in the same order of magnitude of all of Europe), and it doesn't seem to cause the mayhem you suggest -- and mind you, most gov't spending takes place at the state and local level.
  - pzh 10y ago
    But you always pay taxes at the federal level, which distributes some of that income to states. Also the individual states have the mechanism to recover taxes you owe them from previous years and to pursue you for whatever violations you have committed. Additionally, state residence does exist as a concept and it is tracked in the form of state ids. It's true there are no borders but you are required to register where you live, you pay more tuition to state unis if you're not a resident of the state, etc. Just because there are no borders doesn't mean there's no control. You can't really compare the US state system to different countries that are openly hostile or may not even talk to each other (e.g. US and Russia, or US and North Korea) and expect to have the legal cooperation that could enable freedom of movement.
    - ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
      >You can't really compare the US state system to different countries that are openly hostile or may not even talk to each other (e.g. US and Russia, or US and North Korea) and expect to have the legal cooperation that could enable freedom of movement. That reveals a fundamental difference in how we see the world. The hostility which you mention is real, but I see it as a byproduct of the kinds of walls and separation we artificially place between ourselves. Let's not forget that same animosity existed between the U.S. and China, and more commercial relations reduced those tensions. I fundamentally believe that the PEOPLE in the U.S., Russia, and yes, even the North Koreans, are fundamentally good. These artificial barriers we palce between one another create this us v. them environment, and that leads to this hostility. How many times don't we hear complaints about "our jobs going oversaas," for instance? Mind you, many of the people voicing those complaints are also people who loudly advocate for increased job opportunities here at home. The lack of empathy for people in other nations is real. But it is created by these restrictions.
kobeya 10y ago
> It is absolutely inexcusable that any person should "defend" any policy short of complete and total freedom of movement. You've simply asserted this, without any explanation. Want to try giving an argument in favor instead? In any case, it's not at all obvious to me. Let's say that I own a private piece of land somewhere. Shouldn't I be allowed to say how has the right to traverse it, camp on it, or build their homes on it? If I were forced to let anyone make use of it, I would say my rights were violated. How is immigration any different? We the citizens of country Alphastan collectively own our land and govern what goes on there. Why should we be _forced_ to let anybody tramp through it? How is that liberty, for us?
ThrustVectoring 10y ago
I'm concerned about opening up the borders before we understand why some countries are corrupt and others aren't. In a place like the US, trying to bribe a police officer is unexpected, and everyone who gets involved in the situation ends up working to punish those involved in the bribery. In a place like Venezuela, bribing a police officer is expected, and everyone who gets involved in the situation ends up getting paid or threatened into supporting the status quo. Corruption isn't the only cultural artifact that's under threat, but if we understand what's going on well enough, I'd be much more confident that opening the borders won't cause existential threat to what makes the host nations great.
- ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
  That's a really interesting point. As an immigrant myself, I'd say that one of the objections to immigration (generally-speaking) which I find has the most sway is something along the lines that you have mentioned. I genuinely believe that some of the "negative" things countries experience are directly related to certain cultural norms/values that many of their citizens may share, and that by moving to a different country, some of those values could also be embedded in the receiving country and similarly "pollute" it. But I think that the answer to that is MORE immigration, not less. By restricting immigration, we're introducing small pebbles into the gears which allow people to find the best opportunities for themselves and their families. I think is it precisely those issues which allow public policies and cultural norms to distort so much. With MORE immigration, I think competition would very quickly weed out norms and practices which are inconsistent with a healthy and productive society. I think a story like Chavez's and Maduro's would be a lot more difficult to come by in a society where their citizens could not be forced to live under their regime.
  - RestlessMind 10y ago
    More immigration will certainly help the countries like Venezuela, whose citizens can simply escape to better places. But at the same time, it will be bad for the host countries whose social safety nets will be strained and whose citizens will now have to put up with masses with vastly different values. And the interaction will not always be pleasant (eg. Cologne incident in Germany earlier this year). So my question to you is - why do you think its a better solution to improve condition of some societies at the expense of some other societies?

refriedbeans3 10y ago

There's no innate human right to freedom of movement within other societies. Humans are individuals, individuals form into groups, and those groups when large and cohesive enough form into societies, civilizations, and now nation states. If those groups are to exist as a "group" they require these shared norms, values, culture to remain a viable group. If part of that culture is to exclude outsiders on the area of land on this earth that they control, then who is one individual or many individuals to say that this is invalid? This presents a lot of opportunity for places like the United States where immigration and freedom of movement is more accepted - so you get more immigration and more growth. But that is something citizens of the US have decided, not external actors.

kristofferR 10y ago
> There's no innate human right to freedom of movement within other societies No human rights are innate though, they're all man made.
morgante 10y ago
> There's no innate human right to freedom of movement within other societies. Sure there is, at least if you acknowledge the notion of human rights in the first place. (There's no "innate human right" to not be tortured.) Without governments, there is no impedance to freedom of movement. This isn't merely theoretical: as governments have become stronger and their reach extended across the globe, the ability to move freely has correspondingly decreased.
- kobeya 10y ago
  I don't think "human right" means what you think it does. Before governments, anybody could straight up murder anyone else, as long as they were ruthless enough to also murder anyone who might want to avenge the deceased. The world was a viscious place ruled by the strong, with no guarantees of anything. "Human rights" are something that didn't exist in the state of nature but were invented afterwards.
  - morgante 10y ago
    > I don't think "human right" means what you think it does. This is a rude way of approaching a discussion. Don't make my assumptions about my knowledge. A much better way of starting a discussion would be to state what you believe the definition of a human right is. There are in fact many different philosophical views on what human rights are, with many philosophers in fact arguing that their origin is in natural rights. [0] > "Human rights" are something that didn't exist in the state of nature but were invented afterwards. That's pretty much what is implied by my first line: > Sure there is, at least if you acknowledge the notion of human rights in the first place. (There's no "innate human right" to not be tortured.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_human_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_human_rights

CalRobert 10y ago

I support freedom of movement, but I also understand people's worries about unmanageable burdens placed on support systems for a nation's people. Of course, if there were no support systems this would be a moot point, and is one of the few counterarguments to, say, increased public healthcare or pensions, that made sense. HN has a lot of proponents of universal basic income. Say a small country, maybe Iceland with only a few hundred thousand people, introduces a basic income of $1000 per month. For many people around the world that is an incredibly huge sum. How do you handle the millions that are likely to arrive to enjoy those benefits? Do you: * Tell them they can come and live there but not claim it, effectively making them second class citizens? * Bankrupt your government providing this benefit to people who are not initially contributing lots of taxes? * Restrict entry to people who are probably going to be a net gain for your government's coffers? Not to mention that when you see a large, _sudden_ influx of people with substantially different language and culture it can be a severe shock to the original inhabitants. I am ardently in favour of helping refugees but I can understand the challenges that occur when newcomers with different cultural norms become a significant part of a place's population. (Aside - it's kind of ridiculous that the US is squabbling about taking maybe ten thousand refugees from a place that they destabilized while Germany takes over a million)

ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
I think you make excellent points. I think where we'd probably disagree is in how quickly (or easily) we'd reach some sort of equillibrium state. You are absolutely right that countries which enjoy greater public benefits would likely enjoy a greater influx of people. But I disagree that that's necessarily a bad thing. I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as a free lunch. And if residents of Iceland make it so appealing to just live there without contributing to society, then I don't see how it is a (globally-speaking) bad thing to have migration make it so that enough people decide to move there to make it less feasible. Let's not forget: The people supposedly moving into those economies would likely be fleeing oppressive regimes with very little economic opportunities. And, with free movement, it would become much harder to give away freebies, AS it would become much harder to become an oppressive government. Stories like Venezuela would be more hard to come by if people could simply leave the country more easily. Just take familiar HN-turf: Software development. What do you think would happen if all Indian developers (many of whom are actually really, really talented), could just as easily apply for jobs in the US? Undoubtedly worse for US-based developers, right? And maybe there is some sense that such a massive disrpution should be avoided, at least "suddenly" as you say. But now you multiply this across every industry, with all of their individual justifications, and what you end up with is with an ossified global society. We end up trying each to protect our pie (from crop subsidies on out), all perfectly justifiable. But, as a global community, we make it worse for all of us. Just this week Elon tried to inspire us about the idea of an interplanetary species. It just seems inconsistent to me for us to dream about being a people who can travel freely to the stars, but that we need to ask permissions of random strangers to visit family members, to employ our talent productively far from where we were born, etc. I think you raise really valid points. But in my eyes, those are issues to be dealt with in the pursuit of this ideal, not justifications on why it should not be pursued/is not feasible.

sametmax 10y ago

Immigration is a huge issue. It implies tremendous demographic and resource management, logistic, cultural chocks, including educational challenges. Of course nations want to control borders. If you don't, you can't deal with the population flow and all of the above. And you need to deal with the above. Just hoping everything will be ok if you don't think about it is like hoping schools will be ok if we don't think about it.

ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
And yet, for a long time in the past century, the U.S. dealt with a massive influx of immigration from all around the world, with all of the complications around culture, resource, and education that you mention. But it seems to me that it is one of the chief sources of the country's strength, no?
- RestlessMind 10y ago
  For a long time in the past century, the US didn't have any safety net. So whosoever came here essentially had to bootstrap themselves. I believe you can have only one of the two - open borders, or social safety net. Having completely open borders with generous social safety net is mathematically impossible, unless you want to discriminate against the newcomers by denying them the benefits (which is, again, a bad thing according to many people).
- sametmax 10y ago
  Yes, and you still had to present yourself at the border, with a passport, and be registered. Controlling immigration doesn't mean preventing people to get in, it means knowing who is coming in, and how many people, at which rate, so you can take decisions. Besides, while it is a country strength, it did and still do have a cost. Whether this cost is worth the benefit is something you can only answer if you have metrics to do so, and illegal immigration make it hard to have those metrics, or change your policy to adapt to your new situation. People always see immigrations as being a moral issue first, but it really is not. It has strong moral implications by nature, but it's first a management issue. Just like eduction, science, etc.

pzh 10y ago

This is a very idealistic goal, but we still have no solution to issues like how the state would balance the books if the population is in constant flux. If the number of contributors suddenly decreases or the number of consumers of social services shoots up, then the state will simply go bankrupt. If you allow total freedom of movement, you're basically creating a system similar to a business where you have zero predictability and control over your income and your costs.

ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
In the US you are completely free to move and work in any state you want to (and a geography in the same order of magnitude of all of Europe), and it doesn't seem to cause the mayhem you suggest -- and mind you, most gov't spending takes place at the state and local level.
- pzh 10y ago
  But you always pay taxes at the federal level, which distributes some of that income to states. Also the individual states have the mechanism to recover taxes you owe them from previous years and to pursue you for whatever violations you have committed. Additionally, state residence does exist as a concept and it is tracked in the form of state ids. It's true there are no borders but you are required to register where you live, you pay more tuition to state unis if you're not a resident of the state, etc. Just because there are no borders doesn't mean there's no control. You can't really compare the US state system to different countries that are openly hostile or may not even talk to each other (e.g. US and Russia, or US and North Korea) and expect to have the legal cooperation that could enable freedom of movement.
  - ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
    >You can't really compare the US state system to different countries that are openly hostile or may not even talk to each other (e.g. US and Russia, or US and North Korea) and expect to have the legal cooperation that could enable freedom of movement. That reveals a fundamental difference in how we see the world. The hostility which you mention is real, but I see it as a byproduct of the kinds of walls and separation we artificially place between ourselves. Let's not forget that same animosity existed between the U.S. and China, and more commercial relations reduced those tensions. I fundamentally believe that the PEOPLE in the U.S., Russia, and yes, even the North Koreans, are fundamentally good. These artificial barriers we palce between one another create this us v. them environment, and that leads to this hostility. How many times don't we hear complaints about "our jobs going oversaas," for instance? Mind you, many of the people voicing those complaints are also people who loudly advocate for increased job opportunities here at home. The lack of empathy for people in other nations is real. But it is created by these restrictions.

kobeya 10y ago

> It is absolutely inexcusable that any person should "defend" any policy short of complete and total freedom of movement. You've simply asserted this, without any explanation. Want to try giving an argument in favor instead? In any case, it's not at all obvious to me. Let's say that I own a private piece of land somewhere. Shouldn't I be allowed to say how has the right to traverse it, camp on it, or build their homes on it? If I were forced to let anyone make use of it, I would say my rights were violated. How is immigration any different? We the citizens of country Alphastan collectively own our land and govern what goes on there. Why should we be _forced_ to let anybody tramp through it? How is that liberty, for us?

ThrustVectoring 10y ago

I'm concerned about opening up the borders before we understand why some countries are corrupt and others aren't. In a place like the US, trying to bribe a police officer is unexpected, and everyone who gets involved in the situation ends up working to punish those involved in the bribery. In a place like Venezuela, bribing a police officer is expected, and everyone who gets involved in the situation ends up getting paid or threatened into supporting the status quo. Corruption isn't the only cultural artifact that's under threat, but if we understand what's going on well enough, I'd be much more confident that opening the borders won't cause existential threat to what makes the host nations great.

ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
That's a really interesting point. As an immigrant myself, I'd say that one of the objections to immigration (generally-speaking) which I find has the most sway is something along the lines that you have mentioned. I genuinely believe that some of the "negative" things countries experience are directly related to certain cultural norms/values that many of their citizens may share, and that by moving to a different country, some of those values could also be embedded in the receiving country and similarly "pollute" it. But I think that the answer to that is MORE immigration, not less. By restricting immigration, we're introducing small pebbles into the gears which allow people to find the best opportunities for themselves and their families. I think is it precisely those issues which allow public policies and cultural norms to distort so much. With MORE immigration, I think competition would very quickly weed out norms and practices which are inconsistent with a healthy and productive society. I think a story like Chavez's and Maduro's would be a lot more difficult to come by in a society where their citizens could not be forced to live under their regime.
- RestlessMind 10y ago
  More immigration will certainly help the countries like Venezuela, whose citizens can simply escape to better places. But at the same time, it will be bad for the host countries whose social safety nets will be strained and whose citizens will now have to put up with masses with vastly different values. And the interaction will not always be pleasant (eg. Cologne incident in Germany earlier this year). So my question to you is - why do you think its a better solution to improve condition of some societies at the expense of some other societies?