Sunday, March 16, 2014

A Very Euvoluntary Open Borders Day


Today is Open Borders Day (according to the folks at Open Borders). The idea of free migration ought to be important for folks who find EE arguments compelling. And here's why:

Foreigners in distressed countries lack access to euvoluntary markets.

Worry over the typical American worker should be identical to worry over the typical foreign worker. Aristotle was right: faced with the natural limits of a mature sense of justice, 3000 miles is no different from 8000 miles. National borders are not morally relevant. And again, the consequences of failing to exchange with peaceful people means foregone wealth on both sides of the transaction.

And at the risk of being a Helen Lovejoy myself, consider what sort of misery children experience elsewhere in the world. If you have the stomach for it, check the World Bank's child mortality figures. The US is 7 per 10k.

Chad is 150.

If there were a jurisdiction in America with a child mortality rate that high, the public outcry would be deafening. But we've so convinced ourselves of the ironclad salience of national borders that the suffering of others elicits maybe a little hand-wringing and the rise of a mostly-unaccountable, nastily wasteful Foreign Aid apparatus.

The answer is obvious. Throw the crib door wide.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Do you have suggestions on where we could find more examples of this phenomenon?