National-weighted consequentialism?

I don’t think it has much to do with consequentialism, as it has with simply not caring about some people. In this case, foreigners.

Keeping current pass laws advantages current rich country citizens over poor country citizens. Conveniently enough, rich country citizens can decide whether to keep them or not.

Wolf’s particular choice of phrasing makes me wonder whether material from Steve Sailer has been making its way to his desk

http://www.vdare.com/articles/sailer-vs-taylor-round-ii-citizenism-vs-white-nationalism

especially in the context (in the interview) of the white working class. It’s pretty unusual otherwise, for the simple reason that the club already exists in the econ as a model of a club good, which provides a service by consensus. In the situation where a majority can outvote a minority, then it’s no longer an economist’s sense of a club, since the minority would just logically withdraw their stake and leave. Majority vote would be closer to an economist’s sense of a shareholder board – but no economist would uphold that as a coherent SWF for decisions outside of a single dimension. It’s too fun to invoke Arrow’s theorem.

I haven’t read the original but is Wolf’s statement “countries are like clubs. They can decide who members are” (which I take to mean they can decide who to admit but once you are member, you stay in the club) normative at all? Is he justifying this or his he just saying that’s how the system is?

Where I would see a more important element of disanology between clubs and countries is that the members of clubs are generally equal while that is far from the case for different members of countries. The Nazi example seems to not be applicable to a debate on immigration, while it is certainly true that citizens do not have unlimited discretion to decide on who their current members are (in other words they have limited scope in stripping citizenship from current nationals), it is vital that citizens have practically total control over who the new members (immigrants) will potentially be. That is what an immigration policy is for and everyone should be able to examine these policies in light first and foremost of their own economic interests.

A better analogy would be between countries and stakeholders in a company. The board of directors (political leadership) of a company has the duty to maximize stockholder’s (citizen’s) wealth. By giving away stock to non-stockholders (easy mass immigration) the leadership is diluting the value of citizenship for the current stockholders. What works better about this analogy is that by looking at stakeholders (which includes employees), we get huge differences economic interests between the board of directors (ruling oligarchs), who want the cheapest possible labor costs and the employees, who want to be paid as much as possible.

From the point of view of stakeholders, on immigration it is absolutely clear that it is not in the economic interests of low-skill workers to have the marketplace flooded with masses of poor, low-skill immigrant labor that will to do the same work for much lower wages. On the other hand the wealthy and upper middle class (the main purchasers of low-skill labor) certainly do benefit from the lower wages that mass low-skill immigration brings in its wake.

Worse, it is always in the economic interests of the oligarchs (surely we can take as a given that the US is an oligarchy now) to maximize disaccord among the lower ranks in order to not only wear them down fighting each other, but also so that either side will come to the rich with pleas for aid against their enemies. Mass-immigration of culturally and ethnically diverse people serves this goal admirably. This idea that social cohesion is NOT in the oligarch’s interests surely even pre-dates Aristotle who said:

The tyrant must take every means of keeping the people under; he must know what they are doing; he must employ spies and eaves-droppers; he must sow quarrels and dissensions among them.

Or as Theodor Mommsen says about Roman slavery:

It was an economic maxim, that dissensions among the slaves ought rather to be fostered than suppressed.

We saw the US version of this phenomenon last week in the Chicago mayoral election.

It is for all these reasons that all citizens, especially the lowest 50% of the population, must have their voice heard on immigration outside of shaming tactics that label them as racist for wanting to maximize the value of their citizenship.

the idea of synthesizing shareholder interests onto a single common interest expressed by their representatives depends crucially on Arrow’s theorem being suppressed in some way – pick your favourite. A for-profit corporation does so by pursuing only one dimension (i.e., profit); it is not possible to simplify a national interest in this way. Within Arrow’s theorem, deliberative liberal democracy has decidedly more pragmatic drivers (publicly deriving a mandate, etc).

but you don’t seem to have an argument that it is legitimate that they do so, even though that’s what’s at issue here. And even though I’m in the UK, and the two commentators I discuss are in the UK, you have to make the argument about the US.

I don’t see much of a difference between the US and UK on this issue, the issues are pretty much universal.

The argument I gave as to why people must control immigration is in order to protect their class interests. Wasn’t I clear about that?

Looked at differently, for example in the colonial era, didn’t the people of Africa have a right (although not the means) to control who immigrated into their countries and colonized them?

Sorry @Chris, I was not trying to be snarky, but perhaps you could mention some economists who do think that, and then we can look into their claimed justifications? I don’t know of any such economists, but I am just an amateur. As far as I can tell it’s an uncommon view among economists – they are generally for free trade and free movement.

For what it’s worth I suspect where it is found, the justification is the usual, i.e. it’s a foundational decision (or assumption if you prefer) about who is part of the community of interest. It usually comes down to that.

“The proposition that people have a right to coerce other people just in case it advances their interests to do so, which is what you appear to believe, is without merit.”

The problem with this statement is that many times your first group of “people” don’t think that your second group of “people” are actually full-fledged “people”, and therefore your statement is false. I.E., the Nazis might or might not agree with your statement when referring solely to other Nazis, but they wouldn’t see it as applying to Jews, who aren’t “people”. Likewise, many of the opponents of immigration don’t see the immigrants as “people” with the same rights and privileges are themselves.

The “othering” of populations must be taken into account when discussing immigration, otherwise what is the point?

Chris Bertram,

“ZM: it is clear that Wolf discounts the interests of foreign nationals in his calculus, but what is at issue here is what his justification for doing so might be.”

I doubt there is much of a good justification as they use discounting to avoid acting on climate change and don’t have any good justifications for that either. In climate change economics I have an idea that whenever economists use compassionate discount rates they are criticised and then they have to justify their compassionate rates, while people who use cruel discounting don’t have to justify theirs since cruel discounting is normal.

But I am not an economist so hopefully I’m sort of right and not misleading anyone by that sum up.

In general I do not agree with you on open borders being beneficial, I think countries should be more equal instead so people have no need to migrate due to better incomes elsewhere and just want to migrate for other reasons.

But if you are sticking to criticising discount rates then I agree with you — and moreover discounting of future generations will likely be more felt in the coming years by citizens who are discounted due to being in developing countries as they are likely to make up most of the 200-250 million refugees forecasted to be displaced by 2050 due to climate change. As at the moment governments aren’t even settling the 50 million refugees (the highest number since WW2) it is important that refugees be prioritised for migration if there’s going to be 250 million of them in 35 years.

I could not find anything to read on justifying discounting based on national borders. But I found an article on justifying social discounting — this justification involves lots of maths and notes John Rawls made the best known justification for discounting (of future generations in his case).

Here is some of the article:

“The most popular objective function used to determine optimal policies in infinite horizon models is the discounted utilitarian criterion,

equation(1)

∑t∈ℕβt−1u(xt),

where 0<β<1 is the utility discount factor and xt is the consumption of generation t. This criterion has been heavily criticized on the ground that it treats successive generations differently. Many economists in the utilitarian tradition have denounced this deviation from the ideal of equal treatment of all individuals.
…
At the same time, several authors have pointed out the distributional consequences of not discounting future generationsʼ utility. Mirrlees [32] computed optimal intertemporal consumption patterns in plausible economic models using the undiscounted utilitarian criterion (the so-called Ramsey criterion). He observed that present generations should save up to 50% of their net income for the sake of future generations.

The finding was best summarized by philosopher John Rawls who declared that “the utilitarian doctrine may direct us to demand heavy sacrifices of the poorer generations for the sake of greater advantages for the later ones that are far better off” [38, p. 253]. He went on to say that “these consequences can be to some degree corrected by discounting the welfare of those living in the future” [38, p. 262]."

Source: Justifying social discounting: The rank-discounted utilitarian approach, by
Stéphane Zubera, and Geir B. Asheimc, Journal of Economic Theory
Volume 147, Issue 4, July 2012, Pages 1572–1601

OK to actually answer the question: “Can discrimination against foreigners be justified in a consequentialist framework? Discuss.”

As per @MPAVictoria – I hope everyone puts their own children before the children of others. If you need an some sort of justification from first principles to persuade you to do that then you are a terrible person.

Nevertheless, can you justify it from first principles? Yes. Firstly you know them better than you do strangers, (and better than strangers know them). Therefore your efforts on their behalf are likely to be more successful, and less beset by unintended consequences, than your efforts on behalf of people you don’t know as individuals, and whose circumstances you understand poorly if at all. Secondly you (hopefully) have a natural sentiment which will encourage greater efforts on their behalf than you would make for others. Both of these factors apply also to more distant family, to friends, and to acquaintances but obviously to a lesser extent.

But can that amount to a justification for nationalism? I am not sure it can. Consider a roofer in Essex who I don’t know personally and whose circumstances I understand only in outline. Probably I understand his circumstances better than I do those of a Kenyan truck farmer, but at that level of attenuation I am not sure the first factor – knowledge – can really make a significant difference. Nor do I really have any special sentiment for the Essex roofer over the Kenyan farmer.

So while it requires a deep moral flaw to deny that one ought to care more for one’s own family and friends than for strangers, I don’t think that extends to nationalism, because most of the nation are also strangers.

Chris, it’s really not. By what criteria is he an economist? He does not have an advanced degree in economics, he has never been an academic, and he has made his living for 30 years writing and editing newspaper articles. If a person like that is not a journalist, who is?

Economists are distinct group of people with many distinct traits — many of which I do not care for at all. If you want to make claims about “economists,” it’s not snobbery to suggest you should be referring to that group of people, it’s just a matter of using the word in the way it is generally understood.

Uh, oh. An open tag again. My profound apologies if the rest of the thread winds up being italicized.

Maybe I’m being dense but I don’t understand this post at all. I’d assume Wolf thinks that an economist called upon to advise on government policy would normally do so in terms of consequences for that govnerment’s citizens. In the same way, a economist who was consulted by a business might consider a strategy’s consequences for shareholders. Qua economist he doesn’t have or need a comprehensive moral doctrine, does he? What he said in this case was weaker than this though, that decisions about immigration policy are the responsibility of that country’s citizens (ie. not that outsiders’ interests aren’t important, just that it is their decision). I’m sure there are valid criticisms of both assumptions but I can’t see either of them are unusual or obviously mistaken.

I find the Wolf-bashing odd btw: is it because you can’t be a real economist if you don’t have a PhD?

Sorry, I X-posted. Here’s Krugman on Wolf:

But all this counts for very little, especially when macroeconomics itself — or at any rate the kind of macroeconomics that has dominated the journals these past couple of decades — is very much on trial. And note Portes’s praise for Martin Wolf, which I heartily second; Wolf doesn’t even have a PhD. And that matters not at all; what he has is a keen sense of observation, a level head, and an open mind, all attributes lacking in far too many of my colleagues.

Is a nation exactly the same as a family? A club? A union? No, but it’s more like a family, a club, or a union than it is like nothing at all, which is what the OP would make it.

But these are genuinely difficult questions! After all, a club is quite different from a union, which is quite different from a family. If a nation is like one of those things, then it is not like the others. Then again, many people have also felt solidarity on the basis of race. I think most of us would say that, morally, the white race is indeed most like nothing at all. There is no legitimate solidarity on that basis at all. But what about black solidarity? I think we would be reluctant to dismiss it so quickly. In modern racial systems, black and white are not really symmetrical. But I would be reluctant to assume that I, or you, or Chris B., or anyone else on this thread, know exactly how they are not symmetrical.

On this topic even more than others, I think it is very important to try to elucidate the questions and contradictions, and resist the temptation to leap to a resolution of them.

I’m not an economist, but I don’t see a problem with weighted consequentialism. Provided of course we avoid the extreme case where the weighting function is one and zero. Those on the inside, have presumably particptaed in the process of human development of others on the inside, both financially and possibly by participation in the political process. A foreigner has not. We see
something like this in the states with respect to out-of-state tuition at state subsidized public universities, out-of-staters don’t get the subsidy. We also see a mechanism for reducing the insider/outsider disparity: reciprical agreements among states, (your kids will be considered as insiders by us, and in return our kids are insiders in your system).

I don’t think insider/outsider equal weighting (which applies to other things than immigration btw especially trade policy) would survive the political process, so some sort of policy that is in between the extremes is the best we are likely to be able to get and sustain.

As you quoted in 9, Chris, Wolf gave his view “as a citizen, not an economist”. And as you note, he probably hasn’t given much serious thought to the issue. So it’s hardly the best example of how “economists” view immigration. I think the (stereo)typical economist response would be that according to this or that economic modeling, based on these and those dubious assumptions (the economist won’t usually spell them out and won’t admit they are dubious), this or that immigration policy will increase or decrease GDP by whatever fraction of a percent. If GDP is increased, it’s good, otherwise bad. What else could there be to consider?!

JWM is right that economists (at least in the US but probably in the UK as well) tend to favor “liberal” immigration policies, which are those policies favored by the plutocracy. A (self-described) economist who doesn’t agree with that view is Dean Baker, e. g.
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/thoughts-on-immigration-policy.

Exclusionary citizenship or membership are not consequences of organizing a political or social entity but its purpose and meaning, often originally for economic especially for founding elites but diffused to the lower orders in order to maintain social stability and keep them exploitable. Deciding who is eligible for membership is a coveted privilege of its elite.

Crooked Timber is these particular posters and not just anybody; commenters feel flattered and protected by the act of banning as long as their input on who is unwanted is recognized and appreciated, making them feel a little bit of power and democracy.

Political, social, intellectual whatever capitals. At this point in Late/Post Capitalism, one of the purposes of economism, homo economicus is to disguise all the other accumulation/status engines that are inside and around us, to make real subsumption invisible.

CB 48: Ok liberal equality ensures that the homeless and the billionaire are both subject to the same law, whether the homeless trespasses on the mansion or the rich man trespasses … well never mind. But why wouldn’t the same reasoning apply to rich and poor countries? Poor countries are free to (and do) enforce immigration control and they act within a framework of international law that says that each country has a near absolute right to decide who or what crosses the border (and what happens within those borders). Countries are not individuals of course but I don’t see why your reciprocity argument wouldn’t apply in the same way.

p.s. sorry, the question mark shd be outside the quotation marks, not inside.

States would be more like clubs if it was easier to create new ones, or leave or secede from existing ones. In some ways, states are getting more like clubs (especially EU states), but not anywhere near enough to make Wolf’s analogy fair on those who currently wish to migrate.

I think in response to your actual question there are two relatively straightforward answers. First, nation-weighted consequentialism is a deontologically determined framework in some cases. I think this fits the mindset of many people quite reasonably well and is not straightforwardly a stupid position. There is a group of people you care about more than others but you are not otherwise much impressed by deontological arguments. The second argument is that at a higher level of analysis, nation-weighted consequentalism for policy-making at the national level is itself a consequentalist approach. You do not frequently hear arguments for why the world bank should do something or other to make immigration harder or easier. People recognize the difference between policy making and policy advocacy aimed towards different types of institutions and they believe that national policy-making that does not place a much higher value on citizens well-fare is dysfunctional and will not lead to long term political stability. I have heard this argument pretty much explicitly at times and it is also not crazy in my opinion.

But I also agree with some other commenters that economists in particular are not the most likely people to be making these arguments.

I think I agree with Sebastian (hence the niggling feeling I must be missing something).

#57

So ethical arguments are now decided by the majority using their intuition? God help us!

The Wolf stuff about “sharing core values and loyalty to institutions” @9 is not consequentialist. He may be an economics journalist by profession, but in that quote he’s either just repeating security-oriented bromides or he sounds like some kind of ‘organicist’ conservative or communitarian. Or something. But not an economist concerned only w maximizing global and national ‘welfare’ as measured by empirical indicators.

“I believe existing members have a right to demand that anybody permitted to join the club shares its core values and feels loyalty to its institutions.”

I think the point is to protect against a tragedy of the commons with respect to civilised values. If one society generates a culture which produces benefits that attracts immigrants, if they move for the benefits but not for the culture then free immigration will destroy the means of progress.

@CB #59, “What I’m saying is that economists tend to be consequentialists, so they offer a particular kind of justification for rights, permissions, partialities etc. ”

I did address that point when I said “the justification is the usual, i.e. it’s a foundational decision (or assumption if you prefer) about who is part of the community of interest.”

There is no such thing as “pure” consequentialism. The results are baked in with the axioms. You want radical redistribution? Use Rawls’ rules and it comes naturally. Or free trade? Choose aggregate utility. Opposed to abortion? Include embryos in the community of interest. Pro choice? Just exclude them. You want nationalism? You know what to do. None of this should be surprising.

Consequentialism doesn’t work even in theory (utility monster), and the practical problems are much worse (problem of knowledge, agency problems). At best it can be a signpost to assist in policymaking. But then there is no set of moral axioms which works all of the time, for similar reasons. (And ref JW Mason #23).

I think the talk about “sharing core values and loyalty to institutions” is vacuous drivel – at best.

” I didn’t say there shouldn’t be a category of citizen. What I’m saying is that economists tend to be consequentialists, so they offer a particular kind of justification for rights, permissions, partialities etc. Can we tell a consequentialist story justifying parental partiality to children? Sure we can. Children get better taken care of on the whole if they are assigned to particular agents, and the facts of human psychology tell us who the default assignment should be to. We could try a similar strategy for citizens and states, and it might justify giving greater weight to citizen interests if doing so generally brought about the best results.”

It seems pretty clear that you either don’t understand the citizen/non-citizen distinction very well, or you don’t think it has as much value as most people seem to think. Which is fine, you may even be right, but again, you should explain that to us if you want to be effective. Asking us to explain it to you is likely to be met with shrugs by the world.

I’m pretty sure the short answer is that most economists aren’t or don’t think of themselves as ‘consequentialists’ in the sense that a philosopher (in the sense of someone deeply schooled in the academic practice of philosophy, not in the older sense of the word) would use the term.

I don’t understand why it is so obvious that consequentialism automatically works against the citizen/non-citizen distinction. I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, but since you aren’t being clear about the problem I have to try to guess. It seems to me that for lots of people, their nation has (or at least seems to them to have) a distinct character or ethos. If they judge that to be a good thing (or things), they don’t want to take on so many immigrants as to seriously dilute or destroy whatever that thing is. That is why assimilation was considered an important immigrant value until very recently.

I feel as if the multicultural response to ‘assimilation’ had good insights (in that not everything that we count as national ethos is really worth preserving against immigrant influence) but like many things with good insights, can be taken too far.

I suspect that you may be taking the multicultural response to assimilation as a given, instead of a very contested zone. Or something like that.

Again, I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, but your approach makes it difficult to understand what you’re trying to say because you seem to think it so obvious that it doesn’t need to be said.

CB:

Rather, [economists] think of themselves as being consequentialists all the way down, and of rights, powers, permissions etc as being ultimately justified by outcomes.

I take it the problem is with “all the way down”, yes? As in, you’re wondering how, if one takes consequentialism seriously, so that one’s commitment to it goes all the way down—there are no foundational deontic principles creeping in—how then would one assign differential weights to citizens vs. non-citizens (or perhaps residents vs. non-residents). Is this right?

And I think the answer is what lots of people are saying: the consequentialism _doesn’t_ go all the way down. It seems to me it’s got to be this because otherwise, yeah, you just can’t make the relevant distinction. I mean I can see grounds on which you might, but they’re of a pretty unsavory sort and would I think be anathema to anyone with broadly liberal-democratic commitments. But I take it you find the “look, the consequentialism doesn’t go all the way down” response to be unsatisfactory. And I guess I’m not seeing why.

(If I’m misunderstanding the argument/issue, any clarification would be much appreciated.)

” What do economists think justifies national-weighted consequentialism?”

Citizens invariably want their state to privilege their interests over the interests of people elsewhere and all political parties capable of forming government are constrained by this reality and, as it happens, in at least rough agreement. Economists (unlike philosophers, sociologists etc..) actually get to whisper advice into the ear of the executive of the state and hence if they are to have any influence, they need to operate on the basis of extant reality. Politics is, after all, the art of the possible.

I suppose one could argue that is the job of activist philosophers, sociologists and so on to continually disrupt pragmatic poltical discourse and to thus expand the field of possible.

“But I take it you find the “look, the consequentialism doesn’t go all the way down” response to be unsatisfactory. ”

This sounds like a plausible explanation. I can’t understand how consequentialism could possibly go all the way down. Somewhere you have to decide what counts as good and bad consequences. Same thing with all sorts of utilitarianism, a lot get smuggled in with what counts as useful and what doesn’t.

Chris Bertram,

“Sebastian H: I didn’t say there shouldn’t be a category of citizen. What I’m saying is that economists tend to be consequentialists, so they offer a particular kind of justification for rights, permissions, partialities etc. … So his partiality to compatriots has to be based on something else [than overall good consequences, given global inequality]. But what?”

In the piece you link to Wolf just says a pure economic analysis of migration based on GDP gains alone would be ludicrous since such an analysis would eliminate all controls on migration — so his reasoning goes that the UK has to be concerned about citizens of the UK not Burundi so for an analysis of the relevant consequences he thinks you should weigh up the benefits of immigration only by measuring the impacts on the GDP per capita of UK citizens not immigrants from Burundi nor people who stayed in Burundi.

While this is quite a poor justification, it does seem to be Wolf’s chosen justification:

Martin Wolf: “Aggregate GDP is, as I frequently noted at the time, a ludicrous measure of the benefits of immigration. That the Treasury used it was scandalous. Indeed, if that were the goal, elimination of controls on immigration would have been the right policy, because that would have maximised GDP.

Leave that absurd position aside. The question, then, is what weight should be put on the welfare of future immigrants. If the weight is very much higher than zero, then one is getting ever closer to the cosmopolitan welfare position that David is describing. So what was (and now should) the weight be, Jonathan?

To put it in the context of your debate with David, let us agree that UK immigration policy is not concerned with the welfare of Burundi. But what is the value it places on the welfare of the Burundians who will arrive, as a result of a liberal policy?

I would argue that this weight should be zero. Under a zero weight on the welfare of future immigrants (surely the position of most British citizens), the policy question becomes not what is the impact on GDP per head, or productivity per worker, but the impact of immigrants (of different kinds) on GDP per head (and its distribution) for those already in the UK.”

PS – Anticipating Brett’s objection: I should have said “no one has a gun” rather than “no one else has a gun.”

MFB,

closing down immigration is doing to be necessarily and substantially beneficial for the country, which Mr. Nero claims but which seems to have been debunked,

For example, Harvard economist George Borjas has shown:

Although the net benefits to natives from illegal immigrants are small, there is a sizable redistribution effect. Illegal immigration reduces the wage of native workers by an estimated $99 to $118 billion a year, and generates a gain for businesses and other users of immigrants of $107 to $128 billion.

http://cis.org/immigration-and-the-american-worker-review-academic-literature

In other words low-skill immigration lowers wages for the poor and increases profits for the rich. This is not rocket science and this is why so many economists, who are typically working for the interests of the wealthy, stretch themselves into such convoluted intellectual knots in order to support mass immigration.

when Mr. Nero began equating immigration with colonialism

The “comparison” I made was asking when it is “moral” to stop foreign outsiders from coming into your country. The question is, if it is wrong to stop foreign immigrants from entering your country, is it also wrong to resist foreign colonialists from entering your country? Or for example, is it unacceptably “coercive” to resist foreign multi-nationals from operating in your country? I am just trying to test whether these theories about open borders work in all cases.

If I’ve understood the learned OP correctly, rejecting national-weighted consequentialism means rejecting the view that a nation state is entitled to do things that benefit its nationals but disadvantage non-nationals. I wonder how that applies to topics other than immigration.

Take tariffs, for instance. These, I think, are at least intended to benefit nationals at the expense of non-nationals (whether in the long run they actually do so is another matter). Are they therefore unacceptable if one rejects national-weighted consequentialism?

Or armed forces. Again, these are intended (even if in the long run they don’t) to give an advantage to nationals and, if circumstances require it, disadvantage – sometimes terminally severe disadvantage – to non-nationals. Are they also to be rejected?

And if nation states have no right to regulate population movement across their borders, trade across their borders, or to use armed force across their borders, what is the point of nation states?

There’s another category of state actions which seem to me to depend on with national-weighted consequentialism for their justification, but which are I think often approved of by people who would generally describe themselves as left-wing: defaulting on state debts, and confiscating foreign investments. Surely these are intended to benefit nationals at the expense of non-nationals? You could of course argue that in such cases the non-nationals affected damn well deserve to be disadvantaged, but is that really a comfortable position?

Piggybacking off what Abbé Faria says, unrestricted immigration can have unintended consequences. If a nation state with a disliked minority knows other countries will take in that minority, it cab expel them and seize their property. See Arab countries and their Jews, India-Pakistan, even Romania and East Germany selling their citizens to West Germany. Serbia tried something similar with Kosovo, expelling many Kosovar Albanians to neighboring states. Not all immigrants are voluntary. On the flip side, many countries prevent residents from becoming citizens. The largest group are of course Palestinian refugee descendants living in Arab countries, but also places like Syria with its Kurds, Pakistan with its Bangladeshi stranded population, the Rohingya, etc. It’s not clear that everyone condemns this. Citizenship would destroy the need for a right of return.

It would be helpful if those who defend the nation state as if it was some sort of natural law would consider how historically contingent and comparatively recent this particular form of political organization is.

“Wolf’s view is that ‘countries are like clubs. They can decide who members are. Once you are a member, you matter to the club. If you are not a member, you don’t.'”

Wolf is wrong, of course. Most members of Club USA matter very little to the powers-that-be.

Surely it’s not the consequentialism that causes the hiccup, it’s the commitment to methodological individualism (something economics shares with classical liberalism)? Migration may be good or bad for individuals, but a club, or a nation, or any other group, can only be maintained by policing boundaries. As Palestinians learned, if you let in too may others, you find yourself living in their country, by their rules. The question stops at the group concerned, and asks about group maintenance, not about individual welfare as such. Economics pretty much defines welfare as the sum of individual welfares, so has no hold upon this.

(in fact, dredging through my mind, the claim that Jonathan Portes regards the inhabitants of Burundi as being just as important as those of Birmingham was one of the many ways in which David Goodhart embarrassed himself in a similar debate a few years earlier. Goodhart was simply wrong to claim that Portes had said anything of the sort, but it’s a sort of understandable error because this would be the starting point for most economists – as John says, it’s always the view taken when the subject is anything other than immigration policy. I think that what’s gone on here is that economists realise that the radical open-borders policy is not popular and have given up on it for fear of being mistaken for ordinary loonies and treated like a public health problem).

b. mcmanus @43
Economists argue toward efficiency, and are theoretically not normative.

With some exceptions (see next box).

I agree with dsquared.

Economists hardly consider nationality at all. This is precisely why economists despise “Buy American”-type campaigns and why the economics profession is in general in favor of controversial policies like outsourcing: they would rather raise the incomes of poor people (in India) than maintaining the incomes of middle-income people (in Indiana). Of course coming out in favor of free trade has become associated with being biased against poor people, but that is a function of looking almost exclusively on Indiana. See Working Class Nero’s comment about the effects of immigration on poor people, where he/she focuses on shifting returns within the rich country, but quietly fails to mention anything about the poor country/the real beneficiaries of freer immigration.

(Aside: I think immigration/trade policy may be the last remaining area in the public realm where jingoism/racism/call you what you like is the accepted conventional norm.)

To get back to the original post: I think very few economists use nationally-weighted welfare criteria, to the extent that I’ve no idea of any plausible justification of those that do.

I think very few economists use nationally-weighted welfare criteria

I’m pretty sure it’s common practice for economists to analyse the effects of a given policy on GDP. That’s a ‘nationally-weighted’ criteria, is it not?

“It would be helpful if those who defend the nation state as if it was some sort of natural law would consider how historically contingent and comparatively recent this particular form of political organization is.”

I’m not sure the historically contingent angle helps that much. If we are talking about immigration, the idea of keeping out people from the wrong clan extends well past the idea of nation states.

@LFC

No [coming out in favor of free trade has not become associated with being biased against poor people]

We’ll have agree to disagree. (I don’t disagree with much of your subsequent comments fwiw; rather I assert that the majority of anti-globalization folk are rarely as nuanced as you, and that my original claim about the perception of ‘free trade’ is true.)

@engels

I’m pretty sure it’s common practice for economists to analyse the effects of a given policy on GDP. That’s a ‘nationally-weighted’ criteria, is it not?

Fair point.

I think it has more to do with an implicit acceptance that “Whatever about identifying the effect of this poilcy on Country X, we have no way of quantifying its effect on Country Y” though, rather than it being a welfare judgment.

In the sky,

See Working Class Nero’s comment about the effects of immigration on poor people, where he/she focuses on shifting returns within the rich country, but quietly fails to mention anything about the poor country/the real beneficiaries of freer immigration.

Examining the winners/losers of freer immigration in the poor or middle income countries is helpful in describing the real impacts of Neoliberal Globalization.

What I mean by Neoliberal Globalization is a movement to level standards of living between the rich, middle and low income nations. At the ideal equilibrium point, global standards of living converge at a low income nation’s. In other words high income nation’s standard of living falls precariously while poor countries standard of living rises modestly. This is because there are so many more poor people than rich globally. The main mechanism to which Neoliberal Globalization works is through the restriction of the ability of the national borders of rich countries to keep out cheap labor and goods produced by cheap labor. Along with standard of living equalization, distribution of wealth profiles will tend towards those of the poor countries, for example if we take a Gini of 30 for rich countries and 60 for the poor, in an idealized Neoliberal Globalization world the entire globe would converge towards a Gini of around 55. So Neoliberal Globalization increases income disparity within a rich or middle income nation but tends to lessen income disparity between rich and poor nations.

So the poor in poor countries and the rich in the rest of the world are the potential winners. Everyone else will be losers.

So the two main constraints currently blocking an idealized and leveled Neoliberal Globalization world are protective (both immigration and trade) borders and the logistics of moving poor people to rich countries (or in having products destined for rich countries to be produced in poor countries).

Let’s look at Mexico to examine the impact of freer immigration. Since supply and demand realities show salaries have declined in the US as Mexican low-skill labor migrates there; the opposite must also be true, as 13% of Mexican labor force has headed north, surely Mexican working class wages have benefited as the labor supply tightened? George Borjas has studied this and indeed has found that the decrease in labor supply in Mexico has led to an 8% increase in salaries. Also the working classes in Mexico benefit from remittances sent their way from the US to the tune of around $20 billion a year but only after the wealthy elite have siphoned off around 10% of this money.

But that’s only half the Mexican immigration story. Being a middle income country, they have their own southern border with even poorer people on the other side to protect. And so up until 2011, the Mexican working classes benefited from one of the most Draconian immigration laws in the world that helped keep their salaries from getting undermined by, for example, poor Guatemalan migrants. Seen from this perspective it is unlikely many Mexican working class people feel their salaries would benefit from “freer immigration” that would allow in an influx of poor Central Americans, who would only send salaries lower as the decreases in the labor force northward were more than compensated for by increases in low-skill labor crossing the southern border. They prefer freer immigration being a one-way street.
Even in the US there is at least anecdotal evidence of tension between Mexican immigrants who feel they are losing “their” jobs to newer and cheaper Central American migrants.

Seen from the Neoliberal Globalization framework, the Mexican working classes are temporary winners only because they are able to resist freer immigration into their country. But after the low-hanging fruit of the rich country’s working classes are all picked, since they are above the global average, the Mexican working classes (and others in middle income countries) will in turn come under the relentless global income leveling pressure exerted by Neoliberal Globalization. And the rich in middle/ rich income countries will continue to be winners as Gini scores will decline as the rich get only richer while at the same time the poor in the poorest countries will indeed get a little less poor.

Mexico is just one case. Another example is the movement of high-skilled Africans (mainly doctors) to Europe. I found it hard to see how this benefits the African nations they leave behind although most Europeans (except doctors of course) are probably benefiting.

On the other hand India is aggressively exporting high-skilled labor to the Western world (and low-skill labor to the Gulf States) and does not at all seem to suffering as a result.

This all seems so obvious, but I keep being told how brilliant and important Wellman’s freedom of association argument is, despite its failure to grapple with the evident and substantial shortcomings of the analogy, so a lot of smart people are seeing something you and I don’t, that they can’t seem to clearly articulate.

Trolley problem: a community (linguistic, cultural, whatever..) is threatened and has two choices. If they disperse, all will survive and most will prosper, but their community will be lost. If they stay and defend themselves against the threat, some will die and all will be, for a time, poorer, but they will survive as a community. Economics says the first choice is unambiguously the better one. Empirically, people’s choices lie all along the spectrum from one to the other – but most people seem to feel that both ends involve loss.

djw:
@106 [Working Class Nero] is exhibit a, b and c for the case trying to transform anti-immigrant positions into something coherently leftist is pretty much impossible to do without humiliating yourself.

I don’t share some of comment 106’s normative views (I’d put a higher normative weight on increases in the incomes of the extremely poor), but I think some of 106’s empirical assertions are on or close to the mark. The statement that “Neoliberal Globalization increases income disparity within a rich or middle income nation but tends to lessen income disparity between rich and poor nations” seems reasonably accurate as a broad generalization.