Branko Milanovic advocates reinventing apartheid

if they remain in their dysfunctional hellholes, they’re still global citizens with second- or third-class status forever, do they not?

but more to the point, the key argument of the article

In effect, there is a trade-off between such a view of citizenship and the flow of migration. The more we insist on full rights for all residents, the less longstanding residents will be willing to accept more migrants.

is primarily a claim about politics, not Pareto calculation.

P.S. I don’t want to renounce by native citizenship because that would negatively affect my children.

Better link.

https://reason.com/archives/2008/01/24/ending-global-apartheid/

And no, it is not the same as apartheid, so long as there citizenship by birth-right.

But it’s interesting to note that the ultimate goal of South African apartheid was a system in which the Black population of SA was redefined as migrant labour, with citizenship rights in the bantustans and none in SA itself.

Another thing: Milanovic’s system might be an improvement for all concerned over a hypothetical no-immigration alternative (although even then only in narrowly economistic terms – is “moderately wealthy non-citizen of country B” an unqualified improvement over “impoverished citizen of country A”?). But it’s plainly a trade-off as compared to the status quo: the gainers are UK employers and the state, the losers are the immigrants themselves and their home countries (assuming that immigrants tend to send some money ‘home’, and that Milanovic’s system would make them poorer). Milanovic tries to make out that British citizens would be among the gainers (“made to share their entire premium with incomers”), but I’m not buying that; immigrants are net contributors. There’s also, arguably, a gain for those British citizens who hate and fear immigrants, and who would have the satisfaction of knowing immigrants were being treated badly, but I don’t think that should be taken into account; in any case, that’s the kind of appetite that grows with feeding. So at the end of the day it’s a plan for enriching British employers at the expense of poorer countries.

I don’t agree with Milanovic here, but I find Chris’ concept of “basic rights” of human beings troublesome. Any “right” is a right to expect certain behaviour from others; it’s hard to argue that this inheres in the individual and not the collective. And short of invoking God, it’s very hard to escape from utilitarianism, majoritarianism or similar as the principle underlying collective rules. Better surely to argue for a global utilitarianism than to fall back on dubious concepts of natural law.

This second class status is already present everywhere. I have American colleagues here in the UK who have to pay thousands of pounds and face endless paperwork and queues to have the right to work here, pay loads of tax, yet have reduced rights to social services and benefits. You can be a legal resident of the UK, pay all the taxes everyone else pays, yet have no right to child benefit, for example. At the other end of the scale, most migrants are doing jobs natives do not want or have to do, yet Branko seems to imply we should penalize them for doing this? The whole argument makes little normative sense, and is politically extraordinarily naive: there is no reason to believe that second class status would assuage native hostility to immigration. If anything it legitimizes and encourages it.

#11

wow, some 2000 years of philosophy dismissed in one paragraph, well done

The article is paywalled, and I am disinclined to give money to the FT. But I’d read Milanovic with a charitable eye – his work on global inequalities shows a breadth of sensitivity.

Second class status is, as observed above, alive and well across much of the world. Here in Australia, migrants from NZ are permitted free entry but denied benefits (despite paying taxes).

I get the feeling that Chris must at least admit (based on the discussion so far) that you can’t have it both ways, i.e. generous universal rights for all residents and free migration. One or the other will come under stress at some stage. If we had a world, without significant economic differences, this might work, but that is not the world that we have. And I tend to agree with Paul @11 that rights are demands placed on others, and their willingness and ability to accommodate must have limits.

“Rather, all and any rights can be sacrificed on the altar of income improvement, just in case someone is poor and desperate enough to make a deal (who are we, paternalistically, to stop them?)”

this is a harder question to answer than you seem to imply, imo. If the people concerned do consider themselves to be better off, in what sense is your concern with their basic rights in their interest? personally I wouldn’t go as far as “all and any rights can be sacrificed on the altar of income improvement” but I wouldn’t be too quick to suggest overruling the choices of the people concerned either, even if the best thing to do would be to improve the choices in front of them rather than be content with choice amongst bad alternatives.

Milanovic-Trumpism.

In all countries that I am aware of, recent immigrants have fewer rights than citizens. Nowhere is it the case that migrants are allowed “to lay claim to the entire premium falling to citizens straight away”. So what is the point of Milanovic proposing what is already reality? Is he ignorant, does he wish to create the impression that immigrants have it too good, or is his aim to lay the propagandistic groundwork for even more exclusionary policies?

Is he ignorant, does he wish to create the impression that immigrants have it too good, or is his aim to lay the propagandistic groundwork for even more exclusionary policies?

That escalated quickly!

(Two cents: I can’t get into the FT from here but have a very high opinion of Milanovic based on other things he’s written – the fire and brimstone that are being lobbed at him here seem a bit misplaced. )

Louis Enrique @21
“Because most inequality is across rather than within states, migration has greater potential to reduce global inequality than within-state tax-and-transfer programs.”

Doesn’t necessarily follow because of subsequent dynamic effects. Ceteris Paribus arguments only ever work if ceteris really are paribus. Turning say Germany into Brazil doesn’t necessarily result in long term benefits.

Harvard economist Lant Pritchett promotes the same thing- because he’s a humanitarian.
Pritchett, and his colleague, George Borjas, both agree that helping foreign poor through our immigration system hurts most Americans. But Pritchett is OK with that. Pritchett says using our immigration system as a tool to reduce global poverty is more effective than foreign aid. Pritchett wants to bring in waves of Bangladeshis who would be allowed to work a few years and then deported so other Bangladeshis could benefit. (I assume no one would ever get pregnant, get anyone else pregnant or just take hide when their time is up)

When an advocate for ex-felons brought up that we already have desperate people who have a hard time finding work, Pritchett admitted he didn’t care because the Bangladeshis that would be coming were worse off than our own poor (who would be even worse off if a policy like this were put in place). Pritchett said to the audience, “You don’t want to cut your own grass do you?” Pritchett is a humanitarian ,who doesn’t cut his own grass.

Would you rather give up your citizenship rights or the right to live in the West? Everyone knows the answer to this.

The whole discussion seems to me to assume that a job isn’t a right and a duty in the current system. But in discussing benefits from a state and a society, if you don’t make this odd assumption, much of the supposed conflict between immigration and social welfare becomes much less pressing. Except of course in the current system, unemployment is a necessary feature, and benefits are a grudging accommodation meant to manage political/social consequences. It’s the old problem where reforms can’t make a fundamentally messed up system work.

@35 – the point of the argument is that none of those people have made any ‘contribution’; all they’ve done is be lucky enough to be born and brought up here. As it happens, age-related UK job market entrances and exits don’t necessarily balance out – among women especially; having been 65 for men and 60 for women, the retirement age is in the process of being equalised at 66 (by 2020), before being pushed back to 67 and probably 68. (By the same government that’s sympathetic to ordinary people’s fears about immigration, ordinary people’s worries about benefit scroungers, etc.) Besides which, it’s very far from being the case that the majority of immigrants bring dependents (most are able-bodied young men), or that the majority of immigrants can’t get by in English (it’s a global language, let’s face it).

If there’s a citizen/freeloader problem, as Milanovic suggests, then it’s very localised. If you’re working cash-in-hand, living on truck and sending everything you save back home, then no, you’re not paying any taxes. But if you are working cash-in-hand, living on truck and being paid so little that (once you’ve sent a bit back home) you’ve got nothing to spend on yourself, you’re not the problem – the problem is your employer.

Phil @ 9

The key thing you are missing is that it’s arguably better than the status quo IF it means that there are many more immigrants; it’s a trade-off between non-citizens, with people-who-would-immigrate-in-either-case worse off, but could-only-immigrate-if-benefits-were-lower better off.

Phil @9
‘There’s also, arguably, a gain for those British citizens who hate and fear immigrants, and who would have the satisfaction of knowing immigrants were being treated badly, but I don’t think that should be taken into account; in any case, that’s the kind of appetite that grows with feeding.’
Hopkin @13
‘The whole argument makes little normative sense, and is politically extraordinarily naive: there is no reason to believe that second class status would assuage native hostility to immigration. If anything it legitimizes and encourages it.’

Hear, hear.

“Indeed, that’s just weird (or maybe not for a certain type economist) – it is universally agreed that this system is inherently unjust”

I haven’t read the article but have read the relevant chapter in his new book. He does acknowledge that it’s unjust , but also says that it’s preferable (both as an improvement on where they’re coming from and measured in the effect it has on incomes) to not allowing them migrate. So he argues, Iirc , that if it’s between the kafala system and greater restrictions from entry to western countries, the kafala system leads to better outcomes

It’s not, Reason, but the kind of people who say it is are also the kind of people who hate migrants (see e.g. Brett Bellmore). You can join the dots.

I have certain rights by virtue of my existing, Paul. Anyone who wants to take them away can fuck off.

It’s really not hard to understand, and it’s not troublesome at all.

Phil @42
“But if you are working cash-in-hand, living on truck and being paid so little that (once you’ve sent a bit back home) you’ve got nothing to spend on yourself, you’re not the problem – the problem is your employer.”

These people don’t go the toilet? They don’t get sick?

Trying to pretend that externalities don’t exist is something that (G)libertarians need for the arguments to work, but I thought we here were more sophisticated than that.

faustusnotes @51
Now go to Raqqa and say that.

Jeff Johnson,
yes.

In another way, I think my problem is with the methodological individualism of the approach being used here. There is too such a thing as society that cannot just be captured by considering each individual separately.

omitted words
Insisting that movement be allowed only on the condition of full citizenship in fact means that the principal mechanism for the reducing the the MOST IMPORTANT unjustifiable source of inequality in life chances–the national space in which one lives one life–cannot be used given political realities. That is how I read Milanovic’s argument.

…darn out the door. Would have loved to follow this discussion.

“Insisting that movement be allowed only on the condition of full citizenship”

What is the point of this strawmannery? No country in the world immediately grants citizenship to new immigrants. You know that, don’t you? Milanovic knows it for sure. So wtf?

“An adult immigrant is responsible for its own welfare, children are not. Are you proposing that migrants not be allowed to bring children with them, then?”

I think you’ll find that many newly-adult citizens also have children. If they don’t have children when they become adults, children usually follow thereafter.

“Do you propose that middle eastern norms should be what we aim for?”

I don’t even know what that question means. My point is, if you’re going to argue that a newly-arrived young adult immigrant is an unfunded burden on the state, you need to explain why that isn’t true of a newly-matured young adult citizen.

“I’m just saying that to think that all social and environment standards could be maintained with free import of quasi indentured slaves is problematic at the very least.”

We’re in agreement, and I’m skeptical of any scheme involving guest worker programs or two-tiered citizenship models for precisely that reason. On the other hand, the indentured servants are here, now, working, and being kept in bondage because they’re illegally here and can’t apply to to the law to escape their bonds. Now what?

RNB @ 65: “Yet actual apartheid created a wage premium for those classified as a white…”

Can this be right? I don’t know, but it seems counterintuitive. A white carpenter would have been competing with a few other white carpenters and with a very large number of black carpenters. Apartheid-era whites were quite happy to employ black carpenters; the low-cost labor was one of the points to the whole system. How does that create a wage premium for the white carpenter? With what wage are you comparing that of the white carpenter to determine it is a premium?

faustusnotes
1. I am definitely not a Libertarian – in fact it is Libertarians who are pushing natural law.
2. You didn’t understand the point. The point is that believing you have a “right” is in fact not the same thing as de facto having a right.

faustusnotes @75
I didn’t say tell it to the Raqqans, I said “say that in Raqqa” – see how much good it does you. You see you have a right, because your society has granted you a right and enforces it. That right is not inherent in you, any more than the same right is inherent in a rabbit confronted by a wolf.

Layman,
what EXACTLY do you mean by a “right” here? Do you mean something that you can reasonably expect other people to respect (because of custom or legal enforcement) or do you mean something that you arrogate to yourself because you believe you don’t have to follow the rules of the universe (which are that the strongest wins).

“So why is it ethical to label newborn babies as “American” or “Mexican,” due to nothing but the descent and geographical position at birth of their parents…”

Why is it ethical to deny those living in a defined geographical area the ability to form some sort of collective group with a defined membership including everybody living in that area and rules that will establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity?

layman @70
“I don’t even know what that question means. My point is, if you’re going to argue that a newly-arrived young adult immigrant is an unfunded burden on the state, you need to explain why that isn’t true of a newly-matured young adult citizen.”

No I don’t. The children are already part of the society, they are a product of the society (you might even say that they are the reason for the society to exist). People wishing to join that society are not, and the society reasonably has a right to consider on what conditions they should be allowed to join. You aren’t just granting immigrants new rights, you are diminishing the rights of existing citizens (because the country belongs to the citizens). It is like saying an issue of new shares doesn’t impact existing share holders.

“But even without out it, it is a monstrous injustice to individuals if they are very long term residents of a country (and de facto members of it) but are denied full legal rights of membership and are exposed to (for example) threats of deportation.”

Or just a choice. I know plenty of people who are perfectly happy living, sans citizenship, in Singapore, Japan, and similar places. There’s nothing a priori monstrous about denying citizenship to migrants. The wrong comes when we deny citizenship to people that have no reasonable alternative to staying in the host country.

And that’s the big issue, isn’t it? Why don’t some migrants have reasonable alternatives? There’s certainly a practical argument that, if we allow open migration, there’s isn’t an ethical reason for oppressive governments to ever change. That oppressive government can simply say, “Well, if they want things like free speech and the right to vote, they should just go to Britain.” And why would that even be wrong? Living in Syria is now a choice; if you don’t like our torture and child killing, go to Germany.

“I am definitely not saying people don’t have rights, only that they only have those rights that their society grants to them and enforces.”

Yes, I get that’s what you’re saying. Thus there are no regimes which violate their citizens’ rights, because those citizens only enjoy the rights not violated by the regime. Can that be right?

reason, care to answer my question?

An Eastern Oregon informant opposes $15 on the grounds that high labor costs will cause McDonalds to automate (they are reported as experimenting), thereby denying his kids the opportunity to get a “starter” job. That he visualizes the generational career path as via McDonalds boggles me pretty much, but he insists. “Wake up, sheeple!”, as he would say.

#86: “On the one hand, you have a healthy, capable young adult; while on the other, you have a healthy, capable young adult. Why is the one a burden in ways the other is not? Can’t both struggle to find work?” Let me sketch one possible answer to this that I’ve heard in my universal-benefits welfare state during the recent wave of refugees and migrants that swept over Europe. One of these young adults in the example is likely born in this country, speaks the local language (which, note, is NOT English in most of Europe), has family, friends, and other social networks right here, and is usually educated pretty much like the average citizen of his or her local-born cohort is. The other young adult doesn’t speak the local language (or even English), has no social networks in place here, and has usually less education than the local young adults have. Add to that the fact that the newly-arrived immigrant has arrived in the middle of a long economic downturn, where simply being young and able-bodied doesn’t give you any kind of advantage at all against all the others who are looking for a job – especially when those others can speak the language, are better educated than you, and can ask their family or friends for recommendations if needed.

Although both have been net burdens up to this point, I’d say the probability of the person in the first group getting employed and thus becoming a net contributor in the long run is much, much higher than that for a person in the last group, and past statistics would seem to confirm this. This is of course probabilities we’re talking about, and of course a lot of people in the first group end up really badly, and some in the second group end up really well. A lot of this is also dependent on the state of the economy, and also on the country of origin of the migrants; unsurprisingly migrants from neighboring countries tend to have far better job-market prospects than the current wave of migrants from the Middle East.

@Chris, #61
Maybe I overdid the sarcasm about ideological purity. Sorry about that. In this election season it seems to be an issue on the Democratic side that is touching people’s passions: idealism vs. pragmatism.

I could just simplify and say I believe the in finding policies that benefit people we should not allow the perfect or the best become the enemy of the good.

Here is a quote from Milanovic:

so long as we redefine citizenship in such a way that migrants are not allowed to lay claim to the entire premium falling to citizens straight away, if at all.

I think the words “straight away” suggest that he’s not necessarily envisioning such limits to be permanent, though with “if at all” he leaves that door open.

If we are talking about permanent limits, I’m more sympathetic to your case, but otherwise it felt to me you were overreacting based on an important abstract principle that we must defend, but should not regard as holy. A temporary compromise may be a very good idea. Even perhaps for the lifetime of newcomers but definitely not extending to their offspring, who should be full citizens.

Yes, follow the link Luis Enrique provided. He’s the one Chris Bertram should be debating here. I hope that this debate does happen.

@26 points 2 and 3 seem in contradiction to me (if brain drain creates problems, then why are you for open borders), and 2 includes an argument (brain drain) not against immigration with restricted rights but against immigration as such. So it seems that you are switching the topic.

Moreover, if you are for open borders and the only politically available alternative is migration with restrictions, then we need some argument as to why something that gets us closer to a universal right to movement is worse than a state farther away from it. No doubt such an argument could be made; perhaps we deal with the economist’s concept of how second best policies can be Pareto inferior to the status quo ante.

Plus, I don’t see why the emigration of someone who is not at the bottom of a poor society could not end up reducing the differences in the mean international inequality while opening up opportunity in that poor country. I grant that I am writing in a very distracted state.

I did not find the arguments persuasive in 23 but perhaps when I think about them more I’ll understand the force of them.

(if brain drain creates problems, then why are you for open borders)

There might be more than one reason for supporting or opposing something, and fairly dealing with the downside of policies you favour is not contradictory.

What would happen if the West did not have immigration? What if, like is currently happening in the US, patterns start reversing and the immigrant population starts dwindling? How does this affect population growth, labor market growth, GDP growth, pensions, national ratings, bond rates, and the integrity of the global financial system? Why is the IMF warning about GDP growth all the time? Why do politicians campaign on making growth happen?

I think the reason Westeners are so keen on discussing immigration from the individual freedom, non-racist, helping the poor of the world, and human rights points of view, is that they are still not politically prepared to accept that the West depends on immigration to sustain the rate of growth required to not crash its system and to continue paying its debt without incurring on third world levels of austerity.

I don’t see – perhaps it’s elsewhere in the paywalled article – what the mechanism is that goes from “new immigrants are second-class citizens, at least for the time being*” to “more immigrants are accepted”. If it goes via the ‘native’ population being satisfied that those people aren’t getting the free ride that the press has been telling them they get, colour me sceptical in the extreme.

*Note that the permanence or otherwise of this status would be a political question – and if we’re assuming an anti-migrant constituency, I wouldn’t like to trust in the good will and clearsightedness of any government in setting an appropriate period of second-class citizenship.

@104 Lupita. so you are saying the West is basically a pyramid scheme. We need to keep adding more people into the scheme to keep it supported and if we stop then the whole scheme collapses? I think I may agree.

@Matt

OK, I’ll rephrase. How will the demographic transition, which is already underway, affect Western economies? Is not mass immigration a way to delay the impact of low/ zero/ negative population growth on GDP growth, debt, and pensions? And is not talking about how to make mass immigration to the West more palatable politically in the short term, a way of kicking the can down the road instead of confronting the inevitable which is, in my opinion, a non-growth, post-capitalist system that we have yet to imagine?

If the system has turned into a Ponzi scheme, as Dipper suggests, should it not be unwound before it collapses?

But my main gripe is the way third word workers are portrayed, as disposable beings or pawns to be moved around for the greater glory of GDP growth, without considering the impact on poor societies of having millions of children growing up without a father and communities being left without young men. In Mexico, at least, the impact has been devastating to poor, rural communities that have now been taken over by drug cartels.

The social impact of mass emigration cannot be measured in monetary terms. The social and cultural externalities on poor communities are not even being considered, as if their cultures and communities were no more than garbage.

Further to previous comment – Actually when I think about that last point, there’s possibly evidence to the contrary – Scandinavian countries that have good work and family conditions for women have both high paid workforce participation and fairly stable (not declining) birth rates I think (though still below replacement rate)

I struggle to imagine a good quantitative index for it, but what do you think are the relative accessibilities of political/process rights for those on decile “most excluded” in top-decile-Democracy-Index country, versus the political/process rights for the decile “most connected” in the least free countries?

“I’m pointing out that if you want the future to hold a “Germany”, the place needs to be populated by Germans. ”

I can’t believe you wrote that Brett Bellmore. We have already seen what happens when people think for Germany to be “Germany” it “needs to be populated by Germans” and it ended very very badly.

You’re American, and America is predominantly an immigrant society. This sort of idea would mean most of everyone in America would have to leave the country for America to become America again full of indigenous Americans. I like reading books about past times when the cultures were more distinct, it is very interesting, but with technology there has been mass migration for centuries and its not going to go back to lots of distinct cultures like in the past.

About 20% of the German population has a different ethnic background than German, possibly more depending on how mixed ethnicity is counted.

I don’t think nationalism is a very good reason not to take migrants, especially when there is a refugee crisis. And really migration means all the countries have more connections like in traditional cultures where they arranged marriages so as to make sure that all the kingship groups were connected well. Your wife is a first generation immigrant so you should be able to talk about all the benefits of immigration for your family and community instead of saying Germany won’t be Germany if it isn’t full of Germans.

@Brett Bellmore

“I don’t hate the next door neighbor, but I don’t let him rummage around in my fridge. I don’t even give him my network password.”

You do however constantly advocate regarding him/her as somehow inferior/dangerous/deserving of discriminatory treatment based on insignificant genetic differences. You’ve done this consistently on a variety of blogs and been removed from a number of them as a result. The dots don’t really take too much joining in your case, Brett.

Returning to the main discussion, I do find it interesting that those who claim the enthusiasm of hypothetical Nigerians/Syrians etc etc for second-class status tend not to be Nigerian/Syrian etc etc – much less willing to consider whether they might “deserve/welcome” a reduction in status themselves in a future which is clearly going to be a great deal less Western, white and male in terms of economic dominance.

I think Brett’s right that if you were to replace a quarter of your population with foreigners in one generation your culture would change.

Nearly 30% of the australian population was born overseas. We’ve had sustained massive immigration — of the sort Bretty reckons is unsustainable — for literally generations now. We’re doing OK, cultural-continuity-wise.

Where are you from, by the way, Brett, if you don’t mind me asking? What’s your native culture, the one you’re defending?

> What makes you think I hate migrants?

Signs and markers that you probably don’t notice.

You have to understand, Brett: you can’t tell the difference between prejudice and reasonable conclusions from the inside. Noone thinks their decisions are prejudiced, because if they did they’d rethink them and reconsider: the only actual real-world irrational prejudice, then, is that which the enactor is unaware of.

You cannot self-assess your racism. Everything that seems to you reasonable will seem to you reasonable, obviously: you need someone else cross-checking your results. “I think that what I think is reasonable is reasonable” is a vacuous statement; “this man thinks that what I think is reasonable is reasonable” is something useful.

I tell you, Brett: you are pretty damn racist. You don’t have to trust me, but… I know nothing about you and care less. What sort of reason would I have for lying about my assessment of your racism?

And y’know what? As unreliable as my judgement is — and I’m not claiming to be perfect or even very good — if all you’ve got to compare it to is your [worthless; see above] self-assessment then my dodgy judgement is by far the best thing you’ve got. And a wide array of people of the sort you get here, all of whom — independently — think you’re pretty damn racist?

You’re pretty damn racist, Brett.

TM @67 @89
I’m not advocating an apartheid system. What makes you think that I am? This really is about me not liking CB tendency to push for a Natural Law view (which is to me as a social democrat anathema) and for fully open borders which I tend to regard as not compatible with social democracy in the world as it is (although it could be in another world that had developed more evenly). I think citizenship needs to mean something, we can’t just pretend we live with a world government.

P.S. For people who haven’t followed the thread I made clear that
a. I am a migrant myself (from one rich country to another Australia to Germany in fact)
b. I think migrants should be integrated into the society in which they live.

> forcing women to have babies

Oh, there’s a whole fucking genre of japanese media where the plot is exactly, “japanese government forces my self-insert charactermen and women to have sex and babies to Save The Yellow Race”.

‘Nearly 30% of the australian population was born overseas. We’ve had sustained massive immigration — of the sort Bretty reckons is unsustainable — for literally generations now. We’re doing OK, cultural-continuity-wise.’ (Collin Street, 125)
That is a lot easier to do if you’re an Anglophone nation. Your language and culture are the dominant ones, globally. Why should anyone bother to learn the unimportant language and boring culture of a minor nation when they might not even stay here?

reason 64, 77, 80, 83, 84.

My problem with you approach is that you act the hard-headed realist but in fact you are peddling a mystification. Society does exist, d’accord, but it’s not a monolithic entity that grants and denies rights, makes decisions, plans for the future, has agency. You say that people don’t have rights, only society does. There is no coherent way to attribute rights to a society. “Society reasonably has a right to consider” etc., that makes no sense.

I take it you live in Germany. Germany is governed by a constitution that declares human rights to be inviolable. That is as close as you get to an expression of the collective will of the German polity, so why not take that seriously.

I asked about the effects of apartheid on society not to impute a position to you but because it seems obvious to me that apartheid-like arrangements are wrong both because they violates individual rights and also because they are detrimental to the common good. Germany is a good example because exclusionary laws concerning the “Gastarbeiter” – laws of the sort that Milanovic seems to advocate, aimed at permanent exclusion of immigrant workers – have delayed and impeded the integration of a large immigrant community into German society. It’s a good example why these kinds of laws are a bad idea. And also why they don’t work in the long run in a liberal society – you can’t permanently deny rights to a class of people and still claim to care about equality and human rights.

The assumption behind constitutional government is that human rights are more than a gentlemen’s agreement.

Robespierre
Which human rights and which constitutional government are you talking about precisely and why does this have to be assumed when they have been encoded?

TM
OK, thanks for the pedantry. Yes people (plural I note) and society (the collective of people extended by their relations with one another) are subtly different and perhaps I was writing less carefully than I should have. But as people who live in one place for a while develop relations with one another, such carefully might be understandable, might it not?

The tension (or confusion) between taking the individual as given (the economics approach) and the social is on full display here. Might I recommend John Ellis’ Language, Thought and Logic, or the line of thought summed up by the linguist M A K Halliday:

“society, language and mind are indissoluble: society creates
mind, mind creates society, and language stands as mediator and
metaphor for both these processes”

In the present context, we create rights. That makes them real. Then we act them out variously – institutionally through states, socially through peer pressure, protest, prophets, sources of emulation, shamans; emotionally through resentment and resistance, artistically through icons, stone tablets, temples, paintings, stories, graffiti… Why should we expect consonance?

In the present context, we create rights. That makes them real. Then we act them out variously – institutionally through states, socially through peer pressure, protest, prophets, sources of emulation, shamans; emotionally through resentment and resistance, artistically through icons, stone tablets, temples, paintings, stories, graffiti… Why should we expect consonance?

Sounds a bit Hegelian to me. I think it’s noteworthy that some of these various ways tend to be a bit more effective than others. I can ‘act out’ my right to the neighbourhood I grew up in ‘artistically’ through my graffitti but when my landlord acts out her dissonant understanding through the court system and the bailiffs that’s probably going to seem a bit more real to all involved…

Chris Bertram #114: “The problem is that the imposition of laws on people isn’t merely an impersonal causal process to which we must adapt ourselves, but a deliberate collective choice by a population and their political representatives. Milanovic’s attitude is that of the man who says “you need to eat, but I will only let you eat if you strip naked for me. Therefore, morality demands that I make you strip naked.” Well, no it doesn’t, it demands that the man feed the needy person without imposing such a condition. Shades of Cohen’s critique of Rawls on the difference principle here.”

Very well put!

Milanovic particular suggestions are also underargued. From FT: “As happens currently in the Gulf states, migrants could be allowed to work for a limited number of years, or to work only for a given employer, or else be obliged to return to their country of origin every four or five years. They could also be made to pay higher taxes since they are the largest net beneficiaries of migration. ”

Why does he stop there? His underlying view appears to have no principled grounds for that stop. E.g. how about weaker workplace hazard rules and food security standards for temporary migrants? Or mandatory participation in a kidney donation lottery? As long as both global rules and institutions (including processes that increase power and wealth for the 1%) and anti-migrant nationalist sentiments are taken as a given and unchangeable background some such proposals might also come out as net gains on his blinkered paretian view.

Why does he stop there? His underlying view appears to have no principled grounds for that stop. E.g. how about weaker workplace hazard rules and food security standards for temporary migrants? Or mandatory participation in a kidney donation lottery?

I don’t know what he thinks but one view is that rights are to be balanced against consequences in an ethical calculus where rights-violations weigh significantly higher than other negative consequences without being absolutely forbidden. (Breaking a promise to my sister might be permissable to get my partner to the hospital but not watch a cricket match…) If you adopt this framework you might give some rights a higher weighting than others and you might see the right to pay the same rate of income tax as native residents as less basic as, say, the right to bodily integrity.

Let the grovelling begin!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3553432/David-Cameron-orders-advisers-reach-TRUMP-case-wins-White-House-despite-blasting-divisive-stupid-wrong.html

“David Cameron has ordered his diplomats in Washington to reach out to Donald Trump to repair relations in case the Republican front runner pulls off an improbable White House win. The Prime Minister slammed Mr Trump at ‘divisive, stupid and wrong’ last year in the wake of controversial remarks about stopping Muslims entering America. Responding to a petition calling for Mr Trump to be banned from visiting Britain, Mr Cameron said he opposed an outright ban but told MPs: ‘If he came to visit our country I think he would unite us all against him.’There are fears in Government the remarks could leave the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and America on ice were Mr Trump to enter the White House in January.”

Now that Trump looks very much like securing the Republican nomination, and perhaps the WH, I sincerely hope that we can move past the Trump-Hitler hyperbole and start considering the very real problems a Trump presidency presents. Borders are, of course, very central to a Trump presidency. We saw last Labour’s determined efforts to depict any and all mention of borders as a manifestation of xenophobia and racism blow-up spectacularly in election defeat. I expect HRC to try to be both for building the wall and against it, (Labour 2015). The more troubling dimensions of a Trump presidency for me include Trump’s very real America First isolationism. I noted last fall that petitions to ban Trump from Britain were a most unwise move from a nation almost wholly reliant on the active support of the US, especially as the proven US default position in 1914 and 1939 was and is – Europe’s problems are not our problem. Perhaps more troubling is Trump’s expert salesmanship. If ever there was a fox, he’s it. And he looks well on the way to convincing a sizeable percentage of the chickens that he alone should be trusted to provide protection from the other foxes.

I’m in favor of bringing manufacturing jobs back to 1st world economies, but worry that Trump’s commitment to balancing the budget by demanding US allies spend more on defense is going to have some extremely serious ramifications in east Asia and other places. Trump’s already discussed the possibility of a nuclear Japan, which represents a dream come true for Japan’s nationalists and a nightmare for just about every sane person. There’s still an outside chance that Sanders can make some magic happen at the convention, but perhaps it’s time to think much more seriously about rallying around the Dem change agent, rather than learning to live (as Cameron is now realizing) with President Trump.

Peter T
I don’t quite get what you are getting at. I never said people could advocate to get new rights recognised. But if other people don’t respect them (whether through custom or law) they don’t mean a thing.

oops Belanov – sorry.

But only the other hand, I think you have it the wrong way around. The problem today seems to be no that nation states can’t control their populations, but that populations can’t control their nation states.

reason @ 130: I don’t think individualism versus collectivism is a useful way to think about left versus right. The right is in its own way extremely collectivist, favoring a well-ordered hierarchical society over one centered around individual flourishing.

UserGoogol @168
I wasn’t comparing the “left” to an amalgous “right” but to Libertarianism which is something very specific and not especially hierarchical, but tries to promote individual flourishing only if you have money.

Neoliberal propaganda? Portraying naked exploitation as a favor for which migrants should be grateful?

Have you read anything else by Milanovic, TM? For that matter, have you even read his paywalled piece or just Chris’ attack on it?

What is it about certain citizen rights that make them apartheid-able but not others?

That’s a rather unhelpful way of posing the question, I think, since most people agree that apartheid is morally repugnant. I agree your question (‘why draw the line here exactly?’) needs to answered, I just think there are answers available which aren’t unreasonable on the face of it.

reason

I’m more or less agreeing with you. But “rights” (like “people”, “respect”) is a large and hence vague set of concepts. The leaders of the American colonial rebels formally enumerated a set of rights that they thought they already had in law or custom as a move in a contention with the British crown. As part of this move, they appealed to religious belief, belief in natural law, British and general western European custom and so on. They also asserted, although in veiled language, other “rights” – eg to hold slaves and take land from Amerindians. Their victory enabled the institutionalisation of some of these, which transferred the formal conversation to legislatures and courts of law. But the informal understandings continued to percolate and evolve. Human rights have been sacralised in the western secular tradition but, to my mind this is not because they are, in fact, sacred or immanent. It is because this is a very effective (and very ancient) social gambit, placing the issues beyond the immediate reach of many forms of power, by constituting right as power.

Anyway, really a side issue, so I’ll say no more.

engels 172, if you have reasons to disagree with me, why not state them.

If one looks at the pass system rather than the color bar as I did @120, then Milanovic could be said to be arguing not against global apartheid but for a form of it. He is trying to rationalize the flow of labor from the so-called traditional sector or homelands [poor countries] to the modern sector of mining and advanced agriculture [wealthy country] where due to economic and political restrictions the migrants will have to endure “wages below their marginal productivity”.

However much this movement reduces inequality between the sectors, it may well also have the effect of extracting rents (or extra surplus value) from migrants in modern capitalist enterprises. Think of it this way.

If migrants are not given rights to bring their families with them, then the the migrant need not earn a wage that is necessary to cover the costs of a family in a wealthy country. Or if the state denies access to the schools and emergency medical services, the migrant may choose to leave the family behind, which again means the wage need not cover the full costs of a family in a wealthy country.

And of course the migrant is tied to an employer as a condition of her or him getting the visa–and the visa will only be granted if the migrant is restricted from competing with citizens just as the color bar protected whites–the migrant would also not have the right of exit to pressure the employer into a higher wage.

The wage then need be a fraction of what it would be for a worker with family in the US. What Milanovic is proposing would rationalize a system of exploitation through the regulation of movement.

I’m getting a #solidarityisforwhitewomen vibe from the outrage expressed at the mere thought that one way of avoiding population decrease is for women to have more children. What about all the girls (and boys) who grow up without a father because he is off picking tomatoes in Imperial Valley? Where is the outrage at that? Why does a mere comment about something that cannot be enforced, elicit more censure than actual suffering that is actually happening in poor communities? Why must poor men see the advantage of emigrating and leaving behind their language, friends, family, and way of life, but Westeners cannot even conceive of confronting their great, big problem of lower GDP growth and how it will impact the repayment of their debt, their pensions, and the underpinnings of the whole global financial system, of empire. How better and more discrete ways of exploiting the poor is what is keeping the system from crashing?

Poor people, their families, their communities, are seen as disposable while Western women are special snowflakes that melt at the mere suggestion of having a baby. Accusations of racism and sexism seem the way to avoid talking about a global neoliberal system that is about to implode, yes, because it is increasingly difficult to keep GDP in the West growing at a steady clip, quarter after quarter, as the system requires, without immigration.

The West does not set its immigration policies based on not being racist and sexist. They are in place to postpone a crash and give the elites a bit more time to loot the system.

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that the Women of the West have more babies, particularly if it means that poor women suddenly need to see the virtues of leaving their own children to become their nannies. They may, of course, do as they wish.

The OP does not acknowledge Milanovic’s basic empirical findings which show how much luck in what Shachar calls the birthright lottery–not merit or hardwork–determines life chances in the world today. Derbyshire deals with this in the FT, a piece Milanovic linked to on his twitter account. I am sure Milanovic would be happy were his findings to lead to a more honest acknowledgement of the role of luck in the lives of those born in wealthy countries (like myself as an anchor baby) and a greater tolerance for free movement over borders. He thinks migration is more effective than aid in equalizing opportunity. Interestingly he has not been pressed on this here, but I think there are clear counter-arguments. I still there is huge value in his empirical findings on the importance of luck in the birthright lottery, and I think the OP should have acknowledged that value, independent of his proposals to address the problem.

Sadly, no. Libertarianism is liberalism without all the epicycles.

No, it’s really not

What is it about reproductive choice that makes CT commenters lose their mind, and why is the fact that our species’ abundance can not grow forever evoking irrational panic among otherwise reasonable people?

Lupita 183, what a load of reactionary BS. Do you have no shame?

That, plus “if you’re complaining about X, that means you don’t care about Y, you monster!”

Matt, thanks for the link. I’ve never read that Freeman piece so I shall give it a try. I’m doubtful it’ll change my mind I’m afriad…

(Fwiw I was being slightly glib, if I were to be less so I’d probably say that American liberalism is a refinement of classical liberalism in response to problems thrown up by the history of capitalism – working class organisation and socialism in particular – and libertarianism is a peculiarly synthetic C20th invention intended to make c.l. appealing to the masses… More than happy to revise that if others have better knowledge of intellectual history.)

“I’m just saying!”

I was going to render that as “I’m not racist, but…”

Mass migration is clearly part of the neoliberal package, and I have always expected that Bertram-like positions would have inegalitarian, Milanovic-like results in one way or another. What a Left should be doing is fighting to make sure both Country A and Country B are decent and sustainable places to live in, rather than relying on the ‘invisible hand’ of global demographic development and the ‘free’ movement of people from Country A to Country B (‘free’ as in ‘free labour’ under capitalism). The living standards of poor countries must be raised in ways other than constantly moving people out of them, and the demography and economy of rich countries must be maintained in ways other than constantly moving people into them. As for the former, moving would not be something many people would want to do if their countries were even moderately decent places to live. As for the latter, having children would not be something people would have to be forced to do, and, even assuming for the sake of the argument that it was an obligation, it wouldn’t be a particularly insufferable one, if there was a decent welfare state sufficiently supporting said activity in terms of financing, care, health, education etc. Ignoring the above is a case of the typical liberal unwillingness/inability to look beyond formal expressions of will/choice/consent and into the conditions that determine them.

@182 Well, if we’re taking a hard line on ‘this stuff’. I respectfully request that provide something more than an entirely unsupported accusation of sexism before your unsubstantiated charge. To the best of my knowledge I have never produced a single criticism of you or your comments and nothing that can be remotely considered as sexist. This despite several onerous remarks from you. Finally, during our only and last exchange when I noted that I’d visited your blog and offered similar good wishes regarding your studies, you offered a pro forma thank you and duly informed me that all further communications with me would cease.* The striking distinction between us being I did not use your request to invent some imagined slight, and your inability to recall your own churlish behavior towards me.

I see no utility to expand further other than to insist once again that you immediately provide concrete textual evidence of my attempts to dissuade you from contributing to the discussion here and that these attempts are rooted my prejudice towards you based on gender. Absent both, I expect a full public apology and a retraction of your accusation.

* I can and will provide links to the comments in question. Given however that you are a historian by training and profession and, therefore, a stickler for accuracy, I’m certain you can lay your hands on your own surly and self-serving comments as easily as I.

Lupita: “What about all the girls (and boys) who grow up without a father because he is off picking tomatoes in Imperial Valley? Where is the outrage at that?”

I’m generally in agreement with a lot of what Lupita writes, but I think that the migrant experience tends to get overgeneralized a bit. In particular, the Jewish migrant experience wasn’t (up until Israel, and I don’t want to get into that) one of leaving a place where one and one’s family belonged in order to labor in a foreign culture. It was one of leaving one hostile place for a different and hopefully less hostile place, neither of which is really one’s homeland. I think that there are still a very substantial number of migrations of this type going on (not among Jews, obviously).

For the larger point, that economic growth demands on migrants, it’s clearly true, and I can’t see any reason in justice or logic why migrants should be second class citizens. But again, as I wrote upthread, I prefer hypocrisy to formalized bad practices for as long as actual good practices aren’t available.

(Parenthetically, one family matriarch came to the U.S. with her passage paid because she was the bride in an arranged marriage. The guy was evidently older than advertised, and she rejected the marriage, found a job, and used her earnings to bring the rest of her family over.)

(fwiw, Ive only seen Rich’s comment now, which my comment on the other thread is on the same topic of. A Coincidence rather than passive aggressive rebuttal, ie I agree with “but I think that the migrant experience tends to get overgeneralized a bit. “)

It’s a little more nuanced, though not substantially different. The critiques above still apply (and I like Milanovich)
Whatever the merits of his position, I would hope (and expect) any immigrant group to fight for both fair pay and whatever rights that were removed from them under this hypothetical scenario. A lot of people above seem to want to see them either accept their fate as second class citizens and an underpaid underclass in the receiving country, or accept their fate as second class citizens and an underpaid underclass in the global economy. Whatever happens, i hope they don’t listen to the conservatives.

@ 201 Kidneystones, if you can provide those links, please do so.

@203 RP writes: “I prefer hypocrisy to formalized bad practices for as long as actual good practices aren’t available.” But formalized bad practices would actually give those legally here some more protection of the law, which they don’t presently have. So on whose behalf do you prefer hypocrisy?

Under Milanovich’s hypothetical, yes. In the real world, probably not.

Just in case Kidneystones’ assertion that “Australia … is a far more tolerant and welcoming place than in the past” has confused the issue, I would like to clarify. It does of course depend what you mean by “the past”, but I was specifically talking about the post Second World War period, in which there was considerable improvement from the racist immigration policies of the pre-war period, unfortunately followed by a backlash, particularly against refugees, from the late 1980s-early 1990s (which was also the period when neoliberalism began to be a powerful influence in Australian politics).

If anyone is interested in this, there is article http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-11/obrien-the-founding-father-of-australias-indefinite-mandat/3658804 which I think is good. It’s an opinion piece but it provides a good political overview in an easy to read form. I wouldn’t recommend Wikipedia on this, the entry is confusing and leaves out important historical information.

Val, Kidneystones is an obnoxious shithead. Amusing at times, though, seriously, I wouldnt worry about it.

Yes, I basically agree Ronan. As a fair process I’m prepared to have a discussion with him off-line, because I accept that it’s serious to say someone is acting a way that’s effectively sexist or discriminatory (rather than just generally being an arse-hole). My beef is, I don’t like all the patronising put downs I get here, I find them really unpleasant and kind of personally hurtful. More broadly, I think that kind of thing discourages women in general from taking part in these discussions, which is a great loss, especially given there are some really smart and thoughtful women who comment at times on CT. So I’m prepared to call it when I see it, but I won’t have long debates online if I can avoid it, because it’s not fair to other people on the thread, who want to talk about the OP.

@221
I’m happy to let this go now, but as a general principle I will still call it when I see commenters being particularly patronising or contemptuous to me or other women.

I’m not stupid and I can see the risk in what I’m doing – of creating an over-sensitised atmosphere in which people are scared to make robust comments to women for fear of being called sexist. But I think that risk is actually quite minor, and the potential benefit of creating a better atmosphere for women to take part in these discussions outweighs it.

Dipper @128

Both the statement that people are being denied a hearing because they are racist and the statement that people are being denied a hearing because they are ‘racist’ are false.

There are some people who are racist. There are also some instances of people who can’t fairly be characterised as racist nevertheless making racist statements. There are also some instances of people making statements which are inaccurately characterised by others as racist.

In such cases, other people sometimes respond (sometimes gently and sometimes harshly) that the statements in question are racist.

If somebody characterises a statement I make as racist, that person is not, by so doing, denying me a hearing. Being accused (fairly or unfairly) of making racist statements may be an unpleasant experience, but it is not a denial of a hearing. To respond to an unpleasant, inaccurate, or unfair accusation (or an accusation which you think is such) by complaining that the person who made the accusation is denying you a hearing is to utter a falsehood, one which obfuscates discussion of the substantive issues.

I’ve never read that Freeman piece so I shall give it a try.

…although I’ve just realised that like Milanovic’s piece on freedom of movement it’s pay-walled. Ain’t liberal capitalism wonderful?

My comment to ks was a bit much , so I apologise for it, although it’s not exactly rhetoric Engels or ks don’t use regularly . Anyway, mea culpa.
The problem with milanovichs idea, IMO, is there is absolutely no evidence, or even logical argument, for how this would work. How would making current discrimination official make western populations more amenable to immigration ? Why would there not still exist migrants outside a hypothetical western kafala system who still have even less rights than the new norm ? What would be the long term political and institutional consequences of such a plan? I’ve read the relevant chapter in his book (though not the whole thing so perhaps he expands on it somewhere else in it ) and he doesn’t deal with it’s practices implementation at all (iirc). It’s like an afterthought. Has anyone made this case above or linked to a detailed proposal ?

Or in other words, the burden of proif isn’t on those arguing against milanovich (as per Matt Colin)but on milanovich and those who agree with him

@ 229 I have no objection to your obscenity. In fact, I’m pleased to see you publicly degrade yourself with the venality, the vulgarity and the dull invective. The icing on the turd sandwich you fashioned for yourself is your predictable decision to chime in on the side of groundless charges of sexism. No surprise there, either.

But please refrain from implying I’m ever as dull or crude. To the best of my recollection I’ve yet to call anyone here worse than an idiot. I regularly employ ‘hypocritical, unthinking, dull, witless, stupid, dishonest, and others.’

Feel free to select for yourself any you find that fit. Oh, btw. Apology accepted.

Matt – thanks!

@226 Thanks very much (really) for affirming the obvious. I’ve no idea how lies, falsehoods, and smears foster healthy debate, but then I’m not Val, thank God. I very much fear I’ll end up enumerating several more of her more depressing flaws before she discovers the wit, or the grace, to apologize.

@234 I’m sincerely delighted to bring a smile when I can. In the reciprical spirit of good will permit me to state for the record that I usually find your comments well-grounded and insightful.

Economists have often said that domestic labor should be geographically mobile (and sectorially mobile), yet now they say that immigration may have to be rights-restricted. Both these positions in service of… What, exactly? Saving The System? I think this is just more “economism”, i.e. the re-engineering of life by economics. I think Milanovic is another intellectual victim of economism. It is social engineering, justified by an economic theory that is increasingly unrealistic.

My basic objection is to the standard economics idea that labor MUST be mobile to meet the needs of capitalism. Whether it’s domestic of international, I think that this is becoming useless and unjustifiable.

The idea is that if you can’t find a job, then it’s your own fault, and you should move to somewhere where there ARE jobs. “Voting with your feet,” in the execrable phrase of Ronald Reagan.

Labor mobility was “necessary” in early modern capitalism, when most output was of scarce physical objects, and the huge factories to produce them cheaply had to be situated somewhere, and so, the labor had to move to those areas. Along the way, neighborhoods were created and then destroyed, wildlife areas bulldozed, social capital obliterated, tax bases argued about, areas ghettoized.

And this logic was followed unquestioningly by people in the early factory system, after the millennia of moving to palmier places when your harvests went bad. Or else pillaging the neighbors.

Labor mobility was written into economic theory.

Now, immigration is a big problem — due to none other than economists’ same, standard prescription for conducting reality. Showing as little foresight as they showed before the financial crash.

Yet ALL of it is less and less necessary. We have moved into the age of the oversupply of everything that is necessary to life — goods, labor, capital. Shippable to wherever you live. And we are heading into the age where medical advances and artificial intelligence are going to create even MORE oversupply.

Yet economists refuse to notice — or else they hope that everything will go back to “normal” (whatever that is!) once the latest huge globalization-surge is assimilated into The System. Thus they keep dreaming of the eternal need for capitalism. Money is kept artificially scarce, to save the balance sheets of the biggest players and to keep the poor people toeing the line, in service to the diseased psychology of meritocracy that is also touted to be eternal.

We see that capitalism is becoming evermore guilty of “social engineering” — the same guilty charge that it used to level against communism.

Of course, economists themselves still hope to hop from place to place, in search of jobs, in search of tenure. Perhaps this causes them to think that labor mobility is a basic requirement for everybody else, to keep The System going?

Why don’t economists develop a holistic theory, instead of leading us down the primrose path into these monumental cock-ups?

Why should anybody be required to move, to have income to live? It’s illogical, it’s anti-ecological, it’s phony.

Dipper @236

Failure of the authorities to act is not the same thing as denying people a hearing. I’ve had experience myself of complaining to authorities without succeeding in getting those authorities to do what I thought they should do; it would be inaccurate to say in those cases that the authorities in question failed to give me a hearing.

You also write ‘people alleging wrong-doing were labelled as racist, and hence their allegations were denied any currency’, as if describing people as racist is automatically equivalent to denying currency to their allegations, when plainly it isn’t. There are plenty of examples of people who have been described as racist and whose views nevertheless have wide currency. Since you describe the particular cases you’re referring to as ‘well publicised’, obviously the allegations in those cases have received wide currency.

I understand that people who are described as racist, or who have their statements described as racist, often find it unpleasant, and I understand that those descriptions are sometimes applied inaccurately and unfairly. The same thing is true of many other descriptions. For example, people who are described as liars, or who have their statements described as lies, often find it unpleasant, and sometimes those descriptions are inaccurate and unfair. The fact that negative descriptions are sometimes applied inaccurately and unfairly is insufficient justification for a general rejection of the use of negative descriptions.

I also understand that when negative descriptions are applied to people or to their statements, it may sometimes have the effect of reducing the extent to which some other people are willing to listen to them. If somebody whose opinions I trust tells me that so-and-so is not worth paying attention to (because they’re liars, or because they’re racists, or for any other reason), I may largely or wholly stop paying attention to so-and-so — although that doesn’t mean everybody will do the same thing, because not everybody trusts the opinions of the same people whose opinions I trust. Once again, that’s not sufficient justification for rejecting all use of negative descriptions.

If you tell me that it’s wrong, for specific reasons, to describe a particular person as racist, you may have a case. But if you tell me that describing people as racists is wrong in general, you have no case.

If it’s not your position that describing people as racists is wrong in general, how is your position different?

oops. Still struggling with that href stuff.

Engels, thanks for @228. I hope CB responds.

@Dipper

I agree with what you are saying. In the West, I’ve noticed that much of the debate on immigration has been silenced with accusations of racism to the point where pro-immigration is practically the equivalent of non-racism. I think there is a connection between shaming the opposition into silence and the sudden, angry, emergence of the Trump phenomenon.

Again RP I am happy to let your response stand. No response from me.

@106.1: I trust you that your support for open borders is genuinely ethics-based. But how can one distinguish your arguments from the arguments a disingenuous lobbyist could use as window dressing to hide the real purpose — enriching the neoliberal elite?

From a first principles perspective, I agree with you. But from an evidence-based perspective, I have not seen data that indicate opening all borders would result in improved human welfare.

It’s possible that closed borders are unjust but are still the best available option. In-group/out-group distinctions present a divide and conquer opportunity for the 1%. Perhaps the human brain is so flawed that it makes poor whites in the US band together to attack Latino immigrants rather than uniting with them to fight the CEO who is the real problem. Open borders may decrease working-class solidarity, leading to inevitable economic exploitation of both immigrants and citizens by birth.

Additionally, open borders coupled with information asymmetry may transform a lower SES but otherwise not exploited Filipina woman into a lower SES and sexually exploited immigrant woman without the money to return home. Geographic dislocation may create a class of vulnerable people without traditional checks against exploitation.

@199: Good points.

Rnb, can you (or have you above?) Lay out how this system would work in practice ? How it would counteract the problems of (1) lack of enthusiasm for immigration among western publics (2) the poor treatment of immigrants. How would making second class citizenship official either end the phenomenon of illegal immigration or improve the migrants position.

“Engels, thanks for @228. I hope CB responds”

There’s nothing to respond to. The link didn’t make any sort of case for anything. It was a bit of boilerplate and a link to lance pritchetts book. Which might have the answer admittedly,.

The link didn’t make any sort of case for anything. It was a bit of boilerplate and a link to lance pritchetts book.

The central point that (from point of view which encompasses inhabitants of extreme poverty and not just those who ‘escape’ it) we need a ‘road out of hell’ is true and fundamental imo.

Fwiw my substantive objection to the OP is #155. Milanovic would probably want to distinguish between basic rights (which can not be abrogated on consequentialist grounds) and other citizenship rights (which can).

“But if you condition migration on full citizenship he is saying the flow of migration will be radically below what its potential would be. ”

But neither you or him have shown any evidence for this, afaict .

Jus soli already does not exist and has never existed in most of the world and here it still stands in the US, RP. You need to consult Milanovic’s data to get some idea of the leap in welfare that often comes from moving across a border to understand that many migrants would accept something less than full citizenship to enjoy it and that if more legal slots could be made available by formalizing legal standing below full citizenship (again this being the political price that citizens in the wealthy countries would impose, not what Milanovic thinks they have a moral right to impose), more migrants would likely come (perhaps to escape even more exploitative relations at home) and their welfare could increase dramatically. Ronan, just look at Milanovic’s data, and he is not promising that creating more legal slots below full citizenship would end illegal immigration.

I have the book and read the relevant chapter. I must have missed it. Can you give me a reference and I’ll look (please, no snark)

@260 Nope, I’m done for the day.

perhaps engels or someone else will do the work of putting Milanovic’s positions fairly

I’m clocking off too but nice try!

“I’m done for the day; perhaps engels or someone else will do the work of putting Milanovic’s positions fairly and finding the value of his empirical findings (independent of his proposals to deal with the problem) and actually reading more of his work than a short FT piece.”

?? Who is doubting his empirical work on measuring global inequality? People are objecting to this argument not the man’s career.

259 , I’m not sure what calculation youre talking about. I Assumed you meant he calculated potential inflows if you put restrictions x y and z in place. I have no idea how this could be done, but anyway it wasn’t. His argument for this position Is on the last 5 pages of chapter 3. I really can’t see any substantial difference to the FT article except it’s slightly longer. There is no “calculation “, data or model backing up his argument (afaict) . Much less a detailed proposal. His main reference (which is available online) is to a new republic article titled “A Radical Solution to Global Income Inequality: Make the U.S. More Like Qatar”. This is equally lacklustre. But, I’ll admit, I haven’t read a lot on this, so maybe this argument is known by experts , has been mapped out , modelled, estimated etc, and people’s reticence to say anything specific is because it’s taken as given the reader will know the research.
Again, no one is arguing against his “empirical work”, much less the economic gains to be achieved through greater immigration.
I’ll leave it there though, as I’m posting too much .

RNB: “But if you condition migration on full citizenship he is saying the flow of migration will be radically below what its potential would be.”

Yet no one conditions migration on full citizenship. Most states which accept immigrants present an escalating status beginning with some form of temporary and restricted residency, leading to some form of permanent and largely unconditional residency, leading eventually to the option of citizenship. It is the idea of some form of temporary and restricted residency in perpetuity which is objectionable.

About 25 years ago, the US granted amnesty and a path to citizenship to millions of undocumented, Mexican, agricultural workers under the argument that they were being exploited because they were undocumented and, once duly documented, their lot would improve. What happened was that, once documented, agricultural workers left en masse for L.A. and other urban areas and a new wave of undocumented Mexican campesinos took their place. Plus, there was a lot of corruption. Anybody could buy papers stating that they had worked in the fields. So the exploitative labor conditions in American agriculture and its dependence on semi-literate foreign peasants did not change at all.

So there is also the law of unintended consequences at work here in these bureaucratic schemes of how to regulate immigration.

@275 Your blanket absolutes render your judgment on both statements false using your own questionable metrics.

The use of the term racist varies a great deal according to setting and audience. During the 19th century, particularly, the term race was employed broadly by a great many ‘academics’ and social scientists. The term ‘racist’ today carries a career-killing value that is radically different than its use during much of the 20th century in the west. To imply, otherwise, as you do, is anti-historical, clumsy, imprecise, and counterproductive. So, rather make your own case you end up making a very good argument against using the term racist.

The very real penalties society exacts against those in academia, business, the arts, and virtually all arenas in modern western society are so numerous, easy to identify and enumerate, and punitive as to shift the burden of proof very much onto those who choose to employ the term, especially against specific individuals in real-life terms. Consider your own place of employment. Can any career survive censure, or even complaints, over the use of racist language, or the charge that promotions, etc. are made on the basis of race? No. And this is particularly true in liberal settings where hyper-sensitivity on questions of race and gender are the norm.

You can do better.

Lupita @246

I am struggling to understand what you mean when you write ‘I would like to see rich countries adopt immigration policies that take into consideration externalities.’

If I have misunderstood I hope you will correct me, but I am guessing, on the basis of your earlier comments, that the kind of externalities you are talking about are the damage that can be done to communities when people leave them — the examples you gave earlier were specifically of damage done to communities in Mexico by the departure of migrants to the US.

If I’ve understood correctly that far, I’m not sure what policies in rich countries would take account of those externalities. I suppose if rich countries banned all immigration from poor countries it would prevent damage to communities in poor countries as a result of migration from poor countries to rich countries, but I don’t want to conclude that this is your proposal without something more explicit from you on the subject. I can’t think of a way that rich countries could practically operate a system where permission to immigrate is conditional on an assessment of damage to the source country resulting from the emigrant’s departure, and I can’t think what other kind of policy you might have in mind.

On the other end of the question, you write that in ‘poor countries, there are policies … that … push whole classes of people towards emigration as a short term solution instead of addressing issues of poverty, inequality, and justice’, and if this is so I can understand that you want those policies revoked, but I have no knowledge of the policies you’re referring to.

kidneystones @276

I observed earlier that some people are racist. I am not sure whether you acknowledge this fact. There will obviously be a significant difference between the position of somebody who holds that all allegations that a person is racist must be false there are no people who are racist, and the position of somebody who holds that some people are racist and that therefore it is possible for some allegations that a person is racist to be true.

If it is accepted that it is possible for some allegations that a person is racist to be true, then it follows that there is a difference between the possibility of people losing their jobs as a result of false allegations of racism and the possibility of people losing their jobs as a result of true allegations of racism. There is a difference between saying that there are particular cases where people have unfairly lost their jobs because they were falsely accused of racism and saying that nobody should ever lose their job for racism. This is a particular example of the more general principle that there is a difference between saying that there are particular cases where people have unfairly lost their jobs because they were falsely accused of X and saying that nobody should ever lose their job for X.

If somebody is accused of X, and X is grounds for loss of employment, then the burden is on the accuser to prove the allegation before the accused is dismissed; but this is not the same as saying that nobody should ever accuse anybody of X, or that accusations of X should generally be regarded as wrong.

I am particularly struck by the confidence with which you assert what must (as you suppose) be true of my own place of employment when not only have I provided no information that would identify my place of employment, I have not even provided any information that would confirm that I am employed. I would like to think that you can do better.

JD Thanks for this. You are quite correct. I’m asserting a norm and I am asserting that this this norm is so pervasive that it applies in your place of employment despite lacking the most basic information about your conditions of employment.

You will now either refuse to continue on this topic or confirm that being identified as “racist” in your daily work has no bearing on your career, or that the charge of racism carries the consequences I assert. Your place of employment may well allow/encourage racist behavior. In most western countries, however, racist behavior by employees exposes institutions to severe penalties both in real terms and in the marketplace. Or, are you living in a nation where charges of racism have no consequences?

Such places do exist I know.

This conversation made me think of this hilarious article by Sady Doyle, where she quotes the (research based) figure at which men think women make up half the crowd (17%) and the figure at which they’ve taken over (33%)

http://inthesetimes.com/article/16157/our_feminized_society

I wonder if similar perceptions apply to people of colour?

kidneystones @283

You write that ‘racist behavior by employees exposes institutions to severe penalties’.

Is it your position that racist behaviour should not expose people to penalties? if not, how is your position different from that?

Being accused of things that aren’t a part of your self-image is kind of distressing.

But noone’s self-image includes an awareness of their bigotries. That’s not how bigotries work.

Hi JD, Thanks for this. I’d normally prefer you respond to my questions, rather than simply pose your own, but in this case the answer is fairly easy. People are free to hold any view they like.

Contracts of employment, however, have conditions. Violating a contract carries consequences. I worked alongside a ‘former’ member of the Nation of Islam who confessed to holding some extremely racist views in his youth. I see no reason why he should be punished for his private views, present or past. He brought a lot to the job even if he wasn’t universally liked. Religious prejudices/beliefs can also complicate relations.

I’m from Canada and we tend to have an extremely liberal view of free speech. I’m not personally interested in eradicating any set of beliefs other than fear and intolerance. These coupled with economic insecurity, real and imagined, allow frightened people to regard those outside their group as a threat. The notion of race or racialism was a respected part of social science throughout the 19th century as you likely know. Generalizing behaviors and abilities on the basis of melanin, gene groups, etc seems a most unsound practice. Punishable by law? No. Grounds for dismissal? Yes.

So, that puts me firmly on the side of churches do not sanction gay marriage, for example. Excluding people entering businesses and public places on the basis of color/gender etc. should be punishable by law. Private schools that segregate on the basis of gender, or religion are fine by me. Sorry for the longish reply.

Perhaps you’ll now reply.

kidneystones

I too am ready to drop the subject of our exchange if it’s clear that it’s too much of a derail, but in the meantime, since you’ve observed that I did not respond to a direct question posed you, I will now do that (and nothing else).

The question was whether I live in a nation where charges of racism have no consequences.

My response is that the validity (or otherwise) of the position I have taken is independent of which nation I personally happen to live in.

> Private schools that segregate on the basis of gender, or religion are fine by me.

Sure, as long as they don’t use the state courts or police — no contract or trespass actions — to enforce that segregation.

Private property is an exercise of state power — it arises as a result of a state grant of an authority to exclude and is thus delegated state power — and so can’t exceed the limits placed on that polity’s government by that polity’s constitutional framework.

Why should we maximize this kind of migration?

Because it’s what people would themselves choose over the alternative of staying out, and because it would reduce the massive economic inequalities which result from where people are born, which are unjust

“I just find the Kantian fundamentalism on display here odd”

Good thing you don’t write abusively. Who cares whether you find it odd, or whether you think it’s Kantian fundamentalism? Is there an argument that you have that doesn’t come down to the same old “lots of people want higher income, and who are we to decline to let them agree to sign away their citizenship if they want that”? Is there an argument that you actually endorse, rather than restating bits of things that you don’t endorse but that you think for some strange reason we haven’t already considered even though they are said every time this comes up?

“Just by being born in the US rather than in Congo, a person would multiply her income by 93 times…The real hour wage gap between rich [NYC and London] and poor [Beijing, Lagos, Delhi] cities in 11 to 1 for the construction worker, 6 to 1 for the skilled worer, and 3 to 1 for the engineer”. (Milanovic in the third chapter of his new book)

With such income gaps–note CB does not mention Milanovic’s estimates of the citizenship premium– I find unpersuasive CB’s attempts to minimize the welfare improvements migrants would enjoy even were they to enjoy something less than full citizenship.

Second, greater migration even with the kinds of limited citizenship that wealthy citizens would impose as a price is likely not to be the source of extracting concessions such as forcible organ donation but to relieve people of the poverty that would lead them to deform themselves in this way (@299 gets it wrong) Moreover, Milanovic never recommends or even considers sacrifices from immigrants that would reduce their basic health and bodily integrity without which they could not carry out their life projects; rather he is looking for ways to strengthen these basic meta-capabilities.

Third, Milanovic can both oppose Qatar’s treatment of migrant labor as he does and still realize that in some ways such treatment to the extent that it overcomes unwillingness to tolerate migration may still do more to improve human welfare than does the indifference of many wealthy countries which have set themselves up as a Fortress. This is more about undermining a smug sense of Western humanitarian superiority than recommending slave-like conditions for migrants.

That is, those in wealthy countries (and there are many here) who say they sadly oppose greater migration due to a political inability to give migrants the same set of formal rights as citizens should understand the huge welfare losses they are imposing on the world’s poor.

This is why Bertram has to argue that migration under limited citizenship would not bring as great welfare benefits as Milanovic is saying that it would and many migrants believe it would.

“This is why Bertram has to argue that migration under limited citizenship would not bring as great welfare benefits as Milanovic is saying that it would and many migrants believe it would.”

No, again you’re ignoring the fact that milanovich (and you) have to make this argument.
CB also knows

“With such income gaps–note CB does not mention Milanovic’s estimates of the citizenship premium”

And has written about it in the past (and supports, afaik, open borders because of this.)

You continually refuse to make an argument about how milanovichs proposal would actually work. Your argument is entirely a declaration to (milanovichs) authority.

And Everyone here knows who milanovich is and his work on global inequality. This is irrelevant to this proposal he’s putting forward

Again Ronan I have clarified what I wanted to say. You have made objections (why would welfare improve with greater migration even with limited citizenship? what is Milanovic actually proposing? why not have open borders instead?) that I think are clearly answered in the chapter that you have read. So I’ll leave it at that.

p. 152

Here’s the main point from page 151 going on to 152

“By extension, less harsh and yet still discriminatory treatment of migrants in the rich countries could have even more beneficial global effects. But to take that step, one would have to accept what seems like a huge shift in policy: discriminatory treatment of migrants in the recipient countries, and de jure introduction of two or three levels of “citizenship” rights, at least for a while. Currently, citizenship is in theory often viewed as a binary variable: one is either in or out. If one is “in,” all rights (and duties) follow. But this is already not exactly true; there are gray areas. In the United States and a number of EU countries, legal residents cannot vote, but they pay taxes. The balance between rights and duties is less favorable for them than for citizens. Still, many of them do not object, and they stay in their new countries even though they remain noncitizens. One could go further and create new types of residents for whom the balance of rights and duties would be even less favorable—if doing so were the price one needed to pay for increased migration. There are many schemes whereby this could be done.
Since migrants are, almost by definition, the greatest beneficiaries of migration, and it is conceivable and even probable that because of migration the incomes of some classes of individuals might go down in both the sending and the recipient countries, migrants might be required to pay higher taxes (Freeman 2006). Proceeds could be used to help those who have lost out from migration. Migrants might be assessed taxes to recoup the cost of their education incurred by the sending countries (with taxes remitted to the sending countries). Or they might be required to spend, at regular intervals and until a certain age, a given number of years working in their countries of origin (Milanovic 2005). Another alternative might be to allow many more temporary workers, a practice followed by Switzerland (Pritchett 2006). The most radical view is advocated by Posner and Weyl (2014), who argue that allowing in migrants who then face discrimination, both at the workplace and in terms of civic rights, as in Qatar, does more to benefit the poor people in the world than do the exclusionary policies of rich countries, which are justified by the countries’ inability to give the same set of formal rights to all would-be migrants. There is a sharp trade-off, in Posner and Weyl’s view, between openness and civic rights: a more open migration policy requires withholding some civic rights. We can debate the sharpness of the trade-off, but we cannot deny its existence”

The posner article is available online and mentioned above. It also provides no evidence for its claim.

engels: “Okay, I give up. Have fun guys!”

You should recognize that when people out of the blue talk about how annoyingly you write, this is why. You haven’t actually argued at all. You’ve brought up possible arguments that you don’t endorse — as long as those arguments fit within two sentences — and whenever people do write what they think, you’re all “OK I’m bailing.” But that hasn’t stopped you from characterizing other people’s arguments in all sorts of insulting ways, which I guess that we are supposed to recognize as inherently true because they are true in your mind. Do you really think that anyone here thinks of their argument as “Kantian fundamentalism”, or that you’re really representing that argument non-sarcastically?

Are you ever going to defend what you actually think rather than incredulously bail?

@J-D

Back to immigration policies in rich countries and externalities. As you know, during the colonial era, imperial powers enacted policies that were detrimental to the colonies yet benefited the power, that is, colonial powers did not take into consideration negative externalities and greatly exaggerated positive ones such as bringing civilization, institutions, Christianity, etc. That same predatory system exists today, it is called neoliberalism, and one of its imaginary positive externalities is solving world poverty and inequality by hiring foreign maids and taking away their passports.

Specifically, in the 70s, US banks found themselves with a glut of petrodollars and, with no regard to externalities, started lending massive amounts at very low interest rates to poor countries with corrupt right-wing, governments, otherwise known as allies. Of course, the result was that interest rates suddenly were raised, leaving poor countries with massive debts and nothing to show for the initial loans except some useless, pharaohnic monuments, less social spending, and a wave of emigration.

Then came the free trade agreements. In Mexico, NAFTA coupled with agricultural subsidies in the US and no regard for externalities, created another wave of emigration which fit quite nicely into an exploitative agro-industrial model.

I can’t think of a way that rich countries could practically operate a system where permission to immigrate is conditional on an assessment of damage to the source country resulting from the emigrant’s departure

Simply stop supporting corrupt, foreign elites with usurious loans and free trade agreements that weaken labor and social rights and that cause poverty and mass emigration in the first place. Stop the arms deals, money laundering, military invasions and bombings. Let Pax Americana die. The non-West will do the rest. Just don’t get in the way.

So after a quick glances the Swiss guest worker system (1) it seems to have always been contested, immigrant groups and their governments lobbied the Swiss for expansions (family reunification etc) (2) the top 6 largest migrant groups are still European. Could it be maintained if they were, instead, not? In fact , going by this, It seems as European migration became easier in the 99/00s, non European immigration became more restricted.

Since I’m here:

By the same logic one may want to maximize commercial organ trafficking.

Yes, that’s correct. The point I’m making is that there is a Paretian logic which points towards legislation and deontological logic which points towards proscription. Balancing them in each case is the tricky part (I imagine you’d get a different answer depending on whether you were discussing organ markets, sex work, pay-day loans, gastarbeiten, etc) Pretending there isn’t a dilemma is what I consider ‘fundamentalist’.

engels: “Rich, please go out and get drunk.”

So you’re patronizing too. Let’s leave that aside and see what you actually say about this — there’s a “Paretian logic which points towards legislation and deontological logic which points towards proscription. Balancing them in each case is the tricky part […] Pretending there isn’t a dilemma is what I consider ‘fundamentalist’.”

No one said that there isn’t a dilemma in some cases. I wrote otherwise upthread, but then wrote that it depended on the case. In the case of torture, no amount of economic benefits would convince me that it was a good idea. This isn’t called being a “fundamentalist” about torture unless you’re engels. Similarly, in the U.S. within living memory we just emerged from a de facto and de jure system of official second-class citizenship. No amount of sketchily imagined economic benefits is going to convince me that it’s a good idea to reinstate one, so why should I pretend to consult the economic charts?

So you’ve insisted that in some nebulous sense this wasn’t about what the OP said that it was — the sacrifice of rights on the altar of income improvement. But when it comes down to what you actually mean, you write that unless people are willing to consider sacrificing rights on the altar of income improvement, they’re fundamentalists. They have to at least consider the economic case or they’re … what? Just wrong? Unthinking? It comes down to what your arguments always come down to: you simply think that you’re right to such a highly internalized degree that you can’t even argue in favor of it, and you think that merely stating it is enough.

That is why your comments manage to be both uninteresting and insulting at the same time, and also I suppose why you can never understand why they are.

@322 Milanovic estimates that abt 15% of the population wants to migrate but only 3% does. Say then 12% of the pop moves from a poor country to a wealthy one and the income of migrants rises say 10x. Match that with any other development program.

RP writes: “Similarly, in the U.S. within living memory we just emerged from a de facto and de jure system of official second-class citizenship. No amount of sketchily imagined economic benefits is going to convince me that it’s a good idea to reinstate one, so why should I pretend to consult the economic charts?”
The benefits are not sketchy or sketchily imagined–painstaking economic work has gone into estimating them; and we already have millions of migrants here legally without full citizenship–so are are you proposing to expel them to make sure no one here does not have full citizenship?

@324 As noted above I think the best treatment of how Pareto improvements can lead to a Pareto inferior outcome is in Kaushik Basu’s Beyond the Invisible Hand. I briefly noted the argument here two weeks ago and again on this thread.

Thanks, RNB. I am working on prisoner’s dilemma games — particularly within a collective bargaining context — so that citation is very helpful. The Poston discussion is nice, too. There is a pdf copy available online:

https://www.southalabama.edu/philosophy/poston/Documents/Socialevil.pdf

In his last book Milanovic gives data that China’s average income rose to around $9000 PPP from say $2000PPP; China alone grew at this rate. The rest of world did not, and more than this kind of jump in income would result without 25 years of intervening growth from migration.

Don’t vote in national elections–we fought for close to two centuries to win this right for every American. RP would have to expel those permanent residents, given that he has said full citizenship or bust. By the way, slavery is not analogous to extra taxes on migrants to compensate for losses in the native and host country or a visa for a set number of years or a requirement that they also work in their home country for some many years. But say that workers in a guest worker program are virtually enslaved. The solution would not be to ban worker guest programs if this is the only way to increase immigration, given political constraints. The solution would be to use the relevant government agencies to make sure workers are not subjected to wage theft, forced overtime and sexual harassment.

I have a lot of people to respond to here without help, RP. You will excuse me if I do not think I have to respond to your arguments to advance mine.

Lupita @315

‘Simply stop supporting corrupt, foreign elites with usurious loans and free trade agreements that weaken labor and social rights and that cause poverty and mass emigration in the first place. Stop the arms deals, money laundering, military invasions and bombings.’

In general, those are proposals that I endorse. But they aren’t proposals for immigration policy, and I don’t understand how they’re relevant to a discussion of immigration policy.

J-D,

You’re saying that severe restrictions on immigration do not invalidate anti-immigrant sentiment (??seriously??) and that letting people in who would otherwise would be barred would actually strengthen anti-immigrant sentiment if these migrants were not accepted as full or near full citizens and that this strengthening of anti-immigrant sentiment by letting in more immigrants (!!!) is so terrible that it’s not worth the 10x increase in income that migrants may enjoy.
Well I am glad that you’re so down for the fight against anti-immigrant sentiment!

@J-D

In general, those are proposals that I endorse. But they aren’t proposals for immigration policy, and I don’t understand how they’re relevant to a discussion of immigration policy.

If you endorse my proposals, then you are endorsing the end of the current global neoliberal system, with its mass migrations and concentration of wealth. Focus on the system and there will be no mass migration to devise immigration policies for.

“the truth is that I find it boring to address arguments that I find so poor.”

Oh good Lord

No US already at close to 15% of population foreign born, I think he is saying. Not checking now. The movement would probably be more to other wealthy countries. Obviously he does not think we would any time soon get to 15% of global population migrating from poor to wealthy countries; that number indicates % that would want to move perhaps from a poor country to a wealthy one or how much pent up demand there is for migration.

Not to add anything new but to correct my own typo or a spellcheck mistake…@337 was supposed to read.
J-D,

You’re saying that severe restrictions on immigration do not INDICATE anti-immigrant sentiment (??seriously??) and that letting people in who would otherwise… be barred would actually strengthen anti-immigrant sentiment if these migrants were not accepted as full or near full citizens and that this strengthening of anti-immigrant sentiment by letting in more immigrants (!!!) is so terrible that it’s not worth the 10x increase in income that migrants may enjoy.
Well I am glad that you’re so down for the fight against anti-immigrant sentiment!

Lupita: “If it were true that immigrants would be earning ten times what they can earn in their countries […]”

I was wondering when someone was going to comment on the 12% x10 income thing. I didn’t want to because I figured that it was RNB’s mistake, not Milanovic’s. But let’s not have anyone suggest that we’re being asked to create a whole new legal category of second-class citizens because of sketchy economic estimates. Maybe 12% of the people from less developed nations will all get jobs as computer programmers or something.

Congrats to Lupita for actually looking up the minimum wages, though.

As long as the rich countries promote free trade, instead of distributing productive capacity (Mercantalism – so that each can look after then own), aside from promoting unnecessary and brutal wars, there will be a flow of migrants beyond what is “normal” for whose with wanderlust.
Free trade seemed like a good idea, until the third world caught up in technological capability, and liberalisation allowed corporations to dislocate production, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
The 1% are fine, and all is as it should be.
Time to take stock and stop this silliness because there are international obligations regarding refugees and asylum seekers!
A good rule of thumb is don’t allow America to crap on your doorstep. From Kitschko to Asad, Europe shows itself to be a colony!

I go further and agree with Lupita that if you’re looking for ways to benefit poor people, immigration policy is the wrong area in which to focus your attention

Sorry, but this is fucking nuts

Why do ask me questions if you obviously think I’m a liar?

I am sorry for being rude but I can’t think of another way of honestly expressing my reaction to someone who thinks ‘if you’re looking for ways to benefit poor people, immigration policy is the wrong area in which to focus your attention’ (and who I assume has been at least occasionally watching the news coming out of Europe).

“If I’m continually encountering people in public trying to speak Spanish to store clerks, and keep getting “Press 1 for English” on the phone, in an English speaking country, hundreds of miles from the border..”

My god. The US allows foreigners in??? Brett, how’s your French? Because Paris is going to be a real struggle if the French take your line.

Chris, I agree ‘Kantian fundamentalism’ is an over-statement. It was polemical shorthand in the service I had already made somewhat more carefully above and which I felt had been ignored. At least in my case I experience these issues as a conflict between Kantian-type intutions about acceptable treatment of others, which pull in one direction, and economistic-type intuitions about consensual bargains which benefit aggregate welfare, which pull in another. It wasn’t intended to prejudge who is right but state my feeling that you and others weren’t giving the economistic side its due weight.

I agree it’s impermissible to violate fundamental rights for consequentialist reasons but (since I’m not a ‘fundamentalist’) I think there are weaker rights which it can be permissible to violate. I’d assumed BM would claim the rights he was allowing to be traded away were in the latter category so, pace your characterisation, he would not see himself as ‘ treat[ing] some people on our territory unjustly’. But I could well be wrong as I only read this in the paper FT which I can’t access now.

Rich, seriously, take a long walk off a short pier…

I find it very strange that this even has to be pointed out – to me it is self-evident.

That might be because it is indeed self-evident and therefore doesn’t need pointing out (ie. almost everyone agrees with you that there are some inalienable rights but they may disagree about precisely which rights those are)

engels @353

I don’t think that you’re a liar and I didn’t write that you’re a liar.

I frequently encounter people saying or writing ‘Sorry’ when they’re obviously not sorry. It’s obviously a common practice. I don’t think all the people who engage it in are liars. If If I watch a period drama on stage or screen and a servant at the door gives callers the ritual response that the master and mistress are ‘not at home’ when I know they are, I don’t conclude that the servant is a liar or even that the master and mistress are liars. But to me it’s a legitimate question to ask why the servant says that the master and mistress are not at home when they are — although I no longer have to ask this question because I’m now familiar with the answer.

I’m not thoroughly familiar with why people say ‘Sorry’ when they aren’t, and that’s why I ask the question.

If you feel that writing ‘this is fucking nuts’ is ruder than you want to be, you might find it less discourteous to write something like ‘this is ridiculous/ludicrous/risible’, although you might find it even less discourteous to give some explanation of why you think so.

Brett Bellmore @354

I did not use the word ‘bigot’ as a reflex; I used it after consideration as the word most likely to convey my intended meaning.

If you regularly observe, in an English-speaking country, people trying to speak Spanish with shop assistants, it’s an indicator of the presence of a substantial number of people with limited English (or possibly none). But ‘a substantial number’ is not synonymous with ‘too many’. The presence of people trying to communicate with shop assistants in Spanish neither picks your pocket nor breaks your leg.

Also, if they are in the country illegally, their presence conveys no information about the appropriateness of the quotas set for legal immigration (the issue I was discussing in the comment you were responding to) since, by definition, they are in the country despite those quotas, not because of them.

engels @366

When people are unaware of the availability of an alternative form of expression which is less discourteous, and then are made aware of it, they may genuinely be sorry for previous unintended rudeness (and grateful for being enlightened): ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was considered rude to use the word “Scotch” to refer to people, I’ll be sure to use “Scottish” or “Scots” from now on, thank you for telling me about this’.

But when people aware of the availability of a less discourteous form of expression intentionally make the choice to use a more discourteous form of expression, they’re obviously not sorry for the rudeness. Yet they sometimes still say that they are. This phenomenon interests me.

Me neither.

engels @353 and Rich Puchalsky @357

‘What should rich countries do to help poor people?’ and ‘How should European countries deal with the large numbers of people currently trying to enter?’ are two different questions — obviously the second is more specific than the first. People who are trying to answer the second question obviously have to think about immigration policy, but that doesn’t mean that people who are trying to answer the first question are well advised to think about immigration policy.

That might be because it is indeed self-evident and therefore doesn’t need pointing out

Well let me quote CB:

What is being contemplated by BM is that we decide to treat some people on our territory unjustly (denying them rights to which they are morally entitled) and also forseeably expose them to all kinds of domination and injustice at the hands of others (mainly employers) for the sake of an aggregate global welfare gain.

CB clearly and rightly felt the need to point this out and I was astonished he had to.

If you think treating people unjustly is OK please feel free to elaborate, meanwhile I’ll just hold on to my naive Kantian Fundamentalist position that it is wrong to do so.

“Sorry, but this is fucking nuts” is short for “I’m sorry. But I find this line of reasoning [fucking] incomprehensible/ [nuts].

Much of this discussion has been illuminating and worthwhile, but not this part.

What about just plain merkan H-1B?

Good question

> I think it’s probably best if we agree to disagree

What’s “best” is if you stopped being an arsehole, or failing that just shut the fuck up a bit more often. “Agree to disagree” is pretty far down on the optimality list, unless your sole metric is “doesn’t challenge engel’s ego” or something.

To clarify: I like him too, but have the impression most don’t, so I’m not so surprised people use him as a pejorative or respond to his name like an expletive.

I took your comment to imply you agreed that insisting on inviolable rights isn’t tantamount to Kantianism. Is that not so? (I suppose the disagreement could be about the about “fundamentalist” modifier–but I don’t see how Kant’s view about categorical duties admits of degrees, so it seems an empty qualifier.)

“What about just plain merkan H-1B? Very common. Non-immigrant visa, allowing to work for a limited number of years, and only for a given employer.”

No, not really. Another employer can hire the H-1B holder by agreeing to similarly sponsor the visa. H-1B holders also routinely become green card holders (permanent residents), who then routinely become naturalized citizens. It is not a perpetual state of second class citizenship, wherein one’s rights are substantially infringed forever, or up to some determined point at which one is ejected from the host country.

Rich @385: “What I object to about ‘Kantian fundamentalism’ is the clear implication that unless you think like an economist does, you aren’t thinking.”

Okay, I think I get it. You took “fundamentalist” as a description of one’s (lack of) reasons for being a Kantian, rather than as a description of the content qua Kantian. I see why that would be objectionable, and I suppose that is how many use that word.

But I do wonder why that narrow usage must be the norm. There’s a perfectly descriptive–and I think rather admirable–sense in which a fundamentalist is simply someone who holds some fundamental ethical beliefs and commitments strictly even when they counter other reasonable interests. More simply: someone who is morally consistent.

“Bad” fundamentalists aren’t bad because they’re fundamentalists, but because they hold bad ethical beliefs consistently. Just as utilitarians are just Kantian deontologists with an absolutely narrow set of categorical duties, “anti-fundamentalists” are just fundamentalists about a different narrow set of fundamental values, usually value pluralism or rights.

Doubtless impossible to stop the spiral of misunderstandings, but I explained what I meant I meant by ‘Kantian fundamentalism’ twice above.

Ime most people hold a moral theory which allows room for consequentialist and deontological reasons, each of which kind may over-ride the other given sufficient weight (see Nagel ‘War and Massacre’ for some elaboration). ‘Kantian fundamentalist’ was intended as a mildy pejorative term for the view that (an expansive set of) deontological reasons have absolute priority. And I didn’t intend to dismiss it – I think it has many formidable defenders – but in my experience it is not commonly accepted.

Transferring labor income from labor to the rich, in rich countries, might not be as globally welfare enhancing as people think.

389, good. Now you’re using words like “could” and “may” and “if”, and acknowledging it’s a content free hypothetical. This is at least a step up from claiming there exists a specific policy proposal and evaluation, and it is an empirically supported trade off.
Now all you and BM have to do is make an argument with content, specific ideas, realistic evaluations etc. Show how this thought experiment has any real world validity.

engels: “‘Kantian fundamentalist’ was intended as a mildy pejorative term for the view that (an expansive set of) deontological reasons have absolute priority.”

Everyone understood that it was pejorative (except possibly for anon, who apparently thinks that holding unwavering attachment to certain beliefs doesn’t have the connotations of unthinkingness that everyone else associates with it). But the problem wasn’t only that it was an obvious slam, the problem was also that you got it wrong. As I wrote the first time, there’s nothing necessarily deontological about it. One may have simply decided for pragmatic reasons that something is a generally bad idea and that it’s not worth your time to keep reevaluating it whenever someone claims it’s a good idea. Torture and official second-class citizenship are two examples of ideas that people for some reason keep trying to get others to reevaluate as good, and life’s too short to painstakingly follow whatever twisted reasoning they have this time.

Why don’t you go off and write some more poetry?

> Rich, I’ve got no interest in arguing with you as I’ve said about half dozen times now.

Rich isn’t actually asking you any questions, you know.

Check. Read carefully. He’s making statements in response you’ve made, but he’s not, even implicitly, asking questions or making statements that particularly invite answers.

He’s not arguing with you. He’s disagreeing and expressing his disagreement — something that I’d hope we’d both agree is something he’s allowed to do — but he’s not arguing with you.

[unless it’s your opinion that your expressed position that Rich not argue with you thereby makes it wrong for Rich to say anything except that which you agree with in substance and implication. But noone would think that, right?]

But you see all disagreement that way, engels.

Here, a quick test: write a sentence a person could write that expresses their disagreement with you in a way you feel comfortable with, that you don’t perceive as abusive. Take Rich’s as a starting point, or start from scratch, and write what you think people should write when they disagree with you. Just a couple of sentences should do it.

Ze K @386

It may be the case that ‘”Human rights” is a joke that the most bloodthirsty and repressive societies in the world repeat loudly and endlessly, in a hope to drown out the screams of their victims…’, but even if that happens to be true it does not follow that human rights are a joke that the most bloodthirsty and repressive societies in the world repeat loudly and endlessly, in a hope to drown out the screams of their victims.

Brett Bellmore,

“Both Sanders and Trump are signs that the explosion isn’t far off. And the US isn’t alone in this. I don’t expect the explosion to be pretty.”

I think governments around the world are struggling with a lot of similar policy issues at the moment. The neoliberal consensus from the 80s to the 2000s isn’t really working to address environmental issues, the environmental issues are tied in with economic issues, and many economies haven’t recovered from the GFC. I think migration is probably another connected issue, since having so much immigration really shows that there are fundamental economic problems causing high levels of migration. And as well as general migration there is a refugee crisis. All these issues need the development of new policy, and they are global issues so countries are going to have to work on policy together diplomatically to achieve good outcomes.

We had a migration debate here in Australia in the Liberal Howard Government era, this got pretty ugly and I think it would have been very hard for migrants. The main politician was Paline Hanson who is maybe a bit like Donald Trump except not rich or on a reality tv show, but she’s outside of the political establishment similarly. It really was very ugly for a while. One of her speech writers lived in one of the small towns around here, even though he wrote her speeches he was pleasant and generous in person, I never heard him make racist speeches in person the times I encountered him, and his wife was from Asia (Paline Hanson said things like she was worried about Australia being swamped by Asians) but maybe he married her later on after working for Pauline Hanson. Now Australian fear of migration is mostly concentrated on refugees, who the policies treat very badly, we have worse refugee policy than America I think since the refugees are detained off shore in Nauru and Papua New Guinea, the government makes the Navy turn refugee boats back to Indonesia, and the government excised the entire Australian mainland from our migration zone somehow so I don’t know how people migrate when we have no migration zone, maybe they left in specifically the migration department in Canberra or something as the migration zone.

I think Donald Trump is worse than Pauline Hanson since although he is a political outsider as well, he is very rich and was a reality show star so he has a lot more power than Pauline Hanson who the mainstream political parties sort of tried to contain or appropriate when it suited them. But the migration debate did get very ugly, and there are still upsurges here and there like about the development of Mosques.

I think it would be difficult to be a migrant during these debates, as you would start feeling like you were unwelcome even if you were a legal migrant.

Brett Bellmore @405

When persistent majority preferences are not reflected in government policy, I don’t think of that as an example of a democratic system not working, I think of that as an example of a system being imperfectly democratic (or, in some cases, obviously, just not a democracy). Every system I have ever heard of has been at best imperfectly democratic, although obviously some fall further short of democracy than others. As a democrat, I consider the general remedy for the failings of democracy to be more democracy.

I am not persuaded by your prediction of a coming explosion. Nothing lasts forever: no democratic system, and also no undemocratic system. However, I don’t observe in history that when a system fails to be democratic, or when government policies fail to reflect persistent majority preferences, it’s an indicator that an explosion is coming.

Also, when people make predictions in metaphorical terms which they can’t translate into more literal terms, I have found it a good rule to discount them.

@411

Imperfectly is putting it rather mildly:
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

“We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues. Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.”

engels @414

‘What should rich countries do to help poor people?’ and ‘How should European countries deal with the large numbers of people currently trying to enter?’ are two different questions — obviously the second is more specific than the first. People who are trying to answer the second question obviously have to think about immigration policy, but that doesn’t mean that people who are trying to answer the first question are well advised to think about immigration policy.