Immigration
By Andrew Medworth @ 11:00 | Filed under: Philosophy, PoliticsI am in favour of open immigration into the United Kingdom, for reasons ably laid out by Harry Binswanger in this excellent essay.
I hold this position because it is the only one consistent with the principle of individual rights: for example, if the owner of a British house is able to strike a voluntary rental or purchase agreement with a foreigner, no-one may properly use force to prevent them from entering into that agreement.
Any other stance would concede the vicious collectivist notion that the “natives” currently living here somehow “own” the country and have the right to dictate who may or may not enter “their” land; such a view is the embodiment of everything I oppose, politically. It is no coincidence that many politicians who campaign in opposition to immigration are the worst kind of unprincipled, opportunistic, rabble-rousing populists: it takes a special kind of dishonesty to claim that immigrants are lazy good-for-nothings who come to sponge off our welfare system while systematically targetting people who employ them.
Young middle-class urban professionals like myself are in an interesting position today. We went to university with many foreign students, and we work alongside many foreign colleagues. The old cliches (”why, many of my best friends are foreign…”) are rapidly becoming out-of-date: speaking for myself, a significant majority of my friends were not born in this country. I am part of a small monolingual minority among my close acquaintances.
Without immigration, many of my most rewarding relationships would not exist: I would not have been exposed to the world’s varied interesting cultures, many of which (particularly in Asia and North America) are increasingly more attractive to me in many respects, more pro-life, than the dominant trends in this country.
Not only do I recognise the significant contribution of immigrants to society at large, I can also see in the most visceral terms the positive impact of immigration on my own life. So perhaps you will understand that when I hear people advocate increasing restrictions on immigration, I experience a very strong emotional reaction: I would rather slit my own throat.
In his essay, argued from the perspective of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism (which I share), Dr Binswanger also addresses many of the practical arguments against immigration. And it is these which dominate the public debate in Britain, because the moral premise that the proper form of government is a tyranny of the majority, and that the amorphous collective popularly labelled “the people of Britain” owns the entire country, was conceded by all sides in our dreary, passionless and principle-free party politics many years ago.
The most common one, the one which irks me the most and is now respectable even in the liberal media in Britain, is a concern about the strain placed by immigrants on things like housing, roads, school, health services and the police. It seems to be taken for granted that immigration should place these “national resources” under increasing strain.
But it never seems to occur to anyone to look at the nature of the things people are worried about being “strained” by immigration, and compare them to the things which are not of such concern. For example, nobody worries that the supermarkets will not have enough food and household goods for immigrants to live on. Nobody is crying that immigration will push up the price of electronic goods, even simple and basic ones like refrigerators. Nobody writes to their local MP or petitions the Prime Minister, begging them to do something about the soaring costs of books, or clothing, or home insurance due to the terrible strain placed on these by unfettered immigration.
Why not? Because these things are provided by a (largely) free market which responds to price signals, where entrepreneurs are rewarded for supplying the needs and wants of a population of any size and where there is thus a strong incentive to increase supply swiftly in response to increases in demand.
It is only those services which are provided in a Soviet-style command-economy fashion by the State (such as the National Health Service and public transportation) and those which are essentially under State control or very heavily regulated (like housing), where the concerns lie. Here, there are no freely-established price signals to provide an incentive for better provision, and the individual entrepreneurism of smart people thus cannot be harnessed. It is surely no surprise to anyone that government bureaucracies cannot cope with rapid changes in demand for services.
The obvious solution, however — namely that restrictions should be lifted, and services not related to the protection of individual rights from violation by force or fraud should be provided in a free market by private organisations and charities rather than the state — is completely taboo in British politics. This is because of the uncontested moral base underlying all political debate in this country, namely altruism and collectivism. If you’re able, on this view, you “just have to look after” your fellow human beings, and if you won’t, you must be forced to.
Without a deep challenge to this philosophy, there is a real danger that immigration, as well as many other things which enhance the lives of rational, productive people, will suffer further damage. Already, there are many factors in place discouraging people from coming: a friend of mine recently had to pay £950 to renew her visa, despite the fact that she already pays all our exorbitantly high taxes.
The only way to answer this danger is to challenge the moral base of our politics. And the only coherent way I have ever seen to do that is Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. This issue illustrates once again the vital importance of philosophy to our daily lives, and how the wrong one challenges everything which makes our lives worth living.
October 27th, 2007 at 12:32
I fully support your freedom of choice to live in a multi-ethnic, multicultural society. However, I want no part of it; I merely wish to live in peace among my own people.
At the moment I am unable to this because your freedom is denying me mine. What are your thoughts on this conundrum, and what do you personally indeed to do about rectifying the situation?
October 28th, 2007 at 11:30
In a free society, the rights of one person never conflict with the rights of another person. There is no conundrum. For example, if a short, dark-skinned, heterosexual male wants to live among only “his own people,” he and they have a right to form a commune, at their own expense, and associate within that commune only with fellow short, dark-skinned, heterosexual males. In the normal course of life, they have a right to exclude — from their property — tall, blond-haired, lesbian women, if they choose.
Only police agents of a proper government would be able to enter the grounds of the commune without permission, and then only in an emergency and under strictly defined, objective rules for the purpose of protecting rights, particularly the three basic rights of life, liberty, and property. Otherwise, the members of the short, dark-skinned, heterosexual commune would never need to deal with others.
I support uniculturalism, not multiculturalism. The one culture I support is rational culture. I welcome all individuals as potential trading partners. My “own people” are humans, as long as they are peaceful and honest. All others should be excluded or locked up.
Burgess Laughlin
http://www.aristotleadventure.com
October 28th, 2007 at 17:33
Responding to Burgess Laughlin; if only it were true that indigenous English nationalists could form our own exclusive society. In England we do not have the freedoms that individuals have in the US and many other parts of the world. One obvious example is that we are not allowed to have our own radio stations (and even more galling is the fact that we are forced to pay for the multicultural propaganda of the BBC.) Additionally, England is a small and overcrowded country where there is no room for us to form ‘communes’ or ‘reservations’ – certainly not without a change in the law and government policy.
October 28th, 2007 at 22:11
To “lee”:
Whom do you consider to be among “your own people” and why? Why do you wish to live among them and exclude others? Exactly what do you mean by your desire to “live in peace among [your] own people”? Do you believe you have the right to stop a person coming to this country by force simply because they were not born here, and if so, what gives you that right?
There are a number of things I could say in answer to your question, which strikes me as deeply mistaken at best, but I cannot say them before I understand more about your viewpoint and its base.
I must warn you that I consider any assignment of importance to birthplace or genetic lineage in moral, social or political affairs as irrational beyond measure. I do not believe it is possible to hold racist views honestly.
If you subscribe to such ideas in any form, I’m afraid I will have to terminate this discussion immediately and ask you not to post here again, because to engage soberly with a proponent of such ideas would be to give them an admission into rational debate which they do not deserve. However, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and allow you to clarify your viewpoint in case my concerns are unfounded.
Many thanks,
Andrew
October 29th, 2007 at 09:23
It seems unfortunate Andrew that you have so quickly resorted to decrying someone who disagrees with your views on immigration as ‘racist’.
There is a purely practical aspect to the opinion that too many people living on a small island is not necessarily a good idea. For example, land/housing is a finite resource in the UK, how will the market react to the increasing demand, and a supply that just can’t keep up? Working from this viewpoint, what better way is there of controlling population, than based on place of birth?
October 29th, 2007 at 10:07
Green_dome:
Decrying “lee” as racist is precisely what I have not done. I have been extremely open-minded, inviting him to clarify his views before making any judgement. However, since he describes himself on his website as an “ethno-nationalist”, I do not think it is unfair of me to say that the burden of proof is on him to demonstrate that he is not a racist.
It is absurd to say Britain is a crowded island: take any long train journey here and you will see that there are swathes and swathes of space available. And even where housing already exists, its capacity could be enormously increased by building flats instead of houses, thereby increasing population density. Nor is it true to say that we are limited to the land we have: there are many genuinely crowded islands where space has been created by reclaiming land from the sea. It is amazing what entrepreneurial ingenuity can do when it is left free to act: there is simply no basis for saying that the supply wouldn’t be able to keep up with demand in a free market.
Even if there was a small island with a genuinely unbreachable limit to housing supply, there are any number of better ways to control population than excluding people on the basis of birthplace. For example, you could state that anyone who cannot buy or rent a dwelling cannot stay: this would allow the population of this fictional island to alter based on freely-conducted transactions and ability to offer values to others, rather than racial allocation. But in the context of modern Britain this is pure fantasy: we are not in that condition today and nor will we be so in any foreseeable future. The world can support a far larger population than it does today, if the human mind is left free.
I have yet to see any evidence that concerns of this type are anything other than a thin rationalisation for a collectivist society, in this case a racial-collectivist society. As I have already stated, I consider this view to be just about as low as you can go politically and I will not allow any of its exponents to post comments here.
I will say the same to you as I said to “lee”: I do not know you and I do not want to judge you prematurely. If you can convince me that you do not hold racist views, we can continue this discussion. Otherwise, I will have to ask you to take your ideas elsewhere, because they are not welcome here.
Many thanks,
Andrew
October 29th, 2007 at 10:19
In a free society (the context for my earlier post as well), land and housing are not “finite resources.” In fact, housing is not a “resource” at all in the sense that untapped oil in the ground is a resource merely waiting to be exploited. Housing, in a free (laissez-faire capitalist) society is someone’s property. It is not a “resource” for others except in the sense that they can trade for its use.
Likewise, land is not finite. Government parks can be sold off to anyone who wants to develop them. Taller buildings, accomodating more people, can replace shorter ones. Swamp lands can be reclaimed. Jetties can be built into the sea. Even islands can be created offshore. Whole communities can be floating. Land is not a “finite resource” in a free society.
Burgess Laughlin
http://www.aristotleadventure.com/
October 29th, 2007 at 11:51
Andrew ..
I fail to see how my initial post could indicate any racism on my part although of course racism appears to be a very flexible term which is twisted to suit those who wish to stifle debate on certain important and contentious issues (does place of birth even necessarily indicate race, I think not). I say this as a general comment as I also do not know you and so do not want to make accusations of using such a nasty tactic.
Your idea regarding the ability to buy/rent a place of residence is an interesting one although purely on a theoretical level, I too understand that would never work in practice, whereas the idea of residence based on birthplace is more practical.
Ironically, it seems that the current collectivist ideologies which are predominant in the UK’s politics currently are either promote high levels of immigration, or obscure it through skewed statistics. All for ‘the greater good’ of course. As a lover of freedom, I would assume you believe in the rights and freedoms of the individual first, well if you look at the UK as an individual entity (which it can’t be denied it is, at the very least geographically) why should the existing residents be forced to undergo the reduced quality of life that mass immigration can cause. From the point of view of land/housing, I would definitely see development of parks and green belt land, as having a negative impact on quality of life. An increased reliance on communal blocks of flats likewise is a definite negative in terms of overcrowding and would be a definite hindrance to integrating immigrants (or spreading the joys of multiculturalism, depending on your preference for PC terminology).
Your points regarding the inefficiences of state mechanisms for providing services are absolutely spot on, although supporting open & uncontrolled immigration seems to me like a slight pathological urge to “just have to look after” the rest of the world (in this context people looking for a higher quality of life.
My ideal situation would be a UK run on broadly libertarian principles, with very tight immigration controls. Incredibly selfish, but hey, the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.
October 30th, 2007 at 18:07
A referendum is needed to decide where the UK stands on immigration. Perhaps if the government had done more to monitor and control illegal immigration the people might have more confidence in its ability to legislate correctly.
October 31st, 2007 at 21:51
Green_dome:
I owe you an apology: your original post indeed does not suggest the possibility of racism. I read it in haste on my travels, but I should certainly have been more careful given the sensitivity of these issues. I hope you’ll accept my apologies for this.
It is certainly true that racism is often used as an undefined smear-term, and I should certainly provide a definition. I take racism to mean any ascription of importance to genetic lineage in the social, political or intellectual spheres. This would include the advocacy of any legal or political mechanism which treats people differently according to their “race”. Your remarks about birth-place thus do not suggest racism: as you correctly observe, birth-place and genetic lineage are not necessarily related.
Opposition to immigration does not imply racism (although that is a common form of it), but it does imply collectivism, as Dr Binswanger argues and I shall attempt to argue in what follows. To begin with, however, I would like to elaborate on some of my points in earlier comments.
“Lee” claims on his website that he is an “ethno-nationalist”. “Ethno-nationalism” can only mean nationalism where the nation is defined in terms of ethnicity, i.e. on the basis of genealogy or ancestry. The obvious implication of such a view is that individuals should identify with each other, and form a political community, on the basis of their shared ancestry or “race”. It implies the creation of a state which discriminates on the basis of race.
This is clearly a racist position, and I will not allow it to be advocated on this site. This is why I have asked “lee” to choose between disavowing it and ceasing to post on this site. I consider any kind of racist state or society as too obviously irrational in the light of theory and history for anyone to advocate it honestly, and I will not help to give it a veneer of reason by engaging with its proponents in any form.
(To clarify one possible confusion: I hold that the desire to form an isolated racial sub-community within a free society by means of the use of private property and freely-accepted mutually binding contracts is still racist and immoral, but should not be illegal in a free society. People should be free to enter into any relationships they like which do not violate the rights of others, but this carries with it a requirement to accept the consequences, which in this case will be that no decent people will have anything to do with the racists. In a free society, that is also their right.)
Moving on now to your arguments, I do not understand why you claim that a system of private property is less “practical” than a system where people are assigned housing or turned away by the state based on where they were born. The former is based on the principle of individual rights whereas the second is based on the principle of totalitarian collectivism. In theory and in practice, the former has proved to be the only moral and practical social system.
Consider what a birthplace-based scheme would mean in practice. Let us indulge in the following fantasy: suppose there is no way to increase the supply of housing in the whole country, and that there is one empty house left with two people competing for it, one born in that country and one not.
Both these people have the same rights, I hold, because both are human. Both, I further hold, have the right to bid to live in this property, offering values (most likely money) to the owner for the right to move in. I say that the owner has the right to give the flat to either party, according to his best judgement of which offer is the most favourable to him. I hold that this is the only position compatible with individual rights, freedom, and rational egoism.
Under your proposed system, I assume, the owner would only be able to offer the house to the natively-born party, even if the foreigner makes a better offer. This implies a system of totalitarian collectivism: natives are held to have priority over housing and this policy is enforced by the state, at the expense of the property owner and to the detriment of the foreigner. (Please correct me if I am misinterpreting your position.)
The only possible justification for such a view is that the natives “own” the country collectively, and have the right to initiate force against any individual in their society who wishes to dispose of his property in a manner which the group does not like. For examples of such systems in practice taken to their full logical extent, I refer you to Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and Maoist China. Glowing examples of practicality these are not, and if the end of a road is impractical, so is taking any number of steps down it, however small.
Remember that the above housing situation was a total fantasy: I still hold that Britain is not anything remotely approaching “full”. You worry about threats to green spaces and the development of oppressive housing developments: but remember that I am advocating that housing should be provided on a free market, where parties have to give value for value to mutual advantage. This means that developers will have to provide housing in which people want to live and are willing and able to pay to live.
If people value green space, and are willing to pay commensurately with their desire, developers will provide it. If people do not like living in certain kinds of tower block, developers will have every incentive to build better kinds. It is only the government housing projects, combined of course with their disastrous welfare policies, which have created “sink estates” and nightmare tower blocks. The private sector can and will do better: it is possible to increase population density while retaining a pleasant society. Any mistakes in development, and prices will drop, developers will make losses, and people will move out.
Even if this becomes impossible for some reason, and people genuinely begin to be priced out of an area (as opposed to what is happening now with our coercively constricted supply and inflated demand), that does not give them the right to use force against the owners or tenants: the latter are not slaves and there is no moral principle requiring them to sacrifice for others’ welfare. But I stress once again that this is pure fantasy: not only do we have plenty of room in Britain, but in the kind of world I want to see, anyone priced out of this country would be able to go freely to, say, the United States, where there is no shortage of space whatsoever.
This brings me to an important point: I am not in favour of an immediate policy of freedom of immigration into Britain. This policy would have to be phased in slowly, in order to allow the damage current government policies have done to be undone. It takes time to build houses and flats and for other industries to adapt. And the freer other countries are, the more effective our policy will be: we should look to negotiate mutual free immigration with other countries (like the EU countries once we withdraw from the EU, or the US).
This issue is not confined to housing either: for example, we must negate the danger of immigration from places with a high degree of Islamic militancy by winning the war against Islamic totalitarianism once and for all, destroying its state support in Iran and elsewhere and making it abundantly clear that its cause is hopeless. We must also work to reverse the current “politically correct” approach of the police, for example the way they regularly turn a blind eye to Muslim girls being kept home from school or sent to other countries for forced marriages. It must be clear that we are not cultural relativists and that there are certain practices which we will not accept here.
All this will be difficult to bring about. After all, we are dealing with a political establishment where almost no-one is willing even to countenance the kinds of views I have been putting forth. But why should we not specify the end we wish to see? And why should moving away from that end (towards a system of collectivism) for “pragmatic” reasons be of any help to us? The only way to make society better is to make it better.
(The current high levels of immigration in Britain and the poor statistics which obscure this state are a function of the fact that the current governing elite wants higher levels of immigration, in some cases because of corrupt cultural-relativist ideologies, in others because of a desire for cheap and diligent unskilled labour, and I suspect in most cases both. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who understands collectivism: collectivist societies always dissolve into some form of pressure-group war of all against all. The pro-immigration side happens to be winning out for now, but that may not be the case for long. This is an example of a collectivist system producing the right policy for the wrong reason, and the solution is not for a different pressure group to gain power, but to eliminate collectivism.)
The final point I will address is your question about existing residents of the UK being “forced to undergo the reduced quality of life that mass immigration can cause”. There is a problem with the way you are using the words “force” and “accept” here: they need more careful and specific definition for the meaning of your statement to be clear.
The issue of force is the most fundamental one in politics. I hope my view is clear by now: I hold that no-one may initiate force against another, and that each individual should be free to pursue his or her own self-interest so long as he respects the rights of others to do the same. As I have tried to argue, there is no force against existing residents involved in a foreigner immigrating into the UK: it involves (or should involve) completely voluntary transactions with property owners here. Existing residents have no right to use force to prevent such immigration, even if (despite all the arguments I have given as to why it should not) it damages their standard of living.
If, however, damage to living standards does occur, nothing I have said implies that existing residents should just “accept” it. Suppose an unskilled British worker loses his job because an immigrant is willing to do it more cheaply. This may result in a temporary drop in living standards: while the quantity of jobs in the economy is not fixed, and the immigration will ultimately result in job creation, the new jobs may not be in the same industry and they may not come immediately, so the worker may have to learn new skills and/or wait a while.
I hold that the worker has no right to use force against the immigrant: employers are not his slaves and they do not owe him a living (though his old employer must of course honour the terms of his contract when laying him off). But that does not mean he must “accept” his lower standard of living: he is free to improve his education or start a new business or try to find new jobs by any other productive and peaceful means he chooses. The only kind of action he is barred from is force.
My desire that immigration to Britain should ultimately be free and open has nothing to do with any altruistic desire to “look after” the rest of the world. I have given my reasons for my views very carefully, and I can assure you there is no “pathological” hidden agenda lurking beneath. I very much hope that oppressed people from around the world would be able to come to Britain to improve their lives in such a society, but this is not motivated by altruism: as I have been arguing all along, there are real benefits to this for those already living here, such as new people to trade with, make friends with and experience cultural exchanges with – not to mention depriving oppressive societies and dictatorships of their best people, thereby weakening their political position and making us and the rest of the world safer.
My argument for immigration is that it is the only policy consistent with our self-interest and freedom. It has nothing to do with an altruistic desire to help foreigners.
I hope this goes some way towards addressing your questions and concerns.
Many thanks,
Andrew
November 1st, 2007 at 13:59
I’ll repeat it; I do not wish to live in a multicultural society; and I should have an equal right NOT to live in a multicultural society as anyone else who prefers to live in such a society. However, at the moment anyone who is exercising their individual right to live in a multicultural society is denying me my rights to live as I wish. If you believe in democracy you must support my freedom to live in peace as I choose; so why not let’s have a referendum and see exactly how many people share my views and then act on the results…some sort of indigenous English homeland.
November 1st, 2007 at 14:54
Andrew,
Thanks for your detailed response, it contains some very interesting philosophical thoughts on the subject. My thoughts perhaps were reflecting on the nature and effects of immigration as it currently is in the UK and not on the concept of how (high levels of) immigration should not necessarily have these effects. As you point out, the UK and indeed the rest of the world are not in a position in which the true benefits of immigration can be realised due to the current nature of politics and society being far from ideal. The process of bringing about the necessary changes will be a long and difficult one, if indeed it ever happens & I still find myself in favour of tighter immigration controls in the here and now.
Regarding Lee’s comments, I believe that the ‘multicultural’ utopia that has been present in much of this Government’s propaganda is clearly imposed to further the pursuit of whatever social engineering the Government has been attempting to carry out in this country. Conversely from an ideological point of view I suppose a Government denying the ability of cultures to mix is just as wrong. I personally have seen an overall trend for significantly different cultures to have a tendency to ghettoise themselves, preferring their own to sharing/mixing with different cultures (I would point out that I am thinking of communities on a large scale here, rather than interpersonal relations).
Does the state have any right to interfere with this result of human nature? I think not.
Does the state have any right to forcibly preserve the historical culture of a nation? I would also think not although who else would do this in a country with totally free immigration. Is it worth losing valuable and historical cultures due to an adherence to what is philosophically right or wrong?
…well I’m buggered if I know but it’s interesting to discuss it.
…interesting blog I reckon I’ll check back here from time to time.
November 1st, 2007 at 21:30
Lee:
You say you do not want to live in a multicultural society. A non-multicultural society is necessarily one where the individual is not free to peacefully pursue his or her own cultural values, but is systematically forced to obey the prevailing norms. (I am taking the term “multiculturalism” here to mean a society where people vary significantly in their origins and cultural practices, formed within a system of individual rights ensuring that people do not use force against one another and maintaining certain essential civilised limits on the role of force.)
A non-multicultural society would be an collectivist slave-society violating every principle of proper government and social relations. You have no right to create such a society, or maintain it should it ever come to exist. Such a “right” would amount to a right to enslave, a right to violate rights. There can be no such thing. You do not have the right to “live as you wish” if your wishes involve enslaving others.
If you are able to create, by free mutual contract, a private community composed according to your wishes then a free society would allow you to do so. But that is very different from a non-multicultural state: any children born into your private community would have the right to rejoin civilised humanity at any time, and the criminal and contract law of a free society would operate throughout your enclave. You would be policed by the law enforcement agencies of a free society and any criminal disputes would go through free courts. Anyone in the country who did not want to be part of your experiment would be free to refrain and boycott you according to their individual conscience.
You continue to evade my questions about the exact nature of and reasons for your views, so I am inclined to assume the worst. Please don’t post here again.
Many thanks,
Andrew
November 2nd, 2007 at 09:13
Why do you say I have no right to wish to create an ethnic-based, monocultural society? Such societies exist all over the world; I would imagine they might be even in a majority. Muslim societies aren’t multicultural and for the most part neither is China – that’s getting on for half of the world’s population. If it’s okay for Muslims and the Chinese to live within their own defined cultures and ethnicities; why should European peoples be denied equal rights?
You state that in my ideal society people will be forced to ’systemically obey the prevailing norms’ yet do not recognise that this is precisely the situation I currently find myself in, in a multi-ethnic, multicultural society. In an ethnonationalist society, no-one would be forcing anyone to be part of this society; you would be free to go and live in the multicultural society of your choice – a choice I cannot freely exercise myself at the moment: if (as is the case) I do not wish to live in a multicultural society, to where can I emigrate where I’ll be able to live amomg my own people and left in peace?
I have no desire to enslave others/foreigners. I don’t like foreigners and their customs so why on Earth would I want to enslave them? I want nothing at all to do with them; Muslims, Chinese, Africans, Poles, Albanian… that’s why I don’t want to be living in a multicultural society.
I’ll repeat it again; I do not want to enslave anyone, discriminate against anyone, attack anyone (or their country), neither I am claiming that my ethnic group (the English) is superior to any other…justthat, like any other, it is unique and has the same right to preserve itself as does any other culture or ethnic group – I just wish to live in peace with like-minded people.
By the way, there is a lot of hatred and bigotry in your replies.
November 2nd, 2007 at 21:06
“Lee”:
I’m sorry, was that an argument or a joke? For your sake I hope the latter, but even if so, it’s in poor taste.
It’s not ‘okay’ for anyone to form a racist society. Full stop.
The argument against turning the UK into an “ethnonationalist” society is not that I and others wouldn’t like it. This is not a conflict of arbitrary desires or feelings. Majority or minority opinion have no effect on fact. My argument is that an ethnonationalist society would violate at root the objective, scientifically-demonstrable principle of individual rights upon which human life depends, and that you thus have no right to form such a society. Even if you can find the land in a free country, you would not have the right to secede from that country’s laws.
Turning the UK into an ethnonationalist society would not just violate what remains of the rights of everyone currently living here: it would turn this country into a place where people are forced to live as tribal savages rather than human beings. I cannot imagine a worse fate for this once-great nation.
You have the right to form your own private voluntary tribal enclave with your own resources, if you can, and accept the consequences. If this is not enough for you, too bad. Any attempt to gain any more should be righteously met with all necessary force.
Ah, some information at last! So you are a racist, as I suspected. I never said you wanted to enslave foreigners: it’s yourself and others in your country you want to enslave, which is arguably worse. If you wouldn’t allow someone in your country to sell a house to a foreigner, you are violating his rights, making him your slave: he may not dispose of his property as he chooses because of your arbitrary prejudice.
The hypocrisy and injustice of this remark (from someone who says he “doesn’t like foreigners”) beggar belief. Bigotry (if it means anything at all) is prejudicial and unjustified bias. Unlike you, I have given detailed reasons for my views in the foregoing discussion.
As for hatred, I think my writing speaks for itself in this regard. I do not pretend to argue without passion: these are vital issues, after all. But I do claim that any emotion I have is based upon rational evaluation. Hatred is the wrong word for what I feel for the views you have expressed here: it would grant them an importance and esteem which they do not deserve. “Contempt” is closer.
I will tell you once again as plainly as I can: please do not post here again. Any further contributions from you will be deleted. I’d have deleted your last post as well, if it didn’t do such a good job of proving me right.
Andrew
November 3rd, 2007 at 09:45
Ayn Rand’s speech “Global Balkanization”, transcribed in The Voice of Reason, is very pertinent to this discussion. Some extracts:
November 6th, 2007 at 10:01
Rights, being not self-enforcing, how is it then, that foreigners are said to have rights which the net taxpayer of our citizenry is obliged to defend through our government? If there be such obligation, to extend protection outwards to foreigners, how can we not owe loyalty to the net taxpayer of our citizenry over against the foreigner coming in on net public subsidy? This ingression by foreigners on to net public subsidy increases the level of aggression in our sovereign territory; yet it does not seem as though Binswanger’s or your definition of the excludable criminals and diseased would likely include very many of these. In any case, it is at least reassuring that such and such radicals, draw back from the anarcholibertarian precipice of advocacy of literally free immigration. Successful societies are rare and endangered by the potential immigration of hostiles in catastrophic numbers; do you or Binswanger consider ‘open immigration’ an universal principle such as may be applied even to Israel? Man is a warlike being as well as a rational one, and there is no evidence or argument to be found that human nature allows for a lasting peace so thorough as to allow for proceeding as if there were not hostile nations or groups such as certain religions. In a world of war, the virtue of loyalty must not be treated as unnecessary. I am an American, and my nation commands loyalty, when those to whom loyalty is owed, such as the net taxpayer of our citizenry, has aggression increased on him by the entry of foreigners ( to whom we do not owe this loyalty, regardless of their degree of suffering ) on to net public subsidy here.
November 6th, 2007 at 20:59
JSB:
Thank you for your comment. I have already answered some of your points here. Certainly the world is full of nations and ideologies hostile to us, and as I have said, the most dangerous of these (such as radical Islam) must be defeated. I do not advocate open immigration as a policy to be pursued in a vacuum: like any principle, it has a context of application (but is valid absolutely within that context).
If we took proper steps (both on the political and the intellectual levels) to counter irrational ideologies, we would soon have nothing to fear from them, especially as I do not advocate automatically giving immigrants the vote. Most likely, if we had a proper society, immigrants would be so impressed by it (as it would be rife with explicit advocacy and embodiments of rational ideas) that they would soon abandon their false ideologies. In fact, most would come here explicitly because they wanted to live in a more rational country: our intellectuals would make it clear to them that the better life available to them over here depends on certain philosophical roots.
Your use of the word “loyalty” bothers me: I’m sure you don’t mean it this way, but it could be interpreted as having collectivist overtones. I certainly believe that immigrants should be expected to follow our laws and not attempt to destroy our society, and if they do so then they should be deported, but I don’t believe rights can be contingent on a person holding certain beliefs, as long as they do so peacefully.
As for your point about “net public subsidy”, of course I oppose giving immigrants government welfare payouts, free government housing etc. Immigrants would be expected to pay their own way or rely on voluntary charity, just like the native population. However, I disagree with your claims about rights.
It is true that the government would have to protect immigrants’ rights from those who would violate them: of course rights must be enforced by positive action by the state. It is also true that the money it costs to protect certain individuals’ rights might be more than those individuals pay in taxes. But this could be true of natively-born people as well: I could apply your argument equally to any resident of the UK who needs more protection than they pay in tax. To claim that we owe a “subsidy” to less productive natives but not to less productive foreign residents strikes me as having disturbing tribal-collectivist overtones.
Whether the recipient of protection is natively-born or not, the same principle applies: a violation of their rights is a violation of all our rights, and thus their defence is our selfish obligation. That’s what it means to have a genuine right.
To require that someone contribute more in taxes than it costs to protect their rights is absurd. For a start, since in a proper society the government’s role would be limited to protecting people’s rights, and taxes would not (and could not) be collected in proportion to the cost of protection in each individual case, it is mathematically inevitable that some people will pay more than their protection costs and some will pay less. If this is unfair, then proper government is impossible.
It is invalid to place any positive precondition (such as paying a certain amount in taxes) on protecting someone’s rights, native or foreign. As long as the person respects the rights of others (a condition which places no positive obligation on him, only the negative one of not initiating force), he is entitled to protection.
Many thanks,
Andrew
November 7th, 2007 at 03:11
Thank for your reply, obviously drawing on intelligence, thought and effort of high value. Loyalty to nation and to fellow nationals is of course usually given a collectivistic presentation, traditionally with a holistic super-entity above beyond and apart from the individuals, who are described as having value insofar as they sacrifice to this or other mythical entity above them. While this is the background of invocation of loyalty to nation, we also have patriotism such that the individual conceives the nation as a vehicle of his loyalty to others of his nation, which is activated at least in that one circumstance of the foreigner coming in across the borders in such manner as to increase the aggression inside them. Rather than being the miser who counts every penny that a foreigner got off the public subvention; I say that this one circumstance of the manner in which a foreigner crosses the border relative to resulting increase of aggression, is that which at minimum is determinative of the nation, of the loyalty which it cannot mean less than. America is not everyone; therefore we do not owe extension of protection to otherwise good foreigners, if they cost us something on net balance for this extension. I also dispute that the incoming immigrant is really interchangeable with a newborn of our citizenry; one has citizen parents responsible for him, the other as an adult is on his own responsibility, so that we may blame him if he is a fair-sized net taker hereabouts. There is a moral distinction of great significance, between citizen and foreigner, relative to that loyalty which is minimally determinative of the nation as stated above: that treason which gives net public subsidy to makes the recipient an accessory to treason, a high crime. The citizen however cannot by receiving such subsidy be accessory to treason, which as defined in the American constitution and English law, includes giving aid to the foreign hostile. For the foreigner to increase aggression through taking net public subsidy is hostile, and what he does specifically operates on that ultimate minimum standard of what loyalties entrain the nation. Imposing an obligation to extend protection from our government out to foreigners indefinitely numerous, saying that these peoplem have their rights, can’t be right insofar asit would cause us to fall below the minimum necessary to protect those who do have a claim on our allegiance/loyalty. It needs to be shown that this immigrant and that immigration cohort will be compatible with the maintenacne of our prior and necessary minimal loyalties to those whom we already have extended this protection and at some cost, so that indeed there is a ‘positive precondition’ to be shown prior to extension of protection in that way.
November 9th, 2007 at 00:55
Lee got merked by Medworth!
November 28th, 2007 at 17:55
First of all, greetings from a former fellow Beechen Cliffer.
I too used to believe in free immigration to Britain, but from a Marxist perspective. H.L. Mencken once said that “the most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the obviously untrue” and to believe passionately in free immigration is an example of this in my opinion. I do not wish to be rude because I recognise my own past follies here, but this has been the tragedy of innumerable otherwise perfectly intelligent people, to end up believing passionately in the obviously untrue, starting out with perfectly reasonable sounding first principles and ending up arguing that black is white and white is black in order to satisfy their diverse but equally disasterous ideologies. Such ‘intellectuals’ have made fools of themselves before ‘ordinary’ people who can see perfectly well what the ideologically-blinded intellectual refuses to see.
Free immigration would be a monumentally costly folly for a number of reasons. I shall begin with the potential scale of the immigration as I feel this is the most intractable issue as no matter how one twists or turns or what ideology one resorts to it cannot be overcome. The number of people who would have the desire and ability to come to Britain given free immigration would be enormous, in the tens of millions at least. One should note that a study predicted that Britain’s population could double by 2080 given high but still restricted immigration. With free immigration the country’s population could easily quadruple.
You argue that housing and transport etc should be of no more an obstacle to immigration than the provision of fridges, books or other consumer goods and that all that is needed is a free market in housing as there is in refrigerators. Now, that is patently absurd and I believe an example following an ideology until one arrives at a position that is so obviously wrong that it is laughable. Fridges, books and other goods can simply be produced to demand but the land that houses and roads stand on cannot be increased. The suggestion otherwise by another poster that this not the case is simply silly – the amount of land that could be created through reclaimation in Britain is insignificant and would be created at a prohibitively high monetary and environmental cost. Free markets cannot perform miracles or defy the laws of nature, logic or physics any more than any other economic system. Let us leave miracles to the realms of religion!
Britain is a small and already crowded country. There are perfectly good reasons why it is not permitted to build housing wherever it is wanted as that would rapidly result in urban sprawl and the loss of our countryside and nature and the decline in our quality of life. If combined with free immigration, the results would be unimaginably awful in a country with 120 million, 200 million, 300 million people.
I shall move on to another reason why free immigration can never be permitted. Much of the world is a frightening and dangerous place. I do not blame people for wanting to escape from it, but this is precisely the reason we cannot permit them to come here in large numbers. I am originally from South Africa, a country that has descended into savagery and horror on a scale unimaginable in the West. One is 50 times more likely to be murdered in South Africa than in the UK and the rape rate is similarly frightening. Horrifically backward beliefs and practices are common. For example it is believed that sex with a virgin can cure AIDS, leading to the rape of children and even babies. Women are burned as witches. People are murdered for body parts to be used in magic potions or muti. At a recent murder trial of two men in Pietermaritzburg for the shooting and killing of two women drivers a widespread attitude was revealed; when asked for their defence they explained that they simply needed to get home – some trivial need is more important that a person’s life in such a society. Much of the rest of the world is similar or wracked by civil war, violence and instability.
If such popultions are allowed to move to Britain in large numbers they will bring their problems with them. They will not abandon their centuries old ways and beliefs simply because some libertarian intellectuals ask them to. To suggest otherwise is to defy all recent experience. The Dutch believed that Muslim immigrants would see the freedom and prosperity of Dutch society and embrace it, on the contrary they violently rejected it to the point of murdering leading Dutch figures. Reason, rationality and ‘enlightenment’ count for little in the face of savagery. It is no good reasoning with the armed robber, the man wielding a machete or the suicide bomber.
What happens if through immigration the Muslim population grows to become a majority and demands Sharia law? Will we submit to that or instead effecively resort to dictatorship by supressing the demand for Sharia? Neither is an appetising prospect. The recent discovery of the body of an African boy floating down the Thames, the victim of a muti killing, should sound the alarm bells of the dangers of allowing the immigration of populations with practices we find abhorrent.
Finally, to argue that people’s affinity for members of their own nation is racist is in my opinion bizarre and dealing in absolutes, taking the freedom of the individual to absurd and unnatural extremes. I am not talking of the view that one’s own nation is superior and others inferior or the hatred of foreigners, simply the desire of the vast majority of people in all nations to live with people of the same language, culture and history. To reject such a reasonable and universal desire is a recipe for ideological irrelevance.
That in my opinion is the end result of an ideology that leads one to passionately believe in the obviously untrue in the absence of unusual circumstances and a willingness to use force to impose it on others, which I do not believe you intend for one moment. Everyone else can see the obvious untruth and therefore the ideology is rejected and remains a vanishingly small view of no influence or importance outside its own small circle.
Ed
November 30th, 2007 at 22:10
Hi Ed,
Greetings to you, and thank you for your thoughtful comment. It is always good to hear stories of someone overcoming intellectual errors, particularly as colossal an error as Marxism, which is one of the most disastrous examples of elevating ideas above reality in the history of human thought. Ayn Rand’s ideas, which inspire much of my writing, contain strong and unique methodological antidotes to such rationalistic errors, which I have certainly benefited from studying. I believe you would too.
I disagree that my advocacy of free immigration is an example of this type of error as you claim. The principles I used in my argument — liberty, property, rights — were not dogmatically asserted a priori but are themselves inductively derived from experience. I reject the false alternative of floating dogmatic ideas versus modern concrete-bound empirical pragmatism: it is possible to derive abstract principles from facts by logical inference (though this is hardly the time or place for even an attempt at a defence of that view).
I think several of your objections stem from a misunderstanding of my position. For example, perhaps it is true that there are countless millions who would like to come to Britain, but I certainly do not advocate opening the borders until there isn’t a square metre of land in the whole country unoccupied by a person. I do believe in a right to immigrate if you can find somewhere to live here, but there is no such thing as the right to turn up here and be provided with a dwelling (barring certain cases of legitimate temporary political asylum). If the country really did start to fill up, people would rapidly start to be priced out and would therefore stop coming.
I also concede that there are legitimate issues to be considered around what land should be opened up for development and how: I am not advocating instantly abolishing all planning laws and allowing any and all building anywhere in the UK. In a genuinely free market, voluntary contracts would develop between occupants of neighbouring plots of land, restricting what people can do on that land and thus protecting its value. (Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute has cited cases of where this has happened where he lives in California.) The British planning laws have largely prevented the growth of such agreements and it is not immediately obvious how we could move from what we have now to such a system: in all likelihood, the change would have to be gradual and case-by-case.
But this theoretical speculation is actually largely irrelevant to this debate. I want to re-emphasise a point which I have made already, namely that Britain is not a crowded country as you claim.
Many people seem to hold this belief, but if you’re looking for a notion which is “so obviously wrong that it is laughable”, this would be a good candidate. The proportion of land in the UK which is settled is less than 7.7% (I can’t find an official source for this, but I found it on multiple independent sites, and it sounds about right: for one source try here).
Not only that, but the land which is already settled is not being used very efficiently in terms of population density — even the government is planning to build hundreds of thousands of new homes on “brownfield” sites over the coming years, and places like Manhattan prove it is possible to increase population density beyond anything we currently have in this country without seriously compromising quality of life.
The land shortages in the UK are entirely due to our planning legislation, and I strongly believe that the way we use our current settled land, as well as the huge surplus of land we have, would improve massively in a free market context, provided that context was properly introduced. I think a free Britain could easily deal with a population six times larger than today.
To suggest that land is fundamentally different from, say, refrigerators is simply wrong: the materials which go into making refrigerators are finite as well. The markets which have been left freest from state interference prove, as Adam Smith famously observed, that freedom gives individuals the power to guides the use of those resources into the most valuable channels by means of reason.
I understand, and to an extent sympathise with, your concerns about brutality of the world, but I think your acceptance of this as “just the way things are” is an example of the concrete-bound nature of your argument. There is no nation on earth which has not been just as barbarous as, say, much of Africa is today, within a bare few generations of the present. What do you think caused some to change but not others? The fundamental cause of such change is always philosophical, and sometimes its catalysts have been remarkably few in number, the British Enlightenment leading to the Industrial Revolution and the founding of the United States being cases in point.
If you look at human history broadly enough, you will see that the power of the good has proved itself over and over. It is true that we are ill-placed to change people’s minds in this unprincipled, cynical, skeptical and relativistic age of ours, but there is no reason that state of affairs has to continue. A rational, morally confident nation would have no trouble assimilating immigrants, and nor would it have trouble locking up and deporting any who refused to follow the law. You are right that it is “no good reasoning with the armed robber, the man wielding a machete or the suicide bomber” — note that I have never said it was or that we should try — but it is possible to reason with his neighbours and his children, particularly if they are wholly immersed in a culture which is pro-life, proud, and fundamentally hostile to barbarism and have seen the way such a culture deals with such threats.
If all else fails, nothing in what I’ve said implies that immigrants must be allowed to vote. And in the kind of limited-government society I advocate, votes could do limited damage anyway.
To judge people as fellow human beings on the basis of their genetic lineage is neither reasonable nor universal, it is racist. The desire to exclude them by force on such a basis, or on the basis of birthplace, from an area you do not own is neither reasonable nor universal, it is a deadly breach of a vital principle. The proper policy is to judge people on the basis of shared values — which in my own life I find to be increasingly unrelated to the former factors — and to give value for value, with no regard for race or birthplace.
You seem to believe that my unusual views condemn me to “ideological irrelevance”. Given the torrent of criticism which has been levelled at this article from all areas of the philosophical spectrum, you might seem to have a point. (One of the chief purposes of this site is to do what little I can to demonstrate to people of the dominant viewpoint that another way of thinking is possible and defensible, and given the above collection of comments, I regard this as one of my most successful essays in this regard.)
But again, a slightly broader view of history might give you some pause for thought on this subject. Incredibly fast ideological turnarounds have happened in human history before, spurred by remarkably small groups of people. It would surely be outrageously arrogant to say that my point of view will be dominant any time soon, but the same applies to the view that the status quo will inevitably prevail.
You state:
I would not be surprised if King George thought the same way, right up to 1775. Unfortunately for him, the “obvious untruth” turned out to be a profound and little-recognised truth, which, thanks to its brave assertion by the American Founding Fathers, changed the world forever.
Human affairs are capable of changing very quickly, and in surprising ways, given the correct stimuli. It may or may not be possible to apply those stimuli successfully to the world of today — but what can one do but try?
Warm regards,
Andrew
December 1st, 2007 at 07:54
For racism to be defined so broadly, while still implying the usual slippery slope, ordinarily would be a prelude to leftist smearing, and usually a way to have something in the place where a rational argument was rightly to be expected. Is it known to be true that racism should mean more than the racial-genetic inheritance of completely formed concepts? If it can, would such a definition allow for implying slippery slopes, any more than a new regulation of ice cream production implies an inexorable process towards the Kolyma goldfields? One move to the left does not always imply every other, likewise a very broadly and questionably defined ‘racism’, does not set up slippery slopes everywhere. The use of the term racism rather than partiality, bias, disaffinity, or one without the associations that racism, as a term, has for connotations of slippery slopes to some uncommonly bad political situation of mass killings, allows for the inference that such connotations are to be taken.
If one is deducing from a principle, such as that there is always a perfect harmony of interests among individuals throughout the world, isn’t there an equally plausible interpretation that it is not, in most cases, really in the lifelong interest of the prospective immigrant, to move to the more successful societies, insofar as these nations are indispensable, in their present quality of population or better, for the continuity of the advancement of civilization, and he would do harm to that? There have already been several decades in which the changes in infectious disease in the world have outrun medical science’s pace; a catastrophic stagnation would be like this, yet would penetrate further. There is an analogy to the stealing-from-the-research-lab ethical ‘puzzle’. How long-term and how broadly should we conceive our interests and those of the prospective immigrant, and must the immigrant try to learn, understand and take the greatest of care, even before he disembarks, that his new residency not do damage to these high goods of civilization, just for his immediate aggrandizement?
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:28
In Atlas Shrugged, was there an unfettered right to immigrate to Galt’s Gulch? The people living there created a successful society, but John Galt went to great lengths to keep it hidden from others. By keeping Galt’s Gulch hidden, was there not a recognition that individuals who hold irrational beliefs are a threat to those in a successful society?
In Atlas Shrugged the rational nature of capitalism was not enough in itself for capitalism to triumph, rather the irrational nature of social democracy had to be clearly revealed first through total social and economic collapse. In this sense, is rational thought enough to alter the views of an Islamic fundamentalist? The social and economic consequences of such fundamentalism need to be starkly revealed first and perceived as the cause of the problems. Until then, as with Galt’s Gulch, do those living in a (relatively) successful society such as Britain not have a right to restrict the entry of those who hold such irrational beliefs?
March 9th, 2008 at 23:23
David:
Thank you for your comment.
Galt’s Gulch was private property, not a country. Of course, I am not proposing that private property owners’ right to control access be ended, but no-one owns Britain as such, so it is not proper to compare Galt’s Gulch with Britain as a whole.
Certainly, irrational ideas are a threat to others, but the proper way to combat such ideas is not to violate the rights of their advocates: it is philosophical and cultural activism, aiming ultimately at fixing the political system so irrational ideas have no power in society.
I will close this comment thread by recommending Craig Biddle’s new article in The Objective Standard advocating open immigration, with which I agree 100%.