Do You Favor ‘Open Borders’?
Short Answer: Yes. Longer Answer: The Problem Isn’t That the ‘Border’ Is ‘Open’; Read On ...
Let’s start by picking some very low-hanging fruit.
A government that regulates industries, plays favorites among market participants, requires licensing for occupations, and manipulates interest rates and the value of currency isn’t allowing a “free market” or an “open market” to operate.
An astute observer would more properly realize that it’s more accurate to call such a scenario a “subsidized market” or “crony market.”
The same holds true for freedom of speech and freedom of the press. A government-regulated environment for expression is hardly free, especially if the government is also playing favorites and suppressing some people’s rights. It can happen with social media, or with books, or with any medium of expression.
And when it does happen, careful observers know that it indicates a lack of open debate and free speech/press. It’s more accurate to call it “favored/disfavored speech” or outright “censorship.”
The benefits of truly open markets and open debate
I spoke with Bryan Hyde for his daily broadcast, “The Bryan Hyde Show,” published Friday, Feb. 2 (he’s also a fellow Substack creator) about the evils of violence-based interactions — so, everything done by governments! — but also about healthy competition.
Bryan opened his show talking about solving problems “without government as the primary ‘problem solver.’ ” Later in the episode, we discussed how government drives negativity and obscures healthy social interactions. I said:
People should express their ideas and goals, and compete for influence, as long as it’s nonviolent. … So we are going to jostle, we are going to compete, we are going to throw our ideas at each other. We’re going to scaffold on them. Hopefully, we’re active listeners, so we’re hearing the other person out, reading fairly, comprehending. …
But as long as you’re involved with a coercive civil authority, which is what your government is — an institution that claims a monopoly on violence — your politics will always be evil.
Key to advocating for free and open interactions is to recognize what they are and what they aren’t.
Which brings us to another important and newsworthy topic, and some confusion I’ve heard and read in framing the issue.
‘Open border’?
There’s so much talk about “open border” and “open immigration” to describe current U.S. government migration policy. Really, do a search on Twitter/X for those terms and you’ll see plenty of people who know better than to call cronyism a “free/open market” or censorship a “free/open debate” nevertheless talking about an “open border.”
The U.S. border with Mexico is hardly an open border, even as thousands of migrants cross it daily, because both the federal government and lower levels of government are intruding upon the process of migration.
The Diversity Visa Program effectively plays favorites with ethnic groups and countries of origin on an annual basis, while immigration quotas can “drive individuals to come to the U.S. without documentation, since people who would have otherwise immigrated legally face a substantial and unrealistic backlog.”
The bloated welfare state effectively subsidizes migration, along with distorting labor and resource markets for citizens and other “legal” residents.
And globalist government agencies like the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) loudly and expensively manipulate migration.
None of this represents a truly free or open immigration process.
And that’s a shame, because migration is a natural human right. Discriminating against people based on the imaginary lines drawn by sociopaths (more commonly known as “political borders”) inevitably interferes with voluntary interactions. Furthermore, government immigration policy usurps the private-property rights of people who live near the political borders. And since all natural human rights spring from human dignity, these intrusive policies run afoul of both anarchism/voluntarism and genuine Christianity.
I support truly open immigration — the same way I support truly open markets and truly open speech and press — uninfected by coercive civil authority. In doing so, I have to be honest about the terminology and the fallacy of looking to the manipulative government to be the “problem solver” when manipulative government is a terribly evil part of the problem.
The Comments are ‘open’ …
Let me know your thoughts on this hot-button topic.
There are no subsidies nor other crony favoritism for leaving a comment, though I promise to read all of them and respond in kind :-)
Well done. I go a step further and say we are actually being farmed by other entities, they aren't human, i can see that by the path of actions over the last 2000 years, we can go further back. It's not unlike what we do to other species with farming for food, with research on other beings, cruel stuff, and much more. When you cage something, interesting side note is that many indigenous cultures did not domesticate or cage, your cage ain't far behind. What is happening now is pretty obviously a big farming technique to control and change the face and order of a place. Same with in Europe. Those who created all the refugees in the Middle East through illegal and immoral wars, destroying countries and people's lives, then went on to claim they cared about them and brought them into Europe to destabilize and change that place quite drastically. It's still evolving. Everyone is used. The 'powers that be' are obviously done with the "west." Same with the "covid" footprint. The same is happening on our southern border, NGO's, the UN, corporations are all participating in setting up and facilitating this wild event. Most of these people are coming from destitute places such as the Congo and others. I have no beef with them in fact I've tried to speak up for all the victims of our foreign policy. How do Congolese folks, you can use other examples, get a flight to south america and then make the journey north to our border? That's a feat in itself. Once again everyone is used, care is not at the core, it's very strange farming. We shall see where it goes. In history when this has been done before the results are usually dismal with the affected country changing drastically and millions upon millions of people dying, mainly through starvation. It's an old farming technique, one you would think the targeted animal would eventually figure out. It's even more crazy that many of the targeted animals, ie humans, actively support the operation thinking they are being kind. These people have been protected for a long time and have lost their senses. Their protection may be coming to an end. They will be shocked if the results are similar to past occurrences. Did you ever see the Deagel numbers? The human being is no longer much in need for these folks. Lordy lordy what a ride... Great writing! I liked your post.
Read it.
My approach is a bit different -- I believe that true private property borders are, by definition, closed. I also believe that truce lines of temporary peace b/w rival warlord gangs (e.g. US, Mexico) are not borders, and so the question does not apply.