let people pay to immigrate, with a price set high enough to keep the pace of immigration “reasonable”
---
I assume that there would be some kind of auction with a fixed number of slots.
Under such a regime, we could actually use market prices to discover the value of immigration. If individuals really became dramatically more productive upon moving to America then the bid would go up. If it got high enough (one million, etc) or low enough you could increase/decrease the number of slots in the next auction. Instead of debating this endlessly with studies, we would just know who the market thinks is right.
Never going to happen though. Besides the crassness of it, the real problem is illegal immigration, birthright citizenship, and family reunification. You can't charge for the cow when you give the milk away for free.
Alternate history thought experiment: what if alcohol prohibition had lasted 50-100 years instead of 12? Would we still have seen a rapid collapse of the illegal alcohol trade, and rapid establishment of widely-patronized legal alcohol sellers and producers, when it was repealed? Or would people have stuck to the moonshines, and moonshine dealers, that they had come to know and rely on, especially if excise taxes meant that the illegal product remained somewhat cheaper?
Path dependence remains underrated and is a cause for patience. This is particularly true for cannabis, where the regulatory landscape remains very uncertain and hazardous for would-be Diageos of weed for the reasons other commentators have pointed out.
Sounds to me like you’d be better classified as a classical liberal than a libertarian. OR as a libertarian that focuses on economic issues and doesn’t agree with the (now mainline) libertarian view on foreign policy.
I agree with all of these points except to say that there are many ways to greatly expand legal immigration that would work. Eg. A Canadian point system. Also, immigrants as a group commit fewer crimes than natives, so I don’t think the crime angle is the issue with the current border situation, it’s the undocumented and unaccountable nature of having millions of people in the country essentially hiding from the government and legal system at all that’s the problem.
I think a big divide between conservatism and libertarianism is that conservatives want to wield political power to achieve results.
I've read many a Reason think piece about how Christopher Rufo is evil, but he's the one getting things done. Conservatives are the ones winning office and passing school vouchers, not libertarians. If we get school vouchers (real school vouchers for everyone, not some means tested charter school thing only for poor blacks) it will likely be because the Rufo's of the world convince people that the alternative if your kids being exposed to LibsofTikTok. Not because of the same CATO paper that's been published for decades.
I watched a recent Peter Thiel interview in which he said he is no longer a libertarian because he realized that saying one was a libertarian was another way of saying "I don't want power and responsibility" which made it easier to fit in with leftists and not get into the messy business of politics.
This was readily apparent to me during COVID (conservatives fighting for freedom, DC libertarians MIA because desperate not to get TRUMP coded).
Conspicuously off the list of libertarian victories: gun rights, especially regarding concealed carry, have trended in the libertarian direction for the last couple of decades.
I think most of the points you claim to differ from libertarians on are points that libertarians have a fair bit of disagreement on amongst themselves.
Also, I think over-regulation is causing many of the issues with legalization/decriminalization of marijuana. When the black (and gray) markets provide a more favorable business climate than the legal market, the black market will dominate. This is what has happened in California, and to a large extent in Washington state.
Similarly, fentanyl became a problem after cracking down on heroin, which became a problem (this time around) after cracking down on prescription opioids. There are root causes to address beyond the drugs themselves.
School choice is nice but it will have almost no effect on student learning. Jarring as it sounds, American schools do about as well as can be expected. Because once you reach a certain minimum standard, which most of American schools do meet, there are really only two things that matter: how smart the kids are and how motivated they are.
Perhaps the major disappointment of modern life is that the first is not very changeable. Early "interventions" that seem to build up mental firepower largely fade away as the child grows.
To change the second would require wholesale changes in the curriculum, because young people simply are not interested in much of what is taught. We pretend that we can make it interesting. "Have better lesson plans." "Make your math problems about things they're interested in, like how many sneakers someone has, or how much money hip-hop artists make." That might make things 0.02 SDs better.
I wanted to add a different opinion on non-profits. I reckon it is still a voluntary association of people and resources, and you can get the same problems at large scale that we get in gov't and for-profits - inefficiencies, bureaucracies, spin, bad incentives.
But I reckon it's a very important type of organization that we wouldn't want to do away with and that for-profits can't replace. Sure, there are many non-profits that really don't move the needle on whatever cause or desired outcome they want to produce and they stick around because they can come up with proof of SOME impact and convince donors that they're delivering enough value.
But here are some non-profits where I just don't see any effective for-profit or gov't substitute:
1) my local marching band booster foundation - volunteer parents raising money to pay for new uniforms, flags, props, instruments, transportation and food during competition season...I've been a part of many of these kinds of non profits- supporting a student program. I don't see a for-profit solution for this.
2) And here's a non-profit I'm following that seems be helping solve a tragedy of the commons:
Have a look at https://theoceancleanup.com/ => they're cleaning plastic and trash out of the ocean and rivers. I wonder if a for-profit could come up with a business model to do what they are doing? Would anyone pay a for-profit to clean up international waters? Don't non-profits have the potential to deliver value in the place of government.
3) Another role for non-profits: I reckon for a healthy society, you need watchdogs on ALL concentrations of power, whether government, for-profit or non-profit (think Institute for Justice, Pacific Legal Foundation). Is there a business model for this that would perform better, have better incentives long term?
I think that the weakness of many libertarians on crime would be my most significant area of discontentment with the movement. I'm not sure where most non-conservative libertarians stand on the post-covid and post-George Floyd crime wave. Specifically, the role that Soros-funded DAs like George Gascon, Chesa Boudin, Kim Foxx, Larry Krasner, and Alvin Bragg have played in firing career criminal prosecutors, setting overly lenient bails and plea bargaining, and just generally not enforcing the law. I remember when the justification for drug decriminalization was that it would free up law enforcement to focus predominantly on felonies and violent crimes. Instead, the broken windows theory has been vindicated. There is just an embarrassing lack of law and order in American cities now purely because of bad policies that have undone two decades of consistently declining crime rates pre-covid.
I agree with most of your takes. Including that overturning Roe v Wade (which was of course correct as a matter of constitutional law) has not been a big win.
I disagree only with your assertion that it should be completely left to the woman to choose. Abortion at 37 weeks is murder. The whole point here is that the unborn child has rights too. Elected representatives of the people *should* be making the decisions. Anti-libertarian Europe has for the most part gotten this correct. Had there been no judicial activism with Roe v. Wade in the first place, it is very likely we would have as well.
Alternatively, a constitutional Roe v Wade ruling would have said clearly that a woman does indeed have a more or less complete right to privacy in the 1st trimester, a viable fetus (a.k.a “third trimester”) has almost universal protection against murder except extreme health risk to the mother, and in between states can regulate as they see fit, and Congress has no right to regulate this issue at all.
I still hold out mild hope that some future Court will make this sane, constitutional ruling that is 100% consistent with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Libertarianism to me is more principle than ideology. Not just political language but syntax. If politics is tribal competition, libertarianism limits the scope of the wins as well as the losses. So it will never be a winning tribe because it's not tribal and knows its wins are provisional. But we can't afford to lose the principle.
“I do not think that drug legalization achieves what it is supposed to achieve.” How about eliminating the federal prohibition, and putting this to the voters in each state, county and city?
It is disappointing that you give “celebrating alternative sexual identity” as a libertarian position (with which you disagree), rather than *allowing* alternative sexual identity. Conflating *allowing* with *celebrating* is a standard invalid move of critics of libertarianism.
let people pay to immigrate, with a price set high enough to keep the pace of immigration “reasonable”
---
I assume that there would be some kind of auction with a fixed number of slots.
Under such a regime, we could actually use market prices to discover the value of immigration. If individuals really became dramatically more productive upon moving to America then the bid would go up. If it got high enough (one million, etc) or low enough you could increase/decrease the number of slots in the next auction. Instead of debating this endlessly with studies, we would just know who the market thinks is right.
Never going to happen though. Besides the crassness of it, the real problem is illegal immigration, birthright citizenship, and family reunification. You can't charge for the cow when you give the milk away for free.
Alternate history thought experiment: what if alcohol prohibition had lasted 50-100 years instead of 12? Would we still have seen a rapid collapse of the illegal alcohol trade, and rapid establishment of widely-patronized legal alcohol sellers and producers, when it was repealed? Or would people have stuck to the moonshines, and moonshine dealers, that they had come to know and rely on, especially if excise taxes meant that the illegal product remained somewhat cheaper?
Path dependence remains underrated and is a cause for patience. This is particularly true for cannabis, where the regulatory landscape remains very uncertain and hazardous for would-be Diageos of weed for the reasons other commentators have pointed out.
Sounds to me like you’d be better classified as a classical liberal than a libertarian. OR as a libertarian that focuses on economic issues and doesn’t agree with the (now mainline) libertarian view on foreign policy.
I agree with all of these points except to say that there are many ways to greatly expand legal immigration that would work. Eg. A Canadian point system. Also, immigrants as a group commit fewer crimes than natives, so I don’t think the crime angle is the issue with the current border situation, it’s the undocumented and unaccountable nature of having millions of people in the country essentially hiding from the government and legal system at all that’s the problem.
I think a big divide between conservatism and libertarianism is that conservatives want to wield political power to achieve results.
I've read many a Reason think piece about how Christopher Rufo is evil, but he's the one getting things done. Conservatives are the ones winning office and passing school vouchers, not libertarians. If we get school vouchers (real school vouchers for everyone, not some means tested charter school thing only for poor blacks) it will likely be because the Rufo's of the world convince people that the alternative if your kids being exposed to LibsofTikTok. Not because of the same CATO paper that's been published for decades.
I watched a recent Peter Thiel interview in which he said he is no longer a libertarian because he realized that saying one was a libertarian was another way of saying "I don't want power and responsibility" which made it easier to fit in with leftists and not get into the messy business of politics.
This was readily apparent to me during COVID (conservatives fighting for freedom, DC libertarians MIA because desperate not to get TRUMP coded).
"A job is not something you should want to save".... Mostly but not entirely true. Some kinds of work are possibly intrinsic to The Good Life.
Conspicuously off the list of libertarian victories: gun rights, especially regarding concealed carry, have trended in the libertarian direction for the last couple of decades.
I think most of the points you claim to differ from libertarians on are points that libertarians have a fair bit of disagreement on amongst themselves.
Also, I think over-regulation is causing many of the issues with legalization/decriminalization of marijuana. When the black (and gray) markets provide a more favorable business climate than the legal market, the black market will dominate. This is what has happened in California, and to a large extent in Washington state.
Similarly, fentanyl became a problem after cracking down on heroin, which became a problem (this time around) after cracking down on prescription opioids. There are root causes to address beyond the drugs themselves.
School choice is nice but it will have almost no effect on student learning. Jarring as it sounds, American schools do about as well as can be expected. Because once you reach a certain minimum standard, which most of American schools do meet, there are really only two things that matter: how smart the kids are and how motivated they are.
Perhaps the major disappointment of modern life is that the first is not very changeable. Early "interventions" that seem to build up mental firepower largely fade away as the child grows.
To change the second would require wholesale changes in the curriculum, because young people simply are not interested in much of what is taught. We pretend that we can make it interesting. "Have better lesson plans." "Make your math problems about things they're interested in, like how many sneakers someone has, or how much money hip-hop artists make." That might make things 0.02 SDs better.
A colorful disturbing graph:
https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1202722271418146817?lang=en
I wanted to add a different opinion on non-profits. I reckon it is still a voluntary association of people and resources, and you can get the same problems at large scale that we get in gov't and for-profits - inefficiencies, bureaucracies, spin, bad incentives.
But I reckon it's a very important type of organization that we wouldn't want to do away with and that for-profits can't replace. Sure, there are many non-profits that really don't move the needle on whatever cause or desired outcome they want to produce and they stick around because they can come up with proof of SOME impact and convince donors that they're delivering enough value.
But here are some non-profits where I just don't see any effective for-profit or gov't substitute:
1) my local marching band booster foundation - volunteer parents raising money to pay for new uniforms, flags, props, instruments, transportation and food during competition season...I've been a part of many of these kinds of non profits- supporting a student program. I don't see a for-profit solution for this.
2) And here's a non-profit I'm following that seems be helping solve a tragedy of the commons:
Have a look at https://theoceancleanup.com/ => they're cleaning plastic and trash out of the ocean and rivers. I wonder if a for-profit could come up with a business model to do what they are doing? Would anyone pay a for-profit to clean up international waters? Don't non-profits have the potential to deliver value in the place of government.
3) Another role for non-profits: I reckon for a healthy society, you need watchdogs on ALL concentrations of power, whether government, for-profit or non-profit (think Institute for Justice, Pacific Legal Foundation). Is there a business model for this that would perform better, have better incentives long term?
I think that the weakness of many libertarians on crime would be my most significant area of discontentment with the movement. I'm not sure where most non-conservative libertarians stand on the post-covid and post-George Floyd crime wave. Specifically, the role that Soros-funded DAs like George Gascon, Chesa Boudin, Kim Foxx, Larry Krasner, and Alvin Bragg have played in firing career criminal prosecutors, setting overly lenient bails and plea bargaining, and just generally not enforcing the law. I remember when the justification for drug decriminalization was that it would free up law enforcement to focus predominantly on felonies and violent crimes. Instead, the broken windows theory has been vindicated. There is just an embarrassing lack of law and order in American cities now purely because of bad policies that have undone two decades of consistently declining crime rates pre-covid.
My smart-ass take on immigration policy is we should have open borders: for attractive young women.
How dare you not be an extremist libertarian!
I agree with most of your takes. Including that overturning Roe v Wade (which was of course correct as a matter of constitutional law) has not been a big win.
I disagree only with your assertion that it should be completely left to the woman to choose. Abortion at 37 weeks is murder. The whole point here is that the unborn child has rights too. Elected representatives of the people *should* be making the decisions. Anti-libertarian Europe has for the most part gotten this correct. Had there been no judicial activism with Roe v. Wade in the first place, it is very likely we would have as well.
Alternatively, a constitutional Roe v Wade ruling would have said clearly that a woman does indeed have a more or less complete right to privacy in the 1st trimester, a viable fetus (a.k.a “third trimester”) has almost universal protection against murder except extreme health risk to the mother, and in between states can regulate as they see fit, and Congress has no right to regulate this issue at all.
I still hold out mild hope that some future Court will make this sane, constitutional ruling that is 100% consistent with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Libertarianism to me is more principle than ideology. Not just political language but syntax. If politics is tribal competition, libertarianism limits the scope of the wins as well as the losses. So it will never be a winning tribe because it's not tribal and knows its wins are provisional. But we can't afford to lose the principle.
“I do not think that drug legalization achieves what it is supposed to achieve.” How about eliminating the federal prohibition, and putting this to the voters in each state, county and city?
It is disappointing that you give “celebrating alternative sexual identity” as a libertarian position (with which you disagree), rather than *allowing* alternative sexual identity. Conflating *allowing* with *celebrating* is a standard invalid move of critics of libertarianism.
In the EconLog era there were a bunch of interesting posts by AK on this subject. This one for example: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/11/libertarianisma.html
I'm more partial to Wilkinson, but YMMV.