“Every so often,” said the Capitalist, “I have the sense that you all don’t hate me quite as much as you should.”
The Humanitarian shrugged. “I’m lousy at hating anyone. Even you.”
Undaunted, the Capitalist took a deep breath and began.
“I have a plan to set things right. The steps are easy to describe, easy to do, and very likely to work. But we will never take them.”
“You’re going to make me ask, aren’t you?” said the Humanitarian.
“Oh no,” said the Capitalist. “I’m just going to shoot my mouth off.”
“Be glad he doesn’t charge for it,” said the Cynic.
“Just for today, it’s free.”
“Just for today, huh?” said the Academic.
“Step one,” said the Capitalist, “Open the borders to anyone who wishes to enter, on the condition that they register with the government.”
“Libertarians are going to hate that,” said the Academic. “And they’re your base.”
“Yes and yes,” said the Capitalist. “Now to piss off everyone else. All by itself, opening the borders would do enormous good. A recent estimate says that if every country opened its borders, world GDP would roughly double. Letting laborers chase higher productivity has huge, enormous, gigantic payoffs. We’re leaving all those gains on the table right now even as we wallow in an economic crisis.”
“The gains would mostly go to the migrants,” said the Malthusian.
“In other words,” said the Capitalist, “the government helps the most unfortunate members of our polity, the newest, the lowest-status, the people with the most to lose. Downright Rawlsian, isn’t it?”
“What makes you think you can just go around treating people… equally…. like that?” asked the Cynic.
“People have an equal ability to feel suffering,” said the Humanitarian. “That’s why we treat them equally in good times, and why we attend to the neediest first when times go bad.”
“We can all suffer equally?” said the Stoic. “That’s a new one by me.”
“Perhaps,” said the Cynic, “the followers of the stoic philosophy should be permitted by the state to suffer even more.”
“Perhaps,” said the Stoic, “I should remind you of Hobbes’ theory: We are all made equal by our equal ability to inflict suffering.”
“Still, why would any immigrant in their right mind register with the government?” asked the Cynic. “Best case, it’s another form to fill out. Worst case, the electorate changes its mind and tells the migra to round ’em all up.”
“Which brings me to step two,” said the Capitalist. “Everyone who registers will also be given title to a modestly sized piece of federal land. Have you seen how much federal land there is? It’s a giant honkin’ chunk of the West, almost all of Nevada, the large majority of Alaska, and lots and lots in other places too.”
“Not our precious federal forests!” said the Epicurean.
“Aren’t those lands often already in development?” asked the Skeptic.
“Indeed they are,” said the Capitalist, “just inefficiently and in a highly roundabout system involving a dozen or so federal agencies and countless special rules for this or that. Most of it isn’t what you’d call ‘precious national forest,’ either. Carve out Yellowstone et cetera, and we still have plenty to entice people into the registry, into land ownership, and into caring about the fate of our nation. Ultimately, into citizenship.”
“Would they be productive as farmers?” asked the Stoic.
“If not, they could sell the land, and whatever they got would tide them over until they found a job. Illegal immigration would vanish overnight, because doing it legally would pay so well. We’d have to be careful about apportioning the land by value, but I think we could manage. And even if we didn’t — it’s a gift horse. No one’s forcing anyone to take it.”
“Egalitarians are going to hate that,” said the Academic. “And when you’ve lost them…”
“Have I lost them too? Excellent!” said the Capitalist. “Economists say the corporations have a glut of capital but are afraid to do anything with it. The obvious solution is to add in the other factors of production — land and labor — for cheaper. And no one could say that the corporations had been given a handout. They’d have to buy that land from the newcomers just like anyone else.”
“What if the immigrants take the cash, spend it all, and end up on welfare?” said the Skeptic.
“For three reasons, I don’t expect many land-welfare bums. First, a gift of land isn’t going to appeal to people who just want to go on welfare anyway. Second, in the longer term, racial diversity is negatively correlated with welfare benefits, both at the state level and internationally. Everywhere you look, more diverse societies have smaller welfare states. If we increase our racial diversity, we can expect less in the way of welfare overall.”
“An interesting dilemma for the left,” said the Skeptic. “A strong welfare state or racial diversity, but not both.”
“The same for the right,” said the Cynic. “Cultural purity brings creeping socialism.”
“Who gets the worst of it?” asked the Skeptic.
“Libertarians,” said the Cynic. “They’re always wrong about everything.”
“Ahem,” said the Capitalist. “My third reason not to fear a welfare glut is that if a lot of the immigrants sold, the land would be turned over to large-scale productive uses — forestry, farming, ranching, mining. And with those, we get the blue-collar jobs everyone wants to have back.”
“Do they really?” asked the Skeptic. “Or would they complain about the land giveaway?”
“Sometimes signalling isn’t about signalling,” said the Cynic.
“True enough,” said the Capitalist. “But all this new development would require a small army of white-collar workers too — lawyers, accountants, managers, clerks, and the like. Everyone would get back to work, including the folks who’ve been here all along and don’t want or can’t do hard labor. It’s not even like it’s a new plan. Know how the West was won? Illegally.”
“People would be really unhappy about losing the federal lands,” said the Skeptic. “They might value those more than an economic recovery.”
“Merely from the endowment effect,” said the Malthusian, “which is precious to everyone. Give someone something — anything — and they’ll value it more just for the sheer fact of having it. That ‘something’ can be totally crappy, too, like the current economy. They’ll overvalue the status quo anyway.”
“Now, there are certainly problems with this not-fully-baked plan,” said the Capitalist. “But I don’t think they are what you think they are. The country would get browner (for all the harm that would do). Its public spaces would decrease (for all the virgin wilds they are right now). Those spaces would go to folks not in our tribe, at least not by today’s reckoning. From there, they’d go to nasty evil big corporations — but only if they paid fair market value. There would be lots of new development (which is what ending a recession means, and which left-liberals still mysteriously find objectionable, at least in good times). Many of the new jobs would again go to foreigners. And let’s not forget, they would register with the government, just to creep out the libertarians. Everyone wins, and everyone’s sore about it.
“So where’s the goopy half-baked part?” asked the Malthusian. “I mean, by your lights.”
“Easy,” said the Capitalist. “My plan is not designed to fix the economy. Take note: I never said that it would. It’s designed to wound everyone’s fake interests, and to get everyone to notice it. In the meantime, it also wounds almost everyone’s true interests, and I’m guessing no one notices it. The real problem with my plan is this: The value of land would plummet, at least temporarily, and the damage it would do to the real estate market would almost certainly swallow up everything else, as we just saw with the last big real estate devaluation. But that’s hardly what springs to mind, is it?”
“I think you hate the poor,” said the Cynic.
Hilarious. Have a cookie!Report
Just because land exists means it must be developed. I’m perfectly OK with the idea of there being some land out there that’s just being land, not bought and sold, fenced off, and extracted.Report
Then you should be outraged by what corporations routinely do to huge swathes of federal land.
It’s possible that you are, but I’m not finding it yet.Report
I pretty much am. I’m quite aware to keep the machinery of the economy running, some mining, extraction, logging, etcetera of federal lands has to be done because that’s where the stuff is, but I can pretty much guarantee the way it’s done is corrupt, filled with mismanagement, and untold environmental damage.
Also, there is the small fact that we don’t have to open up federal lands to have open borders. We could double the density of most major cities without a problem.
Finally, the reason why the federal government owns so much of the land out West is that lot of it is crap land nobody wants, can farm on, etc. Now, it turns out some of that crap land had minerals and such on it so now corporations want to buy it, but there are no great expanses of farmland sitting out there for Juan and Li to buy up.Report
Don’t worry, he can always fall back on the last line of the post, where he admits that he’s just trolling.Report
If you don’t like it, you can go away. Or you can stick around.
Either way, I win.Report
Gee the times i’ve thought about saying that about universal health care.Report
I think the people who don’t like exactly what we have right now should all go away.Report
Actually i think i should just get to veto anything i don’t like.Report
Now we’re talking!Report
Well, you are a Libertarian and therefore essentially fascist, after all.Report
Don’t forget to repeal all the regulations on workplace conditions and minimum wage; otherwise all those new immigrants will be exactly as expensive as the Americans they’re replacing. There is not some Magic Mexican Power that makes them able to work twice as hard as Americans for half the pay.Report
If we guaranteed to Mexicans the same wages and working conditions we extend to Americans, my guess is we’d get a lot more of them coming over, and they’d probably work a lot more hours.
Raise the price of labor, the quantity supplied goes up.Report
If we guaranteed those Mexicans the same wages and conditions we extend to Americans, we’d have fewer, since the only reason to hire undocumented workers is because doing so is cheaper than hiring a legal worker. Why would anyone pay the same amount in wages and benefits for someone who is less fluent in the local language and customs.Report
Presumably because they are more willing to do disagreeable work.Report
…for similarly-disagreeable wages.
That an American asks for a high salary to crawl through shit with his eyes open does not make that American a lazy greedy bastard.Report
sure there is! Amusement park workers work 12 hour days without overtime — it’s the farm workers act (they’re classified as seasonal laborers, who don’t make overtime). Magic Mexicans can work 16 hour shifts with no breaks… so long as we only employ them for part of the year. Any job, any labor.Report
Nicely done Jason.
This line in particular:
Report
You’re a damn fine writer, Jason.Report
FWIW there is already a ton of open land in the middle of Alaska which people can buy. Every once in a while someone up here suggests a bunch of libertarians can form there libertopia out in the wilds. For some reason ( well actually a bunch of obvious ones) people don’t seem to do that.Report
It seems you’re playing it both ways on the value of this land.
Either it’s very valuable to have it sitting around, untouched, pristine (which, we know, it isn’t).
Or else it’s so worthless that no one will even buy it on the cheap so that it may sit around, untouched and pristine.
You can’t have it both ways.Report
Well i mean there is land that the gov doesn’t own that people can buy. Its not being protected or preserved. Its just brutally cold most of the year, very remote and life is real hard. Very few even want to try it and most don’t stick with it. Of the people i know who do the remote Alaskan life style they are either fairly anti-social or are retirees who have plenty of money. There is plenty of worthless land nobody wants to buy. There is plenty of land people want to buy, often because it is close to pristine preserved wilderness.
The value in untouched, or minimally touched, wilderness cannot be solely measured in dollars. This makes the argument difficult for everybody. Is the money the only value in the world? Who is losing a job or productivity due to wilderness? Does wilderness have a value, lots of people seem to think so? What do we owe the future in terms of preserving parts of this world for them?Report
Why don’t they like 60 below with no way to grow anything other than cabbage and carrots. If they change their mind I have a great recipe for moose burgers.Report
There’s also an, ahem, weed that grows well.
Three months straight of sunshine?Report
Tis true Jaybird, but it is very hard to get it to bud out before it freezes.Report
Real growers have green houses with grow lights. Three months of sunlight does not a years worth of pot make.Report
If you are growing it in a greenhouse wouldn’t you rather be in Vancouver because the weather is better, the cops are nicer and the grizzleys are a whole lot rarer than in Alaska Plus you are a whole lot closer to distribution centers.Report
Never had moose, but elk is pretty good.Report
“Perhaps,” said the Cynic, “the followers of the stoic philosophy should be permitted by the state to suffer even more.”
I laughed for a solid three minutes.Report
I wish I could claim credit for the underlying idea, but I got it from Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice, chapter 11 p 269-70: “We conscript the able-bodied, men and women deemed capable of bearing the rigors of war. But we punish only the deserving: not those people most able to bear the stigma of punishment or some random selection of them, but those who ought to bear it… If we distributed punishment differently, it would not be punishment at all.”
And yeah, I laughed out loud at that, too.Report
By the way, just about every time I start thinking, “Goddamn it, why isn’t Jason participating in the comment threads more, I’d like to know what he thinks about this one,” you pull one of these brilliant bits out (I’m assuming, not out of your ass like I do with most of my writing, because it’s stellar stuff) and I have to forgive you. I hate you for that, you bastard.Report
First, a gift of land isn’t going to appeal to people who just want to go on welfare anyway.
“If you can sell the land, isn’t that equivalent to welfare?” asked the Accountant.Report
“Plus a lot of transaction costs and risks,” said the Skeptic. “And who needs those?”Report
“No problem!” quoth the Entrepreneur. “I’ve got it all worked out. Just sign here, on the dotted line.”Report
“That was supposed to be a reply to the Skeptic’s comment above,” he explained.Report
“I’m going to be very disappointed if this comment thread doesn’t degenerate into a bunch of puns,” he added swiftly.Report
I’m bemused at the starry eyed optimism that posits that non/poor-english speaking immigrants in an unfamiliar country would be handing their allotted patches of land to corporations for anything remotely approaching fair market value. Maybe I’m channelling the cynic too much today but I suspect that after the shyster immigrant importer, the crooked land agent and the corporate appraiser had taken their cuts the immigrant would probably get a handshake and a carton of smokes to enjoy while he hitched back to Mexico to jump onto the ride again.
But it’s beautifully written and funny in any event so bravo.Report
Does it matter, really? I think the whole idea is to get the land into private hands. Who exactly makes money off that isn’t terribly important.Report
Ah well if that’s the underlying premise I guess that’s fine. Though it poles the whole concept further out into Lala River along with the People’s Centralized Economies barge and the Galt’s Gulch Yacht.Report
The problem is how to get the land into private hands in a way that’s not just a crass handout to well-connected business interests. The original post suggests all kinds of ways that one obvious solution would fail.
If I had a better one, I’d have written a policy proposal, not a silly one-off thing during my lunch hour.Report
“a silly one-off thing during my lunch hour.”
You realize those who hated you for your superior writing skills hate you even more now for your /speedy/ superior writing skills?Report
Auction?Report
You say “crass handouts to well-connected business interests” as if it were a bad thing. I thought you were a libertarian.Report
That’s harsh Mike. Libertarians are all about denying politicians and officials the power and position to be able to hand out squat to cronies or otherwise.
A politician in a minimally invasive state or an official in a very constrained regulatory roll would have little to no favors to offer.
But you know this perfectly well so why be all mean and snarky about it. Are ya trying to give us lefties a bad name? I only ask cause I care.Report
It was intended ironically — as the kind of think Jason expects me to say. I see that was unclear.Report
Ah gotcha. My monocle has been retrieved from my scotch. All is well.Report
Ideally you should only use words you actually understand.Report
This is what happens to some degree, historically, even if the immigrants aren’t poor and speak English.
The question is, to what degree. Any plan is going to have some failure cases in implementation. If a few guys take their land and sell it at under-market values to buy whiskey, but most don’t, it’s probably still an okay plan.
It’s all about the details.Report
I suspect that after the shyster immigrant importer, the crooked land agent and the corporate appraiser had taken their cuts the immigrant would probably get a handshake and a carton of smokes to enjoy while he hitched back to Mexico to jump onto the ride again.
As I said, it’s how the West was won.Report
Fair enough ol’ buddy.Report
I’m confused. What exactly is the left not going to like about this idea? I’m on the left, and I think it’s somewhat silly, but if I actually had a vote on it, I’d vote for it, simply to fix immigration.
The left wouldn’t like the whole ‘losing national lands’, but in reality, we’re already doing that, very cheaply, to mega-corps. If this plan _replaced_ that, then fine, no objection. (Except to ask why we’re limiting it to just immigrants.)
You seem to think the left wants a ‘strong welfare state’, which we do…but that does not mean ‘a lot of people on welfare’. That just means that welfare should be broad and actually helpful. The left wouldn’t mind if no one was on welfare.
Well, strictly speaking, _some_ people probably ‘need’ to be on welfare, or we’d stop it. Just like _some_ people ‘need’ to be sick…or we’d close hospitals. Those outcomes would be well and good if all problems have been solved and no one’s ever going to be sick or poor again, but in the real world, it’s not so good. OTOH, in the real world, there will always be sick and poor to start with, so the idea that the left ‘want’ anyone to be that is a bit silly.Report
I’d thought the extensive development and national land giveaway bits would be more objectionable.
You’re right, though — there would be no good reason to limit the plan to immigrants.
The left wouldn’t mind if no one was on welfare.
I find this difficult to believe, particularly given that welfare eligibility is tied to the poverty line, and that line adjusts upward when the country becomes wealthier. Given current policies, someone will always be eligible for welfare. I can only imagine that most people agree this is how things should be, particularly on the left.Report
I think you misunderstand the point. In a perfect world, there’d be no need for welfare ’cause there’d be no poverty or barring that, private charity would pick up the slack. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, as David said, there will always be poor people, so welfare is needed and there ya’ go.Report
That’s not really how the poverty threshold is set. It is set at the level where people are ‘lacking the resources to meet the basic needs for healthy living; having insufficient income to provide the food, shelter and clothing needed to preserve health’.
That line does move due to inflation and what we consider ‘sufficient’, but there is nothing, theoretically, stopping every single person from being above that point. (Or, strangely, below that point. If we has a zombie apocalypse, for example, the entire population would probably lack the shelter needed to preserve health, because the requirements for that got much larger, and thus would technically be in poverty.)
There are other poverty guidelines, for example the EU has ‘people making less than 60% of the median income, but also doesn’t require anyone above it…if the median income is $50,000, then if everyone make $30,000, no one is in poverty. (This standard fails rather horrifically in a recession, though, because the less in general people are paid, the less ‘poverty’ there is.)
There’s really no poverty guideline that says ‘The lowest 10% are in poverty’, which is the only way what you’re talking about could work. That wouldn’t really make sense, though, because what would it measure? We already know how many people are counted under it!Report
Well technically it depends on your definition of poverty because you’re both right. On one hand poverty is a finite line.. on the other hand it’s a formal income level below a line that is defined by the average income in the country. So one definition is somewhat static (though still moving) and the other moves quite a bit both up and down.Report
Won’t illegal immigration disappear overnight… because you’ve opened the borders? Or does that just mean stopping all enforcement at the border itself – if you cross without papers you’re still committing a crime, you just won’t run into any agents? What is it to “open the borders”?
And for the record, the plummeting values of land were, if not the first, among the first considerations to cross my mind here.Report
I was thinking about all of the little ethnic grocery stores that would pop up.Report
In the middle of rural Nebraska?Report
Some of the best Mexican food can be had in the Mountain West (by which I don’t mean the southwest): Montana, Idaho, northern Utah.Report
Massively relevant disclosure: anecdote follows.
I’ve had Mexican food in Idaho. It came with tots.
I’ll stick with Los Angeles and/or Albuquerque.Report
You did not go to the right Mexican food place in Idaho. You typically want to go to a place that has been converted from a garage, a bus, a train, or something else.Report
I’ve had Mexican food in Salt Lake City. It contained no detectable trace of spice.Report
Old Colorado City just got its first Ethiopian joint.
Anything can happen.Report
You and Maribou should come visit me and Jason and we’ll take you to Little Ethiopia in D.C.
Sooooooooo good.Report
My memories of the 70s and 80s are vivid enough that “Ethiopian restaurant” sounds like the setup for a really tasteless joke. (The same way that “Polish logician” does, even though Poland is in fact notable for producing that brand of mathematician.)Report
It’s a lot like Indian food, at least insofar as “Indian food” is any one thing to begin with. Think lots of spices simmered together, plenty of chili peppers, and you eat it with flatbread.
Oh, and whole, deep-fried fish, which are amazing.Report
Raw beef! With butter!
…And a bunch of other stuff, I guess. But if you’re not going to order the raw beef, you might as well just go to an Indian restaurant.Report
I can’t believe I didn’t see this!
Count on it.Report
Seems to me that it would specifically be the value of land out in the middle of nowhere that would plummet. Except that that’s already pretty cheap. I wouldn’t expect the price of urban or suburban real estate to fall much. In fact, it might even rise, with all the extra population.Report
Living in the south most of my life, I’ve always found the idea of over-population in America a strange concern. I can ride for hours through parts of the south and see only a handful of homes. There’s so much space in America, it boggles the mind. I suppose if you grew up in NY or LA you might feel cramped, but America is really wide open — and, on another topic, I think this has a psychological effect on people, depending on where you live. Like in South America where there’s so much space, geographical diversity and tropical surroundings — it creates a different view of the world that has to do with abundance, potential and a sense of freedom. But then controllers in centralized locations mess things up.Report
Even New York and LA are sparsely populated compared to a lot of European and Asian cities.Report
The capitalist seems reasonable, because you made him so.
“The gains would mostly go to the migrants,” said the Malthusian. I’m not sure anyone describing himself as Malthusian would say this, but I’m also not sure any “Malthusians” actually exist. What would you say if I said that I think your reliance on contrived ideal cases and parables discredits your main point?
“If we increase our racial diversity, we can expect less in the way of welfare overall.” – I think you’re confusing cause and mechanism here. Perhaps the reason people don’t support welfare benefits for minorities in democratic societies is because people be racist. I mean, in Finland, that poor guy with four kids delivering newspapers as an adult is like an adult and he shouldn’t have to deliver newspapers so we should like make some law that lets him sell insurance of whatever, but, in America, that poor black guy with four kids is lazy because capitalism works.
“It’s designed to wound everyone’s fake interests, and to get everyone to notice it.” – Definitely, and indeed. But I think readers here are sane, academic dudes, so they’ll definitely agree that academic wounds are not real wounds, but, they’ll also argue that real wounds exist (see explanation above.). Report
The capitalist seems reasonable, because you made him so.
Guilty as charged.
“The gains would mostly go to the migrants,” said the Malthusian. I’m not sure anyone describing himself as Malthusian would say this, but I’m also not sure any “Malthusians” actually exist. What would you say if I said that I think your reliance on contrived ideal cases and parables discredits your main point?
I would say:
1. The Malthusian always pipes up when zero-sum or other doom-and-gloom thinking lurks nearby. Here, he is complaining that we would not benefit existing Americans, only new ones.
2. There are too Malthusians. Gregory Clark is one of the more prominent.
3. In pieces like this, I often don’t have a point. This piece is a good example. I like a lot of the policy ideas articulated within it, but I also recognize their problems and try to grapple with them. Bundling them all together creates more problems, and of course I’m aware of it. The point of the bundling is to get people — with me first on the list — to think.Report