DemocracyThe God That Failed
Page 23
Publicly owned buildings and structures were all financed by taxes, and as far as undeveloped public land is concerned, it is the result of a public, i.e., tax-funded and enforced, policy prohibiting the private appropriation and development of nature and natural resources. Hence, it would appear that it is taxpayers, in accordance with their amount of taxes paid, who should be given title to public buildings and structures, while undeveloped public land simply should be opened up to private homesteading. Keep in mind that civil servants are not taxpayers (even though, in public discourse, they frequently fancy themselves to be so). Rather, their net income is typically paid out of taxes paid by other individuals working in the private sector of the economy. Civil servants are tax-consumers (just as public "welfare-recipients" are tax-consumers rather than tax-payers)23; hence, civil servants as well as welfare-recipients should be excluded from private ownership in formerly public buildings and structures. Both civil servants and welfare-recipients live off other people's tax payments, and it would add insult to injury if they, instead of those who had paid their salaries and handouts as well as the public buildings and structures that they occupy and control, should be awarded ownership of these buildings and structures.24 As regards undeveloped public land available for private homesteading activities, every public land manager, ranger, etc., should be excluded for a similar reason from homesteading land currently occupied and formerly guarded by him against potential private developers. He may be permitted to homestead other public land that is presently occupied and formerly guarded against private development by other government agents. But to allow him to homestead land he currently occupies would give him an advantage over other potential homesteaders that would be manifestly unfair in light of the fact that it was he, paid in this by taxpayers, who had previously kept these taxpayers off and away from this land.
23See on this also chap. 4, esp. note 15.
24To be sure, a number of complications would arise in this privatization scheme. In order to determine the ownership shares granted to various individuals in buildings and structures currently "owned" by local, state, and federal governments, these individuals would have to provide documentation of their past payments of local, state, and federal taxes respectively, and in each case past welfare payments received must be deducted from taxes paid in order to arrive at a figure for the amount of net taxes paid. In a fully privatized market society, the task of finding a detailed solution to this problem would be typically assumed by private accountants, lawyers, and arbitration agencies, financed directly or indirectly—against a contingency free—by the individual claimants.
7
On Free Immigration and Forced Integration
I
The classical argument in favor of free immigration runs as follows: Other things being equal, businesses go to low-wage areas, and labor moves to high-wage areas, thus affecting a tendency toward the equalization of wage rates (for the same kind of labor) as well as the optimal localization of capital. An influx of migrants into a given-sized high-wage area will lower nominal wage rates. However, it will not lower real wage rates if the population is below its optimum size. To the contrary, if this is the case, the produced output will increase over-proportionally, and real incomes will actually rise. Thus, restrictions on immigration will harm the protected domestic workers qua consumers more than they gain qua producers. Moreover, immigration restrictions will increase the "flight" of capital abroad (the export of capital which otherwise might have stayed), still causing an equalization of wage rates (although somewhat more slowly), but leading to a less than optimal allocation of capital, thereby harming world living standards all-around.1
1"The law of migration and location," explains Ludwig von Mises, makes it possible for us to form an exact concept of relative overpopulation. The world, or an isolated country from which emigration is impossible, is to be regarded as overpopulated in the absolute sense when the optimum of population—that point beyond which an increase in the number of people would mean not an increase but a decrease in welfare—is exceeded. A country is relatively overpopulated where, because of the large size of the population, work must go on under less favorable conditions of prod uction than in other countries, so that, ceteris paribus, the same application of capital and labor yields a smaller output there. With complete mobility of persons and goods, relatively overpopulated territories would give up their population surplus to other territories until this disproportion had disappeared. (Nation, State, and Economy [New York: New York University Press, 1983], p. 58)
See also idem, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, Scholar's Edition (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998), pp. 620-24; Murray N. Rothbard, Power and Market: Government and the Economy (Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1977), pp. 52-55.
In addition, traditionally labor unions, and nowadays environmentalists, are opposed to free immigration, and this should prima facie count as another argument in favor of a policy of free immigration.2
II
As it is stated, the above argument in favor of free immigration is irrefutable. It would be foolish to attack it, just as it would be foolish to deny that free trade leads to higher living standards than does protectionism.3
It would also be wrong to attack the above case for free immigration by pointing out that because of the existence of a welfare state, immigration has become to a significant extent the immigration of welfare-bums, who do not increase but rather decrease average living standards even if the United States, for instance, is below her optimal population point. For this is not an argument against immigration but against the welfare state. To be sure, the welfare state should be destroyed in its entirety. However, the problems of immigration and welfare are analytically distinct problems and must be treated accordingly.
The problem with the above argument is that it suffers from two interrelated shortcomings which invalidate its unconditional pro-immigration conclusion and/or which render the argument applicable only to a highly unrealistic—long bygone—situation in human history.
The first shortcoming will only be touched upon. To libertarians of the Austrian School, it should be clear that what constitutes "wealth" and "well-being" is subjective. Material wealth is not the only thing that has value. Thus, even if real incomes rise due to immigration, it does not follow that immigration must be considered "good," for one might prefer lower living standards and a greater distance to other people over higher living standards and a smaller distance to others.4
2On the counterproductive effects of labor unions see William H. Hutt, A Theory of Collective Bargaining (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1980); idem, "Trade Unions: The Private Use of Coercive Power," Review of Austrian Economics 3 (1989); Morgan O. Reynolds, Making America Poorer: The Cost of Labor Law (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1987); on the environmentalist movement see Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., The Anti-Environmentalist Manifesto (Buringame, Calif.: Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993); Larry Abraham, The Greening: The Environmentalists' Drive for Global Power (Phoenix, Ariz.: Double APublications, 1993).
3See on this chap. 8 below.
4See on this in particular Mises, Human Action, pp. 241-44; Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State, 2 vols. (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1993), pp. 183-200.
Instead, a second, related shortcoming will be the focus here. With regard to a given territory into which people immigrate, it is left unanalyzed who, if anyone, owns (controls) this territory. In fact, in order to render the above argument applicable, it is implicitly assumed that the territory in question is unowned, and that the immigrants enter virgin territory (open frontier). Obviously, today this can no longer be assumed. If this assumption is dropped, however, the problem of immigration takes on an entirely new meaning and requires fundamental rethinking.
Ill
For the purpose of illustration, let us first assume an anarcho-capitalist society. Though convinced that such a society is the only social order that can
be defended as just, I do not want to explain here why this is the case.5 Instead, I will employ it as a conceptual benchmark, because this will help explain the fundamental misconception of most contemporary free immigration advocates.
All land is privately owned, including all streets, rivers, airports, harbors, and so on. With respect to some pieces of land, the property title may be unrestricted; that is, the owner is permitted to do with his property whatever he pleases as long as he does not physically damage the property owned by others. With respect to other territories, the property title may be more or less severely restricted. As is currently the case in some housing developments, the owner may be bound by contractual limitations on what he can do with his property (voluntary zoning), which might include residential versus commercial use, no buildings more than four stories high, no sale or rent to Jews, Germans, Catholics, homosexuals, Haitians, families with or without children, or smokers, for example.
Clearly, under this scenario no such thing as freedom of immigration exists. Rather, many independent private property owners have the freedom to admit or exclude others from their own property in accordance with their own unrestricted or restricted property titles. Admission to some territories might be easy, while it might be nearly impossible to others. In any case, however, admission to the property of the admitting person does not imply a "freedom to move around," unless other property owners consent to such movement. There will be as much immigration or nonimmigration, inclusivity or exclusivity, desegregation or segregation, nondiscrimination or discrimination based on racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural or whatever other grounds as individual owners or associations of individual owners allow.
5See on this Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (Boston: Kluwer, 1993); also chap. 9, note 16.
Note that none of this, not even the most exclusive form of segregationism, has anything to do with a rejection of free trade and the adoption of protectionism. From the fact that one does not want to associate with or live in the neighborhood of Blacks, Turks, Catholics or Hindus, etc., it does not follow that one does not want to trade with them from a distance.6 To the contrary, it is precisely the absolute voluntariness of human association and separation—the absence of any form of forced integration—that makes peaceful relationships—free trade—between culturally, racially, ethnically, or religiously distinct people possible.7
6As Ludwig von Mises reminds us,
even if such a thing as a natural and inborn hatred between various races existed, it would not render social cooperation futile... Social cooperation has nothing to do with personal love or with a general commandment to love one another. People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the right and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict. (Human Action, p. 168)
7Contrary to the currently fashionable multiculturalism, it might be pointed out here that no multicultural society—and especially no democratic one—has ever worked peacefully for very long. Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 124-27, has provided some recent evidence to this effect. Working back from the present, look at the record: Eritrea, ruled by Ethiopia since 1952, splits off in 1993; Czechoslovakia, founded in 1918, splits into Czech and Slovak ethnic components in 1993; Soviet Union, splits into multiple ethnic components in 1991, and many of these components are threatened with further ethnic fragmentation; Yugoslavia, founded in 1918, splits into several ethnic components in 1991, and further breakup is still under way; Lebanon, founded 1920, effective partition of Christians and Muslims (under Syrian domination) since 1975; Cyprus, independent since 1960, effective partition of Greek and Turkish territories in 1974; Pakistan, independent since 1947, ethnically distinct Bangladesh splits off in 1971; Malaysia, independent since 1963, Chinese-dominated Singapore is expelled in 1965. The list goes on with cases, which have not yet been resolved: India, and the Sikhs and Kashmiris; Sn Lanka, and the Tamils; Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and the Kurds; Sudan, Chad, and the Arabs versus Blacks; Nigeria, and the Ibos; Ulster, and the Catholics versus the Protestants; Belgium, and the Flemish versus the Walloons; Italy, and the German-speaking South Tyrolians; Canada, and the French versus the English.
IV
In an anarcho-capitalist society there is no government and, accordingly, no clear-cut distinction between "inlanders" (domestic citizens) and foreigners. This distinction only arises with the establishment of a government, i.e., an institution which possesses a territorial monopoly of aggression (taxation). The territory over which a government's taxing power extends becomes "inland," and everyone residing outside of this territory becomes a foreigner. State borders (and passports), are an "unnatural" (coercive) institution. Indeed, their existence (and that of a domestic government) implies a two-fold distortion with respect to peoples' natural inclination to associate with others. First, inlanders cannot exclude the government (the taxman) from their own property and are subject to what one might call "forced integration" by government agents. Second, in order to be able to intrude on its subjects' private property so as to tax them, a government must invariably have control of existing roads, and it will employ its tax revenue to produce even more roads to gain even better access to all private property qua potential tax source. This over-production of roads does not result merely in the innocent facilitation of interregional trade—a lowering of transaction costs —as starry-eyed economists would have us believe but leads to forced domestic integration (artificial desegregation of separate localities).8
But is not Switzerland, with an assembly of Germans, French, Italians, and Romansh, an exception? Put briefly, the answer is no. All essential powers in Switzerland, in particular that of determining cultural and educational matters (schools), are concentrated in the hands of the cantons rather than those of the central government. And almost all of the 26 cantons and "half-cantons" are ethnically homogeneous. Seventeen cantons are almost exclusively German; 4 cantons are almost exclusively French; and 1 canton is predominantly Italian. Only 3 cantons are bilingual, the Swiss ethnic balance has been essentially stable, and there is only a limited amount of intercantonal migration. Even given these favorable circumstances, Switzerland did experience an unsuccessful, violently suppressed war of secession—the Sonderbundskrieg of 1847. Furthermore, the creation of the new, breakaway French-speaking canton of Jura from the predominantly German canton of Berne in 1979 was preceded by years of terrorist activity.
On the most likely genetic base of the human tendency to associate with "likes," and dissociate from "unlikes," see J. Philippe Rushton, "Gene-culture, Coevolution, and Genetic Similarity Theory: Implications for Ideology, Ethnic Nepotism, and Geopolitics," Politicsand the Life Sciences 4 (1986); idem. Race, Evolution, and Behavior (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1995).
In fact, as noted by Max Weber, Soziologie, Weltgeschichtliche Analysen, Politik (Stuttgart: Kroener, 1964), p. 4, the famed roadways of ancient Rome were typically regarded as a plague rather than an advantage, because they were essentially military rather than trade routes.
Moreover, with the establishment of a government and state borders, immigration takes on an entirely new meaning. Immigration becomes immigration by foreigners across state borders, and the decision as to whether or not a person should be admitted no longer rests with private property owners or associations of such owners but with the government as the ultimate sovereign of all domestic residents and the ultimate super-owner of all their properties. Now, if the government excludes a person while even one domestic resident wants to admit this ve
ry person onto his property, the result is forced exclusion (a phenomenon that does not exist under private property anarchism). Furthermore, if the government admits a person while there is not a single domestic resident who wants to have this person on his property, the result is forced integration (also nonexistent under private property anarchism).
V
It is time to enrich the analysis through the introduction of a few "realistic" empirical assumptions. Let us assume that the government is privately owned. The ruler owns the entire country within state borders. He owns part of the territory outright (his property title is unrestricted), and he is partial owner of the rest (as landlord or residual claimant of all of his citizen-tenants real estate holdings, albeit restricted by some preexisting rental contracts). He can sell and bequeath his property, and he can calculate and capture the monetary value of his capital (his country).
Traditional monarchies—and kings—are the closest historical examples of this form of government.9
What will a king's typical immigration and emigration policy be? Because he owns the entire country's capital value, he will tend to choose migration policies that preserve or enhance rather than diminish the value of his kingdom, assuming no more than his self-interest.