The reason for citing the model of an anarcho-capitalist society is that no such thing as forced integration (uninvited migration) is possible (permitted) within its framework. Under this scenario no difference between the physical movement of goods and the migration of people exists. Just as every product movement reflects an underlying agreement between sender and receiver, so are all movements of immigrants into and within an anarcho-capitalist society the result of an agreement between the immigrant and one or a series of receiving domestic property owners. Hence, even if the anarcho-capitalist model is ultimately rejected—and if for "realism's" sake the existence of a government and of "public" (in addition to private) goods and property is assumed—it brings into clear focus what a government's immigration policy would have to be if and insofar as this government derived its legitimacy from the sovereignty of the "people" and was viewed as the outgrowth of an agreement or "social contract" (as is presumably the case with all modern—post-monarchical—governments, of course). Surely, such a "popular" government, which assumed as its primary task the protection of its citizens and their property (the production of domestic security), would want to preserve rather than abolish this no-forcedintegration feature of anarcho-capitalism.
In order to clarify what this implies, it is necessary to explain how an anarcho-capitalist society is altered by the introduction of a government, and how this affects the immigration problem. Since there is no government in an anarcho-capitalist society, there is no clear-cut distinction between inlanders (domestic citizens) and foreigners. This distinction appears only with the establishment of a government. The territory over which a government's power extends then becomes inland, and everyone residing outside of this territory becomes a foreigner. State borders (and passports), as distinct from private property borders (and titles to property), come into existence, and immigration takes on a 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 exclusively with private property owners or associations of such owners but ultimately with the government qua domestic security-producer monopolist. Now if the government excludes a person while a domestic resident exists who wants to admit this very person onto his property, the result is forced exclusion; and if the government admits a person while no domestic resident exists who wants to have this person on his property, the result is forced integration.
Moreover, hand-in-hand with the institution of a government comes the institution of public property and goods; that is, of property and goods owned collectively by all domestic residents and controlled and administered by the government. The larger or smaller the amount of public government ownership, the greater or smaller will be the potential problem of forced integration. Consider a socialist society like the former Soviet Union or East Germany, for example. All factors of production (capital goods), including all land and natural resources, are publicly owned. Accordingly, if the government admits an uninvited immigrant, it admits him to any place within the country; for without private land ownership there are no limitations on his internal migrations other than those decreed by government. Under socialism, therefore, forced integration can be spread everywhere and thereby immensely intensified. (In fact, in the Soviet Union and East Germany, for instance, the government could quarter a stranger in someone else's private house or apartment. This measure and the resulting high-powered forced integration was justified on grounds of the "fact" that all private houses rested on public land.15)
Socialist countries are not high-wage areas, of course. Or if they are, they will not remain so for long. Their problem is not immigration but emigration pressure. The Soviet Union and East Germany prohibited emigration and killed people for trying to leave the country.16 However, the problem of the extension and intensification of forced integration persists outside of socialism. To be sure, in nonsocialist countries such as the United States, Switzerland, and the Federal Republic of Germany, which are favorite immigration destinations, a government-admitted immigrant could not move just anywhere. His freedom of movement would be severely restricted by the extent of private property and private land ownership in particular. Yet by proceeding on public roads or with public means of transportation and by staying on public land and in public parks and buildings, an immigrant can cross every domestic resident's path, and move into virtually any neighborhood. The smaller the quantity of public property, the less likely this will occur, but as long as any public property exists it cannot be entirely avoided.
15By the same token, under socialism every form of internal migration was subject to government control. See on this Victor Zaslavsky and Yuri Lury, "The Passport System in the USSR and Changes in the Soviet Union," Soviet Union 8, no. 2 (1979).
VI
A popular government that wants to safeguard its citizens and their domestic property from forced integration and foreign invaders has two methods of doing so: a corrective and a preventive one. The corrective method is designed to ameliorate the effects of forced integration once the event has taken place and the invaders are there. As indicated, to achieve this goal the government must reduce the quantity of public property and expand that of private property as much as possible, and whatever the ratio of private to public property may be, the government should help rather than hinder the enforcement of a private property owner's right to admit and exclude others from his property. If virtually all property is owned privately and the government assists in enforcing private ownership rights, the uninvited immigrants, even if they successfully crossed the border and entered the country, would not likely get much further.
The more completely this corrective measure is carried out (the higher the degree of private ownership), the smaller will be the need for protective measures, such as border defense. The cost of protection against foreign invaders along the United States-Mexico border, for instance, is comparatively high because for long stretches no private property exists on the U.S. side. However, even if the cost of border protection were lowered by means of privatization, it would not disappear as long as there are substantial income and wage differentials between highand low-wage territories. Hence, in order to fulfill its basic protective function, a high-wage area government must also engage in preventive measures. At all ports of entry and along its borders, the government, as trustee of its citizens, must check all newly arriving persons for an entrance ticket; that is, a valid invitation by a domestic property owner; and anyone not in possession of such a ticket must be expelled at his own expense.
16See on this Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (Boston: Kluwer, 1989), chap. 3; idem, "Desocialization in a United Germany," Review of Austrian Economics 5, no. 2 (1991); idem, "The Economic and Political Rationale for European Secessionism," in Secession, State and Liberty, David Gordon, ed. (New Brunswick, NJ :Transaction Publishers, 1998).
Valid invitations are contracts between one or more private domestic recipients, residential or commercial, and the arriving person. Qua contractual admission, the inviting party can only dispose of his own private property. Hence, similar to the scenario of conditional free immigration the admission implies that the immigrant will be excluded from all publicly funded welfare. On the other hand, it implies that the receiving party must assume legal responsibility for the actions of his invitee for the duration of his stay. The invitor is held liable to the full extent of his property for any crimes by the invitee committed against the person or property of any third party (as parents are held accountable for crimes committed by their offspring as long as these are members of the parental household). This obligation, which implies that invitors will have to carry liability insurance for all of their guests, ends once the invitee has left the country, or once another domestic property owner has assumed liability for the person in question by admitting him onto his property.
The invitation may be private (personal) or commercial, temporary or permanent, concerning only housing (acc
ommodation, residency) or housing and employment, but there cannot be a valid contract involving only employment and no housing.17 In any case, however, as a contractual relationship, every invitation may be revoked or terminated by the host; and upon termination, the invitee—whether tourist, visiting businessman, or resident alien—will be required to leave the country (unless another resident citizen enters into an invitation-contract with him).
17In the current legal environment wherein domestic property owners are essentially barred from engaging in any form of discriminatory action, the presence of foreign guestworkers would inevitably lead to widespread forced integration. Once admitted, based on an existing employment contract, these workers would then be able to use the courts in order to gain entrance also to housing, schooling, and any other form of "public" establishment or accommodation. Hence, in order to overcome this problem employers must be required to offer their guestworkers not just employment but housing and other things such as shopping, medical, training or entertainment facilities, i.e., the amenities of an entire self-contained factory town. For a discussion of the much maligned institution of factory towns see James B. Allen, The Company Town in the American West (Norman: Oklahoma University Press,
The invitee, who is at all times subject to the potential risk of immediate expulsion, may lose his legal status as a nonresident or resident alien only upon acquiring citizenship. In accordance with the objective of making all immigration (like trade) invited-contractual, the fundamental requirement for citizenship is the acquisition of property ownership, or more precisely the ownership of real estate and residential property. In contrast, it would be inconsistent with the very idea of invited migration to award citizenship according to the territorial principle, as in the U.S., whereby a child born to a nonresident or resident alien in a host country automatically acquires U.S. citizenship. In fact, as most other high-wage area governments recognize, such a child should acquire the citizenship of his parents. Granting this child citizenship involves the nonfulfillment of a host country government's basic protective function and actually amounts to an invasive act perpetrated by the government against its own citizenry. Becoming a citizen means acquiring the right to stay in a country permanently, and a permanent invitation cannot be secured by any means other than purchasing residential property from a citizen resident. Only by selling real estate to a foreigner does a citizen indicate that he agrees to a guest's permanent stay, and only if the immigrant has purchased and paid for real estate and residential housing in the host country will he assume a permanent interest in his new country's well-being and prosperity. Moreover, finding a citizen who is willing to sell residential property and who is prepared and able to pay for it, although a necessary requirement for the acquisition of citizenship, may not also be sufficient. If and insofar as the domestic property in question is subject to restrictive covenants, the hurdles to be taken by a prospective citizen may be significantly higher.18 In Switzerland, for instance, citizenship may require that the sale of residential property to foreigners be ratified by a majority of or even all of the directly affected local property owners.
VII
Judged by the immigration policy entailed by the objective of protecting one's own citizens from foreign invasion and forced integration and of rendering all international population movements invited and contractual migrations, the Swiss government does a significantly better job than the United States. It is relatively more difficult to enter Switzerland as an uninvited person, and it is more difficult to stay on as an uninvited alien. In particular it is far more difficult for a foreigner to acquire citizenship, and the legal distinction between resident citizens and resident aliens is more clearly preserved. These differences notwithstanding, the governments of both Switzerland and the U.S. are pursuing immigration policies that must be deemed far too permissive.
18See on this also chap. 10, sect. 6, and Spencer H. MacCallum, The Art of Community (Menlo Park, Calif.: Institute for Humane Studies, 1970).
Moreover, the excessive permissiveness of their immigration policies and the resulting exposure of the Swiss and American population to forced integration by foreigners is further aggravated by the fact that the extent of public property in both countries (and other high-wage areas) is substantial; that tax-funded welfare provisions are high and growing and foreigners are not excluded; and that contrary to official pronouncements even the adherence to free trade policies is anything but perfect. Accordingly, in Switzerland, the U.S. and most other high-wage areas, popular protests against immigration policies have grown increasingly louder. It has been the purpose of this chapter not only to make the case for the privatization of public property, domestic laissez-faire, and international free trade, but in particular for the adoption of a restrictive immigration policy. By demonstrating that free trade is inconsistent with both unconditionally or conditionally free immigration and requires instead that migration be subject to the condition of being invited and contractual, it is our hope to contribute to more enlightened future policies in this area.
9
On Cooperation, Tribe, City, and State
I
Ludwig von Mises has explained the evolution of society—of human cooperation under the division of labor—as the combined result of two factors. These are first, the fact of differences among men (labor) and/or the inequalities of the geographical distribution of the naturegiven factors of production (land); and second, the recognition of the fact that work performed under the division of labor is more productive than work performed in self-sufficient isolation. He writes:
If and as far as labor under the division of labor is more productive than isolated labor, and if and as far as man is able to realize this fact, human action itself tends toward cooperation and association; man becomes a social being not in sacrificing his own concerns for the sake of a mythical Moloch, society, but in aiming at an improvement in his own welfare. Experience teaches that this condition—higher productivity achieved under division of labor—is present because its cause—the inborn inequality of men and the inequality in the geographical distribution of the natural factors of production—is real. Thus we are in a position to comprehend the course of social evolution.1
Several points are worth emphasizing here in order to reach a proper understanding of this fundamental insight of Mises's into the nature of society—points which will also help us realize some first, preliminary conclusions regarding the role of sex and race in social evolution. First, it is important to recognize that inequalities with respect to labor and/or land are a necessary but by no means a sufficient condition for the emergence of human cooperation. If all humans were identical and everyone were equipped with identical natural resources, everyone would produce the same qualities and quantities of goods, and the idea of exchange and cooperation would never enter anyone's mind. However, the existence of inequalities is not enough to bring about cooperation. There are also differences in the animal kingdom—most notably the difference of sex (gender) among members of the same animal species as well as the difference between the various species and subspecies (races), yet there is no such thing as cooperation among animals. To be sure, there are bees and ants who are referred to as "animal societies." But they form societies only in a metaphorical sense.2 The cooperation between bees and ants is assured purely by biological factors—by innate instincts. They cannot not cooperate as they do, and without some fundamental changes in their biological makeup, the division of labor among them is not in danger of breaking down. In distinct contrast, the cooperation between humans is the outcome of purposeful individual actions, of the conscious aiming at the attainment of individual ends. As a result, the division of labor among men is constantly threatened by the possibility of disintegration.
1Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, Scholar's Edition (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998), p. 160.
Within the animal kingdom, then, the difference between the sexes can only be said to b
e a factor of attraction—of reproduction and proliferation; whereas the differences of the species and subspecies can be referred to as a factor of repulsion—of separation or even of fatal antagonism, of evasion, of struggle, and annihilation. Moreover, within the animal kingdom it makes no sense to describe the behavior resulting from sexual attraction as either consensual (love) or nonconsensual (rape); nor does it make any sense to speak of the relationship between the members of different species or subspecies as one of hostility and hatred or of criminal and victim. In the animal kingdom there only exists interaction, which is neither cooperative (social) behavior nor criminal (antisocial) behavior. As Mises writes:
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