April 5, 2008
Imagine there’s no country….
This blog is a comment on Martin Wolf’s Column in the Financial Times of Friday April 4, 2008, “Four falsehoods on immigration”.
Martin and I have crossed swords before on the issue of immigration. Our disagreement is fundamental and based on different ethical premises. Martin believes that existing residents of a country have a right to control who enters their country. The House of Lords select Committee shares this view, as is clear from their Report, The Economic Impact of Immigration, which asserts that the criterion to be used to assess the costs and benefits of immigration for the UK is the impact on the existing resident population.
I reject that view. The wellbeing of the existing resident population is no more, and no less, relevant than the wellbeing of any potential immigrant to the UK, wherever in the world he or she may be. I recognise private property rights. My home is my castle and I can deny entry into it to anybody at any time. I don’t recognise national property rights. A country is not like a private home. A country is an open club.
The subject is complicated in part because normative issues (what ought to be) tend to get tangled up with positive issues (what is). So to avoid any unnecessary flaming about my lack of historical knowledge and failure to understand how people actually feel and think about the country or countries they belong to, let me state that countries certainly historically have not been the kind of clubs I am talking about. My argument is (1) that clubs is what they ought to be and (2) that, with a bit of luck and with a bit of help and effort, at least some countries, including the UK, may be moving in that direction.
Despite our fundamental disagreement on whose wellbeing matters, I have no problem with 3½ out of Martin’s four falsehoods on immigration. Clearly, the impact of immigration on the size of the economy, however this is measured, is of no significance. Immigration does not strengthen the fiscal position. Immigration helps defuse the pensions time bomb if and only if immigrants arrive here aged between 18 and 21, immediately find work and remain employed, don’t marry, don’t have kids, don’t get ill and retire and drop dead at age 65.
Martin’s remaining falsehood “,…immigration lowers vacancies and relieves job and skill shortages” is only a partial falsehood. Selective immigration obviously can relieve skill shortages. The various ‘key worker’, ‘essential worker’ and ‘(skill) points schemes operated all over the world and proposed for Britain can certainly relieve skill shortages. You can wait for domestic markets and other institutions to correct the shortages without immigration, but you may have to wait a long time. In the UK, you may have to wait forever, as among the arrangements and institutions that have to respond effectively are the public funding of education and training and the private and public institutions delivering education and training. In the UK, these changes occur in geological time.
Countries as open clubs
Back to what a country is and what it isn’t, or ought not to be. Christopher Caldwell, in a discussion of Lord Goldsmith’s report “Citizenship: Our Common Bond” puts it very well:
“Citizenship is bound up with identity. National identities traditionally arose out of people’s sense of themselves as a “people”, in an ethnic or a historical sense. But in a world of globalisation and mass migration, promoting that kind of identity sounds bigoted. Old republics like the US and France seem to have an easier time of it. Their self-understanding is “creedal” - it is built not on belonging to a people but on holding certain core philosophical beliefs.”
I have tried to say something similar in the language of the theory of local public goods. To me countries are, or ought to be, clubs. Importantly, countries are open clubs.
Countries are territorially based clubs for the provision of public goods and services - defence, law and order, defence of property rights and other fundamental human rights, basic healthcare, education for minors, the collective insurance of privately non-insurable risks and perhaps a few other things.
Countries as territorially based legal and social and entities exist because people need land to live. Countries are a partition of the globe (they divide it exhaustively but without overlap), because for most people it is difficult to be in more than one place at a time. Land - territory - is scarce and can be subject to overcrowding and congestion.
Countries have states associated with them (institutions that have the monopoly of the legitimate use of coercion or force (through taxation and through prescriptive or proscriptive regulation)) because of pervasive free rider problems associated with the financing of public goods. There is a minimal efficient or optimal scale for the provision of most public goods, but it is not the same for all public goods. This has produced Federal arrangements and proto- or quasi-federal arrangements like the EU. There are also, after a range of increasing returns, diseconomies of scale and scope associated with country size and the number of tasks performed by the state. This is why we don’t (yet) have a single global state, or indeed any form of global provision of public goods.
They should be open clubs: anyone who is willing and able to abide by the rules of the club ought to be able to join. The members of the club (the citizens of the country) have the right to deny entry (membership) to persons who are not willing and able to abide by the rules of the club. They also have the right to expel existing members who are unwilling or incapable of abiding by the rules of the club. Banishment or exile for members of the existing resident population are the natural complement to the denial of membership to would-be immigrants unable or unwilling to abide by the rules of the club.
Expulsion/exiling of residents/citizens of a country is something that should not be considered lightly. It is a sanction of last resort for repeated transgressions against the rules. It also presupposes that there is a place/country to which the no longer acceptable resident/citizen can be banished without this exposing him or her to the risk of maltreatment, torture or death in his/her place of exile. Extraordinary renditions of the kind engaged in by the Bush administration, to its eternal shame, are never acceptable. Some other way of protecting the country/club from those who do not accept and constitute a material threat to its fundamental values and binding rules will have to be found (internal exile to a small uninhabited island in the Outer Hebrides comes to mind).
The next key question concerns the nature of permissible or legitimate rules the clubs can adopt. I would deny the validity of any rule that discriminates in favour of or against someone because of birth, territoriality, ancestry, heritage, race, ethnicity, history, religion or culture. No Blut und Boden - ethnicity or citizenship based on descent and homeland. The sharing of common values should be the necessary and sufficient condition for membership in the polity.
No country (club) should be able to deny membership to outsiders by imposing membership rules that violated certain universal human rights. There are several places where their essence is stated. One is the Bill of Rights - the first 10 Amendments to the US Constitution, with the exception of the Second Amendment, which has, regrettably, been hijacked by the gun lobby. Another useful statements of criteria that have to be observed by all countries is found in the first 21 Articles of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the remaining Articles, numbers 22 to 30, are either meaningless or refer to aspirations and hopes, rather than rights that should be granted regardless of circumstances),
But subject to that, everyone ought to be welcome everywhere. Or at least anyone from anywhere, should be admitted everywhere with equal rights and obligations to those of existing residents, even if not truly welcome. Sensible solutions to free-rider problems will have to be designed, of course, but that is not beyond the ken of humanity.
Why open clubs as the norm?
In an earlier exchange with Martin Wolf on immigration, in response to Martin’s Column “Why immigration is hard to tackle”, I wrote:
“From a normative point of view, I am with Philippe Legrain who believes that freedom of movement is a human right. For me, when it comes to the rights of nations and countries, libertarian political instincts combine with religious convictions: “The earth is the LORD’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein”. Not: Britain for the British or Scotland for the Scots, or even British jobs for British workers. I do not recognise national property rights.”
I continue to hold strongly to the views expressed in the 24th psalm.
Martin stated in his reply to my comment: “Interestingly, Willem quotes in support of his position the psalmist’s line: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” The words come from the Hebrew Bible, that is, from my own religious tradition. Willem will note the irony: the idea that the earth was the Lord’s was deemed by the Hebrews to be entirely compatible with the notion that God’s people enjoyed special rights to the land of Israel. Indeed, the psalmist – assumed to be King David – was a notable warrior against those who sought to conquer his country.
David, second king of Israel, was one of the most fascinating, complex and contradictory characters in Scriptures full of fascinating, complex and contradictory characters. He may not always have practiced what he preached (or sang), but this in no way affects the truth and beauty of what he sang. I named my son David partly because of the joyful way King David danced half naked before the Ark of the Covenant as it entered Jerusalem, partly because the name means ‘beloved’.
I like to believe that David wrote the psalms attributed to him in the Bible. David’s authorship of any of the psalms attributed to him is, of course, an open question among scholars. The Hebrew inscription commonly rendered as “A Psalm of David”, may equally well be translated as “connected with David,” “for David,” “in the style of David” as “by David”. It is by no means clear that authorship is indicated.
If the psalmist of the 24th Psalm is indeed David, it is a universalist, poetic David, the David of the lament over Saul and Jonathan and of the many other achingly beautiful psalms attributed to him. It is not the cruel, vindictive David who cursed his wife Michal when she criticised him for prancing around in front of the Ark. She considered this undignified behaviour for a king - a not unreasonable position for a guiding and directing wife. I am sure my wife would have thought the same.
It is not the particularist, homicidal David who gave as dowry to King Saul, his future father-in-law, the foreskins of two hundred Philistines he had killed (this was for the same Michal he cursed into barrenness after the Ark episode); nor is it David the grim conquerer and destroyer of the Philistines, the Amelekites, the Jebusites, the Moabites, the Ammonites and assorted other inhabitants of the lands that became Israel and Judah. The consolidation of the conquest of the promised land under David involved genocide, just like the earlier stages. I recognise the reality of the horrors of particularism, but I strive for the promise of universalism.
Conclusion: a country is not a home
The existing British residents or citizens of the United Kingdom do not own the United Kingdom, nor should they be able to restrict the entry of anyone wishing to live in the country, as long as these immigrants are willing to live by the fundamental rules that define the United Kingdom as a country. This means that violent homophobes have no place in this country, regardless of what religion they adhere to. Those who deny equal rights to women, those who impose forced marriage on others, or who practice female genital mutilation (aka female circumcision) likewise do not belong here.
If tolerance is indeed a defining characteristic of the United Kingdom, as I believe, then intolerant behaviour cannot be tolerated. Liberalism will have to develop sharp teeth if it is to survive. But there should be no special consideration given to those who happen to have been born here, or to those whose ancestors at some earlier point in time came to this country as economic immigrants, as political refugees or as raping and pillaging invaders.
The key point that separates Martin and me is that for Martin, in the UK immigration debate, it is only the wellbeing of the existing residents that counts, while for me their wellbeing is neither more nor less important that the wellbeing of anyone who might want to emigrate to the UK.
Martin also makes the point that immigration could be desirable if one believed that a population that is both substantially larger and substantially more heterogeneous than today’s would be beneficial. I don’t believe that a substantially larger population for the UK would be beneficial. Quite the contrary, I consider the UK, or at any rate the English nation, to be overpopulated. However, other parts of the world are both poorer and even more overpopulated than the UK, so a significant migration from those countries to the UK would be the desirable from the point of view of global welfare, even if it were to make the existing UK residents worse off.
As regards greater heterogeneity, however, I have no doubts whatsoever. When I first came to the UK in 1965, the UK was overwhelmingly white, much more homogeneous than today, and very boring and uninspiring indeed. It had come to the end of the Imperial, Post-Imperial and co-victors of World War II roads but was not yet ready to assume its role as a middle-sized European country. The food was terrible - the coffee undrinkable. The only food both edible and affordable on a student budget was the local Indian. The only manifestations of creativity were found in pop music and the sub-culture that surrounded it, and those were pretty much straight imports from the USA. The parochialism and ignorance of the rest of the world was crushing. This was a country going nowhere fast.
Today the UK, especially in its creative urban centres, is one of the most ethnically, racially, culturally and religiously diverse countries in the world. While this creates huge tensions, it also makes it the most exciting, creative and innovative place on earth. It is immigration that revived the UK and immigration that will keep it alive, if the country is confident enough to let it happen. Those who don’t like what the country has become are, of course, free to leave and go elsewhere - to join a club more to their liking.
“If tolerance is indeed a defining characteristic of the United Kingdom, as I believe, then intolerant behaviour cannot be tolerated.”
No. Tolerance is a characteristic a person not a country. You seem to be under allusion that you can change the population of the country and it will still retain its virtues. Are you a believer in homeopathy?
Posted by: Kit | April 5th, 2008 at 12:12 pm | Report this commentIt is a shame that you find the country of Shakespeare, Newton, Turner and the Beatles to be “very boring and uninspiring”.
1. Countries are not a partition of the globe: Antarctica and the oceans are not included.
2. Countries are much more then club-like providers of public goods: nationalism has been the most potent ideology in modern history, outmanouvering other strong forces such as communism and religion. Like it or not, people have a strong need to emotionally identify with their territory and its attached culture — and the international system recognises this. A big influx of immigrants will undoubtedly diffuse the current national culture of the host country.
3. There are advantages to be had in preserving global variety. Apart from the aesthetic appeal of social, cultural and political diversity, such non-uniformity allows competing systems to develop relatively independently and thereby enhance the choices and opportunities open to mankind. Historically, one of the main drivers of modernisation in Europe was the competition between different countries and different cultures, as opposed to the staid uniformity of China, which was initially much more advanced.
The modern United States is a globalised world in miniature, a laboratory for the kind of fully integrated, free-for-all you would have foisted on the globe as a whole. I think it is a depressing possibility: one uniform vulgar speech, one uniform eclectic popular culture, the pursuit solely of material well-being. I do not want to live in such a world, which I feel would lose much of its appeal. Such a world would also be much less creative (America’s current creativity necessarily relies on the existence of diversity outside its borders — from whence it derives templates that it later synthesises and integrates).
In short, just as it is important to preserve bio-diversity in an age of creeping urbanisation and industrialisation (which is not to doubt the advantages for humanity following from those last two) so is it important to preserve cultural-lingual, social and maybe even political diversity in an age of creeping globalisation (which, again, is not to doubt the great advantages following that historical force). Diversity is a global public good.
Posted by: Ron Cohen-Seban | April 5th, 2008 at 1:01 pm | Report this commentI am with Willem on this one. The idea that local residents should be decisive on the issue of admission rights for immigrants, and the implicit notion that their decision should be based on perceived economic advantage for local immigrants, are both problematic.
The notion of locality allows for overlapping jurisdiction. What if I wish to admit into my household someone that my neighbours do not want in their neigbourhood. What if citizens of London see perceived advantage in immigration that the rest of the country is not so keen on? What if European nation states admit immigrants with nation-specific cultural affinities that the large grouping of Europe does not care for. Endowing historically located individuals decisive power does not generate clear guidance in such contexts without selecting one level of grouping (Europe or UK or London ..) as the decisive group. Why should immigration be a national (rather than city-wide or international) issue?
Further, relatively affluent societies may choose to decide on criteria other than narrow economic advantage. This may be true for those who care only for Shakespeare, Newton, Turner and the Beatles, as well as those who find these boring. I suspect either group will benefit from an exposure to a wider set of cultural ideas, perhaps more than can be picked up by occasional holidays abroad.
Posted by: Alexander Denver | April 5th, 2008 at 2:08 pm | Report this commentThoughtful, but you might to carefully reconsider that point about expulsion - in Germany, it is fundamentally forbidden to strip a German citizen of their citizenship and then deport them, because it was among the most effective tools of two different totalitarian governments.
Simply removing those individuals who refuse to play along according to the rules set by some government authority seems to simply sweep aside the fact that some governments need to be removed, not their citizens.
Forced expulsion has the further advantage of not creating martyrs, since the people being deported can easily be painted as criminals, traitors, or simply those who leave instead of acknowledging their mistakes and reintegrating themselves into society. At least during the decades of the Cold War, the people stripped of citizenship by the East German or Soviet government included some of their nation’s leading artistic and moral figures, whereas the people doing the deporting were building the Berlin Wall and maintaining the gulag.
Posted by: not_scottbot | April 6th, 2008 at 7:55 am | Report this commentTo not_scottbot: your points all have merit. The reason I believe a country needs a mechanism like exiling or expulsion is that I want to achieve the maximum amount of symmetry between incumbents (the existing resident population) and outsiders - the rest of the world population. The importance of the historical accident of the status quo can never be negated completely, but it should be minimised.
If outsiders can be denied entry and membership because they do not play by the rules, then incumbents must be subject to expulsion if they do not play by the rules. The symmetry is essential because it is the wellbeing of the world population, current and future, rather than the wellbeing of the current resident population that matters.
Expulsions can be and have been abused by totalitarian governments. So have prisons and psychiatric confinement orders. I don’t think we can do away with either, unfortunately, just because they are subject to abuse.
Let me also clarify one point in my original posting. When I wrote: “No country (club) should be able to deny membership to outsiders by imposing membership rules that violated certain universal human rights. There are several places where their essence is stated. One is the Bill of Rights - the first 10 Amendments to the US Constitution, with the exception of the Second Amendment,. … . Another useful statements of criteria that have to be observed by all countries is found in the first 21 Articles of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights …”, I meant this to apply to the criteria used for expulsions also.
Posted by: Willem H. Buiter | April 6th, 2008 at 11:54 am | Report this commentI admire Willem when I agree with him and I admire him when I disagree with him, too. As he says, there is a fundamental difference between us on this issue. This is not true on the economics. I agree with him that allowing selective immigration can help eliminate narrow “shortages” of particular skills. But we really disagree on whether politically defined groups have a right to exclude non-members. It seems to me clear that they have such a right. Indeed, as I have argued before, this is inherent in the notion of democratic self-government.
Of course, one might argue that they should not exercise such a right, either for utilitarian reasons (of the kind that the government incorrectly uses) or for moral ones. But I am clear that strangers do not have a right to enter my home. It is a privilege that I may, or may not, grant. My country is my political home. I am entitled, through the political process, to decide who may enter it and who may stay in it.
Certainly, one of the criteria I would use in deciding this is whether the would-be entrant shares the fundamental and much cherished values of this political home of mine: tolerance; democracy, equal rights for men and women; and so forth. Unfortunately, many would-be entrants do not. It is unclear whether many of them even understand what those values are. So not only do citizens have the right to decide who should enter. We are, mistakenly, permitting the entry of many who do not meet Willem’s criteria for residence. I think we at least agree on that.
In general, however, I strongly share Willem’s liking for heterogeneity. That is one reason why I am reasonably comfortable with substantial gross immigration. Since there are many emigrants, that is perfectly compatible with low net immigration.
Posted by: Martin Wolf | April 6th, 2008 at 2:22 pm | Report this commentKick out to where? What if no place is willing to accept these “dropouts”?
A country carries responsibility for its citizens — a responsibility that includes imprisonment, if need be. Which goes to show that the “club” analogy is inappropriate — “extended family” is perhaps closer to the truth. There is an emotional element attached to the concept of country, something hyper-rationality cannot contain.
Posted by: Ron Cohen-Seban | April 6th, 2008 at 5:53 pm | Report this commentIs heterogeneity automatically superior or desirable? And is there not some inherent utility or intrinsic value to the relatively homogeneous UK of the 1960s however uninspiring to the likes of a younger Mr Buiter?
Even cultures that some may see as boring can have merit and can be worth preserving. I am in self-imposed exile from London for a few weeks in Utah. Contrary to Mr Cohen-Saben’s conventional generalisation of the US as globalised, integrated, and vulgar, Utah is actually remote and unique, however homogeneous. I find it to be a refreshing change from London (or New York for that matter), perhaps because of its particular brand of blandness, if that is we must call it. In fact, compared to many places I’ve been, Utah can be quite friendly and civilised if somewhat insular and old-fashioned. And the people here have their own culture which is clearly distinct. I am grateful that there is a place in the world like this that I can visit, however backward and parochial in the eyes of some. To deluge the place with say, Dutchmen, would be a sad loss of a culture I quite appreciate, even if it meant the average Dutchman was able to live in a bigger house and have a higher standard of living. Likewise, the merits of flooding Tibet with Chinese are debatable at best, in spite of the beneficial effect on Chinese freedom of movement.
The same applies, I believe, to the UK. Although I suppose some of the culture of post-austerity Britain must inevitably recede in this fast-modernising world, I’m not sure we in western Europe or the Anglo-Saxon world should be anxious to give up our culture(s) or even to mitigate our own material well being to accommodate freedom of movement as a “universal human right”. At minimum, we should value and defend our own culture and well-being with the same vigour that Mr Buiter commendably values others’.
Posted by: King David the American | April 7th, 2008 at 8:35 am | Report this comment“But there should be no special consideration given to those … whose ancestors at some earlier point in time came to this country as economic immigrants, as political refugees or as raping and pillaging invaders.” How right you are. Some of the most unpleasant members of the club belong to this category. They should be expelled. But who would take them in?
Posted by: Ian Walsh | April 7th, 2008 at 9:00 am | Report this commentSo we have two views regarding whether a country should be, by constitution, an open club based on territory; or a club run by its members for its members, and which can restrict admission in quality and quantity according to existing members’ wishes.
Posted by: JonA | April 7th, 2008 at 9:16 am | Report this commentPatently, democracies are clubs run by members for members, and I don’t see how any democracy could ever write itself a constitution denying itself the rights to restrict immigration and to rewrite the constitution. (Well, we could give all world citizens the vote on constitutional matters, I suppose).
Therefore, the openness of the club will have to rest on the attitudes and self-interest of residents/members.
(Claiming the Enlightenment - rather than religion - for my own views) we ought nevertheless to be able to settle on enlightened policies which encourage people to move to where they are most useful to society. The key will be to reduce the redistributing scope of government, thus preventing the entitlements which stoke xenophobia.
On the “club” question, my heart is with Willem Buiter but my head is with Martin Wolf.
JonA’s comment seems to me reasonable and is helpful on the economics. My understanding of the current labour economics literature is that higher migration rates, migration from developing countries to developed countries is net economically beneficial to developing countries. This is, firstly, because of remittances (many times the amount of official aid); and, secondly because returnee migrants take back with them a whole range of additional formal and informal skills that they wouldn’t otherwise have acquired and which significantly increase both their own and their economy’s productive potential.
However, the economic debate - both in this blog and the House of Lords report - seems to have missed a significant important benefit of higher rates of immigration. That benefit is the strong work and attitudinal motivation of emigrants. They are literally full of “get up and go” - and on their bike, ship, coach, etc they went.
The standard economics of migration shows that arrivals work in jobs (and earn) rather less on average than their formal education, IQ etc suggest that they would if they were native born. But, their children and grandchildren are disproportionately represented in higher social and income groups. Note that Willem and Martin and I - and several members of the House of Lords Committee - are 1st or 2nd generation native born descendants of immigrants.
In my case, for sure, the original arrivals struggled and had low lifetime earnings whereas subsequent generations show lots of doctors, lawyers, teachers … and an (ex) Tory MP. Similar tales now arise from Asian and other more recent immigrant groups.
This motivational/attitudinal effect is the human capital analogy to that associated with FDI (foreign direct investment). With FDI, the major benefits are not so much the cash as the technological and management know-how spin-offs. Similarly for immigration, the main benefit is that the people who migrate are the brightest and the best. Hence, I would expect per capita income losses from restricting unskilled as well as skilled migration. Certainly, my paternal grandfather would not have scored many points on the Labour Government’s new proposals.
So, let’s try to keep as open a club as possible.
Posted by: Jon Stern | April 7th, 2008 at 3:24 pm | Report this commentI am unclear on the philosophical principles that would *force* (rather than merely allowing) a country to be an “open club”, if the principle of property rights is adhered to. Surely any group of individuals should be free to make up its own rules about standards of admission (as well as standards of behavior once admitted).
Personally (perhaps also as a result of being a bit of a global itinerant), I strongly favour the abolition of most immigration restrictions, provided potential free-rider problems are adequately resolved. I am in favour of this because, as far as I can determine, the evidence suggests that relaxed immigration standards are beneficial to all involved parties in the long-run. But those people who disagree with me certainly have the right to decide who they support letting in into whatever social group they form.
Posted by: Andrei Timoshenko | April 7th, 2008 at 3:48 pm | Report this commentHopefully England will adopt Buiter’s plan. Then, make proposing plans like his grounds for immediate expulsion.
While Buiter’s plan might work if every single country on Earth went along, what would actually happen is that Buiter’s plan would become a recipe for some form of conquest, as other countries obtained power inside England.
Let me suggest that Buiter reads the following and then tries to understand the way things actually work:
city-journal.org/html/15_4_mexico.html
Posted by: LonewackoDotCom | April 7th, 2008 at 7:01 pm | Report this commentI think there are at least two major problems with this view, one philosophical and the other practical.
On a philosophical level, it apparently denies both the existence of, and emotional strength of, the concept of a nation, that is a group of people sharing at least some of such things as language, history, culture, ancestry and so on. If not denying their existence, it at least opposes it.
On a practical level, democracy implies rule by majority. Without constraints on migration, it seems to me it would become trivial for political leaders to manipulate populations via incentives for or against migration of those with certain views, in order to create majority support for particular policies. This would be especially so in small countries.
Empirically, many of the happiest and most prosperous societies are many small, relatively homogeneous democracies. I don’t think this is a coincidence: the further the state is from the people, and the more diverse the population, the less likely it is that there will be a common view of what the state ought to do, and that this view will be effectively reflected by the state. The willingness of individuals to make sacrifices for the broader society may also decline as the latter becomes larger and more diverse.
Posted by: Thomas S. | April 8th, 2008 at 6:24 pm | Report this comment[…] Imagine there’s no country…. This blog is a comment on Martin Wolf’s Column in the Financial Times of Friday April 4, 2008, “Four falsehoods on immigration”. […]
Posted by: EconTech » Buiter On Immigration | April 9th, 2008 at 4:08 am | Report this commentW Buiter ignores the revolt of the white working class to his ideas and thinks they need enlightenment or correction. This mandarin-knows-best approach exemplifies continental approaches to governance. Unlimited immigration (as Blunket) or Unlimited compensation packages (as Blair) may well be policies for the dustbin at any forthcoming democratic vote in this particular “club”.
Posted by: Roland M | April 9th, 2008 at 9:14 pm | Report this commentI couldn’t help noticing that Buiter is (or more accurately imagines himself to be) a Jew. I’m curious that he doesn’t explain in detail exactly how Israel should be opened up to all comers as a club? Would he please do this in detail? It would be so enlightening. I believe this man to be a hypocrite and liar, concerned to damage other countries, and anyone who agrees with me would, I imagine, be pleased to see Buiter expand on his ideology. I look forward to his detailed comments which I’m sure will be quickly forthcoming, despite the tendency of people like him to rely on censorship to cover their ansurdities.
Posted by: R West | April 10th, 2008 at 6:20 pm | Report this commentIn a democracy, ‘the nation’ represents the point of coincidence between the administrative apparatus and the will of the people. If political authority is to be sought by means of a popular mandate, since neither race, religion or social class are found to be acceptable, ‘the nation’ remains the most convenient abstraction around which a mandate may be organised. The current administration, having renounced interest rates as a means of controlling inflation, have adopted an open-door immigration policy in the hope that labour costs will gravitate towards a true market value. The assumption underlying this philosophy is that the mainspring of inflation is excessive labour costs but this may not prove to be true in fact. In any event, no amount of argument about the definition of ‘Britishness’ will suffice to reduce the cost of labour below the point at which workers are no longer able to meet their actual costs of living.
As far as appeals to the writings of a bronze-age Hebrew monarch are concerned, these would seem irrelevant except insofar as the Judaic tradition appeals to both autocracy and nationalism. Does anyone really believe that autocratic nationalism would provide with a more satisfactory commercial environment than liberal democracy? In my view this seems most unlikely.
Posted by: Johnstone | April 11th, 2008 at 10:44 am | Report this commentI am unable to see how support for individual property rights and opposition to national property rights can be logically consistent. If it is accepted that an individual may own a plot of land and grant or deny access to it, then it must follow that two or more individuals may pool part or all of their property, without losing their property rights.
An example of the above would be reciprocal granting of access, by two individuals, to a pooled region comprising part of each individual’s property, with an agreed mechanism for allowing or denying access to those not party to the agreement. If the validity of this is accepted, then it cannot be denied that three, four, a million or sixty million individuals may do the same. The result, then, is national property rights.
Posted by: Thomas S. | April 11th, 2008 at 12:45 pm | Report this commentI simply cannot agree with you, Professor Buiter on this one. The logical conclusion of your theory is that all countries must accept all immigrants at all times and give them the same rights as citizens/residents, even long term ones provided that they play by the rules…also we can expel citizens should they not behave. This is nice political philosophy, but is simply impractical at many levels.
Level 1: Incentives. What incentive is there to pay tax, and build good social services if you know that everybody has the same rights as you do. The UK is a good case - I lived there for 20 years, paid c.3m pounds in taxes and the social services are disastrous- partially because of immigrants. Why would you contribute to the community when you know that improvements will draw ever more people. It is completely impractical now to say to the citizens of all the rich countries that we should allow all immigrants to enter and then either allow our public goods to decline, or pay ever increasing tax.
Level 2: How would you propose to expel people who have no other citizenship and where to. How would you get third countries to agree. Mr Mugabe now you have, ahem, won the election I am sure you would like some of our finest chavs). Mr Chavez, do you feel you would like some islamic nutters today? No How about some glue sniffers from merseyside. Better not mention the chavs (sic) then
Level3: Votes. Surely you cannot be imagining that anything you have said could ever become public policy anywhere. I would quite like more women to walk round naked in summer (actually anytime)-I think I could get this passed into law somewhere sooner than your idea - unfortunately most places where women don’t vote seem to believe in burkha
I have philosophical objections as well - in your scheme you obviously cant pass rights to live somewhere on to children. Why should you be able to pass anything else on. Also what is a right? If we only acquire rights by behaviour, then why shouldn’t we argue that if you kill someone you lose the right to ever be free, vote again etc. Surely citizenship is important enough to rank almost alongside this?
I am looking forward to knowing where you will expel me to for writing this (Barbados I hope)
By the way I would be quite happy to replace the benefit scroungers et al in the UK with hardworking (insert ethnicity), but as this wont happen….
Posted by: Euroman | April 13th, 2008 at 10:23 pm | Report this comment‘Today the UK, especially in its creative urban centres, is one of the most ethnically, racially, culturally and religiously diverse countries in the world. While this creates huge tensions, it also makes it the most exciting, creative and innovative place on earth.’
I must have missed all this creativity, where’s it at and what does it consist of? Gang rape, shootings, terrorism, fgm, honour killings, incest?
Posted by: Richard | April 18th, 2008 at 3:29 pm | Report this comment