The Two Simplest Arguments for Open Borders on Feed 44

C4SS Feed 44 presents Jeff Ricketson‘s “The Two Simplest Arguments for Open Borders” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford.

“If someone in Spain and someone in Saudi Arabia want to meet in Bangladesh, preventing them by force from doing so simply because of their starting locations cannot be justified. The same two people, if living across the street from one another and meeting in a local restaurant, would do no harm and face no border controls. The inconsistency is morally intolerable.

It doesn’t particularly matter what the enforcement rules are, so long as they make movement harder. It could be that it costs a few widgets to cross one, that it takes a long waiting time, that they are completely impassible, or some combination thereof. What matters is that there is a cost, insurmountable or not, to crossing a border. This does not bring prosperity to those in regions with more land than labor to work it, as they cannot easily get laborers to work that and increase its productivity. Nor does it help labor-rich regions, as laborers there have nothing on which to work.”

Feed 44:

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