Libertarians are dismissed by the right for “wanting to allow anyone into the country” and dismissed by the left for “wanting to deny welfare to immigrants”.

That we are simultaneously dismissed by both old parties for offering a peaceful, voluntary solution to a problem that neither old party has been able to solve despite threatening massive violence against millions of otherwise innocent people gives us libertarians that warm, confident feeling that we are on the right track.

Let me try to explain how immigration would work in a fully voluntary society…

(For a more intermediate solution: How would libertarians alter today’s immigration?)

Principles
So, we voluntaryists believe that there is one, absolutely-for-sure, universal human ethic, which applies to all humans over all time in all cultures and in all situations — the right of self-ownership.

From that single universal right, we derive the right of all humans
- to labor as they choose
- to use the fruits of their labor as they choose
- to (dis)associate with whomever they choose
as long as they do not infringe upon the equal rights of others.

Now, that’s about it for voluntaryist ethics.

What surprises most non libertarians is that our ethics are really not about “government”; our ethics focus on the bottom-line, minimum respect that humans must afford one another, as free men — that we respect the body, labor, and property of each another.

Generally, at this level of discussion there are even some on the left and some on the right who agree with us! We all learned as kids, “Don’t punch others and don’t take their stuff”.

Let’s see what happens if we apply this ethic to immigration.

The Ethic Applied
Citizen A, who has the absolute ownership over his own property, may invite Person B onto his property.

Person B, who has the absolute ownership over his own body, may move his body onto Citizen A’s property.

As they both own their own bodies, while on Citizen A’s property, they may labor and associate however they both consensually choose.

No Conditions
Notice that it doesn’t matter whether they are neighbors, or live a few hours away, or live across the world. Their universal human right to own their own bodies and their own property are because they are human, and not because of any rulers or lines on a map.

Thus, libertarians conclude, humans have the right to move their bodies onto property if the owner consents — which means a form of “free immigration”.

The Government Problem with Free Immigration
Now, people who currently live in a statist world can readily imagine a series of problems. After all, rulers have created a lot of stupid laws that infringe upon human rights, and thus there could be a lot of conflicts if Person B moves onto Citizen A’s property.

But notice that the problems originate with the rulers’ laws, not with our human rights.

So let’s look at how current laws create problems and how a libertarian society, without those laws, would not suffer those problems:

1. Welfare: A major fear is that some immigrants come to take advantage of “government programs” that steal property from productive citizens and give it to unproductive people, including some newly arrived immigrants. “They’re coming here to steal from us!”
   
   First, notice that the thief is not the immigrant; it’s the ruler.
   
   A libertarian country would not have any such coerced welfare. Citizens would band together to voluntarily give charity. Those who wanted to pay for the immigrant would pay because helping the immigrant was something they wanted to do with their bodies, their labor, and their property.
   
   But at no time would some unwilling Citizen C be threatened with violence (through law) to pay for Immigrant B’s room, board, education, health care, unemployment, childcare, clothing, travel, beer, etc.
   
   Thus, this concern is a nonstarter in a libertarian country.
2. Voting: A major fear is that a flood of unproductive immigrants would stuff the ballot boxes to vote to expand the amount of looting of productive citizens.
   
   In a libertarian society, rulers do not have any super-ethical power to steal from citizens; they have to convince us using their words, not their government guns. Thus, a voting immigrant would have no unethical power to use his vote to plunder.
   
   Again, problem averted through peaceful recognition of each other’s rights.
3. Culture: A major fear is that an influx of an alien culture will threaten the “dominant culture”. (For example, adding a significant number of Venezuelans into Japan would significantly change Japanese culture.)
   
   Libertarians do not believe that it is ethical to impose cultural preferences (or any other personal preference) through the violence of laws.
   
   However, libertarians give citizens who want to preserve their culture a tool they don’t have in statist society. We recognize any group’s absolute right to (dis)associate with whomever for whatever reason. No one would be forced to associate with another group, to hire or work with them, to buy from or sell to them, etc.
   
   If it meant so much to you, you would be able to create your own cultural enclave, with people of “your own kind”. You may interact and trade with others — or not. That is your decision about whom you want to associate your body with.
   
   You may voluntarily covenant with neighbors not to sell your homes to, for example, Venezuelans such that your part of Japan remains “Japanese”. That would be your decision made in concert with your associates given that it is your and their property.
   
   But you must bear the costs of your (dis)association choices. For example, if people object to you not selling to Group X, your sales will suffer.
4. Hidden Soldiers: Another fear is that some immigrants desire to harm citizens. This is certainly a problem in an interventionist country, where its rulers are killing people all over the world, and the friends and relatives of the murdered might get a little pissed.
   
   A libertarian society would not be intervening in any foreign countries. No killing.
   
   Instead lots of trade, and lots of friendship. People would benefit by win-win trades with us, and they would have a disincentive to hurt us.
   
   And, the citizen who brings in the immigrant is financially and socially responsible for him. His insurance carrier and protective service will be quite interested in assurances that the immigrant guest is not going to cause trouble. The blow-back will be on the sponsor.
5. Unproductive: A major fear is that low-IQ, low-skill immigrants could flow in, and “What would we do with them.”
   
   Well, good news! In a libertarian society, you don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want to; the problem is the sponsor’s, Citizen A, who invited the immigrant here. This is literally none of your business.
   
   But let’s look at it from Citizen A’s perspective: Why would he invite onto his property someone who could not be productive? Citizen A is the only person responsible for the immigrant! If his guest turns out not to be productive, Citizen A will have to pay for him, or evict him back out of our country (assuming no other citizen wants to sponsor the immigrant).
6. Crime: Many citizens are fearful of potentially criminal immigrants.
   
   In a libertarian society, you in your enclave may allow in, or not allow in, anyone you choose. It’s your property. The road in front of your home is your property. The sidewalk is your property. You may restrict or open traffic as much as you choose and to whom you choose.
   
   A libertarian society would have much more data about who is passing by your home. Reputation would travel with the person and would matter. (Think eBay reputation writ large.)
   
   Anyone convicted of a crime against body or property would be in the database, and your freedom of association could refuse him entry into your home, your enclave, your street, your business, etc.
   
   Again, the immigrant is not here under some faceless government program; he is “spoken for” by a sponsor, who puts his own reputation on the line with his neighbors. This is a form of “extreme vetting” because there is a single person who suffers direct adverse consequences if he invites in a criminal, and thus he will be very careful to know the family and values of his guest.
7. Tragedy of the Commons: A major fear is that immigrants would overuse common resources, like parks, emergency rooms, schools, etc., making them more expensive and of less utility for the citizens.
   
   A voluntaryist society would not have “commons”. All space would be privately owned. Thus, if you owned a park, and immigrants started sleeping in it, it is your property and you may decide how to deal with the situation — turn it into a camp, or remove them and charge the sponsor. If you want to make it a “refugee camp”, if immigrants violate the property rights of the adjoining neighbors, the neighbors can seek compensation from you. But otherwise, if it’s your park, it’s no one else’s business but your own.
   
   Similarly with schools. They’re are all private. So if you want your school to subsidize immigrants, you may. You also may refuse to include immigrants. (And immigrants and sponsors may purchase and create their own school.)
8. Getting There: A fear is that the roads would be jammed with refugees traveling to Citizen A’s property.
   
   In a voluntaryist society, the road is no longer a commons, so again there is no tragedy of the commons. The roads are privately owned; no one may travel on them without permission of the owner. The owner may have payment requirements, and mzy refuse passage of various people (e.g., criminals.)
   
   If a sponsor wanted an immigrant to come to his property, he or the immigrant would pay the transit fee for the road. There is no imposition on any other property owner.
9. Jobs: Another major fear is that immigrants will “take” jobs of citizens.
   
   If it’s my property, I may invite anyone I want onto it. Given that we own our own bodies, once on my property, we may then work our bodies together in any way that we mutually agree.
   
   No one has the ethical right to tell me whom I may invite onto my own property, or how the two of us may consensually use our own bodies once there.
   
   A job is simply a trade, between two consenting adults. One person offers his current labor; the other person trades the property that his past labor previously created. It is no one’s business but the two people involved. No one may ethically intervene using threats of violence on either party.

The differences between a voluntaryist society and our current statist society is great. What voluntaryism offers is a society of voluntary agreements between consenting adults. No one, not even rulers, may initiate violence against the property owner or the body owner in order to try to control the property or body. (They may use other means (e.g., disassociation) to try to impose their preferences.)

The property owner becomes responsible for his decisions, and may suffer financial and social costs for poor decisions.

If you (and your association) want to support immigration, you sponsor an immigrant, you bring him onto your property, you insure him, you cover his costs, and you make sure he succeeds, or you send him back. You rightly earn the accolades of helping our friends, the immigrants, because it was you putting your body, your wealth, your property, and your reputation on the line to do so.

If you do not want to support immigration, you do not have to bear its costs. Others cannot virtue signal by forcing you to pay for their feigned righteousness.

By respecting each person’s ownership of his own body, labor and property, we massively reduce the number of unnecessary conflicts present today, and chronic problems — that it turns out are caused by rulers’ violent violation of our fundamental human rights — are much more easily solved, person to person.

Hope that snapshot helps! :)

See related:

Patch Job on Current Immigration

• How would libertarians alter today’s immigration?

Principles

• What is the difference between ethics and morals?
• What principles do libertarianism rest on?
• What is the most important right a person has?
• Why is self-ownership so important to libertarians?
• How do you get from self-ownership to private property?
• What is the opposite of libertarianism?
• What is the difference between ethical and legal?

Voluntaryist Society

• How does a voluntaryist society deter crime?
• How might a voluntaryist society handle a rapist?
• Could the owner of a road in a voluntaryist society omit gay people?

→ Immigration

→ Table of Contents to Dennis’ Libertarian Writings

I tend to, at an emotional level, ascribe moral virtue to people who think for themselves, even though I know intellectually that you can be a horrible person and still think for yourself. Similarly, I tend to like people who make good arguments and think carefully. To generalize my experience of libertarians, libertarians tend to be above average in all these ways, so I tend to like libertarians.

Even when I was a conservative, I couldn’t say as much about conservatives. There are still many conservatives and a few leftists that I, nevertheless, like. However, many of those people also express the characteristics I mention above.

Pursuing civilians with weapons, arresting them, separating them from their children, and impounding them like stray dogs, based on a Minority Report-esque precog notion that the incarcerated “might commit a violent crime” or “might utilize a government service” are anathema to libertarian principles.

Libertarians believe in the non-aggression principle, namely that the minimum possible, but the maximum necessary degree of violence may be performed to prevent a violent or aggressive act. A person literally walking on a road or looking around for agricultural work does not reach such a threshold. Indeed, if I want to invite a migrant to work for me, or otherwise visit my property, the government violates my rights when it prevents safe passage among consenting individuals.

If the government is going to administer a public good, it may not employ the public good to restrict our liberties. The State should allow for what would have been possible under complete private ownership. For privately owned spaces, people have the option to ask for permission or pay to enter a space. It is unjust for the government to own the space, and then declare that reasonable options for safe passage are now entirely unavailable.

Most libertarians are not anarchists, and it is unfair and impractical to hold any political ideology to its logical extreme. It would be disingenuous to say, for example, “You’re a liberal? Well, a tax rate of 40% or 50% is an arbitrary number. Why not 50.5? You might as well call yourself a Marxist and tax at 100%” Thus, a libertarian can reasonably support some role for government at the border. If there is suspicion of criminal history, questions about parenthood, or for inspection of communicable diseases, the state can delay or prevent passage, until these issues are clarified.

In the illustrious libertarian tradition of pissing off both the Left and Right, I might add that many liberals are not doing immigrants any favors with some of their advocacy. There are 6,500 undocumented immigrants with end-stage renal disease. The myriad articles that call for health care for undocumented people to be provided by or subsidized by the taxpayers only lead to the misperception that immigrants are, overall, takers. A plan for the public to pay for all kinds of services would limit the number of immigrants that can be absorbed, and help far fewer people, in the long run. It would provide incentives for the people who are sickest and least able to work to enter the country.

This CNN article about a 51-year-old mother of five with renal failure due to uncontrolled Type 2 diabetes may prompt some sympathy, but is also likely to backfire, on the “empathy” front. Hemodialysis, on average, costs $89,00 per year, and this is in addition to the many other medical expenses that people with such serious conditions typically incur per year. They are also unlikely to be able to work.

One of the reasons why the government should not be incarcerating migrants is that, once the immigrants in the government’s custody, the citizens are now responsible for the arrestees’ health care outcomes. It is better to just let people to weigh the costs and benefits of migration, and to forge their own path.

Image: Free from Pixabay

I live in a world where my views are grossly misinterpretted and regularly belittled, often with no fact-based counter-arguments.

I live in a country that is increasingly authoritarian, where citizens would gladly trade freedom for “security”, and basic freedoms are routinely denied for the “greater good”.

I live in a society where it’s acceptable and normal for others to try to control my life, in the name of “protecting” me from myself.

Because most voters blindly follow mainstream media, there is almost nothing I can do about any of this.

Political discussions are aggravating and unbearable. I’m routinely disgusted with all voting options. I’m afraid to admit I’m a libertarian at work or other social gatherings for fear it will impact my career, respect from peers, and credibility. In one of my jobs, I was told that I had better be voting for Obama, because elsewise I didn’t belong there. My fact-based arguments can easily be dismissed because I’m “crazy” - and that seems to be sufficient enough for dismissal from any further discourse.

Overall, I’m thinking, “this sucks”, but I soldier on nonetheless.

Supporting the border control that we have now is not adaptable with libertarianism. If one is a libertarian and support the current border control or border control suggested by the Republican party they are hypocritical libertarians, or a libertarian with a conservative view, or a very confused Republican.

First, walls are for commies. Authoritarian nations along with Communists in control always supported walls. Walls just don’t keep people out they keep them in, and they hinder freedom to travel. Land is stolen to make the wall, and walls are not fiscally responsible.

Second, as of right now our Supreme Court said you can have check points anywhere 100 miles within the border. Once, again this is hurt freedom of movement, and they are treating us like criminals forcing us to show paperwork.

Third, this is a restriction of the free market. As of right employers have to ask to hire people outside the nation. Remember, the Trump administration restricted certain VISAS, well that is a hinderance to the markets. If you owned rental property the government restricts one to who they want to rent their property to. Both of these actions should be consent between two parties with out the interference of the government.

Fourth, there are people being deported without a trial, and or without proper legal aid. They are being jailed illegally to and being detained. We found out that children were being separated from their parents, and the government argued that they did not need to supply basic needs such as soap and toothpaste.

There is nothing libertarian about current day practices. It is true that Libertarians (most of us) are not all anarchists (not all libertarians are anarchists but all anarchists are libertarians). Most of us do believe in limited government. I work on the principle. That projects or laws have to fall under two categories. One, they have to be fiscally responsible, and second they cannot infringe on ones right. Current practices with immigration in general don’t fall under either.

Like, I said in the begining if one is a libertarian and support the current border control or border control suggested by the Republican party they are hypocritical, or a libertarian with a conservative view, or a very confused Republican. Border control as it is is not adaptable with libertarian values. But, call your self a libertarian anyway, I guess.

If the border is completely open then no immigration is illegal. Legalization is in fact the only way to completely eliminate illegal immigration. That is what open borders are essentially about: legalizing immigration. So libertarian or not, opposing both open borders and illegal immigration at the same time does not make sense.

Treating the entire country as the property of the community is the kind of thinking that libertarians ordinarily oppose because it is a great excuse for meddlesome authorities. If the authorities are always co-owners in a way, then minding your business is their business. For example, if property rights mean that you can tell the people staying on your property not to use alcohol, and the community owns the country, then prohibition is a libertarian policy. Would that not be absurd? Being held from letting foreigners live or work on your property is a violation of the property rights that many libertarians hold dear.

Libertarians can try to view immigration restrictions as a necessary evil. That would mean the policies are still wrong but needed to prevent worse. This requires some creativity. Conservatives can simply fear the changes open borders would bring, but libertarians want radical changes to society, so change in itself is no valid reason for them. Socialists can fear the capitalism that the freedom to migrate brings—in particular, their efforts to unite the workers of the world in a socialist revolution may be frustrated if those workers have to compete with each other in a united global free labor market. Libertarians do not fear freedom either, however. Instead, libertarians pretend that they are about to change America for to better, and letting in conservatives and socialists from other countries will ruin the opportunity. Thus, with a significant suspension of disbelief, libertarians can indeed oppose open borders.

Free Trade and Migration
From the Libertarian Party Platform:

We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. However, we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a credible threat to security, health or property.

As a libertarian myself, I am not quite that understated. I long favored an open-border policy until, that is, our welfare state grew so large. Open border or welfare state... pick one.

We are a nation of immigrants. It has always pleased me that, even though I can't be Russian or Chinese or Igbo, my Russian, Chinese and Nigerian friends can be every bit as much of an American as I am. We are the only nation with ideology as its definition, and that ideology is our national heritage of personal freedom. Anyone who comes here in pursuit of that is alright by me.

And that's where we now have a problem. We now have the Democratic Party, a party that has not recently been much in favor of our "national heritage of personal freedom," wholesale importing masses of people who are not pursuing any such thing. Indeed, many of these groups are antagonistic to our way of life and have no desire to assimilate our values. They are here on the Democratic promise of welfare in return for their votes.

To me, and I hope to everyone who reads this, this is a travesty of the first order. Many Republicans are all too happy to go along with this perversion of our heritage. Others are all but closed to the idea of immigration, particularly when taxpayer-subsidized. I'm at the point of wanting everything put on hold until we have a national conversation to sort this out. I hope we will all remember these unscrupulous policies as we pull the lever this November, as the Democrats' actions of recent years most certainly have earned them less of a voice in that conversation.

To me, migration is clearly a natural, inalienable right. We respect a bird’s right to migrate more than we respect human rights to the same, and that’s just insanely backwards to me. Unless an alien has proven themselves to not be a peaceable person, they should be free to come and go from any country that claims to have a love of liberty.

In the United States, our federal constitution supports this as well, giving the federal government power over only naturalization, which is the process to become a citizen, but not power over who can reside in the United States as an alien. Debates of the Founding Fathers were about policies to entice people to come in (e.g. easy access to citizenship), but there was never talk in regards to restricting who could come to the United States.

We make a tragic mistake if we increase government power in order to correct problems that are caused by government power.

The Libertarian Perspective
Immigration is an example of the trap inherent in government violence:

1. A problem is presented.
2. A politician offers a “solution” — a new law. The law will cost money, increase bureaucracy, impose costs, reduce liberty, hinder innovation, crowd out alternative solutions, and is inflexible. If you disagree with it as “the solution”, tough noogies. It will never be evaluated or repealed.
3. The politician takes credit for having “solved” the original problem, even though, in 99 out of a hundred cases, the law will not solve it.
4. The bureaucracy moves in and proceeds to expand.
5. Threatening violence on hundreds of millions of people to do things that they would not do otherwise causes them to react in millions of unanticipated ways, producing unintended, new problems.
6. <Choose one of the new problems and return to 1>

Government solutions are just more turns of the authoritarian screw. Each turn purports to “solve” a problem, which was caused by a prior turn of the authoritarian screw. Each new turn leads to more unintended, unanticipated problems, and ultimately to yet another turn of the authoritarian screw.

The libertarian solution is to remove the screw. We don’t need it; it is what is causing our worst problems; it doesn’t work; and we can find peaceful, voluntary methods to solve our problems.

Example: Criminalize Hiring
While I could illustrate this screwing using any of many government “solutions” for illegal immigration, let me quickly outline how threatening businesses with violence if they hire illegal immigrants produces unintended, new problems.

Because government is incompetent to do what it promised (i.e., keep illegal immigrants out), the government comes up with yet another new law as a solution to the problem they caused. They foist immigration enforcement onto otherwise peaceful citizens whose only crime is that they would like to hire workers. They threaten these otherwise peaceful citizens with fines, incarceration, and even possibly death should they dare hire someone whom the government can’t even keep out of the country.

“Oh, this won’t cost you much,” the government assures us all.

Now, every hire must go through a government bureaucracy. A charge is levied, time is wasted, taxes are raised to cover the costs of more government databases, government infrastructure, government bureaucracy, and government police to monitor, to track, to spy, to enforce, to attack, to penalize, to seize, and to incarcerate.

The direct and indirect costs are transferred into the prices for all our products and services; everything we buy costs more, reducing everyone’s wealth.

Short-term hiring is truncated as too expensive, given the new, higher fixed costs. Informal hiring is chilled as neighbors fear government goons because they did not properly vet the kid next door.

Automation is accelerated as a cheaper, and physically safer, alternative to human beings. Small businesses, which cannot absorb the higher fixed costs, higher reporting requirements, and greater capital investments, go out of business. With less competition, our product choices, product availability, customer service, new product innovation, and product quality suffer, further reducing our wealth.

Unemployment and poverty rise. Taxes increase to meet the need for new welfare entitlements.

All the while, the government is increasing its surveillance of us, tracking us, watching what we do, approving us and our trades and of how we labor.

And each one of these new problems are opportunities for … more laws.

Thusly are we more screwed …

The Screwed up Part of Getting Screwed
Not only will increasing government coercion produce more unintended problems, but you will be wasting your time fighting to increase government!

More government power and control over us is the opposite direction of where we should be headed if we ever want to eventually become free!

If we ever change direction and start to move towards greater freedom, we’re going to have to spend twice as much time simply reversing anything that you were successful getting government to impose on us, before we can even get back to our current state, so that we can start to remove the government interventions that were really causing the problems.

Unscrew the Screw(ed)
Why not take all that time that you would waste trying to increase government’s violent control over us, and instead start to remove the prior screwings?

That’s what libertarians urge.

• Replace coerced welfare with voluntary charity: Many of the things that you are concerned about are caused because the government threatens you with violence to force you to pay for behavior that you do not approve of.
  
  Great! If that’s the problem, then focus on removing that screw. Instead of an indirect attack on people simply because they might receive property that was stolen from you, what if you stopped the theft of your property directly?
  
  If you think about it, you don’t really care if, say, a church wants to sponsor an immigrant and is willing to reach into their own pockets to voluntarily pay for the immigrant’s lodging, education, health, etc. That’s a real act of loving, voluntary charity, which doesn’t burden you. In fact, if they take such active personal responsibility, we can expect that they will be more careful than the government will ever be to select people who are truly worthy of their support, to ensure their support is effective, and to end support if they learn that the recipient is abusing their charity.
  
  So, what if we simply figured out a way where you don’t have to pay if you don’t want to, and all those people who really, really care about the immigrants, they pay the costs themselves?
  
  For example, what if no immigrant could access any entitlement program for at least the first 20 years? They would have to either produce wealth, or convince private charities to support them, or return home.
  
  This would decrease government violence, and be a big start in moving us towards a world of voluntary, rather than coerced, relationships.
  
  And it wouldn’t cost you a thing, if you didn’t want it to.
• Decrease Voting Power: A big concern has to do with what will happen to our freedom if authoritarian immigrants can vote to increase the level of authoritarianism over us?
  
  Instead of an indirect solution of whomping on immigrants because they might eventually form a majority that enslaves you, what if we focused on reducing the ability of anyone to enslave anyone else through voting? Let’s face it: enslavement sucks no matter whether its done by an immigrant or a native.
  
  Our Constitution is obviously not good enough protection of minority self-ownership. What if we focused on structural changes that better protect a minority from being enslaved, no matter who the majority was?
  
  Greater federalism? Right to secede? Super-majorities? State nullification? Minority nullification? Bureaucracy sunset? Subsidiarity? Partitioning? Flat tax? Debt limits?
  
  These are all big ideas. Yes, they reduce immigrants’ power to enslave us but they also reduce anyone’s power to enslave us.

Identify the Screws
We could go through all the counterproductive problems of immigrants, and instead of looking at this as a problem that is caused by the immigrant, ask ourselves, how are current government laws causing this to be a problem and preventing free people from voluntarily solving it?

And then we could get rid of those government laws.

If we’re going to spend our time, why wouldn’t we focus it on removing the real problems, rather than adding yet another screw to our own coffin lid?

See related:

• How would libertarians fix immigration in the short-term?
• How would a voluntary society handle immigration?
• Should government incent birthing more children into poverty?
• Who is killing the mom and pop stores?
• Should abortions be funded by the government?
• Why is the US so much more dangerous than any other western country?
• What are libertarians’ advice for people who want to escape poverty?
• What do libertarians think should be done about countries in which people lack basic liberties?
• Where do liberals disagree with libertarians?
• What is the libertarian perspective on the Catalonian secession crisis?
• What alternatives do you suggest for democracy?
• Should the US split into two countries: Republican and Democrat?
• Why would Christians refuse to support government welfare?

I don’t understand how something can be good or bad for libertarianism. A libertarian chooses not to initiate violence against innocents. That’s a personal moral choice. Do you mean mass immigration encourages more people to choose libertarianism? Or that it makes libertarians happier? Or something else?

The freedom to leave a place is not only a fundamental human right, but underpins a lot of other rights.

However mass immigration does not mean only the freedom to leave, but that many people choose to leave. Many people choosing to leave suggests something is wrong with a place, possibly it does not allow freedom.

But more freedom does not necessarily make people more libertarian. Many of the most passionate libertarians of the 20th century escaped the most horrific totalitarian states in human history. Many people in relatively free countries forget how important freedom is. It’s people who live in deserts who really appreciate water, not people who live near rivers or lakes.

They/we hate each other.

And love each other.

It's the problem you run into when you essentially have two sets of political beliefs and pull your favorite (or the best by some people's measure) parts together. They weren't built to function that well in tandem so you have conflict in the party.

It's the reason the Libertarian Party (as in the official actual Libertarian Party not just those who ascribe to the belief) won't take off anytime soon. A major leader is needed, and it's not anyone we have now. Until then, until a major leader steps up and lays the groundwork then it will essentially exist in limbo.

This question could be asking so many different things!

I would tend to answer a How? question with a bunch of adverbs, but my guess is that the OP didn’t really mean that. :) [Footnote 1]

Thinking Libertarian Positions
So, let me instead offer you the algorithm (a set of rules that will produce the same, correct answer each time) that will give you the libertarian position on virtually any subject that you might wonder about! (Would that answer this question?)

Here it is:

Libertarian Ethical Algorithm

1. Is violence or theft being initiated against the body, labor, associations, or property of an otherwise nonstealing, peaceful person?
1. If yes, libertarians are against it: enslaving another person’s body is the most grievous ethical crime a human can commit
1. Commensurate violence is ethically permissible to end this violation of the victim’s self-ownership.
2. If no, (as long as everyone involved consents) we are fine with it!
1. Some libertarians may individually support it while other libertarians may individually reject it <0864>
2. But no ethical libertarian will justify violence or theft to stop it — neither their own, nor through the proxy of the state.

Cut this out and tape it onto your refrigerator. Refer to it for any policy question that may come up. 99% of the time, this will give you your answer. {For an example of where it fails: <0745>}

Incidental Explanations
All the rest of what we libertarians have to say are incidental to this algorithm.

• Why self-ownership must be the starting point for any human ethic or human right.
• How self-ownership extends to labor, associations, and property. <1226>
• How self-ownership applies to this particular question.
• How there is no exception to this ethic for some ruler-elite. <0314>
• How, no, just because we are against using violence and theft to achieve Goal Y, that does not mean that we are against Goal Y. <0864>
• How, no, just because we think Solution Z is wrong-headed, that isn’t our principal reason for objecting to using violence and theft to implement Solution Z.
• How you can still get (much of) what you want, even if you don’t steal and don’t threaten violence. <1172>
• How consensual interactions produce better results overall than violent and thieving interactions.
• How a diversity of solutions, peacefully and voluntarily pursued, is much more likely to solve the problem the fastest, with the least cost, with the fewest unintended consequences, and with the highest regard for the rights of all involved.
• How voluntary relationships are ultimately better than violent and thieving relationships.
• How you are being tricked by the violent and thieving ruler-elite to believe that their violence and thieving is ethical, necessary, and for your benefit.
• How even if you get a short-term benefit for yourself of using violence and thieving, that can not justify using violence and thieving. <1172>
• How we have to separate ourselves from those (psychopaths) who believe that violence and theft is their right to use to get what they want. <1001>
• etc.

It’s Easy!
Now, I’ve answered more than 1300 questions just using this algorithm, and I’ve been pretty upfront with how I was coming up with my answers.

Yet, many of you will still ask me, “Okay, Dennis, but what about this case?” And, I, being a dutiful libertarian hoping to guide at least part of mankind to a more peaceful, voluntary, loving society, will walk over to my refrigerator to remind myself what our algorithm is, apply it to the question that you’ve asked, return to my computer, and using the adverbs (which I started to answer this question with), write my answer out as clearly as I can, and then take the majority of time trying to address some of the incidental obstacles that I suspect got in your way from accepting the (pretty obvious) ethical answer (because I really do believe that you already knew, in your heart and in your mind, what the ethical answer had to be.)

You Can Do It!
But sadly, that’s an infinite job, because there are an infinite number of policy questions that could be asked.

But on the only hand, happily, most of you don’t need me at all!

The people who follow me are some of the brightest, most open, clearest thinking people on a very bright, open, intellectual site. And most of you already have instilled those adverbs (which I started to answer this question with) as your guiding virtues for the person whom you want to become. And I honor you for both your inherent qualities, and for the qualities that you have chosen to painstakingly instill.

You Must Take Over
But my time here is limited, both in length and in daily commitment. And our human struggle between evil and good will continue long after I’m gone. And now that I’ve moved to the Free State, I’m trying to find ways that I can bolster a real-life libertarian community. <1262> So, I have far less time to pad my oversized bare feet over to the refrigerator and return here to struggle to find the words to support you in rejecting yet another commonly accepted evil that men are far too willing to inflict upon one another.

Luckily, you now know how libertarians think. And so, with your own cheat sheet taped to your own refrigerator, I’d like more of you to take over the duties of explaining to the next wave of Open and Curious nonlibertarians. Use those adverbs to patiently and lovingly explain to them the ethic that those with the biggest hearts and best minds must eventually embrace, once you gently get them past their (way too many) incidental obstacles. <1070> And in this way, you may some day find enough allies who commit to treat one another ethically, peacefully, voluntarily, consensually, respectfully, etc. with whom you can form (somewhere, but probably not here) a truly free society. (And just to note, this is such a difficult task to do, that there’s a good chance that you’re doing this to just give your kids a fighting chance to form a free society for their kids.) <0800>

That is, unless you decide to get off your backsides and join me up here at the Free State yourselves, to roll up your sleeves and help us figure out how to build at least a partially free society in the real world rather than simply dreaming of an ideal one virtually. :) <1176>

Footnote 1: Some of those adverbs reflecting how libertarians think differently might include:

“Clearly, objectively, respectfully, ethically, lovingly, peacefully, logically, consistently, principly, unbiasedly, innovatively, caringly, humanely, universally, entrepreneurly, empirically, epistemically, courageously, frankly, consensually, honestly, philosophically, historically, economically, thoughtfully, carefully, rationally, ….”

See Related:

Free State Project

1262: What objections do people have to the Free State Project?

1176: Should I move to New Hampshire to build a local libertarian community?

0800: How will libertarians create their model society?

A bit different answer on a bit different question

0820: What do libertarians think of other libertarians?

1273: What do you think about libertarians?

Defining Characteristics

1205: What one characteristic do all libertarians share?

0921: What characteristics does everyone agree libertarians have?

1075: What are some lesser-known values of libertarianism?

1197: What is the difference between the authoritarian-libertarian axis and the Left-Right axis?

1220: What questions identify a libertarian?

0944: How would you describe libertarianism to a child?

0992: Where would a libertarian fall on the political spectrum?

0864: How do libertarians separate their personal opinions from their political opinions?

1172: What is the strongest argument against libertarianism?

1001: What is the hardest argument you face against libertarian ethics?

0314: What is libertarianism, starting from first principles?

Writing about Libertarianism

1070: What advice would you give to libertarian writers on Quora?

Learning More about Libertarianism

0765: Which libertarian Quorans should newbies first follow?

0408: Who are the top twenty libertarian bloggers?

1206: What reading would you recommend to a newbie curious about libertarianism?

1124: The Best On-Line Libertarian Courses

Other

1226: What is the relationship between capital and labor?

0745: What do libertarians think about abortion?

<, LibQuality, NAPConsent, Diffusing, DifUnd,>

Thanks Quora!

Limited government. Freedom of the individual to be responsible to himself, and harm no one else. De-criminalize personal habits (marijuana, alcohol, fat foods, etc).

Adherence to the U.S. Constitution, freedom from government intervention into personal behavior-emails, texts, etc. Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Limited government in matters that are states rights and not the federal governments business: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The more power the government has the more harm it can do to the citizens since they can over-step or mis use their power. The NSA case is typical. http://m.vice.com/read/the-fbi-wants-to-wiretap-every-us-citizen-online"We are not listening in on your conversations, well, we accidentally listened to a few million by mistake. We don't listen to the other 99.99%. WRONG. The government gets authority and abuses it or can abuse it.

Libertarians distrust too much government. Libertarians don't like the government to tell them how to live (not the same as how to interact with others).

Limited government, the cornerstone of Libertarian beliefs.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have."

My apologies for this error. There is much discussion about this quote. My original quote came from what I thought was a reliable source.

This quotation was not attributed to Jefferson until relatively recently. It is sometimes followed by, "The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases," which is most likely a misquotation of Jefferson's comment, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground."
http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/government-big-enough-to-give-you-everything-you-wantquotation

One has to understand that there are two ‘gay agendas,’ one that actually exists, and one that only exists in the minds of fearful conspiracy theorists.

The real ‘gay agenda’ is simple: There will be people who want to rob of you the same basic dignity they themselves take for granted: DO. NOT. LET. THEM. That is all.

The fictional ‘gay agenda’ that is thrubbed about by hardliner conservatives and…(sorry, I’m Canadian, I have no idea what a ‘Libertarian’ is or how it differs from, ‘Liberal’ or ‘Conservative’. )

Anyway, OT. The fictional ‘gay agenda’ is a market list of misconceptions, stereotypes and outright LIES about gay people - outlaw Christianity, legalize pedophilia, take drugs, have sex, spread AIDS. Because normal lives are for normal people, which gays clearly are not, so they neither live, nor want to live, the same as anyone else, and if ever they did, they’d stop being gay and just find boobies appealing.

Some people think rights and benefits are like apples in a basket - juicy, precious, and of finite quantity, and there simply aren’t enough to go around. If those people get rights, then someone has to have THEIR rights taken away. That’s not how it works. Not at all.

(On open borders) No.

You cannot have a free market without free movement of labor. If you oppose the latter, you cripple the former.

And if you are opposed to free markets I don't know how you'd consider yourself a Libertarian. It's basically just a “I'm not like the other girls" statement at that point.

Oh, I’m a sucker for a hero! :)

The Bully
You know, the thing about authoritarianism is that it’s a philosophy of bullying, of brutalization, of playing cruelty to the crowd’s prejudice.

And as much as we see hand-wringing and hear PSAs about high school bullying, the one thing I remember, as I look out at the current political landscape, was how popular bullying was.

The Defender
In the face of the authoritarian’s “Submit to Our Ruler or Die” ethos stands the libertarian, always vastly outnumbered, defending the weakest of the weak, the people who are the most bullied, the most put upon, the most hated.

And the authoritarian, comfortably backed by his drones and his minions and the mindless multitude screaming for ever more blood, can sneer and mock and demean and threaten the libertarian all he wants.

But the libertarian stands tall and firm, through social ostracization and ridicule and ad hominems and strawmen, and every sophistic and rhetorical and demagogic and legalistic trick the authoritarians have learned over their five thousand year reign of terror over us.

The Gang
Not one of the authoritarians will support the libertarian. Because none of them would ever consider leaving peaceful people in peace.

Consent? Peace? Freedom? Diversity? Tolerance? Love? Understanding? Choice? These are not the known paths to power!

The authoritarians seek only to keep their power if they already have it, or to grow their mob to a size that can replace the current ruler with themselves, so that they can be the ones who are bullying and brutalizing.

An Enemy to All!
And the libertarian threatens all of various groups of authoritarians, in all their dreams of domination and subjugation.

And so, though the authoritarians hate one another in a way that only rival psychopaths can, they will join forces to line up shoulder-to-shoulder against the lonely libertarian, for there can be no Game of Thrones for them to win if the libertarian is successful in getting the “little people” and the “free folk” to refuse to be ruled.

But our hero faces this monstrous opposition without any superpower, with only the weapons any frail human has:

• his mind to think clearly;
• his heart to empathize ;
• his gut to know he is right;
• his balls to not back down; and
• his soul to know where true justice lies.

And with only these very human weapons, and the power of his determination, he makes his lonely stand, repeatedly countering the bully’s cruelty with a simple and rational and ethical call for “Live and Let Live”.

See related:

0301: Parable: Why does government anger libertarians?

0182: Is it okay to hate libertarians?

0549: What is the solution to bullying in schools?

0516: Why are libertarians generally looked down upon politically?

0112: What typical arguments do libertarians face?

0683: Why shouldn’t the stronger, smarter, younger, and better armed be able to kill you for your property?

0586: Are libertarians psychologically healthy and happy people?

0762: Why do people get angry about politics?

0670: Are libertarians or authoritarians more sociopathic?

0634: How do you explain libertarianism to a determined statist?

0799: What needs to be said about libertarians?

0794: Do libertarians realize that they’re irrelevant?

0782: Would you be willing to be friends with someone who had different political views than you?

0685: Why should you not become a libertarian?

<, AntiLib, Diffusing, Taxonomy, Popular, DenPref, BookIncl, LibQuality,>

Are there any valid criticisms of libertarianism?

Yes. It’s a blind, quasi-religious belief in the magical powers of the market. It assumes that if we lay all the power in the hands of the capitalists the result will be utopia. And it will, but only for the capitalists. The rest will be kept at any level of living standard the capitalists see fit and by the lessons of history that will be abject poverty.

Libertarianism if enacted inevitably will lead to plutocracy and in consequence another communist revolution. At some point the empoverished masses will not care if communism failed, they will just demand that the capitalists be overthrown.

The Libertarian movement is in an… interesting position right now. Granted, with Trump directly telling them not too long ago that they have to vote for him regardless of their policy positions (something that flies directly in the face of Libertarian ideology), this may well be changing in the near future, but this is the truth for now.

On the one hand, the Libertarian movement is about ultimate personal freedom. In that, they are 100% supportive of trans rights and acceptance of transgender people. As long as we’re not harming anyone else, they don’t care one whit about us or what we do to ourselves. It’s all about our freedom to be who we are - ain’t no skin off their back if what we are doesn’t make any sense to them.

But on the other hand, they are also strongly tied to the Republicans and to the American right wing. This rather boggles my mind, but it does make some amount of sense - after all, while Republicans have consistently worked to erode personal freedom and to shove the government as far into our lives as they can get away with, they have consistently said that they are in favor of small government and individual freedom. But because of this, they are constantly exposed to right wing propaganda, which is currently extremely hostile towards transgender people specifically, and LGBT+ people in general to a lesser extent. While they don’t gravitate towards Fox News, they do follow sites like The Daily Wire, OANN, or InfoWars - all of which give them a distorted view of the world in general and LGBTQIA+ people specifically.

Where any given Libertarian falls depends on how much influence these two competing truths have on them. Those that are true-blue followers of the ideology don’t give two shits about transgender people - they believe we should be allowed to just be us, just don’t try forcing them to say or do something they don’t believe in; those that believe the propaganda rant and rave about how we’re trying to force them to lie on our behalf, rather than putting in the effort to understand why we’re asking for what we’re asking for.

Unfortunately, with the amount of hate flying around about us, the latter do at least appear to outnumber the former.

It is not actually a left/right distinction, it is a protectionist/libertarian one. You have strong civil libertarians on the left, and strong protectionist/authoritarian tendencies on the right as well.

Libertarian: As a Practical matter, they believe that influx of labor, in the form of people who are not afraid of working hard, and building a future for themselves is good for society and the economy.

On the Ideological side, they believe that people should be free to better themselves or their situation, and a society cannot be free if it prevents people from doing thatm, simply because of the accident of where they happened to be born.

Protectionist/Authoritarian: The practical side is that people from other places, who are willing to come in and work harder, for less money reduce stability, exert downward pressure on wages, and reduces the opportunities available to the citizens of the nation. Moreover, they exert social pressures on the nation, and are sometimes believed to be more likely to be criminals or freeloaders (though the data rarely supports such a claim)

The ideological side is that a nation’s first responsibility is to its citizens (ie America First), and that immigration must be tightly controlled to make certain that it does not negatively impact the native population.

Neither side is exactly wrong, but neither has an unassailable moral high ground either. “Good People” are hurt no matter which choice you make. The only difference is which side of a national border they were born on. Like most policy issues, ideological purity generally yields the worst possible outcomes, and the “best” solution is one that lies somewhere in between and maximizes the benefits of immigration (to immigrants, and the host society), and limits the negative impacts to the domestic working population.

I have my opinions on what that should look like - but we’d all be far better served if people stopped pretending that this was some kind of cut and dried issue with a clear [moral] solution, and started trying to find a policy that works.

“Are libertarians against civil rights?”

If your definition of “rights” is what is inherent in the individual, the right of each individual to his life, liberty, and property, and to justice when those rights are aggressed against by anyone, then libertarians are very much in favor of civil rights.

If your definition of “rights” includes things like denying business licenses because you don’t like who a business owner chooses to hire or serve, using extortion to pay for things you happen to like, using threats of violence to force other people to give you things you want, or what you think someone else is entitled to, then it’s your definition of “rights” that is at fault, not libertarians.

Libertarians are against coercion. That’s all. Rights don’t require coercion, because they are inherent in the individual.

The idea of “civil rights” are only a category in the broad social concept known as “rights”. All “rights” begin with the individual “right” to life, liberty, and property.

Because a lot of people who call themselves libertarians aren’t.

I was raised in a libertarian family. My parents were active in the party in the 70s and their basic philosophy hasn’t changed much—they are still committed to the idea that you can make any decision for yourself so long as it doesn’t involve force or fraud toward others. That meant that when they had a business in the 80s, they trusted gay people as employees and vendors; when a cousin divorced her husband to seek love with other women in the 90s, they supported her decision; when they were raising me in the early 2000s, they taught me that it was unjust that same-sex couples couldn’t marry; and when I came out to them as trans a few years ago, they accepted me immediately and unconditionally, even before they fully understood my reasons.

But many people who call themselves “libertarians” these days don’t really have much in common with my parents. They’re basically contrarian conservatives who don’t want to call themselves part of the Republican Party. Many of these people joined during or after the “Tea Party” era; some old-school libertarians changed their views, too. They live largely in the right-wing media bubble—often in pretty extreme parts of it—and accept its slander of LGBT people as fact.

It’s impossible to really understand libertarianism without understanding how dramatically it’s changed. The modern New Hampshire Libertarian Party barely even pays lip service to the principles of David Nolan—principles that led the party to condemn criminalization of homosexuality as a “victimless crime” in 1972.

Keep in mind private property, individual liberty, and individual responsibility.

In order for someone to immigrate they must find somewhere on the other side of the imaginary line to provide them space to live. Private property means the immigrant arranges their own housing, finds their own work, and so on.

This is no different than someone from Iowa “immigrating” to Kansas. Changing towns, cities, states, countries, it’s all exactly the same.

If you move across town, what do you do? Arrange with an existing property owner to rent or sell a place to live.

Hotels do exactly the same job on a temporary basis, take in “immigrants”, regardless of what line on a map they crossed, providing voluntary, mutually beneficial living space.

Do I support “immigration”? Of course, otherwise I would have to be living in the same house I grew up in , or I would be a hypocrite.

Most government programs increase violence to try to correct the unintended consequences from its prior use of violence. Eventually, the program is out of control, and only then is the libertarian asked, “Well, how do you propose to fix this mess?”

Our knee-jerk response is sometimes, “Well, we wouldn’t get into the mess in the first place!” But let me avoid that and offer an alternative to the Democratic and Republican cycle of violence.

1) We didn’t start the fire
Let’s look at just two of the ways that our rulers’ use of violence caused this problem.

1a) Killing people over there makes them want to kill us over here
“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.”
— Thomas Jefferson

We could detail decades of our rulers’ violent interventions that killed people over there. Libertarians can get pretty worked up about how evil that is, but even if it doesn’t bother you, the unintended consequence is that people over there now want to come over here to kill us because (and their logic isn’t too flawed) we voted for mass murderers and gave them our money to go over there to kill them! (At least, you guys did. I voted Libertarian… ;) )

Libertarians don’t believe that mass murderers should be able to steal from you to go over there to kill them, even it it helps the cronies of the rulers. We believe that you as a human being may trade your property with, or give it in charity to, whichever foreigner you choose, but rulers should have no ability to initiate violence on us over here so that they can initiate violence over there, causing them over there to come back over here to seek vengeance on us.

1b) People over there want steal from us over here
“It's just obvious [that] you can't have free immigration and a welfare state.”
— Milton Freidman

Sure, it’s nice to give to the needy. But it’s not charity when one is “generous” with someone else’s money! (And there is little incentive to be frugal with other people’s money!!)

Our rulers steal money from us and give (a tiny portion of it back) to their favored voting blocks via (failed and counterproductive) government programs.

Is the resulting welfare generous? Maybe, if it were your own money that you gave voluntarily to a program you believed in, then you might be able to claim virtue.

But our rulers’ generosity with your money has no bounds. There are 7 billion people on the planet and the vast majority of them earn orders of magnitude less than we do. To be “generous”, our rulers have been stealing from our children and our grandchildren (through debt).

In a libertarian society, rulers could not steal from you to pretend that they were being generous. You could give voluntarily to those causes that you thought were worthwhile. If you wanted to give money to refugees, then you could do so.

But with today’s kleptocracy, you have no say in how many, how much, for which programs. But immigrants have enormous incentives to travel long distances at great personal danger to automatically receive a portion of the product of your, and your children’s, labor.

This unchosen charity greatly inflates the number of immigrants. Now, the rulers don’t care — it’s not their labor that is being stolen. But regular citizens are rightfully resentful towards such parasitic motivations.

1c) Other violent contributors
While I will focus on just these two government causes of immigrants coming over here to kill us and to take our stuff, I note in passing that there are many other ways that our rulers cause immigration problems: instigating civil wars, courting immigrant voting blocks, allowing immigrants to reverse current cultural norms through laws, poor policing, eliminating entry level jobs, reducing employment opportunities, expanding civil service unions, reducing small business opportunities, impoverishing Americans, ….

2) Freedom of Movement
So, libertarians generally agree with our liberal friends; we believe that people should be able to peacefully move wherever they want. But I have to acknowledge my conservative friends’ point that it’s hard to allow freedom of movement when our rulers have imposed stupid policies whereby such movement is caused by, and inevitably leads to even greater, violence and theft.

So, how might we be able to transition from this authoritarian mess to the simpler libertarian peaceful society where consenting people voluntarily choose how and whom to care for (and don’t go around killing and stealing from everyone).

3) An Interim Plan
Caveat: This is not a “libertarian” plan; it’s this libertarian’s plan.

The characteristics of a libertarian solution would:

• Roll back government violence wherever it exists.
• Allow peaceful people to voluntarily find win-win solutions.
• Allow those citizens interested in being generous to specific immigrant groups to be generous in the fashion that they think works best.
• While personally recognizing the costs,
• While being incented to find solutions that work better
• While basking in the full benefit of their generosity
• And allow those citizens, who prefer not to participate in their neighbor’s peculiar charitable undertakings, to avoid suffering any of its costs.
• Nor taking any credit for false “generosity”

A More Libertarian Immigration Plan — for the Interim

1. Specific Sponsors: In order to enter the US, immigrants require a US sponsor
1. The sponsor can be an association (e.g., church, the Syrian Refugee Relief Agency, etc.)
2. The sponsor benefits from the admiration of their actual generosity.
2. No Stealing: The sponsor guarantees that the immigrant will not steal from current US citizens.
1. Easy, if the immigrant is a high economic prospect.
2. If the immigrant is a low economic prospect, the sponsor may have to:
1. Pay relocation and living costs until the immigrant is productive.
2. Teach them English, find them a job, find them a home, etc.
3. The sponsor would be responsible for all costs until the immigrant can get up on his own feet.
3. The immigrant may not receive any transfer payments via government violence from the unwilling for housing, food, welfare, education, health, etc.
1. All costs are the sole responsibility of the sponsor.
3. No Killing: The sponsor guarantees that the immigrant will not kill.
1. The sponsor might take out insurance (say, $10M) to pay victims of any potential terrorism caused by their immigrant.
2. Insurance companies, not the government, would vet.
1. Some immigrants would be too risky to insure, and thus the sponsor might pull out and the immigrant could not enter the US
2. Low risk immigrants would command low premiums and sponsors could afford to bring those in.
3. Sponsors give up their own citizenship should the immigrant kill.
4. No Economic Shackles: Immigrants need not follow any labor or business regulations.
1. Nothing prevents them from getting any (esp. entry level) job
1. No minimum wage, no SS#, no health insurance, etc.
2. Nothing prevents them from starting their own small business
1. No regulations, no licensing
5. Revocation of Charity: If a sponsor is no longer willing, and no other sponsor steps up, the immigrant is sent immediately back.
1. The sponsor, not the government, watches to protect against risk.
2. If the immigrant appears to be making bombs, or refusing to work.
3. Sponsor pays (an assurity) for the costs of returning the immigrant

Associations with ties to various countries will have better information about specific individuals from those countries; they can sponsor those they really trust, can integrate them, and can monitor them better for signs of trouble.

Instead of immigrant communities that keep their mouths shut as bombs are built in garages, incentives are aligned to benefit the individuals and society in general.

Is this a great solution? No. But maybe it breaks the log jam of the two authoritarian parties trying to force their one-size-fits-few solutions on each other.

People currently protesting their deep, heartfelt love and concern for immigrants could roll up their sleeves and take personal action and personal risk for what they truly think is right. They don’t need to bully the unwilling into paying the price for their generosity. They can take ownership of the problem through real charity.

There would be a major incentive to find better solutions. For example, sponsors, once they start to spend their own money, may decide that they would much rather resettle 12 refugees over there for the same investment that it takes to resettle one refugee here.

Those scared, are insured. They don’t have to pay the price of someone else’s generosity. They know that their neighbors have their own necks on the line, and are vetting, shepherding, and monitoring carefully these immigrants. And they may monitor local sponsors to assure themselves that they are safe.

Another benefit is that it helps people see how removing government can allow real people to find real solutions, to create jobs and new businesses.

And it places real people back in charge of working together peacefully and voluntary to help one another.

See also:

• Examples of over-regulation?
• Mistakes politicians repeatedly make?
• Can conservatives complain about regulations yet try to regulate the movement of workers?

→ Defense, Military, War

→ Immigration

→ Table of Contents to Dennis’ Libertarian Writings

Explaining why the Libertarian Party takes the positions it does is rarely difficult. The entire party platform stems from a simple idea: people should be able to live their lives as they please. The only restrictions on peoples’ behavior should be rooted in preventing people from infringing on the rights of other people to live as they please. This is sometimes summarized as “don’t hurt people, and don’t take their stuff”.

Migrating across national boundaries doesn’t hurt anyone. It doesn’t take anyone’s stuff. So, the Libertarian Party believes people should be allowed to do it.

I do want to point out that the Libertarian position isn’t precisely “pro-immigration”. The party’s position involves reducing barriers to immigration, allowing people to come into the country if they choose to do so. The party platform does not actively encourage immigration. Bringing in more immigrants is an objective the government could pursue actively, and it once did, through the Homestead Acts back in the 1800s. But that’s not a position any political group I know of is pushing for today.

Jeez, how long have you got? I'll stick to one thing: rationalism. Libertarianism assumes that everyone will behave with rational self-interest and this will produce the best possible outcome. Life doesn't work that way. Psychologists and marketing departments have long since discovered that most people's decision-making is based on all kinds of irrational things. Sentiment, mood, prejudice, upbringing, religion... the list is nearly endless. There are good reasons why McDonald's uses yellow and red in their restaurants, and why grocery stores have installed bakeries and reshuffle the shelves around periodically. None of them have anything to do with rationality.

Here's an example from recent research. People are shown a sequence of pictures, always of a little boy, then a firearm. They are asked to judge in each case whether the firearm is real or a toy. They are more likely to judge it to be real if the preceding image is of a black child than if it is of a white child. They may think they are judging rationally, but the association of young black men with violence overrides their judgment.

Now throw in the fact that half the population is of below-average intelligence, and lack the capacity for rigorous inquiry. Another big chunk is so busy putting food on the table that it cannot afford the time to compare all options. Yet more are too sick to do so. The idea that a person dying of cancer should shop around for the best doctor from their deathbed is absurd.

Libertarians also have an unpleasant tendency to value their own private property above the lives of their fellow citizens. While there is obviously a balance to be struck, the idea that private property is always more important than the good of one's fellow creatures is lacking in what is normally called common decency. And the notion that pure greed will produce the most socially desirable outcome is ridiculous. It might, conceivably, if we were all identical clones competing on a level playing field; but we're all different and the playing field is never, ever level.

Have you ever noticed how the vast majority of people who espouse this greed-is-good philosophy are white American males? And you don't hear it nearly so much from children picking over the garbage heaps for something to eat in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro?