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Jiro comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102 - Less Wrong
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It's just the flip side of the utilitarian idea that you have to give everything you own to charity (except for the money you need to keep making more money to give to charity). Pretty much nobody actually does this, but utilitarianism demands it.
Except in this case, it's not about reducing your utility to increase other people's utility by a greater amount, it's about reducing the utility of everyone in the country to increase other people's utility by a greater amount. It's always easier robbing Peter to pay Paul if you are not Peter.
Or for another comparison, taxation. We could let in lots of immigrants, decreasing the utility of people already in the country for a greater increase in the utility of other people. We could also tax people in the country and use it to buy foreigners a whole series of things starting with malaria nets, again reducing the utility of people already in the country for a greater increase in the utility of other people. Yet taxing locals for the benefit of outsiders is something we only do to a very limited extent, and mostly when giving things to outsiders also brings us some benefit.
(And before you say libertarians don't believe in initiation of force, most libertarians are not anarchocapitalists and do think there is some role for government.)
Just wondering, why not do it the other way round? Make the immigrants pay higher taxes. (Only the first generation; because their children are already born in this country.) For the immigrants, it is presumably still a big improvement over living in their country of origin. For the local people, it removes the "but we would have to pay higher taxes" argument.
Immigrants to the UK pay, on average, more taxes than native Brits.
The biggest problem with the headline is that it assumes "immigrants" are a homogenous group. There could be some groups that are good for the country and some which are not, in which case you could still justify keeping the second group out. If you read the article it even says "However the report highlights that not all groups of migrants make a positive fiscal contribution to the UK and in some cases migrants can represent a burden for public finances."
Also, this doesn't count losses in utility that happen to locals because of immigrants but don't involve collecting benefits, such as increases in crime rates or unemployment rates.
That's quite interesting, and does refute a lot of the people who argue against all immigration. But the UK does have some forms of boarder control.
In order to do that the immigrants would have to pay enough in taxes to make up for the loss in utility by the preexisting residents. Some groups of immigrants, such as immigrants resembling the current Mexican illegals, may not be able to pay that. Furthermore, the same political groups who want more immigrants would oppose such a plan to the point where it won't be feasible.
And the fact that they have children in this country is part of what decreases utility for the people already in the country.
What? If an employer is willing to hire the immigrant, this means that his labour is more valuable to her than her money, and if a grocer is willing to sell him food, this means that his money is more valuable to her than her food, so it'd seem like the immigrant is providing positive net value to the original population of the country, isn't him?
It means the immigrant is producing positive net value to a member of the country, but it can still reduce the average utility for every member of the country.
But if it reduces the averages by raising every individual's utility and simply moving people from the "outside" group to the "inside" group who started with low utility, we can hardly call that bad.
(This is known as Will Rogers phenomenon BTW.)
Thanks. I knew there was a name for it, just couldn't remember what it was.
If immigrants generally reduce utility for everyone in the country, would the same apply for the children of citizens?
There is a middle ground between 'all immigration is generally bad' and 'there should be no boarder controls whatsoever'.
People intrinsically care about their children.
The UK, like pretty much every other country in the world, does not run on a pure capitalist economy.
What do you mean by that? That there are externalities?
A common argument against immigration is that immigrants are a drain on the welfare state. I don't think this is true in the average case, but it can't be dismissed solely from first principles of an efficient market.
In principle you could let some person in without giving them any welfare benefits.
Yes, and without access to taxpayer funded schools etc. We could talk about a hypothetical AnCap UK, but this isn't going to happen in the foreseeable future.