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army1987 comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102 - Less Wrong
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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.