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buybuydandavis comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'm not convinced utilitarianism actually adds support. At the very least Bryan Caplan's arguments rely on freely switching between deontology and consequentialism, frequently in the same argument, to work.
How many billion people would be better off if allowed to immigrate to GB?
Utilitarianism is about counting everyone's utility the same. "Shut up and multiply" - where multiply is the number of people, not a weighting factor for how much you give a shit about them. That weighting factor should be 1 for all.
Not that I'm a utilitarian. But a libertarian utilitarian would have his work cut out for him to overcome the basic tenets of non initiation of force and weighing everyone's utility equally to justify limiting immigration.
This is just another version of the utilitarian argument for redistributive taxation and has a similar problem. Hint: consider what it is about GB that makes it such a more desirable place then the immigrants' home countries and how that difference comes about.
Yes, that's my point. Open borders in general is supported by utilitarianism.
No need to try to convince me that utilitarianism has it's failings, I've been on board that ship for a long time.
My point is that a libertarian utilitarian can see the flaws in the naive utilitarian argument for redistribution. The naive utilitarian argument for open borders has similar flaws.
People would only immigrate to GB until there was no further utility involved in doing so. It's highly unlikely you'd end up with even one billion people there, even assuming that they could all fit.
Perhaps the phrase should not be 'shut up and multiply', but rather 'shut up and integrate'.
That was expressed better in Snow Crash:
"...once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity..."
...
You can't fit billions of people in the UK. ( I guess that's not what you meant, but that's what it sounds like)
Well, an absolute libertarian could of course not justify the state doing anything. And a utilitarian could come up with arguments against unrestricted immigration - for one thing, perhaps it would be better to maintain at least some border controls but increase foreign aid? I'm not suggesting this is a good idea, it just doesn't seem immediatly ridiculous.
The gain in quality of life from moving to the UK would gradually diminish as the island became overcrowded, until there was no net utility gain from people moving there anymore. Unrestricted immigration is not the same thing as inviting all seven billion humans to the UK. People will only keep immigrating until the average quality of life is the same in the UK as it is anywhere else; then there will be an equilibrium.
That quality will be substantially less than it is in the UK right now. That is why the current population of the UK, and any other developed country (i.e. any country with a standard of living much higher than the world average), does not want unrestricted immigration.
Yes, of course. But the net average quality of life is increased overall. Please examine the posts that I'm replying to here, for the context of the point I am making. For convenience I've copied it below:
If you are entering the argument with a claim that the UK's current inhabitants can be utilitarian and simultaneously weigh their own utility higher than those of other humans, then you should be directing your argument toward buybuydanddavis' post, since ze's the one who said "That weighting factor should be 1 for all". I am merely noting that not being able to fit billions of people in the UK is not a valid counterargument; net utility will still be increased by such a policy no matter what the UK's population carrying capacity is.
I'm not sure this necessarily holds true. In very broad strokes, if the quality of life is increased by X for a single immigrant, but having that immigrant present in the country decreases the quality of life for the existing population by more than X/population, then even if a specific immigrants quality of life is improved, it doesn't mean that the net average quality of life is increased overall.
Yes..... you may be right, and it is a compelling reason, for example, not to admit terrorists into a country.
I suppose that if a particular individual's admission into the country would depress the entire country by a sufficient amount, then that's a fair reason to keep them out, without worrying about valuing different peoples' utilities unequally.
If that is an argument for doing it, it's also an argument for managing one's own home the same way. That ended badly for George Price.
I don't recognise an obligation to give my stuff away so long as anyone has less than I do, and I take the same attitude at every scale. There's nothing wrong with anyone trying to emigrate to a better place than they are in; but nothing wrong with No Entry signs either.
That's fine. Do you consider yourself a utilitarian? Many people do not.
For that matter, following Illano's line of thought, it's not clear that the amount that poor people would appreciate receiving all of my possessions is greater than the amount of sadness I would suffer from losing everything I own. (Although if I was giving it away out of a feeling of moral inclination to do so, I would presumably be happy with my choice). I'm not sure what George Price was thinking exactly.
No, I don't. The Price endgame is one reason why. The complexity of value is another. I do what seems good to me. That may be informed by theorising, but cannot be subservient to it.
But it cuts against the grain of the fundamental premises of both ideologies. That's what I'm saying. The zero order application of both ideologies leads to open borders.
Not true. A state could always justly protect people willing to be protected from initiation of force.
Fair enough.
Yes, I agree that open boarders is the most obvious policy for a libertarian utilitarian, although more from the libertarian POV. Utilitarianism requires thinking long-term - redistribution of wealth by tax is clearly a utilitarian good in the short term, but in the longer term it might become harder to incentivise useful work and so the issue is not so clear cut. This is why its possible to be libertarian utilitarian, rather than a communist utilitarian.
In the same manner, the long-term effects of absolute open boarders might be quite negative.
You can, actually. It's called "the British Empire".
It was widely considered a bad idea the last time it was tried, but it is possible. The United Kingdom is not defined by it's current set of borders or locations.
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.
If immigration is open, it doesn't just benefit the people who move to the UK. It also benefits family members who stay behind-- the immigrant will probably send money home.
I'm not an economist, but doesn't that in turn harm the people who are still in the UK, because money is being moved out of the country rather than being reinvested in the UK economy?
On the other hand, work is being done in the UK, but money is being taken out-- this should lower prices, at least for a while.
The local buyers of competing labor benefit, the local sellers of competing labor lose.
If we're playing utilitarianism globally with decreasing marginal utility, it's a win,
If we're playing nationally, it's likely a loss.
La Wik knows all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittance
Remittances back to the home country often represent a sizable fraction of a country's GDP, exceeding all international aid and foreign investments.