sghorwitz

Bring it on Horowitz. Bring it on. That extra 'o' slows you down in a good fight.

Not in public anyway.

How about "you're far more likely to be poor if you have no freedom." The Berlin Wall was not there to keep people in WEST Germany.

My friend Bryan Caplan did an AMA a little while back and I have the same views as he does on open borders, which is keep 'em wide open. I don't fear the scenario you lay out here because there's no history to support it. Immigrants who come here do so because they want to make their lives better and help their families in the process. As they assimilate, they will not just complete "become us," we will become more like them. Thinik about all the ways in which what was once immigrant food and culture have become part of who we are as Americans (that pizza you're eating..). Assimilation is a two-way street and has many more positive than negative externalities. Plus, it's a simple matter of human rights and bleeding heart libertarianism that we should give those with the least all around the world the opportunity to make a better life for themselves by recognizing their right to move to where the opportunities are and create work and property contracts with those who live there. I simply cannot see how any libertarian can support anything less than open borders on both practical and moral grounds.

I think the most common misconception is that it's just "ideology" - that it is no different from libertarianism. It isn't helped when people use the term "austro-libertarianism." Austrian economics is as old as modern economics, dating to the marginal revolution in 1871, and is a form of value-free social analysis. Unfortunately, too many economists think math and related models are the only kind of "science" or rigorous thinking. They're wrong as the history of economics and other disciplines demonstrate.

Folks might also want to see this https://www.cato-unbound.org/2012/09/05/steven-horwitz/empirics-austrian-economics