Lots of Replying on Open Borders

A while ago, I wrote a critique of my friend Charles Amos’ position that there can be no libertarian case against open borders, suggesting that there could be. He wrote a reply and I wrote a plan for a reply on a piece of paper in a pile (sorry, stack) at my grandmother’s. However, I did say to Charles the other day that my next post would be a reply. So I’ve taken the methodical (cop out?) approach of replying attack by attack to his reply to my argument. His writing is indented below, my replies are not. If you didn’t see it, you’d best check my initial case as for brevity’s sake I refer to it without re-making it. Do also check out Charles’ work for some hot take arguments.

The chief problem with Brookes’s argument is the existence of rights of way. Rights of way are something almost all libertarians from Murray Rothbard and Walter Block through to Billy Christmas and Robert Nozick believe in. Admittedly, how these are established and their exact extent is up for debate, however, no libertarian believing in today’s footpaths or public roads, for example, can believe only those who originally walked on the path or made the road are entitled to do so because this would end a great many footpaths and roads thought to be legitimate by them. These rights of way are open to everyone; future generations and all. Hence, foreigners have a right of way into the country too which is to deny the justice of closed borders.

Are those rights of way so pervasive that they apply to all common infrastructure? My argument simply ran that immigration involves traversing on that which is owned by the state or which is safeguarded by the state for the citizenry. For Amos to show that this does not allow for restrictions would be to show that rights of way are so pervasive that one could not prevent immigration without obstructing an immigrant’s use of rights of way - a far bolder claim than the one that he advances (that some rights of way exist).

Should Brookes’s argument be accepted then it would be morally permissible for a majority of taxpayers to exclude children from ever laying foot on a road, street or public park. Children, after all, have not paid into the state, and, thus, have no claim on using the infrastructure taxpayers have financed. No libertarian warranting that name can accept this (lockdowns would have been permissible under this moral reasoning too). Indeed, it is this point about children which persuaded a very good friend of mine to reject Hoppe’s argument for closed borders. Unfortunately, he wanted to keep closed borders so he simply rejected libertarianism as well. Shame.

I’ve not advanced the idea that any and all immigration regulations are justified - I’ve merely shown that they could be justified. Likewise, I’ve therefore not shown that it is necessarily morally chill for many to incur restrictions on others using their property rights. Nonetheless, I don’t think Amos is fair to the position I suggested. Children clearly share in any inheritance of the work of others creating our public goods, and therefore should have access to them. Alternatively, if the government owns the public goods to be used in the interests of the public, then it also seems to have an obligation to allow use. Therefore, I do not think this stands as a particularly strong rebuke.

Now, if we accept only domestic residents have rights of ways which they have inherited from their forefathers, which, I imagine is Hoppe’s position given this gets him free movement of nationals within a country but no free movement with foreigners, why can’t nationals alienate this right to the world. Why couldn’t I, who has the right to traverse the whole of the country as many times as I like, make an open invitation to everyone across the globe to come to Britain. And if I implausibly only have a right to so many steps across Britain, couldn’t I just gift or sell these to foreigners.

Access to property is clearly not the same as a right of invitation. A child in a household has access to the home but does not have free rein over who they invite.

Let’s accept Brookes’s argument is right however (assume no rights of way). Does it get him to justifying national border controls? No. Brookes writes: ‘[T]he state is operating as a steward for the property owned in part by the vast majority of the public across the whole territory’. Brookes shouldn’t be talking about ‘the state’ here for a proper analysis of the problem though. Although it might simply have been a slip of the pen, roads, bridges and pavements are not ‘the cumulative work of the people of a country.’ Rather they are instead the work of specific county and city council employees using specific funds from specific council taxpayers. And it is these specific council taxpayers, not ‘the people of the country’ who have the right to determine what happens to their local infrastructure.

I think this rejoinder would hold more water if its claims were so. But ultimately things are largely organised on the level of the state. Local authorities work under the backing of central government funds, or issue taxes only within the frameworks and enforcement of central government. Central government provides the frameworks and systems for infrastructure plans. In the UK in particular, we have parliamentary sovereignty - all levels of government had to be at some point sanctioned by the legislature (or via the central government backed by the legislature).

If people want closed borders, they will need to adopt a thicker theory of justice which includes promoting a certain conception of the good life; an ethic no libertarian can accept.

I conclude that Amos has failed to show that my argument falls. Rights of way are not a challenge to the idea that government could be justified in restricting access to infrastructure it manages (and thus immigration) unless one suggests that rights of way are basically ubiquitous across this infrastructure - a very strong claim that would need justifying. My argument does not mean that heavy restrictions on the citizenry are warranted, so the attempted reductio ad absurdum there does not hold water. And lastly, since infrastructure was built by cooperation across national efforts, it does follow that ownership would either be held collectively by individuals across a country or by the state organising these efforts. Therefore, my argument does not justify localised immigration policy (and therefore does not fall prey to any arguable reductio ad absurdum there).