When I first started advocating for open borders back in 2005 or 2006, and then in my 2010 book Principles of a Free Society, I was a bit starry-eyed. I was zealous. I felt sure I discerned what justice demanded. I was advocating for a better world. Above all, I wanted to help the billions of people in this world whose lives, by American standards, are desperately poor and deprived, or who live in fear, or both. I knew that open borders was the best way to do it. I didn’t think my odds of bringing that about were good. Not at all. One in a million maybe. But the stakes were so high that the gamble (of my time) still seemed worth the effort. At any rate, I could escape my own guilt for being part of the system of exclusion through paying my taxes and thereby funding deportations. American democracy would march on unperturbed either way. It was rock solid, eternal, almost a law of nature.
Eighteen years later, the stakes look very different.
On November 5, 2024, a majority of Americans cast their votes for president for Donald Trump, a convicted felon and adulterer, who had embezzled money from his businesses to pay hush money to a porn star he had slept with, who stole classified documents from the White House, twice impeached, but above all, who had incited an insurrection to try to hold onto the presidency after he was defeated in the 2020 election, and then persisted for four years in poisoning Americans’ minds with outrageous lies about the election having been stolen.
The miracle of democracy lies in the way ruling parties let themselves lose elections and then voluntarily relinquish power. The loyal opposition opposes the ruling party, but supports the constitution, and trusts the ruling party to adhere to the constitution, submit to a fair election, and then yield power when the time comes. The strong norm of accepting election outcomes, and then allowing free speech and all the rest of the supporting practices that undergird electoral competition, is what ensures the maintenance of democracy, and even people who care less about democracy than about something else, like personal ambition or wealth or some policy issue like abortion, are incentivized to work within the democratic system because it’s too strong to be overcome.
No longer. All that’s gone. It’s been proved that you can refuse to accept elections and the American people will still support you, maybe even more than before. Ambitious people will take note. Idealistic movements will take note. The rules of the game are now to play for. Will Trump declare himself dictator for life? Will his supporters stand by him if he does? If not he, how about the next celebrity sleazeball? What if Elon Musk has some really swell ideas for what he could do as dictator of America, and he thinks he can use Trump as a figurehead for a few years and then just cancel the 2028 election and take over? Should he try it? Why not? If it’s not his preference, should he do it defensively? He’ll be around for a while. If Elon doesn’t set himself up as dictator-for-life, will someone else do it, and then bump off Elon Musk, on the principle of cutting the tall poppies? Maybe he should do it unto others before they do it unto him. All the calculations change. It’s hard to put the Humpty Dumpty of democratic norms back together again. Even if there are honest elections in 2026 and the Democrats get a majority back, everyone has been put on notice that the center may not hold. The ceremonies of political innocence are being drowned, and mere anarchy is waiting to be loosed upon the world.
Where did things go so wrong? There are a lot of answers to that question, but perhaps the most important of them all is that American democracy is well on its way to destroying itself through the cult of total immigration sovereignty, or what its supporters prefer to call, in misleadingly innocuous language, democratic control of immigration.
The American politicians, under pressure from voters, who on this issue are rather simple-minded, sowed the seeds of the fall of democracy by promising to control immigration and appease a tidy, unreflective old preference for total immigration sovereignty. Lots of people reside on the territory of the United States without permission, but don’t do any harm. We could have chosen to be relaxed about that. Instead, we made a crisis out of it, not a real, practical crisis, but a crisis in public opinion, in the social imaginary.
The state of public opinion made it a consistent course of least resistance for ambitious politicians to claim that they would “enforce the law.” In one sense, of course, they did. Passport controls were in place. Illegal entry was sometimes addressed through deportation. But there were still a lot of illegal immigrants on US soil, and some crossing the border. And illegal immigrants regularly mingled with law-abiding people and were treated with sympathy and respect, not like criminals. Even burdened with illegality, most of them seem to be better off than they would have been at home. In that sense, illegal immigration paid. So it didn’t seem like the law was being enforced. And it was always available as a cheap grievance for demagogues to exploit.
Why did Americans blunder like this? Why weren’t they able to sensibly recognize the limits of immigration enforcement, and avoid letting themselves be scared into an imaginary crisis, to the point where all political morality got turned on its head, and bad became good, and the majority chose a demagogue who had built his brand precisely on loathsome thuggishness and an apparent lack of any scruples, seemingly in hopes that he might do the nasty things to immigrants that decent, law-abiding politicians couldn’t do?
What makes it odd is that Americans are able to form sensible views with respect to other victimless crimes. As I discussed on my Substack recently, in “The Limits of Immigration Enforcement,” illegal immigration is a victimless crime, and the peculiar difficulties of enforcement arise from that and resemble those of enforcing other victimless crimes. Americans’ laws prohibit some recreational drugs, underage drinking, prostitution, speeding on highways even in situations where it’s objectively safe, and many other activities that are victimless. They have their reasons, good and bad, for keeping these laws on the books. But they understand that enforcement has its limits, and a pretty sizable amount of law breaking is normal when there is no victim to claim redress, and law forbids what conscience does not forbid and may, depending on a variety of circumstances, require. Americans lost their heads about alcohol a century ago, and enacted a constitutional amendment that criminalized a victimless behavior. But it is now generally recognized as a mistake and a cautionary tale. People have rights, and the government derives its legitimate powers from consent of the governed, so laws against victimless crimes are anomalous and can’t be fully enforced. We’re used to it.
In general, Americans can understand that not everything is under democratic control. They understand that speech and religion are not under democratic control, on principle. Government has no right to legislate them. Family, too, must be voluntary and not governmentally mandated. The government can wish for a higher birth rate, but it must not try to compel one. Culture, too, must be free. No matter how much you dislike the latest fashions, you can’t command people what movies to like or what songs to sing. Again, you can influence prices through monetary policy, but it has to be, by and large, up to businesses to decide the price at which they sell their products. Americans have long possessed a healthy dose of libertarian common sense, and there are a lot of things that they don’t expect the government to be able to control.
Why can’t they have the same insight about immigration?
I think the heart of the matter is that immigration restrictions can’t be sensible because they have to be completely undemocratic, in a particularly important sense of that word. A general problem with democracy is the rational ignorance of the voters. They couldn’t possibly get informed about all the issues that depend on elections. And they don’t have an incentive even to really try. They know that no single vote will tip the election, so where does the personal ROI come from for doing the research you need in order to vote wisely? There may be some. Politics can become a form of entertainment, for better or worse, causing people to get informed in a certain way. And being knowledgeable might impress your friends, though again, that may be good or bad. It promotes both information and factionalism. But the most honest and unbiased reason to find out what the law is, is that as a subject of the government, you have to obey it. Citizens-as-subjects get first hand experience of the law, which they can then apply when they are wearing their citizen-as-voter hats. That’s why democracy works. That’s why partisan misinformation doesn’t have everything its own way. Citizens know why other victimless crimes are imperfectly enforced, because they know what it’s like to break the laws against them when they’re unreasonable.
But citizens don’t have to find out what the immigration laws are because they’re not subject to them. So they never find out by experience how unjust and stupid the immigration laws are, and how often breaking them is the right thing to do. And voter opinion forms and festers in a bubble of ignorance.
Trump may not really lack any moral scruples. But he certainly acts the part on stage! Among thousands of other disgraceful obscenities, he told a crowd in Colorado that mass deportation would be “bloody.” Trump often lies. And I suspect that he’s lying that mass deportation will take place. It would take hard work. And it would be dangerous for him personally. Americans might just come to their senses and overthrow him. And some idealist might deliver him an assassin’s bullet in exchange for the crimes against humanity. He certainly didn’t seem overly keen to fulfill his promises during his first term. “Lock her up,” he said of his opponent Hillary Clinton. He didn’t lock her up. “Build the wall and make Mexico pay for it,” he said, but he didn’t even try. Oddly enough, his supporters didn’t seem to care. There’s something weird going on here, some kind of performance art that consists in playing a James Bond villain character all the time, for which this decadent country seems to have a perverse taste. I don’t understand it. But anyway, there’s at least some reason to think they want the evil act but not the evil deeds. Maybe his supporters really do want mass deportations. I don’t see why they’d say they do to pollsters, if they really don’t. But maybe they want it to be somehow immaculate, and if it started turning bloody, they’d actually turn against it. Here’s hoping that’s how they feel. And here’s hoping that Trump fears that’s how they feel, and would be afraid to test it. It’s not clear what he’d gain by carrying out his promises of mass deportation, personally. It would probably be a lot easier to take some token actions and then declare victory to his easily bamboozled followers.
Anyway, the point is that I agree with Trump on one thing: if there are to be mass deportations, they’ll have to be bloody. Many of these people have roots here. Many have families here. Many have nothing to go back to. They’re from countries where they don’t speak the language. Some have no memories of their countries of origin. They may fear death by gang violence. If they go home. They may fear death as opponents of the regime. They may have no jobs to go back to, no homes. Some are never going to leave, no matter how bad things get. For others, a life of being dragged through air-conditioned courtrooms and brutality-free jail cells where food and water are provided will be pretty appealing compared to what they would face if driven back to their countries of legal nationality. No threat short of immediate, gruesome death will tip the cost-benefit analysis in favor of going back.
So yes, Trump, if there are to be mass deportations, they’ll be bloody. Maybe they’ll be too bloody even to be mass deportations. Dead bodies can’t emigrate. In the Bible, King Herod ordered all the young babies killed so that the prophesied king would not live to supplant him. Pharaoh killed the babes of the Hebrews so that they wouldn’t become too numerous. It’s possible. We haven’t fallen quite that far morally, yet. But we’ve fallen very far, very fast.
That’s why no other politician in America has been quite wicked enough to convince voters he’s ready to perpetrate that. When a great democracy lets its whole public discourse be permeated by a lie, the biggest liar wins. Mainstream politicians collaborated in the lie that illegal immigration could be stopped. Now we’re reaping the terrible harvest of that lie, and American democracy may already be past the point of no return.
And so, while I’m still much concerned with the plight of the world’s poor, and I’m very eager to welcome as many of them as possible into the United States and other rich countries because that’s by far the most effective way to alleviate world poverty, I now have another objective, which is as important to me, and somewhat more acute, namely, to save American democracy. American democracy is critically ill right now, and I think its best hope of a cure is a nice medical injection of Open Borders Thought.
What do I mean by “open borders?” There was a time, a few years back, when in a certain very niche community, it could begin to be expected that people’s understanding of the term “open borders” would not be nearly the random outcome of an encounter between a thinking mind and a natural language phrase, but would be informed by a body of thought developed in a variety of places but especially on this blog. Activity has slackened since, although Bryan Caplan still bravely carries the torch as an influential public intellectual thoroughly schooled in the way of thinking. His book Open Borders, which for better or worse is in the format of a graphic novel, is probably the best introduction to it for the general reader.
But let me summarize it here in my own way:
- People have a right to go where they need to go, and live where they need to live, in order to live according to the dictates of their conscience, and to support themselves and their families.
- Also, people have a right to be with relatives and friends and others that they love, and to stay in the midst of communities where they are deeply rooted and have a strong network of social ties.
- Governments do wrong to interfere with the rights in (1) and (2) except in exigent circumstances for narrow, compelling motives, principally the prevention of terrorism and contagious disease.
- When governments violate the rights in (1) and (2) except in narrow circumstances as described in (3), they act unjustly.
- Immigration policies that respect the rights described in (1) and (2), and that accept the constraints described in (3) and (4), comprise “open borders.”
- Open borders do not imply that the crossing of borders should be free of any checkpoints or constraints. Rather, any such checkpoints and constraints should be administered with due regard to the right to migrate.
- Open borders in no way imply that foreign-born persons residing in a democracy should enjoy the right to vote at any stage of their residency.
- Open borders do not, in general, imply equal treatment under the law for native-born persons or citizens and for foreigners. However, insofar as administrative law reflects understandings of basic justice and natural rights, a community may be required to provide similar justice services to the foreign-born, on pain of violating their rights.
- Open borders are compatible with migration taxes.
- Open borders are compatible with allowing or incentivizing labor market discrimination in favor of the native-born or citizens.
The above list answers many questions and raises more. To the long-running “problem” of illegal immigration, the answer is simply: stop. Stop fighting it. Stop worrying about it. Stop the deportations. We don’t necessarily have to grant all illegal immigrants citizenship, but let them live without fear and work and trade on a normal basis, more or less.
But it’s a radical policy. Like abolishing slavery or communism or polygamy, abolishing migration restrictions points to dramatic changes which can’t be thoroughly foreseen. There’s good reason to think the changes will be mostly good. For example, it will raise world GDP dramatically, increase the manpower of liberal democracies relative to aggressive autocracies, and probably accelerate innovation. I believe, although it’s controversial, that many low-skill native-born Americans will see wages fall due to immigrant competition, but migration taxes can compensate them so that the large efficiency gains from open borders can benefit those on whom the first order impacts are negative.
But to hash out all those debates is not my purpose here. Rather, I want to remind people that there’s an alternative to the self-destructive pursuit of total immigration sovereignty. I want people of good will to stop giving hostages to MAGA and other fascist-adjacent political cults by conceding that we need to “enforce the law,” “control the borders,” or whatever. We actually don’t. Total immigration sovereignty is not an indispensable condition of national survival. We don’t have to sacrifice every principle on the altar of an unattainable total control of who is present on the national territory. Some people are here without permission. That’s okay. We should be relaxed about that. We don’t have to keep pretending that it’s some kind of crisis.
And if we’re really smart, we will institutionalize the truth that it’s okay. We’ll rethink the insistent prerogative of democratic control of immigration. We’ll learn to start our arguments about the subject from what is a nice, fair, decent way to treat people who want or need to be in this country for one reason or another. We’ll accept that whether to come here or not should mostly be up to them, not us. We’ll evolve towards open borders. We’ll get stronger, create a huge amount of opportunity for people from all over the world, and increase the wealth and freedom of the human race. And then we can elect nice, honest, democratic politicians again.
Finally, let me end by responding to a question from a friend about what Democrats should do now. I’m not a political consultant, and I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. But if my advice to relax about illegal immigration is to impact policy, someone will need to run on it and win. That someone would presumably, for now, be the Democrats. So it’s a fair question.
It’s tricky to answer because the Democrats pay a heavy political price for advocating a large policy and social agenda growing out of the Sexual Revolution, to which I’m totally unsympathetic. It would be easy for me to say to jettison all that, but not quite fair advice, since their priorities are different from mine. It would also stray too far from the current topic. Democrats could also try more of the same and hope to win, when Trump’s plans fail or fall short, or a better candidate comes along. But that feels like unsatisfying advice.
So I’ll offer a substantive concession: build the wall. That’s the compromise I’d suggest for the sake of political expediency on the path to the larger goal.
It might seem like a fatal concession to make, even as a tactical compromise. What could be more antithetical to open borders than a giant chain of concrete and wires marring the like southern border?
But the moral significance of a physical barrier is slight, and it would be a small price to pay for many other things, such as a path to citizenship for current illegal immigrants, or more visas. The main goal isn’t a physically open border but an own society that respects immigrants’ rights, recognizes a right to migrate, and abjures the conceit that it can and should completely control entry and insist on total immigration sovereignty.
And anyway, there are other ways to get here. Boats. Small planes. Tunnels. Shipping containers. So physical prevention of all illegal immigration isn’t realistic. What we need to do instead is overhaul public opinion and the social contract so that we can live and thrive with it.
Open borders cannot be sustained. The third world adds 83 million new babies, annually, net gain. They are flooding into first world countries to the point of water, energy and resource collapse. This commentary is out of touch with reality. All of Europe, Canada and America will collapse with continued open borders. Frosty Wooldridge, 6 continent world bicycle traveler
Yes it can be, in fact, even more so NO COMMUNAL BORDERS AT ALL! This user agrees with about seven-to-eight-tenths of what this gentleman is putting forth here and this user — whilst knowing of this site for about eight-or-so years now, is only just commenting now after a flight-of-fancy to see if this website was still in-operation — is likely the most anti-wall/”communal-property”/pro-private-property/freedom-of-movement person on, underneath, and beyond planet Earth! Besides the simple fact (which is enough for this user, personally) that no one has the Right, nor capability, to impede the freedom-of-movement of three-hundred-million, nor seven-billion, people, nor the Right to steal from such people in order to pay for such aggression, “communal property” is, per many a FEE article, “inefficient” as private-property is founded “pre-politically”, as one AnthonyDeJasay postulated. There is no “u-s”, there is no “o-u-r”, there is no “w-e”. There is only “y-o-u” and “m-e”. There is no “w-e”, as no one speaks on behalf of this user without their expressed permission, and vice versa.
This is a post-truth and post-genius “Idiocracy” world in which nothing is as it seems: prowrestling is not about prowrestling; abortion is not about abortion; borders are not about borders, etc., etc.. In a world of three-hundred-million, let alone seven-billion, people, on the surface alone (more on the Euler/Haley/Symms/Verne-posited “hollow-Earth” another time), it is simply not feasible to expect for such people to be stolen from, even from elsewhere in the imaginary country (of which all “countries” ultimately are) and not of the immediately-affected, let alone next-of-kin, in the form of “taxes” in order to fund a man with a gun to point it at a professional doctor in order to not perform a requested abortion-service.
FEASIBILITY TRUMPS MORALITY (f which the Rebloodlicans of the UniParty are usually concerned about, or at least, purport themselves as being concerned about in the media/public-sphere) AND LEGALITY (of which the Democrips of the UniParty are usually concerned about, or at least, purport themselves as being concerned about in the media/public-sphere)! If something is not feasible, then, as the ol’ saying goes, “facts don’t care about one’s feelings”!
Focus on the ROOT-CAUSES of a given problem, NOT the mere SYMPTOMS! To do otherwise is a prelude to statism and a waste of time, effort, and capital, and, ultimately, life! Focus on the PUSH/PULL-FACTORS of the broader migration-crises!!! It’s a VOTING ISSUE, it’s a REGIME-CHANGING ALPHABET-SOUP AGENCY ISSUE, it’s a WELFARE issue, it’s a DISCRIMINATION (of which it is NOT a “dirty-word”, but a basic, daily function in the market as freedom-of-association and freedom-of-DISassociation are inextricably-linked as NOT being mutually-exclusive positions, just as being pro-choice AND pro-life are NOT mutually-exclusive positions) issue, it’s a CURRENCY issue, it’s an issue of CULTURAL DIFFUSION! Can so-called “western”/”American cult-ure” NOT withstand diffusion into, and by, “Hispanic”/”Mexican-cult-ure”??? One CANNOT “have their cake and eat it too”! To hide such cult-ure from behind a physical wall and movement restrictions of non-criminals is NOT indicative of a “winning cult-ure”. To think Rebloodlicans/conservative-minded folk are “pro-life” or to think that Democrips/”progressive” (regressive)-minded folk are “pro-choice” are deluding themselves. A “Dark Triad Psychology-afflicted individual (made-sociopaths — usually from trauma and/or ignorance and high time-preference when faced with scarcity, the latter of which will always exist, even with the likes of the logical-conclusion of 3D-printers in the form of “Star Trek”-style Matter Pattern Replicators — born-psychopaths — of which are actually a rarity in the world and usually self-destruct rather quickly — and sociopathic-narcissists, malignant, grandiose, and covert; fearful and lazy; which are the worst of the trio) does not care about the Rights of a sovereign individual! Even though this user is not (at least anymore) a fan of YaronBrook of the AynRandInstitute, this user can take a good quote from anyone and make use of it and find wisdom in the most mundane of things and places, and he was correct in postulating that “the group cannot reason, only the individual can reason.”
For example, WHY do cults-of-personalities primarily appear only in mass public gatherings, from the Reichstag to the Winter Palace to “the Swamp”? There IS “magic” (in a manner-of-speaking) that exists in this world, and it’s psychological, it’s sociological. When people gather in large groups, they stand a larger probability to de-individuate and turn-off the reason center of their brain, thus, leading to de-humanization with the adherence to the unsustainable business model of the “ends justifying the means” and that the collective is greater than the sum-of-its-parts. Take, for example, a tank, or weaponized group transport otherwise: if the individual nuts and bolts and screws and tracks and plating are not properly attended to, then the construct-in-question is more of a danger to those inhabiting it than those it is purported to be pointed-at!
Yes, the hit-or-miss (and, unfortunately, more “miss” than “hit” in the past handful of years, the same with his daughter who collects for VoldemortZelenskyy’s Ukraine) DoctorJordanBPeterson is correct that “hierarchies are Naturally-occurring and should be supported”, HOWEVER, this user’s anarcho-capitalist libertarian-minded sphere-of-influence merely wants such hierarchies to be VOLUNTARILY-CONTRACTED ones, as opposed to any adherence to this sense of aforementioned “communal property”, replete with all of its woes, in the form of this mythical “social-contract”.
The State, itself, is NOT “a given”, as some a priori fact-of-life! AnthonyDeJasay debunked the purported purposed of the State (to mint and interpret and enforce private-property contracts) by pointing out that….the State did not always exist, therefore….”Who authorized the State?” At least two individuals had to have willingly come together in order to contract the State into existence in the first place, therefore, two individuals can, to this day, do the same in coming together to mint, interpret, and enforce private-property contracts of their own, and others with their permission.
It is basic Austrian/Misesian Economics 101 that “the State and the market are incompatible with one another”! There is NOTHING that the State can produce that the unmitigated free-market cannot produce, better, faster, and cheaper! Consumers are NOT all invalids, incapable of making decisions and learning and growing and sharing such information and imparting such wisdom to their kith-and-kin, most-especially in this Internet Age! The free-market DOES fix itself without all the coercion-backed artificial-inducements (“safeguards”, “protections”, etc.). There ARE non-government testing-firms that do a better job than government “services”. For example, from a Mises-Wire write-up by BobMurphy, and, specifically, the comment section beneath it, from several years ago, Underwriter’s Laboratories likely has their seal-of-approval inside most people’s refrigerator, among other appliances. The government does not actually produce the equipment its supposed military uses, “justly” or (usually, at least these days) unjustly abroad and on the home-front, but is the one using coercion to supply the bodies to become troops from the Draft! Actor RobertDeNiro appeared in an advertising campaign for an independent testing firm that would put their seals-of-approval on the storefront windows of businesses, like cafes and other restaurants.
It’s about two things: faith and responsibility. Currency is the collection of tokens-of-faith in one’s labor, and what’s needed now, more than ever before, IMHO, as well as what is closer to being attained since the time of the original “Atlantean” central-planning alien rebels, is “sound money”! Sound money is, perhaps, the GREATEST tool in rendering the State, in RBuckminsterFuller-fashion, OBSOLETE! Why? Because the State survives under “Gresham’s-Law”, which states that people chase after “bad money”. What constitutes “sound money”? Well, Professor ClaytonCarpenter of Harvard has a write-up on that on Mimble Wimble Coin’s website under “good money” (although this user’s sphere-of-influence may no longer be fans of MWC itself). IMHO, what’s closer to such sound money is that of artificially-scarce (because the Scarcity Principle is of utmost importance), anonymous-by-default cryptocurrencies (because, as Rafael”The Crypto Vigilante”LaVerde says, “privacy is shelter”), perhaps powered by make-shift solar-sails that are backed-up by competing private security firms (“Dispute Resolution Organizations”, as one ShaneKillian calls them), a.k.a. “Polycentric Law”. Why is this important? Because tokens-of-faith in the form of sound money should reflect “faith” itself, which is immediate, intangible (invisible), cannot be intercepted and is finite (as all people are mortal, of course and to think otherwise is delusional level of hubris bordering on solipsistic).
Does one’s current currency reflect these qualities, or can they be damaged in the rain, stolen physically and electronically, and be printed ad nauseam by the Central Banksters, who fancy themselves “gods-among-men”, and their currency-printing reflects that belief. They are the true rebels, NOT the anarchists, as the Central Banksters and their government pawns (and subsequently, those with a “seat-at-the-table” in the corporatocracy) rebel against not only cause-and-effect, but the Universal Laws of Supply-and-Demand! The entrepreneur survives, and even thrives, BECAUSE of their understanding and respect for such Universal Laws!
What exactly IS “the government”? There is a difference between “governMENT” (etymologically “govern”, meaning “to control”, and “mente”, from Latin, which means “mind”, to mean “mind-control”) and governANCE (of which the likes of private charities, schools, clubs, and non-corporation private companies all utilize). The State (a better term than “government” because of confusion, of conflation, of the aforementioned two terms) can be defined as the (namely and eventually-if-not-immediately, coercive) monopoly (all of which are artificial and NOT Naturally-occurring in the Universe; as, for example, neither supernovas nor black holes nor plagues nor war have a monopoly on death and destruction in the Universe) on credit (tokens-of-faith), arbitration (the minting and interpreting of private-property contracts), and defense (the enforcement of said contracts and well-being) over a given region. All “anarchy”/”AnCapistan” REALLY is is just having OPTIONS in credit, arbitration, and defense in a given region! As MurrayRothbard noted, the true “capitalism” (originally a SLUR coined by crackpot-KarlMarx to discredit free-markets) is “anarchy” and the true “anarchy” is “capitalism”! Anarcho-capitalism is the logical conclusion of libertarianism, a.k.a. voluntar(y)ism!
All States are monopolies and all States are racist! It’s NOT a matter of trying (and failing, miserably, always-and-forever) to “End Racism” (looking at the NFL right now, and their side-lines and backs of some of their helmets), as “there is no racism without statism!” “Prejudice” should NOT be conflated with “racism/sexism” merely because it’s a “less-sexy headline” than the latter! “Prejudice” is merely a reverse-preference and downstream of private-property! JackPhillips, the Colorado baker need not be forced to do business with self-immolating men who think themselves women, nor can, say, authors SteveBannon, JaredTaylor, and RichardSpencer look up to try to enforce racially-homogenous couples across half-a-continent and three-hundred-million people! One is as entitled to their prejudice as they are their preference, and vice versa, and it is the existence of the State itself that chooses forced-association or forced-disassociation over the other, depending on who has a “seat-at-the-table-that-should-not-exist”! One is NOT entitled to the fruits of another’s labor, let alone their genetic-material, be they “human” (however one wishes to quantify that term, as either a singular-race or amalgamation of races merely capable of reproduction with one another, that’s besides the point), Annunaki rebel conquerer, or “Vril-ya Gray” reptilian alien parasite, allegedly in a deal with the “military-industrial-complex” that DwightEisenhower WARNED of as he left office, as it is alleged that such a deal was brokered after “first-contact” with the saucer-crash at Roswell, New Mexico, entailing blood-tributes in-exchange for advanced military technology. Think about it: how did the U.S./”west” advance so quickly after WW2, faster than at any era in human history to that point? Why blood-tributes? Because, allegedly, these Vril-ya, or “Targzizzian”, or “Draconian” reptilian Grays (“little-green-men”, according to an alleged threat to expose given by actress Norma”MarilynMonroe”Jean to the late-JFK before her rayp-and-drug-overdose-murder at a party) do not ingest nutrients the way humans do….they, allegedly, absorb nutrients through the skin….from blood-bathes.
No one is advocating throwing pipe-bombs! Those are oxymoronic “AnCom” Antifa agitators: crisis-actors bought-and-paid-for as a relatively-cheap army by GeorgeSoros/GiorgioSchwartz, real-life Nat-Soc-collaborator and billionaire hedge-fund owner by way of “Act Blue”, a terrorist-slush-fund for the Democrips to point at competing firms and individuals! Everyone knows this, everyone knows about all the false-flag operations for gun-control, some assisted by DNC chair DebbieWassermann-Shultz and the “Dancing With The Stars” producers, ever since BarackHusseinSoetoroDavisKissingerO’Dronebummuh-Rob’em’son said that he’ll “have more power after the [2012] (s)election”!
The State will, has and does, use any and every trick in the book, from logical fallacies and straw-man non-arguments and loaded-and-leading “questions” that are actually “gotcha” statement-traps disguised as questions, and, chiefly, on BOTH sides of the UniParty, to try and sustain itself, however, THE STATE IS NOT SUSTAINABLE! The State, itself, is an “exist-scam”, the likes of the centralized “FTX” cryptocurrency exchange by that fat piece of refuse, SamBankman-Fried. Whilst usually Democrips, Rebloodlicans can, have, and will use largely emotional-based versions of the aforementioned to try and win popular opinion as a coping mechanism for the violation of First Principles, of even their own morality. As H.L.Mencken, childhood crush of philosopher AynRand, poor man’s repackager of LudwigvonMises (at least compared to MurrayRothbard), posited, the State is merely a “gang-of-men engaged in a kind of advance auction-sale of stolen goods, namely for said popularity. This “pathological altruism”, of which AynRand WARNED readers about in her seminal masterpiece, “Selfishness is a Virtue”, is a symptom of the cancer of collectivism! Do not conflate “selfishness” with “greed”. The prior simply means looking out for one’s self, and is the antidote to greed. “Greed” is a vice that entails negative/offensive action be taken against someone else to screw them over.
The character “GeorgeEastman” in the ElizabethTaylor film, “A Place In The Sun”, did NOT commit murder when he swam to his boat that his pregnant wife decided to commit suicide from diving off, he was merely looking out for himself and one CANNOT save everyone! The “trolley-lever-holder” in the infamous statist fallacy “trolley scenario” is NOT responsible for the POSSIBLE death of many by not pulling the lever, but IS guilty of murder by consciously making the action to divert the track to ENSURE the death of some, regardless of whether it was in the name of some arbitrary “greater good” that might save many more lives! This was illustrated by “Captain Jean-Luc Picard” on a season five episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” when a time-traveler sees him make a conscious act that saves people’s lives, rather than worrying about the possible negative consequences of losing many more lives in the process. That is NOT “set-in-stone”! It’s been said, somewhere (this user cannot recall where), that the job of “the-devil” is to get humanity to “beguile itself”. It is this self-doubt, this artificially-induced self-doubt, that Dark Triad Psychology-afflicted beings can come to power, and the more “fragile” and centralized the construct, the greater the probability for greater liabilities stemming from abuse of such power, as opposed to a more “Antifragile” (per the NassimNicholasTaleb entitled book) aspect of decentralization! If a dirty-bomb were to go off in a centralized society….more people WILL be negatively-affected than in, say, the decentralized obsidian trade route cities of the ancient region of southeastern-Turkey and Syria. The larger the scope and extent of such power leads to the attraction of worse Dark Triad Psychology-afflicted beings! The lesser the scope and extent of such power, the more manageable are the potential losses!
Now, this reader and fan does take some umbrage with some of what the author above here is putting down, in terms of believing the mainstream/lamestream legacy-media’s LIES about January 6th being an “insurrection” riot, when it was merely a rambunctious jaunt through the capitol, which was allowed to happen and featured KamalaWh0rehouseHarris direct the Secret Service to plant a fake-bomb across the street by schoolchildren and a female Air Force colonel lose her life, needlessly and senselessly, to an alleged Negroid-male capitol city officer…and for the case to be completely and utterly covered-up afterwards! Only one old man had a firearm on him and DonnieDiddler supporters were not in the business of bringing undue harm to innocents, despite what the likes of the NothingButCrap network’s intentionally-blurry video clips might have the uninitiated believe!
Yes, DonnieDiddler HAS done SOME “good”, and for those actions he should be commended, but a lack of an endorsement is not indicative of an indictment nor is an indictment indicative of a lack of an endorsement. Is he “better” than his alleged cousin, (K)illary(K)u-Ru(K)linton or Creepy, Sleepy, “Scranton-Joe” (“Pedo-Pete”-by-his-son, Cocaine-Hunter)Bidet? Marginally, yes, but that’s like saying fecal matter without nuts is better than other fecal matter that does contain nuts because one is allergic to nuts! That individual with a nut-allergy is STILL susceptible to the likes of hepatitis and MERSA and salmonella, etc., etc.! Voting for the “lesser-of-two(-or-more)-Evils” is what got the world into the mess that it is in and one is ADMITTING to voting for Evil in the process! It does not matter if a man’s “member” is micro-sized, as even just the “tip” being inserted without consent is STILL RAYP! This is why “minarchy” does NOT exist and cannot exist, just as the likes of LarkenRose has espoused over the years! Those who want power will not be satisfied because they are insecure beings (lazy and/or fearful) and those who desire to be left alone and only voluntarily-interact with one another will want more freedom!
“Limited-government” is a pipe-dream! One is either a “statist”….or an “anarchist”! “Do or do not, there is no try.” One cannot be “half-pregnant!”
Please check-out, at one’s earliest convenience, the fine folks over at The Foundation for Economic Education, The American Institute for Economic Research, The Future of Freedom Foundation, “The Dollar Vigilante”, “The Crypto Vigilante”, “Anarchapulco”, who wrapped-up their 11th Year Anniversary this past February, and Liberland’s 10th Anniversary celebration next week, PorcFest in June, MisesUniversityWeek this July and “Liberpulco”, later this summer in September!
Thanks for reading! Taxation is theft!
Peace, Luv, Logic, Truth, and Anarchy!
Addendum: It’s also a BLACK-MARKET (DECRIMINALIZATION) issue, in which bad actors are incentivized to conduct their dealings of banned goods and services away from the State, with higher prices on many goods, such as natural medicines, that do a better job than most-anything “Big Pharma” sells. Virtually everything in the grocery store is either poison or a mere ineffective placebo in-comparison! The quality of such goods and services in the black-market is lower and performers (such as for sex-work) and banned-good producers have less leverage to the monopolies within the black-market. There are children being sold into slavery to drug lords in Mexico, being asked to kill people, because it’s so hard to escape being in such a captive audience and if sex-work were decriminalized (different than “legalized”, in which the likes of cannabis at dispensaries pay a “pound of flesh” to the State for having a “seat-at-the-table[-that-shouldn’t-exist], then the likes of the late performer AugustAmes wouldn’t have been bullied to suicide all because she did not wish to perform with a bisexual male who just got done sodomizing another man and was concerned for her health. She was labeled horrible names, like “homophobic” until she couldn’t take it anymore.
This is also why the Baltics (and hopefully not Argentina) joining aggressive, globalist organization, NATO, is such a bad idea, because the competition from Iran to Israel and Russia and the eastern-bloc to NATO and the EU allows for smaller expediencies (look up the HenryDavidThoreau quote on what all government really is) and individuals to leverage better deals, such as by the equivalent of writing “Dear John” letters to competing “lovers”! In a captive, Zionist-world-order audience, however, many smaller expediencies and individuals not of the Anglo-Franco imperialists have little-to-no real leverage and are not going to get what they think they are paying into!
And an addendum to the “GeorgeEastman” reference and
“trolley-problem” reference, it is basic Austrian/Misesian Economics 101 that “there is no accounting for the final destination of a good.” This means that the likes of the Lady-Winchester did NOT need to build such a house full of stairways and doors that led nowhere, allegedly in order to confuse ghosts because she had some problems sleeping, especially with post-partum depression. She, and her husband and the Winchester-repeating-rifle company were, and are not, responsible for the deaths the rifle caused and causes! This goes right back to the alleged job of “the-devil” (which the Satanic-Alynskiite-playbook-reading Democrips, crocodile onion-powder-induced tear-shedding B.O. and Klintonites utilize): they try to guilt-trip people into feeling sorry for something that they should not feel sorry for, because they had nothing to do with such a crime, even if real and not a false-flag operation!!! Case-in-point: this user had a teacher (she doesn’t deserve the title of “professor”, IMHO) back in this user’s earlier college days that was going to a conference whereby she said she was going to try and ask about the CEO of McDonald’s having any “corporate responsibility” for deaths and health issues the obese and other consumers that are customers of the firm have! That “Super-Size-Me” piece of agitprop “documentary” was a total, leftist-statist HIT-PIECE! Michael(“Michelle”)Obama was just trying to starve schoolchildren to make them easier to brainwash! It has NOTHING to do with “health”!
The “State” can also be defined as the monopoly on the delegation of responsibility. Therefore, its Natural enemies are the nuclear-family and religions that don’t have a “seat-at-the-table[-that-shouldn’t-exist]!”
https://mises.org/mises-wire/overpopulation-fallacy-why-more-people-means-more-knowledge-and-prosperity
04/11/2025
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Mises Wire
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Amir Iraji
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For decades, the dominant narrative surrounding population growth has been one of alarm. Thinkers like Malthus warned that population growth would cause mass starvation and ecological collapse. Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb famously predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve in the 1970s due to overpopulation.
Today, concerns are shifting. Many of the same governments that once feared overpopulation are now worried about declining birth rates. Countries like Japan, South Korea, and much of Europe struggle with economic stagnation and aging populations. Even China—after enforcing its coercive One-Child Policy—is now encouraging larger families. This shift raises an important question: where did the fear of overpopulation come from, and was it ever justified?
This fear is rooted in the old zero-sum view—the belief that wealth and resources are fixed, and that a growing population simply means dividing those resources into smaller portions. Aristotle, for example, argued that if a city’s population grew too large for people to know one another, resources would be depleted.
Today, the evidence is plain: if the old theory were correct, modern megacities would be dystopian wastelands. Yet cities like Tokyo, New York, and London are among the wealthiest and most dynamic places in history. So why does this zero-sum logic persist—not only among ordinary people, who intuitively believe it, but also among so-called experts, especially economists who should know better?
The reason lies in their static view of human societies—the static fallacy. Their assumptions are based on static models, borrowed from the natural sciences, where variables and outcomes can be predicted with a high degree of certainty. In physics or biology, an increase in a certain factor (e.g., the number of rats or locusts) leads to predictable consequences (e.g., resource depletion and famine).
This view is flawed because it fundamentally misunderstands human nature. Unlike other species or other physical matter, humans are not just passive consumers of resources. They are active, creative, and innovative, constantly finding solutions and reshaping their environment. As Huerta de Soto puts it, they have an inherent capacity for entrepreneurial discovery. That’s why—unlike rats, bees, or sharks—we do not live the same way we did 10,000 (or even five) years ago.
Human history is full of pivotal, yet unpredictable, discoveries. Take penicillin: before Alexander Fleming’s accidental breakthrough, bacterial infections were among the leading causes of death. No predictive model could have foreseen this discovery, yet it revolutionized medicine and saved countless lives. Or consider 3D printing—once unimaginable, it is now transforming manufacturing, medicine, and even space exploration. We also cannot predict all the outcomes of new and future AI technologies, as well as others.
This explains why Ehrlich’s predictions in The Population Bomb failed and why he also lost his famous 1980 wager against Julian Simon. Ehrlich claimed population growth would deplete resources and drive prices up, while Simon argued that human ingenuity would lead to abundance and lower costs. They bet on five metals over a decade, and—by 1990—all five had dropped in price, proving Simon right.
Huerta de Soto provides a key insight into why population growth drives progress rather than collapse. He argues that, contrary to Adam Smith’s division of labor, the true driver of economic progress is the “division of knowledge.” By this, he specifically means entrepreneurial knowledge, which is, by definition, dispersed—unlike scientific knowledge, which can be centralized and stored.
Entrepreneurial knowledge is subjective, exclusive, and private. It can’t be centralized because each bit of it exists in the mind of a different individual, often in a tacit and inarticulate way. Not only that, but it is also constantly evolving, as this is the knowledge we create through trial and error—by acting in the face of uncertainty, noticing opportunities, and discovering what works and what doesn’t.
This means that every individual possesses unique, irreplaceable knowledge shaped by their genes, upbringing, experiences, and circumstances. As a result, each person is an irreplaceable creator of new entrepreneurial knowledge, which can lead to discovering solutions. When populations grow, the total pool of entrepreneurial knowledge expands, leading to more innovation and better solutions to human problems.
These solutions are not always grand inventions; most of the time, they are smaller discoveries that improve everyday life. The founders of Airbnb just noticed the scarcity of affordable lodging during a major conference in San Francisco. They began renting out air mattresses in their apartment to attendees, realizing many people were willing to pay for a more personal and affordable alternative to hotels. Countless similar discoveries happen every day, often unnoticed, but they form the bedrock of our prosperity.
The zero-sum mindset that ignores the power of entrepreneurial discovery is embodied in Thanos—the villain in the Avengers movies. Believing resources are finite, he wipes out half of all life to “save” the universe. Yet, instead of prosperity, his plan leads to collapse because every person who vanished was not just a consumer, but also a problem-solver with unique knowledge.
To illustrate how much dispersed knowledge is embedded in even the simplest products, consider a cup of coffee. We assume making coffee is straightforward, yet no single individual knows how to produce it entirely on their own. Coffee beans must be grown (often in Brazil or Ethiopia), harvested, processed, shipped globally, roasted, and brewed using machines designed by engineers and manufactured across different countries. This process involves thousands of individuals, each contributing their exclusive knowledge to bring a simple cup of coffee to your table.
Now, imagine reducing the world’s population by half. The result would be a dystopia like the one depicted in Children of Men, where even meeting our most basic needs would become a challenge. Worse still, we would never know how many undiscovered innovations—medical breakthroughs, cleaner energy sources, more efficient production methods—would be lost forever.
The fear of overpopulation is just one example of a broader mistake—treating human societies as static systems where trends continue unchecked, and resources are exhausted without new solutions. This same error underlies many failed doomsday predictions, from peak oil to climate catastrophe models that overlook technological and entrepreneurial innovation.
Again and again, history shows that human ingenuity—whether modest or groundbreaking—always outpaces static predictions. Just as Julian Simon debunked Paul Ehrlich’s overpopulation fears, countless innovations in energy, efficiency, and technology have defied collapse forecasts.
The real threat is not population growth or industrial progress—it is the failure to recognize the power of human creativity. Rather than fearing the future and resorting to central planning, we should embrace the entrepreneurial discovery that drives human flourishing.
Nathan Smith proves that he flunked mathematics while in high school. Opening borders in Western Countries cannot be sustained. The third world adds 83 million new babies, net gain, annually. They are flooding into first world countries with no end of the line. Those migrants are overwhelming water, energy and resource supplies. Such massive and endless immigration will collapse first world countries. It’s that simple; it’s that deadly. Nathan Smith lacks simple understanding of “carrying capacity.” No species can overrun the carrying capacity of a finite land mass and its resources. It’s a deadly finish for humans to continue exponential growth. Frosty Wooldridge, 6 continent world bicycle traveler. Author of three books on human overpopulation.
“Human overpopulation”. Pssh, depopulation-promoting Malthusian leftist statist-stacy! Sick of ol’ Roy being wrong about population and climate-change the past sixty-years???