While cruising to Bermuda, Bryan Caplan concludes that cruise ships show the logic of open borders:
On a cruise ship, people of all nations — and all skill levels — work together. Top-notch pilots and mechanics from Scandinavia ply their craft alongside cabin stewards and janitors from the Third World. Via comparative advantage, their cooperation allows them to provide an affordable, high-quality vacation to eager consumers.
A Bastiat fan notes that a cruise ship is not a democracy.
Meet the captain:
Lee Kuan Yew [first Prime Minister of Singapore] eschewed populist policies in favor of pragmatic long-term social and economic measures. With meritocracy and multiracialism as governing principles, Lee made English the common language to integrate its immigrant society and to facilitate trade with the West, whilst mandating bilingualism in schools to preserve students’ mother tongue and ethnic identity. Lee’s rule was criticised, for curtailing civil liberties (public protests, media control) and bringing libel suits against political opponents. He argued that such disciplinary measures were necessary for political stability, which together with rule of law, were essential for economic progress.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew
Following the “logic” of open borders in an existing democracy is the path to social collapse; failed state or totalitarian state, take your pick.
Even open borders advocates lock their doors at night. Why?
Exactamundo! Only totalitarian governments can herd cats; a few sheep dogs will not do. Or in other words, diversity and a small government are contradictory notions; more migration and diversity will never lead to a smaller, less intruding, government.
Some people will bring up Switzerland, but if you point out how genetically related people even from the different cantons are, that just proves the point.
“Lee Kuan Yew [first Prime Minister of Singapore] eschewed populist policies in favor of pragmatic long-term social and economic measures. With meritocracy and multiracialism as governing principles”
Lee him like Emperor in old times. Emperor he like big father. Big father him know what best for little children, his subject. Little children them love big father. Big father him tell little children what to do and little children they do with happiness.
The benevolent dictator in the Chinese model.
My comment on that posting which I suspect will not be approved:
This could be the stupidest argument I’ve ever read.
A cruise ship is open borders in miniature? Cruise ships have amazingly tight border controls. You don’t get on them unless you’re part of the crew or you’ve paid for passage.
The third worlders that you’d love to swamp your nation of residence with don’t have free access to a cruise ship – they are employed under condition of good behavior and can be dismissed and removed from the ship for violating the rules or for no reason at all.
What cruise ships actually demonstrate is that the only way to allow third world people to live near and work with civilized people without chaos, crime, and disorder being the result is to do so in a context where the third worlders are deprived of all “fundamental human rights” and can be removed.
I’m glad to say I did find Steve Johnson’s comment on there, and well said it was.
I was all prepared to just say I don’t want my country organized as a f*cking cruise ship. but that reaction might find no sympathy on the open border libertarian side of the spectrum.
Too wide a conceptual gap.
Historical contingency though they all are [and what is not, beyond the level of biology?], I like my country as a set of geography/demography/culture and organized as a society/polity.
The upside of all this is that in the open-borders paradise of the future, there WILL be government. It will be global, and there will be no escape.
Also, a cruise ship is owned by a company and shareholders that are external to the ship itself, and to whom even the Captain is ultimately responsible. The former have no stake in the life and lives of the ship, but total stake in its ownership and destiny.
Slovenian Guest says: “Exactamundo! Only totalitarian governments can herd cats; a few sheep dogs will not do.”
Religious and cultural fanatics are an interesting phenomenon.
It is possible for a religious cult to have no visible government, because all the fanatics in the cult believe in the same doctrine.
Even without religion, a sufficiently fanatical cultural belief can replace government. A gathering of sufficiently fanatical anime fanatics can live together in peace and harmony because all of them are so devoted to anime that none of them aggress against each other.
Unfortunately, fanaticism doesn’t scale nearly as well as explicit government. It’s hard to produce a fanatic, whereas it’s easy to produce a cop or a preacher.