Wednesday 3 April 2013

Open Border 'Libertarians' - the lefts fifth column of utilitarianists.

There is a group of people claiming to be libertatian, who have perversly come out in favour of open-door, unlimited, unfettered immigration.

The central plank to their argument is that - in total - a higher proportion of immigrants are employed than UK born, implying that they create more wealth than they consume, so increase GDP so they are a benefit to the UK.

My first challenge to this argument is that it could justify some imigration, but it there is nothing there to support open-door immigration. Why shouldn't we expect 100% empoyment among immigrants? After all we are in a position to choose who to admit and who to allow to stay - unlike native citizens, who are here for better or worse...

But a bigger question comes back to Maggies 'no such thing as society', society is not an entity in its own right, it is a term that refers to individual men and women. So what does it even mean for a 'country' to be better off? Countries don't have minds, souls, feelings, thoughts... the government/state may be 'better off' with a higher GDP to tax, but a man on minimum wage is still on minimum wage regardless.

If the argument is that the average person in the UK is better off, well again - the UK citizen on minimum wage is still on minimum wage even if a new migrant is in the UK earning a fortune - is the open-door-libertarians argument that UK citizens have some duty to share their birthright simply for the benefit of non-citizens? This is a clasic utilitarian argument - 'the greatest greatest good for the greatest number through redistribution'.

These foolish young 'libertarians' have thought themselves through libertarianism, righ in to utilitarianism (a socialist philosophy) but not noticed (or don't want to admit it) so cling to a trendy 'libertarian' label they no longer deserve.

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