There are many things that frustrate and disappoint me about the United States (and Western society in general), but every once in a while something comes along that reminds me to be grateful for everything that is right. The article below appears only in the subscriber’s area of The Economist, but I think it’s too important not to post. It’s a blatant copyright violation; so sue me.

My friend Sumit mentioned some problems with open borders unrelated to economic issues. He raises good points; there are significant challenges associated with assimilating immigrants. Will they learn English? Will they overwhelm native culture? Will they believe in the essentials of America’s Constitutional republic?

I suspect that immigrants are still a net win, but I agree with Sumit that 100m new Americans could have negative effects. In any case, the core point of my previous post remains: the pseudo-economic arguments against immigration are bogus. And even if we don’t open the borders, it is clear to me that the US can and should welcome many more immigrants—both skilled and unskilled—to the land of opportunity.

I wrote another letter to The Economist, but unfortunately the article I wrote about requires a subscription to read. I linked it anyway; all (both?) of my readers already subscribe to The Economist, right?

SIR – “The not-so-Golden State” (May 27) frets about growing poverty and inequality in California, and yet a big part of the answer to the “problem” is right in the article: “With unskilled immigrants pouring in from Latin America…the gap between rich and poor is growing faster in California than anywhere else in America.” But when poor Latin Americans move to California and get richer, both poverty and inequality obviously decrease. Perhaps California appears to have a problem only because the analysis is tied arbitrarily to political borders.

Michael Hartl
Orange, California

Most people—including, lamentably, both most scientists and most politicians—don’t have a good understanding of economics, and as a result there is much confusion on the subject of oil depletion—sometimes called (in rather alarmist fashion) “peak oil”. My own thinking on the subject was sparked by David Goodstein, a physics professor at Caltech (where I got my physics Ph.D.). Goodstein is a principal exponent of the view that oil production will peak very soon (within one or two decades), and has expressed his view clearly in lectures and in his book, Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil. Goodstein is a clear thinker and an accomplished scientist, and he makes a compelling case; I am inclined to believe his claim that, at least when considering conventional sources and proven reserves, we are “running out of oil”. And yet, unlike him, I am not particularly worried. How can this be?

Immigration is a hot topic these days, so I thought I’d put in my 2¢. My solution to the immigration problem is (like many of my beliefs) politically untenable; but this blog is about intellectually honesty, not pragmatism, so here it is: open borders. There are many who argue against open borders because the ensuing flood of immigrants would overwhelm welfare programs, government-sponsored health care, the school system, and many other public services. These arguments are perfectly correct, except they are weak arguments against immigration; they are, however, strong arguments against public services.

Let’s take one of the main services people are worried about in this context: public schools. If schools were provided by private companies in the same way that, say, restaurants are, immigrants would represent additional potential customers, and their presence would be welcomed. Education companies and restaurants alike would rightly see immigrants as a new market. The reason that immigrants place a burden on the school system is that public education ignores the underlying economic reality that education is a scarce good. That is, education costs more to provide for many people than it does to provide for a few. The so-called burden derives not from a problem with immigrants, but rather from a defect in the way we provide educational services.

And so it goes for the other supposed reasons that open borders wouldn’t work. More people means more workers, more consumers, and more productivity generally. And that doesn’t go just for highly skilled workers; people in general are an economic positive, even if they are unskilled. To the extent that the “system” can’t handle new people, that’s an indication that the system itself is broken. And to the extent that immigration puts pressure on this broken system, that pressure (as computer hackers would say) is not a bug—it’s a feature. (Amazingly, I’m not the only one who thinks this way.)