More Timely Than Ever!

Monday, March 18, 2024

Trump: Another Special-Interest-Pandering Politician

Trump promises to slam a 100-percent tariff on [Update:] imported cars made in Chinese-owned factories in Mexico. He announced this not to a group of prospective car buyers but to a group of car makers. So what else is new? Car buyers, who outnumber the well-organized car makers but are not themselves organized, would have to pay more for cars they do not want if Trump got his way. That's the point.

This is America first? No, it is not. It is "An Interest Group Whose Votes I Want" First versus everyone else. That's always the case with protectionism. Stopping consumers from buying whatever they want helps some (in the short term) at the expense of the rest. Calling the favored group "America" is self-serving special pleading. Trump's good at that. He thinks he knows better than you.

Trump is just another special-interest-pandering politician. Many people are fine with that because they misunderstand markets and dislike foreigners. But as Adam Smith taught us long ago, the wealth of a nation is determined by the people's free access to the world's products and not by how much they are cut off from those products. We produce to consume. We don't consume to produce.

David Friedman cleverly points out that cars can be produced in two ways: the old-fashioned factory way and by, say, growing grain, loading it on ships headed to, say, Japan, and welcoming the returning car-laden ships. Both production methods are legitimate, and which one prevails should be left to free people making choices in a spontaneously ordered marketplace. Trump obviously never learned about the law of comparative advantage.

Friday, March 15, 2024

TGIF: Reverse Scapegoating in the Immigration Debate

In the controversy over immigration we can spot a phenomenon I call "reverse scapegoating." According to Merriam-Webster, the scapegoat is "one that bears the blame for others." With reverse scapegoating, others bear the blame for one. Both are unjust.

Reverse scapegoating is clear in the demagoguery about "migrant crime," occasioned most recently with the murder Laken Riley. As the Associated Press shouted in a recent headline, "Killing of Laken Riley is now front and center of US immigration debate and 2024 presidential race." The 22-year-old Georgia nursing student's body was found after she had been beaten during a morning run. Very sad indeed.

Based on surveillance-camera footage, the AP reported, the police arrested "Jose Ibarra, 26, a Venezuelan citizen. Immigration officials say Ibarra entered the U.S. illegally and was allowed to stay. He unlawfully crossed into the U.S. in 2022, authorities said." Ibarra faces murder and other major charges.

Opponents of immigration are having a field day, none more than Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate. Even people who would have nothing to do with Trump echo his words. Trump reacted by saying, according to the AP roundup, “Crooked Joe Biden’s Border INVASION is destroying our country and killing our citizens! The horrible murder of 22-year-old Laken Riley at the University of Georgia should have NEVER happened! [Ibarra is] an animal that came in.” Naturally, Trump believes Ibara wouldn't have entered had Trump been in charge of the border.

In other words, the murder of this innocent woman allegedly by a migrant who entered the country without government permission papers proves that what's going on at the Mexican border is an existential threat to America and must be stopped by any means necessary.

The problems here should be obvious. First, it's not an invasion. Everyone knows that the word refers to a foreign military entering a country uninvited -- you know, as the U.S. military did in Iraq and Afghanistan or Russia in Ukraine.

Moreover, why should a horrific act allegedly committed by one person without papers tar others who had nothing to do with the crime? We know that most people who enter the country with or without papers commit no crimes. Rather, they produce value in the marketplace, benefitting us all, and strive for better lives. Why should the U.S. government condemn them to life sentences in the poorest, most war-torn, and least free countries when they could make up to 20 times as much money here? Of course, criminal suspects should not be immune from prosecution because of their immigration status.

Some statistics show that legal and illegal immigrants commit proportionately less crime than native-born Americans. I know many people won't believe it, but it seems to be true. (See, for example, Bryan Caplan's Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, pp. 91-92. And Cato's Alex Nowrasteh's discussion here.)

We all know from historical experience that most immigrants are a net plus to us as they help themselves. A few commit harm, but native-born Americans harm innocent people every day. Some Americans, who freely travel from state to state and city to city without papers, commit horrific crimes. Should we ban or closely monitor interstate migration? How about freedom of reproduction? After all, some couples will produce future criminals. 

A response might be, "If we can save one life...." But they don't mean it because if they did, they'd propose licensing reproduction, restricting domestic travel, reducing the speed limit to 10 miles an hour, and outlawing left turns. Many other intolerable ways of saving lives can be imagined. "But that would be extreme!" someone might say. And sentencing innocent people to lives of poverty, war, and tyranny is not?

As economist Benjamin Powell points out, as long as America is a magnet for those seeking better lives, and as long as legal immigration is virtually ruled out for all but a few, a border problem will exist -- complete with traffickers' vicious exploitation. The source of the problem, however, is not immigration but bad policy. Again, as Powell says, this is like the prohibition of booze and drugs. When people want to do something peaceful that's against the law, they'll find a way to do it -- even if it's with the help of bad people who otherwise never would have gotten involved. Prohibition creates the crisis that politicians and voters are then determined to stop by any means no matter how cruel.

You don't like illegal immigration? Legalize it! End reverse scapegoating!

(For more, watch Bryan Caplan's excellent video presentation of the case for open borders.)

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Celebrating the Gaza Onslaught: Is There No Shame?

To Israel's supporters: are you not ashamed when you see the videos that IDF soldiers make to celebrate the death, destruction, and humiliation they're inflicting on the people of Gaza? Some would call those soldiers "my people." We're talking about Abu Ghraib stuff here.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Something to Agree on?

Can't we all at least agree that this was an extremely clumsy sentence from Academy Award-winning Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer that invited misinterpretation?

Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza.

I assume he meant that they repudiate (why would this British guy say "refute"?) Israel's hijacking both Judaism and the memory of Hitler's victims in a cause that has produced such horrible consequences for both the Israelis and Palestinians.

Saturday, March 09, 2024

Now an Audiobook: What Social Animals Owe to Each Other

My book What Social Animals Owe to Each Other is now an audiobook. It's on YouTube here. And here's an MP3. What? You need an MP4? Okay, here.

HT: Spencer Hayek

Friday, March 08, 2024

TGIF: Is Israel Crazy?

Has Israel gone mad? Or has it always been mad? What is the country thinking?

The collective nouns seem reasonable in light of the widespread support in that country for the Israeli government's appalling military assault on the people of the Gaza Strip for the last five months. How can Israel -- and its outside supporters -- cheer on the bombings (compliments of coerced Americans), the ground attacks, the mass starvation, the terror, and the rest of the crimes that we witness every day? The death toll is pushing 31,000, most of them infants, children, women, and old men, not fighters. So many more have been disabled for life. Gazans -- including newborns -- lack food, good water, medical services and equipment, and drugs, including anesthesia. The humanitarian aid is a small fraction of what they need. So many have been driven from their homes, to which they'll never return because the buildings have been destroyed.

And there's no end in sight! Will it take the murder of the last Gazan for it to stop? For clear-eyed observers watching helplessly from afar, it is heartbreaking. We cannot even stop the Biden administration from sending bombs, bullets, and spare parts to Israel -- without which this could not go on.

Those are human beings in Gaza, for heaven's sake! Stop the carnage!

Thursday, March 07, 2024

Coming to Palestine Now an Audiobook!

My book Coming to Palestine is now an audiobook. You can listen to it on YouTube. The audiobook is also here. HT: Jorge Besada.