Oddbean new post about login | logout There's a natural equilibrium between the amount of welfare your state provides and how porous your borders can be. Open borders only make sense with no welfare state, so opening your border will inevitably lead to the collapse of the welfare state.
As I said, elsewhere, I'm okay with the welfare state collapsing (it will, anyway, eventually), but I think most of the people promoting open borders don't realize that it will result in all welfare being privatized and largely disappearing.
Well, I am being charitable. Some of them are probably promoting open borders because they know it'll collapse the welfare state rapidly and eventually lead to anarchy. A lot of people are eager to build on some ashes, so they're arsonists.
I don't think welfare systems typically collapse. Rome's grain dole lasted centuries. Under stress, eligibility requirements are tightened, so the recipients have to work harder to demonstrate political reliability and ideological correctness.
Well, it would collapse down to a new equilibrium, at least. From "Here is your mobile phone, fully-furnished apartment, preloaded debit card, free medical, dental and university, and now we'll fly in your 7 closest friends and relatives, too" to "three hots and a cot".
It would have to keep getting less generous and more restricted, the longer the border was open.
True. Requirements can and probably will at some point escalate to proof-of-violence against regime-citical symbols and persons. That and an expected level of (self-) loathing, poor self-care and emotional disregulation. You know, like they already select for...
Ideological tests wouldn't work, as the open borders promoters are usually socialists and their test would be something like "Do you think we should let all poor people move here and get free stuff, so we can be nice and friends?" That wouldn't limit the number of welfare recipients, because that's the target group.
I don't buy it, sorry. The poorest countries have the most generous welfare systems. Just laser-targeted to the elite. (Western countries also direct much direct and indirect welfare to the elite and their dependents.) I propose that open borders are self-limiting in themselves, not via the proposed interaction with welfare. No one here agrees with my migration policies - except immigrants, who mostly don't want what they left behind to follow them. A critical mass of immigrants voting is the most certain and perhaps the only good way to end mass immigration, IMHO, YMMV
Productive immigrants tend to be against open borders, it's true. But open borders combined with a generous *universal* (I stand corrected.) welfare state will tend to be less attractive to productive immigrants (they don't need the help and don't want to pay for it), and more attractive to the least-productive ones (they like the free stuff and don't pay for it).
True enough, but perhaps not sufficiently so to prevent social welfare being useful politically. Social welfare here is far from universal; there are interviews, tests, social worker's discretion, and, for many categories, a race requirement. (Germany may be different.) It makes perfect sense when you view social welfare as a patrimonial system for vote-buying at the lowest cost. (Just as industry policy here is mostly grant-laundering at high cost). Elites can still use social welfare to buy new immigrant voters as long as existing citizens can be excluded from it. There is a level of economic disarray at which this will cease to draw, but the regime's other vital functions have probably imploded before that. I encourage both tax avoidance and tax evasion to accelerate this, I admit.
With a well designed welfare system, the welfare state will eventually die. It's a knowledge based economy that'll create the critical thinking that'll outlive the use case of welfare.