Episode 137: Bryan Caplan discusses open borders
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What does “open borders” actually mean according to Bryan Caplan?
Yeah. Yeah,
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, an unexpected philosophy podcast. I'm Matt Tikman. And with me today is Brian Kaplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and New York Times bestselling author of Open Borders The Science and Ethics of Immigration. A nonfiction graphic novel. I really can't recommend this book highly enough. It's totally fun and entertaining to read. But it really spares no expense when it comes to making, you know, careful and precise arguments. So I think that's something that philosophers would appreciate. You won't be surprised to hear, after all that, that Brian Kaplan is here to talk about open borders. Brian Kaplan, welcome. Thanks very much for having me. So I thought we could start by talking about what open borders is.
Um I actually was a bit confused about this when I first uh was involved in conversations about this issue with friends of mine about like what counts as open borders. So maybe we could start there. Like is open borders just no country has any customs whatsoever, there's no border control at all, everybody just walks around crossing international boundaries. Same as if they were walking in to get a pizza?
Right. So what I would say is that open borders just means that anyone who doesn't belong in jail is free to live and work in any country the way they want. That is different from no borders at all. So you might say that US states have no borders at all. You can just cross without it making any difference and no one even asks who you are or asks for your papers. Open borders is totally consistent with having passports and other things like that, as long as they say, hey, you're not on the list of one a murderer, so go right on in.
Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. Like right, so if we just like quickly check that the person's not a terrorist, and if they are, we don't let 'em in, like that could still be open borders, right?
Yeah. Well again, I would say that this is a slogan. And like all slogans, if you could be at ninety nine point nine percent of the slogan, then that for all practical purposes is just the same as a hundred. Uh you you would say, like, I favor free trade. Well what about free trade and plutonium? It's like all right, well maybe all right look The I when I say I favor free trade, you know almost exactly what I mean. There's a few residual issues where you might be unclear and if you it's really comes up we could talk about it, but Yeah, what I find is usually people who are against open borders are against anything rulely like open borders, so it's not like I have a lot of arguments where people are picking on the very fine points at the end, although occasionally it does come up just more for fun than for intellectual substance.
Yeah, yeah. But I think it's useful to At least nail it down enough so that the whole conversation doesn't turn into objections or quipples about those cases. Yeah. Yeah. Does an open borders policy have like an extreme opposite? Like what would be the most close that international borders could be?
Well, North Korea, I suppose. So yes, you could have a country in principle where you're fully autarchic and no one gets in or out alive. I would think of that as the most extreme case of closed borders. Or again, of course, since normally people are focused just on immigration, it's unusual to find someone who's against tourism, for example, although every now and then you'll have someone who is. But if you just imagine a country where they say, look, we will all cloud zero immigration for any reason whatsoever, then I'd say that would be the opposite of what I'm talking about.
Right. And it seems like in principle maybe you could kind of logically separate being a totalitarian country from having totally closed borders if you there was an imaginary country where everybody was completely free to do everything except leave the country or something.
Yeah, one can imagine that, but that's highly unusual. Again, of course, immigration policy is almost always, or at least pre-COVID, about whether to let people in, not whether to let people out.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does “open borders” actually mean according to Bryan Caplan?
0:13–6:00
2
How do immigrants from poor countries boost productivity when they move to richer economies?
6:00–22:55
3
What empirical evidence shows that open borders could double global GDP?
22:55–36:41
4
Why does Caplan argue that the fiscal impact of immigrants is at worst neutral and often positive?
36:41–50:40
5
Do humans have a moral right to live and work wherever they choose?
50:40–57:16
6
Will open borders overwhelm small or densely‑populated countries?
57:16–1:04:48
7
How do utilitarian, libertarian and Rawlsian arguments support open borders?
1:04:48–1:12:34
8
What would a world look like a century after every nation adopts open borders?
1:12:34–1:12:55
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Elucidations
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