It reminds me of a thought experiment I have read somewhere. Imagine that there are many people in the world who are dying from starvation. They would happily agree to be your slaves, if you feed them. There is too many of them and they are not qualified for modern economy; if you would give them more than a minimum, there wouldn’t be enough for you to have a decent life. Imagine you only have the following three options:
A) Share everything with them. Everyone will live, but everyone will be rather poor. B) Accept them as your slaves, in exchange for food and shelter. Everyone will live, you will keep your quality of life, but there will be a huge inequality. C) Refuse to interact with them. You will keep your quality of life, but they will die from starvation.
If we order these options by altruism, which is how those poor people would see them, we get A > B > C. It would be best to make those poor people our equals, but even helping them survive as slaves is better than letting them die.
If we order these options by pure egoism, we get B > C > A. Having slaves would be a cool improvement, keeping status quo is acceptable.
But in the typical decision process, we refuse B to signal that we are not complete egoists, and refuse A because we are not really that much altruistic. Thus what remains is the option C… which paradoxically both altruists and egoists consider to be worse than B (and the altruists also worse than A).
The thing is, I don’t think a lot of illegal immigrants are unqualified for a modern economy. If they were unqualified, there wouldn’t be so many laws trying to keep them from working.
Although hypotetically here could be two independent interests that just happen to be strategically aligned. Some people want to stop unqualified immigrants, other people want to stop qualified immigrants who would compete with them on the job market.
Also there are of course concerns other than economical, such as people bringing with them some nasty habits from their cultures. These were not included in the thought experiment, which perhaps makes it irrelevant for real-world situations.
Also having slaves has the risk of those slaves rebelling later.
I wasn’t kidding when I said one of the motivations was a desire to not live with large numbers of strangers. One issue might be cognitive load—the strangers have unfamiliar customs (is a sincere apology accompanied by a smile or a serious expression?) and possibly an unfamiliar language.
As far as I can tell, the economic side of not wanting immigrants is a sort of merchantilism—a belief that all that matters is where the money is, so that new people showing up and getting paid for work just seems like money getting drained away. Weirdly, rich people who show up and spend money without working locally may be disliked, but they don’t seem to be as hated as poor people who do useful work. I don’t think it’s just about competition for jobs.
Even without that, there’s a lot of issues about giving them welfare. We could allow them entry as second-class citizens who have no minimum wage or access to welfare but still need to pay taxes. We’ll avoid having to give them welfare, but we’ll need to admit that we have second-class citizens, which is something we pretend to be against.
That depends on the degree to which the two groups compete for jobs. There are also positive secondary effects which reduce the impact (immigration reduces inflation and increases the overall market size). The employment impact of immigration on low-skilled workers is somewhere between slightly negative and slightly positive.
Slavery is a non sequitur here. Under the circumstances you might suggest “I will pay you below minimum wage” or “I will pay you nothing, but provide housing on my plantation where you work.” But so long as they have the right to walk away at any time its not slavery, and there’s nothing in the setup that justifies that loss of liberty. Your hypothetical situation is an argument against the minimum wage, not pro-slavery.
It reminds me of a thought experiment I have read somewhere. Imagine that there are many people in the world who are dying from starvation. They would happily agree to be your slaves, if you feed them. There is too many of them and they are not qualified for modern economy; if you would give them more than a minimum, there wouldn’t be enough for you to have a decent life. Imagine you only have the following three options:
A) Share everything with them. Everyone will live, but everyone will be rather poor.
B) Accept them as your slaves, in exchange for food and shelter. Everyone will live, you will keep your quality of life, but there will be a huge inequality.
C) Refuse to interact with them. You will keep your quality of life, but they will die from starvation.
If we order these options by altruism, which is how those poor people would see them, we get A > B > C. It would be best to make those poor people our equals, but even helping them survive as slaves is better than letting them die.
If we order these options by pure egoism, we get B > C > A. Having slaves would be a cool improvement, keeping status quo is acceptable.
But in the typical decision process, we refuse B to signal that we are not complete egoists, and refuse A because we are not really that much altruistic. Thus what remains is the option C… which paradoxically both altruists and egoists consider to be worse than B (and the altruists also worse than A).
The thing is, I don’t think a lot of illegal immigrants are unqualified for a modern economy. If they were unqualified, there wouldn’t be so many laws trying to keep them from working.
Great point!
Although hypotetically here could be two independent interests that just happen to be strategically aligned. Some people want to stop unqualified immigrants, other people want to stop qualified immigrants who would compete with them on the job market.
Also there are of course concerns other than economical, such as people bringing with them some nasty habits from their cultures. These were not included in the thought experiment, which perhaps makes it irrelevant for real-world situations.
Also having slaves has the risk of those slaves rebelling later.
I wasn’t kidding when I said one of the motivations was a desire to not live with large numbers of strangers. One issue might be cognitive load—the strangers have unfamiliar customs (is a sincere apology accompanied by a smile or a serious expression?) and possibly an unfamiliar language.
As far as I can tell, the economic side of not wanting immigrants is a sort of merchantilism—a belief that all that matters is where the money is, so that new people showing up and getting paid for work just seems like money getting drained away. Weirdly, rich people who show up and spend money without working locally may be disliked, but they don’t seem to be as hated as poor people who do useful work. I don’t think it’s just about competition for jobs.
https://hbr.org/2015/04/emotional-intelligence-doesnt-translate-across-borders
A few examples of people from different cultures misreading each other.
Even without that, there’s a lot of issues about giving them welfare. We could allow them entry as second-class citizens who have no minimum wage or access to welfare but still need to pay taxes. We’ll avoid having to give them welfare, but we’ll need to admit that we have second-class citizens, which is something we pretend to be against.
It also means that the people who are currently working at minimum wage jobs are likely to lose their jobs to the cheaper competition.
That depends on the degree to which the two groups compete for jobs. There are also positive secondary effects which reduce the impact (immigration reduces inflation and increases the overall market size). The employment impact of immigration on low-skilled workers is somewhere between slightly negative and slightly positive.
Slavery is a non sequitur here. Under the circumstances you might suggest “I will pay you below minimum wage” or “I will pay you nothing, but provide housing on my plantation where you work.” But so long as they have the right to walk away at any time its not slavery, and there’s nothing in the setup that justifies that loss of liberty. Your hypothetical situation is an argument against the minimum wage, not pro-slavery.