Hitting The Wall

Bryan Caplan shares some excellent thoughts, and says,

I have trouble even imagining what an intelligent, thoughtful non-libertarian would say

I do too. Having made a couple of trips to Berlin over the last few months, I just cannot fathom how someone can learn about what happened and retain nationalist beliefs about how borders should be "protected". The Berlin Wall seems a moral no-brainer - it was wrong to restrict the free movement of people, and it is an empirical fact that people were fleeing communism, not capitalism. Caplan:

For libertarians, morality doesn't get much clearer than this.  But almost all non-libertarians will be equally certain that the tunnelers are good and the East German border guards and secret police are evil.  My question is: Why, on this one issue, do non-libertarians so readily accept the stereotypical libertarian position?

Comments

[Quinn]

"I have trouble even imagining what an intelligent, thoughtful non-libertarian would say."

I suspect that's because Bryan Caplan seems to assume that you can't oppose immigration controls while being a non-libertarian, but entertain that possibility and he will find that he's troubled no more.

By the way, I'd say I have a more liberal attitude to immigration than many so-called libertarians doing the rounds of the blogosphere (although my accent is on the "so called" here).

[aje]

To be fair to Caplan he's not saying that such a position couldn't exist, he's just saying he'd be interested in delving deeper into how someone could favour open borders in terms of migration but for restrictions on the movement of goods and capital.

[Quinn]

Fair enough, although I'd still say it's perfectly compatible to favour free or as-free-as-possible movement of good, capital and labour while baulking at a libertarians near-total "hands off" view of government.