05/19/2011
05/18/11 — A Reader Says Ayn Rand Was For Open Borders
Re: Last Night’s Letter A Reader Says Ayn Rand Was For Open Borders
From: Brian Riordan
Mr. Shanken’s letter offers further proof that libertarians just don’t get it. Even if there were no welfare, open borders would still be a disaster. The world population will reach 7 billion this year. Forty percent of Mexicans say they want to immigrate here — and most countries are far poorer than Mexico so we can assume that at least similar percentages of the poorer countries' inhabitants would like to come. Forty percent of 7 billion is nearly 3 billion. How many immigrants would libertarians like to welcome — 200 million, a billion — or more? Would they like to empty out Africa and settle that population here and maybe half of India?
Libertarians would probably argue that an equilibrium would be reached in which immigrants would have less desire to come — yeah, because conditions in this country would approach those of the hellholes they come from — is that the libertarian vision for our country? Of course Ayn Rand had no interest in nature — she proclaimed that the "correct" attitude toward it was boredom! According to Rand, those of us who love nature and open spaces are guilty of incorrect thoughts.
Even if libertarians don’t mind seeing the country seething with over a billion Third World immigrants, do they think the new population would preserve a libertarian utopia? No, they would promptly vote to redistribute the wealth of the naive libertarians who welcomed them. And just imagine the wage depression this massive increase in the labor supply would have — plus the increase in the cost of living as everything became scarcer. What we would see is the very opposite of Steve Sailer’s "affordable family formation."
Just as Communism produced, not utopia but North Korea, libertarianism if realized, would be a nightmare.
Riordan is married to a legal immigrant who is "a proud American." His previous letters to VDARE.com are archived here.
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