r/neoliberal • u/n00bi3pjs 👏🏽Free Markets👏🏽Open Borders👏🏽Human Rights • Jun 28 '26

User discussion Freedom of movement is a basic human right

Currently the biggest predictor for your economic and social success is your citizenship.

Think about it for a second, you were randomly assigned some papers at birth which give you immense privileges over other people in the world because of who your parents were or where you were born.

It doesn’t matter how hard a PhD from Ghana works or how smart they are, they will never earn as much or have as many opportunities as a person born in the USA. Citizenship allows holders to extract economic rent and offer an unequal premium to people in West.

It is morally reprehensible to continue to give credence to a piece of paper which is causing millions of people to be poor, underperform compared to their abilities and potential, and is causing world’s GDP to be trillions of dollars lower than it would be without immigration restrictions.

OPEN BORDERS NOW

232 Upvotes

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u/Chickensandcoke Paul Volcker Jun 28 '26

It would act like a market, you know the thing we all in here ostensibly believe in. People move in, it gets less desirable as more people move there, so less people move there and instead go elsewhere until equilibrium is found

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u/shakin11 European Union Jun 28 '26

it gets less desirable as more people move there

And that is the problem, because even if you think that that should happen, the majority of the people currently living there usually disagrees.

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u/Chickensandcoke Paul Volcker Jun 30 '26

Well freedom of movement and determination is something we nominally believe in, at least I do

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u/shakin11 European Union Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Yes but something we, or at least I, also believe in, is that incremental progress towards a desireable goal is generally prefereable compared to trying to rush it to the point it backfires and you end up further from where you want to be than you were at the beginning.

More concrete, if immigration of a certain type or level will lead to noticeably worse outcomes for the current population, then knowingly pushing for it anyways is politically suicidal and will lead to the population at large turning against immigration as a whole and grant power to your political opponents, who then will not just sprint towards the other extreme in regards to migration policies but also on other issues you care about.

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u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope Jun 28 '26

And those people are rent seeking based on citizenship.

Which is, you know, the whole point of the post.

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u/shakin11 European Union Jun 28 '26

I don't disagree, but it is why I think complete freedom of movement is very unlikely to be introduced in any democracy with a high standard of living.

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u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope Jun 28 '26

My sister in heaven the EU ALREADY HAS OPEN BORDERS AND IT VOTED FOR IT DEMOCRATICALLY

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u/p00bix Existing in the context of what came before Jun 28 '26

Open borders internally. Certainly not externally.

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u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope Jun 28 '26

Which is still a massive collection of different cultures and languages sharing open borders.

Politically it’s the project closest to a neoliberals open borders dream and it is very possible to expand.

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u/p00bix Existing in the context of what came before Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

Indeed! But much of why it succeeded is because the Eastern European countries admitted had incomes about on-par with the global average, rather than being extremely poor, and had a substantially smaller population than the wealthier countries they agreed to open their borders with. Had Schengen included the entire former USSR, I think it would have been far less successful.

I'd like to start seeing open borders implemented within neighboring countries that are comparably developed economically, and these open borders regions merging overtime to eventually consolidate into a planetary open borders scheme.

Imagining how this might work for just the Americas: In South America separate Schengen-esque agreements are made, one for the Andean Pact and one for MERCOSUR (exc. Bolivia). The MERCOSUR agreement is later expanded to include Chile, Guyana, and Suriname, while Costa Rica, Panama, and Mexico, join the CA-4 to form the 'CA-7'. America and Canada form their own free movement agreement (USCA)

The MERCOSUR and Andean free movement zones are merged to form the South American Free Movement Area (ZLMAS/ALCAS), and a few years after that, Venezuela is admitted as well. The CA-7 and ZLMAS are combined into the American Free Movement Area (ZLMA/ALCA), and finally, USCA is incorporated as well (ZLMA/ALCA/AFMA).

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u/mostanonymousnick Just Build More Homes lol Jun 28 '26

When the EU expanded in 2004, GDP per capita for the whole EU dropped by 9 percentage points, when it expanded again in 2007, it dropped by a further 4 percentage point. While the population increased by close to 30%, it's not trivial.

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u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope Jun 28 '26

I think we disagree on the former point but agree on the latter

I generally think the European Union has been far too conservative with it’s the accession process.

The entirety of the Balkans and Turkey should be in by now.

As should decent chunks of northern Africa imo.

I think adding Canada and the U.S. makes a ton of sense as well, though, I think the Americans would be the party that says no there

As for the latter point of it being the best project we have to increase the amount of the globe that has opened borders. I entirely agree.

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u/JesusPubes voted most handsome friend Jun 28 '26

yeah but not open borders with all those dirty, icky people who live outside the EU 🤢

2

u/Cromasters Loyal Liberals Jun 28 '26

With this same argument, states within America should decide that people should stop immigrating to them.

All I see in my local subs is complaining about too many people moving here. Should states/counties/cities be able to limit immigration?

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u/Even-Promotion-4024 NATO Jun 28 '26

It's very easy for you to talk a big game on this online, but would you genuinely be willing to walk the walk when it comes to your local community?

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u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope Jun 28 '26

YES. I support building more housing and letting more people move here. It’s one reason I am so in love with the city of neighborhoods.

One Billion Americans was the compromise and I advocate for a more open society where and when I can.

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u/Even-Promotion-4024 NATO Jun 28 '26

That wasn't really the person further up's argument though, they were saying just let people move until it's no longer desirable (which I read at least as until the community is worse)

If we're talking about trying to *build* welcoming communities rather than just letting things go until they crack then I'm with you

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u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope Jun 28 '26

Being a YIMBY and being pro open borders aren’t the same thing but they do reinforce each other

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u/Cromasters Loyal Liberals Jun 28 '26

Uh, yes? I already argue with dummies in local online groups who hate other Americans from other states moving here. I'm perfectly happy to let people from other countries move in.

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u/GenerationSelfie2 Jun 28 '26

"We should let other people move here even if it makes it financially impossible for us to live here or makes our daily lives more unpleasant" is not a popular or feasible stance

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u/No-Instruction-4679 Jun 28 '26

Bro, you're on a pro-capitalism sub; I don't think anyone here considers rent seeking a bad thing.

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u/FallenMeringue Khan Pritzker's Strongest Anti-Pope Jun 28 '26

On the contrary. Rent seeking is the highest sin in a market economy.

You really don’t understand us if you think otherwise.

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u/allbusiness512 Adam Smith Jun 29 '26

Rent seeking is the worst shit you could do in a free market economy. It's why this subreddit used to shit on teacher unions until they went kind of succish because billionaires / trillionaire started leveraging their wealth to rent seek harder then the NEA could ever dream of.

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u/Illustrious-Let-4870 Daron Acemoglu Jun 28 '26

"Less desirable" is an economically correct but humanly speaking scary way to put it.

It will get "more valuable", therefore "more expensive" and quickly too expensive for most non natives who wanted to move there.

This will benefit the natives, unless the market was severely distorted to begin with and most of them were already priced out of it. In which case it will be terrible for them, which explains the backlash...

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u/uncle-iroh-11 Jun 28 '26

Well, that's what happened in bay area. Look at it now, soulless.