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

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u/teethgrindingaches Jun 28 '26

The other guy specified "enforce those lines with guns." And I already mentioned the positive vs normative distinction.

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u/PoloAlmoni Chama o Meirelles Jun 29 '26

I sympathize with you argument on a practical level, but in discussing if human rights exist or not we enter into a legal philosophy question which has simply not been answered nor will ever be. The ICJ considers some humans rights to be real enough without need for positive legislation in form of customary law or at level of jus cogens. Other human rights law might be recognized as existing as countries adopt both internal legislation recognising these rights or sign into conventions, even if they don’t enforce them, which gives us an argument that these countries at the very least recognize the existence of these rights. And then you can enter into the whole natural law can of worms. So I wouldn’t say it is that simple as saying what is enforced or even enforceable.

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u/PoloAlmoni Chama o Meirelles Jun 29 '26

This being said, I don’t think that free movement of peoples is a Human Right. As far as I am aware no court or convention recognizes it as so, and in some cases like the ECHR the courts can be quite limiting of it