Ilya Somin writes provocatively on citizenship reform at The Volokh Conspiracy.

I found his piece worthwhile because, as he does, I oppose Trump's effort to oppose birthright citizenship, although I have long thought the United States needs immigration and citizenship reform.

Widespread confusion about the nature of civil rights vs. individual rights muddies this debate, as I noted years ago:

[I]t reminds me of a distinction Leonard Peikoff drew on his radio show some time ago between civil rights -- which belong to the citizens of a country and pertain to their participation in its government and legal system -- and individual rights -- which belong to anyone in a society. An example of a civil right would be the right to vote. Freedom of speech would be an example of an individual right (that a proper government would guard for its citizens).

The distinction is interesting to me because I suspect that in addition to the massive confusion there already is among the public about the nature of individual rights (e.g., from the philosophical roots of the concept to their very nature, as evidenced by the plethora of ersatz "rights," like medical care), there is further confusion about the distinction mentioned above. The most glaring instance I can think of where this confusion hampers intelligent debate is in the immigration debate, and specifically when the very idea of open immigration is equated with treating all comers as full citizens. [bold added]

Somin seems to have such a distinction in mind when he proposes (1) changing the ambit of citizenship to not include voting, and (2) making participation in the government, such as by voting, contingent on competence and revocable on such grounds as insurrection:

... In an ideal system, restrictions on voting and office-holding would be based on competence and (in some cases) there might be exclusions based on a demonstrated danger to liberal democratic institutions (as with Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which the Supreme Court wrongly gutted, to a large extent). We already have some competence-based constraints on the franchise, such as excluding children, some convicts, and immigrants who cannot pass a civics test most native-born Americans would fail if they had to take it without studying.

...

... the ideal political system would have a strong presumption against restrictions on migration, while also imposing competence-based constraints on voting rights and office-holding...

Somin also argues for restricted access to welfare benefits, which I can only advocate as a stopgap measure until the full repeal of the welfare state, as I have argued before.

I have not thought deeply about this nor am I a legal scholar, but I like these ideas and agree with Somin that, in the meantime, "Birthright citizenship [is] a second-best policy."

-- CAV

Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics changes the subject of economics rather less than many seem to assume. The central claim is that resources are scarce and therefore there’s only some amount, number, of resources that can be used before we run out of those scarce resources. An advantage of this claim is that it is correct. It changes economics less than many think because economics is, in one description, the science of the allocation of scarce resources. So, we’ve rather got built into economics the concept that resources are scarce. We’re not hugely changing the subject by pointing out that resources are scarce that is.

There are those who take the observation further. That because of the scarcity of resources we therefore need to have a more communal, socialist even, attitude toward resource use. Some even claim that we’ve got to get rid of the capitalism, markets, even neoliberal type ideas, in order to stay within those resource limits. This has the disadvantage of not being correct. A test of more communal, more socialist, non-neoliberal resource use is a quick visit to where the Aral Sea isn’t.

But what if we actually tested, properly, the assertion? Capitalist, market based, even neoliberal, places would have worse environments than those wihch already did the communal and socialist things. Puerto Rico would have a fouler environment than Cuba, say. This is a testable proposition.

So, tested it has been:

Degrowth scholars often claim that capitalism generates social and ecological imbalances, as captured by Kate Raworth's leading doughnut model. We formalize this model using social and environmental indices and measure imbalances using their coefficient of variation. We then test if capitalism, proxied by economic freedom, is associated with greater imbalances across multiple datasets, specifications, and functional forms. We find little support for the model's central prediction. If anything, the relationship often runs in the opposite direction.

Ah.

Yes, resources are scarce. Therefore if we price resources then we’ll use them better. Further, if we price the output from the use of resources then we’ll gain more output from less use of resources. By making every economic participant see the immediate scarcity of resources all decisions are made fully cognizant of that scarcity. We thus gain, for any use of resources, a higher standard of living. Or, equally, for any given standard of living we use fewer resources. Prices, markets, capitalism, dare we say neoliberalism, optimise scarce resource use.

The lesson of this analysis is that Captain Obvious has entered the room.

The takeaway is that neoliberalism - that insistence upon the use of capitalism, prices, markets, in decision making - is therefore the desired, even required, system to deal with the environment.

Captain Neoliberal is here to save the planet.

Tim Worstall

Freedom of speech isn’t meaningful if we aren’t willing to listen.