Immigration as an applied ethics question

The basic premise of libertarianism is that any action is OK as long as it doesn’t infringe on someone else’s rights. So you would be in favor of legalizing drugs, but not drugging and driving which can put others in danger. It gets hard with things like putting junk cars on your front lawn, which could lower the property values of your neighbors’ houses. But you start out with the assumption that actions are permissible and you have to PROVE that they infringe to get them restricted.

But a prima facie rights violation starts with the assumption that something is not permissible and then only becomes permissible when you can prove it is beneficial. For example, take the death penalty. In this case, we start out with the premise that it is banned because it infringes on the right of the convicted. You would need to have really hard evidence of substantial benefits to get it approved.

This is more important than you think because of the behavioral science research that has been done in the past ten years on defaults. A study of 401(k) investments found that when the plan was set up as an opt-in (you had to fill out paperwork to enroll), 36% of new employees enrolled. But when it was opt-out (you had to fill out paperwork not to be enrolled), 86% stayed enrolled. The implications of this for the retirement security of the population are huge.

So how do we consider something like a 401(k) plan? Economics aside for a moment, what is the prima facie assumption? Is it ethically OK to automatically sign people up for things, knowing that it will influence their behavior even if they are allowed to opt-out? 401(k)s may seem like a good thing to promote, but we can use this same strategy for all kinds of programs. Think of all the things that are now “optional.” Newsletters, sex-ed in grammar school, allocating $3 of your tax refund to federal elections, etc, etc., etc. Imagine switching the defaults on all of them.

Then I read a great blog post on immigration by Bryan Caplan at George Mason who discusses an even better essay by Michael Huemer. The economic evidence of whether immigration helps or hurts the domestic economy is so politicized that it’s impossible to get a real sense of the implications. We know it helps some and hurts others. But what is the overall impact? But what we also need to ask (and probably the first thing) is what the prima facie assumption should be. Do we let in groups unless we can authoritatively PROVE that it has an overall negative impact? Or do we keep out groups until we can authoritatively PROVE that it has an overall positive impact?

Read the blog post (and the essay if you have time). They are really worth it.