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Open Borders: The Case | "The Efficient, Egalitarian, Libertarian, Utilitarian Way to Double World GDP" — Bryan Caplan

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When I first started advocating for open borders back in 2005 or 2006, and then in my 2010 book Principles of a Free Society, I was a bit starry-eyed. I was zealous. I felt sure I discerned what justice demanded. I was advocating for a better world. Above all, I wanted to help the billions of people in this world whose lives, by American standards, are desperately poor and deprived, or who live in fear, or both. I knew that open borders was the best way to do it. I didn’t think my odds of bringing that about were good. Not at all. One in a million maybe. But the stakes were so high that the gamble (of my time) still seemed worth the effort. At any rate, I could escape my own guilt for being part of the system of exclusion through paying my taxes and thereby funding deportations. American democracy would march on unperturbed either way. It was rock solid, eternal, almost a law of nature. Eighteen years later, the stakes look very different. On November 5, 2024, a majority of Americans c

When I first started advocating for open borders back in 2005 or 2006, and then in my 2010 book Principles of a Free Society , I was a bit starry-eyed. I was zealous. I felt sure I discerned what justice demanded. I was advocating for a better world. Above all, I wanted to help the billions of people in this world whose lives, by American standards, are desperately poor and deprived, or who live in fear, or both. I knew that open borders was the best way to do it. I didn’t think my odds of bringing that about were good. Not at all. One in a million maybe. But the stakes were so high that

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