In which we take to Buzzfeed to bang the drum for open borders

Over at Buzzfeed I've written the ASI's first 'community post', with nine reasons people should favour more open borders:

2. Immigrants don’t steal native jobs, they create them

When immigrants take jobs, that’s all some people see. What they don’t see is that immigrants spend the money they earn too. That means that for every job taken by an immigrant worker, she will create another one by buying goods and services with the money she earns. Study after study has found that immigrants don’t ‘steal’ jobs.

The idea that immigrants steal jobs is sometimes called the ‘lump of labour fallacy’, because it mistakenly assumes that there is fixed amount of work to go around. If that were true, women entering the workforce in the mid-20th Century should have created mass unemployment. It didn’t.

It's quite a fun format, and I was able to include the obligatory Mean Girls gif, so hopefully it'll get a bit of attention. Now I want to think of other subjects to cover – Which era of Hayekian political philosophy are you?; 10 reasons to privatise the NHS; The Great Recession in 13 kitten gifs. Suggestions in the comments, please...

Fighting Daʻish, the un-Islamic State, with Mercenaries: an effective, feasible alternative?

We might be forced to deploy boots on the ground because air strikes are not sufficient to subdue the repugnant Daʻish (ISIS/ISIL/IS); instead, allowing Private Military Companies (PMCs) to lend direct support to suffering peoples via Mercenaries might be a more effective alternative. Many locals want to fight back (Kurdish Syrians, for example); let PMCs hire them and let them liberate themselves from Daʻish! It is not foreign support that people dislike but the feeling of indignity that arises from others having to fight your battles for you. The mask Daish wears is ideological in order to recruit more extremists and maintain an image; however, many rank-and-file members fight because of the relatively high wages paid (like the Taliban). Attracting individuals to PMCs instead of Daʻish and inducing defections would dwindle their numbers, slow their recruitment drive and show people that it would be increasingly risky to join them. Furthermore, as people defect, those inclined toward violent extremism for ideological reasons would realize that Daʻish is not what they thought it was and, therefore, Daʻish would lose some vital, core supporters. This would encourage a natural death for Daʻish through depletion of native support instead of a long and ineffective war against guerilla fighters.

Whereas our own armed forces would be reluctant to employ natives in the rank-and-file for security purposes, PMCs are more flexible with their recruitment policies. Furthermore, they would be legitimized, have more funds available and pay more than Daʻish; thereby giving young fighters a visible alternative (which isn’t their Govenrment, Foreign Governments or Militias they may have learned to despise) to Daʻish at a time when peaceful employment is scarce and they are pressured into joining for economic reasons (in Daʻish strongholds, for example). The PMCs’ recruitment efforts would also be counter-propaganda to Daʻish’s brainwashing.

Private entities could pay the PMCs to fight Daʻish. This would avoid impositions on those who do not want to see their servicemen on the ground in Iraq whilst enabling those who despise Daʻish to act. Funding would primarily be from sympathisers including, but not limited to; the Iraqi, Syrian and Kurdish diaspora, masses of moderate Muslims, humanitarian and charitable organisations, concerned global citizens, businesses that have vested interests in a stable Middle East, Philanthropists etc. PMCs would also have no incentive to continue fighting once sponsors cut funding.

What about the potential for immoral activities perpetrated by the PMCs? Where is their accountability? Sponsors of such PMCs would naturally distance themselves from those who exploit the chaos of war rather than alleviate suffering; it would be in the PMCs’ best interest to behave relatively decently in war though still ruthlessly toward Daʻish.

If Governments are wavering to offer even inadequate support, why should we be forced to lobby them to do so? Why should innocent people suffer as a result? This alternative can avoid compulsory deployment of servicemen, imposition of taxes and, most importantly, enable us to express ourselves and fight injustice in any way possible.

Should we legalise commercial mercenaries?

Vishal was the 2014 winner of the Adam Smith Institute’s Young Writer on Liberty competition. Commercial mercenary activities have been deemed illegal globally and have significantly dwindled in the 21st century. Legalisation may be useful in the short and long-term.

Currently, the extremist ISIS militants threaten to overthrow the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government requested assistance but limited support was offered. This is partly because we are reluctant to risk servicemens’ lives and spend money. For example, the American and British public may despise ISIS but lack the will to send their own servicemen on such an endeavour; Mercenaries could negotiate their assistance in the conflict for money, debt, natural resources etc. This prevents risking servicemens’ lives and costing taxpayers.

In The Anatomy of the State, Murray Rothbard wrote that wars fought with mercenaries were shorter and had fewer casualties. He quotes the jurist F.J.P Veale who claims that “civilized warfare” flourished briefly in 15th century Italy: “the rich burghers and merchants of medieval Italy were too busy making money and enjoying life to undertake the hardships and dangers of soldiering themselves. So they adopted the practice of hiring mercenaries to do their fighting for them, and, being thrifty, businesslike folk, they dismissed their mercenaries immediately after their services could be dispensed with. Wars were, therefore, fought by armies hired for each campaign… For the first time, soldiering became a reasonable and comparatively harmless profession. The generals of that period manoeuvred against each other… but when one had won the advantage, his opponent generally either retreated or surrendered. It was a recognized rule that a town could only be sacked if it offered resistance: immunity could always be purchased by paying a ransom… As one natural consequence, no town ever resisted, it being obvious that a government too weak to defend its citizens had forfeited their allegiance. Civilians had little to fear from dangers of war which were the concern only of professional soldiers.”

Finally, many NATO member-states are cutting defence spending and enemies have noticed. In future, NATO may find its defensive capabilities severely impaired when a war occurs and it may be difficult to compensate for this lost capacity at such short notice, especially when hostiles have been building their own forces in the meantime. Rushed conscription of civilians hardly compares to contracting seasoned warriors. In those circumstances, Governments struggling to fight public enemies can turn to mercenaries (even foreign ones if foreign governments don’t lend direct support) to pick up the slack.

Isn't Will Hutton's logic here just so lovely?

We'd probably have to invent Will Hutton if he didn't already exist for his logical twists and turns are something of a national wonder to behold. On the subject of FIFA he's noticed that it's not the purest of organisations, not as white as the driven snow:

This is a disgrace. Based in Zurich, Fifa is the governing council of world football, with 209 national member football associations. Yet even though it has global reach, power and income, earning $4.5bn this year from the World Cup alone, it is run with less transparency than a car boot sale. Football, and the world, needs better.

The president is elected by a simple majority of the 209 members. There are no checks and balances; no accountability to a governing board; no transparency over key issues such as pay; no protocols for the publication of reports like those of the former New York district attorney, Michael Garcia. Once elected, the president of Fifa can run the organisation like a tribal chieftain, dispensing favours to seek ongoing support from the tribe’s varying factions and brushing off criticism. His position is unassailable.

Well, yes, OK, perhaps being part of an organisation where not everyone accords with the British notions of fair play and honesty might not be all that wise a decision. Possibly we migfht leave then, or refuse to deal with it until it starts to live up to those values we deem important.

It underlines the larger point: we have to live up to our values and make common cause with those who share them. Yet the Conservative party is gearing up to fight the election on a nativist programme of leaving the European Convention on Human rights (ECHR) and moving ever closer to exiting the European Union.

But we mustn't leave an organisation that doesn't accord with British notions of fair play and honesty. Actually, doesn't even agree with the basic and fundamental underpinning of our system of law (as Lord Woolf so notably pointed out). If Hutton didn't exist we would have to invent him, wouldn't we? Otherwise where would we find our logical equivalent of the Red Queen, where an argument means whatever he says it does rather than that plain and honest meaning.

Of course poverty traps exist: but they're possible to escape

Over at The Economist some musing on whether there really is a poverty trap that developing economies can get stuck in. and the answer is yes, of course there is: but also that it's potentially possible to escape such traps.

DO POVERTY traps exist? Academics seem to think so. According to Google Scholar, so far this year academics have used the phrase “poverty trap” 1,210 times. (Paul Samuelson, possibly the greatest economist of the 20th century, was mentioned a mere 766 times). Some of the most innovative work in development economics focuses on how individuals' lowly economic position may be perpetuated (geographical and psychological factors may be important).

But, says a new paper by two World Bank economists, the idea of poverty traps may be overblown. They focus on national economies and present some striking statistics. In the graph below, a country that manages to get to the left side of the line has seen real per-capita income improvement from 1960 to 2010.

So that's the empirical evidence. But there's also a basic logical point that we can make.

Three hundred years ago all countries were poor. Now some countries are not poor and some countries still are. It's thus logically certain that it is possible to escape whatever poverty traps there are. For some places have done it. It's also equally true that there must be things that prevent that economic growth from happening for some places haven't had that economic growth. Thus we can assert, without possibility of contradiction, that sure, there are poverty traps but there's nothing inevitable about them at all. It is possible to escape for some have done so.

The new population estimates are already being misunderstood

New estimates of future population size have only been out a day and already they're being misunderstood. Firstly they're being misunderstood by the people who actually made them:

Rising population could exacerbate world problems such as climate change, infectious disease and poverty, he said. Studies show that the two things that decrease fertility rates are more access to contraceptives and education of girls and women, Raftery said. Africa, he said, could benefit greatly by acting now to lower its fertility rate.

Piffle, stuff and nonsense. It's a well known finding that access to contraception drives, at most, 10% of changes in fertility. It's the desire to limit fertility which, unsurprisingly, drives changes in fertility. And the education of girls and women, while highly desirable, is a correlate, not a cause, of declining fertility. Economies that are getting richer can afford to educate women: economies that are getting richer also have declining fertility. It's the getting richer that drives both.

But that's not enough misunderstanding. We've also got The Guardian displaying a remarkable ignorance on the subject:

Many widely-accepted analyses of global problems, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s assessment of global warming, assume a population peak by 2050.

That's not just piffle that's howlingly wrong. The IPCC assessments do not assume any such damn thing. For example, the A2 family, which is the family that the entirety of the Stern Review is based upon (and yes, it's one of the four families used by the IPCC) assumes a 15 billion global population in 2100. That is, it assumes a significantly larger population at that date than even these new estimates do. But you can see how this is going to play out, can't you? Population's going to be larger therefore we must do more about climate  change: when in fact these new estimates show that population is going to be smaller than the work on climate change already assumes.

As we might have said here before a time or two we don't mind people being misguided in their opinions and thus disagreeing with us. We pity them for their mistakes of course, but that's as nothing to the fury engendered by people actually being ignorant of the subjects they decide to opine upon.

Learning from history

In the Keystone Cops comedy that is the contending parties in the Scottish Independence referendum campaign, it seems that the Scottish No team have been making all the same mistakes that Canada's No team made on Quebec independence back in 1995. True, the Quebec referendum campaign ended in a narrow No decision – but so narrow that it kept the independence issue alive and grumbling. Next week's Scottish referendum has become too close to call, but most polls are predicting a No majority - though again, one so narrow that it keeps the independence issue alive and grumbling here too.

It seems the No team have learnt nothing from Canada's experience of nearly twenty years ago. Andrew Coyne of the National Post lists the similarities:

• The same early complacency in the No camp.
• The same unbridled panic as the Yes side surged in the polls.
• The same unappealing mix of threats and dubious accounting claims.
• The same blurring of the issues (devo-max, keeping the currency).
• A charismatic Yes leader and a seemingly distant No Prime Minister.

As in Canada, says Coyne, an unwarranted legitimacy was conferred on the separatist project; then came attempts to pacify it with more powers and more money, only to see it grow more ravenous in response. And once again,  a Yes vote is probably forever, while a No vote just marks the start of fresh campaigning.

It all looks like one of the slow-motion car crash in those early comedies. Except this particular farce is deciding the UK's future political and economic reality.

Strange fruit

Vishal was the 2014 winner of the Adam Smith Institute’s Young Writer on Liberty competition.  The free trade of all goods and services seems likely to be optimal—however, given that there are countless lobbies and political pressures that make this situation currently infeasible, I will argue for the abolition of tariffs and restrictions on the trade of fruits and vegetables.

A global abolition of import tariffs and restrictions on fruits and vegetables would, on a static analysis, reduce tax revenue derived from them and increase demand for fruits and vegetables as their prices decreased. But dynamically, reducing the revenue derived from tariffs on fruits and vegetables may well be more than offset from the gains in labour productivity and the increase in national income (and tax revenues) that may result.

David Blanchflower, Andrew Oswald & Sarah Stewart-Brown (2012) found that, after controlling for various other factors, individuals who eat 7 fruits and vegetables a day are found to be significantly happier than those who do not. They further found that this improvement in psychological well-being is nearly as much as the increase in happiness from being employed versus being unemployed!

On top of psychological well-being, greater fruit and veg consumption may also improve general health—itself a benefit—and potentially freeing up healthcare funds. Furthermore, Andrew Oswald, Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi (2009) found that there is evidence to suggest that happiness does raise productivity.

An increase in happiness would also be amplified by the dynamic, contagious effect of happiness: it would spread through the population, further amplifying the economic gains from the easing of import tariffs and restrictions. This phenomenon has been well documented, including in James Fowler & Nicholas A. Christakis (2008).

Some countries already have low import tariffs on fruits and vegetables (in the US tariffs on fruits and vegetables average less than 5% according to Renée Johnson (2014)). But there are several economies where the tariffs are substantially higher; more than three fifths of EU and Japanese tariffs on fruit and veg are between 5-25% and nearly a fifth exceed 25%. Other countries with relatively high import tariffs on fruits and vegetables include China, Egypt, India, South Korea and Thailand.

Perhaps most importantly, the abolition of tariffs and import restrictions on fruits and vegetables would be a big boost to society's least fortunate, a group particularly hard up during an economic crisis like that from which we are only just recovering.

The abolition of tariffs on fruits and vegetables would reduce their price and increase their consumption. The initial drop in tax revenue would be offset by both the direct improvement in psychological well-being and its contagion that would work to enhance labour productivity, national income, health and happiness. Let's pick the low-hanging fruit!

Some evidence that sweatshops are good for Bangladeshi women

I recently read an interesting paper by Rachel Heath and A. Mushfiq Mobarak, of the Universities of Washington and Yale, which looks at the impact that the garment industry has on young girls and women in Bangladesh. 

The results are quite amazing. According to the study, girls in villages close to garment factories (or sweatshops, as they are sometimes called):

1. Delay marriage. On average, a young girl living near a garment factory was 28% less likely to get married in the study year than the average Bangladeshi girl. This effect was strongest among 12-18 year olds.
2. Delay childbirth. On average, a young girl living near a garment factory was 29% less likely to give birth in the study year than average. Again, this effect was strongest among 12-18 year olds.
3. Are much more likely to go to school. Exposure to garment factory jobs was associated with a 38.6% increase in school enrolment rates. Broken down, this translated into a slightly lower enrolment rate for 17-18 year old girls, who presumably were more likely to be in work, and a considerably higher enrolment rate for girls younger than that.

According to the study’s authors, these findings are probably due to some combination of wealth effects (richer families need to marry off their daughters less early, and can afford to send their daughters to school for longer) and the fact that garment factory jobs reward skills, increasing the value of education.

The paper is an important reminder that sweatshops may provide significant benefits to their employees and the places they are located. They are by no means all good, but they are not all bad either, which well-meaning campaigners against sweatshops would do well to remember. A working version of the whole paper can be accessed here.

I'm not sure the Russians have got the hang of this sanctions thing yet

I've been continually amused by the Russian reaction to the sanctions that have been imposed upon the country over Crimea and the Ukraine. First they ban imports of fruit and veg from the EU and US. That's clearly and obviously something that damages Russian citizens more than it does anyone else. Then there was the delightful idea that they would have price controls on the supplies they could get: exactly what not to do to encourage domestic production and imports from new suppliers. And now we've got them closing down McDonald's branches in Moscow over "food safety violations". Russia has shut down four McDonald's restaurants in Moscow for alleged sanitary violations in a move critics said was the latest blow in its tit-for-tat sanctions tussle with the west.

The federal monitoring service for consumer rights and wellbeing announced on Wednesday that the offending outlets included the famous restaurant on Pushkin Square that opened just before the fall of the Soviet Union. The body said the eateries were being shut down for "sanitary violations" discovered during inspections this week.

No, no one at all believes that it's for any reason other than those sanctions. Quite apart from anything else the floor in a Maccy D's will be cleaner than the average food preparation table elsewhere in Russia.

But of course there's more to it than that: obviously, those who would eat at McDonald's, ie the Russian citizenry, are discomfited by this. McDonald's Canada, which owns (last I heard at least) 50% of the stores will lose money. But here's where it gets really fun. The other 50% owner is Moscow City Council (again, last I checked).

So, err, Russian sanctions against the US reduces the cash income of the local council in Moscow.

I'm unconvinced that they've quite got the point of sanctions just yet: you're trying to hurt the other guy, not yourself or your own citizenry.