Saturday, August 9, 2025

 Immigration - The Lynchpin of Western Neo-nationalism

 

 

POPULIST NATIONALISM

 

Over the last few decades, populist nationalist movements and political parties have steadily gained ground in the West. Witness the rise of Trump and his MAGA-movement in the US, Orban in Hungary, Le Pen in France, Farage in the UK, AfD and PEDIGA in Germany, Vox in Spain, Meloni in Italy, the Law & Justice Party in Poland, Wilders in the Netherlands, the FPÖ in Austria, the Sweden Democrats in Sweden, etc, etc. Some have made it into government and some exercise heavy influence on government policy from outside the government.

 

Ostensibly, some of the reasons for the rise of these Populist Nationalist (herein: PN) movements are reactions against the following:

 

1.        Immigration

2.        Perceived disenfranchisement

3.        COVID-related policies

4.        Political correctness & wokeness

5.        Environmental policies

6.        EU bureaucracy

 

While I have a lot of sympathy for the reaction to most of these issues, I have very little sympathy for the first and possibly most significant issue, namely the opposition to immigration. I should like to go into some detail as to why that is the case.

 

Firstly, it is important to note here that there is no consistent anti- or pro-state ideology behind the PN views on these issues, merely a wish for the state to do things differently. Not necessarily for the state to do less or more. Populist Nationalists (herein: PNs) may want less government spending on foreign aid but more on defence. And less on environmental policies but more on policing, public health services, pensions, and education.

 

Thus, there is no particular reason why an anti-state libertarian (a.k.a. a classical liberal) such as myself should support all of these PN positions. The only thing that really unites the PN movements is nationalism. Yet, many libertarians have ended up as supporters. Why is that? Simply because the PN positions on the above issues could be construed as a desire for less state power.  However, libertarians in the PN movements and parties are invariably crowded out by other, much more numerous, supporters who want more government spending on things like defence, public health, and pensions, etc.

 

OVERT AND COVERT RACISM

 

So, having established that there is no ideological consistency in the political positions of the PNs as seen from a libertarian point of view, let us focus on the first issue of immigration. This issue appeals directly to the nationalist mind-set of the PNs. The PNs want to preserve or recreate mono-cultures even though this is neither possible nor desirable in the interconnected, globalised world of today, and may also want a smaller welfare state albeit not necessarily a smaller state overall. So, to put it bluntly, what the PNs want are fewer brown people in general, and fewer brown people on benefits in particular.

 

While I very much disagree with the PNs who declare that they want to see fewer brown people and Muslims, at least they are open about their racist bigotry. The group of PNs that I cannot stand are the people who cloak their collectivist racism in what appears to be reasonable terms: “I’m all for immigration, but only the legal kind”, “I don’t have anything against foreigners, but they should not be put up in hotels at my expense”, “The government should rather spend its money on hospitals than on illegal immigrants”. Etc, etc. 

 

Let us pick some of these statements apart:

 

“I’m all for immigration, but only the legal kind”. This is an easy way for the closet racist to appear indifferent to the race and religion of the would-be immigrant while at the same time supporting a position that will let in only very few dark people and/or Muslims. This is for the simple reason that legal immigration to the West from poor countries – many of which have dark and/or Muslim populations - is all but impossible. Only a tiny fraction of the people who wish to emigrate from these countries are able to do so legally. Expensive visa applications with draconian requirements for supporting documentation can take many years to process even though they have little chance of approval, and it is thus virtually impossible for most would-be immigrants to go down the legal route.

 

“I don’t have anything against foreigners, but they should not be put up in hotels at my expense”. So, the fact that the government has decided to fund hotel accommodation for illegal immigrants is somehow the fault of the foreigners? I think not. The fault clearly lies with the government. A government that many of the PNs would have voted for in the past and whose policies those PNs would therefore have to share the blame for. Clearly, it is grossly unfair to blame the immigrants for the existence of a welfare state that they have had no part in creating or voting for. Yet, the would-be immigrants are made to suffer the consequences of the misguided creation of the welfare state by being denied access to the country in question and the possibility of a better and safer life for themselves and their families. 

 

“The government should rather spend its money on hospitals than on illegal immigrants”. On the face of it, this seems like a reasonable statement. However, the underlying assumption is that it is the fault of the immigrants that not enough money is spent on health care. Again, the existence of a welfare state (including socialised health care) is not the fault of the immigrants. It is the fault of the native inhabitants. Therefore, the immigrants should not be blamed for it, let alone punished for it.

 

Surprisingly, when I suggest a solution that would go a long way to reducing both public spending on immigrants and also the number of immigrants who arrive in the country for the wrong reason (i.e, to receive welfare), PNs are not interested. The solution in question is, of course, banning foreign citizens from receiving anything that is funded by the taxpayer such as unemployment benefits, health care, education, accommodation, etc, etc. This would reduce the costs to the government of immigration to almost zero and would discourage most of the “wrong” type of immigration. In fact, the government would probably make a bumper profit as a result since the foreign citizens would still have to pay taxes in spite of not being entitled to any benefits until they obtain citizenship in their adopted country. Yet, the PNs are not interested. Why? The only answer I can think of is that the PNs putting forward the seemingly reasonable statements mentioned further above are, in fact, not particularly interested in reducing government spending on welfare but are, instead, consumed by a desire to stop the immigration of brown people and Muslims for no reasons other than they are brown and/or Muslim. So, in fact, these PNs are no better than the PNs who openly state that they are against immigration on principle. They are just much more cunning in the way they phrase their opposition.

 

NATIVIST NATALISM

 

That the PNs who get into power are, in fact, racist (or, at best, nativist) can be seen from the way in which they seek to encourage the birth of native babies rather than let in more immigrants to compensate for falling birth rates. As of February this year, a Hungarian woman with just two Hungarian children will be exempt from income tax for life. Hungarian government spending on increasing Hungarian birth rates has now reached 5.5% of GDP. On the other side of the Atlantic, Trump wants to increase the taxpayer-funded allowance to new US mothers from $1,000 to $5,000 per American baby. And as The Economist writes 'Other countries, including Japan, Norway and Poland, have tried tax breaks, handouts, maternity leave, subsidised childcare and even state-sponsored dating, to little effect.' In the UK, Nigel Farage wants to scrap a cap on benefits, which stops families claiming benefits for more than two children.[1]

 

In terms of economics, encouraging child births rather than allowing in more immigrants makes no sense at all. Unlike most immigrants, babies require health care and education for a couple of decades before they start contributing to the economy. Thus, what really bothers the PNs is clearly the different cultures and skin colour of the immigrants rather than the cost associated with letting them in.

 

IDEAL SCAPEGOATS

 

Part of the appeal of the anti-immigrant rhetoric is, of course, that the immigrants cannot and do not defend themselves. The would-be immigrants who have their lives shattered by being refused escape from the danger and poverty of their place of birth have no say in the public debate of their destination country. Furthermore, many of the immigrants that are already in the destination country are unlikely to have the right to vote and are probably not inclined to invite racist ire by actually defending themselves in public against various spurious allegations. Finally, they look different, speak different, and may have different gods. Thus, they are absolutely ideal scapegoats for the PNs.

 

WELFARE STATE VS. IMMIGRATION

 

Socialists in the EU are waking up to the fact that the preservation of their treasured welfare state is incompatible with access to welfare benefits for non-citizens. But rather than restrict the access of non-citizens to benefits, the socialists of Denmark under PM Mette Frederiksen have opted to emulate the views of the PNs on immigration by effectively banning certain foreign citizens from entering the country. She has done so both to deflate support for the PNs (and thus remain in power herself) and to preserve the welfare state. This combination of a right-wing stance of immigration with left-wing support of the welfare state is being noticed elsewhere in Europe. Notably by the German socialist Sarah Wagenknecht, founder of the German party BSW that combines populist left-wing support for an even more bloated welfare state with populist right-wing opposition to immigration. In the 2025 German general election, BSW narrowly missed getting represented in the national parliament by a margin of just 0.03% of the popular vote. However, they already have many elected members of the regional German parliaments. 

 

Unfortunately, this trend is unlikely to change any time soon, in which case Europe is heading for a deplorable situation in which there is complete consensus between left and right about the undesirability of immigration.  For a long time, the welfare state has conveniently been considered by the right as a somewhat undesirable but unchangeable monolith that makes it “necessary” to restrict immigration. The left, too, sees the welfare state as an unchangeable monolith. Just not an undesirable one. The fact is, of course, that the welfare state is a relatively new political invention which can be done away with if the political will to do so can be mustered. So rather than focus on increasing grossly unfair immigration restrictions, the traditional European right ought to focus on eliminating or scaling back the grossly unfair welfare state that they themselves have helped bring into existence over the past century or so.

 

COLLECTIVE GUILT

 

Some PNs defend their anti-immigrant views by referring to the crime statistics where immigrants in some cases account for a higher percentage of criminals than the natives. The PNs also highlight anecdotal evidence and cherry-picked cases of crimes committed by immigrants or descendants of immigrants. This is then used to justify a call for the government to effectively ban immigration from certain countries. What the PNs deliberately fail to mention at the same time is that the vast majority of immigrants from those countries are law-abiding citizens who just want to go about their lives in peace.

 

Using crime statistics to bar the entry of would-be immigrants who are exceedingly likely to be peaceful and productive citizens merely wanting safety and opportunity is obviously a gross and harmful injustice. But such is the result when one chooses – whether by design or ignorance – to judge people collectively rather than individually. Each immigrant is an individual who should be judged on his or her own merits. Many will do well. A few will not. But letting a morally bankrupt organisation such as the government be the judge of which prospective immigrant that is likely to succeed and which is not is like asking a mafia organisation to judge the moral virtues of members of the public.

 

Allowing poor immigrants to settle in rich countries benefits not only the immigrants themselves but also the destination country and the world in general. Several studies have shown that allowing people from poor countries to work in rich countries would increase their productivity up to ten-fold. For that reason, open borders would translate into an increase in global GDP of 50 – 150 per cent.[2] Such a huge increase in global wealth would bring with it vastly improved health care and higher average life spans, among other benefits.  But that is, of course, an economic consideration rather than a moral one. 

 

As for moral considerations, it has long been established that discrimination of people based on their sex, skin colour, or religion is morally reprehensible. How is it, then, that discrimination on the basis of people’s nationality and place of birth is perfectly acceptable? I think history will judge us harshly once we wake up to the fact that immigrants are just as human and diverse as ourselves. 



[1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/06/19/why-magas-pro-natalist-plans-are-ill-conceived

[2] Clemens, Michael. 2011. ”Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk?” Journal of Economic Perspectives25(3), pp. 83-106.

Thursday, November 9, 2023

Group-think in Gaza

It would almost be comical if it wasn’t so desperately tragic: Much of the informed world is again splitting into two halves with one half detesting the other. The occasion this time is the Hamas-Israel conflict, which has split the world into supporters of Hamas and the State of Israel, respectively. Or – as it is in danger of becoming – into one half supporting Arabs and another half supporting Jews.

Those who lean to the left politically tend to support the Palestinians and those who lean to the right politically tend to support the Israelis. Those who go against the grain and support the side that their political tribe does not are asking to be cancelled, de-platformed, or worse.

The Anti-Defamation League in New York reports that antisemitic incidents in America rose by 388% between October 7th and 23rd compared with the same period of the year before. In Dagestan, an antisemitic mob of hundreds of men recently attacked the main airport in order to hunt down random Jewish passengers who had arrived on a flight from Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, Israeli counterattacks on Gaza have claimed a death toll amongst Palestinians exceeding 8,000, with 1.4 million having been displaced. The often-indiscriminate killing of people from the other side, who are always demonised and de-humanised, thus continues apace.

Taking sides in the Hamas-Israel conflict means that you align yourself with people carrying out some fairly horrendous things. If you side with Hamas, you thereby endorse the killings and hostage-taking of politically clueless Jewish teenagers and old grannies. If you side with Israel, you will find yourself having to defend the deaths by bombing of thousands of innocent civilians – including children and pensioners – who had absolutely nothing to do with the actions of Hamas.

Unfortunately, the large extent to which people choose to take sides in the Hamas-Israel conflict is just one of a long list of examples where there are deemed to be only two sides to any issue. For those who take sides, one side is deemed unequivocally good and saintly while the other side is deemed unequivocally bad and evil. Some other examples of binary group-think that immediately come to mind are the following:

• Trump vs. Biden
• Foreigner vs. non-foreigner
• Russian vs. Ukrainian
• Left-wing vs. Right-wing
• Muslim vs. Christian
• Hutu vs. Tutsi
• White vs. Black

Mindlessly dividing humanity up in good people (your own tribe) and bad people (everybody else) is a problem as old as humanity itself. This is what most people resort to in matters of politics, religion, sport, and other matters where logic and reason carry little weight. However, I simply refuse to accept that the human brain is incapable of considering non-binary options. Is there another way? Yes, there is, but that involves engaging the brain in order to stop falling for the temptation of group-think, i.e., thinking in collectivist terms.

Group-think – the judging of people according to which group they are deemed to belong rather than their individual views, qualities, or guilt – is the direct route to the killing of innocents. Especially when the levers of a strong state fall into the hands of group-thinkers who can then realise their bigoted antipathies by carrying out genocide in the name of the nation, the people, the King, and/or God. One of the precious few things that states are really good at are genocides.

History is replete with examples of this happening. In recent times, some that come to mind are Nazi-Germany, India in 1947, Cambodia under Khmer Rouge, Rwanda in 1994, and the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, to name but a few. Conversely, I can think of no genocide that was not perpetrated by a state. Separate individuals seldom have enough power to orchestrate an undertaking as huge as a genocide.

The alternative to collectivist group-think is, of course, individualism. I.e., always judging a person on the basis of his or her individual qualities, opinions, and actions. Consistently applying individualist principles is harder than it sounds, though. For instance, many people happen to identify with a state. They speak of “we” and “us” when they refer to the foreign policy actions of the government of the state in which they live. They even speak of “we” and “us” when they refer to historical events predating their own birth by hundreds of years. Or when they refer to sports events involving the local national team. But the state is not them, and they are not the state. To avoid group-think it is necessary to be absolutely clear about this.

If you want to avoid punishing innocents for the actions of others, you must use an individualist approach. Applying an individualist approach to the Hamas-Israel conflict means not identifying with either side. An individualist approach involves prosecuting individuals accused of having killed other people – whether Jews or Arabs – and punishing them or acquitting them accordingly. With thousands engaged in the killings, it is a huge task to hold each individual to account for his or her actions. However, expediency is hardly a very good moral argument against that approach.

There are often – perhaps even always – more than two sides to any issue. Moreover, your enemy’s enemy is not always your friend. Just because the Israeli military is evil, that does not necessarily mean that the Hamas militia is nice. Or vice versa. The fact that Trump is a scumbag does not necessarily mean that Biden is a saint. Or vice versa. I could go on. However, suffice to say that always putting the individual first would avoid an unfathomable number of gross injustices and deaths in the world. The world is not just black and white. There are many more colours than that.

Friday, September 9, 2022

Does It Hurt Yet?

It is now some six months since the EU and other Western states imposed sanctions on Russia. The sanctions were - at least officially - intended to force Russia to stop the war against Ukraine. Now - half a year later - we can evaluate the effect of those sanctions as some of the results are in.

Firstly, have the sanctions stopped the war, reduced its severity, or limited its scope? No. Not even close. It has, however, thrown Putin’s Russia into the arms of Communist China which does not support any sanctions. It has also heralded the beginning of an era in which countries are seeking to create more self-sufficiency in energy and food supplies so as better to be able to impose and withstand sanctions in the future. The latter is immensely damaging to the long-term prospects of the world economy as basic economic wisdom has it that products and services are best produced in the countries that have a competitive advantage in those specific products and services, irrespective of national borders. That is the basis of international trade, which will be eroded to the detriment of everybody.

Secondly, have the sanctions damaged the Russian economy? Not only have they not had any serious effect, the reduced gas supplies from Russia mean that global gas prices have increase by about 1,000 per cent since September 2021. So of course the limited quantities of gas that Russia still sells command prices that produce significant revenue for the Russian suppliers. Thus, The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Finnish think tank, has calculated that Russia has earned revenue of EUR 163 billion for sales of oil, gas, and coal since the invasion of Ukraine. Over the same period, they estimate that Russia has spend around EUR 100 billion on the invasion of Ukraine. So Russia is not about to run out of money to finance the war.

It is likely that the Western politicians knew perfectly well that the sanctions were never going to work. The sanctions were pure virtue-signalling designed to please the media and the voters who were baying for Putins blood at the time of the invasion. Also, one could be forgiven for suspecting that the politicians introduced the sanctions well knowing that they would cause sky-rocketing energy prices and therefore create an artificial need for governments to intervene with more “generous” government handouts (of people’s own money), more government borrowing, and - eventually - more government taxation, thus expanding the scope of the state yet again. I.e., in much the same way as the government-induced pandemic lockdown panic did. But perhaps that is giving the politicians too much credit as their ability to predict obvious consequences may not be all that impressive.

It is certainly a fact that the scope of the state is rapidly increasing due to the sanctions. France is now completely nationalising EDF, the major French energy company, and price caps, rationing, and subsidies proliferate as if we were already in World War 3. The expansion of renewable but heavily taxpayer-subsidised energy sources such as wind and solar power is accelerated, using self-sufficiency and lack of Russian fossil fuels as pretexts. All this in the holy name of sanctions that are not fit for purpose, and that cause untold suffering and pain to the civilian populations and businesses at both ends of the sanctions, i.e. both in the East and in the West.

In addition to being ineffective and even counterproductive, the immorality of the sanctions are on such a scale that it beggars belief. Almost the entire world population - not just the populations of the sanctioned and sanctioning countries - are suffering under eye-watering gas prices, fuelling rampant inflation that quickly erodes the value of people’s hard-earned assets. Sanctions are the collective punishment of innocent people for the purpose of ‘sending messages’ to national leaders. Messages that are happily ignored by people such as Putin who will personally suffer no adverse consequences of the sanctions. On the contrary, he is understandably very happy that it gives him an opportunity to manipulate the energy markets and earn billions for deliveries of much less gas.

So what to do about Ukraine? They way to go would seem to be continued support for the Ukraine by voluntary groups and organisations that should be allowed to send the Ukrainians any supplies needed to continue the resistance against the Russian forces, including weapons. One could then hope that Russia eventually tires of the war in the same way that the Soviet Union (and later the US) tired of war in Afghanistan, leading to withdrawal. But as it should be painfully obvious from the above, sanctions are clearly not the answer.

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

The Taliban Victory

I have so far not commented on the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. This is partly because my comment could be summed up in the few words ‘I told you so’.

From Day 1, there was never any doubt in my mind that the Afghan government created by the US and her allies would not last much beyond the Western military occupation of the country. Looking back through history, there are numerous examples of Western powers trying to force their own puppet regimes and their own values on other countries very different from their own. Usually, such efforts have failed miserably sooner or later.

This is hardly surprising, given that it is a basic human instinct to group together against others who speak different languages, who come from very different cultures, and who have very different values. Especially when such others are occupying your country militarily and are trying to force through changes based on their culture rather than yours.

Now, after 20 years, at least a trillion dollars of taxpayers money, innumerable unnecessary deaths, and immense suffering, the Western powers have learned anew the hard lesson outlined above. Hopefully, it will finally sink in, although I am not holding my breath, knowing the nature of governments.

This is not to say that I applaud the victory of the Taliban. The Taliban is about as nasty as its worst detractors claim. However, Westerners need to understand that there are parts of the world that they simply cannot control. If they really want to help the unfortunate Afghans who want a life different from the one stipulated by the Taliban, there is, however, one thing they can do: Open the borders!

Allowing the persecuted Afghans to escape from the Taliban is the one obvious and humane solution that simultaneously avoids the West getting entangled in Afghanistan. However, surprisingly few of the people who claim to have the best interests of the Afghans at heart are open to this solution. Yes, they want to help the Afghans, but only if the Afghans stay well away from them. Such is the hypocrisy of the West. No wonder if the Afghans find such Western values rather lacking in both sincerity and consistency.

Sunday, January 31, 2021

The Cost of Xenophobia

In the afternoon of 28th March 1997, the Albanian motorboat Kateri i Radës sailed towards Italy with some 142 people on board. They were all desperately trying to escape the political and economic mayhem in their home country and make a better life for themselves abroad. Still within Albanian territorial waters, the boat was challenged by the Italian naval vessel Sibilia on suspicion of carrying ‘irregular migrants’. The Italian vessel ended up colliding with the motorboat, causing the boat to capsize and sink. Some 83 people, aged between 3 months and 69 years, drowned as a result. Thus, 83 Europeans were arbitrarily killed by other Europeans in just one such event of the supposedly enlightened 1990s.

 

The wreck of the Kateri i Radës was raised and for years laid neglected in a corner of the Italian port of Brindisi. It was eventually converted into a memorial with the fitting title L'Approdo. Opera all'Umanità Migrante (The Landing. A work dedicated to Migrating Humanity):

 

(article continues below)

 


Fast forward to 2020 and the development of the first approved vaccine against Covid-19. The vaccine was created by two scientists from the German company BioNTech. But the scientists - Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci - are, in fact, 1st and 2nd generation migrants from Turkey. In other words, they are not even of European extraction.  

 

This beggars the question how many brilliant minds are lost to the world due to the paranoid fear in Western countries of migrants from elsewhere. How many Uğur Şahins have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea or died of thirst on the US-Mexican border? How many parents of Özlem Türecis have been prevented from leaving their blighted home countries in search of better lives, thus condemning their children to lives in obscurity?

 

As Johan Norberg writes in his book Open - The Story of Human Progress:

 

If people were allowed to move to the place where their labour is paid the best, the gains to world income would be astronomical. According to a back-of-envelope calculation, world GDP would increase by around $80 trillion, in effect doubling world GDP, and those gains would be accrued every year.

 

Abolishing all barriers to goods and services would increase global GDP by a couple of percentage points – nothing to be sniffed at – but abolishing barriers to people would increase it by 60 - 150 per cent, according to several different estimates. And even partial eliminations of barriers to labour mobility could increase global wealth by trillions. This is why economists talk about ‘trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk’ when they refer to the simple policy of allowing people to go and work where they want to go and work. …

 

… it is startling that no policy in today’s world could be more controversial than picking up trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk, especially since new cultures often inject energy into our own, and it helps people to escape poverty and hopelessness, flee persecution and to be with their loved ones.”

 

Even so, the world seems to be going in a different direction. Witness, for instance, the recent end of free movement between the UK and the remaining countries of the EU, and Trump’s relentless campaign against migrants from Mexico and Muslim countries.

 

So when you encounter a taxi driver or a peasant by the roadside on your next visit to Morocco, Turkey, or Mexico, please do remember that they are not lesser beings than you, and that they might have been even more successful than you if they had simply not committed the unforgivable sin of being born in the wrong country.

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Collectivists and the Coronavirus


Collectivists give the group priority over the individual. They are happy to violate individual preferences, liberties, and property in favour of the ‘needs’ of the collective. Socialists, nationalists, populists, and environmentalists are prime examples of collectivists. They have plenty of reasons to be happy with the advent of the coronavirus:

The socialists celebrate the return of Big Brother. Worldwide, governments have committed themselves to increased spending of trillions of dollars. Some for-profit businesses will be forced to close. Sensible austerity is out the window. State intervention, tax increases, price control, rationing, and nationalisations are beckoning or already underway.

The nationalists rejoice in the closed borders they have yearned for for so long. No more arrivals of brown people. Government officials and soldiers once again guard the internal European borders against individuals who have had the temerity of being born on the wrong side of them.

Populists applaud the strong leaders who offer simplistic solutions to complex problems. Lengthy states of emergency with dictatorial powers for the national leaders, and popularity-seeking strongman policies with few or no positive effects are the order of the day.

Finally, environmentalists cheer all the cancelled flights, the immobile cars, and the prospect of thousands of deaths that will result in a reduced world population, thus reducing mankind’s carbon footprint.

Many people belong to more than one of the above four categories of collectivists. They self-identify as part of the state, because ‘the state is all of us.’ They say ‘we’ did this whenever they speak of action taken by the national government. They think of themselves – and, by extension, the state of which they consider themselves a part – as saintly and infallible as long as action is taken ‘in the common interest’.

However, there is nothing about the coronavirus that suddenly makes states saintly or infallible, that suddenly invalidates the laws of supply and demand, or that suddenly discredits private businesses as the backbone of the global wealth that we currently enjoy. Thus, it is private pharmaceutical companies that will produce the medicine, ventilators, and other equipment needed to treat the coronavirus, private businesses that feed us during the crisis, and private research and enterprise that will eventually develop a vaccine against the virus. Governments are simply too incompetent to be trusted to save people’s lives.

The response of states to the pandemic has been somewhere in the range from panic-stricken knee-jerk reactions on one side, to cynical, calculated power grabs on the other. Exactly where we are in this range matters little, as the negative consequences of the governmental interventions are the same, regardless of intent.

An example of this is the recent lockdown in India. India currently has 1,251 recorded cases of the virus and 31 deaths. Now a country of 1.35 billion inhabitants is being closed down by the government because of a virus that has killed just 0.000002% of the population. So many Indians are barely surviving as it is. If those Indians are not allowed to leave their homes, millions of them will die. Of starvation, thirst, exposure, and preventable diseases, that is, not of the coronavirus. The kind of devastation that is going to be faced by the bottom 50 percent of the workers in the informal sector is unimaginable,” says Jayati Ghosh, an economist and professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

We are now entering a global recession because of such government interventions. People are not trusted to generally take the right decisions to protect themselves, their families, and their businesses. Notoriously incompetent and nefarious governments, on the other hand, are trusted unconditionally. Therefore, the greatest casualties of the coronavirus are reason, prosperity, and freedom. That is why collectivists love the virus.

Thursday, March 19, 2020

The False Security Of Closed Borders

Today, Thursday 19th March, the media reports queues of lorries and cars stretching back some 60 km from the German-Polish border. Lorries face a 30-hour wait to cross the border. Families with children suffer a 20-hour wait during which they have no access to food or toilet facilities. The goods transported by the lorries are greatly needed at their destinations, where the lack of them causes disruption and deprivation.

Meanwhile, Australia and New Zealand are today closing their borders and thus follow in the footsteps of the US, Canada, Poland, Germany, Denmark, and many other European countries. In most cases, the corona virus is present on both sides of the closed borders in roughly equal measure. Germany and France is an example of this. In some cases such as Denmark, the virus is more prevalent in the country that has closed its borders (Denmark) than in the countries from which entry is denied (Sweden, Germany). The Danish health authorities (‘Sundhedsstyrelsen’) sensibly advised the Danish government that there is no evidence that closing the borders would have any positive effect. The government chose to ignore this advice and went ahead with the border closure regardless.

In an age of rampant nationalism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism, closing national borders is blatant virtue signalling as there is little or no real reason to do so on health grounds. However, the damage to the economy and the unnecessary hardship caused by the border closures are real enough.

Although few people realise it, damaging the global economy kills. This is an indirect effect that is hard to measure and it is therefore largely ignored as it cannot be explained to the public in the 5-second sound bites favoured by politicians. The French economist Frederic Bastiat wrote of “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen”. In the current crisis, what you see is authoritarian governments taking action that they claim is in the best interests of the citizens. What is not seen are the negative effects of such actions, which are often indirect and all but impossible to measure. But less economic growth – or, worse, economic recession – means less money for medical treatment, health insurance, medicine, and medical research. This translates into deaths. Thus, I feel fairly convinced that the number of deaths caused by the damage to the global economy resulting from the virus and – especially – from ham-fisted and often ineffective government intervention, will far exceed the number of deaths that are caused by the virus itself.

It should be obvious to any but the most casual observer that the only thing that really works against the virus is self-isolation. That means isolating yourself in your private home. But a nation is not a private home, even though populist, nationalist, and socialist politicians would love for people to think of the motherly state in exactly such terms.

Unfortunately, it seems that the politicians are succeeding in making people think in collectivist terms. It is thus exceedingly difficult to find people who are not clamouring for the state to save them from the virus by way of various draconian interventions. Even people who have previously been sceptical about the state’s role in society jump on the bandwagon.

In many ways, this resembles a collective Stockholm-syndrome. The state, which almost always has a history of economic mismanagement, blatant discrimination, devastating wars, and often genocide, is the go-to solution for more than 99% of the world’s population whenever they want to be ‘saved’. They want a ‘strong leader’ and are then surprised whenever they subsequently face the destruction caused by the same strong leader.

Perhaps people act in this way not so much out of ignorance as out of fear. Fear of the unknown is a very powerful force. ‘Better the devil you know’ seems to be the attitude among people who cannot conceive of solutions that are not provided by the state. In the current crisis, safety and security are the concerns that governments are using to expand the scope of the state unopposed by way of ‘temporary’ curbs on individual and economic liberties. Unfortunately, such ‘temporary measures’ have a nasty habit of becoming permanent.

Let us hope and trust that individuals taking individual decisions to self-isolate is what will eventually destroy the virus. Clearly, people who do not self-isolate as much as possible may live to regret it since many of them will get sick and some of them will die. But trusting the government to save you by way of closing national borders not only imparts a false sense of security, it also endangers the essential liberties and economic progress that we – in spite of government actions to the contrary – have enjoyed in recent decades.