Chris Freiman opens up his argument for open borders within the United States of America with this; the economic benefits are huge, we could ‘potentially double’ our GDP, the productivity gains could be incredible, and this brings us back to our obligation, as he puts it, to the global poor. Because our military interventions generally fail, he advocates open borders instead.
Before we go on with Chris Freiman’s argument, I’d like to make a quick aside about our host in this instance, Dave Rubin. As a gay married libertarian, he seems like a smart and generally good guy that can make a compelling point or two, but one complaint I’ve had with The Rubin Report is his failure to actually challenge his guests’ arguments. He generally never actually challenges his guests’ assertions, instead relying on the strategy of weeding out those who he can’t tacitly agree with before they’re ever on the show to begin with. That leaves us with a program where we get to hear other ideas, but extremely rarely do we actually hear those ideas actually challenged due to Dave’s temperament, or at least unwillingness to actually talk back to his guests. An idea that’s presented with no counter-argument in sight is one that starts on a weak foundation; if he actually dug deeper into what his guests actually think and try to find flaws with it, a response like I’m doing right now wouldn’t even be necessary, but here we are.
Dave starts with questioning Freiman’s argument from the idea that the government is generally incompetent, as Freiman agrees with that concept in principle, and asks him why he isn’t more skeptical of them actually executing this policy with the exact tact that’s necessary to avoid the minefield of consequences this policy leads to. And Freiman responds with the idea that since government is incompetent in most things, we shouldn’t trust their judgement when it comes to vetting these individuals at the border, and we should adopt a more laissez-faire approach to avoid this conundrum and just let people in who we generally think are okay people to let in; i.e., anyone who doesn’t have an official criminal record or a disease. And if that’s not a compelling argument to you, he also argues that people have the right to move across borders.
Yeah, you heard that right. He thinks Mexicans have the unalienable right to come into our country and benefit off of everything Americans have built with blood, sweat and tears over the course of 300 years solely because they were a human born on this planet. He actually takes it further, and says, “If we, as individuals lived on seperate sides of the border, but agreed that you should rent my house, or work for my business, and you also wanted to do this, but then the government steps in as a third party and prevents us from free association with one another, that would be a violation of our unalienable rights”.
Freiman’s opinion on this is extremely short-sighted and childish, and to frame this as an issue of freedom that the government arbitrarily opposes is absolute bullshit. First of all, to deconstruct this infantile view of ‘association’, the fundamental issue Freiman runs into is that he thinks he and a third party get to decide who’s allowed into America based purely off of the idea that he or the third party stands to gain economically from the interaction. As if there’s nothing else in this situation that needs to be considered other than his fucking profit margin and bank account. As if there’s zero cost to the other 360 million parties that he’s now affected by allowing this stranger to enter our country so he can make a buck. When people talk about globalist, capitalist pigs I think they’re referring to people like Chris Freiman, who views the American government and people as his personal piggy bank that he can use to cash checks however he can, regardless of the consequences Americans have to face because of that. It’s an incredibly selfish and greedy view of the world, that if there’s a dollar to be gained from two ‘consenting’ parties, any restriction to that is an infringement of their rights. What he fails to take into account is the cost of a policy like this has on America and the countries these people immigrate from. He pretends like a child that his decision to engage in business with a stranger from another country should not only be enabled by the government, but that it has no negative effect on the country that immigrant goes to, (he actually argues that it greatly benefits America) and the government is actually tyrannical if it tries to stop that.
The fact of the matter is, it’s never as simple as an immigrant coming from Mexico and landing a job, a home and instantly starts contributing to the economy. Some of them don’t even speak english, some of them don’t come to America looking for a job, some of them come to live off of family members that are already here, and some of them come here to benefit from our welfare programs meant for actual citizens, so to pretend that these people have little to no cost to America while you collect your rent money from them is more than laughable, it’s downright selfish and laudibly false. The number one contributing factor to the record low wages we’re experiencing right now, that are most affecting the poorest and Americans that need the most help out of all, is illegal immigration. And that’s great for a crony capitalists like Chris Freiman, where the rent on his property gets paid and his businesses have no end of cheap immigrant labour, ready to work for lower wages than a native black American or hispanic American. But that doesn’t help the people who built this country, the people that should benefit from what their forefathers built, instead of allowing the descendants of people that were murdering us at the Alamo two hundred years ago to have it instead.
When you’re talking about a national economy, it eventually comes down to a limited sum game, and every job an immigrant takes at a lower wage not only robs that job from a native American, but it also lowers that native Americans wage at the same time, across all industries, as they’re unfathomably tied together in our free market. Yes it also lowers prices, but that’s a temporary gain, because these immigrants are going to have kids too, and they’ll be natives at that point. Which means their wages have been lowered before they were even apart of the equation, so there’s less opportunity for immigrant children, not more. And when the new wave of immigrants come in, the cycle continues, and the only people that actually get richer are the ones who own the businesses. It’s a cute little way of shifting the burden to government and taking all the profits to the bank while no new economic growth has actually been generated, or if it has, it sits in an LLC, bank account or a stock portfolio, ready to disappear into nothing that will benefit the average American looking for a raise or a better job.
The fact of the matter is, America subsidies illegal immigration because it puts money into the pockets of the richest ‘Americans’, that would similarly run with their tails between their legs if the country actually needed them to contribute instead of sucking off the teat of government. And they do this all while decrying the government for its lack of efficiency and waste of resources, while quietly lobbying to make it worse so they can benefit economically. Not only is it deceitful, and traitorous, and greedy, but it claims to fight all of these things while it makes these issues worse.
I will give major kudos to Dave for bringing up the ‘diminishing returns’ argument against Freiman’s open border policy, where he says, “Yeah, even if you’re 100% right about everything you said, we can’t let everybody in at once, that would ruin the country obviously.” And to his credit, Freiman actually acknowledges that immigrants move because of economic reasons, and when they move in, the demand of labor goes down, and so do wages. But he thinks that the diminishing wages will actually be a disincentive to immigrants and will eventually stop their immigration. My mind is absolutely blown that he doesn’t realize how low wages would have to go for that economic principle to actually take effect; our wages would have to be comparable to Mexico's’ wages before that could ever actually make sense. And let me tell you, that wage is a hell of a lot lower than the federal minimum wage of $7.25, what democrats in our country already call a ‘starvation wage’, and when you consider the fact that counting for inflation, our minimum wage in 1970 was $12 in today’s money, you can already see the devastating effect immigration has already had on our country. You can see the loss of wages Americans have already dealt with because of people like Freiman who rub their hands together at the idea of cheap, foreign labor in America.
This is why we have borders. This is why we have laws. This is why we have a military. This is why we have a government. To protect our standard of living, from greedy fucks like Mexicans who can’t fix their own god-damn country, so they come to ours and profit off of something they had no contribution in making. And greedy fucks like Freiman, who think that America is their personal toy that they can flood with low-quality third world slaves that’ll work $1 an hour less than Americans, and drag the entire wealth of the country down a peg to make themselves richer, while they drive down our roads, call our police and fire departments, buy our houses, invest in our stock market, and putting the profits in a Swiss bank account and retiring in Hawaii.
And they have the fucking gaul to say, “What?! We’re just pulling those poor, poor Mexicans out of poverty! We’re defeating poverty! Global poverty, of course, fuck American poverty, we’re actually putting more Americans in poverty as we lower the standard of living of everyone in the working class, but don’t mind that as we move all our money out of America to avoid our taxes.”
And this moves us on to Freiman’s next point, that he is of the belief that you don’t have to follow unjust laws. And of course, he thinks our immigration laws are unjust. Oh, well how fucking convenient for you. It’s almost like that’s the most beneficial law that you could personally think is unjust and therefore, ‘can be ignored’ as you say.
If only laws worked like this for the rest of Americans, maybe I could make the argument that it’s unjust to say that I can’t murder greedy globalist pigs like Chris Freiman, and therefore, I can freely ignore that law and face no repercussions. It’s almost like a child could see the logical fallacy of this argument, but apparently Dave Rubin think’s that’s a’okay to go unchallenged on his platform.
Freiman goes on to make the analogy to current drug laws and asks Rubin if someone was put away for pot, would they be morally justified in breaking out of prison and not serving their sentence (basically, ‘not following an unjust law’). I’m happy to see Dave Rubin say, “Well, I don’t want them in jail for drugs but I would change the laws, I wouldn’t advocate people escape from prison.”
Thankfully, Freiman agrees that we shouldn’t let terrorists into our country. I wonder if they would want to work at Mcdonalds or Walmart for $9 an hour, hm, maybe that’s got something to do with his position, as he obviously has no problem letting in anyone that positively affects his bottom dollar.
Then, Chris Freiman makes the argument that immigrants and second-generation immigrants have the same political contribution as native born Americans. This is laughably false, as much as I sometimes disagree with the man, Stefan Molyneux frequently talks about his issue with evidence and facts, and hispanic immigrants that come to the U.S vote somewhere between 80-90% democrat. Hmmm, I wonder why that is. I wonder if the democrats ever try to let illegal immigrants immigrate illegally so they can create a bigger voting bloc for themselves, as they acquire citizenship and dreamer status and have as many native-born children as possible that all vote the same way, for the same party that advocates for their unfettered access to American homes, jobs and money. That must be exactly like all that lobbying that goes in our federal government; completely morally innocent and definitely never affect policy.
So Freiman then moves into trying to counter the argument of the increased cost immigrants have on the welfare system, saying that we allow native born Americans to choose careers that maybe are more likely to lead to that American being on unemployment due to the nature of their career choice, for example, a philosopher. Therefore, we owe it to immigrants to also be a drain on that same system, regardless of their choices. This equalizes the right of a Mexican citizen and an American citizen to have unfettered access to the piggy bank of the government that’s meant for working Americans that need a break between jobs, that paid into that system with their taxes their entire adult lives. Apparently, that American deserves that service as much as someone who was born a hundred miles away, in a different country, speaking a different language, who paid not a cent into that system he now draws money from. It’s like Freiman doesn’t understand the basic concept of taxes and citizenship.
I feel like I’m beating a dead horse at this point, so here’s a direct quote from Freiman. “I don’t think the states’ responsibility to its immigrants is that different from its responsibility to its citizens.”
Well, there you go folks. He thinks Mexicans should have unlimited access to the American coffers, as an unalienable right. Okay, moving on.
Freiman says, in response to “What about the immigrants that are a drain on the system?”, “Well, this isn’t my view per se, but if I could sway you to my side by saying this, then I’d compromise with, say, putting a five year limit on immigrants pulling money out of these systems. I would take that over border closure, if those were the only two options… I don’t care so much about the honesty, I just want you and your viewers to come to the open border side.”
Oh, well, when you put it like that Freiman, you sound so god-damn reasonable. I’m sad to say that Dave Rubin actually applauds Freiman for this position, saying that Freiman is being intellectually honest by conceding. I’m not sure what Freiman actually conceded, as he casually brushes away the severe and long term consequences of lowering an entire countries wages indefinitely with a constant influx of immigrants. Or the actual effect of allowing unfettered legal immigration would have, and in Freiman’s perfect world where they have instant and unlimited access to welfare systems established and paid for long ago by actual Americans. It’s frankly disgusting, and it is very reminiscent of his old boss, Cenk Uygur. I thought Dave had actually evolved in his thinking when he moved away from TYT, but it’s hard to tell with his tacit counter-arguments against his guest.
Freiman goes on to talk about income inequality, about how it’s not this big, bad thing we make it out to be, (what a convenient stance to take, considering his position in the economic ladder, having benefited from that artificial unbalance himself in some way), and how poverty is the true evil we need to slay. Let me guess, though, not American poverty, but global poverty. (Of course he said ‘global poverty’.)
He further goes on to say that there should be little to no government regulation when it comes to jobs, and trades like plumbing and carpeting, because who wants any standards for those people? It’s not like they do any important work that would be economically devastating to a poor family if they did a poor job that required them to seek out a more expensive, but better quality service a second time. In that instance, government is just nasty and in the way of people like Freiman delivering a great service that ‘the market can regulate in it’s own due time’, after they fuck up a dozen houses along the way and maybe kill some people with collapsing second floors or walls. As Chris put it himself, “The standard here is not perfection, the standard here is what’s the alternative?”
Yeah what is the alternative, other than the system we have right now that just has buildings falling left and right, you know? There’s already so much corruption and waste in our current system, buildings in America fall over all the time, it’s not like we have any standards or anything, fuck the guberment.
And the age old argument of, “Well, the only real incentive a business needs not to allow my house to fall over is money, obviously. They like money, and if houses start falling over, they won’t get more of it, so it’s self correcting.” Yeah, I guess in a way it is self-correcting, I mean, unless that person ruins another three dozen houses before people start to get the picture that they’re not a very good carpenter. Then the market is eventually self-correcting, assuming that all the people that don’t know how to build houses eventually give up trying to build houses and swindle people out of their money, that is. The market fixes everything, the market can do no wrong.
Luckily I won’t be alone in opposing Freiman’s stance of Universal Basic Income, as Dave questions whether or not giving poor people more free money actually helps them. I really struggle to find the equivalent in Freiman’s stance that if UBI doesn’t work, then by the same principle private charity doesn’t work. The distinction Chris fails to mention is that private charity is completely voluntary and doesn’t happen down the barrel of a government gun, but go on.
Chris actually concedes that private charity would probably work better than state charity. Wow, it’s almost like he’s arguing against himself now.
The rest of the interview delineates to other subjects, so I guess that’s the end of my response.