The last few years has been a tremendous time for openness in business. In just over a decade, open innovation has grown from a novelty to something practised by most organizations. Open source has largely won the battle in software development circles, whilst open data is increasingly prevalent in science and research environments.
This movement is predicated on the belief that as individuals, institutions and indeed as a wider society, we are better off when we collaborate and cooperate with one another, and that being open is the best way of facilitating this. Most of the movements highlighted above are accompanied by large swathes of evidence to back up their value, and this evidence has eventually shifted the way business is done.
There is one area where the opposite has happened in recent years however. It’s an area where populist uprisings have resulted in opposition to openness, and where governments have subsequently worked to close the world down rather than open it up.
Open talent
I’ve written a number of times in the past about the importance of talent to businesses, and indeed of overseas exposure to us as individuals, yet across the world, opposition to migrants and migration has grown considerably. It’s a practical benefit that researchers believe would deliver a premium of around $100 trillion to the global economy, purely by virtue of people being able to live and work where they pleased.
Of course, there are also considerable arguments about this freedom to move where we please being a fundamental human right, that no one should have their life pre-determined purely by virtue of their place of birth.
This is sadly not the case however, and protectionism is on the rise around the world, with populist politicians blaming outsiders for all manner of problems. Migrants overwhelm welfare systems, they fail to integrate into their host society, they bring crime and terrorism with them. All commonly used arguments for why leaving that 100 trillion dollar bill on the floor.
Much as we would love our politicians to use the latest and finest evidence when forging their policies, this is one area where evidence is thrown out of the window. Indeed, most of the evidence presents open borders as the single easiest method for improving living standards of people around the world, even in the richest countries of the west.
The benefits of open borders
It’s an argument made most recently by George Mason University’s Bryan Caplan in his recently published book Open Borders. The animated book takes an evidence-driven exploration of the various issues surrounding open borders, both in terms of examining the benefits and the dangers proposed by various politicians.
The avatar in Caplan’s comic takes us on a journey through the various issues wrapped up in the migration debate. He begins with a vignette about Antarctican farmers, whose endeavors in the frozen tundra don’t amount to much. Transplant them to a more fertile country however and not only are they infinitely more productive, but through the trade in their labor, so too is the local and global community.
Perhaps the most interesting section of the book is when Caplan de-constructs many of the fears surrounding the impact of migrants on host communities however. For instance, when examining the evidence for the impact of migrants on local wages and employment, he argues that even the lowest-skilled migrant actually increases the income (and the tax base) of citizens. The fallacy is based around simple arithmetic.
“Imagine you’re in a room full of NBA players whose average height is 6’7″, and suddenly a class of preschoolers bursts into the room,” Caplan says. “In a stroke, the average height of the room plumments to 4’10″…the lesson when the makeup of the population is changing, averages are deeply misleading. The average can easily fall, even though everyone is better off.”
For instance, if the average native income is $50,000, and the average foreign income is $20,000, the average combined income would shrink to $40,000, but that would not make native people any worse off.
Caplan takes a similar approach to topics such as immigration and the welfare state or concerns around the likelihood of migrants to commit crimes or terrorist acts, or even that they fail to assimilate into the native culture.
Changing minds
Society today is seemingly ever more entrenched, with precious little crossover between opposing camps, or learning from new points of view, so will Caplan’s graphical, comic like style help to convert people? Time will tell. His approach is refreshing in that he doesn’t use emotive language or accuse people of racism if they have concerns about the impact of migration on society.
He also readily accepts that his own belief in the virtue of open borders are likely to require compromise if they’re ever to materialize, and indeed offers up some suggestions as to just what that compromise might look like.
Perhaps an apt illustration of the challenges inherent in his argument comes at the end of the book however, when Caplan references the European Union and its free movement of people. Despite the evidence being pretty unambiguous that free movement has been beneficial to the long-run conditions and wages of all workers, Brexit still emerged in large part due to fears stoked around the effect migrants were having on British society.
It’s perhaps naive, therefore, to believe that Caplan’s book will serve to realign the needle back towards the free movement that has existed for the majority of human history, but the combination of a light and easy to read style with ample and robust evidence work well in making his point. In a world that seems to be veering dangerously towards insularity, it’s a timely reminder of the virtues of openness.
