[rayiner]

I've never seen a good idea come out of George Mason's econ department, and Caplan is no exception. They push the kind of head in the clouds politically oblivious oblivious economics that became passe outside hack thinktanks years ago.

[tokenadult]

rayiner, aren't you from an immigrant family yourself? It would be really helpful to have your perspective on this issue, so either by an edit of the parent comment here, or by a new reply below, why not follow the model of Paul Graham's essay "How to Disagree"

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

and tell us point-by-point what you think is incorrect about Caplan's policy proposals?

[rayiner]

I am from an immigrant family (I am in fact first generation, having moved here from Bangladesh at age 5 with my parents), which shapes my perceptions and makes policy proposals like Caplan's seem naive to me. They seem to me the kinds of ideas that seem attractive to those blessed by good government and a viable culture for so long that you think that human society is naturally that way. My family left Bangladesh to get away from Bengalis and Bengali culture. It seems ridiculous to me that someone born here would want to import that toxic culture into the U.S. wholesale by allowing free immigration.

I don't think a point by point rebuttal of Caplan would be fruitful. I disagree with him fundamentally, about everything from the relevance of macro-economics to political debates, to the notion that "world GDP" matters as opposed to "American GDP per capita." A people, acting through a sovereign government, have no obligation to care about the well being of anyone but their own. I think there is a fundamental equivalence between the set of people who would fight in a war to preserve a nation and the set of people that nation's government should care about.

[civilian]

All I'm reading here is that we should be able to decline immigrants based on cultural stereotypes.

How is their culture toxic?

[rayiner]

Speaking for Bangladesh: everything from attitudes about women and Jews and gays to acceptance of free speech to business ethics to expectations regarding the rule of law.

My father was a college student at the time of the Bengali independence. He had great hope for the country when it adopted a constitution with western-style attitudes (secular democracy). But now he's bitter because the people reinstated the theocracy, made Islam the official religion, made the religious leaders ever more powerful, turned the democracy into dynastic rule by two families, and perpetuated the culture of corruption and graft that exists in government and business. This didn't just happen to them. They're not the victims of external forces. They got the government and society they deserved and tolerated.

There are good people and smart people in Bangladesh. Letting people immigrate in a controlled way, and an emphasis on adoption of American culture, works. But but letting them just import their culture wholesale would mean the destruction of what makes America worth living in in the first place.

[spindritf]

> I've never seen a good idea come out of George Mason's econ department

Really? Prediction markets, futarchy, signalling, ems economics... not even anything in Launching The Innovation Renaissance?