Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There

Bregman next looks at prosperity in different regions of the world. While the countries of the Global North enjoy historic levels of prosperity, much of the Global South remains mired in desperate poverty, hunger, and disease. Wealthier countries have contributed large sums in foreign aid, but the effectiveness of this aid is hard to gauge. Aid may have had a great impact, in which case more aid would be even more beneficial, or may have harmed those it intended to help, in which case more aid could make things worse. Research on the subject has typically failed to conduct controlled trials to establish a causal relationship between how a certain method of treatment affects a particular group. Instead, the argument has focused on the relative merits of either providing greater resources or building local capacity. French professor Esther Duflo has pioneered a new approach of testing similar target audiences using various methods in order to arrive at more definitive conclusions. This approach helps move beyond the “rational actor” model that sees humans as cool calculators and instead seeks to understand how different conditions encourage different attitudes and behaviors. Controlled tests are not always possible, and they cannot address major structural problems. Additionally, in certain cases they can be unethical if they involve deliberately withholding aid from people in need. Nevertheless, controlled tests have provided valuable insights into provision of international aid. However, as effective as these tests may be in answering discrete questions, they miss what Bregman regards as the comprehensive solution to the problem of international inequality, which is opening borders for all.

Just over a century ago, borders were easy to cross in most places, and only repressive regimes required passports. World War I prompted a clampdown on national boundaries that has never fully relaxed, even as globalization brings disparate parts of the globe closer together. According to Bregman, lifting restrictions on workers, refugees, and other people could boost the global economy far more than lifting the far fewer remaining restrictions on goods and capital. Borders are among the main causes of inequality, and wealthy countries hold vastly more wealth than poorer ones. Many people seek to come to the Global North for economic opportunity, yet restrictions on migration remain punishingly high. Even the poor in wealthier countries are far better off than those in the Global South, and thus opening the border would both increase overall wealth and distribute it more fairly. This idea receives fierce pushback in the West, however, largely because of security concerns that sharpen in the wake of terrorist attacks—even though terrorist attacks are extremely rare, and permitting migration tends to decrease the risk even further. Bregman notes that immigrants, even “illegal” ones, are less prone to criminality than native-born citizens, and those immigrants who do commit crimes exhibit the same risk factors as native-born criminals, such as poverty. Ethnic diversity does not compromise the cohesion of a community, while inequality does. Having more laborers will not “take” the jobs of existing workers, since a larger population will help grow the economy and create more jobs—and accepting immigrants has greater economic benefits than outsourcing jobs overseas. Immigrants are less likely to seek public assistance, and easing restrictions will help immigrants more easily return to their country of origin. Open borders is an ideal and will no doubt pose implementation problems and require practical restrictions. However, moving toward this goal is far preferable than retaining the current securitization of borders around the world, which inflict enormous suffering at great cost while doing little to deter population movement. Open borders is another seemingly radical idea that in fact may be far more sensible than the status quo.