(Another) Radical Idea
But maybe I'm crazy
I’ve been daydreaming in fantasyland again. Like before, hear me out on this.
I think we should open the borders between states. Moving between states should be as seamless as moving between towns within a state.
Today going from, say, Oklahoma to Texas involves a checklist of prior arrangements, long delays at the point of crossing, hazardous conditions, arbitrary limitations with political motivations and self-serving influences, etc. All of the self-imposed hardship creates an opportunity for black markets whose dangerous operators bring tragedy in their wake.
If an employer in Philadelphia wants to employ a desirable worker in Camden, NJ, she will need to jump through hoops for years and perhaps still never get to land the candidate.
A warehouse in Oakland, CA cannot simply switch to a supplier in Seattle, WA when that supplier is clearly better than an alternative in Los Angeles, CA. Instead he has to contend with an assortment of additional costs because the train coming from Washington crosses a celestial void (twice) while the one from LA is in the same fictional club. And don’t get me started on how tough it is to get things by boat into Hawaii.1
Think about the advantages of my approach:
More fluid labor markets opening up job opportunities as well as a much higher level of specialization
More people to befriend, date, volunteer with, and interact otherwise
More customers for local businesses, more fans for local sports teams, more patrons for local arts
More ideas to share and combine leading to more innovation and wealth
Simply put: more freedom
Imagine how much more fun Las Vegas would be if Californian’s could effortlessly go there bringing all that demand with them.
Imagine how much more safe and sane the world would be if understood that our distrust of those in other states is based on hyperbolic paranoia. I realize there are people who wish to cross state borders to do harm. But must we all be imprisoned within state boundaries because of the decidedly few evildoers?
I am a realistic dreamer. I know that an opening of state borders will come with frictions including violence. Might banditos make a daring run from West Memphis, AR into Memphis, TN to commit crimes and then quickly escape the pursuing Tennessee authorities across the mighty Mississippi? Possibly and in analogous cases certainly. But contending with that including bringing those to justice will just mean working together between institutions—both governmental and private. Failure to reach amicable relations should only mean restrictions applying to Arkansas on behalf of Tennessee (and those in support of Tennessee’s position). It should not mean a blunt shutdown of all borders everywhere.
What sense does it make that a man in Kansas City, KS cannot simply take his family to dinner in downtown Kansas City, MO? The distance between his home and the restaurant is merely a few miles, but the time to get there is many hours. While that is hard and costly, it is basically impossible for him to send his kids to the school of his choosing if it is across the Missouri River.
While there are risks, it should seem obvious that the good overwhelmingly outweighs the bad.
I know these are truly radical ideas for those of us trapped in The Statrix. Yet with enough effort, I’m sure you can see the light.
P.S. I conceived of this post long before COVID. Having not written it before then, I felt I couldn’t write it during or for sometime after that tragic era. The lockdowns of spring 2020 gave us an actual, natural experiment in this and the economic, social, and (importantly) health results were predictably awful/not helpful. I didn’t want confusion between this being a commentary on the (anti)virtue of the lockdowns per se as a method of fighting the virus when this is a general argument against closed national borders.
Oh, wait. We are so stupid/subject to special interests that we actually do this.