So, two things I really value are free trade and open immigration. On reflection, weirdly, it's somewhat easier to make the open borders case to people, even though it's less popular overall. Why? Because to make a case for free trade, you have to argue the period from the mid 70s to Trump, where trade was getting more and more free, was broadly a good time. But that's not people's intuition, and in my experience, people don't usually accept macro stats.

(possibly this is specific to my bubble)

I think you can make a strong case that politics is very frightening right now, and could get much worse very quickly, but it's hard to argue the world got economically worse during that period.

Part of why the case is also hard, btw, when you're talking to more right-wing people, is a very strong moral argument is to says "a billion Chinese people came out of poverty." Obviously doesn't work for everyone.

@ZachWeinersmith Wait, how does the Chinese coming out of poverty count as a win for free trade? Surely it's the opposite, they invested in their own country and people instead of sending it overseas?
@scarlett Meaning, there's no world in which China comes out of poverty nearly so fast without opening up to trade.

@scarlett @ZachWeinersmith

Free trade let China sell products to other countries, and let other countries move manufacturing to China. All that money flowing into China helped pay for the investment and development.

@ZachWeinersmith
I think the death of Mao and the succession by competent leaders had more to do with it.
@ZachWeinersmith This is, in my opinion, one of the funniest aspects of political economics: that China is probably the best empirical argument in favor of capitalism, yet capitalists are unwilling to use it - because it means admitting that capitalism and democracy are orthogonal.
@Merovius I dunno if they're orthogonal but they're certainly not parallel!
@ZachWeinersmith what’s more, they had famines killing 50 million people within living memory.

@ZachWeinersmith

The immigration economy is like Prohibition.
In the face of huge supply and demand, our government created a black market by banning free trade.
In 1920 it was a black market in liquor. Today it is a black market in labor.

@ZachWeinersmith To me, the biggest issues with free trade are the potential for a race to the bottom in terms of regulations protecting the environment and the labor.

@ZachWeinersmith

"So, two things I really value are free trade and open immigration."

#libertarian