As a libertarian conservative, I have grown so tired of the simplistic application of libertarian principles. The real world of laws and economics is a complex system and the principles cannot be shallowly applied in isolation in the name of ideological purity. It is is not a question of sacrificing principle, but rather applying them in the context of complexity.
The difficulty lies in incrementally moving this messy system back in the direction of what the Founders called ‘ordered liberty’, with moving in such a way that results in a global (in the math sense of overall) improvement, which is stable at each step.
The more common simplistic ‘pure’ libertarian take is that every individual local (in the math sense) step toward liberty is an unmitigated win — regardless of the consequences in the larger system.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
A simple example is the Savings&Loan debacle of the 80s. A great reduction in the federal regulation of S&Ls was hailed by libertarians everywhere as a ‘win’. Reason, Cato, etc were all high fiving each other. Of course the fatal flaw was in not thinking about the larger system in a mature fashion — FSLC protection (the S&L counterpart to FDIC gov’t guarantees) was still in place. The end result was ever riskier behavior by the S&Ls, knowing the govt would always bail them out — the ‘moral hazard’, blocking true market discipline — and as a result billions of dollars were lost, and deregulation and economic liberty got a black eye.
Clearly it sometimes better to *not* make move, or make a smaller one, unless/until related changes can also be put in place, so th elocal improvement does not become a net loss globally.
Illegality is not the issue, so much as assimilation (wrt to basic American libertarian ideals.) Freedom of contract is not the only issue here. For radically greater liberty to succeed, in moving the state further out of the equation, the only other real option for supporting self-regulation in society is the core culture. [I know many libertarians make the same mistake as the Marxists in thinking economics --in this case market -- is everything.]
If you want to either a) continue ignoring illegal immigration (or make it ‘legal’ with the stroke of the amnesty pen) or b) vastly increase legal immigration under the existing scheme (with its current preference for third world diversity over what people bring to the table), in the context losing our republic to ‘democracy’ and the welfare state, it will NOT end well for liberty.
