Police State America Erects More Trade Barriers

Did you know that Uncle Sam has imposed a Security Surcharge on incoming packages to the United States? So says a friend who paid an additional $9 over and above the standard fare to mail a small, “secured” item from Australia to the US.

Trade is always invited, consensual and, hence, mutually beneficial to the private property holders that are party to the transactions. When government restricts trade, it violates—not protects—the rights of private property owners to exchange goods and to enjoy freedom of association.

Conversely, free immigration, as the libertarian economist and political philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe has explained, “does not mean immigration by invitation of individual households and firms, but unwanted invasion or forced integration.” When government restricts immigration, it is actually protecting private households and firms from these perils.

As Dr. Hoppe noted, “Someone can migrate from one place to another without anyone else wanting him to do so,” but “goods and services cannot be shipped from place to place unless both sender and receiver agree.”

Hoppe’s distinction seems almost mischievous, but it goes to the core of the complementary relationship between free trade and restricted immigration. (Contrary to what you’ve heard from John Stossel, open borders are not the libertarian default position—and they are certainly not the patriotic position. Those of us who live in real communities, removed from the Beltway and the TV Talkers, understand the burdens that state-engineered immigration has imposed on ordinary Americans living in the “Provinces.”)

In the US there are almost no barriers to the free-flow of uninvited people across American borders. Unfettered trade is a different matter; it is taxed and penalized.