Free markets and open borders

Free markets and open borders

It has been interesting to read in your columns of the various
complaints of the Australian government about the laxness of
Indonesia with regard to the passage of illegal immigrants and,
conversely, those from your readers directed at the U.S. and
Australian consulates issuing travel visas to Indonesian
citizens. Could it be that the solution to both these problems is
to adhere closely to the ideas of free marketeers who have
pressured the World Bank, IMF, WTO and even the UN to push for
open markets?

The benefits of perfect markets and perfect competition cannot
be achieved if there are distortions in the market caused by a
lack of openness in selective areas. Whilst the trend has been
towards open markets in factors of production such as capital and
resources and in goods that are produced from those factors,
there remain two areas of notable exception where a lack of
openness is causing major market distortions and, thus, great
hardship for the populations of many countries. These are in the
areas of the free flow of information and labor. Both, according
to economists, are prerequisites for perfect, and therefore
optimum, markets.

Statutory guarantees of open and accurate information about
public corporations would help to prevent the corporate
corruption that currently threatens the U.S. and, therefore, the
global economy. Further, market fundamentalists need to accept
that they are seriously flawed in their thinking if they treat
the world as one indivisible market and yet do not do away with
all immigration controls.

Thus, instead of countries such as Spain, the U.S. and
Australia putting pressure on their Third World neighbors to
control illegal immigration, a gradual relaxing of border
restrictions, as has happened within the European Union, would
lead to a far more equitable distribution of income worldwide.
This would, in turn, lead to increased consumption (as desired by
the free marketeers) and labor, the last trammeled factor, would
flow freely which, if the free marketeers' mantra is to be relied
upon, should result in more optimal markets and greater
prosperity for all.

So, throw away your passports and visas-laissez-faire and
prosperity, here we come!

FRANK RICHARDSON, Jakarta