Cable, caps and competitiveness

Almost every utterance by a coalition minister is scrutinised for any signs that it may mean there are splits between the coalition partners over policy.  So it's no surprise to see Vince Cable's discussion of immigration policy put under the media microscope.  

Now, before I get into this, I should make clear that personally I am an advocate of open borders.  Of course, as an advocate of a stateless society I'm really an advocate of not having borders!  That's not entirely true - in a stateless society the only borders that would matter would be the borders around everyone's property.  It is these that would naturally control the ebb and flow of people, whether from "overseas" or from the next door town.  Absent a state welfare system a prospective settler would be arriving to take up a job and would have to find someone in that community to sell or rent them somewhere to live or some unowned, homesteadable land on which to set up a new household.

However, whilst we have states, and borders, and welfare, and unemployment, and all the rest of it, there are a wide range of opinions as to how much we should control the comings and going of people across these lines drawn on maps by conquerors of centuries past, and governments and political parties willing to implement or as some would say pander to each of those opinions.  But Vince's comments are important for another reason.  Consistent with Lib Dem party policy from before the General Election, he is talking about needing migrant workers in order to maintain the competitiveness of British businesses.

As a Mutualist, I understand one of the four great monopolies the state wields over us and which big capital uses, indeed manipulates, in order to gain advantage over labour, to be state tariffs.  Now normally tariffs are understood to be things like import duties imposed on foreign goods in order to protect domestic producers from competition.  In reality any impositions that artificially alter the costs of production are tariffs, as Henry George explained in "Protection or Free Trade."  

But here's a thing: so are immigration controls.  Businesses, particularly bigger businesses that can just as easily move their operations to some other country - even if they only threaten to do so - can lower their labour costs by bringing in extra labour, disadvantaging domestic workers in the process.  Of course, it might not be as simple and cut-throat as that.  As the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development spokesperson said in the Guardian article linked to above:

"The reality for employers is that training workers to plug the UK skills gap is a lengthy task," said Gerwyn Davies of the CIPD. "The abrupt introduction of a radical cap would therefore leave many employers with a bigger skills problem and tempt employers with global operations to offshore jobs, where they can find the skills."

But as per the insight of the Individualist Anarchists and Mutualists of the 19th century we also recognise a higher order state controlled monopoly that places huge obstacles and additional costs in the way of ordinary workers being able to attain their full potential: the monopoly of access to low cost credit.  Mutualists want both the money monopoly and tariffs eradicated (amongst others) but we understand that they must be done in a particular order.  

If you remove tariffs, including migration controls, first whilst leaving the monopoly of access to credit intact, domestic workers in the previously protected industries will be doubly disadvantaged.  Denied equitable access to free credit with which to develop alternative employment opportunities they have little escape from the new competition for their labour.

Vince is in the very powerful position, for a Liberal in the last century, of being able to influence both of these state monopolies from his Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.  Reforming and then eradicating the cartelised state money monopoly is far more important to the prospects of the ordinary folk who elect our government (as opposed to the owners of capital who want government to help reduce their costs), in creating equality of opportunity for labour and reducing the state privileges that have benefitted the owners of capital for centuries.

Let us hear something more about that before being too concerned about helping those owners of capital yet again to manipulate their labour costs downwards.