The debate over brain drain has suffered from two failures. The first is the failure to specify why permanent formal restrictions on the right to emigrate would ever be necessary or sufficient for a sustainable development policy. The second is the failure to observe how many coercive mechanisms are already at work in the basic structure of every society. While some institutions of social justice distribute the burdens of social cooperation unfairly, the appropriate response is hardly to abolish them altogether. On the contrary, economic and social institutions that in effect get able people to do things for centrally important social purposes are requirements of any plausible theory of social justice. Appeal to a more systematic theory of this kind is necessary to advance the policy discussion on emigration and brain drain.
