You rock; Tom! This jumping-on-the-hate-immigrants bandwagon has really been driving me nuts. Can't folks see that we're being manipulated and that the state LOVES it when we blame one another rather than the true culprit: the state?
Tom, you're a much better attack dog than you are a campaign manager. 
It's not hard to be for open borders AND against entitlements.
Your Social Security argument is not valid. People paid into the program. They are literally and legally ENTITLED to receive benefits. The way to end the Ponzi scheme is to begin running surpluses (through spending cuts and supply-side tax cuts) so that ENTITLED beneficiaries can be paid from the general account, and new workers are not enrolled into FICA. You would honestly cut Social Security to an old dude who had 15% of his earnings sucked off into that program for 40 years?
To whose money can Social Security victims be entitled? There is no money for them other than that which will be stolen from someone else. It is this logic that allows the system to persist.
Maybe SS victims are owed something, but so are all victims of the state. If you liquidated all the state's assets, it would never come close to being able to pay off its many victims of taxation, false imprisonment and violence. The state is, after all, a bad deal for us.
The immigration opponents are wrong. They are the ones in denial of reality. For one, EVERY SINGLE PEER-REVIEWED ECONOMIC STUDY BY A REPUTABLE ECONOMIST HAS CONCLUDED THAT IMMIGRATION -- legal and illegal -- HAS BOOSTED AMERICA'S NET WORTH AND HOUSEHOLD INCOMES. This includes all externalities, etc. Immigration is good for America on economic grounds, and welfare state arguments do NOT hold water. Denial of this fact is denial of blatant reality. Reality cannot be wished away to justify a yearning for Know-Nothing cultural purity.
Immigrants are entrepreurial and hardworking. Immigrants, per capita, ARE LESS LIKELY TO BE ON WELFARE THAN NATIVE-BORN AMERICANS. Fact. Denying this is denial of reality. Anyone who denies reality does not deserve to exist.
Finally, Phillies shows his leftist stupidity by asserting that an increased welfare state means higher taxes. It doesn't. Look at the horrendous boondoggle in Iraq. We have cut taxes and yet revenues are soaring thanks to Bush's tax cuts. We will be running a surplus by 2008/2009.
What happened to the requirement of a basic understanding of ecnomics in order to be a self-respecting libertarian? There isn't a single candidate in this race who, as far as I can tell, took even an undergrad class in Micro or Macro, or if he did, it didn't take.
If we can pay current beneficiaries by abolishing FICA and lowering taxes, then I say we do it. PROMISES have been made to people directly linked to their contributions. Planning has taken place. But then again, I'm debating with people who have accomplished literally nothing in 35 years of a "movement" based on a childish refusal to deal with reality.
G.E. Smith for President!
The rest of the stoned SNL band for VP.
Tom, you may find this hard to believe, but I AGREE WITH YOU.
This is definitely one area Ron Paul is wrong on.
I think you and Steve Kubby (and several other left-libertarians) do have the correct position on this issue.
(For what it's worth, I also oppose making English the "official language" of the USA. I assume you agree ?)
GE,
You write:
"Your Social Security argument is not valid. People paid into the program. They are literally and legally ENTITLED to receive benefits."
If by "entitled," you mean "entitled under current law," you're correct. If by "entitled" you mean "entitled per se as a contractual matter," you're wrong. See Flemming v. Nestor. The Supreme Court says that payment into the program does NOT create a contractual entitlement. If Congress decided tomorrow to close the Social Security Administration and cut off the checks, it would be perfectly legal. Followed by a lot of stretched necks, I think, but legal.
"The way to end the Ponzi scheme is to begin running surpluses (through spending cuts and supply-side tax cuts) so that ENTITLED beneficiaries can be paid from the general account, and new workers are not enrolled into FICA. You would honestly cut Social Security to an old dude who had 15% of his earnings sucked off into that program for 40 years?"
Re-read what I wrote -- I was very specific in my use of the words "and future." I would very much like to find a way to pay off the people who have already been robbed, but the hostage-holders insist that we can't get off the Ponzi-go-round until and unless we find some magical way to guarantee the future pension needs of every man Jack first.
Would I like to see those who paid in all their lives paid back? Sure. Do I think it's important that they be paid back? As a practical matter, yes.
But if a bill to repeal the FICA tax was introduced tomorrow, I wouldn't hold that bill hostage to it. My job is to defend freedom, not to assume the obligation of unfucking every one of the state's fuckups as a pre-condition to being allowed to unfuck any one of the the state's fuckups.
Now, as a matter of fact, you've already posed an interesting solution based on your belief that we're still on the "cut taxes and revenues will grow" side of the Laffer Curve:
1. Eliminate the FICA tax.
2. Let those who have never paid the tax know that they're never going to have to -- and that they're never going to collect the bennies, either.
3. Use the revenue bonanza you anticipate to:
a) Pay current beneficiaries until they die;
b) Provide similar benefits to those who are close enough to retirement (say, within 10 years) for that they can't possibly re-structure their retirement finances in time to make up for the change.
c) For people who are further away from retirement -- say, up to 20 years -- offer an opt-out with a pay-out. Maybe no interest, but their money back and available for them to plug into IRAs or whatever they want to do. Or they can remain in "the system" and collect reduced benefits (since they aren't paying the tax any more -- pro rate the bennies down).
d) For people who are more than 20 years away from retirement, make it non-optional. Here's your money back, you're on your own.
Tom (Gellhaus),
You write:
"Tom, you may find this hard to believe, but I AGREE WITH YOU."
Why would I find that hard to believe?
I understand that not all Ron Paul supporters agree with Ron Paul on everything.
I also understand that most Ron Paul supporters (at least those in the libertarian movement who have supported him since before he declared for president) and I are probably in agreement 90% of the time.
Please don't take my arguments against Ron Paul's presidential campaign as arguments that all of his supporters are bad people or my political enemies. I just think that his campaign is a bad idea, and that supporting it is a mistake, for various reasons. Most of those reasons are purely strategic, and if I called everyone I had a strategic disagreement with an enemy, I'd be fresh out of friends.
Regards,
Tom
GE,
Dammit, my post got cut off. There wasn't much of it left.
Step 3(d) was: For those who've never paid FICA taxes, they don't start and they have no expectation of bennies.
Step 4 was cut taxes some more once the proposed program has cleared the books.
And the epilogue was something like this:
There are probably holes you could drive a truck through in this, but it's just off the cuff. The main point is that yes, I can think of ways to minimize heartburn ... but no, I don't have an obligation to refrain from freeing one hostage until and unless I figure out a way to magically free all hostages simultaneously. If I can, sure, I will. If I can't, well the onus is on the hostage-takers, not on me. We should not allow them to blackmail us ... THEY are the ones who have something to answer for.
I am surprised to see people trying to vainly defend this insane concept of "immigration."
Can anyone please tell me how organizational harassment, detainment and kidnapping of people who dare to be located between the wrong arbitrary lines can all be validated?
Can someone please explain to me why the existence of some kinds of State crimes validate the existence of some other State crimes?
Either I am insane, or you are.
"At bottom, a border is nothing more than an imaginary line on the ground, drawn by politicians. What's important are not the lines themselves, but the people on either side of those lines."
- Steve Kubby
That's a great pair of sentences right there.
And yes, Francois, the kidnapping and transportation of people because they crossed some government mandated line is insane.
"See Flemming v. Nestor. The Supreme Court says that payment into the program does NOT create a contractual entitlement."
It's *bullshit* like that, Tom, that precludes my taking you seriously.
Awesome post. I've been having a debate with a couple people on livejournal about immigration. It started when someone referred to illegal immigrants as criminals because there are laws against crossing borders without permission.
After arguing that the existence of a law doesn't make something a crime and contending that a crime requires a victim, they inevitably stated that the taxpayers are the victims since illegal immigrants benefit from our tax dollars without paying in.
Funny how I haven't heard from either of them since I pointed out that it was the government robbing them, not the immigrants. I pointed out that if we're the victims, the government is the criminal and that immigration is not the problem, only the scapegoat.
Guess they couldn't find a way to refute that.
Tom - Well, we're basically in agreement. Misunderstanding, I guess. If we can pay SS/Medicaid beneficiaries while not taxing new workers on FICA, then... I'm probably with you. I'm from the Chicago School; I'd rather go piece by piece and evaluate the results. This isn't a moral game to me, it's a utilitarian one.
Billy,
Okay ... you don't take me seriously because I accurately described a Supreme Court ruling.
What can I say? I think the ruling is ridiculous, too, but it was made almost 50 years ago so it's not like everyone hasn't had time to notice it.
I'm not a Friedmanite/Chicago School type, but I seem to recall that it was Friedman who first called it to my attention, noting that Social Security is just a particular tax tenuously linked to a particular welfare program, and that there's nothing in law to prevent Congress from doing away with the tax, the program or the linkage.
Regards,
Tom
Social Security is two programs: A tax and a welfare scheme. That's all it is. This is why there's nothing there to privatize.
Tom, you are one of the best libertarian communicators I know. I love it when we agree!
I was disappointed that you didn't mention Christine Smith's immigration position:
http://libertarianforpresident.c...t.com/
id23.html
Joseph,
There are several reasons why I didn't mention/quote Smith's immigration position, but I'll start with the essential two:
On the one hand, her position doesn't fit the "hostage-holding" position I was trying to describe and condemn. It's profoundly anti-libertarian in its own way (hint: Decentralizing bad lawmaking doesn't turn it into good lawmaking), but not in that particular way.
On the other hand, it also doesn't fit the alternative position I was trying to boost with this article.
It just didn't fit with the very specific them I was riffing on.
Finally, the position paper is so poorly written that it's physically painful to read. I'd like very much to stack it up against Kubby's position[1], but so far I haven't figured out how to excerpt it in a way that is both fair to her position and that doesn't make my readers screw up their eyes and say "wha ...? Ooh, migraine coming on."
Seriously, she needs an editor in a bad way. And I'm not just saying that to be an asshole.
Regards,
Tom
[1] I don't have anything against Smith, and I've tried to treat her fairly (like other LP candidates, she was invited to publish her campaign statements on Rational Review and politely declined; I've featured her media appearances in RRND/FND; etc.). However, I am of the opinion that the more people see/hear/read of her, the less seriously they will take her as a presidential candidate ... so it's in my own candidate's interest that she not be ignored. As a matter of fact, I believe that Kubby and Smith are tentatively scheduled to debate next month on a prominent libertarian "Internet radio" program.
I'm still not hearing any justification for harassment and kidnapping...
Francois,
Were you hoping to?
Regards,
Tom
Well, there seemed to be some people arguing against you here, so I was expecting at least a mock defense. I guess I was too optimistic.
Your contention that no libertarian proposal be held hostage to any other is pure idiotarianism. Order of operations is important! Very important.
Such ideology-over-common-sense reasoning helps keep the libertarian movement small and ignored.
See my essay Atomic Libertarianism. There are plenty of libertarian proposals that are atomic. Focus on those.
Ignore the test and you'll either:
A. Never attain the power to make any steps in the direction of liberty.
Or
B. Screw up the country and give libertarianism a bad name.
So Carl, can you please give us a justification for maintaining harassment and kidnapping in the name of partyarch "tactics"? Please, I'd be very interested in hearing your position on this.
Your article is a horrible, horrible example of partyarchism. You're calling for replacing one tax with another instead of eliminating it because the replacement idea will make people more likely to vote for you. You are a perfect example of what politics does to libertarians.
Carl,
"Order of operations" is itself an ideological argument -- and one that runs counter to accomplishing ANYTHING substantive ... which, of course, is its purpose.
Name a good policy and there will always be some idiot (or, more likely, some charlatan) claiming that it's just impossible until and unless he gets everything else he wants first.
When the statists want something and an objection is offered based on "order of operations," the reply is always some variant of Stalin's "breaking omelets to make eggs." It's only when the direction is in favor of more freedom that "order of operations" suddenly assumes paramount importance and that the eggs suddenly must not be touched, let alone cracked.
It's a scam -- the only question is whether you're one of the scammers or one of the yokels falling for it.
If the opponents of immigration freedom believe that the welfare state must be dismantled before immigration freedom can be allowed, they're free to believe that ...
... but that doesn't mean that I have to play their game. If they think that the welfare state absolutely has to be dismantled before immigration freedom can be respected, fine -- let them bust their asses to dismantle the welfare state faster than I can open the borders. I'm not going to let my opponents set the timetable, because I've seen how they do it: They schedule the train to never arrive.
"let them bust their asses to dismantle the welfare state"
But Tom, it is impractical to dismantle the welfare state before poverty has been eradicated. The order of operations is important:
(1) End poverty.
(2) Dismantle the welfare state.
(3) Open the borders.
So what we need to do first is INCREASE the welfare state in an attempt to end poverty. It is the ONLY practical libertarian solution,
The link between FICA and Social Security is not "tenuous." Look at a paycheck. FICA is broken down into Medicare and SOCIAL SECURITY taxes. The government may not be using them that way, but workers are having their wages sucked off and used to pay the benefits of the elderly, WITH THE EXPECTATION that they will then suck the wages off the younger generation. The only way that this can end -- with any practicality at all -- is to pay for the current beneficiaries' benefits out of the general fund, thereby not enrolling new people into the FICA system. But that can't be accomplished by raising taxes or going into debt -- if it is, then the FICA trade-off is illusory. IF, however, we can raise revenues by LOWERING taxes (which we can) then we are DIMINISHING the aggression, while simultaneously satisfying the ENTITLEMENT part of "entitlement." Not only is this the easiest way to do it, and not only the most moral, but also the most realistic -- there's no way the voting populace would ever go for anything else, and if you think they would, you need to go off on a Freedom School retreat and take mushrooms because you're not living in reality.
We can end poverty before dismantling the welfare state. How? By gradually dismantling the welfare state.
GE,
When I say that the link between the FICA tax and Social Security benefits is "tenuous," I don't see that I'm disagreeing with anything else you have to say.
It is tenuous because benfits are not reliably based on prior payments, and because the congress is free to adjust those benefits in any way, and to any extent, that it likes, with the exception (according to Flemming v. Nestor) of doing so arbitrarily or capriciously with respect to a particular person or group. Congress can raise the retirement age to 72 and they'll have no problems from the court. If they raise the retirement age to 72 for red-haired males who were born on Wednesday, they might.
This isn't difficult to prove -- Congress has adjusted retirement ages and benefit schedules several times, and they can because there IS NO CONTRACTUAL ENTITLEMENT TO THE BENEFITS, or to ANY PARTICULAR BENEFITS. You're required to pay the tax because Congress says so, and you get the benefits you get because Congress says those are the benefits you get.
I agree that as a practical matter, Congress will never just up and repeal Social Security effective 30 days from passage of the bill. Half of them would be hanged from lampposts and the other half would be fed to the nation's zoo-bound lions. That doesn't mean that the whole "you're buying INSURANCE, yeah, that's it" sales pitch is anything but bullshit.
"So what we need to do first is INCREASE the welfare state in an attempt to end poverty"
Are you for real?
A "contract" is not a piece of paper, except for in real estate. Under law, a contract is an understanding. 99% of people would tell you that their FICA means they will receive benefits. Hell, I would bet that 50%+ thinks there is a little account somewhere with their name on it holding their FICA in it -- my dad thinks this, no matter what I tell him.
GE,
I'll leave it to a lawyer or law student to explain to you the difference between Social Security and a contract. Is Mr. X around?
In brief, in order for a contract to be binding, both parties have to agree to the terms. The federal government did not agree to the terms you seem to think it agreed to, and the Supreme Court upheld the government's interpretation of what the terms means.
99% of people who get a Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes mailing may think they've won a million bucks, but that doesn't mean that PCS is contractually obligated to pay them a million bucks.
you cannot end poverty. Poverty is and has been a permanent part of the human condition since...well, since the beginning. It's as useless as trying to convince people not to believe in religions, (or to believe) or not to imbibe in mind altering substances....or not to gamble...etc. etc.
the core human conditions cant be altered to any great degree - not even by liberty, or lack thereof.
Geez. I would have thought you guys would have picked up on the sarcasm. Didn't anyone notice the little at the end of my post?
I got it, Chris. I think folks are overwrought here. You did have me going for the first sentence or so, though 
Good for you... I was about to break the NAP on your ass.
"Poverty is and has been a permanent part of the human condition since...well, since the beginning."
Poverty has alwasy been with us, but capitalism hasn't. As it sweeps over the land, poverty is diminished. If you think you can't end poverty, tell that to the son of a $1-a-day rickshaw puller in Bangladesh whose son is an independent computer programmer, freelancing at sites like Elance.com and making $1,000 a week.
Chris - I knew it was sarcasm, but I responded anyway.
Tom - A contract is an agreement as understood by the parties involved. The government certainly doesn't do much to dissuaded people of the notion that they are entitled to Social Security on the basis of their FICA taxes, and therefore, there is a contract. Of course, as the government has a monopoly of force and enforcing contracts, it can do as it pleases. But this is literally the dumbest argument ever since there is no way that this is even remotely politically possible OR necessary. The path to Social Security abolition is pretty clear, and it does not require screwing old folks. It can be achieved by bombing FICA and lowering taxes on the working, while still paying grandma's benefits. So why do it another way? Out of some perverse fetish for "purity"? Or is it just a religious devotion to impracticality that is so common in the Church of Rothbard?
As a former member of the U.S. Coast Guard let me assure others that it is not possible to "secure the borders".
Ain't gonna happen! We can make them tighter is about all.
And if I wanted to cause harm to the country I could do so without even setting foot in it.
Carl's essay does have some positive points, but I disagree with much of it.
MHW
GE,
On the one hand, it's always fun to watch you tear apart arguments I haven't made as if I had made them.
The only thing we seem to disagree on here is whether or not Social Security is a "contract." I'll leave it to everyone to decide for hirself whether to believe the text of the law and the Supreme Court's opinionin Flemming v. Nestor (both of which say it is not), or the stump rhetoric of a group of people (politicians) whom the public usually rates below used vacuum cleaner salesmen on the believability scale (and who say it is).
Once again for the politically brain locked:
A. Any small political movement can accomplish limited things during any term of office.
B. There are more atomic steps to liberty than even the Democrats or Republicans could accomplish. It is possible to put forth an agenda comparable to Roosevelt's First Hundred Days and still be limited to atomic steps.
C. Limiting to atomic steps is more than just politically sensible, it is just plain a good idea. Were I emperor for a year, I would still limit myself thus, so I don't screw up the country.
Mindlessly applying ZAP in today's context is not just political suicide, it is national suicide.
I gotta stop calling myself a libertarian. Makes me look dogmatic and clueless by association...
A little-known Supreme Court ruling does nothing to disabuse the public of a widely held and constantly reaffirmed notion, and therefore, there is still a contract in the legal sense if not in the Legal sense. And there certainly is in the political sense, and that's all that's important. If I didn't know about the SCOTUS decision, then I can pretty much guarantee you that 99.9%+ of people paying into FICA don't either. This is the equivalent of ultra-fine print.
Rebutted at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/knowin...inghumans?
p=465
Well stated Brian.
Interestingly enough, the idea of immigration restriction as a means of population stabilization is ancient. The ancient Hebrews stabilized by freezing each extended family's right to the ground. An outsider could rent farmland, as could a member of a family that overpopulated its own homestead, but such could never buy land in perpetuity.
Such a system resulted in a Georgist land distribution without the moral hazard that the single-tax would cause. Big families would not get more single-tax rebates than small families. Those who overpopulate feel the pinch locally.
Brian,
I wouldn't call your piece a "rebuttal." For one thing, it's not responsive to the point.
You begin by attempting to exclude yourself from the described class of "hostage-holders" by pointing out that your hostage (foreign economic conditions) is not the same hostage as the one held by the others (the US welfare state).
You're still holding a hostage, though -- it's just that the gun you're holding to the hostage's head is not the threat to middle class entitlements in America, but rather your own hubris in assuming:
a) That you, unlike every past would-be social engineer, can accurately calculate the broad economic effects of large-scale phenomena;
b) That those effects, in the case of future large waves of immigration, will be not only different from the effects of every prior similar wave of immigration in American history, but largely negative rather than largely positive as they have been in the past; and
c) That the foregoing arguments constitute a persuasive argument against open borders.
Your "rebuttal" is a classic case of the "hostage-holding" phenomenon as described. In your world, things only become "feasible" when every concern you may have about them, however ill-founded, has been addressed first ... as you know will never happen. And in your world, any political theory which does not prioritize, as you say, "fundamental human rights," lower than your fears "is just plain broken."
I'm not impressed.
Word to the Up
Tom Knapp writes:
TK) I wouldn't call your piece a "rebuttal." For one thing, it's not responsive to the point. You begin by attempting to exclude yourself from the described class of "hostage-holders" by pointing out that your hostage (foreign economic conditions) is not the same hostage as the one held by the others (the US welfare state). You're still holding a hostage, though -- it's just that the gun you're holding to the hostage's head is not the threat to middle class entitlements in America, but rather your own hubris in assuming: (TK
And thus your whole hostage-holding metaphor utterly collapses in my case. The metaphor is apt when it's about two policy agendas at play in the same polity, but you recognize that it would be silly to say that the rest of the planet is the other hostage-holder. So you say something sillier: that I'm schizophrenically holding two hostages. LOL.
TK) a) That you, unlike every past would-be social engineer, can accurately calculate the broad economic effects of large-scale phenomena; b) That those effects, in the case of future large waves of immigration, will be not only different from the effects of every prior similar wave of immigration in American history, but largely negative rather than largely positive as they have been in the past; (TK
Ah, I see, the schizophrenia you imagine is a projection of your own. In consecutive sentences here you claim that the effects of open borders a) cannot be calculated and b) can be calculated to be "largely positive". When the two Tom Knapps are done debating each other, please have the winner try to address the detailed arguments you ignored about why the open borders in 21st-century America would be dramatically different than any immigration policy ever tried before in human history.
TK) In your world, things only become "feasible" when every concern you may have about them, however ill-founded, has been addressed first (TK
Strawman. I'd settle for a historical example remotely like what is being proposed, or detailed projections about the numbers and human capital of the immigrants we could expect over the next few decades.
BH) Even if one doesn't believe that current or prospective technological and demographic conditions don't combine with global disparities in economic freedom to make opening America's borders infeasible, it surely is not tenable to claim as a matter of political philosophy that a liberty-loving human polity should under all conceivable circumstances always allow unrestricted economic immigration. The concept of a "border" in these discussions is a demarcation between regions with different policies. It's just not intellectually credible to maintain that conditions and policies on opposite sides of a border could never vary so widely as to make unrestricted immigration infeasible. If your political theory nevertheless insists that unrestricted economic immigration is always a fundamental h
If your political theory nevertheless insists that unrestricted economic immigration is always a fundamental human right, then your theory is just plain broken. (BH
TK) And in your world, any political theory which does not prioritize, as you say, "fundamental human rights," lower than your fears "is just plain broken." I'm not impressed. (TK
Calling my argument above "fears" is just facile hand-waving. I dare you to say: "conditions and policies on opposite sides of a border could never vary so widely as to make unrestricted immigration infeasible". If you can't assert that, you're just not in the game here.
And by the way, I clearly did say unrestricted economic immigration is a "fundamental human right". I said that other people say it is. I see you quote me about as well as you quote Ron Paul.
s/did/did not/
Brian,
You write:
"In consecutive sentences here you claim that the effects of open borders a) cannot be calculated and b) can be calculated to be 'largely positive.'"
Um, no, I don't. In the phrasing I've used, it's fairly obvious that "calculation" refers to a predictive operation, not an historical one. My comments on the past effects of immigration are not a calculation, they're an observation.
"Even if one doesn't believe that current or prospective technological and demographic conditions don't combine with global disparities in economic freedom to make opening America's borders infeasible, it surely is not tenable to claim as a matter of political philosophy that a liberty-loving human polity should under all conceivable circumstances always allow unrestricted economic immigration."
A "liberty-loving polity" wouldn't labor under the delusion that economic immigration is something they're either rightfully empowered to "allow" or "disallow" or realistically capable of "allowing" or "disallowing."
And by the way, I clearly did not say that you regard unrestricted immigration as a "fundamental human right." I quoted you completely, and there's no question in what I wrote that you deny so regarding it. Which means that yes, I do quote you about as accurately as I quote Ron Paul ... in other words, completely accurately.
Regards,
Tom Knapp
Tom: you assume immigration is a victimless crime. It is not. Immigrants who become citizens -- or have children who become citizens -- vote (or their children vote).
Voting affects how government operates. As a matter of self-defense, I am sensitive to how my government will act in the future. If unlimited immigration were about letting in all the non-voting pacifists of the world, then your claim would be far more apt. It is not. People bring their culture with them.
I consider it a matter of self-defense to restrict the number of Sharia-demanding Muslims or Confucian Chinese. Much of what is libertarian about America is cultural. Northwestern Europe has a relatively libertarian going back thousands of years. The Vikings were democratic; the Celts borderline anarchic, and respected women's rights to an unusual degree. This, at a time that the civilized East had god-emperors.
Culture is not deterministic, but it is sticky. Given time, immigrant families integrate into American culture, while adding a bit of spice of their own. However, an overwhelming flow of immigration can import the culture wholesale. If I want to live under Latin American style government, I'll move to Latin America -- I love summer, and Spanish is an easy language to learn.
But I like the ingrained values of rule of law, trial by jury, etc. that comes with the English culture that dominates in this country, thank you very much.
Carl,
Thanks for another example of hostage-holding -- we can't have freedom of immigration until we get rid of voting.
Okay, then, go work on getting rid of voting while I work on getting rid of immigration restrictions.
"Thanks for another example of hostage-holding -- we can't have freedom of immigration until we get rid of voting."
Actually Tom, I think Carl's point is that we cannot have freedom of immigration until a homogeneous world culture is obtained. Specifically, that culture must be like Carl's preferred culture: the one he was accidentally born into.
"If I want to live under Latin American style government, I'll move to Latin America"
The problem is that there are millions of people who were less fortunate than Carl who were accidentally born in Latin America. Their wish to live under American style government is continually blocked by assholes interested in "cultural purity".
TK) "calculation" refers to a predictive operation, not an historical one. My comments on the past effects of immigration are not a calculation, they're an observation. (TK
Your observation about the past effects of immigration are irrelevant unless you claim that they are help us calculate the effects of future immigration, in which case you too are guilty of calculation.
TK) A "liberty-loving polity" wouldn't labor under the delusion that economic immigration is something they're either rightfully empowered to "allow" or "disallow" or realistically capable of "allowing" or "disallowing." (TK
Ah, so when the consequentialist arguments get tough, the tough throw up a calculation smokescreen and turn all deontological. Is that your final answer -- that deontological grounds are sufficient for defending unrestricted economic immigration, regardless of any possible consequentialist argument against it? If so, then why the serial invocations of historical precedent in our discussions over the last year? My detailed arguments about the prospective (and merely possible) effects of immigration remain unanswered, and you still haven't dared to assert: "conditions and policies on opposite sides of a border could NEVER vary so widely as to make unrestricted economic immigration infeasible in terms of detrimental effect on labor markets, public goods, natural monopolies, and natural resources." That is the negation of my thesis, so unless you can utter those words, you're just not engaging my position. Care to try again?
TK) yes, I do quote you about as accurately as I quote Ron Paul ... in other words, completely accurately. (TK
"Um, no." http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ma...al/message/
1899 (I see you've stopped getting the emails from my marketliberal forum, so you may also want to read http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ma...al/message/
1898. And, if you're still an Aaron Russo defender: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ma.../message/1905.)
Brian,
Conditions and policies on opposite sides of a border could NEVER vary so widely as to make unrestricted economic immigration infeasible in terms of detrimental effect on labor markets, public goods, natural monopolies, and natural resources.
Happy now?
If I'm "not getting" the marketliberal messages, it must be because the email address is bouncing -- I thought I had the group set to "no email," and I drop in once or twice a month on the web to see what's going on.
As far as being an "Aaron Russo defender" goes:
While I certainly consider Aaron Russo a personal friend and always wish him the best, I haven't been involved with him politically or professionally since the 2004 election cycle -- we've talked a few times, and that's about it. He offered me a job as a researcher for America: From Freedom to Fascism, but I had other commitments and didn't end up getting involved in that project at all.
Commenting by HaloScan
