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Resolved yet? The immigration debate

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Juan replied on Tue, Dec 2 2008 3:46 PM
There is no such clash, no more than there is a clash between owners of bank deposits and owners of banks.
Wrong analogy.

February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church.
Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."

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Juan replied on Tue, Dec 2 2008 3:53 PM
If you have no idea how land is to be owned, you have no idea how to respond to the problem of immigration.
Sorry, the fact that I don't have a complete answer doesn't mean that I can't criticize 'solutions' which are clearly at odds with libertarian principles. I'm assuming this a libertarian forum after all, a forum where the question about what is legitimate and what is not is the central question.

February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church.
Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."

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Juan:
If you have no idea how land is to be owned, you have no idea how to respond to the problem of immigration.
Sorry, the fact that I don't have a complete answer doesn't mean that I can't criticize 'solutions' which are clearly at odds with libertarian principles. I'm assuming this a libertarian forum after all, a forum where the question about what is legitimate and what is not is the central question.

The Libertarian position is property. If you do not understand how the property in question works, you cannot state an opinion on what the Libertarian position is.

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There is no such clash, no more than there is a clash between owners of bank deposits and owners of banks.

I was given an example of a single individual trying to gain ownership over an entire city. Such a claim of ownership inevitably does clash with the individual cases of ownership of the people already existing within that city - why the hell would everyone in the city voluntary sell their property to this single person? Or would the state (an intergenerational organized theif) sell itself off to this single person (who may very well be in league with the state to begin with)? Then we've merely transfered from a state monopoly to a "private" monopoly, and if this "private" monopoly goes on to charge people for living within the city and making use of this transfer of stolen property then this is an apt pretext for the formation of a new state. I think I'm bringing up a perfectly reasonable concern and the clash would be very real if such a scenario were to play out.

Then how are cities to be owned?

As a whole, they aren't. I see it more as a somewhat interconnected accumulation of individual cases of ownership. A voluntary city isn't owned by someone, it's the emergent product of multiple interactions. Different people own different portions of it; in short, the city is decentralized and simultaneously maintained as a whole through a degree of voluntary federation, but noone has a legitimate claim to the city as such.

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Juan replied on Tue, Dec 2 2008 4:04 PM
Sorry Stranger, you don't understand what property is. I suggest you edit your previous post and delete all allusions to "I don't care about who or what is legitimate", otherwise it would be painfully clear that you constantly contradict yourself.

February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church.
Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."

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Juan replied on Tue, Dec 2 2008 4:06 PM
As a side note, this private city uh stuff is not what the libertarian 'inventor' of market anarchism, Molinari, advocated. A private city is not the same thing as competing PDAs operating on the same geographical area. A private city is simply monarchy, not anarcho-capitalism. And the claim that a private city can be built and maintained on a voluntary basis is highly dubious.

February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church.
Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."

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Brainpolice:

 

As a whole, they aren't. I see it more as a somewhat interconnected accumulation of individual cases of ownership. A voluntary city isn't owned by someone, it's the emergent product of multiple interactions. Different people own different portions of it; in short, the city is decentralized and simultaneously maintained as a whole through a degree of voluntary federation, but noone has a legitimate claim to the city as such.

That's not an answer to how roads are to be owned.

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Juan replied on Tue, Dec 2 2008 4:13 PM
why the hell would everyone in the city voluntary sell their property to this single person?
Also, where would a monarch like Stranger get the money to buy a city...? Let's see...I'd like to buy Dresden or maybe Berlin...How much would that cost ?

February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church.
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Juan:
As a side note, this private city uh stuff is not what the libertarian 'inventor' of market anarchism, Molinari, advocated. A private city is not the same thing as competing PDAs operating on the same geographical area. A private city is simply monarchy, not anarcho-capitalism. And the claim that a private city can be built and maintained on a voluntary basis is highly dubious.

Right. My understanding of market anarchism is a bit more aterritorial in that the option of which organizations or associations to join or patronize isn't as tied down to chunky territories. I could theoretically live next door to someone who patronizes a different defense association then me. The whole point is to have free competition and hence choice, not monopoly.

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Brainpolice:
Right. My understanding of market anarchism is a bit more aterritorial in that the option of which organizations or associations to join or patronize isn't as tied down to chunky territories. I could theoretically live next door to someone who patronizes a different defense association then me. The whole point is to have free competition and hence choice, not monopoly.

Why do you keep talking about houses as if that's relevant? You're not even talking about the right thing. You have absolutely no idea how land is produced and organized. You have no ground to provide any opinion on the topic of land ownership. You don't even know how roads are made.

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Stranger:

Brainpolice:
Right. My understanding of market anarchism is a bit more aterritorial in that the option of which organizations or associations to join or patronize isn't as tied down to chunky territories. I could theoretically live next door to someone who patronizes a different defense association then me. The whole point is to have free competition and hence choice, not monopoly.

Why do you keep talking about houses as if that's relevant? You're not even talking about the right thing. You have absolutely no idea how land is produced and organized. You have no ground to provide any opinion on the topic of land ownership. You don't even know how roads are made.

What the hell are you talking about?

I have no idea how land is produced and organized (land isn't technically produced, btw, it's improved upon or transformed)? The basis for what I'm saying is in fact Rothbardian property rights theory, which inherently involves ethical questions of legitimacy in terms of the aquisition and transfer of property titles. I don't think the views expressed by me in this thread are particularly deviant from Rothbard's expressed views on questions of land monopoly in The Ethics of Liberty.

I don't now how roads are made? You mean the specific mechanics of the entire process of production? I don't need to know that in order to understand the application of general economic principles. However, this isn't a purely utilitarian economic matter, despite your apparent tendency to treat it as such. This is a question of libertarian ethics that you keep brushing aside.

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Brainpolice:

Who in their right mind would just give up their home so that some single person can achieve more dominion over the city? Good luck doing that without something along the lines of imminent domain. Sorry, I'm going to keep my home, I like it. I'd prefer not to pass ownership of my home over to some man in an ivory tower, and as soon as he tries to claim ownership over my home I am going to resist him and view him as a criminal.

Brainpolice:
why the hell would everyone in the city voluntary sell their property to this single person?

Conclusion: you do not know what you are talking about.

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Stranger:

Brainpolice:

Who in their right mind would just give up their home so that some single person can achieve more dominion over the city? Good luck doing that without something along the lines of imminent domain. Sorry, I'm going to keep my home, I like it. I'd prefer not to pass ownership of my home over to some man in an ivory tower, and as soon as he tries to claim ownership over my home I am going to resist him and view him as a criminal.

Brainpolice:
why the hell would everyone in the city voluntary sell their property to this single person?

Conclusion: you do not know what you are talking about.

I know exactly what I'm talking about, and you're stonewalling my challenge to your views. If you're going to be advocvating individual ownership over an entire city, then you're going to have to explain how the multiplicity of current individual owners within the city are going to transfer their property to this individual.

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Brainpolice:

I know exactly what I'm talking about, and you're stonewalling my challenge to your views. If you're going to be advocvating individual ownership over an entire city, then you're going to have to explain how the multiplicity of current individual owners within the city are going to transfer their property to this individual.

They aren't because we're not even talking about the same property.

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It is up to individuals to defend what they claim as their property. The government, neither federal or state, has no right to maintain any border policy.
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Stephen replied on Wed, Dec 3 2008 8:59 PM

Juan:
I'd only point out that since third world governments are exceedingly inefficient they also fail at organizing mass-murder

Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sudan, China?

Juan:
unlike the american, german, british, etc, governments, which have collectively killed...what ? A hundred million of their own 'citizens' in wars ? More ?

Less.

Juan:
Are you going to show that my previous posts are fallacious ?

I think I've already showed it's inconsistent with private property.

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Juan replied on Wed, Dec 3 2008 9:05 PM
I think I've already showed it's inconsistent with private property.
No you haven't. I showed that there a few problems with 'libertarians' using the state to enforce their 'libertarian' immigration policy.

February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church.
Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."

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Juan replied on Wed, Dec 3 2008 9:07 PM
SF:
Less.
So, how many (as if it mattered much...) ? And how can you explain that the oh so civilzed westerners burn people alive as a passtime (it's called firebombing I think).

February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church.
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Stephen replied on Wed, Dec 3 2008 9:09 PM

Brainpolice:

Stephen Forde:

Brainpolice:
It is not libertarian to make exclusivity with one's own property uniformly compulsory

Property is automatically exclusive, unless its use by a non-owner is invited.

As for the rest of your argument, lets apply it to violent crime instead of immigration.

 

The closest thing one can come to a libertarian anti-[violent crime] position would be to say that you personally prefer to restrict [violent crime] on your own legitimate property, and others are free to be more inclusive with their own legitimate property. It reduces to a claim of personal preferance that has nothing to do with libertarianism in any direct sense. 

But you cannot, on any libertarian grounds, argue for state-enforced [violent crime] restriction, for [violent crime] restriction as a uniform legal standard. It is not libertarian to support the reineforcement of the state's territorial dominion or legal jurisdiction. The state can not be treated as a legitimate owner in a libertarian analysis, nor is the illusion that the taxpayers are the collective owners of the state defensible or practical (such a thing would be impossible to accurately allocate, especially considering intergenerational issues, and as a matter of state policy it would reduce to a gigantic redistribution scheme if it were attempted to be allocated).

Comparing the act of migration as such to violent crime is absurd on its face. Sorry. You're being highly disingenous and evaded the argument entirely.

 

Your argument is not very good. You use arguments against restricted immigration that could be applied to other issues, and yet arrive at different conclusions for the same arguments. I'm not being disingenuous at all. I just think that, assuming that you are in favour of government enforcing laws against violent crime, you have an overall inconsistent position. I'm just using a roundabout method to bring it out.

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Stephen replied on Wed, Dec 3 2008 9:43 PM

Brainpolice:

Intervention X is the expropriation of private property and intervention Y is the partial return of control over that property. Isn't that libertarian?

State migration restriction is not a partial return of control to rightful owners, it is the exercise of illegitimate state control.

You're a functional statist.

State migration restriction, excepting invited migration, is return of control to rightful owners. Plain and simple. It leaves the choice in their hands. The state no longer exercises its discretion in the matter.

Brainpolice:
There is no way to accurately allocate this to the tax-payers (can I sell my share please?), it is functionally without a legitimate owner, and you are falling back on collectivism. The dejure decider in the scenario is either the state or the state acting on the behalf of a special interest, given that it s unclear who owns what and there are conflicts of preferance among the tax-payers to begin with. This has been pointed out ad nauseum.

No way according to who? This is a problem solved by sucession and desocialization. Or do u lefties have a theory that covers this?

Brainpolice:

And neither will the lefty multicultural libertarians.

The nationalists aren't libertarians to begin with, they function as paleoconservatives.

They seem to be more in favour of liberty than u.

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