What is with all the immigrant hate?

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xahrx replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 2:42 PM

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Nice dodge.  I like it how you completely avoid answering the point despite a rugged tendency to the verbose post.

The point which you failed to address was not whether the police themselves may cause harm and screw up, which they do, but whether or not the principled anarchists here would truly take their arguments to the extreme and not avail themselves of government police 'services' in such a situation because two wrongs don't make a right.  An anarchist compromises the second he uses a public roadway rather than investing in his own personal ultralite, and every time he patronizes a store which the government exercised eminent domain to allow to be built.  The argument is not whether public roads are good or legitamate or a service better provided by the private sector, which they likely are, nor whether or not eminent domain is justifiable, which it isn't.  The point is the practical reality of living in a less than ideal world while fighting for something better, and running into disagreements with occasional idealogues who somehow think their level of compromise is the right one, and anyone who compromises more is too unprincipled and less too utopian.

So perhaps you can pull your head out of your nether regions and realize not everyone who disagrees with you is promoting a wholesale attack on your prescious ideology.

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xahrx replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 2:49 PM

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IrishOutlaw:

The whole problem, what you at least seem to be missing, is that just because the government exists is no reason for us to use it to our advantage. That is no different than any of the other collectivists.

Then never leave your house.  No one is forcing you to use government provided roadways or transit or police or anything else.  Do not leave your house, have everything delivered via private, outlaw helicopter pilots who never file flight plans, never post on the internet since, as it was started with government funds, it is unprincipled to do so, etc., etc., etc.  You have used the government to your advantage a trillion times in your life either directly or passively.  As has everyone.  Only in the totally privatized utopia of anarcho capitalism does no one use the government to their advantage.  In reality the government will likely continue to provide roads, police, and a court system at a bare minimum.  And, as principled anarchists, I expect you and BP to never, ever, ever use such things even should the desire or situation arise where it would benefit you.  It would make you collectivists.

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xahrx replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 2:53 PM

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IrishOutlaw:

How does that have anything to do with my post? I don't remember calling anyone that takes from the government being the champion of liberty.

True, but anyone who tries to enforce an existing law in order to stop the mass redistribution of his wealth to people he doesn't want it to go to is a collectivist.  The bottom line is that if a law were enacted that strictly outlawed all corporate welfare, while not necessarily the libertarian paradigm because you're still using the government to enforce it, enforcement of that law would likely leave people a lot better off, seeing as how millions if not billions of their dollars would not be given away to banks, corporate farms, sugar manufacturers, etc., anymore.  Of course the law itself would take some enforcement dollars and technically expand the government's powers.  But it could pass and could be enforced if enough people made enough politicians understand their jobs depended on it.  And they would be a lot better off for it.

But alas, it would be collectivist.

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Niccolò replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 5:41 PM

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xahrx:

Kent C:

Paul speaks about individualism trumping collectivism while having a collectivist immigration policy.  How would you like me to view it?

I couldn't care less how you view it.  As I've said in other threads, the government is social herpes.  We've got it and we're not getting rid of it.  So what you're asking is essentially, "How do you preach health when you have an incurable but nonfatal disease?"

Easily: With a knife - the knife of revolution. 

I'm very suspect of the "libertarians" here who call for state action while also professing the state as incompetant, immoral, and "diseased."

What garbage, what utter, hypocritical trash! And the things they say aren't too good either.

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Kent C replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 6:12 PM

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So, this morning I donate $50 to lewrockwell.com.  This afternoon they post this:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T-iJKwskH4&eurl=http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/

 Any way to stop payment on a donation?

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reidbump replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 6:59 PM

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Come on Kent, look at Rome if you want to see what unfettered immigration does to nations.  Look at the recent Australian and French riots.  There is a proper role of government even for Libertarians, and protection is a proper role of government.       

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Brainpolice replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 7:17 PM

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reidbump:

Come on Kent, look at Rome if you want to see what unfettered immigration does to nations.  Look at the recent Australian and French riots.  There is a proper role of government even for Libertarians, and protection is a proper role of government.       

Rome seems to be an example of the disasterous effects of imperialism, not any disastrious effects of open immigration.

Unless we wish to make some Nockean distinction between "state" and "government", there is a proper role for government only for minarchist libertarians. Libertarian anarchists, however, reject the institution of government altogether on both ethical and practical grounds. Generally, we tend to argue that the government cannot even provide the minarchist functions of defense and arbitration without initiating aggression (or the threat of aggression) in some way. So we reject minarchism as inherently self-contradictary in that the means necessary to have a minarchist government are in contradiction to its very purpose. We also tend to argue that, if the laws of economic hold true for health care and education, so too should they for the provision of arbitration and security, and therefore there is no practical reason why they should not be left to free competition.

But this immigration debate, unfortunately in my view, is not primarily one between anarchists and minarchists, because apparently there are many anarchists who are attempting to justify immigration restriction (although a handful of minarchists still tout open borders). In my view, if things were as they "should" be, the immigration debate should be primarily between the anarchists (open borders, open immigration) and the minarchists (closed borders, restricted immigration). But particularly due to the influence of Hoppe on this issue, immigration restriction seems to be the dominant position even among anarchists within this particular "circle". And there is also a strategic debate among anarchists as to wether or not the state should be used in the present with regaurd to this issue. If I wanted to be really harsh, I would characterize this as a debate between libertarians and paleoconservatives, but I'm not going to say that someone is not a libertarian if they happen to be wrong on this one particular issue.

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Kent C replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 7:20 PM

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Rome fell because they were busy occupying other countries and debasing their money. Rome's immigrants hardly had "free migration", you had to earn your way in.  Not comparable. I'm not a historian so I could be all wet.

As for Austria and France, there are other issues involved there as well.  The United States and Canada are both countries created by open immigration (and with the US, forced immigration), where would we be without pizza, chili and tacos?  The last of my family to immigrate into N. America came in the mid-19th century.  Maybe my ancentors should have come up with the concept of "illegal" vs. "legal" immigrants first? 

 I should get back to reading all the debate points here but been sidetracked.  I'm still stuck with if the problem is truly the welfare state, as Paul claims,  then why not focus on that rather then the immigrants.  The ad makes the immigrant the bad guy.  And I do not believe the vast majority of them are migrating for a free ride. Those who say they are offer anectdotal evidence.  The appeal of the ad is entirely to one's xenophobia, which gives some support charges of racism.

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jtucker replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 7:24 PM

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You know, this thread is interesting but the title is excessively inflammatory.  

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Kent C replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 8:08 PM

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Sorry, but I find it accurate. Certainly not in all cases but in most.  Wish it wasn't so, this isn't the movement I've been supporting the past twenty five years. BTW, my wife just pointed out that the policy offered by Ron Paul is excessively inflammatory.  The ad certainly is.  Maybe you'd have to view it as a libertarian who's also outside of the U.S.  I guarantee you, its not going down well here in Canada.

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Niccolò replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 8:17 PM

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Kent C:

So, this morning I donate $50 to lewrockwell.com.  This afternoon they post this:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T-iJKwskH4&eurl=http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/

 Any way to stop payment on a donation?

I know, it's so bad. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BAD.

I'm watching this kind of hot lady endorse him now, "I want my children to grow up in the nation our forefathers intended..."

Yeah, so... basically, if you're Catholic, get out.

Kent C:

Sorry, but I find it accurate. Certainly not in all cases but in most.  Wish it wasn't so, this isn't the movement I've been supporting the past twenty five years. BTW, my wife just pointed out that the policy offered by Ron Paul is excessively inflammatory.  The ad certainly is.  Maybe you'd have to view it as a libertarian who's also outside of the U.S.  I guarantee you, its not going down well here in Canada.

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jtucker replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 8:25 PM

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Yes, that's an unfortunate ad.  

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xahrx replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 8:37 PM

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Kent C:

I should get back to reading all the debate points here but been sidetracked.  I'm still stuck with if the problem is truly the welfare state, as Paul claims,  then why not focus on that rather then the immigrants.

If a gas leak catches fire and explodes and sets your pants on fire, the primary problem is the leak.  But you are still going to take care of your pants.

And yes, the horror of that ad, which essentially said we should at least know who is coming over the border, not tolerate law breaking, and perhaps not invite plane loads of young muslim men over since that seems to be the demographic that has some severe problems with us right now.

The horror, the sheer, unmitigatable horror...

Bottom line is there is a difference between the past waves of immigration and the current one, because in the past despite some tendency toward politics, the motivation for immigrants to come here was to earn a living the economic way.  These days a lot more people, including Americans and in my experience a ton of the people who immigrate, see the political means as acceptable and even more desirable that the economic means.  It's not about what you can earn, it's about what you think you are owed.  The problems illegals cause for my company in Texas and Arizona are insane.  The money we spend, the lawsuits we deal with, the turnover is insane, the drug use rampant, the thievery slightly less rampant.  And we try to reach out to schools and community centers to get reliable immigrants, people who are here legally and looking to earn and buck, and I as an HR person can put a career path in front of them if they're willing to learn.  You only have to wade through so many bottles of piss inexplicably used and left filled on the factory floor, with a sizable enough bathroom well within reach no less, before you start wondering just what the hell is going on.

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reidbump replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 8:42 PM

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"I'm watching this kind of hot lady endorse him now, "I want my children to grow up in the nation our forefathers intended..."

Yeah, so... basically, if you're Catholic, get out."

Yes, I'm sure that is exactly what they meant with the First Amendment.  "Freedom of Religion for all...Prostestants."

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reidbump replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 8:45 PM

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Your views are interesting.  I'm relatively new to this site and I'm just now learning about the distinctions between the different libertarians.  I don't really understand the anarchist view as I think it is self-destructive, but I respect your right to think what you do and I find that you also make some very good points.  

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Kent C replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 8:51 PM

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xahrx:

Kent C:

I should get back to reading all the debate points here but been sidetracked.  I'm still stuck with if the problem is truly the welfare state, as Paul claims,  then why not focus on that rather then the immigrants.

If a gas leak catches fire and explodes and sets your pants on fire, the primary problem is the leak.  But you are still going to take care of your pants.

xahrx, you've got a way with words I'll give you that.  But we're not on the same track. I can certainly see your point of view from a utilitarian perspective but I'm a hopeless libertarian ideologue.  The libertarian would oppose gov't intervention even when there might be some claimed benefits for supporting it. But as we know, government intervention rarely lead where the planners think it will. 

 It would be entirely consistent had RP said there would be no benefits immigrants (legal or otherwise).  No aggression in that.  Building a wall and tossing people out when they're not violent is aggression.  Never thought I'd see the day I'd be arguing this with libertarians.  Where is the young Rothbard when you need him?

Guess the philosophy is evolving, you know, like liberalism did in the 19th century. 

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Brainpolice replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 8:56 PM

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Guess the philosophy is evolving, you know, like liberalism did in the 19th century. 

Or, so far as I can tell, devolving, as liberalism did in the 19th century.

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Kent C replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 8:56 PM

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reidbump - I started as a fan of Milton Friedman, evolved into a minarchist (reading Rothbard) and finally concluded we don't really need a government.  I don't support pulling the rug out from the State but wearing it away, so I stay engaged to the political process and accept ideas that offer to cut back the state (ie: aggression) but won't support those that will increase it as suggested by the closed border folks.

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Kent C replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 8:57 PM

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Brainpolice:

Guess the philosophy is evolving, you know, like liberalism did in the 19th century. 

Or, so far as I can tell, devolving, as liberalism did in the 19th century.

Hence, the winky face. 

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Brainpolice replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 9:08 PM

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Kent C:

reidbump - I started as a fan of Milton Friedman, evolved into a minarchist (reading Rothbard) and finally concluded we don't really need a government.  I don't support pulling the rug out from the State but wearing it away, so I stay engaged to the political process and accept ideas that offer to cut back the state (ie: aggression) but won't support those that will increase it as suggested by the closed border folks.

Since we're doing personal histories here: I admitedly started out as more or less a left-liberal, evolved into a minarchist with cultural left tendencies, read a lot of Rothbard and free market economics material, ran into major cognitive dissonance (was wrestling between minarchism and anarchism in my head for a while) and finally concluded in favor of market anarchism. I further evolved as an anarchist to accept a pluralist type of anarchism without adjectives perspective and have adopted an agorist, non-voting, anti-pragmatist outlook on strategy. I've also developed a fairly Objectivist (albiet non-Randian) type of philosophy to justify my anarchism. In retrospect, as a minarchist I was an anarchist in denial the whole time. So here I am.

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douglocke replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 9:15 PM

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Ron Paul Ad: "No more student visas from terrorist nations"

So Ron Paul is keeping a list of "terrorist nations" ?  I wonder what nations are on his list?

D.L.

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jtucker replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 9:25 PM

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 I seriously doubt that this is his position.   

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Kent C replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 9:44 PM

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Jeffery, what is with these TV ads?  The YouTube ads are wonderful, I gag watching the TV ads.  Okay, different audience...just makes me glad I sold my TV right after the invasion of Iraq.  

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JimS replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 9:46 PM

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"instead of spending their money in the country where it was earned it is sent out to other countries. i believe you get the point but want to turn it around and use it against me. nice try but it doesn't make sense. they are taking more out than they are returning. if they spent earned money here it would be a wash. "

huh?  Try that again.  If I put half of my earnings in a mattress, somehow I'm taking from the society??  Shoot, If I counterfeit money and print 50% more of my legit income, that would be contribution??  What has a common man's understanding of economics come to nowadays?  Now if you can understand that if someone who can sock away money into mattress is actually delivering more goods and services to his fellow men than he is consuming, then we can continue: if instead of burying the mattress in the back yard, the person dig a big hole across the border . . . what difference does it make?   If a Mexican sends money over to his relative in Mexico, that means he is consuming less here than he is delivering here, and his relative is consuming more than the relative is delivering in Mexico.  How simple does it have to be?

"You need to go down and hang around your local ER on any given evening."

I was a at a local ER less than a year ago for a borken finger nail.  The bill came to $2700, for a thumb X-RAY and having to wait for four hours to see three paper pushers who were not even nurses.  There wasn't a single Hispanic in the ER, besides the cleaning guy.   There are all sorts of reasons why medical expenses have gone up: fiat money, third-party-pay clients, restriction on doctor and nurse supply, mulpractice insurance, etc..  Import labor however helps hold cost down not pushing it up.  What's next?  Walmart import goods driving prices up because anecdotal recall expenses??  Get real, without the import, the prices would be a lot higher, just because of all the wasteful paper pushing and protected jobs that we have here.

"your argument is ridicules and deserves no rebutal"

Sure, that's always the most eloquent argument.  The "I'm correct; don't confuse me with facts" argument.  

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JimS replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 9:52 PM

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Theft is not a crime unique to immigrants.  What's next? lock up all people making less than $50k a year because they have a higher propensity to theft?

As for different license plates, making it legal for them to apply and get real license plates would go a long way towards solving the problem.

While we are on the subject of draconian solutions, let's nuke the entire neighborhoods where neighbors would enter your garage and help themselves to your tools, and entire neighborhoods where there are unlicensed cars . . . before such trashy neighborhoods spread into my neighborhood :-)  tongue firmly in cheek of course.

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Kent C replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 9:56 PM

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 Brainpolice - Your experience is very similar to mine.  Also started on the "left" but in my case, the timing was unfortunate.  Lets just say my "lefty" profs didn't take kindly to my transition to quoting from von Mises.  Could go into detail if anyone were really interested, but its not in keeping with this particular discussion.

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JimS replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 10:07 PM

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Then you don't know immigration laws as they currently stand.  If you are a Canadian, you are free to be in the US for 90 days.  In fact, hotels and stores love you if you patronize them, as your spending create new jobs here.  Then on the 91st day, you are an illegal alien for having overstayed your visa.  Now tell me, how on the 91st day, you suddenly become "dangerous to our health and welfare"??  Likewise, if you legally came in on student visa.  Upon your graduation, if you take a job from IBM, you are legal.  However, if you start a company called MBI and hire two people, suddenly you are an illegal alien for violating student visa restrictions on non-participation in business, never mind that you are not only not taking jobs away from US nationals, you are actually creating jobs!  That's how crazy immigration laws are today.  Yes, the hypothetical founder of MBI wouldn't be able to get a driver's license without somehow find a way to push enough paper to make his status legal again.  Big surprise?  Not really, big business always find a way to twist legistlations to benefit themselves: big companies are far more likely to have a dedicated department to handle immigration paper works, so the government leg breakers serve to provide the big companies with virtually exclusive access to that pool of relatively inexpensive talented labor . . . at the expense of US nationals who might have been hired by the startup or US consumers who would have benefitted from the startups of course.

Is that the kind of arbitrary law that we really want to defend? 

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JimS replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 10:16 PM

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Shoudn't the issue be property right enforcement/protection instead?  Making it an immigration issue reminds me of the date rape hysteria of the early 90's: sure, some men do bad things, but that's not a reason to lock up all men until proven innocent.

 ps. note to host:

I may have pressed the wrong button when trying to reply to the post by xahrx; instead of "reply" I may have pressed "report abuse"; please ignore that.  My apologies for any inconvenience; some of the other forums that I read usually have reply button at the lower right. 

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JimS replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 10:39 PM

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Regarding the prison population, how many of them are hard crimes, how many of them are crimes created by the legal process, such as driving without license because they are not legally allowed to have one?  As for DUI, I actually got stopped once, and the rooky cop tried to insinuate that I was driving drunk because my face was flushed after getting pulled over; I hardly drink any alcoholic beverage at all, much less getting drunk ever.  Guess what his first question was?  What was my immigration status.  I was quite dumb-founded . . . that's what my tax money is being used for??  I was tempted to tell him that I pay more in taxes every year than he gets paid wearing those jackboots.

What you have described is symptoms of poverty.  You can easily find youths, US nationals, who shack up in tiny New York apartments beyond their supposed capacity.  That's what being young and being poor means.  Eventually, most of them build up enough wealth to be counted among the middle-class if not upper class; that is, unless we make laws to keep them poor, such as not allowing them to have driver's licenses or jobs.  We used to admire individuals who made themselves upper class upstandign citizens despite their Bohemian origins.   What now?  People have to be born with parents buying them chatels whenever they relocate?

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JimS replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 10:43 PM

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"A thief may send money overseas, he is not giving more to society than he is taking. "

Sure, so can a lottery winner.  Talk about letting a leaf blocking a forest.

"The illegals here use the ER for every conceivable problem."

Is that what the poor do in general?  Like in the inner city or native American reservations, long before there were "massive immigrants."  We libertarians have long advocated a solution to those poverty problems: less government intervention, so the poor can make a decent living on their own.  Taking away driver's licenses and job eligibility are sure ways to make people poor.

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JimS replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 10:55 PM

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Your praise of Japan is at least 25 years out of date.  Nikkei is trading today at 1/3 the value of where it was back in 1989, even before inflation adjustment.  Japan's 27-year recession/depression is largely the result of a demographic catastrophy that is partly due to its restrictive immigration policies.

Botswana is facing the influx of equivalent to 20% of its entire population every year, and the issue is logistics for a farming economy.  When the US has 60 million a year new illegal immigrants, and the US economy revert back to subsistence farming, we can talk about Botswana again.

The entire EU member bloc pretty much has open borders with each other.  A skilled German is certainly far more likely to take a job from a Dutchman than an unskilled laborer from who-knows-where would.  For what it's worth, Hongkong is trying to annex an entire neighboring region (Shenzhen) in order to solve its lack of population growth.  If the policy succeeds, it would nearly double HK population. 

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JimS replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 11:15 PM

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You don't have to be an ideologue to be against immigration-control.  There are very practical reasons why immigration-enforcement is bad:

(1) It makes our money worth less, because labor becomes more expensive in nominal terms; no it won't cause real wage to rise because everything will cost more when you spend your money. 

(2) Enforcing something against people's free will is expensive, and we taxpayers will have to foot the bill; just how expensive? enforcing a ban against a "contraband" that has two legs and a brain is probably going to be much much more expensive than enforcing a ban against bottles of "spirits."

(3) The tools that would be required to enforce a comprehensive immigration control, such as national ID, can be easily turned against US nationals.

It reminds me of the silly politics of  "soak the rich" or "soak the Jew/pogroms" or "soak the Hugenots."  Sure, the target population is a minority, so short-term political goals can potentially be achieved through mob rule, but only at the expense of the population at large committing the violence eventually. . . kinda cutting the nose off to spite the face.  Even if we set aside the opportunity cost of giving up trade with the target population, after the expansion of the state power in order to implement the violence ("enforcement"), the enlarged state will have to be paid for by the remaining population. 

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JimS replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 11:20 PM

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I do not drive benefit from the government when I use public roads.  Considering the wastefulness and corruption of government road contracts, I'd probably have much better roads if I were allowed to pick and choose which private turnpike company I invest in, instead of having to deal with government monopolies.  If you are extored by a mafia for protection money, would you consider yourself deriving benefit from the mafia just by staying alive?

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JimS replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 11:23 PM

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It's highly dependent on how the law is structured.  Laws limiting the power of government are highly libertarian . . . think the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution.  They do not involve additional bureacracy.  Laws providing another layer of tax-eating watchers to watch over existing watchers however would indeed be communistic.

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JimS replied on Sat, Dec 29 2007 11:31 PM

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Rome destroyed itself through imperial adventures, welfare state and monetary debasement.  Without the immigrant labor (in civil economy and in its army), the Roman state probably would have faltered long before when it historically did.  Rome had been recruiting soldiers from Germanic tribes for defense for nearly two centuries before its collapse.  Without those tribesmen pitching in to help Rome, it would have been over-run long before 400AD.

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Niccolò replied on Sun, Dec 30 2007 12:13 AM

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reidbump:

Yes, I'm sure that is exactly what they meant with the First Amendment.  "Freedom of Religion for all...Prostestants."

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newson replied on Sun, Dec 30 2007 1:17 AM

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Kent C:

As for Austria and France, there are other issues involved there as well. 

 

not austria, australia - where i was born and currently live.  we're "crocodile hunter", they're "mozart".

now i've got that off my chest, the "bondi riots" of 2005...

first, as you correctly imagine, this problem had a very long gestation period, and complex causes.  there had been tension between the resident, mainly anglosaxon population of southwest sydney, and the new kids on the block - the moslem lebanese.  the trouble-makers on the moslem side were second-generation migrants, the parents of whom had fled the civil war in lebanon, mid 70's.  they came under government sanctioned refugee programmes, so the illegal argument doesn't hold.  the maronite christian lebanese didn't have any difficulty with integration, but the moslem community's problems certainly predate 9/11 (australian armed forces participated in both "desert storm" and "enduring freedom" operations).

"burka versus bikini on the beach" - was how it was seen superficially, but you would have to go back to see how multiculturalism had been implemented by successive generations, and also have a eye towards the way police have been reluctant to target particular ethnic groups, for fear of racial vilification. youth unemployment, helped along nicely by minimum wages and welfare subsidies, have seen many youths, both anglos and moslems struggle for a sense of  place in society.  many find it in the gangs (surfies or bikies, for the anglos), or in the mosque.

yeah, i like pizza, tacos, and chili, too, but you also get mafiya, 'ndrangeta and triads as side-orders.  and like the usa before the 1930's, australia also experienced mass immigration in the fifties and sixties, with negligible unemployment (no benefits), and excellent economic growth.  different era, different australia.

we've got natural barriers to immigration, but both labor and liberal (left and right) governments have taken a hard line against illegal immigration.  genuine refugees are granted asylum once background checks have been concluded satisfactorily, and economic refugees repatriated immediately.
 

as regards illegal immigration, the biggest offenders arrive with a valid return air-ticket, and are the british and irish. they overstay visas, or work on tourist visas, and they blend in!  so the riot problem is only indirectly connected to the immigration debate, and is a social/cultural/economic question.

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xahrx replied on Sun, Dec 30 2007 7:20 AM

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Kent C:

xahrx, you've got a way with words I'll give you that.  But we're not on the same track. I can certainly see your point of view from a utilitarian perspective but I'm a hopeless libertarian ideologue.  The libertarian would oppose gov't intervention even when there might be some claimed benefits for supporting it. But as we know, government intervention rarely lead where the planners think it will. 

Nor do I expect it to.  The second the welfare benefits are ended and a lot more property is privatized, I'd shift my position and be in favor of much looser border policy.

It would be entirely consistent had RP said there would be no benefits immigrants (legal or otherwise).  No aggression in that.  Building a wall and tossing people out when they're not violent is aggression.  Never thought I'd see the day I'd be arguing this with libertarians.  Where is the young Rothbard when you need him?

RP is trying to win an election though, which means getting more voters, not more libertarians.  Like I said, the world is compromise.  Put simply you can't quote Rothbard, Mill, Mises, Menger, Jefferson, et al, and expect the world to change.  Any action we take in the current, less than ideal world, is by definition a compromise if only because the current world is the one we live in and it simply would not exist were it not for government intervention.  And once more that's not to say the government was necessary for what we have, likely in hindered a lot of developments and in its economic policies redirected a lot of resources which would have been used elsewhere.  But to truly get some change going you do have to work with people with whom you may differ on principle.  Education and the agorist approach has its place, but it's not the entirety of a winning strategy, especially if you want to enjoy some level of freedom in your own time and not just fight for something which may come about decades if not centuries from now.

And, like I said,  I don't consider myself a libertarian, not by a long shot and not anymore.  I consider myself a subversive and an otherwise amused spectator when I'm not involved.

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xahrx replied on Sun, Dec 30 2007 7:38 AM

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JimS:

Shoudn't the issue be property right enforcement/protection instead?  Making it an immigration issue reminds me of the date rape hysteria of the early 90's: sure, some men do bad things, but that's not a reason to lock up all men until proven innocent.

There is the underlying issue: the government is stealing our money through various means and giving it away to various people and groups, from businesses to immigrants to bankers.  Then there are the immediate issues: the problems this can cause.  Even if you take a pure market view then there is some discoverable optimal level of immigration that would exist in a totally privatized society.  With the rampant government violation of property rights, nationalization of land, and the offerring of incentives to illegals in the form of government services, by definition we're going to be dealing with way more immigration than we otherwise would be in an ideal world.  Same with pollution, or driving, etc.  So the point becomes, at least in my view, do you stick to pure principle and fight against the root causes only, or do you divide your attention and fight against the root causes but also seek some stop gap measures to at least make life easier for people who are alive now.  As far as I can tell people have been fighting the root causes, mostly unsuccessfully, since time began.

But then that's the difference between theory and practice.  I can theorize on the web with the best of them, but at the end of the day I have to drive down the government road to a store which might be an eyesore to some and which may have used eminent domain to get built, and buy milk and groceries.  Actually getting something done that might make life better and easier, and promote an overall move toward more liberty, means working with people in the real world who I might not always agree with politically.  If their goals coincide with mine we work together, if not, not.