2046

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economi...t-collapse.html ECB may have to turn to 'nuclear option' to prevent Southern European debt collapse [...] Mr Cailloux said the ECB should resort to its “nuclear option” of intervening directly in the markets to purchase government bonds. This is prohibited in normal times under the EU Treaties but the bank can buy a wide range of assets under its “structural operations” mandate in times of systemic crisis, theoretically in unlimited quantities. [...] The issue of the ECB buying bonds is a political minefield. Any such action would inevitably be viewed in Germany as a form of printing money to bail out Club Med debtors, and the start of a slippery slope towards in an “inflation union”. But the ECB may no longer have any choice. There is a growing view that nothing short of a monetary blitz — or “shock and awe” on the bonds markets — can halt the spiral under way.

Galtonian? Did I miss something?

Non sequitur + retardation. Edit: and I love how you handle any criticism by jumping into the “I was fighting for your freedoms back in the 'Nam, you dirty hippie!” line, that is so predictable coming from the average conservative, usually when espousing some anti-freedom policy.

Such terrible reasoning. Look at the words you are using and the package-dealing you are committing. An individual can defend his property from trespass. A group of individuals can defend their property from trespass. A group of people can get together and exclude any foreigner from having the right of way. But you do not get to decide who someone else gets to include, and you don't have the right to use the government to force another individual to refuse people he otherwise wants to include. Borders are not magic. Borders are not special. Borders are not God. "The nation" is not magic. "The nation" is not special. The nation-state is not God. We've already answered the question of what borders are legitimately multiple times, but since you're not going to answer to these arguments and just keep reciting that "the nation" gets to decide who crosses "its" (actually you use "it's") border and control how many of them damned brown-skinned wetbacks get to come in so as not to take our jerbs and pollute our communities with their filthy foreign language, I won't bother linking to them again.

I disagree. That would be due to an improper distinction between interventionism and defensive/retaliatory action. The government is correct in cracking down on trespassers attempting to invade your property because you have the right to exclude people. But you don't have the right to force others to exclude people because you don't own the entire country as private property. Thus the reductio ad absurdum for international immigration restriction applies for interstate immigration restriction, interregional immigration restriction, interlocal immigration restriction, etc.

The first argument is made from Marxist exploitation theory, which rests on the disreputed Labor Theory of Value, which basically states that value is intrinsic in the amount of labor required to make an item and any profit or surplus extracted from the amount paid to the worker and the amount taken by the owner is exploitation of the worker by the capitalist. His complaint about monopolies are essentially a corrolary of his exploitation beliefs. You need to point to the flaws in the root of Marxist exploitation and provide an alternative, the classical liberal theory of exploitation (which Objectivism agrees with and indeed validates and expounds upon) is that he who initiates physical force is the exploiter, and he who is robbed, looted, or plundered from is the exploited. So in number 1 there is no exploitation because the surplus value is the amount willing market participants voluntarily agreed upon, the worker accepts it voluntarily because of his time preference, and everyone gains. In number 2, there is no exploitation because a single-seller of a good or service has no coercion involved under laissez-faire unless there is some interventionism present, and as long as there is the freedom of entry, the seller must provide a value or face competition, and no Keynesian "faith in greedy people" is required. Sorry those are big run-on sentences, but then again I am terrible at debating.

He arrived at it through reductio ad absurdum. Because you don't have a right to violently impede the freedom of migration of an individual over property that you do not control because he lacks "merit" to freely deal with people that are otherwise disposed of dealing with him.

Why do you ask? Is that because the brown-skinned foreigners in Mexico are generally conservative Catholics and the brown-skinned foreigners from Iran are evil ragheads? We would apply the principles involved to Iran just like we would apply to any other country, including the proper foreign policy toward a nation we are resisting aggression from. A free immigration policy is the only thing concurrent with the proper, rational foreign policy. Why in the world would you permit immigration from a nation you are at war with, except to allow assylum to be given to those who can find it? The comment is thus meaningless, and goes back to the same "we'll start respecting the principle of individual rights when we live under individual rights" meme.

I get you, Markoso, and I wish there were some academic response to give definite shape to the "I want damn little." Although the chapter 20 of Capitalism by George Reisman goes a long way, I would like to get Objectivists to focus on specifics. What kind of fortifications are needed to protect from external aggression? What kind of ports-of-entry are needed and where to put them? What kind of screening and how to go about that? Should we require a cirminal history, medical history, should we require a ticket of invitation of some king from a current resident to prove he is not trespassing, etc. How do we verify the immigrant is not working with a foreign government or engaged in espionage? What do we do with the immigrant that doesn't know how to behave and respect rights? Should we require a current resident to assume liability for any damage to property caused by the immigrant for a time?

It doesn't matter to me whether the country is "mostly rights respecting" or not, it has no right to initiate force. And if in breaking that unjust law, the outlaw does not himself initiate violence, then he is justified in his action and the State is wrong to punish him.

Wow. That is just fantastic. To equate breaking an immoral law with rejecting reason as the means with which men should deal with one another defintely falls under the "war is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength" category. The issue, as Binswanger notes, in disobeying unjust laws (laws which represent the initiation of physical force) is whether or not breaking that law involves the use of force. If it does not, then it not only is not immoral but an embrace of reason as a means of human interaction (granted the action is rational, like migrating to further your life, and not like smoking crack for example.) You are under no moral obligation to follow this law, and neither are they. Again, as already stated, breaking an immoral law is not showing disregard for "the law" as a concept or as a category, but simply showing disregard for that specific law. The only laws one is obliged to follow are objective laws (ie,. laws that prohibit the initiation of force or fraud.) NO OTHER LAW is moral, and NO OTHER LAW is one obliged to follow. It may be practical to follow certain unjust laws, but you are not under a duty to follow them.

That sounds like any conservative Republican boilerplate. The "Rule of Law" is not God. There is no moral obligation to obey an immoral law simply because it is "the law." Breaking an immoral law is not showing disregard for "the law" as a concept or as a category, but simply showing disregard for that specific law. A law which has no legitimacy may morally be freely broken and those who do so and thereby pursue values, and rationally further their lives, are heroic. Objectivists of all people ought to recognize this and hold them up as so, not act as xenophopic nationalists act.

Okay, I'll pull it. You do know that under the a proper system of immigration that we are advocating, there is no obligation for you to associate with those who you do not want to? To the extent that you have to presently is not a problem of free immigration and is not a justification for restricting free immigration. If you do not want to live near too many Mexican, mestizo, Hispanics, Latinos, Spanish-speakers, blacks, gays, Asians, Indians, Hindus, Muslims, etc. that is perfectly legal and you and all those who see things your way may get together and agree to restrict property titles to allow no association with these groups, or enact contractual limitations with regard to dealing with these groups, or enact voluntary zoning that requires adjacent property owners to vote on whether to allow any given foreigner to buy or rent, or contracts or zoning which restricts which groups may be admitted (no sale or rent to Hispanics for example), or restrict the right of way to inlanders and exclude foreigners, etc. You have the right to do this, but you do not have the right to ask the government to restrict and forcibly exclude foriegners from willing individuals that are disposed to associating with them. Under what we are advocating, there will be as much immigration or non-immigration, inclusivity or exclusivity, desegregation or segregation, non-discrimination or discrimination as individual owners or owners associations desire. Now what about me, as an immigrant, living my life and pursing my values, trading with those who desire it, what do I take from you, to which you are otherwise entitled by right to defend? What about my existence, just being left alone, would take anything from you, that would justify violent suppression of my actions?

You all need to work on your reading comprehension.

According to me? When did I say the government can't own something?

We are not trying to have anything both ways, we are only trying to have something one way: individual rights. We've already dealt with this "for the border to exist..." "for a nation to exist..." argument here and here, you seem incapable of answering to it.

We responded to the "right to control its borders" argument already. You are saying a nation is a sovereign entity that gets to rule over its people and decide who they deal with. We are not saying that there is no such thing as a border, or a government, or a society, or a nation. We are saying that a nation is not an entity (but a collection of individuals) a government (or the "nation") has no right to control who deals with who freely. We are saying that only individual property owners have the right to include or exclude people freely, and the task of a protection agency (the government) is to regocnize and protect that right by not forcibly including (welfarism) and not forcibly excluding (restricted trade, restricted immigration) those who freely deal with each other.

Again, that is an argument against the welfare state, not for restrictions to immigration. Apart from welfare, there is no "drain" except when the government enacts protectionism and restrictions to the free flow of labor (in addition to its insane spending and taxation.) That site promotes protectionism, not laissez-faire. If restricting immigration helps the economy, then why not restrict interregional and interlocal immigration? Just as different wage rates exist between the US and Mexico, Haiti, or China, for instance, such differences also exist between New York and Alabama, or between Manhattan, the Bronx, and Harlem. Thus, if it were true that international restrictions to migration could make an entire nation prosperous and strong, it must also be true that interregional and interlocal migration control could make regions and localities prosperous and strong. In fact, this is something enacted in many parts of the USSR, including the forcible assignment and relocation of entire populations. Why not just assign a perfect number of laborers to each part of the United States, so that nothing gets "drained" and make it illegal for anyone to go anywhere unless the government's planners approve of it?

I could vote for that, if it were just that they were asked to show they have permission or a right to be here. (Although I don't think employment ought to be a necessity. They can easily have purchased some property or rented someone's property and then proceed to look for work, or just a show of permission to stay with a resident already here.) I might even consider a plan which requires for resident alien status a citizen to have buisness with them or a citizen to accept the personal sponsorship by a resident citizen and his assumption of liability for all property damage caused by the immigrant.

This is the actual absurd claim: that immigrants are stealing from you just by being here. You don't argue for a later intervention due to a prior intervention. If both welfarism and restricted immigration constitute interventionism, then they should both be repealed. Otherwise, as Cogito indicated, pandora's box is open and anything can be justified. The argument being that we should restrict immigration, because sometime in the future, an immigrant might go on welfare. It cannot be denied that any children born today might, some years into the future, avail themselves of the State's welfare programs. But if we can preclude the entry of immigrants on this ground, this goes as well for having babies. Becoming pregnant ought to be a crime, on these grounds. At least the Chinese Communists limited people to one child per couple. If opponents of open immigration on the ground that they might become welfare recipients are logically consistent, they would have to oppose any childbearing, whatever. Nobody has said all illegals should be declared citizens either. It is important to make a distinction between "citizen" and "resident alien" and if you actually want to pass a helpful law, pass one exluding the latter from all welfare entitlements in addition to open immigration.

Only in regards to preventing force-initiators from entering (criminals, trespassers, terrorists, communicable diseases, agents of hostile governments, etc.) As far as background checks go, I could perhaps be persuaded by a system presenting border agents with documents showing the person isn't belonging to any of these groups and has permission to travel the way and has permission or ownership of property in his destination, but this goes back to my previous post in regards to what specific concrete processes should a system be comprised of (and the answer is, there are many suggestions, but Objectivists haven't really been focused on proper government planning rather than the principles involved.)

This is what happens when you either just don't pay attention to anything we've been saying, or don't consider what the concept "interventionism" consists of, wihch is to say, you are failing to make a distinction between the initiation and the defensive/retaliatory use of force. The government's use of defensive and retaliatory force does not represent interventionism. In such cases, the government is simply doing its entirely proper, strictly limited job of protecting individual rights from the initiation of physical force. The concept of interventionism applies only to instances in which the government uses physical force not in a defensive or retaliatory capacity, but as an aggressor, that is, uses physical force against people who have not initiated its use. This is what the government does every time it forbids any voluntary, contractual relationship, such as the offer and acceptance of a price or wage, or products or working conditions, that the parties judge to be in their respective self-interest to offer and accept. George Reisman "What is Interventionism?"

Okay, since this is an oft-repeated canard, I will address the "what is a border for" argument. Again, none of us are using the term "open borders" but both of you have. It's just a smear term invented in the 60's and 70's by neoconservatives, in the same way "isolationist" was invented by the Old Left to smear America Firsters. No one says that we should do away with national borders, or that anyone should be allowed to walk across any place he pleases regardless of whose property it is. What we are saying is that only individual property owners have the right to keep people off their property. The job of the government is only to protect rights, so specifically in this issue, to crack down on people who do not know how to "keep off!" from an external field, that is to prevent both forced integration and forced exclusion. That and only that is the goal of a proper immigration policy. This means a border is required, as the representation of the jurisdiction in which private property owners are under the protection of a given government. That is all. To argue that the State has the power to decide who can deal with whom is the in effect declare that the State is the owner of all property and/or that the government has the power to forcibly exclude, that is, to keep other people away without regard to their right to integrate voluntarily with willing residents. By the same token, we reject all welfare or so-called "civil rights" legislation that effects forcible integration among people who do not wish to deal with or include one another.

You could conceive of a system in multiple different ways that would be consistent with rights. I agree that that isn't necessarily the case that "check ins" or blood tests or such things would be required, perhaps only the immigrant need present records proving he has no criminal history or sickness and is not an agent of an aggressive government accompanied with a ticket proving that he is either a property owner, or has permission to be on a legal resident's property. I'm going to invoke the "I'm not a government planner, but just outlining the principles involved" argument here. I think there still need be border patrol agents where applicable to protect property owners from trespass and invasion by external threats. This is the kind of area where I would like to see Objectivists debating on, rather than rehashing again the open immigration vs restricted immigration argument, beating a dead horse to death. Most of us know the reasons for these things already, but there is a lot we don't know. We know where we are, we know where we want to go, but how to get from here to there, and what specific concrete processes should a system be comprised of?

That's because you suggested that the State should deny freedom of migration to an individual on the basis that other individuals want to speak Spanish or not assimilate. It is a non-issue in terms of government immigration policy, in the same way that a an individual is free to contract with or not to contract with people on the basis of their race, but a rational person knows that the "melting pot" strategy is to his advantage. Multiculturalism needs to be ideologically rejected as racism and any other form of irrationality, but the government has no moral say in which cultural ideas get accepted and which get rejected at the barrel of its gun, and its proper policy is open immigration.