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Showing all content posted in for the last 365 days.
- Today
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“The Fourteenth] Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States,” wrote associate justice Horace Gray in the majority opinion. The Wong Kim Ark case was the test case for the 14 th amendment picked by the State Dept to kill Chinese emigration into the US , but they ‘lost’. Is Trump trying to gut jus soli or just ensure the domiciled part? Are visitors to the US considered domiciled in the US , come to LA on a Wednesday give birth on Thursday and fly home Sunday as the guardian of an American citizen?
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People born here who remain here become as American as anyone. Why shouldn't we allow them a say?
- Yesterday
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“Having a say” is pretty vague. If you are allowed to argue a political point, you “have a say”. In the simplest case, that would mean “can legally vote” on a government matter. Your definition has a few interesting consequences. First, in confers citizenship to otherwise non-citizen residents of a few municipalities in Maryland and Vermont, and to persons born in American Samoa. You could fix that by changing your definition, or live with the consequences. Second, depending on the state, felony conviction would result in loss of citizenship (temporary or permanent). You might find that attractive. Third, and again maybe this is a good idea from your POV, you can’t become a citizen until you are 18. So oddly, there are no natural born citizens in the US, they only become citizens as adults: minors are inherently stateless, and cannot travel from country to country (no passport!). Also, it’s not legal to vote unless you are registered, therefore natural-born adults who have not yet registered to vote aren’t citizens. Then finally, it turns out that most jurisdictions presuppose an independent determination of citizenship as a prerequisite for voter registration. If any person is automatically allowed to register to vote given proof of majority, then any adult can automatically become a US citizen. This is kind of the reason why the right to vote is, traditionally, independent of citizenship. Maybe you can work out the kinks in your definition, but I think you will just get lost in an infinite dark rabbit-hole if you invert the citizenship-voting horse-cart assembly. Of course there are also proposals for requiring national service and/or land ownership as extra requirements. Rather than trying to redefine an already established concept, I suggest trying to clarify what special privileges and obligations come with citizenship. There are not many in the US. Primarily it reduces to electoral privileges (to vote, and run for office); holding a US passport which enables visa-free travel to some countries (though makes you pay more to enter other countries), and a few more perks related to sponsoring family for immigration. The government can’t directly deport a US citizen except by “due process of law”, but they also can’t do that for a non-citizen, the process just differs (it’s harder to strip a person of citizenship then deport, there’s an added step, not that this would impede the government). So anybody, other than the child of a diplomat, who is born in the US is a citizen. I see you find it absurd that such people can vote. Another absurdity is that US citizens who have left the country but haven’t renounced their citizenship still can vote in US elections. Why should we even allow non-resident voting? Clearly, the solution to your absurdity problem is to restrict voting to resident citizens. Resident have a clear vested interest in proper government of the US, after all they are living here and will suffer the consequences if an insane clown is elected President of the US. Also: non-citizen residents are required to pay income tax, but they have no representation in the government (OMG we fought a bloody Revolutionary War over that point!!!). Solution: voting is tied to residency – not fleeting presence as in the case of a tourist, but reasonably sustained presence in the US. My goal is not to replace jus solis with jus sanguinis, but I understand that is Trump’s goal. So how do you do that? Simple: a constitutional amendment rewriting the 14th amendment. As we will see, when this idiotic order hits SCOTUS. It is absurd that the fact of citizenship enables special government privileges. The purpose of government is not to dole out special favors, it is to protect the rights of individuals by subordinating society to individual morality.
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My definition of a "citizen" is, a person who has a say in how a government is run. Before, I said that when landowners get together for self-defense purposes, they end up forming a government with a jurisdiction. However, there may be people who live on the land, and aren't trespassing, but don't own it. They might still deserve a say in the government because otherwise they might fear that their rights may be infringed. People might also want to be able to buy and sell land without their citizenship hanging in the balance. So non-land-owners might want to be considered citizens. (And sometimes it later happens that land ownership doesn't confer citizenship.) A government (controlled by the people who are already citizens) can have some flexibility in deciding who is a citizen and who is not. This is especially true if the government recognizes the rights of both citizens and non-citizens. If you are a non-citizen and the government already recognizes your rights, there is no pressing need to become a citizen. But it does mean we can rephrase the question of whether we should have birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants. Birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants would mean allowing the children of people who are here illegally to have a say in how the government is run. And that makes it look absurd: why should we allow that? If your goal is to get rid of birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants, it is necessary to consider the exact legal requirements that need to be satisfied in order to reach that goal. Trump is trying to do it by executive order and by making a case before the courts; if that doesn't work, a constitutional amendment will be necessary. But how it's done is a separate question from whether it should be done. Usually we don't hold children responsible for the crimes of their parents, but it seems like rewarding them for the crimes of their parents is also absurd. (To the extent that citizenship is a reward, as opposed to a duty of some kind. It can have aspects of both. The USA has "citizenship-based taxation" and, because of that, imposes onerous reporting requirements on foreign banks; this has led to some controversy about "accidental citizens" who live in other countries without knowing they were born on US territory, and find themselves owing taxes. To his credit, Trump has promised to get rid of citizenship-based taxation, but he will actually have to get Congress to do that.)
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Since I suffer and that may be causing an inability for me to see the context in which individual/state and individual/physical object exhibit similarities, you could perhaps enlighten me. ps though even if you can, I'm not sure it will lead to answer to the question of whether or not citizenship is a moral good
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When two things are partially different, they are not "nothing at all alike". Plainly, there is a similarity between the individual-to-state relation and the individual-to-thing relation, and I might add the same goes for the individual-to-individual relation. You are suffering from a case of D-syndrome discussed in Peikoff's "DIM Hypothesis".
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What point are you trying to make ? A hand is a hand , left / right are measurements to be omitted.
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In an actually free market, banks and customers provide both “supply” and “demand”. A bank has a certain supply of money, which it can give to customers provided that the customer will have a supply of money in the future – that which the bank demands as a condition for giving their money to the customer. The bank demand (known as “interest rate”) naturally increases to match customer demand (actual use of the credit card). But this equation also has to be balanced by considering supply. The bank must have a supply of money, and the customer must in the future also have a supply of money – more than the bank’s present supply (because the bank’s demand is “whatever we give you now, plus some percentage which is our demand”). With physical goods, customer demand may outstrip manufacturer ability to produce goods (example: eggs), so prices predictably rise to offset reduced supply. As prices rise, customer demand may decrease, when the current cost approaches the limit of the customer’s supply of money needed to satisfy manufacturer’s demand for money (a.k.a. price). The customer might also increase their supply of money (e.g. work an extra shift), to reach equilibrium in demand (their desire for eggs, the farmer’s desire for money). With credit cards, how can the customer’s supply of the commodity (money) be increased (so as to complete the loan that results from using a credit card)? Working a second job, additional shifts, or improving work skills to get a raise are ways to increase customer money supply. In an unfree market, as we actually have, the highly-visible hand of government takes note of interest rates and forces employers to pay more money for the same product (minimum wage laws) – negating the balancing act that is the law of supply and demand. Or: you can simply repudiate the obligation to repay. That loss by the bank enters into the “cost of production” which figures into the bank’s demand in the form of setting an interest rate. We experimented with that some 15+ years ago, which resulted in a great savings for house-buyers owing to a (temporary) decrease in demand for houses. How does the bank increase its supply of money? Traditionally, in a free market, it borrows money from (other) customers, for example creating savings accounts or certificates of deposit that offers customers extra money in the future, in exchange for turning over customer money on hand right now. But there is another very cheap source of money: borrow money from the federal government, which has a very low demand (interest rate). Banks have an unnatural source of money with little demand, which means that banks have little incentive to respond to customer (depositor) demand for greater interest. If the federal government is to repeal the law of supply and demand for borrowing, the “best” way to do that is for the government to entirely take over the business of borrowing money – offer the same 4% or so rate to ordinary borrowers as they offer to banks who then recycle that non-competitively supplied money into consumer loans of various kinds. Obviously, if the government directly supplies our individual needs for money at this dirt-cheap rate, customers would benefit massively by paying way less interest. That’s a fraction of what Hawley-Sanders offers by way of “relief”. Plus, given the economic power of the Fed, it wouldn’t even be necessary to cap bank interest rates or limit bank loans, customers would naturally gravitate towards the federal money supply. The problem with the argument that price controls lead to shortages is that it’s only true if production is voluntary. If production is mandatory, manufacturer / bank unwillingness is a non-issue. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
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My right hand is nothing at all like my left hand. Apparently you don't understand the theory of concepts.
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A relationship between an individual and the state is nothing at all like a relationship between an individual and a physical object.
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At RealClear Markets, Patrick M. Brenner of the Southwest Public Policy Institute considers the Hawley-Sanders proposal to cap credit card rates at 10% and finds it wanting on two levels. Regulars here and at RealClear Markets will likely already be familiar with the theoretical objections to this proposal, which is simply an attempt to impose price controls on borrowing. On top of being an improper violation of liberty, price controls lead to shortages:Image by John Tenniel, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.Capping interest rates at 10 percent is not a free-market reform; it is an interventionist policy that will lead to unintended consequences, much like the economic restrictions seen in progressive strongholds. Some supporters of the proposal argue that credit unions already function under an 18 percent cap and continue to issue credit, so a 10 percent cap should be feasible for traditional banks. This comparison ignores the unique structure of credit unions, which are member-owned cooperatives with different incentives than for-profit banks. Credit unions also have more flexibility to impose fees and limit access to credit in ways that traditional banks cannot. Credit availability under a 10 percent cap would not resemble credit unions, as banks would be forced to reduce credit lines, close accounts, and eliminate many of the benefits consumers currently take for granted. [bold added]This can not only be seen for all kinds of price control attempts throughout history, there are two recent examples of states attempting exactly this particular type of price control!The effects of a national rate cap would mirror those seen in states like New Mexico and Illinois, where similar policies have already restricted the availability of small-dollar loans. A 10 percent ceiling would not only make traditional credit cards unprofitable for banks but also eliminate the financial flexibility many consumers rely on. Those who can no longer qualify for credit cards will face limited choices, including expensive alternatives with hidden fees and fewer consumer protections. [bold added, links omitted]This is a terrible idea, economists know exactly why it doesn't help anyone, and "real-world" data are there for the asking. Nevertheless, if Trump's rubber stamp Congress passes this monstrosity, I expect Trump to sign it into law. He is, after all, a big fan of tariffs, and those were similarly debunked -- centuries ago -- but also have real-world data showing that they are terrible ideas. Why should things be any different here? In a free society, some people will inevitably make bad choices. It is ironic that this bill is ostensibly to save such people from themselves, but would instead force Trump's mistakes on all of us. -- CAVLink to Original
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That is like asking if a house is a right or a privilege. Is “being president” a right or a privilege? You have a right to life, and society should be subordinated to moral law, via the concept of individual rights. It is a non-essential detail of implementation to specify exactly how society is subordinated to moral law, whether it be via law drafted by a committee of volunteers and voted on by direct democracy, or by a philosopher king who via acute application of reason manages to always write exactly the correct law. You are asking what is the most effective political system within those systems that are capitalism, for protecting individual rights. That is different from asking what man’s rights are.
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Is the distinction between inhabitant and citizen a rational or moral good? Should the ‘franchise’ be considered as a privilege or right ?
- Last week
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Whenever a person enters the US, they become subject to US courts. Entry into the US severs nothing, except in Trump’s delusional world where entry into the US severs one’s legal obligation to follow the law. Entry into the US creates a relation, that of “being subject to jurisdiction”. The exception is diplomats, an exception that Trump could sweep away. Since nothing in the US Constitution directly grants immunity to diplomats, that would be doable by act of Congress, only requiring withdrawing from the Convention on Diplomatic Relations and repeal of a pesky law. The Constitution does not actually say how to get out of a treaty. In fact POTUS has unilaterally terminated treaties over the past century, and it seems to be the legal norm. Trump 1.0 did so (Paris Climate, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Iran Nukes, WHO, UNESCO) on a number of occasions, and if he decided to hell with diplomatic immunity, that treaty could be swept away. However, Congress did enact the Diplomatic Relations Act of 1978 which means that he himself cannot sweep away existing law, at least until SCOTUS grants him that power. With Congress falling in line, we could get rid of those pesky diplomats, though we should first withdraw all of our diplomats. The problem with Maternal citizenship is that some countries operate on the basis of paternal citizenship, for example benig genetically Iranian is a permanent paternal stain that cannot be removed and overrides any maternal citizenship. And really, why should we grant citizenship merely because of the citizenship of the mother? Why not require both parents and even grandparents to be natural born citizens?
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If Russians in Russia are not subject to US jurisprudence on the idea that they are non-citizens residing in Russia, how would illegally entering the US change that idea? What legal/constitutional argument can be made that mere entry severs the prior definition of the individuals' 'status' as it applies to their relationship to the US government?
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Maternal citizenship inheritance upon birth.
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I am claiming that under the law, “subject to jurisdiction” refers to anybody subject to the ruling of the court system of a nation. Diplomats are not subject to the host nation’s court system. Trump has a delusion about who is subject to a nation’s court system – he thinks that by breaking a law, you are then not subject to the courts of that nation. He is inventing a new and logically incoherent class of “people not subject to the courts”. The courts do have personal jurisdiction over illegal aliens, whereas they do not have jurisdiction over diplomats. US courts also do not have personal jurisdiction over Russians for acts committed in Russia against Russians – jurisdiction is primarily geographically bound. There are a few exceptions where nobody anywhere can attack a US interest – classically piracy, as well as war crimes. An exception is that US citizens and LPRs are subject to certain US laws even for criminal acts committed outside the US (also enslavement or child sex trafficking) – a number of African nations have extraterritorial jurisdiction over their citizens for criminal homosexuality. Also recall that for most of the history of the US, permission to enter the US was not required and yet we have always had the legal concept “subject to jurisdiction”. When you enter the US without permission, you do not earn a get out of jail free card: you are subject to laws and can be prosecuted for violating them.
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Breaking the law is not enough; one would have to enter the jurisdiction without permission. This does not rule out that there are other ways to not be "subject to the jurisdiction" such as diplomatic immunity etc. I suppose it would be pretty funny to claim that all illegal immigrants are entitled to diplomatic immunity. (I don't think that's a claim that you are making, though, or Trump either.)
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I invite you to state what constitutional amendment would re-define “subject to the jurisdiction” in a manner that has the exclusionary result which you have in mind. For example, is the Japanese Ambassador to the US “subject to US jurisdiction”? Traditionally, he is not. For example, Anne Sacoolas who the wife of a US spy while in the UK and therefore under diplomatic protection killed a British youth, and availed herself of “diplomatic immunity”. A constitutional amendment could nullify the concept of diplomatic immunity (there would be consequences, but that’s not important). An even more expansive interpretation of “subject to the jurisdiction” would be to declare that everybody on the planet is subject to US jurisdiction, which would mean that technicalities like extradition and sovereignty would not restrict the long arm of US law. It would be obviously silly to claim that “A person who break a US law is not subject to US jurisdictions”. I pray that I don’t need to explain why that is so. That isn’t one of those “avoidance of doubt” over-clarifications, that is plain old avoidance of stupid reasoning.
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Reblogged:ESG, RIP?
DavidOdden replied to Gus Van Horn blog's topic in The Objectivism Meta-Blog Discussion
This is an interesting and as far as I know false claim. In the EU, direct ESG regulations are an enforceable fact, but the US still operates on a free market basis, the only requirement being that a business has to tell the truth about its policies. A company can be as politically incorrect as it wants, it just has to accept the advertising consequences of not being fully woke. Recent government regulations allowed private retirement funds to consider ESG crap in making investment decisions (which is proper – it’s not the job of government to dictate “proper business policy”). If you have any concrete evidence for a federal government regulation on businesses to toe the line on ESG policy, I’d like to see the actual regulation. Needless to say, it is not the government's function to operate retirement schemes, so I'd say "so what?" if the government usurps minority individual values in favor of some majority values. These governmental preferences derive from indirect popular mandate, which is determined every two years. When you get entangled in the whims of politicians, you should expect to lose money. -
Reblogged:ESG, RIP?
necrovore replied to Gus Van Horn blog's topic in The Objectivism Meta-Blog Discussion
It's more than just advertising; the government began passing laws that investment funds it controlled (such as pension funds) or regulated could be required to favor investing in ESG companies even at the expense of returns. ESG often went hand-in-hand with DEI. When companies refuse to hire the most productive or competent people, in favor of hiring based on immutable characteristics, it reduces the productivity and competence of the entire company. So when the company's performance starts to fade, ESG investing would try to compensate by forcing investors to favor it anyway. -
I suppose the argument from the Trump side is that if a person is in the country illegally they are not "subject to the jurisdiction," because it would be a contradiction; in order to be subject to the jurisdiction they would have to obey its laws, but the laws of the jurisdiction would require that they not be there in the first place. Still, for avoidance of doubt, it might be good to have a new constitutional amendment to clarify this.
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There are two main traditions in law. One depends on a wise ruler who has special skills at perceiving justice and can issue ad hoc but correct rulings when called on. The other depends on there being objectively-stated principles which can be applied by any man of reason to decide the outcome of any case. Although US law has tended towards the objective-statement approach, it has been seriously contaminated with wise-ruler ideology. The reason why wise-ruler ideology contaminates US law is that there are very few objective principles in law that any man of reason can follow. This is not an “argument”, it is one of those few unarguable objectively-stated legal principles. The actual starting words of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution are: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States”. We arrived at that iron-clad rule by a process of argument and following other iron-clad rules regarding changes to those iron-clad rules that make up the US Constitution. In 1919, the US Constitution was modified by an 18th provision that “After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited”. It was plainly a stupid modification, and after suffering the consequences for 17 years, it was repealed. Another plainly stupid amendments was the 16th amendment, ratified 112 years ago, which gave Congress the power to tax income. This piece of stupidity has been with us for quite some time and will not go away until the power goes out and the nation dissolves. If you do not like the fact of birthright citizenship, the solution is political, just as it was for all other constitutional amendments. Persuade enough people to adopt some alternative rule of citizenship, and the 14th Amendment can be entirely repealed if the masses so wish. You will have no doubt observed that there is great controversy in the US over what “rights” the US constitution protects. For a while, we believed that it protected a right to privacy, but there is no such clause in the Constitution, and therefore it is not a private matter for the individual to decide whether a fetus has rights as a real person does. That is a matter to be decided on a case by case basis according to the individual state. So what good is this “birthright citizenship” rule? The 14th Amendment continues: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”. This encapsulates the value of citizenship. It means for example that a state cannot decide to confiscate the property of citizens who are Jews, or simply on an arbitrary basis. It does allow the equal confiscation of property, in violation of the rights of the individual. All of these clauses can be modified through an arduous procedure for whatever political reason the masses find appealing. What’s new is that there is a second path to changing those iron-clad objective principles of law, now being tested, that a “wise ruler” will intuit what the nation needs and will invisibly rewrite those objective laws. The interesting question which people have not yet discussed, that executive rewriting of the Constitution would re-interpret Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 on the term of office. Under one interpretation of reality, the 22nd Amendment has already been repealed, since purportedly Trump was re-elected in 2020 and yet he sits for a third term in the aftermath of the 2024 elections. A better solution would be to completely sweep away all vestiges of “citizenship” under law, to be replaced with simple concepts of “proper function of government” and “man’s rights”, irrespective of citizenship – which is itself has anti-conceptual undertones. The entire problem stems from the fact, as implicitly recognized in the 14th Amendment, that the government has the legal power to utterly violate the rights of any individual, except in a very few special cases and even then the supposed limits give way to the exception “unless the government has a good reason to”. Space below for the laughing hyena to counter-“argue”.