Reblogged:Blog Roundup

[Gus Van Horn blog]

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. Over the years, I have taken to task various installments of National Review's war on Ayn Rand. (Here's a good one I'd forgotten about.)

Scratch war on Ayn Rand in the name of accuracy: It's really a war against anyone learning what Ayn Rand had to say, and it began in earnest with an infamous non-review of Atlas Shrugged by professed ex-communist Whittaker Chambers.

I recently learned via New Ideal that Leonard Peikoff penned a rebuttal, in the form of a letter-to-the-editor.

National Review, true to form, elected to memory hole it, but now it appears as a chapter of the collection, Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged -- and as the blog post linked above.

It reads in part:

Mr. Chambers is an ex-Communist. He has attacked Atlas Shrugged in the best tradition of the Communists -- by lies, smears, and cowardly misrepresentations. Mr. Chambers may have changed a few of his political views; he has not changed the method of intellectual analysis and evaluation of the Party to which he belonged. And the National Review, an ostensibly [pro-capitalist] publication, permitted these tactics to be used on the first book which has ever provided a philosophic, rational basis for capitalism.

I am glad to see not only that this thorough rebuttal is now available for anyone to read, but also that it is now easy for anyone to ascertain the true character of the National Review, as exemplified by its treatment of Ayn Rand.

2. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn asks, in the form of her title, a question she clearly hopes to make non-controversial one again. "Instead of ESG and DEI, how about value creation, justice, and independence?"

Here is an excerpt regarding justice:

Not all companies follow these principles, to their detriment. Destroying value instead of creating it, through deception, fraud, or exploitation is unsustainable because not only is it immoral but illegal. Companies that engage in fraud or coercion will be prosecuted and punished. Not trading value for value, even when not illegal, is unjust and leads to a loss of customers, employees, suppliers, and profits. Giving up first-handed adherence to reality is similarly unsustainable, resulting in copy-cat investment in such value-depleting programs as ESG and DEI that violate the principle of justice.

This essay is a much-needed corrective for both ESG/DEI and the alleged rationale for them, the latter of which is part and parcel of widespread ignorance about the nature of capitalism and suspicion of self-interest that permeate our culture.

Image by wirestock, via Freepik, license.

3. At Value for Value, Harry Binswanger economically addresses a couple of favorite conservative myths behind the ridiculous idea that there is a "border crisis."

Regarding terrorism, Binswanger reminds us of what really needs to be done:

One site breathlessly reports that 169 people on terrorist watch lists were spotted and/or apprehended. The same site reports 3.1 million "encounters." But the two facts are not put together: 169 of the "encounters" is 1 in 20,000.

So, conservatives want to stifle the lives of 19,999 people to block entry to 1 person on a terrorist watch list.

The answer to terrorism is not retreating to a bunker. It is moral certainty in the rightness of America combined with decisive, overwhelming military action against the states that sponsor terrorism.

I completely agree with his contention that, "The only crisis on our border is the outrageous refusal to recognize that 'All men are created equal, endowed ... with certain unalienable rights, that among these are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'"

4. Brian Phillips of the Texas Institute for Property Rights alerts us to a proposal in New York that is as obscene as his post title ("The Right to Eat Fried Chicken") is ridiculous:

The New York legislature is considering a bill that would require Chick-fil-A to be open on Sundays. The bill would essentially establish an alleged right to eat fried chicken. The bill's author said, "Look, if you want to eat fried chicken while traveling over the holidays, then Chick-fil-A should be open on Sundays." In other words, it is the responsibility a business to satisfy every consumer desire, regardless of the business' own desires. [link omitted]

As annoyed as this atheist is that Chick-fil-A closes on Sunday, I recognize and support the right of its owners to set their own schedule, and I am outraged that this little dictator in New York wants to set their hours for them.

-- CAV

Link to Original

[tadmjones]

Lol, we should allow illegal entry into the country of military aged men traveling alone, because only 1 in 20k is an identified terrorism threat. The Pfizer initial Covid gene therapy trials showed that the number to vaccinate to statistically prevent 1 death was 22k, did HB apply the same argument against the introduction of potential harm to 22 k in order to ‘save’ one ? 

[Jon Letendre]

Also gotta love how the traitorous idiot suggests that our protection from millions of said military aged males is "moral certainty in the rightness of America" with "military action against the states that sponsor terrorism."

[tadmjones]

As if AR could have swaddled herself in the same moral certainty of rightness and just stayed in St Petersburg. Moral certainty always trumps pragmatic and earthly concerns! Just smacks of religious zealotry. 

[Jon Letendre]

It is religious zealotry. For a great many, mass immigration is not a political/economic/social issue but a spiritual/religious one.

Same for the trans issue. Normal people are taken aback by the lunacy they see. They can't make it make sense. Step one is understanding that for the zealots it is of religious importance.

[necrovore]

Yes, we objectively have a border crisis. So does Europe.

Ours is of course our own fault: first, we shouldn't be giving welfare to illegal immigrants. Second, we should be enforcing the laws, including in the cities, and not, e.g., allowing people to shoplift "as long as it's less than $900." These two policies alone attract the wrong sort of people.

Third, we do need adequate border police as well. What we are facing is an invasion, and the only reason the invaders aren't armed is because they don't need to be.

Fourth, however, legal immigration is absurdly difficult because of the bureaucracy, and that needs to be corrected, because discouraging legal immigration (and legal employment and trade, etc.) encourages illegal immigration (and employment and trade, etc.), and this creates organized crime in much the same way that alcohol prohibition did. (When you're engaging in illegal activity, you can't call the cops, so you call the mafia instead; they play the role of "cops" and "judges" between people engaging in the illegal activity -- but disputes become a matter of "might makes right" and there's no rule of law. Unfortunately the present régime seems to be supporting the organized crime rather than supporting the repeal of the Prohibition, but that is just another example of how the Left would rather use force than reason. The Left is much like a mafia, themselves.)

There are some people who think that culture has to be enforced and that the government should enforce it. Such a belief amounts to using "culture" as a license to initiate force. It should be noted not only that we don't have the "separation of state and culture" that we should have, but that the immigrants typically don't have it either, and so they will want to enforce their culture, and currently there is no principled opposition to this, there is only "might makes right," or, our culture versus their culture. The invasion of a hostile culture is much more of a problem in Europe than in the US (because in Europe the invaders are more hostile, bringing Islam and the desire for an Islamic state), but it is a problem even in the US -- and it's easy to see again why the Left aligns with it, because they want to annihilate the good parts of Western culture, and immigrants who seek to enforce their own culture give the Left another way to do that.

The correct solution, however, is not to "enforce our culture, or let them enforce theirs." We need a proper separation of state and culture (as part of a rights-respecting government), which means no enforcement, either public or private, of any culture at all, which means that peaceful immigrants could live here, but invaders could not hope to colonize our country by force. If we did have such a separation, the good parts of Western culture would survive, because they are aligned with reality itself and do not need enforcement. The separation, like any protection of rights, would not properly be subject to vote, but a government would still have to take care that it does not have so many immigrants that they become able to overthrow it completely (or infiltrate and subvert it). It would make sense to require that immigrants seeking citizenship support the separation of state and culture, to the extent such a requirement is even possible, but such a requirement would only make sense if we supported it ourselves.

[tadmjones]

There is no moral reasoning that would allow a law to be created that excludes immigration by Miguel Kowolski ,born 6/8/1990 in Chile, based on the idea that such a law would violate the recognition and protection of MK’s individual rights extended to and enjoyed by all individuals ie human rights. 
 

‘Non-open border’ policies are not the same thing. Instantiating policies to set minimum standards for entry into a nation state by a non recognized citizen are not policies that bar entry , they are ,when properly implemented ,policies that work to protect the individuals rights of recognized citizens.

The idea of a nation state presupposes the recognition of geography, the spacial relationship of reality. Labor markets are also a product of the recognition of spacial aspects of reality. The ‘right’ to freely participate in labor markets is a consequence of the establishment of a civilized society based on the protection of individual rights. Citizens of a country or nation should expect the institution of government to work to protect their freedom to participate in ‘free’ market. Unlimited immigration into a geographic location changes the market constraints on supply and demand by legalistic means and negates ‘economic’ or ‘market’ forces.

The moral principle that identifies the proper function of governments does not by itself qua principle , negate the ‘practical’ reality of location and the actual existence of individual people.

We have immigration policies , I would say all nation states need them and they should be constituted and implemented in view of protecting the rights of their citizens. The more open ‘borders’ are the bigger the crises are going to be in regards the rights protection of the citizens. 
 

One of the corrosive effects , aside from disrupting labor markets which the citizens participate in, is that the federal government considers population density in apportioning congresssional representation , so even if ‘illegals’ aren’t voting, their mere presence augments the functioning of legislation.

[necrovore]

9 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Labor markets are also a product of the recognition of spacial aspects of reality. The ‘right’ to freely participate in labor markets is a consequence of the establishment of a civilized society based on the protection of individual rights. Citizens of a country or nation should expect the institution of government to work to protect their freedom to participate in ‘free’ market. Unlimited immigration into a geographic location changes the market constraints on supply and demand by legalistic means and negates ‘economic’ or ‘market’ forces.

It sounds like you are saying that the "stability of the labor market" has to be enforced and that the government should enforce it. Such a belief amounts to using the "stability of the labor market" as a license to initiate force. (It's also a violation of the separation of state and economics.)

There is no "right" to a "stable labor market." There is a right to offer labor for sale, or to buy it if it's available, but that's it -- prices will vary according to supply and demand. Plenty of things besides immigration can "disrupt the labor market," such as new inventions like AI, or even, historically, ditch-digging machines (which obviate the need to hire lots of men with shovels). Technically, with remote work, it's possible for foreigners to do useful work without entering the country, and that also would tend to reduce the price of the equivalent domestic labor. There is no right to ban such things (or immigration) to "preserve the stability of the labor market."

The manufacture of these false "rights" are what gives rise to antitrust law and lots of other problematic legislation, because false rights conflict with and diminish true ones.

Edited January 21 by necrovore

[tadmjones]

11 hours ago, necrovore said:

It sounds like you are saying that the "stability of the labor market" has to be enforced and that the government should enforce it. Such a belief amounts to using the "stability of the labor market" as a license to initiate force. (It's also a violation of the separation of state and economics.)

 

Markets by nature aren't stable , I was giving an example of some of the consequences of unlimited immigration policies. Wage tax policies coupled with politically driven fluctuations in the labor pool are non-market forces and they impact the price of labor.

Given the ideal of a capitalist economy any elements of a mixed economy and 'bad' , politically engineered legislation and or lack of enforcement of immigration policies disrupt the labor market with extra market influences.

Edited January 21 by tadmjones

[Jon Letendre]

Letting anyone in, including those wholly predictable to be net negatives, is stupid, self-sacrificial, immoral.

[necrovore]

8 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

Letting anyone in, including those wholly predictable to be net negatives, is stupid, self-sacrificial, immoral.

That's only true from a nationalist (collectivist) perspective, where the nation is regarded as a "self" apart from its individuals.

In a free country, no individual would have any duty to sacrifice for anyone else, whether immigrant or not -- and the law would make sure they had no such duty. So there would be no need to be concerned about "net negatives."

In a free country, a person (whether immigrant or not) can't be a "net negative" for long, because they'd run out of resources and either become a criminal (and be subject to prosecution), become a case for voluntary charity (if they can find it), or die.

I also don't trust the government to make the determination about who is going to be a "net negative."

[Jon Letendre]

It is no more a collectivist perspective than Ayn Rand was collectivist is writing about a nation's self-interest.

So you mean in the imagination, in the future, in theory, in an ideal world. Not this world, not this country, which is not free.

Then who do you trust to stop terrorists or those carrying ebola, etc? Don't they also have to make judgments and determinations, even about those things? You trust them that individual X is unqualified for terrorist suspicions but not with finding brain-dead invalids unqualified, based on legislation that would spell this all out? The terrorist disqualifications will be based on government claims of secret intelligence we will never get to see. The brain-dead invalid disqualification will be based on doctors' examinations and legislation.

Your cavalier implication it'll be OK 'cuz the millions of young men can always simply die in our streets of starvation makes me wonder how much experience you have in the streets (and how intellectually serious you really are about this topic.) Young men can become quite agitated well prior to starvation, you know. And they wouldn't sit and die, they would predate. Oh, but we have police, right? Just like the summer '20 riots, we had police then, too. That was perpetrated by a few thousand people motivated by simple politics. Maybe a few tens of thousands. That was nothing compared to what ten or twenty million hungry and angry people can do. We effectively now have no police against such a scenario. They can't even come close to managing a breakdown of order. If any such occurs now that we have allowed so much alien presence military law is going to be the outcome. Moral this, moral that, martial law is going to be the outcome.

Edited January 21 by Jon Letendre

[tadmjones]

Why is the current influx of illegal immigration being assisted to the extent they are? and by whom? They are given money and travel and spread out through the country, surely they did not make these arrangements themselves , in a free country where one follows there own self interest , someone must have an interest in importing people and relocating them, some reports say to the tune of up to 5k in cash/card and then the ability to draw $2100 monthly stipends along with room and board. There are also reports that in the areas that the migrants are passing international organizations and NGO's are handing out information on routes and destinations suitable for crossing. This is definitely not a spontaneous movement of like minded poverty escapees and or political amnesty seekers, and the fact that the same situation is happening in Europe , wtf is going on ?

What cultural change sparked the ambitions of Northern African Muslims to become Parisian baguette bakery apprentices?

Edited January 21 by tadmjones

[Jon Letendre]

Definitely not a spontaneous movement. We're being attacked. They don't carry rifles because there are more than plenty of those here for them already. We're being majorly gaslighted by the likes of O'ist "leadership" about the organic nature of it. "The caravan is seasonal and an ancient tradition, relax!" This blatant gaslighting cannot be error this late in the action.

[necrovore]

I have said before that I support having a border (and a border patrol) as opposed to not having one, and criminals, terrorism, and contagious diseases were among the reasons I listed for having one.

What I'm talking about is economic concerns. The government has no right to stop (or help!) people for economic reasons alone. That violates the separation of state and economics.

It would be better to encourage that separation than to violate it further on the basis that it's already violated. It's impossible to maintain a contradiction in practice, so in a mixed economy, controls seem to necessitate further controls, and this cascades until you get totalitarianism.

It's the philosophy of Pragmatism that says we should give up our ideals and concentrate on what "works." But Pragmatism itself doesn't work, and is part of the problem. Problems have to be fixed at their root, or they will keep coming back.

Edited January 21 by necrovore

[tadmjones]

Perhaps Judge Narragansett should have whipped out the Articles of Conferderation.

[Jon Letendre]

Standing by and watching our overlords engineer a takeover of the last chance for human freedom on this planet for purpose of "encouraging economic separations" is suicidal nonsense.

Practical vs moral is applicable here, as you suggest, and it goes like this: It is impractical and immoral to allow unlimited immigration into America for the same reason Israel doesn't allow it -- because it would lead to societal breakdown, martial law, pain, suffering and death.

Edited January 21 by Jon Letendre

[necrovore]

50 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

Why is the current influx of illegal immigration being assisted to the extent they are? and by whom? They are given money and travel and spread out through the country, surely they did not make these arrangements themselves , in a free country where one follows there own self interest , someone must have an interest in importing people and relocating them, some reports say to the tune of up to 5k in cash/card and then the ability to draw $2100 monthly stipends along with room and board. There are also reports that in the areas that the migrants are passing international organizations and NGO's are handing out information on routes and destinations suitable for crossing. This is definitely not a spontaneous movement of like minded poverty escapees and or political amnesty seekers, and the fact that the same situation is happening in Europe , wtf is going on ?

What cultural change sparked the ambitions of Northern African Muslims to become Parisian baguette bakery apprentices?

I think this is an attempt to overthrow America, including its ideas, by indirect force. Technically, I think some of these people should be arrested for treason.

However, it is partly our own mistake by making it an issue of "might makes right" to begin with.

Normal immigration is not like this, and to confuse this invasion with normal immigration is the same mistake that Marxists make when they confuse a government-granted monopoly with capitalism.

They cannot argue against a free system, but if we remove the free system from the table, and make it a matter of one force versus another, they can apply more force. There are more people outside America than in it.

Throwing away the "ideals" will consign the human race to endless gang warfare.

If we give up the "ideals" and rely on sense-of-life alone, which is relying on our feelings, it puts our feelings on an equal footing with their feelings, which gives them a hope to win that they don't deserve.

Edited January 21 by necrovore

[Jon Letendre]

33 minutes ago, necrovore said:

Normal immigration is not like this, and to confuse this invasion with normal immigration

You are the party confusing our situation with one of living in a free country with certain economic separations and normal immigration.

It is ungrounded thinking to insist on principles that only work in specific contexts, over facts on the ground and actual self-interests given those facts. The results apply to hypothetical worlds and not to our own.

Edited January 21 by Jon Letendre

[necrovore]

8 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

It is ungrounded thinking to insist on principles that only work in specific contexts, over facts on the ground and actual self-interests given those facts.

In this case the "facts on the ground" are man-made, and so the solution is to stop making them (or stop allowing them to be made), not to take them as metaphysically given.

Edited January 21 by necrovore

[Jon Letendre]

Yes, we need deal with the people enabling this.

And we have every right to stop the destruction they are engineering. Texas has every right to try. Every American citizen has the moral right to go there and try, until it stops.

Then we can enact certain economic separations.

Then we can open immigration back up and find out for the first time what "normal immigration" levels really are. Maybe zero. America is an expensive place to live. Telework more and more common. Yeah, maybe zero. Maybe very negative immigration under total freedom, because every country is free in this scenario. So why not telework from the cheapest beach on earth? America might empty into Florida and Central and South America. Northerly immigration could be totally contrary to "normal immigration," for all we know, given the current chaos from the various economic un-separations that distort everything.

Therefore, we have to close the border, deal with the elite globalists doing all of this to us, enact total freedom, implement total freedom, globally, and THEN you will be able to point at the resultant immigration level and for the first time be able to plausibly claim to know what the normal level is.

Edited January 21 by Jon Letendre

[necrovore]

It should be noted that we did come pretty close to the kind of freedom we need -- roughly between the Civil War and World War I. It was not perfect, but it was much better than now, and during that time an unprecedented amount of wealth was created.

So there are historical precedents for both the amount of immigration and the effects of it.

It did not require all other countries to be free, and some immigration did come from people fleeing non-free countries.

Edited January 21 by necrovore

[tadmjones]

The freest part was right before the wealthiest guys , the ones who got that way in the freest time, basically decided to fund the federal govt , so there is that.

[Jon Letendre]

1 hour ago, necrovore said:

It did not require all other countries to be free, and some immigration did come from people fleeing non-free countries.

Nor did anyone say it would.

I said that: only under total freedom everywhere on the planet will we know what the "normal" level of immigration into and out of America, and by whom, is. Only then would all the economic unseparations that distort incentives and foreign unfreedoms that drive victims to relative shelter finally be absent, to reveal the "normal level of immigration." Until then, "normal immigration" is an ungrounded and meaningless reference. You can't even hope to know so much as whether American immigration would be net in or net out, under condition of the absence of every distorting unfreedom around the globe.

Edited January 21 by Jon Letendre

[necrovore]

28 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

Nor did anyone say it would.

I said that: only under total freedom everywhere on the planet will we know what the "normal" level of immigration into and out of America, and by whom, is. Only then would all the economic unseparations that distort incentives and foreign unfreedoms that drive victims to relative shelter finally be absent, to reveal the "normal level of immigration." Until then, "normal immigration" is an ungrounded and meaningless reference.

Some people say that "Capitalism as an ideal requires everyone to be perfectly rational, because if one irrational person comes along, capitalism collapses, so that's why you need all these anti-capitalist interventions such as regulations and anti-trust law and so forth, to deal with the fact that sometimes people are irrational."

You're saying the same thing except applied to immigration.

Edited January 21 by necrovore