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Marty McFly

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23 minutes ago, Grames said:

Trump can't get anything too wild past Congress.  Furthermore, his "labor market argument" that mass numbers of unskilled third world migrants just depress wages for Americans is a straightforward application of the economic law of supply and demand.   I have become skeptical of the value of immigration because immigrants don't assimilate anymore when they can conveniently communicate and visit the home country.  I wouldn't want to live in Mexico or Pakistan, nor do I see any benefit to bringing Mexico or Pakistan to America.  

You haven't answered the question about the trade war he is on record promising to initiate.

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I have become skeptical of the value of immigration because immigrants don't assimilate anymore when they can conveniently communicate and visit the home country.  I wouldn't want to live in Mexico or Pakistan, nor do I see any benefit to bringing Mexico or Pakistan to America.  

Becoming skeptical of other people's actions is well within your rights. I'm skeptical about all sorts of things myself.

As an example, I'm skeptical of the way the NY Yankees' management has been running the team recently. However, I wouldn't dream of using force to stop them from doing what I consider to be a mistake. I'm skeptical of the Yankees' actions, but I'm not skeptical of the principle of individual rights, which gives them the right to those actions.

You, on the other hand, seem to be saying that you've also become skeptical of individual rights, and now believe in using force to impose your views on others.

Edited by Nicky
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If you want to debate Trump's trade policy with China, get informed first. link: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/us-china-trade-reform   How exactly does any of that lead to a trade war unless China doubles down on its current practices and thus effectively admits that considers itself as already in a trade war?  

There is no individual right to ignore valid laws such as national borders and immigration quotas.  The concept that identifies unrestricted and unregulated immigration is invasion.

 

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Trump's List for Supreme Court Justices Are against Elective Abortions

Trump with the Power - Deportations

Rand's political assessment of Mr. Trump would likely repeat her points against George Wallace, but without her charge of racism (at least it would be a more oblique racism). But the other charges would still fly, and her summation would still be: proto-fascism in America. Next to Wallace, she thought Humphrey looked practically decent. Of course she'd be in a pickle more than most of us today, what with Hillary being a woman and all, and with not wanting to vote Libertarian.

Like most Americans, I expect Rand would condemn Trump's conduct at the Presidential debates, a disrespectfulness and sordidness displayed to us, to his conception of us, himself, and the Presidency.

Edited by Boydstun
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"There is no individual right to ignore valid laws such as national borders and immigration quotas.  The concept that identifies unrestricted and unregulated immigration is invasion. " -Grames

But an immigration quota as a government policy isn't really justified, it's not like there is a right for government to determine who you can let on your property. It would be fine to say you can't harbor real threats to security and safety. Except, the issue seems to be that it's as though a rigorous proof of not being a threat is required to immigrate, a level of proof beyond what is required of citizens. So, it's hard to say the existing laws are valid, as in justified. It's possible to be all about open borders, while still promoting efficient law enforcement within the country ("unrestricted" would only be true if immigrants were literally ignored, while citizens weren't ignored.)

Regardless, Trump doesn't have the desire or foresight to get into a discussion even this deep. The Lakoff article is later on about how Trump doesn't go beyond discussing immediate, direct, single-step causation. Indeed, Trump is able to use rhetorical skills quite well. But, he's not a rhetorical genius who both gets people to get excited and is able to talk about complex ideas at the same time.

There are still a lot of problems with the Lakoff article, ranging from fitting ideas into his theory outside the domain it was developed for, assuming that any "conservative" idea is a sign of stupidity without further analysis, trying to use one narrative device without saying why it appears, mischaracterizing definitions to fit that narrative device. There's more, even.

"Empirical research has shown that conservatives tend to reason with direct causation and that progressives have a much easier time reasoning with systemic causation. " -Lakoff

Sort of a nitpick, maybe a tangent, but this is a sign of bias in the whole analysis, and overgeneralization. "Conservative" is so broadly defined, and "Progressive" is more specific - of course the bigger population has less education even by percentage! No narrative required, the populations can't be compared reliably. I've seen studies like it, the groups never look well-defined.

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14 hours ago, Grames said:

There is no individual right to ignore valid laws such as national borders and immigration quotas. 

The only valid laws are the ones that protect individual rights. National borders serve the purpose of delineating the jurisdiction of a government, not to act as walls.

14 hours ago, Grames said:

If you want to debate Trump's trade policy with China, get informed first.

I'm already informed. And, if I wasn't, I would go to a neutral source for my information, not the Trump campaign's official webpage.

Donald Trump on starting a trade war with Mexico:

Quote

We have a trade deficit with Mexico of $58 billion a year. We're going to make them pay for that wall. The wall is $10 billion to $12 billion. I don't mind trade wars when we're losing $58 billion a year. Mexico is taking our businesses.

 

Donald Trump on how he would handle American companies who outsource jobs (doing what he's threatening to do would be illegal, by the way):

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Carrier (US air conditioning company) is moving to Mexico. I would go to Carrier and say, "You're going to lay off 1,400 people. You're going to make air conditioners in Mexico, and you're trying to get them across our border with no tax." I'm going to tell them that we're going to tax you when those air conditioners come. So stay where you are or build in the United States because we are killing ourselves with trade pacts that are no good for us and no good for our workers.

Donald Trump on tariffs (I have no clue what a tax on outsourcing jobs means, but he wants it):

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mandate a 15% tax for outsourcing jobs and a 20% tax for importing goods

 

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2 hours ago, Nicky said:

The only valid laws are the ones that protect individual rights. National borders serve the purpose of delineating the jurisdiction of a government, not to act as walls.

Walls can protect individual rights and national borders should take the form of walls when appropriate.  Prison walls keep rights violating criminals away from rights respecting citizens, and border walls keep out those persons who would violate rights.   Learning what rights are and accepting them as a code of conduct is pretty steep obstacle for most of the world's population.   A would-be immigrant should positively affirm his commitment to respect rights by his own statement to be considered qualified for citizenship.  Making such a statement before a government official that records that act is minimum requirement.   Evading the formal immigration process is evidence in itself that the illegal alien does not respect rights.

Trump saying that trade war would be less expensive in the long term than a bad treaty is not a statement vowing to start a trade war.  I'm confident that with the relative outsider Trump as President we could count on the other branches of government to keep him inside the law, while Hilary Clinton has already demonstrated that she considers herself above the law, to the extent she deigns to think about laws at all.

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15 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Like most Americans, I expect Rand would condemn Trump's conduct at the Presidential debates, a disrespectfulness and sordidness displayed to us, to his conception of us, himself, and the Presidency.

I just don't follow this critique at all as Rand was a fan of Muhammad Ali, and Trump isn't even close to Ali at taunting opponents.  Furthermore, "punch back twice as hard" is the new mode of political discourse in America according to no less than Pres. Barack Obama.  'Too polite and dignified to fight back' is  'too polite and dignified to win'.  

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44 minutes ago, Grames said:

...  A would-be immigrant should positively affirm his commitment to respect rights by his own statement to be considered qualified for citizenship.  Making such a statement before a government official that records that act is minimum requirement.

Yes, they should. Neither party is likely to suggest they do so. And, though I agree with the thrust of this idea, Trump would be the first to find such an idea ludicrous. As someone who has no respect for ideas or for keeping his word, he'd laugh at this as he (correctly) imagines immigrants who share his psychology learning how to lie, and swarming over.

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On 7/26/2016 at 5:18 AM, Boydstun said:

 

Understanding Trump

by George Lakoff

Boydstun,

I am most certainly not making an ad hominem attack against Lakoff.  I've read three of his books Philosophy in the Flesh, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, and Where Mathematics Comes From and have a pretty good understanding of his philosophical bent.  Not only that, I find many of his ideas enlightening and very much worth reading.  He presents many interesting ideas regarding Embodied Mind in Philosophy/Psychology - ideas which interest me greatly.  But his position on Language as Metaphor is something that needs to be taking with a grain of salt.  So too do the conclusions which he reaches with regards to politics that are driven by his understanding/position on language.

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American manufacturers cannot compete against China and Mexico - and other foreign countries - because American companies are burdened by high corporate taxes, excessive regulations, government protected labor unions and government protected regional-based health care monopolies.

American Lobbyists for manufacturers knew that they had zero chance of changing any, or all, of the above, so they lobbied for "free trade" deals.  These deals are not "free trade" by any stretch of the definition.  The term "free trade" has been tortured to Orwellian proportions.  US companies build manufacturing plants in foreign countries that not only give tax breaks, but also have nothing in the way of regulations, EPA requirements, collective bargaining or mandated health care.

As someone who has worked very closely with Developers for over two decades, I can assure you that Trump is very aware of the expenses related to of all of the above.  As someone who has helped developers create pro formas for projects, it's not unusual at all for a Developer to have to write-off 40% to 50% to government entitlements, taxes and the required use of Davis Bacon wages rates for Unionized Labor.

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New Buddha: It might be interesting to compare Where Mathematics Come From: How The Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being to Corvinii's courses. 'Language as Metaphor' strikes me as nominalistic without delving into it deeper. Are you aware of any reviews that might tease out if this is worth deeper pursuit?

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8 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

New Buddha: It might be interesting to compare Where Mathematics Come From: How The Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being to Corvinii's courses. 'Language as Metaphor' strikes me as nominalistic without delving into it deeper. Are you aware of any reviews that might tease out if this is worth deeper pursuit?

Without derailing the post too much (because you know I pride myself on never doing that :blush: ), Lakoff is part of an emerging field known as Embodied Cognition.

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24 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

Fair enough. That is a starting point for me.

As noted in another of my recent posts, Lakoff ties into the Psychology/Philosophy of William James (which I believe very much influenced Rand) and J. J. Gibson (whose mentor was a student of James) and Pierson (who was a student of Gibson) and his influence on  Binswanger.

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20 hours ago, softwareNerd said:

Yes, they should. Neither party is likely to suggest they do so. And, though I agree with the thrust of this idea, Trump would be the first to find such an idea ludicrous. As someone who has no respect for ideas or for keeping his word, he'd laugh at this as he (correctly) imagines immigrants who share his psychology learning how to lie, and swarming over.

Current law provides for an Oath of Allegiance which is similar to the extent that the U.S. Constitution is explicit about rights.  Even the present oath requirement is evaded by illegal aliens.

By the way I think it is unfair to imagine Trump, himself married to an immigrant, as against all immigration instead of the illegal portion of it.  The illegal portion is far too high and the legal portion ineptly administered.  

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22 hours ago, Grames said:

Walls can protect individual rights and national borders should take the form of walls when appropriate.  Prison walls keep rights violating criminals away from rights respecting citizens, and border walls keep out those persons who would violate rights. 

The difference is, the people behind prison walls are criminals. The people behind your newfound idol's wall are not. You have the right to put criminals behind walls. You don't have the right to do that to innocent people.

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Learning what rights are and accepting them as a code of conduct is pretty steep obstacle for most of the world's population.   A would-be immigrant should positively affirm his commitment to respect rights by his own statement to be considered qualified for citizenship.

That is not Donald Trump's position. Donald Trump's stated goal is to put up a wall in front of both immigration and trade, and select who is allowed to pass not based on respect for individual rights, or any kind of other objective criteria, but based on his own government's opinion on whether that trade or immigration is "fair". Some of the criteria he mentioned, when it comes to deciding whether it's "fair", in order of frequency:

1. does it make America great again

2. does it protect Americans' jobs

3. does it promote American manufacturing (by American manufacturing he means manufacturing that takes place on American soil, and employs Americans rather than immigrants).

4. does it allow the federal government to raise minimum wage (which he has promised to raise)?

5. if it's an import, can it be taxed at least 20% (which is a tariff he promised to impose)

etc., etc. how you went from that, and ended up at individual rights, is a mystery to me.

Quote

  Evading the formal immigration process is evidence in itself that the illegal alien does not respect rights.

Let's say an average person without a criminal record or any communicable diseases, living outside the US, decides to apply for permission to live and work in the US. What would you estimate his/her chances are?

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4 hours ago, Nicky said:

The difference is, the people behind prison walls are criminals. The people behind your newfound idol's wall are not. You have the right to put criminals behind walls. You don't have the right to do that to innocent people.

You are subtly equivocating here on the meaning of "behind". The right to put criminals behind walls ultimately derives from the moral principle that self-defense is just in all contexts. The legal justice imparted to criminals takes the form of imprisonment and which effectively renders it impossible for the imprisoned to continue to violate the law and the rights of the innocent by virtue of the fact that they are "behind walls". The action of putting criminals behind walls necessarily takes the form of physical force and so can not be understood when distenangled from an enforcing subject. It is true that both criminals and innocent people behind border walls suffer the restriction of movement but the restriction involved with the former is imposed. With innocent people there exists no party or person playing the role of enforcer so it is unjustified to consider the imposed station of criminals and the station of innocents as equals. There is a distinction to be made between the actions concerning peoples being kept behind walls in order to prevent them from leaving and peoples finding themselves behind walls in order to be prevented from entering; intentional relations are not accidental ones. In fact the only way to make real sense of your dual-usage is to subsume the entirety of the world outside a nation's border walls under the concept of "prison" but even here too we still lack an imprisoning subject.

I imagine the right to erect border walls likewise ultimately derives from the principle of self-defense insofar as it can be demonstrated that certain immigration poses a threat to a nation and her peoples. How to go about this demonstration I have no idea but I see no reason why the idea of erecting a wall should be dismissed out of hand as violating the rights of the innocent.

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4 hours ago, Nicky said:

The difference is, the people behind prison walls are criminals. The people behind your newfound idol's wall are not. You have the right to put criminals behind walls. You don't have the right to do that to innocent people.

Are you stating that living is Mexico is equivalent to living in a prison?  I disagree that Mexico is a giant prison camp, and even if it was it would not be anyone's responsibility to address that situation except the Mexicans in Mexico.   The same goes for any other country in the world, if America is a better place to be that achievement imposes no obligations whatsoever on America to feed the world, to clothe the world, to defend the world or to invite the world to move next door. 

5 hours ago, Nicky said:

 your newfound idol

This is not calm level-headed dialogue, and I just compared Trump with Nixon a few posts up.  C'mon now.

5 hours ago, Nicky said:

etc., etc. how you went from that, and ended up at individual rights, is a mystery to me.

I responded to your short argument that national borders should not be walls because that does not protect individual rights.

On 7/27/2016 at 4:20 PM, Nicky said:

The only valid laws are the ones that protect individual rights. National borders serve the purpose of delineating the jurisdiction of a government, not to act as walls.

That is a much broader contention than arguing that Trumps' particular proposed remedies are over the top, that argument actually casts all border control attempts as illegitimate.   If you don't want to go that far then we are "just haggling over the price" so to speak about how to implement a legitimate government function.

5 hours ago, Nicky said:

Let's say an average person without a criminal record or any communicable diseases, living outside the US, decides to apply for permission to live and work in the US. What would you estimate his/her chances are?

That persons chances would vary wildly depending on whether there was already a relative who was a U.S. citizen or could claim refugee status or had professional credentials as a doctor or engineer etc.  

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6 hours ago, KALADIN said:

I imagine the right to erect border walls likewise ultimately derives from the principle of self-defense insofar as it can be demonstrated that certain immigration poses a threat to a nation and her peoples. How to go about this demonstration I have no idea but I see no reason why the idea of erecting a wall should be dismissed out of hand as violating the rights of the innocent.

If the wall helped with the defense of the country, that would be a argument in its favor. Ultimately, it is not a question of the physical implementation: walls, fences, helicopters, cameras. It is really about the ends those are trying to achieve and the reasoning behind targeting those ends. 

So, the real question is not: "should we have a wall at the border?"

Instead, we start with: "Should we keep immigrants out?" and most people Americans will say it is fine to have at least certain immigrants come in, and to have them come in certain numbers. Even Trump would say it is a good thing that the laws allowed his wife to enter. On the other hand, most people would agree that we don't want to have terrorists (or criminals, including rapists) come in. 

Of course, even if people can agree about what type of people should be allowed in, there's still a big question: how can we reliably identify such people, and would our concrete rules keep out too many good ones or let in too many bad ones? 

But, before we even get to the concrete rules, Trump and many other Americans (GOP, Democrat and independent) do not even want to allow people who want to come to the U.S. to work. This is not about whether they are criminals or terrorists. In principle, Trump and other protectionists, say that even if we knew that some particular Mexican wants to come and spend all day mowing lawns, we should still keep him out, and that we have the right to keep him out.

Morality says that in a free-economy, we do not have the right to bar such a peaceful person, nor restrict the right of the U.S. lawn-owner to deal with anyone he wishes. Economics says it hurts us economically.

The two other aspects are: welfare and citizenship. Should immigrants get welfare too? And, what rules and principles should determine whether an immigrant can become a citizen? But, this post is long enough. So, I'll save those two.

And, to add another twist: net immigration from Latin America is really not large any more. So, even if it is a problem, it is not today's problem.

Edited by softwareNerd
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6 hours ago, Grames said:

Are you stating that living is Mexico is equivalent to living in a prison?

I'm stating that, by building a wall in the path of innocent people who wish to pass, you are initiating force. How is this not obvious to you? You have been on this forum for what, close to a decade? You're not familiar with the Objectivist position on immigration?

And it's not just about the wall, it's about Trump's full proposal on controlling immigration. One of the major parts of that proposal is harsher penalties for people who employ undocumented workers. You can't hide behind the excuse that he's trying to stop crime with that. That isn't targeting criminals, it's targeting workers.

And it's not like Trump has been trying to keep this a secret.

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6 hours ago, Grames said:

That persons chances would vary wildly  

Yes, I know that different people's chances vary. That's why I asked what the AVERAGE person's chances would be. The concept "average" aggregates that variation, into ONE figure. When someone asks what the "average" is, that refers to the sum of all variations, divided by their number.

It is ONE specific number, between zero and one (or between zero and a hundred, if you prefer to express it as a percentage). It's a number that's very easy to figure out, as well.

So go ahead, guess what that number is. It doesn't have to be an exact guess. Your line of reasoning in the previous post implies that you think it's close to certain that people who apply for a visa are successful. I'm just trying to figure out if you really believe that, or if you just haven't put any effort into being logical.

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7 hours ago, KALADIN said:

I imagine the right to erect border walls likewise ultimately derives from the principle of self-defense insofar as it can be demonstrated that certain immigration poses a threat to a nation and her peoples. How to go about this demonstration I have no idea but I see no reason why the idea of erecting a wall should be dismissed out of hand as violating the rights of the innocent.

We are talking about a specific wall, not walls in general. Do you believe that the purpose of this wall is strictly self defense?

Because Trump has been going around stating the opposite very loudly and very frequently: the goal is to keep migrant workers out. Are you aware of that?

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I think it's fine to consider the specifics of Trump's wall proposal -- there are several reasons why it is ridiculous, after all -- but in general, is there any question that Trump is a protectionist? And is there any further question as to whether protectionism is compatible with the free market, with liberty, or with Objectivism?

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3 hours ago, Nicky said:

We are talking about a specific wall, not walls in general.

When you said...

16 hours ago, Nicky said:

The difference is, the people behind prison walls are criminals. The people behind your newfound idol's wall are not. You have the right to put criminals behind walls. You don't have the right to do that to innocent people.

and reiterated your point here...

4 hours ago, Nicky said:

I'm stating that, by building a wall in the path of innocent people who wish to pass, you are initiating force.

I took and am taking both these statements as generalizations amounting to the moral condemnation of border walls as such. My interest was solely in the moral status concerning national border walls and not really any specific policy surrounding them and their application; hence my ignoring everything after the first four sentences of your original post which I responded to.

If what I wrote - 

11 hours ago, KALADIN said:

You are subtly equivocating here on the meaning of "behind". The right to put criminals behind walls ultimately derives from the moral principle that self-defense is just in all contexts. The legal justice imparted to criminals takes the form of imprisonment and which effectively renders it impossible for the imprisoned to continue to violate the law and the rights of the innocent by virtue of the fact that they are "behind walls". The action of putting criminals behind walls necessarily takes the form of physical force and so can not be understood when distenangled from an enforcing subject. It is true that both criminals and innocent people behind border walls suffer the restriction of movement but the restriction involved with the former is imposed. With innocent people there exists no party or person playing the role of enforcer so it is unjustified to consider the imposed station of criminals and the station of innocents as equals. There is a distinction to be made between the actions concerning peoples being kept behind walls in order to prevent them from leaving and peoples finding themselves behind walls in order to be prevented from entering; intentional relations are not accidental ones. In fact the only way to make real sense of your dual-usage is to subsume the entirety of the world outside a nation's border walls under the concept of "prison" but even here too we still lack an imprisoning subject.

- was not sufficient to refute the notion given in your two comments quoted at the top of this post then I would very much like to be corrected.

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