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Marty McFly

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3 hours ago, Craig24 said:

What action does his entry prevent me from taking that you think I had a right to take?  

Illegal entry precludes the government from acting to defend rights by making it impossible to even examine the immigrant much less possibly bar his entry.  There is no point of setting up a government of objective laws and uniform procedures if every private citizen or non-citizen has a subjective veto over government action.  

The chain of logic here is that we start with the principle of individual rights, then we extend our scope of action by establishing a government to defend individual rights.  The government must be strictly controlled in its use of force by hobbling it with rules and procedures and laws that make its actions obey the principle of objectivity as well as that of defending rights.  The illegal immigrant attacks the objectivity of the governments operation directly even if he otherwise never violates rights.  Whatever the immigration law may be it should apply to all immigrants equally.  

An attack on the government's ability to operate objectively is nonetheless an attack on the government and indirectly in principle upon all of its citizens.

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As far as the immigration bit, I stand close to Don's position, or at least the reply. I get that respect of law is important, even when some laws are improper or wrong. But I find existing policy to be "wrong enough" that disregarding many immigration laws is totally fine. It would make a lot more sense to make citizenship something earned as opposed to a birth-right, where movement is permitted without special permissions like voting, or government interactions. I don't see where migration matters one bit, except that a wall isn't inherently bad. What's bad is what looks to be Trump's desire to make permission to enter as a collective decision of The People. If he were trying to be promote rights, he'd at least propose reform to the system.

7 hours ago, New Buddha said:

An important point in my post is that the majority of the money behind his construction loans (and permanent financing) is   money lent by banks.   [...]

Buddha, I wasn't interested in his real estate businesses. It has nothing to do with knowing about economics. He has not been able to expand his business dealings well at all. If he ran a global corporation and especially adding new markets, it'd be different - his skill at business would reflect understanding of global economics and all the complexities. I wouldn't trust Trump to run any business except development, and even then I'd be wary of his vanity (vain, i.e. exaggerated pride that is beyond what is deserved). I'm still interested though, is 6 bankruptcies comparable to developers of similar sizes? Is it more or less, or what you'd expect? I really am curious.

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44 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

I'm still interested though, is 6 bankruptcies comparable to developers of similar sizes? Is it more or less, or what you'd expect? I really am curious.

In a way I did answer this, but it may not be clear to you.  I stated that, often times, developments do fail multiple times before they succeed.  I said that a developer should strive to be the "third one in".  Often times developments run out of money and require an infusion of new capital.  They are, in a sense, sold before they are complete.

AND LET ME BE VERY CLEAR.

The government extracts a HUGE cost from developers.  In the City of Portland, a developer is required to spend up to 10% of the construction cost in  upgrading a property to conform with current Zoning standards.  If you have a $28M project, you are REQUIRED to spend up to $2.8M upgrading your site.  In addition, it can take YEARS to get through Design Review - costing a developer hundreds of thousands of dollars in consultant fees, not to mention lost revenue due to the delay in develpment.  And, developers are often required to make off-site infrastructure improvements to the City's utilities that can cost millions more, but which they do not own and add no value to their property..  This also does not factor in business tax and sales tax.  A huge amount of money is written off by developers to satisfy government requirements.

Regarding Trump, here are two articles regarding his bankruptcies:

DT

DT2

Just because a developer files for  bankruptcy, it does not mean that the development does not go on to become profitable.  Often times the development is restructured.  I'm absolutely certain that Trump has step into many distressed developments and made them profitable.  This is in fact very much the norm.

Summary:

Relative to the size of Trumps portfolio, he is, by any objective measure, a very successful developer -- and people line up to do business with him.

Summary 2:

There is a HUGE amount of risk involved in development.  This would be true even in a pure, Laissez-faire economy.  And the players, (i.e, the banks, developers, architects, engineers and contractors) understand and accept these risks.

Edited by New Buddha
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1 hour ago, New Buddha said:

Just because a developer files for  bankruptcy, it does not mean that the development does not go on to become profitable.  Often times the development is restructured.  I'm absolutely certain that Trump has step into many distressed developments and made them profitable.  This is in fact very much the norm.

All I'm wondering is if 6 bankruptcies is a typical number because you seem to be familiar with the industry in general. If projects fail multiple times, fine. I don't know what "fail" means here though. Also, are there other developers I can compare him to?  

Doesn't change the utter failure and probably fraudulent Trump University. Doesn't change that he probably knows little about macroeconomics and just about anything outside his immediate experiences. He's concrete-bound - just like his buildings. He's fine at business if it's real estate, but he'd be no match for say, Jeff Bezos or any multinational corporation CEOs who make and deal with substantially more money.

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57 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

If projects fail multiple times, fine. I don't know what "fail" means here though.

Lordy.  I'll try again.

It means that if a development runs out of money, it may need to attract new investors and an infusion of new capital/ownership.  This can be done under Chapter 11.  The development gets restructured.  It does not mean -- as Hillary and Bernie want you to believe -- that someone's 87 year old grandmother dies.  It means that some new party enters into the development and "purchases" the work that has been done to date, and takes the project forward and makes it profitable.  This happens all the time.  The players in developments are big boys - Banks, Developers, Investors, Architects, Engineers and Contractors.  These are well educated, professional people who understand the risks that are involved.

And furthermore, the chief cause of a developments running out of money is, by and large, costs associated with the government entitlements process which I spelled out above.

Bankruptcy is not what you think it is. People don't die, lives aren't ruined, granny doesn't spend the rest of her life eating cat food.  Did you read the DT2 link above?  From the link:

People might ask "How is Donald Trump able to file for bankruptcy so many times?" The answer is "He didn't." Trump himself has never filed for bankruptcy. His corporations have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy four times.

By filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the corporation is allowed to continue running while restructuring and reducing its debt. By allowing the business to continue, employees still have their jobs and the business is still making money. Corporate debts still need to be repaid but they may be reduced. The corporation must develop a repayment plan and corporate budget. Both must be approved by the creditors and by the bankruptcy court.

A corporation is a separate legal entity from its shareholders, other owners, board of directors, and CEO. Since it is a separate entity, the corporation files bankruptcy under its own name. In Chapter 11 bankruptcies, the owners’ personal assets are not at risk. The owners’ credit history remains intact.

Edit:  Trump has almost certainly stepped into many projects that were facing bankruptcy, taken them over, and made them profitable.  Surely he should get credit for having done so, right?  Think of all the grandmothers lives that he saved by doing so. /sarc

Edited by New Buddha
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3 hours ago, Eiuol said:

I get that respect of law is important, even when some laws are improper or wrong.

I completely disagree with this, and I think that it summarizes in spirit much of what I find wrong with many of the political opinions on this site.

Where the law is improper or wrong, a person does not owe it his respect. Improper law, in initiating the use of force, acts as man's destroyer; to "respect" it is to sanction it, and our own destruction along with it.

Instead, what we must respect is the fact that there are people who threaten to destroy us for violating their improper and wrong edicts*. Taking this into account may lead us to observe an improper law to some greater or lesser extent, but not out of any "respect" for law, as such. Indeed, there is nothing respectable or respect-worthy of such thuggish behavior; it rather deserves our scorn.

_______________________

* Though calling such edicts "law" is a fine shorthand, and for quick/effective communication, it is as much law, in truth, as if the Mafia had issued proclamations; while the Mafia's proclamations may be "objective" in the sense that those impacted "know clearly, and in advance of taking an action, what [the Mafia] forbids them to do (and why), what constitutes [disobedience] and what penalty they will incur if they commit it," such edicts can never be lawful in the full sense because they violate rights.

This is true of government, too, and for the same reason: neither the Mafia, nor the government, nor any individual or group of individuals has the right to violate the rights of any other.

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18 hours ago, Grames said:

 someone who sneaks across the border to evade examination.

This tells me everything I need to know about your level of understanding of the 12 million people in the US illegally. Really? You think the reason why they are sneaking across the border is to evade examination?

They're not looking to avoid examination. 99% of them would be more than happy to allow the US government to give a proper, objective examination of their criminal history and terrorist affiliations, because they don't have either. The reason why they're sneaking across the border is because that option is not available to them.

And the fact that you can't be bothered to learn that basic fact about their situation, before vilifying them, and calling for their lives to be destroyed, makes you about as objective as the communists vilifying the rich, or the nazis vilifying the Jews. There's no difference. Same tactics, same cheap rationalizations, same disregard for facts and reality.

Edited by Nicky
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9 hours ago, New Buddha said:

It means that if a development runs out of money, it may need to attract new investors and an infusion of new capital/ownership.  This can be done under Chapter 11.  The development gets restructured.  It does not mean -- as Hillary and Bernie want you to believe -- that someone's 87 year old grandmother dies.

Good businessmen do not use bankruptcies as a routine form of doing business, regardless of whether their creditors are grandmas or banks that are working under a tax-payer subsidy. 

Don't rationalize Trumps cheating and failing. There are enough anti-Hillary arguments you can make to vote for Trump, without contorting reality.

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12 hours ago, New Buddha said:

It means that if a development runs out of money, it may need to attract new investors and an infusion of new capital/ownership.  

I read the article. I didn't suggest bankruptcy is a sudden apocalypse, all I asked if his number of bankruptcies are like other developers. As far as I understand it, a bankruptcy is a -not- a sign of succeeding. It's a sign of -needing- to restructure the debt and the law makes it so - otherwise, lots of other people would be screwed from your mistakes as a developer. I could see it happening to good businesspeople once or twice. But 6 times? I don't know, it makes me suspect he's playing the system and abusing the law. I'll look into it though if you're tired of talking about it.

Besides, if your point is "Trump is smart about economics", well, no, as I said, his successes (and I'm still skeptical that he dd it honorably) at all are all in real estate development. Concrete-bound thinking is like that, it can't expand to other areas of knowledge.

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16 hours ago, DonAthos said:

I completely disagree with this, and I think that it summarizes in spirit much of what I find wrong with many of the political opinions on this site.

Where the law is improper or wrong, a person does not owe it his respect. Improper law, in initiating the use of force, acts as man's destroyer; to "respect" it is to sanction it, and our own destruction along with it.

I imagine any system of laws will at times consist of some laws that individually I judge to be wrong. As long as the system in general is objective, it isn't proper to purposely violate the laws. I'd aim to change the law and persuade people to make the law different, but still respect the system as a whole and follow that law. When the law in question is a gross violation of rights, to such a degree that there is more than just an error, then ignoring the law in question is appropriate. I think Grames is thinking of it like the first case, while I think it's the second. 

This is related to my political action thread: when is it morally appropriate to ignore a law?

There's a difference between the system of laws, and a specific law. To follow a law isn't to sanction it or even to be respectful of that law, there are ways to oppose it. Breaking a law on purpose is a "bigger" way to oppose a law. Picking and choosing laws only based on -your- liking of them wouldn't make for a good system. Even if you're sure you're right, obeying the law anyway is important if you believe in a system of objective laws. As I said though, this depends on how bad the law is.

It's so easy to diverge into tangents in a Trump thread!

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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

It's so easy to diverge into tangents in a Trump thread!

This is no tangent, Eiuol. We are speaking to underlying ideas: these are the things which motivate the more-surface-level debates over border walls and other such nonsense, even if that means that those specifics fade from view temporarily.

The case anti-immigration, pursuant to your comment about "respect of law," is that an individual has a moral obligation to follow the law, even when that law is "wrong." (And by "wrong," we mean set against man's rights rather than protecting them; we mean that the law initiates the use of force.) I know that you consider these anti-immigration laws to somehow be so egregious that they no longer merit this consideration of "respect," but I continue to go further in what I consider to be a principled fashion: where the law initiates the use of force, no individual has any moral obligation to follow that law.

Though I would not go so far (and especially without a greatly expanded discussion of context and meaning), I would be more inclined to support an idea that an individual has a moral obligation to resist any law which initiates the use of force, in line with Rand's claim here (from "The Nature of Government"):

Quote

All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.

Thus we recognize that in the case of border wall-builders and -circumventers, there is force being employed. But if we mean to be on the side of right, we must be able to first determine who has initiated the use of force, then generally take the other. Is it the man who seeks to circumvent the wall who has initiated force? Or the man who has built that wall, meaning to prevent immigration? I say that it is the latter, in that he has no right to restrict the immigration of others, and no appeal to the supposed objectivity of an immoral law can change that fact.

1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

I imagine any system of laws will at times consist of some laws that individually I judge to be wrong. As long as the system in general is objective, it isn't proper to purposely violate the laws.

I disagree. The system "in general" does not matter to the man who suffers from his own personal, particular injustice. I do not call upon any individual to submit to injustice for the sake of preserving "the system," or for the supposition that when viewed in some "aggregate" fashion justice is well-served elsewhere, by others to others. This is a call for self-sacrifice.

Rather, if you are an individual who suffers from some unjust law, and you can violate that law in such a way as to not court your own destruction (the specifics of which are highly individual, context-dependent, and beyond the scope of my argument), there is no moral obligation not to do so.

Edited by DonAthos
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11 hours ago, Nicky said:

...  before vilifying them, and calling for their lives to be destroyed...

 

3 hours ago, Grames said:

What?

Which of those two are you questioning?

Vilifying: you're making a negative moral judgement, in "public", on illegal immigrants

Their lives would be destroyed: if someone sent you to some poor town in Mexico where there were hardly any jobs, that would turn your life upside down. 

Personally, I can understand someone making an argument against immigration, and arguing in favor of our current immigration laws. However, to pretend that this is primarily about the rule of law, as opposed to your support for these laws, is disingenuous.

Edited by softwareNerd
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I have not addressed the problem of what to do about illegal immigrants already here.  You all assume too much.  Of those potential immigrants outside the country, that some would stay where they are or go somewhere else is both not a disaster and not my problem.

Nor have I "vilified" anybody.  To vilify means "to speak or write about in an abusively disparaging manner". I have argued that it is wrong legally and morally to circumvent a country's immigration laws, in a detached objective manner enough to support my argument without emotional language or speculations about motives or casting aspersions on other facets of anyone's character.  I would appreciate it if others on this thread would follow the same style.   

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18 minutes ago, Grames said:

I have argued that it is wrong legally and morally to circumvent a country's immigration laws, in a detached objective manner enough to support my argument without emotional language or speculations about motives or casting aspersions on other facets of anyone's character.

To be fair, one poster did argue that your focus on enforcement is wrong in the face of America's current immigration law reality.

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16 minutes ago, JASKN said:

To be fair, one poster did argue that your focus on enforcement is wrong in the face of America's current immigration law reality.

The current immigration law reality is that it is widely ignored and flauted, not just by the illegal border crossers themselves but by "sanctuary cities" and other aspects.  I insist this is a bad thing because it undermines the governing principle of 'rule of law' and is a problem to be solved, not a situation to be cheered. 

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I wonder -- does this idea that immigration law (including restrictive quotas, independent of any "initiation of force," and what I might imagine could be a general ban on a given ethnicity, or national origin, or religion, or etc.) is proper law, and that it is immoral to circumvent it -- does this apply also to emigration? If a nation properly may control who crosses its borders the one way, can it also properly restrict travel in the other? (Edited to add: and if a country tried -- if it forbade some individual [or business] from leaving -- would it be immoral to disobey such a law?)

Edited by DonAthos
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36 minutes ago, Grames said:

The current immigration law reality is that it is widely ignored and flauted, not just by the illegal border crossers themselves but by "sanctuary cities" and other aspects.  I insist this is a bad thing because it undermines the governing principle of 'rule of law' and is a problem to be solved, not a situation to be cheered. 

But you will grant that you support these immigration laws right? Obviously not every detail, but you broadly support them. 

Or are you saying these are immoral laws but your focus is on enforcing them because of the "rule of law" principle?

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34 minutes ago, DonAthos said:

I wonder -- does this idea that immigration law (including restrictive quotas, independent of any "initiation of force," and what I might imagine could be a general ban on a given ethnicity, or national origin, or religion, or etc.) is proper law, and that it is immoral to circumvent it -- does this apply also to emigration? If a nation properly may control who crosses its borders the one way, can it also properly restrict travel in the other? (Edited to add: and if a country tried -- if it forbade some individual [or business] from leaving -- would it be immoral to disobey such a law?)

I assume that anyone who says we should obey the law because it is the law would say this about any law: ... 

... entering, leaving, slavery, homosexuality, abortion, taxes, asset forfeiture, miscegnation, etc.

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6 minutes ago, softwareNerd said:

But you will grant that you support these immigration laws right? Obviously not every detail, but you broadly support them. 

Or are you saying these are immoral laws but your focus is on enforcing them because of the "rule of law" principle?

Correct, I do not support current immigration law in every detail.  Nor am I a legislator or lawyer, just a guy interested in Objectivism.  I don't understand anything in Objectivism to be compatible with the abolishment to national borders, so the correct doctrine must lie somewhere between anarchy and a literal prison planet.

I do not appreciate insinuations that if I do not enjoy anarchy that I must be in favor of the prison planet scenario.  I find that to be uncivil and vilifying.

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10 minutes ago, Grames said:

Correct, I do not support current immigration law in every detail.  Nor am I a legislator or lawyer, just a guy interested in Objectivism.  I don't understand anything in Objectivism to be compatible with the abolishment to national borders, so the correct doctrine must lie somewhere between anarchy and a literal prison planet.

The correct doctrine... okay.

The current law... you think it is mostly correct and moral in saying that most people who want to work here may not enter, and that the government will stop people from coming in even when a citizen is willing to give them a job? Do you support the law that says that a doctor may not enter unless his home country says they have no objections, and only if he promises to return home after a few years? There are so many such laws; but, you get the drift.

Sorry if you think I'm vilifying you. My responses assumed you had some idea of the current laws and wanted to enforce them. Perhaps you don't know what the current laws are like: in which case, I apologize.

Edited by softwareNerd
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3 hours ago, Grames said:

Nor have I "vilified" anybody.  To vilify means "to speak or write about in an abusively disparaging manner".

Yes, you have. You keep falsely claiming that their motive for sneaking across the border is to evade examination, and that their motive for coming to the US is to subvert individual rights. Not only that, you are doing this as part of an organized propaganda campaign by US nationalists. There is no mistaking it: you are using the same exact arguments, the same exact language, and the same exact callous detachment from the reality of 12 million innocent human beings.

When you're given a chance to learn their real motives (they're in the US to earn a living through honest work, and they're sneaking across the border because US authorities are actively seeking to stop them from making that honest living), you refuse to acknowledge it, and just trudge on with the propaganda.

Whether you're aware of it or not, you have adopted the thinking and mannerisms of right wing thugs. It's as clear as day. If you're not doing it consciously, this is me letting you know that you're doing it.

Edited by Nicky
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1 hour ago, Grames said:

I don't understand anything in Objectivism to be compatible with the abolishment to national borders, so the correct doctrine must lie somewhere between anarchy and a literal prison planet.

National borders are defined by the mutually recognized jurisdictions of the respective governments sharing those borders, not through any claim that immigration must be restricted between them. Were immigration unrestricted, this would not lead to the "abolishment of national borders" any more than it would be "anarchy." Doing away with immoral laws does not mean eliminating all law, and citing that a specific law is immoral and ought to be eliminated is no call for anarchy.

Or the anarchy involved would be similar to the "anarchy" experienced when people within the US go to and from Los Angeles without restriction.

Edited by DonAthos
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On 7/31/2016 at 10:40 AM, Eiuol said:

I read the article. I didn't suggest bankruptcy is a sudden apocalypse, all I asked if his number of bankruptcies are like other developers. As far as I understand it, a bankruptcy is a -not- a sign of succeeding. It's a sign of -needing- to restructure the debt and the law makes it so - otherwise, lots of other people would be screwed from your mistakes as a developer. I could see it happening to good businesspeople once or twice. But 6 times? I don't know, it makes me suspect he's playing the system and abusing the law. I'll look into it though if you're tired of talking about it.

Besides, if your point is "Trump is smart about economics", well, no, as I said, his successes (and I'm still skeptical that he dd it honorably) at all are all in real estate development. Concrete-bound thinking is like that, it can't expand to other areas of knowledge.

I just spent two years working on a development that was in Chapter 11 when it was "purchased" by the developer that I worked for.  Subsequently, he ran out of money and he was saved from Chapter 11 by finding another investor.  This is very common in development.  I'm not kidding you when I say this.  This is very common.  There are a huge number of unknowns when beginning a project (many related to environmental regulations and the government entitlements process) which can take years to resolve and cost millions.  Trump has almost certainly stepped into and rescued far more troubled developments than he has gotten up-side-down on. By doing so, you are able to acquire the equity already generated in the development (the buildings/site are still under construction).  Development is for the long term.  You gain equity over 10, 20 and 30 years.  If you can break-even on rents, leases and upkeep, then you are doing good.  The name of the game is equity.

The people who invest in development are not little old ladies living on annuities.  So it's incorrect to say that "lots of other people would be screwed".  The major investment in development is ALWAYS the bank - not the developer.  Rule One of Development: OPM.

And the money that banks make off of of long-term loans is astronomical, -well worth the risks.  The banks get the interest payments, and the developer gets the equity.

Edited by New Buddha
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