Aretae

The virtue of excellence

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Immigration III

Here's the imigration situation I see (rephrasing from my comments last time)

Bobu from Ethiopia has saved about half of his above-average salary of $2/day for 5 years. He would like to spend that $1500 to get on a boat with his family of 6 (Bobu, Mrs. Bobu, and 4 junior Bobus), travel to America, and work his traditional 14 hour days, 6.5 days a week to make a better life for his family. If he stays, he knows that there's a 50% chance that one of his present or future children will die of hunger, violence, or disease before they turn 14.

Should the US government use force to prevent him from coming to the US in order to trade his labor for money?

Are there other questions in immigration? For sure. But the first question is the above...should the US government stop Bobu?

My core claim...if Bobu and his children count AT ALL...you don't reach the anti-immigrationist position.
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10 comments:

wobbly.com said...

If you believe immigration has a negative effect on society, then all it takes is for that negative effect to be of greater impact to you than the positive gain from immigration. I don't see how you can make the 'AT ALL' claim.

I'm not declaring a position here - I've been an immigrant several times and still am one - but it seems odd that you can't see logic in an anti-immigrant position.

[Hey, commenting worked.]

May 8, 2011 at 12:41 PM
GW said...

Since nobody's willing to speak the truth and risk looking like a meany, I will: Bobu and his family have negligible value to our society, and none whatsoever to me. In fact, their presence here would very likely result in a met cost to our society and may indeed have net negative marginal productivity in the general context of any modern society.

Also there's an issue of property right that you consistently gloss over when discussing this issue: the property in question being the socio-economic context created by the institutions of the nation-state. Our society could not exist in anything like it's present level of peace and prosperity without the system of rules and enforcement which create our peaceable social and economic context. Yet, you seem think that, despite our citizens' heavy investment in them, their use should be unilaterally open to anyone who claims them, with no regard for equity or ownership.

That's bullshit. The United States exists for the benefit of, and subject only to the will of, its equity holders (e.g. Productive citizens). Nobody else has a legitimate claim to it except them.

May 8, 2011 at 3:23 PM
Aretae said...

GW,

I think you've said precisely the same thing I've said. The case against Bobu rests on counting value to him as zero.

As to property rights? In most immigration discussions, there are no individual property rights being impacted. It's a question of whether you (collective) ought to use force to prevent me (collective) from renting rooms to and/or hiring/trading with Bobu...

Can't justify it on individual property rights grounds...can't justify it on broad utilitarian grounds unless you discount Bobu. Ingroup ethics justifies it by only counting as important folks who got lucky and were born nearby. Which is a valid ethic, despite MY not having any patience for it, and despite it not being liked much by most liberal-types.

May 8, 2011 at 4:55 PM
GW said...

Classic libertarian doublethink from you yet again. You assume that which you seek to demonstrate, and invert the order of every dependency. You are depending on the value of the socio-economIc context inherent to the nation state in which you live, by auspices of which you can more or less depend on being protected from predation, having your individual rights respected, and living under a rule of law. And yet you simultaneously imply that these thing have no value and that the people responsible for creating and maintaining them have no property right in the result by virtue of having done so. So, if they cannot claim their rightful ownership of something valuable, neither should you. Anybody should be able to squat in the house where you live whether you want them there or not.

Or, if there really is no value to the scheme provided by the nation-state, then anything that might depend on it must not have any value either. That ALSO includes your home, which you would have to personally protect against predation as an individual sovereign if the nation-state did not exist (and would be far, far less valuable as a result).

These are not speculative claims I make here. We know what modern anarchy looks like. It's called Mogadishu: hardly a paradise of prosperity and human rights. We also know what happens to property values in the United States when the nation-state fails. It's called Detroit.

So, for a so-called radical empiricist, you sure do have a funny way of ignoring all the evidence which contradicts your pretty, a priori thinking.

Of course, that's typical of libertarians as well.

May 8, 2011 at 6:49 PM
Aretae said...

GW,

Multi-variate analysis seems as if it comes awful easy to you. Perhaps you should consider academia.

Mogadishu, for instance, is a lovely example, except that it's improved under anarchy as compared to the prior government. Blaming anarchy for the problem is insane. If anything, Anarchy should be hailed as a solution there. Indeed, it has been sufficiently successful compared to the prior government that a book was written explaining said somali "anarchism" and advocating it's extension.

So do I take it that you're a socialist or Hegelian? The needs of the state outweigh those of the individual? Or is the state only justified to protect the individual? I personally take the 2nd view...and the view that it does so badly.

Furthermore...I don't follow how ANY of what you said in this 2nd post relates to what I've said. I thought that after your 1st comment, we were in agreement. If you discount the impact on Bobu to zero, which you do, then anti-immigration is justifiable. If you don't, then not so much. I don't...but consider it an honest moral disagreement over what is important, and one on which our best information says that you would expect different people to reach different conclusions.

May 8, 2011 at 7:09 PM
Gyan said...

I wish I could
predict future as well as Bobu.

May 9, 2011 at 2:38 AM
Aretae said...

fine...knows is an incorrect word.

roughly correctly estimates is the right meaning...but uglier phrasing.

May 9, 2011 at 2:51 AM
rightsaidfred said...

I don't see the evidence lining up for your position, Aretae.

As to property rights? In most immigration discussions, there are no individual property rights being impacted.

I see contrary evidence. The recent immigrant community in my area systematically burglarize me, lowering my property values, lessening my ability to enjoy my property, and increasing my costs of usage.

May 9, 2011 at 8:48 AM
rightsaidfred said...

It's a question of whether you (collective) ought to use force to prevent me (collective) from renting rooms to and/or hiring/trading with Bobu...

We have the opposite. The collective (you) are forcing me to rent to Bobu via tax transfers and prescriptive regulation. This is in a quest to satisfy your emotional needs. You are not making a quantitative or qualitative judgement here.

Ingroup ethics justifies it by only counting as important folks who got lucky and were born nearby.

It is fallacious to fall back on appeals to luck and randomness.

You discount ingroup ethics too much. For that matter, you discount group survival too much. You might not have much patience for it, and liberal types might not like it much, but I don't see much evidence that your brand of social politics will survive into the future.

May 9, 2011 at 8:48 AM
rightsaidfred said...

If he (Bobu) stays, he knows that there's a 50% chance that one of his present or future children will die of hunger, violence, or disease before they turn 14.

Should the US government use force to prevent him from coming to the US in order to trade his labor for money?

It is just not simply a matter of Bobu trading his labor for money. We get a whole suite of other behaviors: Bobu lays claim to social services beyond his economic contribution, and I have no recourse to reverse the mistake you have inflicted upon me. As is so common in politics, we don't get what is promised, and there is no going back. Bobu brings in relatives and starts his own Ethiopian community, purely to his benefit. He does not join current social and producer groups, thus lessening community self-governance and increasing the power of the central authorities. Again, this is for practicable purposes non-reversible.

While we are tossing out solutions, why don't we fix Ethiopia so Bobu doesn't have to become a refugee? He can trade his labor you are so fond of by working in Ethiopia and shipping his results here in exchange for what you have to trade. I mentioned earlier that self-sufficiency is a long term solution, and you savaged me for it. ??? I don't see where asymmetrical immigration is a long term solution.

May 9, 2011 at 8:59 AM

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