I am currently reading The Master and His Emissary , which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.) But then on page 186 I find: "Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad." OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean. But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. Aristarchus had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?) And when Copernicus propose
Or having babies.
ReplyDeleteOnce the government starts deciding one's neighbors, is it really suprising that many people have tried to get the government to reflect their own views?
ReplyDeleteGovernment has intervened in our daily lives in deciding who we can rent or sell our homes to, or serve food or do business with. If people do not wish to live next to Mexicans or eat in the same restaurants as Somalians or ride on the same bus with Muslims, and the government has forbidden freedom of association, then their only choice in their eyes is to keep those people out of the country to begin with.
Our system of democracy (and the state in general) is also troublesome. Immigrants are granted the same voting rights as the "natives" and with strong numbers can impose their culture on their neighbors. This is an issue whether it is Muslims moving into western Europe or New Yorkers moving into South Carolina.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteIf people do not wish to live next to Mexicans or eat in the same restaurants as Somalians or ride on the same bus with Muslims, and the government has forbidden freedom of association, then their only choice in their eyes is to keep those people out of the country to begin with.
Are you saying that the people who currently rent apartments or give jobs to illegal aliens, wouldn't do so if the government allowed discriminatory rental and hiring practices?
I would say yes on two conditions to Mr. Callahan's questions. The first condition would be that whatever amount of government is increased by enforcing the aforementioned, there would be a decreased amount of government in some other area. Second, if this would be known to decrease the political demand for those programs in the future.
ReplyDeleteAre you saying that the people who currently rent apartments or give jobs to illegal aliens, wouldn't do so if the government allowed discriminatory rental and hiring practices?
ReplyDeleteNo, you are assuming that I was speaking of everyone in the country. There certainly are people who will rent apartments or give jobs to illegals and they will continue to employ them regardless of their legal status.
But there are large groups of people who wish to decide who their neighbors are. The Supreme Court started overturning neighborhood covenants that prohibited certain races in the middle of the 20th century. No longer able to maintain neighborhood covenants through law, these people fled the city to the suburbs where they could have defacto segregation through economic barriers (larger plot sizes, minimum square footage, minimum construction cost, etc). This is especially noticeable in older industrial cities like Detroit and St. Louis. St. Louis had 2/3 of its population leave the city since the 1950s. The end result is that it is still one of the most segregated metropolitan areas, with a severely decayed innercity.
The problem is the idea of government deciding who we can associate with. People assume that since the government is in charge of immigration control, it should not be done at all. This is the same poor thinking that occured with segregation. In an anarchist society they are basically the same thing because there are no borders, only property boundaries.
Are "open borders" libertarians in support of anti-discriminatory laws upheld by the government? I think closed-borders libertarians fall into the fallacy of calling for more government intervention (closed borders) to combat a previous intervention (prevention of free association). If open-borders libertarians pointed out the root cause and called for its repeal, they'd have a lot more people on their side.
I think Charno's comment deserves way more attention. What's the difference between me popping out a baby and me sending an American Airlines ticket to a Mexican person? (Please refrain from the obvious jokes.) The Mexican will at least be old enough to already add to society while the baby is years away from being a contributing member. Would it be different if I adopted a Mexican baby?
ReplyDeleteBut that one's already been done, Margaret.
ReplyDeleteBut what's done on another thread, let alone another website, practically doesn't exist!!!! :D
ReplyDeleteSo the birth of say, hundreds of babies to libertarian parents is equivalent to the arrival of hundreds of muslim male jihadi rapists?
ReplyDeleteUm... no.
ReplyDeleteWhich means that an "argument" against immigration which would apply equally to babies is a bad argument.
"So the birth of say, hundreds of babies to libertarian parents is equivalent to the arrival of hundreds of muslim male jihadi rapists?"
ReplyDeleteOr, is the birth of hundreds of babies to socialist parents to be held equivalent to the arrival of hundreds of Arabs who want to open small businesses in the US? (That's what most Arabs seem to do in my neighborhood.)
What is the deal with open borders libertarians going silent on freedom of association? Isn't this what the whole problem is? They seem to support the immigrants "right" to come to a country, but ignore right of the natives to refuse to give them room and board. Is this subject too politically correct?
ReplyDeleteNo, you are assuming that I was speaking of everyone in the country. There certainly are people who will rent apartments or give jobs to illegals and they will continue to employ them regardless of their legal status.
ReplyDeleteI understood your point. You are saying that the only reason there are so many illegal aliens in the country right now is that the gov't makes it illegal for citizens to refuse to deal with them.
So I am saying right now, these illegals (at least the ones not on welfare) are able to get hired. It is illegal right now for those employers to do so. So it's not that these employers want to refuse to hire them, but are forced to by the evil gov't; no it's the exact opposite.
OK so we've established that all these people would still be able to get jobs under your proposal.
So now I'm asking, these current illegals who are renting apartments from people. You're saying that this is only because it's illegal to not give an apartment to an illegal alien? Couldn't the apartment owner report the lawbreaker to the INS?
Yes segregation would occur with total private property. And so the millions of Mexicans, Cubans, Haitians etc. who crossed into what is now called the USA would settle into various neighborhoods in what is now called Texas, Florida, Illinois, etc. where other immigrants lived. People who think shutting down the borders somehow approximates what would happen under free market anarchy are being silly, in my mind.
There certainly would be many more, not fewer, immigrants in a purely free-market US.
ReplyDeleteYou can count on this: every original idea Hoppe has had is wrong.
Granted, there would likely be more immigrants in a Hoppean model than there are now, but this is an arbitrary point. The borders of America are arbitrary. Why would a person living in Georgia care that there are large amounts of immigrants in California and Arizona any more than there are millions in Mexico. It is the fact that the ones in California and Arizona may be exercising control over his life by voting a certain way or using the social services that affects the person. We never hear complaints about the growing number of Mexicans in Mexico.
ReplyDeleteIf voting, welfare, and forced integration are thrown out of the window, there is no conflict. The man in Georgia no longer has to worry about the new comers because he is free to deny them service in his restaurant and send his children to schools that don't admit immigrants. He doesn't even have to worry about the immigrants living in a workcamp outside of town who have come for a paycheck, but are largely uninvolved in the society otherwise.
In other words, I don't think most people who want closed borders care about the official count of immigrants rising, but the fact that they are forced against their will to do business or live with these people.
This is true even of blacks in this country. Whites are denied from forming restrictive covenants and have to fall to a backup plan of moving to different areas to live as they choose. It's become a game of musical chairs. Malls and theatres that were once upscale can become "ghetto" with lots of fights breaking out, shoplifting, etc and the only recourse is to go to other ones further out in the suburbs. This is true for both the stores who lose business because of it, and people who don't feel as safe. This occurance is even noted by black comedians such Chris Rock: "every town's got two malls: they got the white mall, and the mall white people used to go to. 'Cause there ain't nothing in the black mall. Nothing in the black mall but sneakers and baby clothes."
Repeal all forced integration and then it will be okay to open the borders. Opening the borders beforehand is just forced integration and is just as unlibertarian as border control.
Great article! Thanks.
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