Agreed. Wasn’t my point though. I’m just saying if we reject any argument because it isn’t consistent with some utopia then there isn’t going to be much of argument at all.
I wish I could agree.
That’s not what I said. I’m just pointing out that it’s fruitless to begin with the argument that government is illegitimate since most don’t manifest this in their actions. That doesn’t mean that government is legitimate.
And to that I simply say that in more densely populated areas there will arise more statist humans. It allows for the opportunity exploit others. You’re not being mindful of the conditions necessary for effective coercion.
IF the taxpayers had clear property titles to public land, then the state wouldn’t exist, can you see that ?
If taxpayers really controlled the land they own then we’d be living in a free society and immigration wouldn’t be an issue.
I never said otherwise. And let’s suppose that the borders and roads of a country are jointly owned. And 90% of taxpayers are narrow minded tribalists, 9% don’t care and 1% are libertarians who want to let immigrants use their roads - and notice that immigrants pay indirect taxes so they can pay for road usage. How are you going to solve that conflict between the right to exclude of some and the right to not exclude of others ? Voting…?
Then, do you admit that taxpayers have the right to exclude foreigners from their property and have the government enforce that exclusion?
Yeah, I can see that if their property titles were recognised and enforced we would have no government. Look, as far as this whole property thing goes, we have two different definitions. I consider property to be posession. You consider property to be rightful title to possession. I think you’re wrong, but for the purposes of this discussion, I’ll take you’re definition for granted, and will simply refer to illigitimately held property (by my definition) as a possession. k, glad we got that out of the way. Now, since the taxpayers have rightful title to public land, shouldn’t we recognise that they have a right against tresspass? Or do people not have that right if their property has been expropriated (lost possession)?
Don’t many taxpayers have rights to the property titles of roads, since many taxpayers were expropriated to produce them?
The Hoppean position (which is libertarian btw) is not that there should be no immigration, that is closed boarders. If someone is invited, they should be allowed to enter. And the person who invited them should be considered their guarantor, and held liable for any damage they do to the property of others. And if the 1% of “libertarians” decide to let anyone in, and attract the predictable menace of property rights violators, the “tribalists” should be allowed to get an injunction to stop them from letting anyone else in, repeal the invitation of the unwelcome guests and expel them, and be allowed to pursue the “libertarians” assets as compensation for any damages.
It sounds like you believe that we that WE the citizens own the land when we don’t. The “illegal immigrants” are just walking on stolen property. Let them come in I say. We’ll just recruit them, make them our brothers in arms! The fact is there will always be “illegal” immigration.
No no. Wethetaxpayersa have ownership rights to government property. After all, we paid for it.
I prefer uninvited, since some of the current illigal immigrants are invited, while many legal immigrants are uninvited. Yes, they are walking on property that legitimately belongs to someone else. If the legitimate owners don’t want them on the property, they should travel on it. The fact that the property was produced using expropriated funds doesn’t change this in the least.
If someone forces you out of your house, do I have the right to come along and mash it up? Seriously.
Many third-world peoples (not all) tend to be less principled, and more sympathetic toward the political process than western Europeans. These are the people our current democratic welfare rulers import. In addition, to buy their loyalty, they give them all sorts of privileges at the expense of the domestic population. If you have a strategy that will convert these ppl into our allies, I’d like to hear it. But I’m skeptical.
And there will always be crime. Maybe we shouldn’t oppose it.
As I pointed out on page one of this thread, the anti-immigration position is predicated on illegitimate state ownership of land. There’s no way to get around this and I’ve yet to see anyone prove how one can take such a position without legitimizing the state to begin with.
No! The state stole our money through taxes, last time I checked thieves don’t give you something in return for what they’ve stolen.
Yes defintely, if I can’t have my house no one will. But in a nation-state nobody “owns” their home…
Exactly! They’re desperate blank states. And I posted a reason why I believe we can convert them on the 2nd page of this discussion board. Be my guest and look it up.[B]
It all depends what you mean by crime. If you mean drug trafficking, gun trafficking, prostitution, and money counterfeiting; I gladly support that! [6]
I fully support the idea that a group of individuals who jointly own property can do whatever they please with it, provided of course they abide by the NAP.
However, I don’t think that you can use that principle to justify what governments are currently doing. Also, the term ‘foreigner’ strikes me as nonsensical from the point of view of libertarian social theory.
In which case the gov’t owns roughly 50% of your income and can do with it and with you whatever it pleases. Thieves own what they steal – and might makes right. If the state owns public property then you’ve no argument against anything the state does with its property.
Yes, which is, I believe, a roughly correct libertarian definition of property.
Yes, that’s technically correct. The problem is that using a collective abstraction as “the taxpayers” is misleading IMO. First, there’s by no means unanimous consent among the taxpayers as to what to do with their property. Second the property rights are virtually missing in the sense that there’s no way to determine how individual taxpayers own different roads/parks/whatever.
Yes, now, 70% of taxpayers want to exclude, say, ‘drug users’ from their roads - and the rest don’t. What’s next ? You see, the problem is not only immigration. The right of exclusion can be invoked for any reason or no reason at all.So how would you handle such a situation ? Voting…??
I don’t think so.
So, you’re assuming that immigrants are a horde of barbarians ?
sentence first, veredict afterwards ?
Well…no. I don’t think that people who want to restrict immigration using the state in the current scenario have a logically sound case.
That is funny…and deluded. The things is, systems like communism and fascism are creations of western natural elites. In a word, third world governments are as bad as first world ones…and vice versa…
As a somehow related note…I’ve been watching some bush videos and reading quotes. It’s truly amazing.
I’ll say it again and this time in capital letters: "ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS SHOULD, BE, LIBERTARIANS MAIN FOCUS FOR RECRUITMENT. Stephen you act as if these people are brainless leeches, why can’t you see that they’re people who like us need something to believe in. Honestly, you want the state to disappear, but, at the same time you want the state to enforce something it really should have no say in. It’s mind boggling.
The closest thing one can come to a libertarian anti-immigration position would be to say that you personally prefer to restrict migration on your own legitimate property, and others are free to be more inclusive with their own legitimate property. It reduces to a claim of personal preferance that has nothing to do with libertarianism in any direct sense.
But you cannot, on any libertarian grounds, argue for state-enforced immigration restriction, for immigration restriction as a uniform legal standard. It is not libertarian to make exclusivity with one’s own property uniformly compulsory or to support the reineforcement of the state’s territorial dominion or legal jurisdiction. The state can not be treated as a legitimate owner in a libertarian analysis, nor is the illusion that the taxpayers are the collective owners of the state defensible or practical (such a thing would be impossible to accurately allocate, especially considering intergenerational issues, and as a matter of state policy it would reduce to a gigantic redistribution scheme if it were attempted to be allocated).
Sorry about quoting an old post, I was reading the thread from the beginning and felt like I should respond to this. From a statist’s perspective I don’t see this as logical because all your rich citizens that you steal the most from would clearly want to take this road. You can see the advantages of being a ‘guest’ vs being a ‘citizen’, especially if you are wealthy as you would be able to afford your own food, health care, and all the other things welfare provides. As the rich and upper middle class become ‘guests’ there is increasing not enough money for the leeches in the society, and the state will run out of money.
Agreed, such a system wouldn’t make sense for a statist because it would show that welfare is really not needed, and that there are people (both rich and poor) willing to do without it. But I offered that as a counterargument to the “can’t-have-free-immigration-because-of-the-welfare-state” claim made by libertarians. Libertarians shouldn’t worry about the welfare state going broke should they ?
Property is automatically exclusive, unless its use by a non-owner is invited.
As for the rest of your argument, lets apply it to violent crime instead of immigration.
The closest thing one can come to a libertarian anti-[violent crime] position would be to say that you personally prefer to restrict [violent crime] on your own legitimate property, and others are free to be more inclusive with their own legitimate property. It reduces to a claim of personal preferance that has nothing to do with libertarianism in any direct sense.
But you cannot, on any libertarian grounds, argue for state-enforced [violent crime] restriction, for [violent crime] restriction as a uniform legal standard. It is not libertarian to support the reineforcement of the state’s territorial dominion or legal jurisdiction. The state can not be treated as a legitimate owner in a libertarian analysis, nor is the illusion that the taxpayers are the collective owners of the state defensible or practical (such a thing would be impossible to accurately allocate, especially considering intergenerational issues, and as a matter of state policy it would reduce to a gigantic redistribution scheme if it were attempted to be allocated).
So what? That doesn’t mean that the position assumes that that ownership is legitimate. It means that it’s predicated on the fact that the state exists. It has effectively expropriated the land and does with it what our political process allows it.
It’s premised on the fact that no one effectively challenges the creation of borders via the expropriation of land by the state. It follows from this that we can, a priori, say nothing about whether a pro-immigration or anti-immigration stance is truly libertarian. The immigration argument becomes meaningless in the absence of the state but in its presence, whether that presence is legitimate or not, it is certainly meaningful.
I can say that I believe that anit-immigration is better for freedom (not a priori though), given that the state exists and excercises its power, without at the same time assuming that its existence is legitimate.
I don’t see how this is an obstacle to get around.
If they don’t enforce the border than there is no state! If were arguing about whether there should be a state or not than I agree but were arguing about immigration given that the state exists. You could just as easily argue that if the state allows everyone to cross the border they strengthen themselves (which is still enforcement).
Why? The government has a monopoly over the production of arbitration services. If one takes the position that the government ought to enforce laws against violent crime, do they implicitly admit the legitimacy of that monopoly?
Intervention X is the expropriation of private property and intervention Y is the partial return of control over that property. Isn’t that libertarian?
Yeah, it appeals to a national identity. So what? The only rightful owners, are the taxpayers, and what they rightfully own is the property currently in possession of government agents.
And neither will the lefty multicultural libertarians.