In that case, you do’t have to worry about immigrants at all. If popular votes don’t matter, what do you care even if 99% of that 99.9% are morons. You can’t have it both ways. Either votes matter or they don’t. If votes do matter, then we have to base our politics on more than appealing to less than 5% of the people; if votes don’t matter, then votes from immigrants is not even an issue.
A truly competitive political system can not possibly be built upon a kafakanesque bureacratic feudal system that tie people to the land of their births. It would be as silly as trying to build a free competitive automobile market by banning all imports; that would be an oxymoron.
Nor do we have a pure democracy in the US even today. What’s your point? Voltaire’s discovery was in stark contrast to Byzantine’s assertion that a society can only hold together through monoculture. England was very prosperous because it had the capacity to accommodate talented men of all sorts of backgrounds . . . whereas Continental European states were being torn to shreds because the various sovereigns tried to enforce monoculture.
Votes do matter, a lot, at enabling political power. They don’t in any way protect liberty. which is why we have to get the educable people to reject voting before too much power has been enabled.
The first sentence in your paragraph debunked your earlier assertion that 0.1% of the population has all the political power and the remaining 99.9% have none. The last sentence in your paragraph sounds eerily familiar if you read Lenin’s writings and speeches: the “consciece” proletariat workers should have full control over the masses of “unconscience” peasants even though the workers only account for a tiny minority of the population; how to go about it? weighted votes and strip peasants of their votes . . . all through state sanctioned violence of course.
It is not at all. When you really think about the practical ramifications of your policy proposal: people can not move away from the country of their of birth, and that political power should be concentrated in the hands of less than 5% of the population . . . after stripping away all the flowery languages of “educable,” “political conscience/leading-edge” or “divine authority,” what you end up with is dark age feudalism, with less than 5% feudal lords ruling over 95+% serfs and chattels. Neither the midieval knights nor the communist leaders considered themselves thugs who specialized in butchering fellow human beings, but that’s exactly what they were in order to have a system where less than 5% have exclusive political power over the remaining 95+% and the serfs and chattels are not allowed to vote with their feet, at pain of death. The whole way of thinking is totally anathema to libertarianism, which is based on the fundamental assumption that individuals are capable of being rational thinkers, at least for his or her own benefit.
Feudalistic Inquisition is what you will end up with if you insist on judging people based on their origin and “educability.” Which part of your words are you standing by? The part where you advocate that political power should be concentrated into the hands of less than 5% of the population, or the part about government sanctioned violence should be used against voluntary population migration?
If you want to refer to my words, you ought to use direct quotations instead of your fabrications. Obfuscating the truth is not going to win you any arguments.
You are the one obfuscating. You did not put your words into concise terms, so direct quote would be quoting multiple paragraphs from several different posts, making the debate quite unwieldy. If you don’t like my summary of your thesis, please let me know how such summary is substantively different from your thesis:
You argued that:
(a) less than 5% of the population is “educable”
(b) the remaining 95+% are sheeples/followers, and therefore they should not have the vote or any say in politics
Am I missing anything in summarising your position on this topic?
On the second topic of immigraiton, you are against it and think government should have laws and enforce such laws against it. How is that position any different from my summary that you are against voluntary population migration?
In case it’s still not clear to you, an advocacy that “a nation should follow the leadership of a wise leader without second-guessing him” is no different from advocating dictatorship under “Furherprincipe.” The former is dressed up in flowery language (i.e. obfuscating), and the latter is a concise summary of facts and ramifications.
Thought crime? Nah, that charge only exists in a feudalistic/totalitarian political system. On the other hand, I’m still all ears if you can tell me what substantive difference is there between your position and my summary of your position, after cutting through all the flowery obfuscation. I’m quite confident with regard to my ability to cut through obfuscations that usually come with totalitarian ideas . . . people knowledgeble in Austrian economics are often quite good at seeing through such nonsense and getting a good grasp of the practical ramifications of such policy proposals . . . after all, Hayek authored Road to Serfdom more than half a century ago. So tell me, what did I miss, in substantive terms, in my summary?
Correct. It was ruled by a cadre of Anglo-Saxons–mostly men–who considered themselves racially superior and who would have happily had every Mohammedan in their borders swinging from a rope at the slightest sign of political activism.
You have the century wrong. Mohammedians would perhaps be swinging from a rope in the 12th century England; even then Richard the Lion Hearted was quite a deal maker with the muslims on his crusade . . . His biggest accomplishment was successful negotiation with Saladin for safe passage for Christian pilgrims. Richard even offered his own sister Joan of Sicily as bride to Saladin’s brother Al-Adil before he left the Holy Land.
Feelings of racial superiority? That came much later in the late 19th century, and laid the ground works for the decline of Britain through unprofitable imperialism. Also, British sense of racial superiority had a very peculiarly narrow definition of “race”; they were talking about a race of Brits! as they waged war of conquest and extermination on Boers, who were the forefathers of the last institutional apartheid whites in South Africa.
Prejudice and arrogance was not in vogue when Britain was on the rise in the 16th, 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries (Voltaire was in London in the mid-18th century) . Much of Britain’s initial capital came from Jewish communities that initially fled Spanish Inquisition then later fled Netherlands due to invasion by the despotic Louise XIV.
So much for rational argument. Why the heck would Hayek write his books if not for trying to make more people think just like himself? If after reading Hayek, no reader can follow his thought process as intelletual framework and apply to current events, then he would have failed as an author.
There is no inquisition here. Just curious mind wanting to know what you really meant by what you wrote; how is it any different from other garden variety of “high-spirited” totalitarian ideas wrapped in flowery languages. Apparently, there is precious little difference, and your positions are not defensible.
You are projecting your modern multiculturalism on a very different time and culture. Jewish and Muslim minorities got along in 18th century London because otherwise they’d have had their wealth confiscated after being beaten and left to die in the street.
In fact, I believe that’s what used to happen to Catholics in jolly old multi-culty England back then.
As if beating and looting Jews and Muslims did the Spanish crown great good? Practically all the gold that Spaniards looted from the New World ended up in Venice, Antwerp and London . . . why? After beating and looting Jews and Muslims, there was hardly any banker left in Spain. The Spanish crown had to borrow heavily from Italian bankers and went bankrupt numerous times, despite all the treasur fleets arriving every year. Where the Jews and Muslims fled, Antwerp and London, became new centers of wealth and prosperity, outside Spanish control and very hostile to Spain.
Human action is more than bloodthirsty coercion. Otherwise, totalitarianism would have flourished, and there would be no room for Austrian Economics.
England was Catholic, then the king decided to be his own head of the church. There was no real theological or cultural difference between Anglican Church and Catholic Church. The inter-faith bloodshed in England was a factional struggle between different factions of the court. England wasn’t exactly a properous place while that was going.
You really think 18th century Englishmen walked around telling each other diversity is strength, race is a social construct, etc.? Any Jew or Muslim howling about discrimination or human rights back then would have been laughed at, right before being strung up a lamppost.
