Nice dodge. I like it how you completely avoid answering the point despite a rugged tendency to the verbose post.
The point which you failed to address was not whether the police themselves may cause harm and screw up, which they do, but whether or not the principled anarchists here would truly take their arguments to the extreme and not avail themselves of government police ‘services’ in such a situation because two wrongs don’t make a right. An anarchist compromises the second he uses a public roadway rather than investing in his own personal ultralite, and every time he patronizes a store which the government exercised eminent domain to allow to be built. The argument is not whether public roads are good or legitamate or a service better provided by the private sector, which they likely are, nor whether or not eminent domain is justifiable, which it isn’t. The point is the practical reality of living in a less than ideal world while fighting for something better, and running into disagreements with occasional idealogues who somehow think their level of compromise is the right one, and anyone who compromises more is too unprincipled and less too utopian.
So perhaps you can pull your head out of your nether regions and realize not everyone who disagrees with you is promoting a wholesale attack on your prescious ideology.
Then never leave your house. No one is forcing you to use government provided roadways or transit or police or anything else. Do not leave your house, have everything delivered via private, outlaw helicopter pilots who never file flight plans, never post on the internet since, as it was started with government funds, it is unprincipled to do so, etc., etc., etc. You have used the government to your advantage a trillion times in your life either directly or passively. As has everyone. Only in the totally privatized utopia of anarcho capitalism does no one use the government to their advantage. In reality the government will likely continue to provide roads, police, and a court system at a bare minimum. And, as principled anarchists, I expect you and BP to never, ever, ever use such things even should the desire or situation arise where it would benefit you. It would make you collectivists.
True, but anyone who tries to enforce an existing law in order to stop the mass redistribution of his wealth to people he doesn’t want it to go to is a collectivist. The bottom line is that if a law were enacted that strictly outlawed all corporate welfare, while not necessarily the libertarian paradigm because you’re still using the government to enforce it, enforcement of that law would likely leave people a lot better off, seeing as how millions if not billions of their dollars would not be given away to banks, corporate farms, sugar manufacturers, etc., anymore. Of course the law itself would take some enforcement dollars and technically expand the government’s powers. But it could pass and could be enforced if enough people made enough politicians understand their jobs depended on it. And they would be a lot better off for it.
Come on Kent, look at Rome if you want to see what unfettered immigration does to nations. Look at the recent Australian and French riots. There is a proper role of government even for Libertarians, and protection is a proper role of government.
Rome seems to be an example of the disasterous effects of imperialism, not any disastrious effects of open immigration.
Unless we wish to make some Nockean distinction between “state” and “government”, there is a proper role for government only for minarchist libertarians. Libertarian anarchists, however, reject the institution of government altogether on both ethical and practical grounds. Generally, we tend to argue that the government cannot even provide the minarchist functions of defense and arbitration without initiating aggression (or the threat of aggression) in some way. So we reject minarchism as inherently self-contradictary in that the means necessary to have a minarchist government are in contradiction to its very purpose. We also tend to argue that, if the laws of economic hold true for health care and education, so too should they for the provision of arbitration and security, and therefore there is no practical reason why they should not be left to free competition.
But this immigration debate, unfortunately in my view, is not primarily one between anarchists and minarchists, because apparently there are many anarchists who are attempting to justify immigration restriction (although a handful of minarchists still tout open borders). In my view, if things were as they “should” be, the immigration debate should be primarily between the anarchists (open borders, open immigration) and the minarchists (closed borders, restricted immigration). But particularly due to the influence of Hoppe on this issue, immigration restriction seems to be the dominant position even among anarchists within this particular “circle”. And there is also a strategic debate among anarchists as to wether or not the state should be used in the present with regaurd to this issue. If I wanted to be really harsh, I would characterize this as a debate between libertarians and paleoconservatives, but I’m not going to say that someone is not a libertarian if they happen to be wrong on this one particular issue.
Rome fell because they were busy occupying other countries and debasing their money. Rome’s immigrants hardly had “free migration”, you had to earn your way in. Not comparable. I’m not a historian so I could be all wet.
As for Austria and France, there are other issues involved there as well. The United States and Canada are both countries created by open immigration (and with the US, forced immigration), where would we be without pizza, chili and tacos? [;)]The last of my family to immigrate into N. America came in the mid-19th century. Maybe my ancentors should have come up with the concept of “illegal” vs. “legal” immigrants first?
I should get back to reading all the debate points here but been sidetracked. I’m still stuck with if the problem is truly the welfare state, as Paul claims, then why not focus on that rather then the immigrants. The ad makes the immigrant the bad guy. And I do not believe the vast majority of them are migrating for a free ride. Those who say they are offer anectdotal evidence. The appeal of the ad is entirely to one’s xenophobia, which gives some support charges of racism.
Sorry, but I find it accurate. Certainly not in all cases but in most. Wish it wasn’t so, this isn’t the movement I’ve been supporting the past twenty five years. BTW, my wife just pointed out that the policy offered by Ron Paul is excessively inflammatory. The ad certainly is. Maybe you’d have to view it as a libertarian who’s also outside of the U.S. I guarantee you, its not going down well here in Canada.
If a gas leak catches fire and explodes and sets your pants on fire, the primary problem is the leak. But you are still going to take care of your pants.
And yes, the horror of that ad, which essentially said we should at least know who is coming over the border, not tolerate law breaking, and perhaps not invite plane loads of young muslim men over since that seems to be the demographic that has some severe problems with us right now.
The horror, the sheer, unmitigatable horror…
Bottom line is there is a difference between the past waves of immigration and the current one, because in the past despite some tendency toward politics, the motivation for immigrants to come here was to earn a living the economic way. These days a lot more people, including Americans and in my experience a ton of the people who immigrate, see the political means as acceptable and even more desirable that the economic means. It’s not about what you can earn, it’s about what you think you are owed. The problems illegals cause for my company in Texas and Arizona are insane. The money we spend, the lawsuits we deal with, the turnover is insane, the drug use rampant, the thievery slightly less rampant. And we try to reach out to schools and community centers to get reliable immigrants, people who are here legally and looking to earn and buck, and I as an HR person can put a career path in front of them if they’re willing to learn. You only have to wade through so many bottles of piss inexplicably used and left filled on the factory floor, with a sizable enough bathroom well within reach no less, before you start wondering just what the hell is going on.
Your views are interesting. I’m relatively new to this site and I’m just now learning about the distinctions between the different libertarians. I don’t really understand the anarchist view as I think it is self-destructive, but I respect your right to think what you do and I find that you also make some very good points.
xahrx, you’ve got a way with words I’ll give you that. But we’re not on the same track. I can certainly see your point of view from a utilitarian perspective but I’m a hopeless libertarian ideologue. The libertarian would oppose gov’t intervention even when there might be some claimed benefits for supporting it. But as we know, government intervention rarely lead where the planners think it will.
It would be entirely consistent had RP said there would be no benefits immigrants (legal or otherwise). No aggression in that. Building a wall and tossing people out when they’re not violent is aggression. Never thought I’d see the day I’d be arguing this with libertarians. Where is the young Rothbard when you need him?
Guess the philosophy is evolving, you know, like liberalism did in the 19th century. [;)]
reidbump - I started as a fan of Milton Friedman, evolved into a minarchist (reading Rothbard) and finally concluded we don’t really need a government. I don’t support pulling the rug out from the State but wearing it away, so I stay engaged to the political process and accept ideas that offer to cut back the state (ie: aggression) but won’t support those that will increase it as suggested by the closed border folks.
Since we’re doing personal histories here: I admitedly started out as more or less a left-liberal, evolved into a minarchist with cultural left tendencies, read a lot of Rothbard and free market economics material, ran into major cognitive dissonance (was wrestling between minarchism and anarchism in my head for a while) and finally concluded in favor of market anarchism. I further evolved as an anarchist to accept a pluralist type of anarchism without adjectives perspective and have adopted an agorist, non-voting, anti-pragmatist outlook on strategy. I’ve also developed a fairly Objectivist (albiet non-Randian) type of philosophy to justify my anarchism. In retrospect, as a minarchist I was an anarchist in denial the whole time. So here I am.