But why acknowledge such a stupid claim? Receiving a net tax subsidy only constitutes aggression if you have substantial control over the extraction of taxes in the first place. Some people who receive net tax subsidies (executives of large agribusiness operations, some government employees, etc.) do have some control and so can be blamed. Others (non-citizens, for one) have very little control over it.

The aggression is taxation, not the receiving of a net subsidy. Do you think it would be better if everyone were a net taxpayer?

bolton: “The libertarian does not own the border.”

I have no idea what this means. Nobody “owns the border”, because the border is a line with no width, not a plot of property. If you mean that no libertarian owns any property that sits along a point of entry to the United States, I have no idea why you think this. There are plenty of libertarians, e.g., who live along the coast or in Southern California. I’d be glad to buy a strip of land along the border myself for the sole purpose of letting immigrants pass safely into the country: I’d be doing a humanitarian service, and making a mint in the process. But of course you don’t think I should be able to do that. If you did, you would just support enforcing trespassing law, not blanket immigration restrictions. So quit pretending like you care about property rights: the only property rights you care about is the right to do something that furthers your own policy goals.

gc: “IS THERE OR IS THERE NOT such a thing as a net-tax recipient?”

Sure.

gc: “If there is, would you agree or disagree that they are concentrated among the uneducated and unskilled?”

No, of course not. There are four major groups that net tax recipients are dispersed across:

1. The indigent
2. Very low-income workers
3. Government employees
4. Government contractors
5. Old people
6. The super-rich

… among others. You’ve got to remember that by far the largest entitlement program in the United States (Social Security) is both collected and dispersed regressively, that the various levels of government employ millions of people, most of whom are educated professionals and most of whom go on to perform no valuable services whatsoever, at an average salary of $56,000 / year, that the corporate welfare budget typically meets or exceeds all the spending on all low-income entitlement programs combined, etc.

Anyway, again, what has this got to do with immigration? Do you think that being net tax recipients is a good reason to forcibly expel Con-Agra executives, or retirees, or for that matter native workers with little education and few marketable skills, from the country? If not, then why is it a reason to do the same thing to low-income immigrants—instead of, say, lobbying for reform in the tax and welfare systems?

Me: “Now tell me why I don’t have the right to [disregard the opinion of 60% of the country on my own property]”

The Great Khan responds: “For the same reason I cannot move next to you and invite several hundred of my friends that enjoy target practice with their Smith & Wessons and systematically pick off every single one of you wackos. Then rightfully take over your property and claim it as mine. DUH you dolt.”

You are aware of the difference between aggression and peaceful enjoyment of property, aren’t you? I’m not talking about whether or not I have the right to use my property to kill you and steal your stuff. (Do you think that I would have that right if a supermajority of my neighbors agreed with me?) I’m asking you to tell me why I don’t have the right to ignore the opinion of the supermajority of my neighbors as to who I can invite to peacefully stay on my own property while he works in town.

It’s my property, not yours, and I’m not messing with your stuff. So where do you get the right to call up the police and impose the demands of my neighbors on how I use my property?

bolton: “If it is acknowledged that going on net public subsidy is aggression on the net taxpayer or the citizenry, …”

But why acknowledge such a stupid claim? Receiving a net tax subsidy only constitutes aggression if you have substantial control over the extraction of taxes in the first place. Some people who receive net tax subsidies (executives of large agribusiness operations, some government employees, etc.) do have some control and so can be blamed. Others (non-citizen

“In doing so, they only bolster the stereotype that porn is automatically sexist and homophobic.”

Well. Isn’t complaining that the content in Hustler makes porn look violently sexist and homophobic sort of like complaining that “Jump Jim Crow” or “Rufus Rastus Johnson” makes American musical look viciously racist? It always has: that’s the market niche that it’s carved out for itself.

Blowhard likes short responses. So let’s try it again:

“Another try: 60-80% of Americans think immigration rates are already too high. Now imagine how many of them would object to any open-borders proposal. Now: are you really going to say that you think it’s fine to overrule their preference in this matter?”

On my own property? Yes, of course I do.

Now tell me why I don’t have the right to do so.

Razib: ‘If you give them the word “god” most people would have an “idea” somewhere around the middle of the sphere, that is, an MRI would show the same general image, they would react in the same way to prayer or ritual, etc.’

But the conclusion that the ordinary people are having the same idea cross-culturally only follows from the evidence given if having the same electrochemical reactions in the brain and the same individual behavior constitute (or at least entail) having the same idea.

But they don’t, at least, not all the time.

If you could look at all the individual behavior and the brain processes and so on of a medieval peasant and her counterpart on Twin Earth (which is identical to Earth except that the seas, lakes, rivers, etc. are all filled with a substance XYZ, which is chemically very different from H2O but looks, tastes, feels, functions, etc. the same under ordinary circumstances) having to do with the word “water,” you would no doubt see exactly the same thing in both cases. But that doesn’t mean that they mean the same thing when they say the word “water”: the Earthling peasant means the stuff that turns out to be H2O, and the Twin Earthling means the stuff that turns out to be XYZ.

The parallels you might draw between this, and the deference over, e.g., the nature of rituals, matters of theological doctrine, etc. that the laity offer to theological elites (whether formal or informal), should be obvious.

Cut the pie any way you like, meanings just ain’t in the head.

“If we assume that an accurate top-down approach to the net benefit question is intractable, that the results largely hinge on biases and subjective considerations of benefit vs. cost, then I think that this should become a question settled by vote.”

You’re no longer talking about people deciding what to do with their own property. You are talking about a gang made up of the majority of people telling individual people in the minority what they can and cannot do with their own property. The land that I’m living on is my land, not yours and not the government’s.

aleph0: “It seems pretty clear to me that the simplest way to deal with illegal immigration is to crack down on employers.”

Awesome! So we can all go through even more government-inflicted red tape in the process of getting a job! This is sure to improve our economic well-being.

barlow: “That unskilled immigrants pay taxes is largely immaterial, because they pay so little. How much in taxes do you think someone making $7 an hour is paying?”

Quite a bit, actually. If you don’t think that low-income workers pay a hell of a lot of money in taxes it can only be because you are ignoring the (regressive) FICA tax and the (regressive) state and local taxes that nearly all of us pay.

But in any case, what has this got to do with immigration? The problems that you are citing, even where they are genuine, are problems common to all low-income workers, as a result of the tax structure that the government inflicts on us. If that’s a reason to forcibly exclude low-income immigrants, why isn’t it a reason to forcibly expel all low-income workers? If it isn’t a reason to expel all low-income workers, then why aren’t you working on reforming tax law rather than making immigration law even more draconian?

Blowhard: “Good lord but a lot of you seem determined to not take into account one important factor, which is the preferences of the people already living in said country, namely the USA. … But their preference should certainly be taken strongly into account, don’t you think?”

Their preferences concerning what?

Their preferences concerning the use of their own property certainly should be taken into account. In fact, they already are; trespass is against the law and you have every right to throw people off of your property if you do not want them there.

But if you’re trying to give an argument for immigration prohibition, then you aren’t just asking whether people’s anti-immigrant sentiments should hold sway over how they use their own property. You’re also asking whether they have the right to force other people to use their own property only in the way that the 60% see fit. You and your neighbors only have a right to enforce your preferences on your own stuff. While disregarding what many of your neighbors think may or may not be crass (this depends, inter alia, on whether their judgments on the matter are rational or irrational), I can’t see any justice in making it criminal.

aleph0: “I am saying that it should in the very least not artificially inflate the supply of low-skilled labor by neglecting its duty to enforce immigration law.”

Again, open borders are a free market in human movement. Immigration law, when enforced (as it is, even if not so harshly as you’d like) is a government intervention to constrict the labor market. If there is a growth in labor supply as a result of free choices to immigrate, then that’s not an “artificial inflation”. It’s the market at work.

You aren’t happy with how you think the market would work, so you propose government intervention to support low-income citizens on the basis that the State has a special obligation to safeguard their earning potential. That’s state socialism. Specifically, it’s national socialism as opposed to international socialism. Draw your own conclusions about whether this is a position you want to hold.

aleph0: “If I, as owner of property A, have absolute control over what is to be done with my property, then certainly I have every right to disallow use of my property from whomever I chose? I am within my rights to disallow immigration to kingdom A for whatever reason I choose.”

If “kingdom A” happens to be your own property, then yes, of course you do. That’s just a matter of trespassing law; it has nothing in particular to do with immigration. But that has nothing to do with this:

“If we assume that an accurate top-down approach to the net benefit question is intractable, that the results largely hinge on biases and subjective considerations of benefit vs. cost, then I think that this should become a question settled by vote.”

Y

Well, I just prefer the term “feminist” myself, but the idea is to pitch as big a tent as is reasonable, so I didn’t want to alienate people who, for whatever reason, identify strongly with branches of the women’s liberation movement but don’t like calling themselves “feminists” specifically. I think this sort of stuff is less likely to come up now than it was in the 1970s, but you never know.

(And if you think that string of modifiers is long, just check out what they had to do to cover most of their bases over at Anarchoblogs…!)

birch: “How do you propose to solve the problem of poor immigrants not being able to support the infrastructure they use?”

Me: “Try not to indulge in anti-immigrant fabulism. Poor immigrants pay federal and state gasoline taxes just like everyone else.”

birch: “mass unskilled immigration is OK because they pay…gas taxes? Please.”

Try to stay on topic. You made a specific claim about infrastructure, and how immigrants do not support the infrastructure they use. This claim is false. In the case of roads, for example, immigrants pay for their use of the road the same way that everyone else does: by gasoline taxes.

“Let’s say someone works 250 days a year and uses 2 gallons of gas each workday. That’s 500 gallons of gas. Even if gas taxes were 50 cents a gallon, that’s only a mere $250.”

What the hell do you think is the marginal cost of one additional commuter on the road? On what basis do you figure it’s more than $250 / year?

“And btw, highways are generally paid for out of the state general funds and federal income taxes, not just gas taxes.”

In FY 2000, 13.3% of highway funding by all units of government came out of General Fund spending. The remaining 86.7% came from so-called “user fee” taxes such as gas tax, tire tax, additional charges for heavy vehicles and trucks, etc. If you’re that damn worried about the remaining 13.3%, however, it seems like you ought to focus on inefficiencies in road building and maintenance, or on slightly raising “user fee” revenue, or (better yet) on beginning to privatize roads so that they can calculate on their own how to support themselves. None of which has anything in particular to do with immigration.

However, here’s another secret for you–don’t tell anyone! Immigrants also contribute to the General Fund at the state, local, and federal level! Documented immigrants pay all the taxes that you do, including income tax and FICA, and are barred from receiving many of the services that you can receive. Undocumented immigrants still pay sales tax, property tax (either on their own or through the rent they pay to whoever owns the property they live on), and the myriad other taxes that the government inflicts on our daily life.

birch barlow: “Utter nonsense. Large-scale immigration of poor people makes the problems associated with welfare programs and other government-financed programs far worse. Poor, unskilled immigrants put a disproportinate strain on the welfare system and the justice system for that matter. They are also far less able to pay for the services they use.”

This isn’t an argument for immigration restriction. It’s an argument for lobbying to deny welfare services to immigrants. Actually a substantial amount of public aid is already off-limits to both documented and undocumented immigrants; it’s not like you couldn’t rally support for a move like this. The Left would complain, but they’ll complain about your “shoot ‘em on sight and build a fence” ideas too.

birch: “How do you propose to solve the problem of poor immigrants not being able to support the infrastructure they use?”

Try not to indulge in anti-immigrant fabulism. Poor immigrants pay federal and state gasoline taxes just like everyone else.

birch: “The fact that current voters vote for leftist policies at an alarming rate is not an excuse to bring in more people who will, on average, vote even more in favor of socialist policies and have children who will vote for such policies.”

aleph0: “Razib’s non-economic argument is, IMHO, particularly significant when it comes to the responsibility the nation has to it’s native-born low-skilled workforce. This is relevant because massive low-skilled labor immigration directly reduces the ability of native born low-skilled workers to find productive employment. Regardless of the morality of welfare, reducing the ability of already low-skilled workers to find productive work increases the demand for welfare. A country has a duty to the citizens of its polity, low-skilled included, that it does not for non-citizens.”

I await birch’s principled denunciation of such shamelessly socialist attitudes from the anti-immigration corner.