I’m a bit baffled by the film, since, while it is an apparent attempt to rag on Michael Moore, it provides a much more devastating critique of the war and its supporters than it does Michael Moore.

If George Bush were personally going into battle to lead the fight against an army of vile, inhuman goblins directed by the unholy power of a Dark Lord bent on the desolation and domination of the whole of the Earth, and in the process of launching a massive assault on all the strongholds of the civilized world, then I don’t doubt that Michael Moore would not have had quite the same objections to his policies.

Do warhawks actually see the world like this? Much of their rhetoric outside of this silly little film seems to suggest it. If so, it would be funny, except for all of the people who have died because of their childish conception of the world.

This is good stuff. A couple of questions, though. You claim that “With all its warts, copyright was a system that filled an important role at a particular time and in the context of particular technological and social systems around the production and and consumption of a particular intellectual good: eighteenth century printed books.” This is a pretty common way that people arguing for a rollback on intellectual property restrictions talk about the history of IP. But I actually think it’s more rosy than IP deserves.

Here’s why. You argue: “Patronage was simply not an optimum compensation system for the production of the types of work that were demanded. Copyright stepped in because it worked to support publishers and authors in the production of content that was desired but that was not being produced in adequate quantities under patronage, etc.” But in fact copyrights (and patents, too, for what it’s worth) originated protected markets granted by royal mandates—a given printing house would be given a “copyright” in a particular region, which allowed that house and only that house to print books and newspapers in the area. There was no presumption that copyright originated from the perogatives of the author of a work (which could be copied freely by anyone the King authorized to print).

Second: I think you make a really important point, which ought to be underlined, when you say ‘Quite reasonably, people want to know what this replacement or parallel system will be before we rush off eliminating the companies currently paying the people making the music most of us have in our CD players. This is where I start sounding a lot less prepared. Ultimately, I don’t have the “this is the system we’re looking for” answer that people want. Unlike most people I talk to, I’m alright with not having that answer.’

I think there is a certain amount that we can say about how the world will look with certain changes (e.g., without copyright restrictions). But one thing that a lot of people don’t seem to get about freedom is that you don’t have to have everything worked out ahead of time. Five Year Plans are for Stalinists and corporations; if your goal is just to let people decide what it is best for them to do, then you can usually trust them to come up with something creative, worthwhile, and powerful. Not always, of course—people are anything but perfect—but you can get it a lot more often from many people working freely than from one person’s grand scheme for how to organize society.

So while I’m interested in talking about ways the world might turn out without copyright protectionism, or suburban zoning laws, or corporate union-busting, or any number of other things, I’m quite happy to leave a lot of spaces open. The ethical issues are clear enough: people should be free wherever they can be. And the practical issues of what people will do with their freedom are interesting and difficult, but I don’t need to know the answers to all of them. Musicians can figure out how to make music; authors can figure out how to write books; and I’m sure that they’ll come up with much better answers than I will.

“The Daily Kos has suggested this web page may be a hoax. If it is, it is a cruel one; no 19 year old woman deserves to be made the center of a political controversy not of her making. If it is not a hoax, and Maya is gay, I understand Alan Keyes even less than I previously thought.”

How is this controversy not cruel, even if she is, in fact, a lesbian? Does she deserve to be made the center of a political controversy if she is really gay? Does soliciting shock about her (real or fictional) sexuality serve any purpose other than reinforcing gay-baiting?

JimBob, in reply to claim that he is both supporting, and benefiting from, immigrant labor every time he shops at the grocery store, objects: “Most if not all agriculture harvesting can be done by machines today.”

Of course, most if not all agricultural harvesting can be done by tech industry CEOs—you just have to pay them enough. But there’s the rub: the reason that so much agricultural labor is done by migrant farmworkers—many of them immigrants from Mexico and Central America—is that it’s more cost-effective for farmers to get their tomatos picked that way than to automate the process.

That’s not to say that farm labor is great for the immigrants. It’s hard work and the bosses usually treat you like shit. But workers do it because they are willing to put themselves through a lot in order to improve their lives. Also because, thanks to anti-immigrant blowhards like you, it’s often very hard to find work in any other field.

I’ll leave the question of historical food price trends to those who have spent more time researching it; I’d only like to point out here that the issue is not whether the price of beef now is more or less than the price of beef in 1960, but rather whether the price of beef now is more or less than the price of beef would be now if fewer Mexican and Central American immigrants (documented and undocumented) agreed to work at the prevailing wages in the industry. (And as for privatizing profits—I’m all for it. Would that more profits were privatized.)

What about the claim that immigrant labor “socializes the costs” of the labor? It’s hard to see how—and hard to see how it would matter if it did. Documented immigrants pay much the same taxes that you do. Roads are paid for primarily by gasoline taxes, which everyone who drives on a road pays. Schools, local law enforcement, and state law enforcement are all funded primarily by property taxes and sales taxes, which immigrants (documented or undocumented) pay whenever they buy anything and whenever they live anywhere (either directly, or through their landlord). Nor would it matter very much if these things were funded primarily through taxes that immigrants don’t pay: in that case, the fault lies on the government that imposes the taxes and uses the money to provide the services—not on the peaceful immigrants who come here to work.

As usual, people who favor assaulting peaceful immigrants neglect the obvious. The overwhelming reason that Mexican immigrants come to the United States is to work. They benefit from work; and they can find it because employers benefit from hiring them. When employers can produce goods at a lower cost, it helps you, because they will make more of the goods and/or lower the price at which they sell it. The laws of economics are not repealed just because the people involved happen to speak Spanish. Markets work.

Paleo-Anarchist writes: “I’m not blaming the immigrants for invading, but rather blaming the state for encouraging and allowing the immigrants to invade.”

1. Whose property are immigrants “invading”?

2. If you blame the government rather than the immigrants, then why is it the immigrants you are proposing to shoot?

To Kinsella, I wrote: “But, like both Hoppe and Karl Marx, you believe that until the State does wither away, its powers over ordinary, peaceful people and the daily conduct of their affairs should be drastically expanded. (How much more interdicting, harassing, snooping, demanding of papers, and shooting do you think that the Border Patrol and La Migra ought to be doing?)”

Kinsella replied simply: See above

Which I take it referred to these two paragraphs, in reply to Kennedy:

No, no, I’m just opposed to the state. I’m also opposed to the state opening the borders while it has control of the country in the way that it does.

Are you in favor of completely open borders now, *given* our existing state system? Really? Let me ask you, what is your prediction on how many immigrants would swarm into the country over the next 10-20 years, if we totally opened the borders? Keep in mind we have about 275 million people.

But this does not answer any question I asked or reply to any statement I made. Kinsella does support drastic expansion of the State’s powers over the ordinary affairs of non-citizens. And since government agents have no way of identifying non-citizens without harassing, snooping on, stopping, searching, and demanding the papers of citizens and non-citizens alike, and imprisoning them, beating them, or shooting them if they don’t comply (otherwise known as “closed borders”), Kinsella supports the drastic expansion of State violence and interference in the ordinary affairs of everyone. (As if his proposed assaults on peaceful immigrants weren’t enough!) This is what saying that you are “opposed to the state opening the borders while it has control of the country in the way that it does” means. (Similarly, War Communism, round-ups, government central planning, labor books and internal passports, and turning Party bureaucrats into the dictatorial boss of every worker in the country is what Marxism means–even if Marx piously hoped that it would lead to autonomous, freely-associated labor and the withering away of the State “in the long run”.)

Nor did Kinsella answer the question. Since he believes (as he has repeatedly argued) that current immigration levels are partly due to statism, he evidently believes that as long as the State exists, it ought to be doing more to force immigrants not to peacefully move into the United States than it already is. So how much more of what “closed borders” inevitably requires doing, should they be doing?

And, for what it’s worth, in answer to your questions (which you directed to Kennedy, but apparently also directed to me when you directed me to “See above”): Yes, yes really, and I have no earthly idea–and don’t particularly care. If you don’t like the increasing numbers of peaceful immigrants who don’t speak your language, you can always learn Spanish, or perhaps move to Idaho.

JimBob writes: “The elites and a few wacko libertarians keep trying to convince the American people of all the great benifits dirt poor Mexicans bring to our quality of life. Okay. But I for one ain’t buying it.”

Yes you are—in a very literal sense. Every time you buy beef, chicken, lettuce, tomatos, grapes, oranges, or any number of other kinds of meat and produce at your local grocery store, you are reaping the economic benefits of Mexican immigrant labor—much of it undocumented. While you dick around posting on weblogs, Mexican immigrants are breaking their backs in unpleasant agricultural labor in order to make a better life for themselves and their families, and thanks to their efforts you can head down to your local grocery store and find high-quality food year round, at remarkably low prices.

Don’t think that’s much of a benefit? Then try picking your own damn vegetables sometime and see how much you like it.

Kinsella, on being charged with thinking that the State is necessary: “No, I oppose the state. I’m an anarchist. Like Hoppe. I think the state is unjustified and should be disbanded.”

But, like both Hoppe and Karl Marx, you believe that until the State does wither away, its powers over ordinary, peaceful people and the daily conduct of their affairs should be drastically expanded. (How much more interdicting, harassing, snooping, demanding of papers, and shooting do you think that the Border Patrol and La Migra ought to be doing?)

Critto says: … And besides, he [Hans Hermann Hoppe] is an immigrant. He should start preventing immigration from himself, by returning to Austria first.

You’re missing the point. White German-speaking immigrants aren’t the sort of immigrants that are going to “devastate America” in Paleo Bizarro World. You see, sitting around and writing economics papers on the government dime is honest, productive work, in tune with the liberal values of Anglo-American culture. Working long, hard hours in meatpacking plants, chicken farms, picking tomatoes, caring for children, etc., privately funded and often under-the-table and tax-free, is a recipe for social disintegration. Why? Because the people who do that work are Mexicans. And that’s enough for Hoppe, Kinsella, and friends such as Jared Taylor or Pat Buchanan to be sure that there goes the neighborhood…

John Lopez asks Stephen Kinsella, What is it that the INS is doing that needs to be done?

Don’t you get it yet? The answer is “Beating the tar out of some brown people.” It’s a dirty job, but, in Paleo Bizarro World, somebody’s got to do it.