Macker:

One way we can keep distinguish between those immigrants who wish to freeload off others and those who do not (my preference as you obnoxiously put it) is to establish rules that disallow the freeloading. For instance one could make it illegal for first and second generation immigrants from going on the dole and that doing so would revoke citizenship.

Fine. Let’s do it. Now will you start working for this, rather than for calling for immigrants to be shot at the border?

And hey, why stop there, anyway? Why not try to make it so that nobody can go on the dole at taxpayer expense?

One could require the immigrants to provide some form of bond or insurance that would ensure that they would not have to be cared for by the state.

This will only create exactly the same monitoring and enforcement problems as any other form of ex ante immigration control. (Who do you want to verify that they have the right level of assets? The IRS? Who do you want to take action against them if they don’t match up? La Migra and the Border Patrol?) As such it involves a violation of the rights of numerous innocent third parties, and falls to the same objections. It’s also completely unnecessary if you make it impossible for immigrants to go on the dole anyway.

Kennedy,

I didn’t suggest that descriptions like “Du Toit is using bigotry to excuse aggression against innocent third parties” should be presented without an accompanying argument against the bigoted premise, did I?

What I think I have argued is that that is an accurate description of the structure of du Toit’s argument, and that it can be part of connecting your exposition of the argument to your criticism of it (in this case, as a transition to the general reasons for rejecting political collectivism), so there’s no reason why describing an argument as resting on a “bigoted” premise entails not addressing the argument on its merits. It’s just a description of the structure of the argument, which may or may not be accurate in a particular case, and which, if accurate, can be part of addressing it on its merits, by pointing the way to the rest of the argument.

How much of that argument needs to be spelled out and how much can be taken for granted depends on the audience that you’re addressing; here I’ve only mentioned the general reasons against political collectivism rather than spelling them out, or spelling out their application to this particular case, because I’m not trying to convince du Toit (or other border creeps) of anything at all about immigration at the moment. I’m trying to convince you of something about something else, and I figure you’re already acquainted with the arguments that I’m using as examples.

So, what’s the problem with describing the structure of du Toit’s argument by saying “Du Toit is using democratic mysticism [or, bigotry] to justify violence against innocent third parties”? If there are good, established reasons for saying that they are, in fact, innocent, isn’t that an accurate description of what du Toit is in fact doing?

Kennedy,

And aren’t there good, established reasons for saying so? (E.g. that collectivism is false?)

Kennedy,

Well. Aren’t they, in fact, innocent?

I’m not a fan of Galbraith’s, but he and you are spot on about the mathematization of economics.

Penis envy towards the “hard” sciences is an important part of the explanation; I think the professional interests of planning bureaucrats (a common destination, or aspiration, for institutionalized economists) are another; a lot of economists have, after all, a professional interest in justifying their positions as number-compilers, number-crunchers, and number-fudgers to the powers that be.

Personally, I think the best critique of the tendency was actually published several years back, in the form of a parable, in a Calvin and Hobbes strip.

Kennedy,

Isn’t it true that Du Toit is using democratic mysticism (among other things) to justify aggression against innocent dissenters?

Rob, thanks for a great post.

mb, the letter you’re thinking of is Tolkien’s draft of a letter to the Potsdam publishing house Rütten & Loening Verlag, from 25 July 1938. It’s reprinted in Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (letter #30; cf. also letter #29 to his English publisher Allen & Unwin). In the reprinted letter he wrote “I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.”

I have more (including some background a full copy of the excerpts reprinted in Letters) at G 2006-04-27: From the geek archives: Jews, Tolkien, and a parting note to some ruddy little ignoramuses.

Joe: Liberals argue that private charities will not be sufficient. That’s an empirical question, and it’s one that would be hard to answer short of actually trying it.

These premises aren’t sufficient to make the liberal case for the welfare state against libertarian objections, unless you add the further premise (or a more rigorous formulation thereof):

If voluntary charity isn’t sufficient to provide for autonomy, then people can legitimately be coerced into making up the difference.

But that’s not an empirical claim, and it doesn’t just fall out of a “respect for autonomy,” either: after all, it involves sacrificing at least one person’s autonomy, putatively to bolster another person’s autonomy; and it involves sacrificing one form of autonomy, putatively to bolster another form. Libertarians could very well regard charity as a duty, and could hold, empirically, that voluntary charity won’t in fact be “sufficient” (by whatever standards) for everyone to count as having lived up to that duty. The only thing they would need to maintain, to remain consistently libertarian, is that you also have a duty not to coerce anybody to make it “sufficient.”

Brandon,

Could you explain in some more detail which expenditures are being counted as “defense” expenditures? For example, are V.A. benefit pay-outs being counted as “defense” or “non-defense”? What about “Homeland Security” grants to state and local governments? Are 100% of debt interest payments being counted under “non-defense”?