Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> wrote:
Michael Lorrey (presumably) wrote:
> I don't look at it as a nationalist issue, its an economic AND ecological
issue.
> Open borders for TRADE are a bedrock of a free market economy. The existing
> members of a free market economy should also have the ability to control the
> quality of life in their communities. If people living elsewhere want a high
> quality of life like we do, then they should work to recreate our success
where
> they are at. Part of that is re-engineering their society. Societies that
> produce more people than can be sustained on their resources not only
degrade
> their own quality of life, by exporting the results of their bad social
> reproduction policies to our countries, they not only perpetuate a dumb idea
> where they are at, but they export people who will perpetuate those same
dumb
> ideas elsewhere.
Hear, hear!
The only "dumb idea" here is that resources are finite,
They are.
>>and that it is
even possible to "overpopulate" an area.<<
It is.
>>Julian Simon and others have
done a good job of debunking those.<<
I doubt it.
> Opening your borders with any economy that does not behave as yours does
only
> opens your own economy up to being degraded by its association.
Quite so. Also, it's quite stupid to sell, for example, advanced weaponry to
hot-headed barbarians.
> If we opened immigration to everyone that wanted to live here, we'd
> shortly have 6 billion people living in the US, starving to death.
>>Oh, poppycock. We'd have 6 billion people making the biggest,
strongest, cleanest, most diverse, most magnificent economy the world
has ever seen, assuming the government doesn't intervene to screw it up.<<
Oh, COME ON, you don't really believe that, do you? What would really happen
is this: the poor would come all right, by the millions. Most of them would be
completely unskilled, and unable/unwilling to change this. Some would get very
crappy jobs, most of which can and should be done by machines. They'd be
exploited by all sorts of entrepreneurs, put to work in sweat shops and the
like under no doubt pretty inhumane conditions. Others (millions) would refuse
to work, or be unable to find work, so they'd beg, rob and steal from the
"rich white man" whom they hate anyway to support themselves and their rapidly
growing families. Crime, including the worst forms of violent crime, would
flare up to South African levels and beyond, forcing anyone who could afford
it into heavily defended ghettoes/settlements (of course, many would simply
leave for Europe, Canada or some other still civilized place, exactly as the
white South Africans are doing). Large parts of cities and the country as a
whole would eventually be turned into "no-go" areas, just like the current
ghettoes where gang bangers rule, only much bigger, meaner and ridden with
diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis.
The huge, dissatisfied underclass of poor immigrants would be an easy target
for opportunistic agitators, and the already decimated, weak and decadent
(predominantly white) ruling class would eventually be forced to hand over
power -one way or another- to various "local" dictators/war lords. The last
vestiges of civilization would then fall prey to ransacking, wanton
destruction or simply neglect, and the US would be turned into 3rd world
country.
Poor countries usually are the way they are because the people there don't
have what it takes to create a prosperous, civilized society. You can blame it
on their big bad governments, but let's not forget that those governments are
just as much an expression of local culture as anything else. Corrupt
societies produce corrupt governments. Along with the immigrants you import
all their problems, and beyond a certain point your country will go to Hell.
Harsh as it may sound, this is the the way things are, and (immigration)
policies should be based on the truth, not on ivory tower chit-chat.
>>But even that is less likely--with an influx of immigrants, states
would be falling over themselves to eliminate welfare laws and
other handouts so that the people would /have/ to be productive.<<
And this is a good thing!? Welfare is an integral part of civilized, modern
societies. Your libertarian visions of hordes of people doing stupid manual
labor for a pathetic salary and without any social safety net harken back to
the early days of the industrial revolution. Really, you don't want to go
there. Hordes of miserable, poorly educated (if at all) wage slaves operating
primitive and often dangerous machinery is the way of the past; small, highly
automated societies with very strict immigration policies and various free,
high-quality services (health care, for example) for all citizens are, or at
least should be, the wave of the future. Anything less would be a retreat to
barbarism.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:13:56 MDT