>From: "Michael S. Lorrey" <retroman@turbont.net>
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.com
>To: extropians@extropy.com
>Subject: Re: crime in big cities and Europe
>Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 17:15:33 -0400
>
>
>
>Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> >
> > > Frankly I don't find immigration laws to be inhumane.
> > > Why are they a bad idea?...
> > > ...societies that produce excessive numbers of people should pay the
> > > costs of those problems themselves, not pawn them off on others.
> >
> > I'm surprized at you, Michael. Open borders are a bedrock of the free
> > market economy, and a simple consequence of granting the same basic
> > rights of free travel and association to those born on one side of an
> > imaginary line as we do to those born on the other. Nationalism is
> > unbecoming rational minds. "Excessive people" are a resource to be
> > cherished, not a burden.
>
>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.
I am shocked by this being said by an American. If some nation in the world
is the proof of you being wrong it is the US! Immigrants are not unskilled
or uneducated. A ticket to the US is EXTREMELY expensive in most poorer
countries. Face it, you're receiving the elite of these countries, for free.
You get already trained people that are willing to work and work hard. You
also negate the concept of economic growth. And besides, the MORAL aspect. I
have the right to live where I damned well please, as long as I don't mooch
on other people. Really, immigration policy should be one of transhumanism's
more important issues. If we want dynamism, new ideas, new possibilities in
our cultures- we should fight for a free immigration policy.
>I see this all the time, with flatlanders moving up here to the sticks.
>THey
>want the high quality of life that we have living up here, but once they
>get
>here they go about trying to change our community and its laws into the
>same
>sort of shithole they came from, then they wonder why everything has gone
>to
>shit.
Duuuuuuuuuuh, have you looked around lately? I've been to the US four times
in my life and I can see that American integration works just fine, because
you are creolizeing your cultures. That's the strength of America. I wish we
had it here in Europe too, instead of our racist policies of keeping people
out. Why all those derogatory remarks about immigrants?
When my parents moved up here from Massachusetts when I was a kid, they
>understood this, and we learned to live like the people around here lived.
Should you really have done that? Was it really good? Transhumanism is all
about stretching borders, the borders of humanity for Pete's sake! If are
forced to conform to such a banal thing as a culture we might just as well
drop the whole of transhumanism.
>Vermont has the lowest homicide rates in the country, and the most liberal
>gun
>laws, but some moronic woman had the gall to actually complain in a letter
>to
>the editor about her horror at learning how easy it is for a law abiding
>person
>to carry a gun, completely oblivious to the fact that its obviously not a
>problem. (There were, as I recall, about 15 criminal homicides in 1999 in
>Vermont, which has a population of about 450,000.)
??? Relevance to immigration?
>Orwell observed this same problem in England in the late 30's. The British
>are
>famous for their civility and politeness waiting for busses, trains, and
>trolleys. When eastern european refugees started coming to Britain in 1939,
>at
>first there were few enough that the eastern habits of pushing and shoving
>for
>the door got drilled out of newcomers by the larger number of native
>passengers.
>However, once the refugee population turned into a flood, the 'quality of
>life'
>of waiting politely in line to get on a bus or train degraded down to that
>of
>the newcomers.
They still stand in lines in London, so that isn't true. But really is
standing in line more "civil"? I have seen the Italian way of hanging around
in small groups waiting for the bus, and I find that more "civil"
>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. Take our
>relationship with China, for example. We as a nation are benefitting from
>the
>slave labor practices of the People's Republic of China. Their cheap
>products
>are keeping our inflation low. But our morals and ethics have been
>degraded, we
>are externalizing the cost of the products we want onto the backs of the
>chinese
>laborer who is not paid, or is paid little for his forced labor. I
>personally
>try to boycott any chinese made product. If I know a product was made in
>China,
>I won't buy it. I would guess though that probably half of the stuff in my
>apartment was made in china, or parts or resources for the stuff was made
>in
>china.
Of course you're welcome to boycot products from the PRC. But not all PRC
products are made of slave labour. Indeed, the small advances towards a
market economy are undermining the communist dictatorship. A tyrrany can
only benefit from closed border and no foreign trade, it still holds the
whip. But with trade it has to open up.
I personally think that US ban of trade with Cuba has kept the tyrant Fidel
Castro in power for a longer time that would be necessary.
>We are now no better than those in the the Pre-civil war US who did not own
>slaves, did not allow slavery in our own states or communities, but still
>benefitted economically from slavery. Should we then institute an
>'underground
>railroad' of immigration?
It is called "capitalism" and "open borders" today;-)
In the current case, people are not physically
>enslaved, they are enslaved by economic and social memes that create and
>perpetuate poor living conditions where they are at. Memetic shackles do
>not
>come off when you cross the border, they stay with you.
Yeah, say that to those Chinese that fled Mao Zedong's tyranny and built up
companies and businesses all over the world. "You're all commies..."
Slavery did not end with
>the underground railroad, you might notice. Only the civil war and the 14th
>amendment did so.
Slavery, didn't end with that either- only with the African- American people
entering the rest of society as they have largely done today.
>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.
Yeah, everybody would go to the US, everyone would afford the ticket. And
nobody would work.
Hey, Americans!
You're all immigrants!
And you're the richest nation in the world!
Those are the facts that economic history have shown us.
There is an important point to be made here as a transhumanist. People
aren't stupid, weak, and evil. The vast majority really do want to improve
themselves and make their lives better. I think this is more present in
those courageous enough to leave their old lives behind and go into the
great unknown
Waldemar
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