"den Otter" <otter@globalxs.nl> On Tue, 26 Aug 1997 Wrote:
>many of the immigrants are "illegal", but the government lacks the
>willpower and the popular support to take some firm action.
Government also lacks the ability, incompetence is not always a bad thing.
>Free immigration could only function in a world with a fairly
>(culturally, economically etc.) homogenous population.
Nonsense. There are lots of menial tasks that need to be done around my house,
they need no special skills and I would be happy to pay somebody a dollar an
hour to perform them, but not more, I won't pay minimum wage because to me
it's only worth a dollar an hour. There are millions if not billions of
people in the world who would consider a dollar an hour wealth beyond the
dreams of avarice. Both of us would be better off if we could get together,
but one thing prevents us, government.
As for cultural differences preventing free immigration, if I found a culture
to be unpleasant then I wouldn't want to go to that land, if I didn't then I
would. What's the problem?
>It may very well be breaking down (slowly), but what will replace it?
The free market.
>You seem to forget that most people aren't "rational libertarian
>entities"
I have not forgotten, the market can not guarantee a libertarian society,
nothing can, but it can encourage it. Suppose government did not force you to
buy law and police protection from them, suppose there was competition and you
could purchase the laws you liked from companies that were willing to enforce
them. It's easy to vote for some idiot politician who says he will stop your
neighbor from sinning, it's much harder to shell out cold hard cash for it.
For example, in this democracy many towns have laws against women wearing
string bikinis on the beach, and it's simple to see why, there are plenty of
prudes and it doesn't cost them anything to vote. Now let's consider this if
justice was sold as a commodity. The prude is considering 2 protection
companies that are identical except one has a law against bikinis and a
decency patrol to harass women on the beach 20 miles from his home, the other
doesn't but uses the money saved to send an extra security patrol through his
neighborhood at 3Am. The prude would have to be very prudish indeed to pick
the first Private Protection Agency. Justice is no different than anything
else, if you want to maximize it sell it in a free market.
>"We" are the Caucasians (oh, it's that ugly word again)
No not ugly, just rather quaint and old-fashioned, a phrase past its
expiration date, like "moving pictures" or "horse-less carriage" or
"phlogiston" or "luminiferous ether".
>Try promoting the extropian principles in the Middle East or Africa
> etc, and see how far you'll get...
About as far as you would in the bible belt of the USA.
>it's "bye, bye singularity" when the Muslims take over.
Your xenophobia is starting to sound a little silly.
John K Clark johnkc@well.com
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