Ban The I-Word?

[Darth Executor]

These immigrants that are coming are largely poor and uneducated - if and when they vote the will ensure a Democrat majority for the foreseeable future, making the welfare state larger, more intrusive and stronger. Yes, it will eventually collapse on itself but there will be a lot of pain before that. And we may never recover.

It will never collapse. Cuba's hasn't collapsed despite how poor it is. Joel is an excellent example of why libertarians should be kept in cages: he'll turn a prosperous country into a third world craphole just so he can get rid of muh welfare. Or, more likely, turn a formerly prosperous country into a third world craphole and not even achieve his objective.

[seer]

It will never collapse. Cuba's hasn't collapsed despite how poor it is. Joel is an excellent example of why libertarians should be kept in cages: he'll turn a prosperous country into a third world craphole just so he can get rid of muh welfare. Or, more likely, turn a formerly prosperous country into a third world craphole and not even achieve his objective.

Don't be shy, tell us what you really think Darth! ; )

[firstfloor]

FF, there is nothing unnatural. Human beings and the societies they create are nature, we are nature. Again, we are not doing anything, in kind, that the higher primates don't do. I mean chimpanzees will murder each other. If we create hell, then it is our nature to create hell.

While we start on any project with good intentions, we do not commonly know the long term consequences of our actions, inventions, exploitation of natural resources and so on. It is not true to say that there is nothing unnatural. Aeroplanes, for example are artificial. They are derived from natural materials but in an unnatural supra-human way. Monkeys do not fly fighter jets and drop bombs on their competitors. Only human beings have created by the power of imagination entities with godlike powers capable of destroying the planet.

If there is a hell, we built it with our own hands. If there is a Devil, he is us. If there is a God, we are she. If there will be heaven, we will make it on this earth.

[seer]

While we start on any project with good intentions, we do not commonly know the long term consequences of our actions, inventions, exploitation of natural resources and so on. It is not true to say that there is nothing unnatural. Aeroplanes, for example are artificial. They are derived from natural materials but in an unnatural supra-human way. Monkeys do not fly fighter jets and drop bombs on their competitors. Only human beings have created by the power of imagination entities with godlike powers capable of destroying the planet.

If there is a hell, we built it with our own hands. If there is a Devil, he is us. If there is a God, we are she. If there will be heaven, we will make it on this earth.

FF, I'm not speaking of jets, I'm speaking of behavior. And our behavior (both good and evil) is natural - monkeys do murder other monkeys. It is our nature whether we use bombs or clubs. So your problem, at bottom, is with human nature - and the laws of nature that created us this way. Why do you hate nature so much FF?

[Bill the Cat]

Hence the PERSONAL mandate. It is not an order to a government to force its citizens to "love their neighbor"

It clearly is difficult to live up to and just as clearly the idea of illegal neighbour is not compatible with it unless you define neighbour as people like us.

My republican, redneck, gun-toting, deisel truck driving neighbor needs a new fuel pump. Should the government make YOU pay for it out of "loving your neighbor"? If yes, then I will tell him to expect your check in the mail soon...

Then the mission may be defined as hate the infidel, or the apostate or the illegal or whoever it is you happen to hate this week.

Do you try hard to be this stupid?

Is your heart filled with hate or love? Maybe you love to hate.

[firstfloor]

FF, I'm not speaking of jets, I'm speaking of behavior. And our behavior (both good and evil) is natural - monkeys do murder other monkeys. It is our nature whether we use bombs or clubs. So your problem, at bottom, is with human nature - and the laws of nature that created us this way. Why do you hate nature so much FF?

What I am saying is that the supranational corporations that are busily consuming nature to utter exhaustion are just as artificial as aeroplanes. We made them artificial persons more powerful than any government so that even when we know the damage they are doing we have no way of turning them off.

[firstfloor]

Hence the PERSONAL mandate. It is not an order to a government to force its citizens to "love their neighbor"
My republican, redneck, gun-toting, deisel truck driving neighbor needs a new fuel pump. Should the government make YOU pay for it out of "loving your neighbor"? If yes, then I will tell him to expect your check in the mail soon...
Do you try hard to be this stupid?

[seer]

What I am saying is that the supranational corporations that are busily consuming nature to utter exhaustion are just as artificial as aeroplanes. We made them artificial persons more powerful than any government so that even when we know the damage they are doing we have no way of turning them off.

And you are missing the point - what ever we do, what ever impulses we are fulfilling, is due to our nature. It is men doing the above, corporations are made up of humans, it is our nature in action. So again FF, why do you hate nature so much?

[Bill the Cat]

Where Christians are influential in their society and provided those Christians follow their mandate, those societies ought to be noticeably egalitarian.

Untrue. Christianity is far less concerned with individual rights as with individual behavior. Where Christians are influential in their society, their personal lives should reflect one of charity, humility, and love. But they should not use the government as a vehicle to enforce charitable behavior in others.

In fact, the Christian Right is noticeably authoritarian – it is a fake Christianity.

Utterly false. The Church structure itself is authoritarian, so once again, you are talking out of your rear end.

[Darth Executor]

Where Christians are influential in their society and provided those Christians follow their mandate, those societies ought to be noticeably egalitarian.

Hell is egalitarian. Christianity tells servants to obey their masters and masters not to abuse their servants. There isn't a shred of egalitarianism in Christianity and there never was until liberals started pozzing it.

[firstfloor]

And you are missing the point - what ever we do, what ever impulses we are fulfilling, is due to our nature. It is men doing the above, corporations are made up of humans, it is our nature in action. So again FF, why do you hate nature so much?

Unfortunately it is your goodself who is missing the point; not for the first time. The systems we have built go well beyond nature. Nobody WANTED the West African black rhinoceros to go extinct in 2011. The fact that it did means that we have unleashed artificial destructive forces that are well beyond our control.

[seer]

Unfortunately it is your goodself who is missing the point; not for the first time. The systems we have built go well beyond nature. Nobody WANTED the West African black rhinoceros to go extinct in 2011. The fact that it did means that we have unleashed artificial destructive forces that are well beyond our control.

That is the point FF, WE DID IT. Our greed and avarice flow from the nature that the evolutionary process created.

[Jedidiah]

Guys, give up. You will never get a rational discussion with ff.

[Joel]

That is only because we have national borders that help keep the hordes out, and stop us from being a third world country. Being overwhelmed by crime. Never mind the disease.

That's a different argument (than 'having a country'). So your position is that foreigners are inherently disease-ridden criminals who will destroy the economy? Perhaps they have inferior genes?

These immigrants that are coming are largely poor and uneducated - if and when they vote the will ensure a Democrat majority for the foreseeable future, making the welfare state larger, more intrusive and stronger. Yes, it will eventually collapse on itself but there will be a lot of pain before that. And we may never recover.

As it currently is, for the forseeable future, the welfare state will continue to grow exponentially larger and more intrusive, as it has been (some of it even due to an all-Republican congress). There will be a lot more pain. That's already happening.

It will never collapse. Cuba's hasn't collapsed despite how poor it is. Joel is an excellent example of why libertarians should be kept in cages: he'll turn a prosperous country into a third world craphole just so he can get rid of muh welfare. Or, more likely, turn a formerly prosperous country into a third world craphole and not even achieve his objective.

Cuba has had communism, not a welfare state, and that's sufficient to explain why the people are so poor and can't develop.

Welfare programs collapsing (going away) does not mean collapse of the economy. If anything its absence would be a great stimulus to the economy, as a burden suddenly lifted. But it's possible it won't collapse. Before collapse, it might become obvious enough that the program(s) is unsustainable, forcing the state to make reductions, as has been happening in European countries. In which case a bigger drain on the programs forces them to be reduced further.

Nonsense, we don't simply do not need more low wage uneducated workers, we don't have enough jobs now. And a lot of immigrants don't spend a good portion of their earnings in the US, they send it back to family in their home countries.

Free markets clear. Jobs are not a scarce good. "Jobs" are demand for labor, and human desires are unlimited. There are always more things we want done than we can afford to do or have done. Labor services is the scarce good. The only reason the reverse seems true is because of unemployment which is just caused by price being above the equilibrium price. In free markets such things are self-corrected; price and quantity are corrected towards the equilibrium where: the market clears (quantity supplied equals quantity demanded).

Another way to see it is to note that when price is below equilibrium, then there is a shortage of labor. Imagine (for an extreme, obvious example) that tomorrow the going price for labor fell to one penny per hour. Not only would businesses increase their hiring like crazy, but people would think of all kinds of things they want done around the house (full-time cleaning, cooking, a butler, watching the kids, yardwork and gardening and landscaping, maybe changing the landscaping frequently just for fun and variety, home maintenance, home improvement, fanning you with giant leaves, carrying you around on a cushion, etc.). There would not be enough people to fill all the demand. (And so to hire all the labor you want to hire, you would have to start outbidding other people, which is the process that drives the price back up toward the equilibrium price.)

There's nothing to worry about them sending their money to their family either. That's part of the mercantilism that Adam Smith and other economists of his time refuted. If it is as you imagine, it means that they are doing productive things here, producing real wealth (goods and services), but not consuming the real wealth here, only sending home paper money (or virtual electronic money) that the U.S. government creates ex nihilo. That's a pretty good deal. Paper money is just a medium of exchange. Real wealth is goods and services. If it's money in the country that you want, the government creates tons more of it all the time, which is why we have chronic inflation. An increase in money supply doesn't make us richer, and a decrease doesn't make us poorer.

[Darth Executor]

Cuba has had communism, not a welfare state, and that's sufficient to explain why the people are so poor and can't develop.

Missing the point completely, which is that communists still provide all the benefits of a welfare state and despite being poor they haven't done away with it. America won't either. In fact the poorer people are less likely to want to do away with the welfare state since the alternative is eating out of garbage dumps.

Welfare programs collapsing (going away) does not mean collapse of the economy.

In this particular scenario it does because your method of collapsing it involves shipping tens of millions of incompetent and frequently violent rabble over the border. These people are going to gain the voting franchise under libertarian free movement of peoples policy and will bankrupt the entire country before they let go of the welfare state. As will, increasingly, the Americans who are already in America as free trade ensures most jobs will be shipped somewhere else.

If anything its absence would be a great stimulus to the economy, as a burden suddenly lifted. But it's possible it won't collapse. Before collapse, it might become obvious enough that the program(s) is unsustainable, forcing the state to make reductions, as has been happening in European countries. In which case a bigger drain on the programs forces them to be reduced further.

Some of Europe's welfare programs are becoming unsustainable due to increasingly libertarian policies on immigration and free trade so you're getting cause and effect backwards. Many European countries continue to have both a strong welfare state and a strong economy. It's not clear at all that being a welfare state leads to economic failure. It's pretty clear OTOH that unnecessary immigration and free trade do lead to economic stagnation, social decay and transfer power from the general population to unaccountable oligarchs that will then spend that money to make sure you're gonna take pictures at their gay nude orgy wedding or lose your business.