Immigrants make you richer.

[pErvinalia]

As I have said before, I am neither libertarian nor socialist. Or, put another way, I am both. I believe in free enterprise, and in government controls. I believe in personal liberty, and in helping those less fortunate via government and taxes. Or else, you could say I believe in balance, not extremism.

You can't claim to be a libertarian of any stripe if you support involuntary taxation for income redistribution because that is a fatal violation of the fundamental principles of Libertarianism.

You are free to support those less fortunate with YOUR money, but in Libertarianism, you are NOT free to take OTHER PEOPLE'S money and redistribute it to others.

If you believe that you are justified in forcibly taking other people's money in order to redistribute it to those less fortunate, you are not, ipso facto a believer in personal liberty.

Your "balance" consists entirely of a one-sided desire to tell others how they are allowed to dispose of their labor and what portion of it they must give over to your sense of social justice and you implicitly advocate and support the use of force, up to and including deadly force, to extract that tribute from the unwilling.

In other words, you're a Marxist and not any sort of Libertarian at all.

It's all binary to you, isn't it. If you are not a libertarian, you must be a marxist...

A delusional, weird and ignorant perspective.

I don't know why any one bothers engaging with him seriously anymore.

[pErvinalia]

Fine, as long as you realise that in the real world, none of us give a shit about your libertarian fantasy land...

occams razor...

Actually, I do give a shit about some things, but I definitely don't give a shit about Seth's monochrome views in general and his lolbertardian fantasies in particular. So, put that razor away.

As for Australia, it would still be exclusively inhabited by no more than around half a million Aborigines who managed to survive on this continent in amazingly stable communities and tribes for at least 40,000 years. The current opposition to migrants and asylum seekers is a case of descendants of earlier migrants putting up the "no vacancy" sign to later ones.

It has happened in waves. There was significant opposition to the influx of non- Anglo-Saxons, particularly from Italy and Greece between the late 1940s and 1950s, but without them the huge Snowy River Hydroelectric system could not have been built. There would have been no green grocers, corner shops or milk bars. Our knowledge of literature would have been limited to the works of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Joyce and Pam Ayres. In the 1970s and 80s came a tide of Vietnamese boat people. Same reaction, but this time joined by a throng of Australian born descendants of Italian and Greek born parents. A lot of our neurosurgeons, paediatricians and other doctors practising their craft in Australian hospitals and private practices are Vietnamese boat people, as is the recently appointed governor of South Australia. Now we are fighting off a wave of refugees from conflict-torn regions in the Middle East and Asia with unprecedented ferocity, cruelty and brutality. Looks like we are extremely slow to learn.

Hermit, all your post means is that immigration has been good for the immigrants. Nobody disputes that. It's not been so great for the original inhabitants. Even now, after all these years.

I agree, skilled immigration like surgeons is good for everybody, except the country that they are leaving. (ever think of them?)
If the abbos had just allowed a few highly skilled immigrants in, life would be just dandy for them now.
It's unskilled immigration that always depresses the conditions for the poor.

In any case, Australia is fairly underpopulated, in comparison to most of the world.
You don't have astronomical prices for a small plot of land over there, except in the most desirable corners.
The UK is full. Over-full. By a long way. People don't come here for the wide-open spaces. They come to take jobs, which would otherwise be available to the UK residents.

You really are fucking clueless. As Hermit's post following yours shows.

[pErvinalia]

And your posts are getting more and more idiotic.
You state that your little terrace would sell for a million dollars, and then try to claim that it's not desirable. Can you not see the stupidity of that argument?

And I posted about the cost of a plot of land, and you bang on about the cost of housing.
Did it not occur to you that they are not the same thing at all?

God you are fucking clueless. It's not the building that is the vast majority of the cost. IT's the fucking land you dumb cunt. That's the point Hermit is making. HABITABLE LAND IS SHORT IN THIS DESERT CONTINENT. How fucking thick can you be not to understand this. You fucking do this thread after thread after thread. You give your dumb opinion and when corrected with facts and reasoning you just keep digging and even worse resort to only calling your interlocutors posts as "dumb". That's not a fucking rebuttal to FACTS, you dunce. Seriously, i'm thinking about starting a petition to have you suspended for being a fucking idiot. I know we are short on contributors here, but I'm utterly unconvinced that your spurious shite adds enough intellectual content to be worth it. And fuck, you've been getting worse over the last few years. Go to the doctor and get yourself checked out for dementia, FFS. Please stop subjecting us to your idiocy. It lowers the quality of this site significantly.

[Seth]

Seth

My original message had nothing to do with any "right" to migrate. Just that a University of Oxford (UK) researcher discovered that migrants contribute positively to the economic well being of the country they migrate to.

How that translates into national policy regarding immigration is up to the nations concerned, and their government.

I think, though, that your country has benefited immensely from immigration, and the energy and enterprise those people brought to the United States.

By and large this is true, which is why we have an immigration SYSTEM that allows those who will benefit the nation to become productive citizens.

I've not read the paper, but I'm willing to bet that the researcher wasn't talking only about legally sanctioned immigration.

Does the research address the issue of uncontrolled illegal immigration?

[Seth]

As I have said before, I am neither libertarian nor socialist. Or, put another way, I am both. I believe in free enterprise, and in government controls. I believe in personal liberty, and in helping those less fortunate via government and taxes. Or else, you could say I believe in balance, not extremism.

You can't claim to be a libertarian of any stripe if you support involuntary taxation for income redistribution because that is a fatal violation of the fundamental principles of Libertarianism.

You are free to support those less fortunate with YOUR money, but in Libertarianism, you are NOT free to take OTHER PEOPLE'S money and redistribute it to others.

If you believe that you are justified in forcibly taking other people's money in order to redistribute it to those less fortunate, you are not, ipso facto a believer in personal liberty.

Your "balance" consists entirely of a one-sided desire to tell others how they are allowed to dispose of their labor and what portion of it they must give over to your sense of social justice and you implicitly advocate and support the use of force, up to and including deadly force, to extract that tribute from the unwilling.

In other words, you're a Marxist and not any sort of Libertarian at all.

It's all binary to you, isn't it. If you are not a libertarian, you must be a marxist...

A delusional, weird and ignorant perspective.

I don't know why any one bothers engaging with him seriously anymore.

You're obviously not talking about yourself because you have NEVER engaged me, or most anyone else, seriously about anything.

[Hermit]

It's all binary to you, isn't it. If you are not a libertarian, you must be a marxist...

A delusional, weird and ignorant perspective.

I don't know why any one bothers engaging with him seriously anymore.

Some of my replies to Seth might look serious, but for a long time now they've been just for the sake of having a bit of fun. Once you realise just how cartoonish a representation of a black and white, lolbertardian D-K posterboy his posts are, it's almost impossible to take them seriously, and realising that the extremist opinions are shared by very only a very few others, even in the relatively lolbertardian US, there's even less reason to be concerned by anything Seth posts on political, economic and social matters.

As far as his posts about his personal life are concerned I actually, genuinely feel sorry for him. They are also the reason why I don't think he is a Poe.

[rainbow]

Seth

My original message had nothing to do with any "right" to migrate. Just that a University of Oxford (UK) researcher discovered that migrants contribute positively to the economic well being of the country they migrate to.

How that translates into national policy regarding immigration is up to the nations concerned, and their government.

I think, though, that your country has benefited immensely from immigration, and the energy and enterprise those people brought to the United States.

By and large this is true, which is why we have an immigration SYSTEM that allows those who will benefit the nation to become productive citizens.

As you're a Libertarian, I'm shocked that you think it's Big Governments role to decide who can cross a border.

I've not read the paper, but I'm willing to bet that the researcher wasn't talking only about legally sanctioned immigration.

Does the research address the issue of uncontrolled illegal immigration?

The market should decide and Big Government should butt out. Don'cha think?

[pErvinalia]

Seth isn't a libertarian. He's a selfarian. There's very few actual right Libertarians about who are willing to take their toxic ideology to it's limits. Murray Rothbard comes to mind. And there's a reason why there are so few. It's an utterly psychopathic ideology.

[Hermit]

There's very few actual right Libertarians about who are willing to take their toxic ideology to it's limits. Murray Rothbard comes to mind. And there's a reason why there are so few. It's an utterly psychopathic ideology.

Good one. I never thought of rabid right wing nuts that way until you mentioned it, and it does fit. Lolbertardians, at least on the extreme fringe are psychopaths. If they are intelligent and obsessive enough, they come up with some rather simplistic philosophical backfill to rationalise their antisocial views.

In a way the idea that extreme lolbertardians are psychopaths is a comforting thought, for there are not really that many psychopaths around, and most of those who do exist typically restrict themselves to a career of random brutality, sadism and murder. On the other hand it is a bit of a worry after all. A subgroup of psychopaths act out their condition by striving to become zillionaires or at least CEOs of huge corporations. Money means political power, so this subgroup has a political influence way beyond what is healthy for a society.

[mistermack]

You two should move in together. You could have a real 69 then, instead of your usual online one.

But at least, in your wisdom, we now know why Australia can't take any more immigrants.
There's no room. The country is full. Someone should tell the world.

Because at the moment, the only people who know, are a couple of silly cunts on Rationalia.

[Blind groper]

Does the research address the issue of uncontrolled illegal immigration?

No. But it does discuss migrants who are uneducated. The research shows that uneducated migrants still make a major economic contribution.

On land in Australia.
I am not Australian, but I have driven over more of Australia than most Australians. Australia is not short of habitable land. There is heaps. For example, the entire top one third of Australia is monsoonal, with massive rainfall over the short (four month) wet season. Living there is not always comfortable, since for those four months it is hot and very humid and wet, but there is no problem with habitability. In the dry season, water can be pumped up from the aquifers that are topped up every wet season. In fact, in the dry season, the climate is delightful

For the other two thirds of Australia, there is much arid or desert land, which is less habitable, but the entire east coast, to a width of some hundreds of kilometers, is perfectly habitable. This area alone could hold vastly more people than now live in Australia.

Some of the arguments about the most expensive land in Australia are confined to the cities, which is kinda ridiculous. If you go away from the cities and inland a little, land is cheap by the standards of Europe.

[mistermack]

Groper, you keep referring to research, but where is the link?

A totally biased blog-type article doesn't constitute research. Oxford Professors can be as full of shit as anyone else. His opinions are nothing but private opinions without the research facts to back it up.

[Blind groper]

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9301.html

To Mistermack

Prof Ian Goldin carried out the research, and expanded his findings, and a lot of other stuff, into a book, referenced above.

Yes, Oxford professors can be full of intellectual rubbish, just like anyone else. This could be garbage too. However, I am posting on a discussion forum, and it is ammunition for discussion, right or wrong.

[laklak]

Depends on the immigrant, innit? I can get maybe $5-600 for a buck Mexican with good teeth, but a couple of grand for a cute Thai chick. You gotta know the market.

[mistermack]

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9301.html

To Mistermack

Prof Ian Goldin carried out the research, and expanded his findings, and a lot of other stuff, into a book, referenced above.

Yes, Oxford professors can be full of intellectual rubbish, just like anyone else. This could be garbage too. However, I am posting on a discussion forum, and it is ammunition for discussion, right or wrong.

It's not evidence is it? Some Prof with his own slant on things. And he makes the usual stupid observation, that possible billions in world GDP are a good thing.
Nobody disputes that there are winners from unfettered immigration. Firstly the immigrants themselves are the big winners. Then rich people who get richer on the back of cheap labour.

But like I said, it's the poor in the destination country that lose out.
I don't see why the poor in Britain should be kept down, just to make the Chancellor's budget look bigger, and for multi-nationals to make bigger profits.

And Personally, as many have pointed out,I don't give a toss for the poor of Afghanistan or Syria. They've fucked up their own country. Why should the poor of Britain suffer to give them a new start? Fuck em.