Immigrants make you richer.

[mistermack]

YOU are the one claiming it is inhabitable. I'm asking YOU what jobs these people would do if your opinion on what was habitable amounted to anything more than a hill of beans.

Habitable
ADJECTIVE
Suitable or good enough to live in:
the house should be habitable by Christmas

[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.

It's not. It's the role of the People to determine who crosses a border. The fundamental Libertarian premise at work here is the same old "force or fraud" proscription. When a person enters the country illegally, that person is initiating force and fraud against the citizens of the nation by trespassing on property that does not belong to them and that they have neither paid for nor contributed to the construction and maintenance of.

And these people that enter by force and fraud, should they be sent back?

[pErvinalia]

YOU are the one claiming it is inhabitable. I'm asking YOU what jobs these people would do if your opinion on what was habitable amounted to anything more than a hill of beans.

Habitable
ADJECTIVE
Suitable or good enough to live in:
the house should be habitable by Christmas

Why don't you stop dodging the issue? Oh that's right, you have realised you have no clue what you are talking about. Is this a first?

[mistermack]

Why don't you stop dodging the issue? Oh that's right, you have realised you have no clue what you are talking about. Is this a first?

Maybe I don't, but I work on the assumption that the people who compile major dictionaries DO know what they are talking about.

Actually, Australia could easily build a new city on the south coast. And building it would generate loads of jobs. They could put it right on the border, straddling South Australia and Western Australia, so both could put the money in.

The first thing would be to build a decent harbour, which would be a major construction project, and would generate thousands of construction jobs, and permanent jobs running it.
Then you would need a major desalination plant, providing lots more building and permanent jobs.
Then you'd have to lay out roads, build and run an airport, provide a hospital, police station, ambulance station, market gardens using the desalinated water, library, major power station, sewage works, banks, pubs, cinemas, schools, hotels, shops and supermarkets, taxis, filling stations, vets, brothels, car showrooms, workshops, marinas, colleges, chemists, osteopaths, herbalists, and all the other bollocks that people can't seem to do without.

Cities generate jobs, just by being there. They don't rely on what grows in the dirt, otherwise Las Vegas and Casablanca would be fucked.

[Blind groper]

I have had my arguments with Mistermack. But on this point I agree with him. Any coastal area can be inhabitable, and jobs can be created.

I remember Midway Island, which is a lump of barren coral in the middle of the tropical Pacific, and is a vital air base for the USA. Those people needed food, and food would not grow there. It was a long way to ship it in. So they set up desalination and hydroponics and grew more veges than the population could handle.

Australia is a continent, not a little island. It could support a population of several hundred million, if need be. Counting the monsoonal area, and the entire east coast, it has oodles of habitable land. If water was collected from the monsoon area (like they already do at Lake Argyle) and pumped south, much of the desert could be made habitable also.

[Seth]

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.

Go fuck yourself rEv. Just because you're an ignoramus when it comes to Libertarianism doesn't mean the philosophy is flawed.

You contradict yourself every time I take you to the limits of the ideology.

Then why don't you argue the point rather than resorting to ad hominem insults? If I'm contradicting myself, show us the contradiction in an adult manner and I'll do my best to rebut your reasoning.

As anyone who isn't a psychopath should. Seth, I'm granting you an out. I don't think you are a total psychopath. You are overly selfish and at the limits you take it to it is pretty full on anti-social. But you aren't totally without empathy for others. People like Murray Rothbard and others who take right libertarianism to it's ideological limits are total psychopaths.

See, there you go again. You are incapable of engaging in rational debate because you cannot control your ideological anger and you resort to ad hominem as a substitute for rational thought. I conclude this is because when you run out of valid arguments and see yourself losing the debate, you are psychopathically compelled to launch a personal attack in order to divert attention away from your intellectual shortcomings.

[Seth]

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

Yes, it should. The market, not the illegal immigrant. The problem is that illegal immigrants defraud the public by making their own decision to cross the border and leech on society in hopes of getting a job and becoming financially solvent and productive. Sadly, many of them never achieve that and they, or their dependents, become drains on the public purse for things like education and health care because their skill sets are inadequate to the market. And they perpetrate the fraud from the moment they step across the border, which is impermissible.

Rubbish. The setting up of borders in the first place was an act of force or fraud by Big Government.

A good Libertarian should demand that all border fences be torn down.

You still misunderstand Libertarianism. It's not a free-for-all by any stretch of the imagination.

"Big Government" is not a living organism, it's an organizational structure created by the inhabitants of the area, who are perfectly entitled to define the boundaries of their sphere of labor and investment. If I improve a piece of property by constructing a building or factory then by dint of that labor and investment of capital I define a boundary across which others are precluded from intruding without my permission. A nation is no different because it's merely a group of individuals working together towards a common goal and their labor and investment make enjoyment of the fruits of that labor exclusive to those who participate in the labor and investment.

Under your interpretation, any illegal immigrant is entitled to move into your house merely because he has the ability to cross the border and claim your share of the costs improving society.

Are you willing to live your principles to that extent?

[Seth]

But if land was short, there are vast areas of Australia that could easily support human settlement.

I'm sure there are, but that begs the question. Why do you believe that non-citizens have a right to settle those uninhabited areas without the permission of those who own it?

[tattuchu]

begs the question

[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.

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

It's not. It's the role of the People to determine who crosses a border. The fundamental Libertarian premise at work here is the same old "force or fraud" proscription. When a person enters the country illegally, that person is initiating force and fraud against the citizens of the nation by trespassing on property that does not belong to them and that they have neither paid for nor contributed to the construction and maintenance of.

And these people that enter by force and fraud, should they be sent back?

Yes. But let me forestall your obvious rejoinder. Libertarianism doesn't buy into the notion that the sins of the father can be visited on the son. In other words, just because someone in the past initiated force or fraud that resulted in a benefit to someone today does not mean that a person today, who has not initiated force or fraud, is responsible for righting that wrong or compensating the descendants of the wronged person.

The dead people of the past who were wronged by the dead people of the past must take up their complaint with the dead people of the past, not the living people of today. Ancestral guilt is not recognized in Libertarian philosophy. People are expected to right their own wrongs when they occur, and if they don't, it's their problem and no one else's.

[Seth]

begs the question

Fair enough. Rewrite to "Dodges the question."

[tattuchu]

begs the question

Fair enough. Rewrite to "Dodges the question."

[Seth]

Why don't you stop dodging the issue? Oh that's right, you have realised you have no clue what you are talking about. Is this a first?

Maybe I don't, but I work on the assumption that the people who compile major dictionaries DO know what they are talking about.

Actually, Australia could easily build a new city on the south coast. And building it would generate loads of jobs. They could put it right on the border, straddling South Australia and Western Australia, so both could put the money in.

The first thing would be to build a decent harbour, which would be a major construction project, and would generate thousands of construction jobs, and permanent jobs running it.
Then you would need a major desalination plant, providing lots more building and permanent jobs.
Then you'd have to lay out roads, build and run an airport, provide a hospital, police station, ambulance station, market gardens using the desalinated water, library, major power station, sewage works, banks, pubs, cinemas, schools, hotels, shops and supermarkets, taxis, filling stations, vets, brothels, car showrooms, workshops, marinas, colleges, chemists, osteopaths, herbalists, and all the other bollocks that people can't seem to do without.

Cities generate jobs, just by being there. They don't rely on what grows in the dirt, otherwise Las Vegas and Casablanca would be fucked.

Where does the initial capital come from? Taxes or private investment?

[mistermack]

I'm sure there are, but that begs the question. Why do you believe that non-citizens have a right to settle those uninhabited areas without the permission of those who own it?

I don't. Never did. Do try to keep up.

It's only the Jews who have that right.

Apparently.

[mistermack]

Where does the initial capital come from? Taxes or private investment?

It's not going to happen. There is far too much easier development land in Australia.
But if land was short, it could easily be done with a combination of public and private money.

It's a question of supply and demand, not habitable or not habitable.
At the moment, the supply of land is huge, and the demand, with less than 25 million Australian residents, is small.