Immigrants make you richer.

[Seth]

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.

You're absolutely correct. Supply and demand. There is no demand for such a port, and therefore no supply. Habitability has to do with supply and demand of course, as people actually do live in the most environmentally hostile places on earth, including the South Pole.

The point I was making however was criticizing the notion that "if you build it, they will come" which is not axiomatically true. In other words, government would not make society "richer" by taxing everyone to build such a city just to accommodate the desire of citizens of other nations to emigrate to Australia. It would take a very, very long time for the investment in tax money to be repaid by the industry of the immigrants in such a situation.

On the other hand, if a private enterprise wishes to invest money in such a project, and it's willing to wait out the payoff before seeing a profit (which means supporting the immigrants and not foisting them off on the public purse), I say go for it. That's how Las Vegas came to be.

[pErvinalia]

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.

Yep, you have no idea what you are talking about. The border between SA and WA is a DESERT! Nothing is going to grow there, so your dumb idea for "market gardens" is, not surprisingly, dumb. And the coast is a giant fucking cliff, you dumb cunt. You can't build a harbour on a straight cliff. Seriously, you are an embarrassment to yourself, let alone this site. Please shut the fuck up.

On a more general note, you can't just build shit and expect people to live there. WHY on earth would people want to move to a desert town in the middle of nowhere? Perhaps if Australia got it's shit together and built a proper fast train system, then people might live outside the major urban areas. The reality of Australia is that most of the population lives in the big cities. This is historical in nature, and despite being perhaps not optimal in today's world, it will take a huge effort to reverse that trend. Your kooky ideas don't even take this fact into consideration. We aren't starting from a blank slate in Australia. It is a huge continent which is largely desert and historically uninhabitable at any great density. Very little happens outside of the major capital cities. Trying to opinion the world to be different to how your retarded opinions work is, well, retarded.

[pErvinalia]

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.

This shows the usual lack of awareness that foreigners have about Australia. What you people need to realise is that Australia is an ancient continent with very thing and infertile soils. This isn't a new land like NZ or UK. You can't just add water and all of a sudden have fertile land. Honestly, this fucking site is an embarrassment to rationality. You and dickhead above show no ability to learn any facts about the subjects on which you so confidently bleat. We should shut this cunt of a place down.

[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.

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.

But you never do. It always ends the same way. You (presumably) realise you are logically wrong and then just revert to empty rhetorical flourishes like "adapt or die" and the like, as if they are intelligent 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.

Stow the faux outrage, troll. Stop trolling and start treating your interlocutors with a modicum of respect and then you might get the respect you want.

[pErvinalia]

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?

Libertarianism is voluntary association. NOT voluntary association over a post-hoc arbitrarily defined space. Volunteerism is going to create some strange results, hence why most ideologically pure systems need to be tempered by some common sense and rationality. But under pure libertarianism, there is no logical reason to make a distinction on ownership/occupation at arbitrary (and sometimes physical) land boundaries. Libertarianism, like Communism and Anarchism would need to be run on a global scale with no boundaries and total freedom of movement. Having Libertarianism within one country isn't actually libertarianism, because it treats some people are being more equal or special than others. And that goes right against the tenets of freedom that libertarianism is supposed to espouse.

[pErvinalia]

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?

Because "ownership" is a politically defined and enforced concept. Another body politic might not view ownership the same way the Australian body politic does. What kind of libertarianism is it to tell others that they must accept one system of social organisation over another. Those non-citizens have just as much biological right to that land as Australians do.

[pErvinalia]

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.

Why shouldn't they? They benefit from the past force/fraud of their antecendants.

[Seth]

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.

Why shouldn't they? They benefit from the past force/fraud of their antecendants.

Can you read? Fuck off.

[pErvinalia]

Yes I can read and I am using logic and reasoning to question you. Why is it ok for descendants to benefit from past force/fraud, but no ok to expect them to share some of those benefits?

[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.

But you never do. It always ends the same way. You (presumably) realise you are logically wrong and then just revert to empty rhetorical flourishes like "adapt or die" and the like, as if they are intelligent reasoning.

Just because you disagree with my reasoning doesn't make it faulty. You'll note that I respond with reasoning, not ad hominem...until you start hurling insults about.

Stow the faux outrage, troll. Stop trolling and start treating your interlocutors with a modicum of respect and then you might get the respect you want.

By "modicum of respect" you mean "capitulate to my Marxist demagoguery, so, no. Fuck off.

[pErvinalia]

No, I mean stop trolling. It's pretty simple, Seth, even for someone like you.

[Seth]

Yes I can read

Then please do so before opening your yap.

and I am using logic and reasoning to question you.

No you aren't.

Why is it ok for descendants to benefit from past force/fraud, but no ok to expect them to share some of those benefits?

Why is it okay for latecomers to make claims against present owners based on something that happened a long time ago, between people now dead? I explained this already. You don't get to come along and claim that my ancestors abused your ancestors and demand that I compensate you for that wrong because I did not commit that wrong, my ancestors may have, and you have no standing to demand anything on behalf of your dead ancestors, only they do. The fact that they are your ancestors is utterly irrelevant because land belongs to the living, not the dead. If your ancestors lost a war and lost their land as a result, that might be a past evil but you don't get to perpetuate the evil by visiting punishment on the grandsons of the victors. That's stupid, irrational and unreasonable. If we submit to the ancestral guilt trip extortion scheme such squabbles will quite literally never end because throughout human history one tribe has fought another for resources and land and they always will, so ultimately somebody living in the Great Rift Valley could claim ownership of everything on that idiotic theory.

Libertarians deal with the present, they don't pander to layabouts who want something for nothing just because grandpa lost the farm.

[Seth]

No, I mean stop trolling. It's pretty simple, Seth, even for someone like you.

You first. Fuck off.

[pErvinalia]

Why is it ok for descendants to benefit from past force/fraud, but no ok to expect them to share some of those benefits?

Why is it okay for latecomers to make claims against present owners based on something that happened a long time ago, between people now dead? I explained this already. You don't get to come along and claim that my ancestors abused your ancestors and demand that I compensate you for that wrong because I did not commit that wrong, my ancestors may have, and you have no standing to demand anything on behalf of your dead ancestors, only they do. The fact that they are your ancestors is utterly irrelevant because land belongs to the living, not the dead. If your ancestors lost a war and lost their land as a result, that might be a past evil but you don't get to perpetuate the evil by visiting punishment on the grandsons of the victors. That's stupid, irrational and unreasonable. If we submit to the ancestral guilt trip extortion scheme such squabbles will quite literally never end because throughout human history one tribe has fought another for resources and land and they always will, so ultimately somebody living in the Great Rift Valley could claim ownership of everything on that idiotic theory.

This still doesn't address the logical conundrum: Why is it ok for descendants to BENEFIT from past force/fraud, but somehow unreasonable for them to not pay for those benefits? Those descendants are getting something for free.

Libertarians deal with the present, they don't pander to layabouts who want something for nothing just because grandpa lost the farm.

This is exactly what I mean about your inability to logically defend your ideas. What it always comes down to is "I've got mine, Jack. Stuff you". And as I explained above, the "layabouts" are actually those that have got benefits from past force/fraud without having to pay for them. THEY are the morally repugnant ones.

[pErvinalia]

No, I mean stop trolling. It's pretty simple, Seth, even for someone like you.

You first. Fuck off.

I'm not a troll, Seth. You are. You happily admit it. Stop being a fucking whiner when people treat you like the troll that you happily are.

Here's what you need to do. Apologise for trolling us in the past and state that you are here for honest discussion, not trolling, from this point onwards. If you do that, some will actually give you respect immediately.