Focus on the Essence

I know. I quoted Crusader addressing you. Didn't intend to confuse the two of you.

Rockwell is accused of making racist statements during the eighties, primarily in Ron Paul's newsletters, statements like "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks", presumably referring to the riots following the acquittal of the police that beat Rodney King to a pulp.

Apparently, that's the worse example you'll find, since it's the example highlighted by a critical article in Reason, but the article doesn't present any context for the quote. It doesn't tell you that race was central to the issue he addressed a priori, so that he wasn't injecting race into it.

But was the remark insensitive and politically inept? Sure, I'd agree with that. Was it a cynical ploy to attract contributions from racists as Reason suggests? Maybe. [Rockwell sometimes thinks himself too puritanically libertarian for Cato and Reason, so a rivalry exists.] Does it prove Rockwell a racist? I don't think so.

Note that Rockwell's authorship of these controversial statements isn't even firmly established, and Murray Rothbard possibly wrote them instead. I've never seen anything remotely "anti-Semitic" out of Rockwell, and I can easily imagine him playing the sacrificial lamb to protect Rothbard's reputation. The man practically worships Rothbard, and Rothbard was Jewish.

. . . Crusader did. :(

Hey Martin - I didn't say LewRockwell.com is anti-Semitic, Crusader. (I can't remember reading anything there that was anti-Semitic.)

Gil - Lew Rockwell is a disgusting antisemitic piece of garbage.

You're clueless. Rockwell is practically the Pope of Rothbardianity, and Rothbard was Jewish.

The same "problem" (illegal immigrants' working I mean) there is in many countries. Russia is not a exeption.

For a lot of building (especially before crisis) illegal immigrants - are the cheapest labour. They are deprived of civil rights, they are living in AWFUL conditions. Most of them - from the ex-USSR countries.


It's up to goverment...

You don't say who the nation would go out and shoot.

I say that the United States threatens to shoot people (as a last resort at least) who choose to live here without a permit, because it does as a matter of fact. Other states limit migration similarly.

Nor do you point to any specific cause for which shooting them would be a good idea.

I'm not an anarchist. I suppose that some authority threatening to shoot people who shoot other people is defensible. In other words, I don't object to a law against murder, but I wouldn't extend this authority to threatening to shoot people for associating freely with other people. Why would I?

I mean, if someone wants to buy a house from me, even move next door to me, work for my employer, attend my church, send his kids to the school my kids attend and so on, why would you care? Why would you threaten to shoot someone who does these things without your permission? Why not just let me worry about it?

And what difference does it make if this person was born in the United Kingdom or France or Germany or Japan or China or Russian or the Czech Republic or the UAE or Indonesia?

... if you believe governments have the right to define and therefore defend their borders.

In my way of thinking, a state has a "right" to do whatever it will, because it defines "right". It has a right march you and every member of your family to an extermination camp, if it says it does. Rights can be useful constructs or not. One man's right can be another man's tyranny.

If you say you're for free immigration this implies a "no, you don't think governments should".

I think a state better serves the interests of its own subjects if it doesn't restrict immigration. For example, state governments subject to the United States may not restrict migration from state to state. I recently moved from Atlanta to Georgia without asking the permission of either state. I could have moved to Minnesota or California as easily. This liberty doesn't harm people in any of these states. On the contrary, it helps all of them.

In other words, Don's arguments in favor of free trade generally apply to free immigration specifically without modification.

Actually Martin I think Chris was referring to W. Block versus R. Paul and not you.

However I believe my question was valid. Even though you can recognise between 'ought' and 'is', I still nonetheless asked if you believe governments have the right to define and therefore defend their borders. If you say you're for free immigration this implies a "no, you don't think governments should".

I suspect the letter-writer was suggesting that illegal immigrants accept lower-than-market wages in exchange for employment with no questions asked. That's not a far-fetched assertion.

Posted by: Martin Brock | May 3, 2009 2:33:28 PM





My point is that there was no real justification behind your statement.

You don't say who the nation would go out and shoot. Nor do you point to any specific cause for which shooting them would be a good idea.

I was only preempting the possible arguments.

Cliff - wrong. Labor is another commodity and has no special value above other commodities.

Labor is not a commodity. It's the most valuable resource precisely because it's not a commodity. Not only does every man's labor differ substantially from every other man's labor. Every hour of a man's labor differs substantially from the next hour of the same man's labor.

The complexity of human ingenuity is practically limitless, and the value of this ingenuity extends to practically every phase of every productive process involving labor.

I learned this lesson from Julian Simon.

That's not a sufficient argument for amnesty or permitting H1/L1 abuse. Nor does it make for a good argument to end war.

So that's it. You've spoken, and your word is rebuttal enough. You should run for office.

Posted by: Martin Brock | May 3, 2009 10:24:11 AM

That's not a sufficient argument for amnesty or permitting H1/L1 abuse. Nor does it make for a good argument to end war.

"Personally, I'd solve this problem by making them legal."

So you believe governments don't have the rights to borders, M. Brock?

Martin's comment implicitly recognizes governments and borders, otherwise he wouldn't have mentioned the legality issue.

Your comment is non sequitur.

Basically, we have a "housing crisis" in this country only because we threaten to shoot countless people around the world who'd love to buy houses here and occupy them and could well afford to do so if only we didn't threaten to shoot them.

O.K. I'm just going to start double posting when the forum software removes my html tags.

Gil, you do realize Brock was writing tongue in cheek in his essay "against" Ron Paul?

I wasn't writing tongue-in-cheek about legalizing illegal immigrants. I like Ron Paul a lot, but I don't always agree with him.

Yes, I basically support unrestricted immigration for the same reason that I support unrestricted international trade. The whole idea of "free trade" without free immigration is nonsense. Without free immigration, trade generally is not remotely free.

Gil, you do realize Brock was writing tongue in cheek in his essay "against" Ron Paul?

I wasn't writing tongue-in-cheek about legalizing illegal immigrants. I like Ron Paul a lot, but I don't always agree with him.

Yes, I basically support unrestricted immigration for the same reason that I support unrestricted international trade. The whole idea of "free trade" without free immigration is nonsense. Without free immigration, trade generally is not remotely free.

So you believe governments don't have the rights to borders, M. Brock?

Governments have whatever "rights" they say they have, but that's beside the point.

Gil, you do realize Brock was writing tongue in cheek in his essay "against" Ron Paul?

Second, does Mr. Sciance oppose the development of engines with more horsepower, rigs with improved braking and suspension systems, better highways that permit safer travel at higher speeds, or other technological advances





A bit of a non-sequitur with the illegal immigrants around. That's a lack of law enforcement that is being encouraged by business. Enforce the law first, then use the economic argument.

Same thing with H1/L1 abuse. There must be stiff penalties, even if it is at the cost of the business community. I'd personally not stop at disbarment of entire firms involved and business licenses revoked.

Making them legal only rewards it. Enforce the law and reinforce the border.

Cliff - wrong. Labor is another commodity and has no special value above other commodities.





If you were to think of it as a commodity:


It is one that that is not an inanimate object without any ability to reason. There are actual lives behind those who perform the work. They will react to preserve what they have if they encounter a threat. Make the trade citizen-beneficial, not citizen-hostile (as it is now). If all they get is lost jobs and no means to be on the beneficial end of what jobs are left, stop treating them like cattle. Transitionary assistance, placing them with openings that fit their skills, and perhaps what they're doing in Georgia might help.

Work with them, don't work against them.

Oooooooh! Crusader's gone apespit!

Actually I think we're better off without the anti-Semitic epithet altogether. The anti-capitalist epithet is more to the point, and is what needs to be built up.

Without anti-capitalism, anti-Semitism is sort of like, sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me. Without the anti-capitalism, the anti-Semitism can't really hurt me. It's the anti-capitalist friends of the Jews and especially the anti-capitalist Jews themselves who really worry me.

Without the anti-capitalism, my attitude would be, so they hate the Jews, so what, even the Jews hate the Jews. What's not to hate?

Crusader,

I sure don't like the tone of your last comment. It sounds as though you were threatening Gil. What were you planning to do, put a cybernetic curse on him?

And I sure don't like having the anti-semitic epithet bandied about. I've had my problems with Rockwell, too. He did throw me out of Mises University, for asking if The Mises Institute Could Tolerate Mises.

Evidently not.

But if he threw me out for being an obnoxious little Jew, I'm sure the obnoxious part had more to do with it than the Jew part, for he certainly didn't throw Rothbard out, and he was every bit as Jewish as I, if not more obnoxious.

So, I don't think Rockwell is even an anti-Obnoxite, and if he isn't that, he can't be an anti-Semite.

Does that make sense? I hope not.

But I doubt that Rockwell is an anti-Semite. He may be anti-Israeli. I don't know about that. And while I would agree that most anti-Israeli sentiment is thinly disguised anti-Semitism, I wouldn't be so sure of that in Rockwell's case.

Anti-Semitism, anti-Israelism, and anti-Americanism usually go along with anti-capitalism, and Rockwell is certainly no anti-capitalist. So, on the other matters, he deserves the benefit of the doubt

I wouldn't hesitate to call most of the anti-Israelites anti-Semites, but not a Lew Rockwell.

Don't dissipate the power of the epithet with overuse. Save it for where it counts.

And if you really want to be helpful, cool down.

Gil - Lew Rockwell is a disgusting antisemitic piece of garbage. Please do not link any further - consider it a first warning.

Lee Kelly,

Re; is it labour when one enjoys the work?

I was thinking about that shortly after hitting send on my comment above. I can see that in some cases the consumer of the product of my labor may be me. For example, I enjoy hiking in the mountains. The labor, the costs, are the aching muscles, joints, and lungs. The products are the views and the memories. Sustenance? Not unless someone will pay me for the story. Dignity? Not unless someone else enjoys the story.

Since HTML tags are turned off - here's the link to Walter Block's article:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block93.html

On the other hand, how much is NIMBYism involved? I'm not a truck driver so I don't care that Mr. Science has to work at $25/hr less than what he used to or find another field of employment? I found it funny that Libertarian Professor Walter Block argued against Ron Paul when Mr. Paul said he'd get rid of taxpayer-funded universities and the job sercurity that went with it. Oops! Got too close to home.

"Personally, I'd solve this problem by making them legal."

So you believe governments don't have the rights to borders, M. Brock?

Meh. C.T. raised the issue of his/her brother losing his job as a response to Jason Riley's assertion that illegal immigrants don't tend to compete with citizens for jobs. The statement seems relevant.

In fact, other than his/her use of the term "greedy employers," I found none of the letter offensive. C.T. takes our social welfare and immigration laws as given, and he/she wonders why they aren't enforced. Doesn't seem so bad. Having said that, C.T. will probably live long enough to pine for the days of more immigrants than we knew what to do with, and I wonder how he/she will feel when the folly of the statement that the surplus of immigrants is unlikely ever to go away, becomes obvious.

Labour is all cost, except when one enjoys their work, but then is it labour? Hmm ...

Labor is anything I do that you value. If I enjoy it, so much the better.

I wonder what the unions will say when robots completely replace the need for manual labor?

Automation doesn't eliminate labor. It only redirects labor. That's why the U.S. workforce grew four-fold in the twentieth century despite automation that people in the nineteenth century could hardly imagine.

Most people obviously want this progress to increase consumption for most people, rather than increasing the consumption of a few while the consumption of many stagnates or even falls. You'll never persuade most people that some other mode of progress is "just". It's a waste of breath.

Why might he oppose one method of reducing shipping costs - a method that reduces the demand for high-wage drivers - but not other methods that do exactly the same thing?

The other innovations you discuss might raise wages rather than lowering them, even as the number of wage earners driving trucks falls, while hiring illegal immigrants presumably only lowers wages.

People want higher wage jobs. They don't object so much to productivity improvements that move people from high wage jobs to other high wage jobs, but they do object to innovations that move people from high wage jobs to lower wage jobs.

That the immigrants are illegal seems relevant. Illegal immigrants have less bargaining power precisely because they're illegal. Personally, I'd solve this problem by making them legal.

Randy, Sam et al. are right.

I'll add that I do not, and never will draw my dignity or my humanity from my job.

My family, my friends and my church give me that.

Randy,

Labour is all cost, except when one enjoys their work, but then is it labour? Hmm ...

Cliff,

"After all, the object of work is to provide sustenance & dignity to the laborer."

The dignity (and sustenance) comes from producing something of value to someone else, not from the labor itself. The labor is, as Sam points out, all cost.

Crusader,

You mean the labour cartels, right? Although you wrote "unions", I think you meant the labour cartels. The word "union" sounds nice though. Why don't we begin calling monopolies "unique enterprises", too?

I wonder what the unions will say when robots completely replace the need for manual labor?

After all, the object of work is to provide sustenance & dignity to the laborer.

In case you aren't being facetious, the object of work is to produce the goods and services we require and desire.

If those goods and services could be provided without human labor, that's how it would be done.

"Second, does Mr. Sciance oppose the development of ... better highways that permit safer travel at higher speeds, or other technological advances that enable trucking companies today to ship any given amount of freight using fewer and fewer drivers?"

The Teamsters Union opposed raising the federal government-imposed speed limit to 65MPH (and the subsequent return of authority to the states to post speed limits within their borders) for that reason.

Cliff - wrong. Labor is another commodity and has no special value above other commodities.

In an ideal world, immigration into the U.S. would be a lot easier, and illegal immigrants would be deported.

But it really has little to do with the underlying economics. If the north half of Mexico suddenly became another U.S. state, would all this economic competition suddenly be okay? It doesn't make any sense.

Political jurisdictions are importantly only because policies, such as wage controls and labour subsidies, create a surplus of workers.

One wonders how their immigration status is discovered, or is it assumed? Nevertheless, I think an argument can be made in favor of human labor over any technological advancement, especially when labor is replaced. After all, the object of work is to provide sustenance & dignity to the laborer.

Ok, if you kick out all the illegals, maybe his rate goes back up to $25/hour.

I have a problem with illegal immigrants, but it has nothing to do with the jobs they take or the wages they make--I just think they should be prosecuted for their illegal activities, is all (forgery, theft, illegal border crossing as mentioned above). Of course, I would expect those laws to be enforced on normal citizens too.

Otherwise, if it's a legal immigrant, it's really none of my business what wages they make or what jobs they do.