How many people can America support?
Okay, now that you've answered, how do you know that your answer is correct? What reasoning lies behind it? Is there any other rational reasoning process that could lead to a different result?
America today is far wealthier, healthier, resource-rich, and spacious than it was a century ago. Our ability to absorb immigrants is greater than ever. There's one reasoning process, and it makes perfect sense to me.
Of course, the fact is that the correct answer will be decided by the free market, if it's not injured and deprived of its free and moral character by regulation and socialism. And for that matter, a free market will be able to absorb more people, anyway, because it creates wealth and prosperity. But the thing you should realize is that you really have no idea how to decide how many people can be absorbed into our economy, and therefore you shouldn't seek to impose policy based on your estimate on everyone else.
2007-07-09
Why America today can handle more immigrants than ever before
2007-07-03
Optimus Prime and the rights of all sentient beings
Admittedly I liked the Transformers as a boy (I think every boy who was my age did). And admittedly I'm excited about the upcoming movie, which will be released tomorrow. And I'm particularly excited that Peter Cullen, the voice of the original Optimus Prime, will be reprising his role.
Optimus Prime was presented as the ultimate hero. He was completely noble, with perfectly pure motives. In multiple versions of the Transformers story (the cartoon and the comic books carried completely different stories, and the movie is starting yet another new version) that purity and nobility led him to give his life to save others. Sometimes multiple times -- it's science fiction, and that kind of thing happens.
Now as an adult I can ask serious questions like "Is it really good for kids to invest so much hero-worship in a fictional character, and an animated one at that?" And "if I'm using the word hero-worship, should I be a little worried, theologically?" And I definitely don't hold up Optimus Prime as the supreme example of morality, as I might've been more inclined to do at age seven or so. Obviously some people took Optimus Prime very seriously as a role model. And I confess I just bought a Softimus Prime for my second boy's first birthday. Probably he'll mostly just chew on it, not view it as a role model. (But it really transforms!)
But Optimus Prime got a lot of great heroic lines, and some of them taught good morality. And one of them forms the basis of my slogan for the work I do through this weblog and my writings and conversations elsewhere: "Secession is the right of all sentient beings."
Prime's original slogan was "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings." What a great 80's American slogan, huh? :) No wonder Optimus Prime is conspicuously colored in red, white and blue. But the American ideology of freedom is a good one. At least when you mean true freedom, the ideology of the founders, not the ideology of today where we pretend that "democracy" means "freedom" instead of "everybody voting on taking turns violating freedom."
In our world we don't have freedom, because we're missing a particular right. Without that right, freedom is meaningless. Ironically, tomorrow, the day the Transformers movie comes out, is the day that we have set aside for the past 231 years to celebrate men exercising that right: the right to secede. But today we have eliminated that right, and we brainwash children to create a public that actually thinks that not having that right is a foundation of freedom. The mind boggles.
The founders recognized that government was not an institution that magically deserved blind obedience from its subjects. The Declaration of Independence specifically states that government is an institution created by men in order to protect rights. It states that people are free and have the right to abolish and reform that government and create their own whenever the government isn't securing their rights. And when people do establish their government, nothing permits them to commit their descendants to give that government perpetual fealty, generation after generation. Nothing permits them to take away their descendants' rights as expressed in the Declaration of July 4, 1776.
How many things can you name that your government does that do not secure rights? Will your government recognize your right to secede? And if you want to stay with your government, will you recognize the right of other people to make a different choice?
Optimus Prime teaches children that all sentient beings, anything that can think, anything which, as the Christian might say, "has a soul" deserves freedom. He teaches it on a child's level. But adults wrote the declaration of independence, and if the message of Independence Day really is true, then Secession really is the right of all sentient beings. I acknowledge your right to secede, and may I suggest that you celebrate Independence Day by acknowledging mine, and that of others?
2007-07-02
Immigration policy for "our" country
This morning somebody asked my opinion of an email about illegal immigration, which began as follows:
Our country is worth reading a 8 minute speech. It is our country and to those that disagree go home as our fences keep people out not in.
I disagree starting with this fundamental premise.
It is not "our" country. Any time you start arguing from a "we" I submit that it's a sign that your thinking is off. Perhaps only off a little, but sometimes off a lot.
This is not "our" country. Only limited parts of it are mine. A small chunk in Dallas/Fort Worth, to be exact. The rest of it belongs to someone else. Some of it belongs to you guys, most of it belongs to people who aren't involved here.
God only gave me dominion over my part.
When you quit saying that some of it is mine, some of it is yours, etc., and start saying that all of it is "ours," you're thinking collectively, socialistically, Communistically. We are not a commune.
And you've also usurped property rights. "Thou shalt not steal" says the Lord. But the 'patriot' blurs the lines of ownership, pretends we all own it collectively, and thus justifies himself in exercising ownership over the property of others. I don't think God is fooled by such justification.
Hopefully all of us here would scream bloody murder if a movement started in the country that said "The children belong to all of us. Therefore we will all vote on how they are to be raised. We will vote to outlaw spanking, we will vote to outlaw parents teaching religion to their children, we will vote to remove children from the homes and raise them in government centers where they can be taught to seek the greater good, to serve society as good people should. They are OUR children, and OUR children deserve the best." We would rightfully respond "They are most certainly NOT 'our' children. These two are MINE." And we would fight or flee in order to see that our children do not become the state's children.
Of course there's a gigantic power in this country that exercises dominion over the entire thing. And it even offers to let us have a say in how that dominion will be exercised, and to vote on who is going to take turns having the power. The gigantic power continually repeats the collectivist mantra: that we are all in this together, that it all belongs to all of us, that we all have the right (really those who happened to get the turn at power this term) to tell individuals what they may and may not do with what is theirs, or even to take away all or some of it, to make completely blameless actions into illegal acts.
But since I can't exercise dominion over what is not mine, I can't legitimately delegate such a right to that power. Of course, God commands me to submit to it, and so I do. Even when it is not just. Even when it exercises dominion over the little pieces of property God has given to me. But I won't exercise that dominion over others, and I won't authorize anyone as my agent to do so on my behalf.
So in the end, here's what I think about immigration: the entire thing can be easily resolved with property rights, and that's the only righteous way to resolve it.
Here's some links to articles where I've seen this view expressed, or similar views expressed, or have expressed the same myself.
It's wrong for me to tell someone they can't hire someone based on where they were born or happen to live. It's wrong for me to tell a property owner he can't sell or rent his property to certain people. It's wrong for me to take money and resources that don't belong to me to provide services to other people, whether they are "citizens" of "my" country, or not. It's wrong for me to exercise force against other people when they want to compete with me in whatever market/industry I participate in, rather than being industrious and adapting and finding another way to survive. It's my responsibility to provide for my family, by doing work that other people find valuable and will pay for, not by using force to prevent other men from fulfilling the same responsibility. It also so happens that economics teaches us that it is best for the economy if we do it God's way, rather than exercising such force.
What does the Bible say about immigration? Plenty. Look for "alien" and "stranger" in your Old Testament. You won't find a single statement that is encouraging to the view that God looks favorably on those who want to restrict immigration. That's my position.