The Egyptian military has saved Egypt...

[Little John]

The following are facts as stated by you on several occasions on this board. They are not interpretations of your thoughts. They are reiterations of your stated positions:

You believe in property rights for individuals, including, of course yourself. Which is, of course, rather handy for you, since it preclude the possibility of anyone coming and freely partaking of any of your own personal individually owned resources. One must logically presume,from the above, that you believe that the state's (commonly funded) resources may be properly be called upon to enforce your individual property rights.

Yes. Is there anyone here who thinks otherwise?

You do not believe, however, in communal property rights as evidenced by your belief in open borders such that all resources owned in common by the people of this country should, in fact, not be owned in common, but should be made available, without qualification, to anyone from outside this country who wishes to come and live here and partake of those common resources.

Absolutely not true. I have never said that. Ever.
Which makes the rest of your post without foundation.

Come on Steve, stop telling the world what you think I think. If you want to quote something I've written and challenge it that's fine, I'll defend it or retract it, but don't make things up.

Ok, let's break this down one step at a time:

1. do you believe in open borders?

2. do you accept that people who live in a recognised state jurisdiction pay taxes for the purpose of maintaining communal resource owned in common by said taxpayers. A non-exhaustive list of examples of such common resources include all state owned and controlled natural resources such as land, sea and air and also state constructed resources such as railways, water purification and supply systems and roads. Finally all state owned and controlled institutions and organisations such as the educations and health systems.

3. do you accept that all communally owned property, whilst managed and maintained on behalf of the people by state institutions are, fundamentally, the communally property of the taxpayers of that state's jurisdiction and are not owned by the state institutions themselves.

4. do you accept that all resources, including communally owned common resources are, in a physical world, finite, by definition?

5. do you believe that property rights should exist and be enforced for individually owned property?

6. do you believe that property rights exist and should be enforced for communally owned property?

These are straightforward questions and so I expect you to answer them without obfuscation. To the extent that you do obfuscate, will be an indication you have something to hide.

[biffvernon]

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. Yes

I suppose I might obfuscate a bit on 4 if one counts within 'resources' stuff that is not physical, such as knowledge, poetry, love and such-like.

[biffvernon]

Look here, RC, (the most likely person to pull me up on this) I'm not saying that love can't be physical but you know what I mean.

[Little John]

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. Yes

I suppose I might obfuscate a bit on 4 if one counts within 'resources' stuff that is not physical, such as knowledge, poetry, love and such-like.

Thank you for the clear answers Biff. I'm afraid, however, those answers illustrate a major problem you've got with logical consistency.

If you believe in open borders, then you cannot logically concurrently believe in communal property rights. They are mutually incompatible. Or, at least, if you wish to make the argument that once a person comes here and starts paying taxes, that automatically means they become one of the communal owners, if this happens in the absence of consent of the existing owners, then it is merely a form of state-sanctioned theft. To apply this to individually owned property would be like saying that you believe in individual property rights, but that you also simultaneously believe that anyone can come and live on your property and partake of its resources without your permission just so long as the state says they can and as long as they start paying a contribution towards its upkeep. I'm pretty sure you would wish to retain the right to refuse entry to your property to any person on that basis. But, you appear to be unwilling to afford the people of this country the same right to refuse entry to their communally owned property as you would have for yourself.

So, which is it Biff? Do you believe that communal property owners should have the same right of refusal of entry and consumption of their communally owned resources as you would have for yourself in relation to your individually owned resources and that this right should be enforced (by state-enforced border-controls in the case of commonly owned territories otherwise known as countries, or by state-enforced property-boundaries in the case of individually owned territories) or do you believe in open borders? You cannot logically hold both beliefs simultaneously.

Or, at least, you can, but only if you are prepared to propose them for individual property owners as well as communal ones and, even then, there is the philosophical question of whether you have the right to impose that belief on other communal owners who may not agree with you. But, in any event, this problem does not apply since you demonstrably do not believe that people should be able to move on your individually owned land without your individual permission and so you cannot logically consistently argue that such a situation should pertain for anyone else, be they communal or individual property owners.

Basically, when it comes to property rights, you are quite hopelessly muddled at best and a rank hypocrite at worst.

[vtsnowedin]

The notion that some thirty million Egyptians could migrate to the UK (or the USA for that matter) and be absorbed and assimilated is preposterous. We should dispense with the utopian impossibilities and concentrate on the very grim but real possibilities that face the Egyptian population.

[AndySir]

Thank you for the clear answers Biff. I'm afraid, however, those answers illustrate a major problem you've got with logical consistency.

If you believe in open borders, then you cannot logically concurrently believe in communal property rights. They are mutually incompatible. Or, at least, if you wish to make the argument that once a person comes here and starts paying taxes, that automatically means they become one of the communal owners, if this happens in the absence of consent of the existing owners, then it is merely a form of state-sanctioned theft. To apply this to individually owned property would be like saying that you believe in individual property rights, but that you also simultaneously believe that anyone can come and live on your property and partake of its resources without your permission just so long as the state says they can and as long as they start paying a contribution towards its upkeep. I'm pretty sure you would wish to retain the right to refuse entry to your property to any person on that basis. But, you appear to be unwilling to afford the people of this country the same right to refuse entry to their communally owned property as you would have for yourself.

So, which is it Biff? Do you believe that communal property owners should have the same right of refusal of entry and consumption of their communally owned resources as you would have for yourself in relation to your individually owned resources and that this right should be enforced (by state-enforced border-controls in the case of commonly owned territories otherwise known as countries, or by state-enforced property-boundaries in the case of individually owned territories) or do you believe in open borders? You cannot logically hold both beliefs simultaneously.

Or, at least, you can, but only if you are prepared to propose them for individual property owners as well as communal ones and, even then, there is the philosophical question of whether you have the right to impose that belief on other communal owners who may not agree with you. But, in any event, this problem does not apply since you demonstrably do not believe that people should be able to move on your individually owned land without your individual permission and so you cannot logically consistently argue that such a situation should pertain for anyone else, be they communal or individual property owners.

Basically, when it comes to property rights, you are quite hopelessly muddled at best and a rank hypocrite at worst.

It's almost endearing to watch Steve fail so badly at things like mathematics and logic while adamantly insisting that it's the other person that's stupid.

No, increasing the number of communal owners without permission cannot be 'theft' since that makes ever parent who did not seek a referendum on the birth of their child a criminal. You might make the argument that denying communal property rights based on arbitrary geographical markers makes is theft though....

Continued attempts to equate communal property and individual property seems to make little sense. Shared resources have completely different legal and moral systems regardless of whether the administrative entity is a state or a sewing circle.

[biffvernon]

Exactly so, Andy.

I see no logical inconsistency and no muddle when it comes to property rights. As I've said before, property rights and border control are two quite separate things. I don't muddle them up.

Property rights are not an issue when one moves from Yorkshire to Lincolnshire or from France to Germany or from Tunisia to Spain. Only one of these movements involves showing a passport and getting permission from a government, but property still doesn't come into it.

Of course government services have to be paid for and the way this is done is up to local governments. Some choose to tax primary resource exploitation, manufacturing, trade and personal income. Most countries have a combination of all of these. None of this taxation is related to border control. When, say, revenue is generated from sales of oil it doesn't matter much who lives in the land. When revenue is raised from personal income then whoever has an income pays their income tax, when revenue is raised from trade via a purchase or value added tax then it is whoever goes shopping that pays the tax. Again, border control is not an issue.

I suppose the fear in some people's minds is the idea that if we abandoned border control lots of people with no taxable income would move to Britain and expect to be fed and housed out of other people's taxation.

Now I've not said anything about this at it is only tangential, not central, to the idea of no borders. Steve and UE have jumped to conclusions about my thinking but, despite my requests, have been unable to come up with a single quote from me that supports their assertions. But let's now confront the issue head on.

First, I don't think it would be sensible to abandon border controls in one country without doing so across a pretty wide part of the world at the same time. (In the EU it was done right across the EU not by just one nation first.)

Second, and this is rather important, removing border control does not automatically grant rights to access public goods. There clearly are grey areas and in practice there has to be a sliding scale. One might allow the new migrant the right to walk on the road and thus add wear and tear to the pavement for free but demand payment if he wants to drive a car on it. One might, or might not, the political debate would have to be had, provide state paid education and healthcare for children of migrants. An economist might argue that such cost should be seen as a sound investment since an educated child is more likely to earn an income later that could be taxed. One might, or might not, extend such government services to adult migrants, on the basis that once settled into the land they will contribute to the economy later. One might extend government services to elderly migrants with no prospect of their contributing to the economy because that might be regarded as a mark of a civilised society. Again, that would be a political choice that has to be made. In discussions about borders I have not expressed a view as to how that debate should conclude. The outcome of such debate is not determined by the lifting of border controls.

Some people will no doubt shout How Naive! Of course if we have hordes of immigrants we will have to feed them! But look around the world. There are, sadly, plenty of countries where rich and poor live together, where people are allowed to starve to death in close proximity to people with enormous wealth. That's the nation's political choice. Removing border controls might bring such situations to closer focus. In Britain, for example, it may be less politically expedient to allow people to starve to death in Surrey than it is to allow them to die in the Yemen. Removing border controls may remove our insulation from awkward political choices.

A couple of days ago vt wrote

I'll believe the leadership,(military or whom ever replaces them) has saved Egypt when they put in place something that will bring the population into balance with the Nile's food production capacity. As they currently import forty percent of their food and have next to nothing to export to pay for it (Other then terrorism.) That is a pretty tall order. Being pessimistic I expect civil war and genocide to kill some thirty-two million of the poorest Egyptians. Anybody see a neat little solution that could save them from this rapidly approaching apocalypse?

Killing 32 million people is the same order of magnitude as the second world war, so, if vt is right, we had better take that problem seriously. If it is true that Egypt cannot sustain it's own population then the choice is between death, foreign aid and migration. Of course it might be best to sidestep the problem by transforming the situation so that the country can sustain itself. I don't know enough about Egyptian farming potential to know how much slack there is in the system but I notice Egyptian potatoes in English shops in the spring and I sleep between sheets made from cotton grown in Egypt, so there is clearly some wiggle-room.

As global warming proceeds the choice between death, aid and migration will become more stark in increasing areas of the planet. Getting the balance between those three, not mutually exclusive, alternatives, is going to be the theme for global politics for the rest of the century. Border controls and the implications that follow are something we need to have a rational debate about, the sooner the better.

[biffvernon]

That's probably one of the longest posts I've ever written on PS and it will have to do for a couple of days as I'm away from the internet this weekend. Toodle-pip!

[Little John]

Thank you for the clear answers Biff. I'm afraid, however, those answers illustrate a major problem you've got with logical consistency.

If you believe in open borders, then you cannot logically concurrently believe in communal property rights. They are mutually incompatible. Or, at least, if you wish to make the argument that once a person comes here and starts paying taxes, that automatically means they become one of the communal owners, if this happens in the absence of consent of the existing owners, then it is merely a form of state-sanctioned theft. To apply this to individually owned property would be like saying that you believe in individual property rights, but that you also simultaneously believe that anyone can come and live on your property and partake of its resources without your permission just so long as the state says they can and as long as they start paying a contribution towards its upkeep. I'm pretty sure you would wish to retain the right to refuse entry to your property to any person on that basis. But, you appear to be unwilling to afford the people of this country the same right to refuse entry to their communally owned property as you would have for yourself.

So, which is it Biff? Do you believe that communal property owners should have the same right of refusal of entry and consumption of their communally owned resources as you would have for yourself in relation to your individually owned resources and that this right should be enforced (by state-enforced border-controls in the case of commonly owned territories otherwise known as countries, or by state-enforced property-boundaries in the case of individually owned territories) or do you believe in open borders? You cannot logically hold both beliefs simultaneously.

Or, at least, you can, but only if you are prepared to propose them for individual property owners as well as communal ones and, even then, there is the philosophical question of whether you have the right to impose that belief on other communal owners who may not agree with you. But, in any event, this problem does not apply since you demonstrably do not believe that people should be able to move on your individually owned land without your individual permission and so you cannot logically consistently argue that such a situation should pertain for anyone else, be they communal or individual property owners.

Basically, when it comes to property rights, you are quite hopelessly muddled at best and a rank hypocrite at worst.

It's almost endearing to watch Steve fail so badly at things like mathematics and logic while adamantly insisting that it's the other person that's stupid.

No, increasing the number of communal owners without permission cannot be 'theft' since that makes ever parent who did not seek a referendum on the birth of their child a criminal. You might make the argument that denying communal property rights based on arbitrary geographical markers makes is theft though....

Continued attempts to equate communal property and individual property seems to make little sense. Shared resources have completely different legal and moral systems regardless of whether the administrative entity is a state or a sewing circle.

So, let's explore that then.

Your argument is, basically, that because people who already exist legitimately in a given jurisdiction may have children without the permission of other members of that jurisdiction and, in doing so, increase the number of communal owners of that jurisdiction, this then negates any rights of any of the communal owners in that jurisdiction to have any say whatsoever of who may enter it from outside of the jurisdiction.

The argument is specious:

Firstly, procreation is a biological inevitability and so any human constructed systems of rules are inevitably compelled be built around that. Nevertheless, it is also true that within a given society, excessive procreation by individuals or sub-groups will tend to cause tension if the rest of the society feel that they are unsustainably consuming resources. These are extremely difficult issues to deal with an any society must muddle it's way through them as best it can.

However, simply because there is an inevitable artefact of human existence called procreation within a given communally owned and defined jurisdiction, this provides no foundational argument whatsoever, that the communal rights of those people living within that jurisdiction should be deliberately eroded with respect to having the right of refusal to people that live outside of it. Someone who chooses to reproduce excessively within a given area of limited resources as compared to their neighbours is wrong. Somebody moving into an communally owned area and consuming resources without the permissions of the existing communal owners is also wrong. Two wrongs do not make a right. Whilst the first wrong may be inevitable, the second wrong is not.

It's also interesting to to note that your odd principle of ownership does not extend in law to any other form of communal ownership. If I own a share of communal resource and I have children without the permission of my co-owners, this does not then mean that non-existing-owner individuals may consume that resource without the express permission of the existing owners.

You know, it's funny, but it's almost as if you don't really think that existing taxpaying citizens of this country do have communal ownership of these resources and that they should just pay their taxes, shut the F--k up and do as they are told by the real owners. Is that about the size of it Andysir?

[jonny2mad]

if you’re a democracy would the people who come to the country and now live there have voting rights, if so what is to stop them voting away your property rights ?

You could look at how well democracy is working for Afrikaners where they are a minority, the majority votes in laws that discriminates against them in employment, driving hundreds of thousands out of jobs they are qualified to do and makes them paupers .

All legal and democratic like

You seem to think you will have no borders but that the national govt that protects your property rights will still do that I don’t think it would.

National govt is a product of borders

[AndySir]

Two wrongs do not make a right. Whilst the first wrong may be inevitable, the second wrong is not.

The fact that the rule can not be universally applied makes the rule invalid. Ask UE about the categorical imperative - he probably has a better grasp of it than I do.

It's also interesting to to note that your odd principle of ownership does not extend in law to any other form of communal ownership.

There are laws for communal ownership. They are different to those of private ownership. I would put this misrepresentation of my words down to misunderstanding but then...

You know, it's funny, but it's almost as if you don't really think that existing taxpaying citizens of this country do have communal ownership of these resources and that they should just pay their taxes, shut the **** up and do as they are told by the real owners. Is that about the size of it Andysir?

... we're back to Steve debating tactic number one: "When unable to cope with the arguments put before you, accuse the other person of being a shill or having some nefarious hidden agenda."

[Little John]

Two wrongs do not make a right. Whilst the first wrong may be inevitable, the second wrong is not.

The fact that the rule can not be universally applied makes the rule invalid. Ask UE about the categorical imperative - he probably has a better grasp of it than I do.

It's also interesting to to note that your odd principle of ownership does not extend in law to any other form of communal ownership.

There are laws for communal ownership. They are different to those of private ownership. I would put this misrepresentation of my words down to misunderstanding but then...

You seem confused here Andysir.

On the one hand, you wish to invoke Kant's "unconditional moral law" (categorical imperative) to justify your position, yet simultaneously appear quite content to live with the moral inconsistency of communal property rights varying as an arbitrary function of the size of that communal ownership. The significant, non-arbitary difference between the communal owners of a, say, a piece of land they share and the communal owners of an entire country is one of coercion. In the first, people may choose to be an owner and so may choose whether or not to contribute. in the case of a country, they may not since they cannot choose where they were born, nor can they refuse to contribute via taxes.

In the former, you wish the state to enforce (via taxpayer's money) the freedom to refuse entry to outsiders and, in the second, you wish to increase the already existing coercion yet further by not enforcing such rights. In other words, in the case of taxpaying, communal-owners of the shared resources of this country, you wish to add insult to injury. There is a word to describe people who are coerced into contributing resources into a common endeavour but who are also refused any rights of determination of that common endeavour. And it's not "owners", it's "slaves".

So, to reiterate, your basic position is that when it comes to important stuff like deciding how thinly the limited cake in this country gets shared out, the existing taxpayers of this country need to shut the F--k up, do as they are told and pay their taxes.

[AndySir]

You seem confused here Andysir.

On the one hand, you wish to invoke Kant's "unconditional moral law" (categorical imperative) to justify your position...

That will be the reason for your confusion. I have not stated my position yet, merely pointed out the flaw in your criticism.

...yet simultaneously appear quite content to live with the moral inconsistency of communal property rights varying as an arbitrary function of the size of that communal ownership.

I haven't made that argument either. In fact I said it did not vary with size.

In the first, people may choose to be an owner and so may choose whether or not to contribute. in the case of a country, they may not since they cannot choose where they were born, nor can they refuse to contribute via taxes.

A very good point. An absence of nation states and borders would address that issue of coercion, making our communal ownership and responsibility entirely voluntary and, more importantly, addressing the inconsistency that you just pointed out. I see you are now in complete agreement with Biff's world view and hope that I will find you defending it just as vigorously as you have just attacked it (and him).

[Little John]

You seem confused here Andysir.

On the one hand, you wish to invoke Kant's "unconditional moral law" (categorical imperative) to justify your position...

That will be the reason for your confusion. I have not stated my position yet, merely pointed out the flaw in your criticism.

...yet simultaneously appear quite content to live with the moral inconsistency of communal property rights varying as an arbitrary function of the size of that communal ownership.

I haven't made that argument either. In fact I said it did not vary with size.

In the first, people may choose to be an owner and so may choose whether or not to contribute. in the case of a country, they may not since they cannot choose where they were born, nor can they refuse to contribute via taxes.

A very good point. An absence of nation states and borders would address that issue of coercion, making our communal ownership and responsibility entirely voluntary and, more importantly, addressing the inconsistency that you just pointed out. I see you are now in complete agreement with Biff's world view and hope that I will find you defending it just as vigorously as you have just attacked it (and him).

If your argument really is that communal property rights should not vary with size of communal ownership, and you also believe that existing UK taxpayers should not have the right of refusal (via border controls) of entry to this country by anyone who wishes to come and live here, then to be consistent you would need to be content with people being able to move onto any piece of communally owned land without the permission of the existing owners just so long as they made contributions to it's upkeep having once moved there.

So lets test that shall we?

A real world example of the above would be, say, where you owned a section of land in common with a dozen other people and where you parcelled that land out, but left certain large areas for communal use. Then, if an outsider simply moved on to (or otherwise consumed in some way) that communal area whilst promising to pay an annual contribution, you would have absolutely no right of refusal.

You okay with that Andysir?

[AndySir]

Land owned jointly by a dozen people is private ownership.

Land owned by an organisation which comprises a dozen people is communal ownership.

The private owners have the right to do whatever the hell they want. The organisation must, by law, have a set of rules for membership. There are laws on what those rules can and cannot be.

I need not go any further than that, and argue about what those rules are, should be or even what I ultimately think about the idea of open borders (I'm not sure... in a less aggressive conversation I might have explored the reasons why that is the case). All I pointed out was that the two scenarios are different and that criticism which equates the two is weak.