Since When Does the Livestock Ask the Farmer to Improve the Fence?

Immigration, Nanny Statism, Police Statism, Protectionism, Taxation
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“It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn.” ~ Albert Jay Nock

My recent post on the GM-loan-gate has, thus far, generated some interesting feedback and at least one or more epic discussions on various social networking sites.  Aside from enjoying my joke, several people commented on the paragraphs which highlighted several talking points which have troubled me over the last few years.  This one in particular, on immigration, seemed to generate the most feedback:

“Illegal immigration represents a danger to the future of the U.S.”  (The U.S. didn’t even have a comprehensive set of regulations on immigration until 1952.  The Constitution doesn’t even mention immigration in those terms.  Hell, damned-near everyone in the U.S. except for the people who were already here when America was “discovered” is an immigrant or descended from one anyway.  Here’s my question:  When does an immigrant become a visitor or a guest?)

It might be that since Arizona—and Arizona’s governor is currently in the news—that the issue is particularly hot, which therefore made the discussions far-ranging.  Immigration policy generally seems to be a hot-button.  Having written several pieces on immigration, I admit that the subject fascinates me, but something about these recent debates, particularly among libertarians, has intrigued me even more.

One is often tempted to attack the objections to open borders directly, as did I and a number of guests on a recent radio show.  And certainly many of these objections seem ripe for attacking.  By the way, are bumper stickers with “every Mexican who comes to the U.S. illegally is only 15 minutes from welfare” being passed out?  I would hate to miss out on my chances to get one.  Just as popular, but new to me is this one:  “In Los Angeles, 98% of convicted murderers are illegal aliens.”  Uh-oh!  Better raise the fence!  It strikes me that anyone who thinks welfare is an enticement for immigration must have never visited their local department of social services.  Take the worst parts of the DMV and add in ample portions of emasculation and denigration and you’re starting to get close, but it’s still worse than that, on good days.

It occurs to me—finally—that one needs to take a step back to even begin to understand this issue.  For example, of what value is a border?  Specifically, why does the United States have a border and why is it so necessary to maintain it?  Hopefully examining this more general issue will yield insight into the specific issue—and current political hot-button—illegal immigration of Mexicans.  Let us explore a couple of examples, one simple and one a little more complex.

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Don’t Bet on China

Business Cycles, Mercantilism, Protectionism
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China is widely viewed as a “threat” to the US because of its perceived rapid and unstoppable economic growth. This is, in my view, doubly confused. First: if the premise were true, this would be good, not bad. Second: I don’t think China is in such great shape. Unfortunately.

Some free market economists think otherwise. Peter Schiff “predicts that China will overtake the U.S. in terms of Gross Domestic Product before 2020.” Jim Rogers thinks “China will likely constitute tomorrow’s most powerful nation-state.”

I’ve been working for years now for a company with factories and extensive dealings in Taiwan and China. It’s been my opinion for some time that China is a primitive basket case. Land is leased, not owned. The communist party corruption is everywhere. The Asian mentality is far different than the western one; they are less innovative, more subservient and servile, more order-following, more collectivist and less individualistic. Poverty and peasantry are rampant. Asians are far more racist and superstitious than Americans (everyone is more racist than Americans in my experience). You have to get permission for everything. There are currency controls. Contracts are not respected–they are signed because they are viewed as red tape and then they start being renegotiated the next day. And on and on.

In my view, America is, for all our faults, still, by far, the strongest and best large economy in the world. Who can match the US? Canada is too small. Japan is not quite our size and has its own problems. Europe is like an older, more kleptocratic version of the US–and is probably second best in the world. South America is a basket case of banana republics. Africa is even worse. Russia and Central Europe?–mired in pessimism and corruption and the tendrils of the wreckage of communism. Of the rest, I think India has a better chance than China, for two reasons: they speak English, and they inherited the English property rights system–unlike in China where you still have to lease land from the state for 50 years instead of buying it. And I think India is a basket case too, unlikely to improve much for many decades. So the US is and will remain preeminent, in my view–despite all our problems. (See also Jonathan Bean’s America’s Hidden Strength: Babies, Immigration; Joel Kotkin, Why America Will Still Lead the World in 2050, Reason.tv; David Brooks Relax, We’ll Be Fine (News of America’s death is greatly exaggerated. In reality, the U.S. is on the verge of a demographic, economic and social revival); and Glimmers of Hope (The fiscal future of the developed world looks bleak, but the British coalition should give us hope.) Unfortunately, this will allow our parasitical state to maintain its warfare-welfare state (see my post Hoppe on Liberal Economies and War).

An American friend of mine living in China sent me some of his thoughts, which I provide, with editing, and anonymously, below:

China is [screwed], I tell you. This place is one big pile of poo. Jim Rogers and Peter Schiff are wrong, at least about China. Jim Chanos is right! [See also Jim Rogers: China not in a bubble, Chanos couldn’t spell China; China May ‘Crash’ in Next 9 to 12 Months, Faber Says. Also note: Mark DeWeaver, who has written for the Mises Institute before, recently gave a speech about Chinese monetary policy.  There’s some interesting meat in both the audio and corresponding slides.]

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The Legal Labor Cartel

Political Correctness, Private Security & Law, Protectionism, The Basics
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“The truth is that legislatures and Courts have made lawyers a privileged class, and have thus given them facilities, of which they have availed themselves, for entering into combinations hostile, at least to the interests, if not to the rights, of the community – such as to keep up prices, and shut out competitors. The natural result of such combinations also is, that the mass of the members will do more or less to screen individuals from suspicion. The consequence is, that the people have imbibed an extreme jealousy towards them…. Now if the profession were thrown open to all, lawyers would no longer be a privileged class – they probably could no longer enter into combinations that would be of any avail to them, and the jealousy of the people towards them would be at an end.” Lysander Spooner, To the Members of the Legislature of Massachusetts, August 26, 1835.

Lawyers, like doctors, are part of a class of people who must join what amounts to a labor cartel in order to lawfully ply their trade. Bar associations have territories, and they drive up the price of legal services in those territories by limiting entry by service providers. Talk of the lawyer’s “professional responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay” stems from guilt about this anti-competitive status quo in the legal services market. Why should lawyers owe anyone relief if they didn’t first create the burden to be relieved? …

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Counterfeit Property Rights

IP Law, Protectionism, Victimless Crimes
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One of the reasons to oppose intellectual property is that it assigns partial ownership rights to real, tangible, and already-owned property to non-first-comers. For example, that copy you made of Microsoft Office, although you own the disk, you are restricted by law in how you may use this disk, e.g. installing the program, or selling it.

In some cases, IP laws assign a complete ownership, as demonstrated this week when Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes obtained the permission of certain trademark owners to redistribute seized counterfeit clothing items which didn’t belong to either party on condition that their trademarks and identifying labels be removed from the articles.

What I would like is to hear an explanation for is this inconsistency– if there was a counterfeited Nike ‘swoosh’ label once attached to this sneaker, now that it has been removed, why is the sneaker still being treated in the eyes of the law as the rightful property of Nike?

Honestly, I find the concept of IP laws to be illogical in any of its various manifestations whether copyright, trademark, patent, or otherwise. This is not to say that I condone either fraud or misrepresentation, both of which can be reduced to theft– the obtainment of property without the consent of the owner. But merely producing and offering for sale an article of clothing that resembles the output of another producer doesn’t violate anyone else’s rights, even if for the sake of argument we were to concede with sloppy semantic quibbles that it “harms” the potential sales of the other party, since the other party does not enjoy a right to not have his sales diminished by competition.

This is all beside the point that in the common arrangement where counterfeit goods are offered for sale, both the buyer and seller are well aware that the goods are knock-offs, and we can safely assume that no fraud or misrepresentation has transpired.

To conclude, after being robbed suffering a coerced charitable giving, the de facto owner was made further victim to kidnapping and is now serving a seven month prison sentence. As is usually the case, existing positivist law has enshrined principles antithetical to property right in the name of property rights.

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