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Friday Fun Thread for February 14, 2024
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He Gets Us, my lord and savior favorite blogger Scott Alexander has written a piece about love and liberty

Scott is somewhat famously (formerly?) not a libertarian. Reading a piece by someone that understands my base impulse and aversion to state power was very refreshing. I feel like I have to bury that emotion deep down to have discussions with most of the people around me. The revulsion you might feel about someone proposing a government enforced redistribution of the benefits of beauty, is something I feel about most redistribution schemes. The revulsion you might feel about a government licensing scheme for dating is the revulsion I feel towards nearly all government licensing schemes (I only say nearly all, because I leave myself room to be surprised in the future, not because I can think of an exception in the moment).

As a libertarian I tend to end up arguing with everyone (even fellow libertarians). In the last few years the most important argument I keep having with the left is about the nature of corporations and the shared marketplace. I think money is the one value nearly everyone shares, so making it the center piece and main value of the market allows the maximum number of people to participate in it. Once they have their money, they can take it out and go spend it on other things they value (and being able to spend it is why so many people value money!). I think DEI initiatives, environmentalism, certain parts of the labor movement, and social justice have been trying to undermine this for many years. I also don't think too many people on this forum disagree with me there.

No, as the always arguing libertarian, my disagreement with the right is on the topic of nationalism and immigration. Due to the recent wipe I lost one of the posts where I laid out some of my specific disagreements with nationalism. I have a much longer history on this forum of arguing in favor of immigration. Usually only for a day at most, and only a few responses deep, since I encounter a great deal of disagreement. I don't think I have ever laid out an "ick factor" argument about immigration, or in other words why immigration restrictions kind of disgust me. Mostly, I don't think it convinces anyone, but as Scott's article points out it is as close as possible to the true reason why I support open immigration and open borders. And in the future if anyone ever bothers to say "you want immigration for bad reason X" I can refer back to this post, and say "no these are my motivations".

I'll choose my own friends, thank you very much.

Growing up you might remember a time when you had friends not because of who you liked, but because of who your parents liked. Before age 7 it felt pretty common. Most of the time this was ok for me. I didn't have strong preferences for the kind of people I wanted to be around, and I was at the whim of whatever my parents wanted to do anyways. Having a kid to play with at least seemed better than just being in a kidless situation while they hung out with adults. But I specifically remember one time when it was not ok. One of my mom's best friend's from college had two boys, nearly matching in age with myself and my older brother. One of those boys who was a year older than me had a kind of roughness in play that I always hated. If we wrestled it was never really as friendly as it was with other boys. He'd distract me and steal my halloween candy. He'd show me "fun" like how it felt to have your wrist skin twisted in opposite directions. None of these sound too bad in retrospect, but at the time he was literally the worst person I knew. My dad was drunk one time, saw the kid picking on me a little too much and spanked the kid. The parents didn't like that, they didn't believe in spanking, and that kind of ended the friendship between the moms. I assume other people have their own sorts of "forced friendship" stories.

I am lucky to not have many of the opposite types of stories of "forced non-friendship". Where some authority figure in your life doesn't like one of your friends for a reason that you don't care about. Maybe that friend's parents aren't rich, or aren't the right color, or they where in the wrong neighborhood. I think I would have rebelled mightily against this, and sometimes when I got a whiff of my parents doing it for my own good with bad friends, it would sometimes make me want to interact with those people more.

In general humans are social creatures and we like to make our social groups as much as possible. We like to pick our allies and close friends, and we like to exclude those we don't get along with. This is the equivalent of "dating" to me. So when people come in and intrude and insist that I must be friends and allies with some set of people, and enemies with another I feel reactively disgusted with their impositions.

The Policy Implications of choosing your own friends.

Some of the anti-immigration people reading this have already picked up on the first story and shouted "aha! you agree with us, I don't want to be forced to associate with immigrants, but that's exactly what progressives are doing with open borders". To some extent, I sympathize, I really do. When every media property must have a diverse cast, when every college insists on affirmative action, and when government positions at the very top are filled based on race and gender. It certainly feels like an example of some of the forced social interactions I hated as a kid. I like to tell progressives to stop doing that, and I do! Stop affirmative action, stop race based quotas, they are bad for just about everyone involved (they are often only good for the charlatans that gain money and influence by peddling race politics).

But doing the opposite of a bad thing, doesn't make that a good thing. The progressives say you must interact and be friends with these people, but the nationalists say you must not interact or be with these people. I chafe at both rules, or the single rule of "I get to decide your friends". Since we cannot have unlimited friendships, and we don't have unlimited options, the rules are two sides of the same coin.

And for all their many advantages, in this one area the progressives are often at a disadvantage. Because enforcing friendships is actually incredibly difficult, and forbidding them is easy. Progressives might want you to be nice to immigrants, but that process can be sandbagged and slowed down at all levels (if you don't think this is true, then I guarantee that you do not know anyone who has tried to legally remain in the united states. It is a pain in the ass.)

The nationalists have had much more success in enforcing non-interaction. Physically getting into the US and other counties has only gotten easier in recent times, simply re-enforcing natural barriers was one of the main ways of forbidding entry in the past. But lately the US government has started to forbid interaction with the people that are already here. E-verify systems for workplaces have popped up everywhere, and e-verify for renting has also started to pop up in some places (its rarely required by law currently, but I'm an eternal pessimist about the expansion of government powers).

E-verify is one of the largest impositions on the market in recent times. DEI rarely says "hire 100% [our favored people]", but e-verify says exactly that. It doesn't matter how much better a foreigner might be as an employee or a renter. You can't hire them. "Can I pay double the cost and pay two employees for the work of one just to satisfy you?" DEI says yes, e-verify says no. And I know e-verify isn't required everywhere for every job currently, but again I'm a pessimist about the expansion of government powers, and so far e-verify has only expanded in scope not shrunken.

I don't really see what the big deal is?

You are upset that there are people who you would want to work with that you cannot work with? Like who? You need a specific plumber from Guatemala? What specific tasks need to be performed locally that it's impossible to find somebody local to perform equivalent work?

Professionals have been working remotely for a few decades now, you could literally manage a company with somebody without ever seeing them face to face if you wanted. Unless they're in Russia and some other countries that non-nationalist governments have decided to isolate from financial services, what's the issue?

If sharing a physical location with these people is so important for you, have you considered moving? Surely libertarians could get together, pool some money and figure out a way to make their border-free utopia a reality.

I don't really see what the big deal is?

This is often the same thing I hear progressives say about diverse representation in media. "Whats the big deal? Can you not handle seeing a gay or lesbian couple and a few extra black actors."

I think people on this forum rightly point out, that its the principle of it. Once you grant them the principle of it then it is increasingly hard to push back. This might feel new to conservatives, as if progressives suddenly started springing this dirty trap on them in the last decade or two. Where originally progressives just said "lets allow gay marriage" and now they say "whats wrong with teaching your daughters that they are actually just men?" But libertarians are very familiar with slippery slopes. Its one slippery slope after another for just about every government on earth and for just about every policy they ever enact. Rolling back even unpopular government policies is like pulling teeth.

So yes, let me hire the useless plumber from Guatemala, and you not allowing me to is stepping on my liberty.

If sharing a physical location with these people is so important for you, have you considered moving? Surely libertarians could get together, pool some money and figure out a way to make their border-free utopia a reality.

Seasteaders have been working on it. I suspect the first few will get blown up, invaded, and smeared if they go and do anything too libertarian.

So yes, let me hire the useless plumber from Guatemala, and you not allowing me to is stepping on my liberty.

Okay, so long as, if the useless plumber from Guatemala ends up flooding your house, you don't go running to the courts under laws passed by a government that you have been calling restrictive looking for redress. Live by the sword, die by the sword; you don't get to say "these restrictions are trampling on my liberty" and "there should be restrictions on unqualified people causing damage". You want to take the chance on the Guatemalan plumber? The tree of liberty is watered by the blood of patriots? This is your natural born right? Fine. But you take the chance that he's competent, and if he's incompetent, you eat the bill for the damage. Nobody is treading on your rights then.

Yes, I am very much against licensing restrictions. And No, I am not waving my right to sue people for fraud.

You sue and then what? How do you collect? What's to stop that plumber from just running away somewhere else? Is somebody going to barricade the roads, stop him at the airport, seize his assets?

Meh then I suppose I help my community chase out a fraud.

What would you call an organization dedicated to 'chasing out frauds' in the community? Perhaps by providing some kind of token to authenticate that the bearer possesses the skills they represent themselves as possessing?

Definitely not "government" or any of it's licensing bodies, because it does more than chaseout frauds, and their tokens do more than authenticate, they prevent anyone from hiring a person, even if they are aware he was not given the token.

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