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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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Ideally, fix the economic problems that incentivize shadow economies and/or crime, but sure, I think mass deportations approved by a majority and compliant with the constitution are almost always a bad idea but I might be wrong and it should be considered ethically permissible...as long as your government can credibly promise to do it humanely. There's no way a 25% chance of death camps for millions of people is worth it for the net benefits to the remainder.

I don’t think that ‘the remainder’ is the right way to think about it. By that logic, if two people break into my house (where I live alone), then I should be removed by the police for the net benefit of the remainder.

(Or I should let them squat permanently on the basis that the trigger-happy police are unacceptably likely to harm them. )

You could of course say that this is the position of the Māoris/Aborigines/Native Americans etc. and you’d be right. This is why I’m fixated on getting immigrants out of the country while they’re still new arrivals and 15% of the country and not the established multi-generational 40% they are swiftly becoming given observable birth rate disparities.

Are we talking deontology here now because I think there are a few deontological arguments against death camps.

We're saying that my house is my house is my house, no matter how many other people come in. There is no remainder whose wellbeing has to be balanced. It's role ethics, if you like.

If someone is in somebody else's house, and that person doesn't want them there, there is an escalating series of possibilities, ordered by decreasing preference.

  1. The owner asks the intruder to leave. The intruder leaves politely.
  2. The owner asks the intruder to leave. The intruder leaves shouting curses or threats.
  3. The owner asks etc. The intruder refuses to leave, the owner threatens to call the police and the intruder leaves quietly.
  4. The intruder refuses to leave, the owner actually does call the police, then the intruder leave quietly.
  5. The intruder refuses to leave, the owner has to call the police, there's a fight, the intruder leaves on a stretcher.
  6. The intruder refuses to leave, the owner has to call the police, they beat the intruder and drag him away.
  7. The intruder refuses to leave, the owner has to call the police, they shoot the intruder.

Again, 1 is clearly preferable to 7. But you seem to be arguing that at some level on that list, the owner has a moral requirement to allow the intruder to stay on the basis that the benefit to him of the intruder leaving is not comparable to the damage the intruder incurs.

This just doesn't work as a way to run a society. It gives power to the most bloody-minded people at the expense of the kind and the reasonable, and makes a mockery of ownership and citizenship. It's how you get the bike theft meme. I once saw a drunk man with no ticket hold up a bus for an hour by standing in the doorway, because he knew it was legally dangerous to physically remove him.

I would think very badly of somebody who starts at 7 but if the intruder refuses to leave then the owner cannot be blamed for escalating. The possibility of escalation is what allows most conflicts to end at 1 or 2.