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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.
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.
Well I believe that progs are wrong on that, because <20% of the Western population allegedly being under-represented in media (I highly doubt it) does not really matter to the other 80%. Whatever public money goes into making movies (from the public education provided to the workers to state subventions) should surely go toward satisfying at least 80% of taxpayers, not the 1% LGBTQ lobby or whichever flavor-of-the-week. To my limited knowledge, nobody is really preventing anyone from making movies with diverse representation. There's plenty of 'diverse' movies being made, by Nollywood for example. Their 'What's the big deal?' should apply to them, who are challenging the status quo of adequately providing the majority of viewers what they want to see. Likewise, it appears to me that the onus would be on you to provide justification for getting rid of something most people historically liked, borders.
I still don't really see what the issue is for you, as if you really cared about having some random person immigrate to the US, you could spend a million dollars or less and get them on an investor visa.
The problem I see with your 'open-borders' proposition is that it has a huge cost. Satisfying 'your principle' would burden tremendously most people in the country you live in. I don't know if anybody else expressed that to you yet. In the same manner that you could theoretically want to dump heavy metals in the local river because that's just how you like it. It's your freedom to enjoy your 'seasoned' river. And then all that's left for everybody else who perhaps drinks out of that water is to install costly equipment to remove the seasoning you graciously provided at no cost to them.
How do you 'invade' an open-border territory? I have my doubt that these libertarians actually want open-borders. A billionaire like Musk says he wants free-speech on his platform that is until somebody posts the coordinates of his private jet. Would the seasteaders provide refuge to Hamas, Houthis, Somalian pirates... ?
While democracy is already the rule of the rich (with extra-steps of buying major media and nudging voters that they should give legitimacy to your policies) -here is a recent example at the Superbowl.- libertarianism appears to me to be straight-up 'let people wealthier than me do whatever they want'.
I'm not against freedom of association. I wish I had it. But I don't think destroying the country I live in by opening its borders is going to get me that in the short-term. Borders are nice to have, as long as you are the ones in control of them. And that used to be the point of nationalism. Now you want a bunch of (very) rich dudes to control your country's borders, but that's not you.
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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.
You seem to be equating immigration status with professional competency and I'm not sure why. It's reasonable to assume that a licensed plumber is more competent than an unlicensed plumber, but are Guatemalan-born plumbers (licensed or not) less competent than American-born plumbers?
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Yes, I am very much against licensing restrictions. And No, I am not waving my right to sue people for fraud.
Then you can't have both. If you want unregulated business activity, and no restrictions on who can set up to be a plumber, dentist or the like, you don't get to turn around and say "this person with no credentials who set up out of the back of their van deceived me as to their capability!" You pays your money and you takes your chance. If you don't want fraud, you need restrictions on fraud which brings in law which brings in some element of government to make laws. If anyone can set up as a tradesman without the relevant licensing body of their profession having any say, then you get what you pay for, just like the days of the snake oil nostrums before the FDA.
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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.
Maybe just 'licensing body', and I agree that restricting certain activities only to licensed people is in many cases a big problem. Still, how does an 'open-border' territory work in practice?
Is Lampedusa a model for such a community? Or perhaps Mayotte? Or just the plot of the Camp of the Saints?
One can hypothesize some kind of human osmosis law.
Where if two containers of humans are placed in contact, the humans of a darker shade (low civilization potential) will spontaneously move toward the container of lighter humans (high civilization potential) in the direction that tends to equalize the shade on the two sides.
In other words, if you want to live in Mexico, why not just move there?
You're preaching to the choir. I'm pretty anti-immigration regardless of the quality of the Guatemalan plumber's craftsmanship.
I'd be cautious of arguments that rely on your superiority to push a policy of your preference. At the very least don't be surprised if a bigger fish decides to do the same to you.
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Guatemalan tradesman are pretty normal in America. As far as I know there is no constituency of people demanding government retribution for Mayan house-flooding practices.
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