People Have a Right to Immigrate | Michael Huemer | Ep. 5
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- Опубліковано 27 лип 2024
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Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado.
Website: www.owl232.net/
Substack: fakenous.substack.com/
Summary:
In this video, Dr. Michael Huemer argues in favor of the right to immigrate based on the underlying right to be free from harmful coercion. He highlights that immigration restrictions not only harm individuals but also use force against them. He addresses concerns such as immigrants taking jobs and changing the culture, arguing that these do not outweigh the right against harmful coercion. He also discusses the misconception that immigrants would cause resource shortages and harm the economy, emphasizing the positive economic and social outcomes associated with immigrants. Huemer acknowledges that governments may have special obligations to their own citizens but denies that those obligations justify coercively harming others.
If Huemer rejects collective ownership of a territory but accepts private property rights, could the nationalists pool ownership of all the land to one super patriotic guy and have him exclude outsiders? That's de facto the same as the status quo but gets around the rights violation arguments.
They could if done voluntarily. The only problem is that has never applied to any state. There is no state that has been formed with universal consent from the land owners.
Sure, if everyone that ever owns a business all choose not to employ immigrants, or forego ownership of their property to a single patriotic guy who doesn't want to employ immigrants, then there is no rights violation in them not being employed. The reality however is that this is never the case. There are always some people that would be glad to freely associate with immigrants on a business level, but they are barred from doing so, which is a rights violation.
I don't see how harm must be coercive to be wrong and I don't see why the degree of directness of harm is relevant morally. If building a wall around the Seychelles and pouring water in so that the Seychelles go under water would be wrong and if global warming is such that driving to the store and back would make the Seychelles go under water, I don't see why driving to the store and back wouldn't be wrong. And I don't see how right to property doesn't conflict with the right to not be coercively harmed. Preventing immigration only differs from preventing trespassing because countries prevent immigration and individuals prevent trespassing. If preventing trespassing is right because an individual has a right to property and if preventing immigration is wrong because a country has no right to property, I don't see why not.
Yeah I don't understand Michael's position here. Why can't a collective own property together and keep away outsiders? Or even more broadly - what is Michael's concept of property ownership? How can you own property without a state to enforce it and encode it; but once you have a state, doesn't its very existence imply a group of people with their own collective interest?
I have a feeling both speakers would flip their opinion if we were talking about a non-white indigenous tribe, for example the Pirahã people who live along the Maici River. Do the Piraha people have a right to maintain their culture, or should I be able to go there, buy some land, and bring a foreign way of life to a group who does not want it?
In most cases pro-immigration supporters strike me as surreptitiously anti-white. Note the use of the word "zenophobia" which is a leftist calling card. They are against European/western countries and people so that is why they argue for immigration of foreigners to western countries, but never the opposite. I recommend reading Ted Kaczynski's analysis of leftist psychology.
I'll also note Jason Chen did a good job representing the counter position.
You can as a matter of fact have a collective that owns property together and does with it as they seem fit, it is called communism. Now liberals don't tend to agree with that conclusion, because they agree with private property and not collective property. If every asset in a country is the collective property of the populace, then it would be just as valid for the populace to collectively decide to expropriate 99% of the wealth of the rich, which is not a conclusion people find agreeable. In the same vein, it is wrong for the collective to say you cannot freely associate with this person on a business level because we own your property.