Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
In a comment to an earlier thread, Emery wrote:
\n“The free movement of capital.
\nThe free movement of goods and services.
\nThe free movement of ideas and media.
\nThe free movement of people.
\nThe protection of private property.
\nI\u2019m not a starry-eyed idealist, but I like to think that there is a liberal ideal that we should keep our eyes on, not necessarily as a realistic objective for today, but as a goal to strive for.”
\nMy response is that all that free movement stuff sounds great in theory but I’m wondering about it in practice.\u00a0 I just poured myself a cup of coffee and dumped in a packet of sugar.\u00a0 I haven’t stirred it, yet.\u00a0 The sugar is\u00a0 concentrated in a heap of sweetness on the bottom of the cup.\u00a0 That’s America.\u00a0 The coffee in the rest of the cup is bitter.\u00a0 That’s the rest of the world.\u00a0 If I stir the cup, the sweetness will be distributed everywhere, but that also means it will be diluted everywhere.\u00a0 No one place will be super-sweet, all will be equally semi-sweet.
\nWouldn’t free movement of people and money lead to the same result? If you took all the money in America and distributed it to people across the rest of the globe, they would be enriched but we would be impoverished.\u00a0 If we fling open the borders to let everybody from everywhere in the world come here, will they add to the sweetness of America by bringing prosperity and stability or subtract from it by welfare and crime?
\nI can see why people in the bitter lands would want their lives to become sweeter.\u00a0 I can’t see why people in the super-sweet lands would want their lives to become more bitter.\u00a0 As I cannot be guaranteed the glorious result would obtain, a conservative would eschew the experiment.
\nJoe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\nPerverse incentives? \u00a0I get it.<\/p>\n
Perverse wishes? \u00a0Not so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: In a comment to an earlier thread, Emery wrote: “The free movement of capital. The free movement of goods and services. The free movement of ideas and media. The free movement of people. The protection of private property. I\u2019m not a starry-eyed idealist, but I like to think that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-president-obama","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55204,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55203\/revisions\/55204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}