Not like certain people living in certain countries, who were, it was said, as human as anyone else; who were said to be sapient beings, worth more than any mere unicorn. But who nonetheless wouldn’t be allowed to live in Muggle Britain. On that score, at least, no Muggle had the right to look a wizard in the eye.
Sorry, but I’m not a fan of this part—its not like Britain has immigration policies that ban certain races or religions, so I can only assume EY is arguing in favour of totally unrestricted immigration. But the UK has only a certain amount of room, and there are non-xenophobic economic arguments against unrestricted immigration, e.g. putting too much strain on the NHS. But regardless of the arguments for and against, arguing against immigration is not the same as being indifferent to the lives of everyone who lives in a different country.
I did enjoy the rest of the chapter however. Quirrel’s statements about horcruxes were initially surprising—if he is telling the truth, then how is he still alive? If not, then wouldn’t he want Harry experimenting with horcruxes in order to turn him to the dark side?
The most plausible possibility is that he wants Harry’s help to get the philosopher’s stone, and his initial prohibition is reverse psychology. This does help turn Harry against Dumbledoor, but no more than experimenting with horcruxes. Given this, it seems likely that he needs Harry’s invisibility cloak / planning ability / human patronus / possibly partial transfiguration to capture the stone.
Still, Quirrel seems to be leaving this too late. Surely it would have been better to move against the stone very soon after the unicorn incident—by which time, Harry’s anti-death ideology was very obvious, and emotionally driving. Moving against the stone when comparitivly healthy must increase the chances of success, and if it all goes wrong Quirrel could still have tried to fight his way out...
Unless Quirrel isn’t actually as ill as he looks. He seems to have got a lot worse between May 13th and June 3rd.
Edit: I am not arguing that all immigration is bad and everyone should live in neoreactionary ethno-nationalist states. I’m saying that its possible to want to prevent certain people who e.g. have a record of violent criminal behaviour from immigrating to where you live, while still recognising that these people are still human.
Not like certain people living in certain countries, who were, it was said, as human as anyone else; who were said to be sapient beings, worth more than any mere unicorn. But who nonetheless wouldn’t be allowed to live in Muggle Britain. On that score, at least, no Muggle had the right to look a wizard in the eye.
I was surprised by that passage. If anything, it seems magical Britain is more exclusivist. Magical Britain only invited Hermione in because she’s a British witch. The 99.9% of people who are born muggle are excluded completely. I also don’t get the impression that foreign born wizards/witches are automatically invited to Hogwarts. So they are magic-nationalists as well.
They even forbid beneficial muggle-wizard trade, which probably results in the deaths of millions of muggles.
If anything, it seems magical Britain is more exclusivist.
I found it surprising because magical Britain seems much less utilitarian, in terms of excluding people from their moral concern—being indifferent. That’s surely more of the fundamental issue than border control.
They even forbid beneficial muggle-wizard trade, which probably results in the deaths of millions of muggles.
Insofar as everyone dies eventually, and thus the purpose of medicine in general may be thought of as life extension rather than death prevention, and magical healing vastly increases wizard lifespans, it may be said that forbidding beneficial muggle-wizard trade results in the deaths of billions of muggles. Every single muggle who dies of old age, magically-treatable illness or non-instantly-fatal injury is a muggle who would have lived significantly longer if not for the ban.
The wizard population is very small compared to the muggle population, and I don’t think there’s much in the way of reducing the amount of time wizards need to put into healing magic. (Compare this to the efficiencies gained from vaccination and antibiotics.)
The lack of wizard healing makes some difference, but probably more like tens or hundreds of thousands of muggles who don’t get healed.
On the other hand, if wizards were public about their abilities, a higher proportion of wizards (even low-powered wizards) in the muggle population would be identified and trained, and there would presumably be knowledge of methods for integrating wizard and muggle medicine. The results still wouldn’t be all muggles having access to the best of wizard healing magic.
Don’t forget potions. You could easily make use of muggle civilisation’s amazing mass production ability by having them automate every step but the ones that need magical power. The magic drain from potion creation is minimal, so one or a few wizards could effortlessly power a production line.
Muggles also happen to be very good at large-scale farming, which could easily be applied to the production of magical ingredients, even rare ones.
Add in wizards’ ability to cast permanent enchantments at no cost, and their vast array of utility spells (Vanishing Charms alone would be a godsend for any factory), and you have undreamt-of mass production potential.
Small population sizes aren’t an issue when you have two worlds’ worth of force multipliers.
if wizards were public about their abilities, a higher proportion of wizards (even low-powered wizards) in the muggle population would be identified and trained
There’s no such thing as a “low-powered wizard”, and all wizards in Britain are automatically detected magically (at birth?)
It is implied that in HPMOR there are—presumably third-world? - countries where they “receive no letters of any kind”. So potentially a complete breakdown of the masquerade might allow the least sane Muggle governments to track down and kidnap wizarding children for their own use. (I’m a little confused by this, though, since spontaneous untrained magic should be a serious issue if muggleborns aren’t being dealt with.)
I’m not either. It lands with such a clunk. Maybe Magical Britain lets anyone in, but it’s clear that muggles have few rights that Wizards feel they need to respect.
And that last line—ugh:
On that score, at least, no Muggle had the right to look a wizard in the eye.
It doesn’t even make sense. You “have a right to look someone in the eye” based on the totality of who you are versus what they are. Selecting out one point on which you are in error and they aren’t really invalidates the metaphor.
Given all that Harry finds objectionable and even barbaric about Magical Britain, how much indifference they have to the suffering of others, and how his allegiance is more to a scientific culture with rule of law, that last line seems largely just false to Harry’s character. Whatever faults he sees in muggle Britain, he sees as many of more in Magical Britain.
And why is universalist Harry all of a sudden in a twist over muggle Britain, especially?
It seems much more like the line is a gratuitous crack of the riding crop to one of the author’s favorite hobby horses. All pissed off about UKIP’s recent strong showing in elections?
I find open borders consistent with Harry in general, but making that a particular outrage, and particularly aimed at Muggle Britain as compared to Wizards, really doesn’t work for the story or for making the moral point.
Agreed—it’s a complete non-sequitur, crowbarred in with a tenuous link. And the wizards are far more intolerant.
I doubt Muggle Britain lets everyone in—for one thing, it has approximately the same ethnic composition as muggle Britain, for another, I seem to remember that Hogwarts is one of the best magic schools in the world, in which case parents would move to Britain, increasing class sizes until Hogwarts was approximately the same standard as other schools.
Incidentally, do Wizards in third-world countries have the same standard of living as first-world wizards? If so, they see no problem in letting muggles starve on their doorsteps.
All pissed off about UKIP’s recent strong showing in elections?
This may be a slight tangent but I’m amazed (edit: amazed is the wrong word. I’m disappointed) at how the UKIP’s performance has made many people lose all sense of proportion, and become thoroughly mindkilled. About half the discussion seems to be ‘one UKIP supporter said something rasist/sexist/homophobic’. UKIP has 37 000 members. This isn’t just an adhomen attack, its an utterly statistically insignificant adhomen attack.
Worse, a friend of mine who is a lecturer in sociology endorsed a plan to send bricks to the UKIP’s freepost address, thus wasting their money. But if the UKIP supporters then send bricks to the left-wing parties, then all parties lose money and the postal system slows down.
I would have thought a lecturer in sociology would understand about not defecting and keeping the moral high ground, but apparently I was wrong.
I doubt magical Britain lets everyone in—for one thing, it has approximately the same ethnic composition as Muggle Britain
This should be false(r) in HPMOR, given the number of cameos from readers all around the planet. I worried that I was making Hogwarts seem unrealistically multiethnic, and then decided, hey, wizards have had Apparition and portkeys for centuries, it’s a wonder they even still have national cultures.
HPMOR is more ethnic (and gender) balanced than canon, and IMO does seem to have a realistic ethnic composition given teleportation (as you mentioned) and border controls. But its nowhere near 50% Asian as one might expect if there were no borders.
BTW I hope I don’t sound too critical. I have hugely enjoyed the rest of HPMOR and I just think that comparing real-world politics to Voldemort’s indifference is unnecessary mindkilling.
I’m amazed at how the UKIP’s performance has made many people lose all sense of proportion, and become thoroughly mindkilled...
I bet the mindkilling predated UKIP’s victory, and only afforded an impetus to action for those already mindkilled.
About half the discussion seems to be ‘one UKIP supporter said something rasist/sexist/homophobic’.
Why do you find this surprising? That’s the standard attack. It’s simply background music.
Worse, a friend of mine who is a lecturer in sociology endorsed a plan to send bricks to the UKIP’s freepost address, thus wasting their money.
In Western democracies, the Left fights for power and is serious about it. Any means available.
But if the UKIP supporters then send bricks to the left-wing parties, then all parties lose money and the postal system slows down.
When does the opposition to the Left ever respond with a little tit for tat? In the US, there are all sorts of people mouthing off big words about fighting government tyranny, while meekly standing by while their children are sexually assaulted by the TSA purportedly looking for nuclear weapons in their underwear.
I would have thought a lecturer in sociology would understand about not defecting and keeping the moral high ground, but apparently I was wrong.
What he understands that you don’t is that his enemies won’t fight back. If your enemies are fundamentally pacifists toward your aggression, why ever stop?
When does the opposition to the Left ever respond with a little tit for tat? In the US, there are all sorts of people mouthing off big words about fighting government tyranny, while meekly standing by while their children are sexually assaulted by the TSA purportedly looking for nuclear weapons in their underwear.
Ah, I’m no expert in US politics, but I thought that was a Right-supported program? With what little of the Overton Window that covers “this is an absurd overreaction” lying on the metaphorical left-hand side?
Both left and right support the screenings, but it’s fair enough that while this made for an instance of government tyranny that people might oppose but don’t, it wasn’t a good instance of one pushed predominantly by the Left.
Unfortunately, it was (and is) a universally supported program. A pretty good example of Yvain’s Moloch, too—no serious political group can afford to be tarred with the “leave America defenseless before the terrorists” brush...
I remember a story about Rick Perry trying to pass a law limiting the kinds of things the TSA could do in Texas airports before relenting after the FAA threatened to ban flights to Texas airports if the law passed.
Well the right wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh opposed it from day 1.
Also I remember a left wing political cartoon from shortly after 9/11 implying that Republicans were in bed with the corporate sector for not wanting to nationalize airport security (which was then provided by private contractors).
(Nationalizing airport security seems orthogonal to the TSA search issue, though.)
Private contractors hired by and answerable to the airports (and to a certain extend the airlines) have more incentive to not annoy customers than a national agency with fuzzy accountability.
Whatareyoutalkingabout? (I couldn’t find the one where a neo-reactionary asks Scott how many people he wants to kill.) Is this meant to imply some self-refuting statement about the LW community?
I think what he’s getting at is: the Right shows at least as much sign of trying to win by any means possible as the Left, and doesn’t behave at all like a bunch of fluffy pacifists who never fight back when attacked.
[EDITED to fix horrible typo—“off” for “of”—which I think was the result of autocomplete on a mobile device.]
I bet the mindkilling predated UKIP’s victory, and only afforded an impetus to action for those already mindkilled.
I’d agree, it has at most increased the mindkill.
Why do you find this surprising? That’s the standard attack. It’s simply background music.
“Amazed” was the wrong word, used in a sloppy rhetorical sense. ‘Disappointed’ might be better.
When does the opposition to the Left ever respond with a little tit for tat?
Well, of course UKIP didn’t respond in kind, including when the prank escalated to sending blood and shit. And of course, it’s UKIP who are the fascists, so let’s hit them with sticks!
What he understands that you don’t is that his enemies won’t fight back. If your enemies are fundamentally pacifists toward your aggression, why ever stop?
Thing is, I do understand this, but maybe I’ve haven’t fully internalised the fact an intelligent person can think that they are ‘fighting the power’ (he argues that UKIP are extremely similar to Nazis) while crushing anyone who dares to utter a contradictory opinion. I would say I can’t understand this behaviour, but that would be purely rhetorical, because I do know what compartmentalisation is.
And when you have an iron grip on the moral high ground because anyone who disagrees with you is racist, then I suppose you can afford to defect constantly.
I did enjoy the rest of the chapter however. Quirrel’s statements about horcruxes were initially surprising—if he is telling the truth, then how is he still alive? If not, then wouldn’t he want Harry experimenting with horcruxes in order to turn him to the dark side?
Perhaps he is a Horcrux transfer (as long speculated) but a failed one; introspecting about how different he is from his memories of ‘himself’, he would realize ‘he’ hadn’t survived and all that was left was a weird mishmash of Monroe’s personality and Voldemort’s memories, and this was entirely worthless as immortality.
What argument could be more convincing to Quirrel than personally embodying the failure of horcruxes as an immortality strategy?
I’ve also been thinking along these lines, anyone remember this part from the opening ceremony?
The young, thin, nervous man who Harry had first met in the Leaky Cauldron slowly made his way up to the podium, glancing fearfully around in all directions. Harry caught a glimpse of the back of his head, and it looked like Professor Quirrell might already be going bald, despite his seeming youth.
“Wonder what’s wrong with him,” whispered the older-looking student sitting next to Harry. Similar hushed comments were being exchanged elsewhere along the table.
Professor Quirrell made his way up to the podium and stood there, blinking. “Ah...” he said. “Ah...” Then his courage seemed to fail him utterly, and he stood there in silence, occasionally twitching.
“Oh, great,” whispered the older student, “looks like another long year in Defence class—”
“Salutations, my young apprentices,” Professor Quirrell said in a dry, confident tone.
It seems to imply that becoming the second victim of a Horcrux might not necessarily create a mishmash of personalities, but instead have them competing as separate (maybe “partially mixed”?) identities. This would also explain why Harry consider his “dark side” different from himself.
Yes, that often came up in past discussions. The problem is that the dual persona part seemed to get dropped early on and it changed to one of energy—Quirrel going into zombie-mode, not shy-Quirinius-mode. Presumably when he was up there on the podium, he was trying to summon up the energy for his speech.
… hmm. You know, depending on how separate the personalities are, it’s possible the original (“zombie”) Quirrel was simply stressed out of his mind from Voldemort essentially holding him prisoner in his own body.
This lack of a definite personhood may be related to the answer that Quirrell gave when Harry asked him why he wasn’t like the other children.
[Emphasis added]
I will say this much, Mr. Potter: You are already an Occlumens, and I think you will become a perfect Occlumens before long. Identity does not mean, to such as us, what it means to other people. Anyone we can imagine, we can be; and the true difference about you, Mr. Potter, is that you have an unusually good imagination. A playwright must contain his characters, he must be larger than them in order to enact them within his mind. To an actor or spy or politician, the limit of his own diameter is the limit of who he can pretend to be, the limit of which face he may wear as a mask. But for such as you and I, anyone we can imagine, we can be, in reality and not pretense. While you imagined yourself a child, Mr. Potter, you were a child. Yet there are other existences you could support, larger existences, if you wished. Why are you so free, and so great in your circumference, when other children your age are small and constrained? Why can you imagine and become selves more adult than a mere child of a playwright should be able to compose? That I do not know, and I must not say what I guess. But what you have, Mr. Potter, is freedom.
Perhaps he is a Horcrux transfer (as long speculated) but a failed one; introspecting about how different he is from his memories of ‘himself’, he would realize ‘he’ hadn’t survived and all that was left was a weird mishmash of Monroe’s personality and Voldemort’s memories, and this was entirely worthless as immortality.
If Monroe was a hero, then Monroe’s personality really doesn’t fit with some of Quirrel’s actions. But there are times when it seems like Quirrel is developing some affection for Harry, for instance the Christmas present.
I have long been wondering if there is a possibility of Harry redeeming Quirrelmort, and if there is actually any part of Quirrel still in there, it makes this idea a lot more plausible. I had thought that after the redemption, Harry would deduce that Quirrel is Voldemort. But I think there is not enough time left in the story for this to play out.
If Monroe was a hero, then Monroe’s personality really doesn’t fit with some of Quirrel’s actions.
We aren’t told enough about Monroe during the war to really know. Maybe Quirrel really is what an embittered Monroe personality plus murdered family plus Voldemort memories plus amnesia plus terminal disease from sacrifices would look like.
If Monroe was a hero, then Monroe’s personality really doesn’t fit with some of Quirrel’s actions.
Also, the Defence Professor lied-with-truth about having stolen Quirrel’s body outright “using incredibly Dark magic” when questioned on the real Quirrel’s whereabouts.
The argument isn’t about immigration to Britain, it’s about a trade embargo between the whole Wizarding World and everyone else. There’s one drinking fountain for wizards and another for muggles, only instead of both having water the wizarding one is full of healing potions.
EY is arguing in favour of totally unrestricted immigration.
I don’t find it surprising from a combination of EY’s libertarianism and utilitarianism. Many libertarians are this way, and utilitarianism only adds more support for the argument.
I’m not convinced utilitarianism actually adds support. At the very least Bryan Caplan’s arguments rely on freely switching between deontology and consequentialism, frequently in the same argument, to work.
How many billion people would be better off if allowed to immigrate to GB?
Utilitarianism is about counting everyone’s utility the same. “Shut up and multiply”—where multiply is the number of people, not a weighting factor for how much you give a shit about them. That weighting factor should be 1 for all.
Not that I’m a utilitarian. But a libertarian utilitarian would have his work cut out for him to overcome the basic tenets of non initiation of force and weighing everyone’s utility equally to justify limiting immigration.
People would only immigrate to GB until there was no further utility involved in doing so. It’s highly unlikely you’d end up with even one billion people there, even assuming that they could all fit.
Perhaps the phrase should not be ‘shut up and multiply’, but rather ‘shut up and integrate’.
People would only immigrate to GB until there was no further utility involved in doing so.
That was expressed better in Snow Crash:
″...once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity...”
How many billion people would be better off if allowed to immigrate to GB?
...
You can’t fit billions of people in the UK. ( I guess that’s not what you meant, but that’s what it sounds like)
But a libertarian utilitarian would have his work cut out for him to overcome the basic tenets of non initiation of force and weighing everyone’s utility equally to justify limiting immigration.
Well, an absolute libertarian could of course not justify the state doing anything. And a utilitarian could come up with arguments against unrestricted immigration—for one thing, perhaps it would be better to maintain at least some border controls but increase foreign aid? I’m not suggesting this is a good idea, it just doesn’t seem immediatly ridiculous.
You can, actually. It’s called “the British Empire”.
It was widely considered a bad idea the last time it was tried, but it is possible. The United Kingdom is not defined by it’s current set of borders or locations.
You can’t fit billions of people in the UK. ( I guess that’s not what you meant, but that’s what it sounds like)
The gain in quality of life from moving to the UK would gradually diminish as the island became overcrowded, until there was no net utility gain from people moving there anymore. Unrestricted immigration is not the same thing as inviting all seven billion humans to the UK. People will only keep immigrating until the average quality of life is the same in the UK as it is anywhere else; then there will be an equilibrium.
People will only keep immigrating until the average quality of life is the same in the UK as it is anywhere else; then there will be an equilibrium.
That quality will be substantially less than it is in the UK right now. That is why the current population of the UK, and any other developed country (i.e. any country with a standard of living much higher than the world average), does not want unrestricted immigration.
Yes, of course. But the net average quality of life is increased overall. Please examine the posts that I’m replying to here, for the context of the point I am making. For convenience I’ve copied it below:
How many billion people would be better off if allowed to immigrate to GB? Utilitarianism is about counting everyone’s utility the same...
You can’t fit billions of people in the UK.
If you are entering the argument with a claim that the UK’s current inhabitants can be utilitarian and simultaneously weigh their own utility higher than those of other humans, then you should be directing your argument toward buybuydanddavis’ post, since ze’s the one who said “That weighting factor should be 1 for all”. I am merely noting that not being able to fit billions of people in the UK is not a valid counterargument; net utility will still be increased by such a policy no matter what the UK’s population carrying capacity is.
But the net average quality of life is increased overall.
I’m not sure this necessarily holds true. In very broad strokes, if the quality of life is increased by X for a single immigrant, but having that immigrant present in the country decreases the quality of life for the existing population by more than X/population, then even if a specific immigrants quality of life is improved, it doesn’t mean that the net average quality of life is increased overall.
Yes..… you may be right, and it is a compelling reason, for example, not to admit terrorists into a country.
I suppose that if a particular individual’s admission into the country would depress the entire country by a sufficient amount, then that’s a fair reason to keep them out, without worrying about valuing different peoples’ utilities unequally.
But the net average quality of life is increased overall.
If that is an argument for doing it, it’s also an argument for managing one’s own home the same way. That ended badly for George Price.
I don’t recognise an obligation to give my stuff away so long as anyone has less than I do, and I take the same attitude at every scale. There’s nothing wrong with anyone trying to emigrate to a better place than they are in; but nothing wrong with No Entry signs either.
That’s fine. Do you consider yourself a utilitarian? Many people do not.
For that matter, following Illano’s line of thought, it’s not clear that the amount that poor people would appreciate receiving all of my possessions is greater than the amount of sadness I would suffer from losing everything I own. (Although if I was giving it away out of a feeling of moral inclination to do so, I would presumably be happy with my choice). I’m not sure what George Price was thinking exactly.
That’s fine. Do you consider yourself a utilitarian? Many people do not.
No, I don’t. The Price endgame is one reason why. The complexity of value is another. I do what seems good to me. That may be informed by theorising, but cannot be subservient to it.
But it cuts against the grain of the fundamental premises of both ideologies. That’s what I’m saying. The zero order application of both ideologies leads to open borders.
an absolute libertarian could of course not justify the state doing anything.
Not true. A state could always justly protect people willing to be protected from initiation of force.
Not true. A state could always justly protect people willing to be protected from initiation of force.
Fair enough.
But it cuts against the grain of the fundamental premises of both ideologies. That’s what I’m saying. The zero order application of both ideologies leads to open borders.
Yes, I agree that open boarders is the most obvious policy for a libertarian utilitarian, although more from the libertarian POV. Utilitarianism requires thinking long-term—redistribution of wealth by tax is clearly a utilitarian good in the short term, but in the longer term it might become harder to incentivise useful work and so the issue is not so clear cut. This is why its possible to be libertarian utilitarian, rather than a communist utilitarian.
In the same manner, the long-term effects of absolute open boarders might be quite negative.
How many billion people would be better off if allowed to immigrate to GB?
This is just another version of the utilitarian argument for redistributive taxation and has a similar problem. Hint: consider what it is about GB that makes it such a more desirable place then the immigrants’ home countries and how that difference comes about.
My point is that a libertarian utilitarian can see the flaws in the naive utilitarian argument for redistribution. The naive utilitarian argument for open borders has similar flaws.
If immigration is open, it doesn’t just benefit the people who move to the UK. It also benefits family members who stay behind—the immigrant will probably send money home.
I’m not an economist, but doesn’t that in turn harm the people who are still in the UK, because money is being moved out of the country rather than being reinvested in the UK economy?
It’s just the flip side of the utilitarian idea that you have to give everything you own to charity (except for the money you need to keep making more money to give to charity). Pretty much nobody actually does this, but utilitarianism demands it.
Except in this case, it’s not about reducing your utility to increase other people’s utility by a greater amount, it’s about reducing the utility of everyone in the country to increase other people’s utility by a greater amount. It’s always easier robbing Peter to pay Paul if you are not Peter.
Or for another comparison, taxation. We could let in lots of immigrants, decreasing the utility of people already in the country for a greater increase in the utility of other people. We could also tax people in the country and use it to buy foreigners a whole series of things starting with malaria nets, again reducing the utility of people already in the country for a greater increase in the utility of other people. Yet taxing locals for the benefit of outsiders is something we only do to a very limited extent, and mostly when giving things to outsiders also brings us some benefit.
(And before you say libertarians don’t believe in initiation of force, most libertarians are not anarchocapitalists and do think there is some role for government.)
Just wondering, why not do it the other way round? Make the immigrants pay higher taxes. (Only the first generation; because their children are already born in this country.) For the immigrants, it is presumably still a big improvement over living in their country of origin. For the local people, it removes the “but we would have to pay higher taxes” argument.
The biggest problem with the headline is that it assumes “immigrants” are a homogenous group. There could be some groups that are good for the country and some which are not, in which case you could still justify keeping the second group out. If you read the article it even says “However the report highlights that not all groups of migrants make a positive fiscal contribution to the UK and in some cases migrants can represent a burden for public finances.”
Also, this doesn’t count losses in utility that happen to locals because of immigrants but don’t involve collecting benefits, such as increases in crime rates or unemployment rates.
In order to do that the immigrants would have to pay enough in taxes to make up for the loss in utility by the preexisting residents. Some groups of immigrants, such as immigrants resembling the current Mexican illegals, may not be able to pay that. Furthermore, the same political groups who want more immigrants would oppose such a plan to the point where it won’t be feasible.
And the fact that they have children in this country is part of what decreases utility for the people already in the country.
it’s about reducing the utility of everyone in the country
What? If an employer is willing to hire the immigrant, this means that his labour is more valuable to her than her money, and if a grocer is willing to sell him food, this means that his money is more valuable to her than her food, so it’d seem like the immigrant is providing positive net value to the original population of the country, isn’t him?
It means the immigrant is producing positive net value to a member of the country, but it can still reduce the average utility for every member of the country.
But if it reduces the averages by raising every individual’s utility and simply moving people from the “outside” group to the “inside” group who started with low utility, we can hardly call that bad.
A common argument against immigration is that immigrants are a drain on the welfare state. I don’t think this is true in the average case, but it can’t be dismissed solely from first principles of an efficient market.
Yes, and without access to taxpayer funded schools etc. We could talk about a hypothetical AnCap UK, but this isn’t going to happen in the foreseeable future.
That EY is in favour of unrestricted immigration I don’t find too surprising, or objectionable, not that I would take his word on this—he’s not an economist.
Magical Britain might discriminate against Muggleborns, but at least it allowed them inside so they could be spat upon in person.
What I object to is the implication that British people think foreigners are not even worth spitting on.
And incidentally, don’t people get banned from LW? Even people who mass downvote are, it was said, as human as anyone else; who were said to be sapient beings, worth more than any mere unicorn. But who nonetheless wouldn’t be allowed to post in LW.
Edit: On more sober reflection, the last paragraph is not the most intelligent thing I have ever written. It seems to equate banning/exile with preventing immigration in the first place, and I suppose there are reasons why you might want a website to have powers a nation-state doesn’t anyway.
Any community, whether a website or a country, requires people with a shared set of norms (I probably what a more general word but I can’t think of one). To maintain this it needs some combination of training/indoctrination of newcomers and excluding people who don’t, won’t, or can’t accept them.
1) Countries are really big. There are multiple layers of sub-community, providing for much more diversity even in a country that isn’t about diversity. LW is multiple orders of magnitude smaller than Britain even with lurkers counted, and if we only count the regulars, the same can be said of magical Britain.
2) Countries don’t have a specific purpose. Websites often do (including this one, used in the example). On a website, simply going off-topic badly can be a bannable offense (not here, yes). A country trying to do that is farcical.
3) The example given above, that I was responding to, was about someone who was let in to LW, did some bad things, and was banned. This is the equivalent of exile. It was targeted and in response to an existing wrong. It was not done proactively for a broad category of people who had not done anything wrong.
4) Speaking of those people not doing anything wrong, “don’t, won’t, or can’t accept [the community’s norms]” might be a legitimate reason, but it was not the criterion applied in the example, even approximately.
Countries are really big. There are multiple layers of sub-community, providing for much more diversity even in a country that isn’t about diversity.
Yes, but you still need standards for said sub-communities to be able to coexist.
It was not done proactively for a broad category of people who had not done anything wrong.
Depends on the website and the situation. Hacker News, for example, temporarily disables creating new accounts whenever it is linked to by a mainstream source. Also if a bunch of people from 4chan decided to show up here, I suspect you’d support proactive measures.
Speaking of those people not doing anything wrong, “don’t, won’t, or can’t accept [the community’s norms]” might be a legitimate reason, but it was not the criterion applied in the example, even approximately.
What example were you thinking of? In the example of immigration to the GB, if you listen to the complaints of the people against immigration, many of them amount to the above criterion.
Hmm, you might be right—I was unsure about this sentence when I posted it, but, well, politics is the mindkiller. Edited. The reason I mentioned it is because it seems to me that there are perfectly good utilitarian reasons for banning people from places without denying their worth as a person.
Quirrel’s statements about horcruxes were initially surprising—if he is telling the truth, then how is he still alive?
I think he was never dead or diminished. That Quirrell would not take precautions against “The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord” strikes me as crazy talk. Even if there were no “sense of doom” back then, why take chances? Have Bella wring it’s neck. The end.
He faked his death, set up Harry as a savior, took a vacation, and returned as Quirrell when Harry became old enough to use magic.
That Quirrell would not take precautions against “The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord” strikes me as crazy talk.
Only a very paranoid person would assume this power applied when Harry was a baby. What if he sent Bella, and she couldn’t bring herself too kill a baby? I know this seems unlikely, but not as unlikely as a baby being the only person to ever survive AK.
“Yes, Mr. Potter, very amusing. So, Mr. Potter, can you guess what was the very first item on that list?”
Great. “Um… never use a complicated way of dealing with an enemy when you can just Abracadabra them?”
“The term, Mr. Potter, is Avada Kedavra,” Professor Quirrell’s voice sounded a bit sharp for some reason
‘Professor Quirrell’s voice sounded a bit sharp for some reason’ is a hint that he is Voldemort, and that he did not fake his own death.
This is why I’m not buying the otherwise fairly plausible ‘Voldemort faked his own death’ theories
“The term, Mr. Potter, is Avada Kedavra,” Professor Quirrell’s voice sounded a bit sharp for some reason
Possible reasons include:
He was Voldemort, and has some reason which seems good to him for not trying to AK Harry, then or now. The reminder that at least one Outside View says otherwise annoys him.
He wants Harry to learn AK, well enough to ensure the boy casts it (or genuinely tries rather than trying to try) in a moment of crisis, and thus wants him to practice the actual pronunciation or at least not practice mangling it.
Though the “for enemies” event hasn’t happened yet, other events gave him a (possibly irrational) distaste for Muggle-borns who think “abracabara” is funny.
Sorry, but I’m not a fan of this part—its not like Britain has immigration policies that ban certain races or religions, so I can only assume EY is arguing in favour of totally unrestricted immigration. But the UK has only a certain amount of room, and there are non-xenophobic economic arguments against unrestricted immigration, e.g. putting too much strain on the NHS. But regardless of the arguments for and against, arguing against immigration is not the same as being indifferent to the lives of everyone who lives in a different country.
I did enjoy the rest of the chapter however. Quirrel’s statements about horcruxes were initially surprising—if he is telling the truth, then how is he still alive? If not, then wouldn’t he want Harry experimenting with horcruxes in order to turn him to the dark side?
The most plausible possibility is that he wants Harry’s help to get the philosopher’s stone, and his initial prohibition is reverse psychology. This does help turn Harry against Dumbledoor, but no more than experimenting with horcruxes. Given this, it seems likely that he needs Harry’s invisibility cloak / planning ability / human patronus / possibly partial transfiguration to capture the stone.
Still, Quirrel seems to be leaving this too late. Surely it would have been better to move against the stone very soon after the unicorn incident—by which time, Harry’s anti-death ideology was very obvious, and emotionally driving. Moving against the stone when comparitivly healthy must increase the chances of success, and if it all goes wrong Quirrel could still have tried to fight his way out...
Unless Quirrel isn’t actually as ill as he looks. He seems to have got a lot worse between May 13th and June 3rd.
Edit: I am not arguing that all immigration is bad and everyone should live in neoreactionary ethno-nationalist states. I’m saying that its possible to want to prevent certain people who e.g. have a record of violent criminal behaviour from immigrating to where you live, while still recognising that these people are still human.
I was surprised by that passage. If anything, it seems magical Britain is more exclusivist. Magical Britain only invited Hermione in because she’s a British witch. The 99.9% of people who are born muggle are excluded completely. I also don’t get the impression that foreign born wizards/witches are automatically invited to Hogwarts. So they are magic-nationalists as well.
They even forbid beneficial muggle-wizard trade, which probably results in the deaths of millions of muggles.
I found it surprising because magical Britain seems much less utilitarian, in terms of excluding people from their moral concern—being indifferent. That’s surely more of the fundamental issue than border control.
Insofar as everyone dies eventually, and thus the purpose of medicine in general may be thought of as life extension rather than death prevention, and magical healing vastly increases wizard lifespans, it may be said that forbidding beneficial muggle-wizard trade results in the deaths of billions of muggles. Every single muggle who dies of old age, magically-treatable illness or non-instantly-fatal injury is a muggle who would have lived significantly longer if not for the ban.
The wizard population is very small compared to the muggle population, and I don’t think there’s much in the way of reducing the amount of time wizards need to put into healing magic. (Compare this to the efficiencies gained from vaccination and antibiotics.)
The lack of wizard healing makes some difference, but probably more like tens or hundreds of thousands of muggles who don’t get healed.
On the other hand, if wizards were public about their abilities, a higher proportion of wizards (even low-powered wizards) in the muggle population would be identified and trained, and there would presumably be knowledge of methods for integrating wizard and muggle medicine. The results still wouldn’t be all muggles having access to the best of wizard healing magic.
Don’t forget potions. You could easily make use of muggle civilisation’s amazing mass production ability by having them automate every step but the ones that need magical power. The magic drain from potion creation is minimal, so one or a few wizards could effortlessly power a production line.
Muggles also happen to be very good at large-scale farming, which could easily be applied to the production of magical ingredients, even rare ones.
Add in wizards’ ability to cast permanent enchantments at no cost, and their vast array of utility spells (Vanishing Charms alone would be a godsend for any factory), and you have undreamt-of mass production potential.
Small population sizes aren’t an issue when you have two worlds’ worth of force multipliers.
There’s no such thing as a “low-powered wizard”, and all wizards in Britain are automatically detected magically (at birth?)
It is implied that in HPMOR there are—presumably third-world? - countries where they “receive no letters of any kind”. So potentially a complete breakdown of the masquerade might allow the least sane Muggle governments to track down and kidnap wizarding children for their own use. (I’m a little confused by this, though, since spontaneous untrained magic should be a serious issue if muggleborns aren’t being dealt with.)
I’m not either. It lands with such a clunk. Maybe Magical Britain lets anyone in, but it’s clear that muggles have few rights that Wizards feel they need to respect.
And that last line—ugh:
It doesn’t even make sense. You “have a right to look someone in the eye” based on the totality of who you are versus what they are. Selecting out one point on which you are in error and they aren’t really invalidates the metaphor.
Given all that Harry finds objectionable and even barbaric about Magical Britain, how much indifference they have to the suffering of others, and how his allegiance is more to a scientific culture with rule of law, that last line seems largely just false to Harry’s character. Whatever faults he sees in muggle Britain, he sees as many of more in Magical Britain.
And why is universalist Harry all of a sudden in a twist over muggle Britain, especially?
It seems much more like the line is a gratuitous crack of the riding crop to one of the author’s favorite hobby horses. All pissed off about UKIP’s recent strong showing in elections?
I find open borders consistent with Harry in general, but making that a particular outrage, and particularly aimed at Muggle Britain as compared to Wizards, really doesn’t work for the story or for making the moral point.
Agreed—it’s a complete non-sequitur, crowbarred in with a tenuous link. And the wizards are far more intolerant.
I doubt Muggle Britain lets everyone in—for one thing, it has approximately the same ethnic composition as muggle Britain, for another, I seem to remember that Hogwarts is one of the best magic schools in the world, in which case parents would move to Britain, increasing class sizes until Hogwarts was approximately the same standard as other schools.
Incidentally, do Wizards in third-world countries have the same standard of living as first-world wizards? If so, they see no problem in letting muggles starve on their doorsteps.
This may be a slight tangent but I’m amazed (edit: amazed is the wrong word. I’m disappointed) at how the UKIP’s performance has made many people lose all sense of proportion, and become thoroughly mindkilled. About half the discussion seems to be ‘one UKIP supporter said something rasist/sexist/homophobic’. UKIP has 37 000 members. This isn’t just an adhomen attack, its an utterly statistically insignificant adhomen attack.
Worse, a friend of mine who is a lecturer in sociology endorsed a plan to send bricks to the UKIP’s freepost address, thus wasting their money. But if the UKIP supporters then send bricks to the left-wing parties, then all parties lose money and the postal system slows down. I would have thought a lecturer in sociology would understand about not defecting and keeping the moral high ground, but apparently I was wrong.
This should be false(r) in HPMOR, given the number of cameos from readers all around the planet. I worried that I was making Hogwarts seem unrealistically multiethnic, and then decided, hey, wizards have had Apparition and portkeys for centuries, it’s a wonder they even still have national cultures.
HPMOR is more ethnic (and gender) balanced than canon, and IMO does seem to have a realistic ethnic composition given teleportation (as you mentioned) and border controls. But its nowhere near 50% Asian as one might expect if there were no borders.
BTW I hope I don’t sound too critical. I have hugely enjoyed the rest of HPMOR and I just think that comparing real-world politics to Voldemort’s indifference is unnecessary mindkilling.
It’s interesting, especially given that no one seems to care that the current EU head is a not-quite-repentant former soviet apologist.
I bet the mindkilling predated UKIP’s victory, and only afforded an impetus to action for those already mindkilled.
Why do you find this surprising? That’s the standard attack. It’s simply background music.
In Western democracies, the Left fights for power and is serious about it. Any means available.
When does the opposition to the Left ever respond with a little tit for tat? In the US, there are all sorts of people mouthing off big words about fighting government tyranny, while meekly standing by while their children are sexually assaulted by the TSA purportedly looking for nuclear weapons in their underwear.
What he understands that you don’t is that his enemies won’t fight back. If your enemies are fundamentally pacifists toward your aggression, why ever stop?
Ah, I’m no expert in US politics, but I thought that was a Right-supported program? With what little of the Overton Window that covers “this is an absurd overreaction” lying on the metaphorical left-hand side?
Both left and right support the screenings, but it’s fair enough that while this made for an instance of government tyranny that people might oppose but don’t, it wasn’t a good instance of one pushed predominantly by the Left.
Unfortunately, it was (and is) a universally supported program. A pretty good example of Yvain’s Moloch, too—no serious political group can afford to be tarred with the “leave America defenseless before the terrorists” brush...
I’m not sure about that. At least I have a hard time finding anyone on the internet, in either political camp, who supports it.
Look at it from the other side—which serious political group loudly opposes TSA?
I remember a story about Rick Perry trying to pass a law limiting the kinds of things the TSA could do in Texas airports before relenting after the FAA threatened to ban flights to Texas airports if the law passed.
Well the right wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh opposed it from day 1.
Also I remember a left wing political cartoon from shortly after 9/11 implying that Republicans were in bed with the corporate sector for not wanting to nationalize airport security (which was then provided by private contractors).
Ah, interesting! I didn’t know that. Props to Limbaugh et al.
(Nationalizing airport security seems orthogonal to the TSA search issue, though.)
Private contractors hired by and answerable to the airports (and to a certain extend the airlines) have more incentive to not annoy customers than a national agency with fuzzy accountability.
What are you talking about? (I couldn’t find the one where a neo-reactionary asks Scott how many people he wants to kill.) Is this meant to imply some self-refuting statement about the LW community?
I assume few people try to make self refuting statements.
I guess we’re even, as I have no idea what you’re talking about either.
I think what he’s getting at is: the Right shows at least as much sign of trying to win by any means possible as the Left, and doesn’t behave at all like a bunch of fluffy pacifists who never fight back when attacked.
[EDITED to fix horrible typo—“off” for “of”—which I think was the result of autocomplete on a mobile device.]
I’d agree, it has at most increased the mindkill.
“Amazed” was the wrong word, used in a sloppy rhetorical sense. ‘Disappointed’ might be better.
Well, of course UKIP didn’t respond in kind, including when the prank escalated to sending blood and shit. And of course, it’s UKIP who are the fascists, so let’s hit them with sticks!
Thing is, I do understand this, but maybe I’ve haven’t fully internalised the fact an intelligent person can think that they are ‘fighting the power’ (he argues that UKIP are extremely similar to Nazis) while crushing anyone who dares to utter a contradictory opinion. I would say I can’t understand this behaviour, but that would be purely rhetorical, because I do know what compartmentalisation is.
And when you have an iron grip on the moral high ground because anyone who disagrees with you is racist, then I suppose you can afford to defect constantly.
Perhaps he is a Horcrux transfer (as long speculated) but a failed one; introspecting about how different he is from his memories of ‘himself’, he would realize ‘he’ hadn’t survived and all that was left was a weird mishmash of Monroe’s personality and Voldemort’s memories, and this was entirely worthless as immortality.
What argument could be more convincing to Quirrel than personally embodying the failure of horcruxes as an immortality strategy?
I’ve also been thinking along these lines, anyone remember this part from the opening ceremony?
It seems to imply that becoming the second victim of a Horcrux might not necessarily create a mishmash of personalities, but instead have them competing as separate (maybe “partially mixed”?) identities. This would also explain why Harry consider his “dark side” different from himself.
Yes, that often came up in past discussions. The problem is that the dual persona part seemed to get dropped early on and it changed to one of energy—Quirrel going into zombie-mode, not shy-Quirinius-mode. Presumably when he was up there on the podium, he was trying to summon up the energy for his speech.
… hmm. You know, depending on how separate the personalities are, it’s possible the original (“zombie”) Quirrel was simply stressed out of his mind from Voldemort essentially holding him prisoner in his own body.
This lack of a definite personhood may be related to the answer that Quirrell gave when Harry asked him why he wasn’t like the other children.
[Emphasis added]
If Monroe was a hero, then Monroe’s personality really doesn’t fit with some of Quirrel’s actions. But there are times when it seems like Quirrel is developing some affection for Harry, for instance the Christmas present.
I have long been wondering if there is a possibility of Harry redeeming Quirrelmort, and if there is actually any part of Quirrel still in there, it makes this idea a lot more plausible. I had thought that after the redemption, Harry would deduce that Quirrel is Voldemort. But I think there is not enough time left in the story for this to play out.
We aren’t told enough about Monroe during the war to really know. Maybe Quirrel really is what an embittered Monroe personality plus murdered family plus Voldemort memories plus amnesia plus terminal disease from sacrifices would look like.
Also, the Defence Professor lied-with-truth about having stolen Quirrel’s body outright “using incredibly Dark magic” when questioned on the real Quirrel’s whereabouts.
The argument isn’t about immigration to Britain, it’s about a trade embargo between the whole Wizarding World and everyone else. There’s one drinking fountain for wizards and another for muggles, only instead of both having water the wizarding one is full of healing potions.
I don’t find it surprising from a combination of EY’s libertarianism and utilitarianism. Many libertarians are this way, and utilitarianism only adds more support for the argument.
I’m not convinced utilitarianism actually adds support. At the very least Bryan Caplan’s arguments rely on freely switching between deontology and consequentialism, frequently in the same argument, to work.
How many billion people would be better off if allowed to immigrate to GB?
Utilitarianism is about counting everyone’s utility the same. “Shut up and multiply”—where multiply is the number of people, not a weighting factor for how much you give a shit about them. That weighting factor should be 1 for all.
Not that I’m a utilitarian. But a libertarian utilitarian would have his work cut out for him to overcome the basic tenets of non initiation of force and weighing everyone’s utility equally to justify limiting immigration.
People would only immigrate to GB until there was no further utility involved in doing so. It’s highly unlikely you’d end up with even one billion people there, even assuming that they could all fit.
Perhaps the phrase should not be ‘shut up and multiply’, but rather ‘shut up and integrate’.
That was expressed better in Snow Crash:
″...once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity...”
...
You can’t fit billions of people in the UK. ( I guess that’s not what you meant, but that’s what it sounds like)
Well, an absolute libertarian could of course not justify the state doing anything. And a utilitarian could come up with arguments against unrestricted immigration—for one thing, perhaps it would be better to maintain at least some border controls but increase foreign aid? I’m not suggesting this is a good idea, it just doesn’t seem immediatly ridiculous.
You can, actually. It’s called “the British Empire”.
It was widely considered a bad idea the last time it was tried, but it is possible. The United Kingdom is not defined by it’s current set of borders or locations.
The gain in quality of life from moving to the UK would gradually diminish as the island became overcrowded, until there was no net utility gain from people moving there anymore. Unrestricted immigration is not the same thing as inviting all seven billion humans to the UK. People will only keep immigrating until the average quality of life is the same in the UK as it is anywhere else; then there will be an equilibrium.
That quality will be substantially less than it is in the UK right now. That is why the current population of the UK, and any other developed country (i.e. any country with a standard of living much higher than the world average), does not want unrestricted immigration.
Yes, of course. But the net average quality of life is increased overall. Please examine the posts that I’m replying to here, for the context of the point I am making. For convenience I’ve copied it below:
If you are entering the argument with a claim that the UK’s current inhabitants can be utilitarian and simultaneously weigh their own utility higher than those of other humans, then you should be directing your argument toward buybuydanddavis’ post, since ze’s the one who said “That weighting factor should be 1 for all”. I am merely noting that not being able to fit billions of people in the UK is not a valid counterargument; net utility will still be increased by such a policy no matter what the UK’s population carrying capacity is.
I’m not sure this necessarily holds true. In very broad strokes, if the quality of life is increased by X for a single immigrant, but having that immigrant present in the country decreases the quality of life for the existing population by more than X/population, then even if a specific immigrants quality of life is improved, it doesn’t mean that the net average quality of life is increased overall.
Yes..… you may be right, and it is a compelling reason, for example, not to admit terrorists into a country.
I suppose that if a particular individual’s admission into the country would depress the entire country by a sufficient amount, then that’s a fair reason to keep them out, without worrying about valuing different peoples’ utilities unequally.
If that is an argument for doing it, it’s also an argument for managing one’s own home the same way. That ended badly for George Price.
I don’t recognise an obligation to give my stuff away so long as anyone has less than I do, and I take the same attitude at every scale. There’s nothing wrong with anyone trying to emigrate to a better place than they are in; but nothing wrong with No Entry signs either.
That’s fine. Do you consider yourself a utilitarian? Many people do not.
For that matter, following Illano’s line of thought, it’s not clear that the amount that poor people would appreciate receiving all of my possessions is greater than the amount of sadness I would suffer from losing everything I own. (Although if I was giving it away out of a feeling of moral inclination to do so, I would presumably be happy with my choice). I’m not sure what George Price was thinking exactly.
No, I don’t. The Price endgame is one reason why. The complexity of value is another. I do what seems good to me. That may be informed by theorising, but cannot be subservient to it.
But it cuts against the grain of the fundamental premises of both ideologies. That’s what I’m saying. The zero order application of both ideologies leads to open borders.
Not true. A state could always justly protect people willing to be protected from initiation of force.
Fair enough.
Yes, I agree that open boarders is the most obvious policy for a libertarian utilitarian, although more from the libertarian POV. Utilitarianism requires thinking long-term—redistribution of wealth by tax is clearly a utilitarian good in the short term, but in the longer term it might become harder to incentivise useful work and so the issue is not so clear cut. This is why its possible to be libertarian utilitarian, rather than a communist utilitarian.
In the same manner, the long-term effects of absolute open boarders might be quite negative.
This is just another version of the utilitarian argument for redistributive taxation and has a similar problem. Hint: consider what it is about GB that makes it such a more desirable place then the immigrants’ home countries and how that difference comes about.
Yes, that’s my point. Open borders in general is supported by utilitarianism.
No need to try to convince me that utilitarianism has it’s failings, I’ve been on board that ship for a long time.
My point is that a libertarian utilitarian can see the flaws in the naive utilitarian argument for redistribution. The naive utilitarian argument for open borders has similar flaws.
If immigration is open, it doesn’t just benefit the people who move to the UK. It also benefits family members who stay behind—the immigrant will probably send money home.
La Wik knows all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittance
Remittances back to the home country often represent a sizable fraction of a country’s GDP, exceeding all international aid and foreign investments.
I’m not an economist, but doesn’t that in turn harm the people who are still in the UK, because money is being moved out of the country rather than being reinvested in the UK economy?
On the other hand, work is being done in the UK, but money is being taken out—this should lower prices, at least for a while.
The local buyers of competing labor benefit, the local sellers of competing labor lose.
If we’re playing utilitarianism globally with decreasing marginal utility, it’s a win,
If we’re playing nationally, it’s likely a loss.
It’s just the flip side of the utilitarian idea that you have to give everything you own to charity (except for the money you need to keep making more money to give to charity). Pretty much nobody actually does this, but utilitarianism demands it.
Except in this case, it’s not about reducing your utility to increase other people’s utility by a greater amount, it’s about reducing the utility of everyone in the country to increase other people’s utility by a greater amount. It’s always easier robbing Peter to pay Paul if you are not Peter.
Or for another comparison, taxation. We could let in lots of immigrants, decreasing the utility of people already in the country for a greater increase in the utility of other people. We could also tax people in the country and use it to buy foreigners a whole series of things starting with malaria nets, again reducing the utility of people already in the country for a greater increase in the utility of other people. Yet taxing locals for the benefit of outsiders is something we only do to a very limited extent, and mostly when giving things to outsiders also brings us some benefit.
(And before you say libertarians don’t believe in initiation of force, most libertarians are not anarchocapitalists and do think there is some role for government.)
Just wondering, why not do it the other way round? Make the immigrants pay higher taxes. (Only the first generation; because their children are already born in this country.) For the immigrants, it is presumably still a big improvement over living in their country of origin. For the local people, it removes the “but we would have to pay higher taxes” argument.
Immigrants to the UK pay, on average, more taxes than native Brits.
The biggest problem with the headline is that it assumes “immigrants” are a homogenous group. There could be some groups that are good for the country and some which are not, in which case you could still justify keeping the second group out. If you read the article it even says “However the report highlights that not all groups of migrants make a positive fiscal contribution to the UK and in some cases migrants can represent a burden for public finances.”
Also, this doesn’t count losses in utility that happen to locals because of immigrants but don’t involve collecting benefits, such as increases in crime rates or unemployment rates.
That’s quite interesting, and does refute a lot of the people who argue against all immigration. But the UK does have some forms of boarder control.
In order to do that the immigrants would have to pay enough in taxes to make up for the loss in utility by the preexisting residents. Some groups of immigrants, such as immigrants resembling the current Mexican illegals, may not be able to pay that. Furthermore, the same political groups who want more immigrants would oppose such a plan to the point where it won’t be feasible.
And the fact that they have children in this country is part of what decreases utility for the people already in the country.
What? If an employer is willing to hire the immigrant, this means that his labour is more valuable to her than her money, and if a grocer is willing to sell him food, this means that his money is more valuable to her than her food, so it’d seem like the immigrant is providing positive net value to the original population of the country, isn’t him?
It means the immigrant is producing positive net value to a member of the country, but it can still reduce the average utility for every member of the country.
But if it reduces the averages by raising every individual’s utility and simply moving people from the “outside” group to the “inside” group who started with low utility, we can hardly call that bad.
(This is known as Will Rogers phenomenon BTW.)
Thanks. I knew there was a name for it, just couldn’t remember what it was.
If immigrants generally reduce utility for everyone in the country, would the same apply for the children of citizens?
People intrinsically care about their children.
There is a middle ground between ‘all immigration is generally bad’ and ‘there should be no boarder controls whatsoever’.
The UK, like pretty much every other country in the world, does not run on a pure capitalist economy.
What do you mean by that? That there are externalities?
A common argument against immigration is that immigrants are a drain on the welfare state. I don’t think this is true in the average case, but it can’t be dismissed solely from first principles of an efficient market.
In principle you could let some person in without giving them any welfare benefits.
Yes, and without access to taxpayer funded schools etc. We could talk about a hypothetical AnCap UK, but this isn’t going to happen in the foreseeable future.
That EY is in favour of unrestricted immigration I don’t find too surprising, or objectionable, not that I would take his word on this—he’s not an economist.
What I object to is the implication that British people think foreigners are not even worth spitting on.
And incidentally, don’t people get banned from LW? Even people who mass downvote are, it was said, as human as anyone else; who were said to be sapient beings, worth more than any mere unicorn. But who nonetheless wouldn’t be allowed to post in LW.
Edit: On more sober reflection, the last paragraph is not the most intelligent thing I have ever written. It seems to equate banning/exile with preventing immigration in the first place, and I suppose there are reasons why you might want a website to have powers a nation-state doesn’t anyway.
… so? The only ways I see that this provides an argument at all are so strained I feel like I have to be not grasping the reason you mentioned it.
Any community, whether a website or a country, requires people with a shared set of norms (I probably what a more general word but I can’t think of one). To maintain this it needs some combination of training/indoctrination of newcomers and excluding people who don’t, won’t, or can’t accept them.
These two things are far enough apart that arguing for one does not do much to argue for the other.
Yes, but the principal I stated is pretty general. Care to explain why you think it doesn’t apply in the case of countries.
1) Countries are really big. There are multiple layers of sub-community, providing for much more diversity even in a country that isn’t about diversity. LW is multiple orders of magnitude smaller than Britain even with lurkers counted, and if we only count the regulars, the same can be said of magical Britain.
2) Countries don’t have a specific purpose. Websites often do (including this one, used in the example). On a website, simply going off-topic badly can be a bannable offense (not here, yes). A country trying to do that is farcical.
3) The example given above, that I was responding to, was about someone who was let in to LW, did some bad things, and was banned. This is the equivalent of exile. It was targeted and in response to an existing wrong. It was not done proactively for a broad category of people who had not done anything wrong.
4) Speaking of those people not doing anything wrong, “don’t, won’t, or can’t accept [the community’s norms]” might be a legitimate reason, but it was not the criterion applied in the example, even approximately.
Yes, but you still need standards for said sub-communities to be able to coexist.
Depends on the website and the situation. Hacker News, for example, temporarily disables creating new accounts whenever it is linked to by a mainstream source. Also if a bunch of people from 4chan decided to show up here, I suspect you’d support proactive measures.
What example were you thinking of? In the example of immigration to the GB, if you listen to the complaints of the people against immigration, many of them amount to the above criterion.
Hmm, you might be right—I was unsure about this sentence when I posted it, but, well, politics is the mindkiller. Edited. The reason I mentioned it is because it seems to me that there are perfectly good utilitarian reasons for banning people from places without denying their worth as a person.
I think he was never dead or diminished. That Quirrell would not take precautions against “The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord” strikes me as crazy talk. Even if there were no “sense of doom” back then, why take chances? Have Bella wring it’s neck. The end.
He faked his death, set up Harry as a savior, took a vacation, and returned as Quirrell when Harry became old enough to use magic.
Only a very paranoid person would assume this power applied when Harry was a baby. What if he sent Bella, and she couldn’t bring herself too kill a baby? I know this seems unlikely, but not as unlikely as a baby being the only person to ever survive AK.
‘Professor Quirrell’s voice sounded a bit sharp for some reason’ is a hint that he is Voldemort, and that he did not fake his own death.
This is why I’m not buying the otherwise fairly plausible ‘Voldemort faked his own death’ theories
Possible reasons include:
He was Voldemort, and has some reason which seems good to him for not trying to AK Harry, then or now. The reminder that at least one Outside View says otherwise annoys him.
He wants Harry to learn AK, well enough to ensure the boy casts it (or genuinely tries rather than trying to try) in a moment of crisis, and thus wants him to practice the actual pronunciation or at least not practice mangling it.
Though the “for enemies” event hasn’t happened yet, other events gave him a (possibly irrational) distaste for Muggle-borns who think “abracabara” is funny.
A sharp tone serves his goals for some reason.