Gyroscopic Investing

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/us/ob ... texas.html

The best news I've had in weeks.

I could probably do a bit of research on this, but perhaps I'll just let you fine folks give me a quick summary on the first point here...

1) What is Obama really doing with this immigration program?  I haven't paid much attention to it.

2) Putting it in context, is this really anything very unique when it comes to executive power via agencies?

3) Will the fact (or opinion, I suppose) that our immigration system is extremely broken help his case, or is that a moot point when it comes to executive action?  It seems to me, the more dysfunctional the current state of affairs is in a certain arena of federal law/enforcement, the more one could claim a legitimate role of the executive branch, via agencies, to take more unilateral action.

4) Is a District Court in Texas calling this unconstitutional really much of a sign of anything?  Isn't this sure to go to the Supreme Court, where it really matters?  If so, then what are the chances the SCOTUS will rule it unconstitutional?


Personally, I have a distaste for executive authority... except perhaps when the alternative is even more distasteful (as it was in certain arenas in the Teddy Roosevelt era, as well as our current immigration system.  Especially because it seems to me that part of this debate is the "executive authority" being exercised by the states when they're trying to enact/enforce laws that give a massive amount of power to police to stop people and ask for their papers.

While I'd like to see a strong border and a very tight legal immigration policy (especially as it pertains to people who hail from countries with high Islamic terrorist activity), something really bothers me about taking a family of 4 who's spent most of their lives here and either deporting them to a country they don't know as home, or force them to live most of their lives in fear.  I wish the two parties could be blunt enough about the immigration topic to have very conservative policies towards our border and legal immigration, as well as a liberal round of "amnesty" for people who've been here for a long time and meet other criteria.  In the absence of a compromise on the law, I'm not sure what authority I'd want to grant the president in enforcing current law.

moda0306 wrote:In the absence of a compromise on the law, I'm not sure what authority I'd want to grant the president in enforcing current law.

He is not enforcing much of any immigration law at all. That's the problem. He (and Bush II) has done very little in terms of border and workplace enforcement and deliberately created a problem that he would "solve" by ignoring congress. He has stated his intentions politically in an interview with Vox as one where he wants to water down the conservative electorate with his actions. Not that he needed to admit this as it is plainly obvious when you look at the voting patterns of the groups being allowed amnesty. Further to this, his actions have allowed the importation of criminals, gang expansion and likely communicable diseases that are re-emerging. Not to mention a refugee resettlement program that is likely importing radical islam that jeopardize the freedom of Americans as the government is forced to respond to the threats with more surveillance and laws.

In a sane time he'd be tried for treason.

The immigration system is not broken. It suffers from extreme lack of enforcement from most all presidents. The dems want big government voters which illegals being amnestied provide. The GOP wants cheap labor to exploit which the illegals provide. It's a win-win for both of them.

craigr wrote: The immigration system is not broken. It suffers from extreme lack of enforcement from most all presidents. The dems want big government voters which illegals being amnestied provide. The GOP wants cheap labor to exploit which the illegals provide. It's a win-win for both of them.

That's a great summary right there.  There doesn't seem much hope for change.  The other thing I would add is that I for one don't blame the illegal immigrants one bit, because I know if I was in their shoes, I would probably do the same thing.  The blame goes solely toward our government for not protecting our borders/jobs.

Ad Orientem wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/us/ob ... texas.html

Except its all hollow ideological bluster on the judge's behalf that ignores similar actions by many previous Presidents. <yawn>

And seriously anyone who disagrees with the refocusing on "dangerous criminals, including terrorists and gang members" instead of law abiding illegal immigrants is delusional.  That is vastly better than the do nothing policy we had before.  Ignore the stupid politics.

MachineGhost wrote:

Ad Orientem wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/us/ob ... texas.html

Except its all hollow ideological bluster on the judge's behalf that ignores similar actions by many previous Presidents. <yawn>

And seriously anyone who disagrees with the refocusing on "dangerous criminals, including terrorists and gang members" instead of law abiding illegal immigrants is delusional.  That is vastly better than the do nothing policy we had before.  Ignore the stupid politics.

"law abiding illegal immigrants..." 

Ad Orientem wrote: "law abiding illegal immigrants..." 

Busted!!!

I noticed the oxymoron, but decided not to edit it just to see if anyone would jump on it.  The guilty parties will be charged accordingly!

Just like property and money, borders are imaginary and metaphysical.  Does anyone REALLY think that is higher in a hierarchery of importance than the physical murder of someone where death is tangible and objective?

MachineGhost wrote: I noticed the oxymoron, but decided not to edit it just to see if anyone would jump on it.  The guilty parties will be charged accordingly!

Just like property and money, borders are imaginary and metaphysical.  Does anyone REALLY think that is higher in a hierarchery of importance than the physical murder of someone where death is tangible and objective?

And yet theft of money--that thing which is also imaginary and metaphysical--is treated like a serious crime. In the end if you don't believe in a God, everything is imaginary and metaphysical, is a social construction--including the objectionable nature of murder, which is not so objectionable to the rest of the animal kingdom, let's remember (hey, I had to pull out my liberal arts history sometime). But simultaneously, the truth of that statement negates its usefulness. If everything is "imaginary and metaphysical" or "a social construction", then we must evaluate it in terms of our human norms. And in that world, we have borders. And not only are those borders are important to most people, I would argue that some borders are important to all people. The border between the street and your house, for example.

While I acknowledge the importance of the myths of things called "borders" and many forms of so-called "property" in terms of setting the table for an orderly, productive, free-ish, safe society, it would be foolish to not realize them for the myths that they are.

And if they are, in fact, artificial, rather than fundamentally, objectively true as certain folks assert... then the idea that we forcibly remove folks (at the point of a gun, of course) to lands hundreds of miles away from the ones they call home because they don't carry the right papers, is one of the most gross forms of government overreach there is.

The problem is, a lot of people want to have their cake and eat it too (this goes for many on the left extreme as well).  They want the government to defend artificial borders and artificial property claims, but they don't want the government to provide "artificial" market incentives like unemployment benefits, universal healthcare, retirement benefits, free education for youngsters, environmental regulations & taxes, etc.

Further, they want to go as far as to oust families from their homes because they picked the wrong ovaries to be born in.

There are a lot of artificial social contrivances out there, as PS points out.  However, if we are going to respect them... and some oppose each other, to some degree (breaking into "somebody's" home to deport them out of "our" country), then let's at least acknowledge the contradiction/dilemma with the scenario, and discuss the topic like there's more than one social illusion being respected at the same time, here.

moda0306 wrote: While I acknowledge the importance of the myths of things called "borders" and many forms of so-called "property" in terms of setting the table for an orderly, productive, free-ish, safe society, it would be foolish to not realize them for the myths that they are.

And if they are, in fact, artificial, rather than fundamentally, objectively true as certain folks assert... then the idea that we forcibly remove folks (at the point of a gun, of course) to lands hundreds of miles away from the ones they call home because they don't carry the right papers, is one of the most gross forms of government overreach there is.

It's not government, it's human. I have a house. I don't want random people coming in my house without permission. The whole idea of this hinges on rights, and privileges, and ideas of ownership, and spatial relations, and political blah blah blah... but the core impulse to claims things for ourselves and exclude the unwanted are fundamentally there, fundamentally human. You feel them, and I feel them, and everybody feels them. We create a bunch of social institutions around these things because they are such important concepts to us funny creatures. This is completely obvious to all but some liberals who like to deconstruct things so deeply that when they're done, nothing makes sense. Right up there with focusing so much on exceptions that the general trend is forgotten.

Pointedstick wrote:

moda0306 wrote: While I acknowledge the importance of the myths of things called "borders" and many forms of so-called "property" in terms of setting the table for an orderly, productive, free-ish, safe society, it would be foolish to not realize them for the myths that they are.

And if they are, in fact, artificial, rather than fundamentally, objectively true as certain folks assert... then the idea that we forcibly remove folks (at the point of a gun, of course) to lands hundreds of miles away from the ones they call home because they don't carry the right papers, is one of the most gross forms of government overreach there is.

It's not government, it's human. I have a house. I don't want random people coming in my house without permission. The whole idea of this hinges on rights, and privileges, and ideas of ownership, and spatial relations, and political blah blah blah... but the core impulse to claims things for ourselves and exclude the unwanted are fundamentally there, fundamentally human. You feel them, and I feel them, and everybody feels them. We create a bunch of social institutions around these things because they are such important concepts to us funny creatures. This is completely obvious to all but some liberals who like to deconstruct things so deeply that when they're done, nothing makes sense. Right up there with focusing so much on exceptions that the general trend is forgotten.

Completely obvious to everyone but liberals?

Sorry... I'm really going to have to disagree with you here.

- Some think logic/reason gives us a deductively proven RIGHT to liberty and property (the latter being "an affect of our actions," whatever that means.

- Some think property and borders are important because they carry objectively good consequences.

- Some think God has given us these "unalienable rights."

Hell, you've probably snatched up 75% of conservatives with those three assertions right there!  The idea that only "liberals" have trouble grasping that moral & social institutions are a myth is utterly ridiculous to me.

In fact, I'm starting to think I must have misunderstood what you were saying.

I'd argue that there are very FEW people that recognize these things for the idiosyncratic man-made myths that they really are.  And if they are true, there certainly isn't proof for any of it, and we tend, as humans, to balance out myths against each other... usually boiling down to two competing philisophical realms (though there are massive amounts of differences within each realm).

1) Kantian (rights-based) morality
2) Utilitarianism

Most of use some conveniently organized and inconsistently applied mix of the two (liberals AND conservatives) to defend their political/moral/property positions and position in the society they belong to.

To say everybody realizes this... or that everyone but liberals realize this... is a huge error on my part.  Most people think they're operating on a plane of objective truth, and they behave accordingly obnoxiously when they see those lines crossed.

moda0306 wrote: To say everybody realizes this... or that everyone but liberals realize this... is a huge error on my part.  Most people think they're operating on a plane of objective truth, and they behave accordingly obnoxiously when they see those lines crossed.

I think you've just been spending too much time on online message boards full of obnoxious libertarians.

The real majority opinion IMHO, as I said in another post, is the spiritual one that God ordained this and that's where morality comes from and yadda yadda yadda.

Once you enter the realm of intellectuals, most of the people who hold that position vanish and you're mostly left with the utilitarians and the deductive moralists. Deductive moralists would be the 50 or 75 obnoxious libertarians who seem to appear everywhere on intellectual online forums and their position basically has no real support, as it is self-contradictory six ways to Sunday but they will never admit it. That leaves the vast majority of non-divine explanations for the legitimacy and morality of human institutions being utilitarian ones, IMHO. Utilitarianism's core precept is the idea of the useful social construction. That's what borders are, that's what rights are, etc. All of this stuff is just made up because we humans liked the idea of them and because they made our lives easier in some way. This simultaneously supports the liberal position that there's nothing magical about these institutions so they should be responsive to change, but it also supports the conservative position that the institutions that have endured for a long time did so because they've presented the most utility to the societies that adopt and defend them, and should be treated with the most respect and skepticism to alteration--institutions like hierarchy, religion, rights, property, borders, money, gender roles, marriage, etc.

What it doesn't support, IMHO, is the idea--only ever expressed by liberals, in my experience--that since these things are social fabrications or metaphysical figments of our imaginations, that they ultimately have no particular significance, importance, or moral weight; because if one takes that position, one must logically take the same position for everything else, which is simply unproductive nihilism that endlessly frustrated me in college and probably contributed to my dramatic rightward shift.

Pointedstick wrote:

moda0306 wrote: To say everybody realizes this... or that everyone but liberals realize this... is a huge error on my part.  Most people think they're operating on a plane of objective truth, and they behave accordingly obnoxiously when they see those lines crossed.

I think you've just been spending too much time on online message boards full of obnoxious libertarians.

The real majority opinion IMHO, as I said in another post, is the spiritual one that God ordained this and that's where morality comes from and yadda yadda yadda.

Once you enter the realm of intellectuals, most of the people who hold that position vanish and you're mostly left with the utilitarians and the deductive moralists. Deductive moralists would be the 50 or 75 obnoxious libertarians who seem to appear everywhere on intellectual online forums and their position basically has no real support, as it is self-contradictory six ways to Sunday but they will never admit it. That leaves the vast majority of non-divine explanations for the legitimacy and morality of human institutions being utilitarian ones, IMHO. Utilitarianism's core precept is the idea of the useful social construction. That's what borders are, that's what rights are, etc. All of this stuff is just made up because we humans liked the idea of them and because they made out lives easier in some way. This simultaneously supports the liberal position that there's nothing magical about these institutions so they should be responsive to change, but it also supports the conservative position that the institutions that have endured for a long time are the ones that have presented the most utility to the societies that adopt and defend them and should be treated with the most respect and skepticism to alteration--institutions like rights, property, borders, money, gender roles, marriage, etc.

What it doesn't support, IMHO, is the idea--only ever expressed by liberals, in my experience--that since these things are social fabrications or metaphysical figments of our imaginations, that they ultimately have no meaning or significance at all; because if one takes that position, one must logically take the same position for everything else, which is simply unproductive nihilism.

Irrespective of whether or not one believes in God, I think it is difficult to argue that the Judeo-Christian religious tradition is not the cornerstone upon which Western Civilization has built its moral/ethical values system.

Ad Orientem wrote: Irrespective of whether or not one believes in God, I think it is difficult to argue that the Judeo-Christian religious tradition is not the cornerstone upon which Western Civilization has built its moral/ethical values system.

It clearly was. Like I said, the godly explanation is the most common and popular one. But I would also argue that this is because it was useful, and I would say that a key part of western civilization's success can be traced to the relative social utility of most of the institutions of the Judeo-Christian system. There's a reason why primitive tribes practicing human sacrifice, genital mutilation, or pooping in the river never became great civilizations (if there was ever to be any statement I could make that would permanently bar me from entering the liberalism clubhouse, this would be it, BTW).

Pointedstick wrote: What it doesn't support, IMHO, is the idea--only ever expressed by liberals, in my experience--that since these things are social fabrications or metaphysical figments of our imaginations, that they ultimately have no particular significance, importance, or moral weight; because if one takes that position, one must logically take the same position for everything else, which is simply unproductive nihilism that endlessly frustrated me in college and probably contributed to my dramatic rightward shift.

Sounds like Nirvana to me! 

But we can't claim that all metaphysical-economic-utilitarianisms have the same equal weight in importance.  All metaphysical-economic-utilitarianisms ARE equal, but SOME metaphysical-economic-utilitarianisms are MORE equal than others.

MachineGhost wrote:

Pointedstick wrote: What it doesn't support, IMHO, is the idea--only ever expressed by liberals, in my experience--that since these things are social fabrications or metaphysical figments of our imaginations, that they ultimately have no particular significance, importance, or moral weight; because if one takes that position, one must logically take the same position for everything else, which is simply unproductive nihilism that endlessly frustrated me in college and probably contributed to my dramatic rightward shift.

Sounds like Nirvana to me! 

Nirvana would be not even feeling the need or desire to participate in this discussion due to its meaninglessness. But within the context of a discussion about competing ideas, declaring that everything is meaningless or relative in order to avoid having to debate the issues on their merits is just rude.

Pointedstick wrote: There's a reason why primitive tribes practicing human sacrifice, genital mutilation, or pooping in the river never became great civilizations (if there was ever to be any statement I could make that would permanently bar me from entering the liberalism clubhouse, this would be it, BTW).

Huh, I'm guessing liberals don't see the utility in utilitarianism.  As a former libertarian, my political position now is that whatever metaphysical-economic-utilitarianist action maximizes the public interest is what is right and proper.  And I sure don't mean that based on political propaganda or ideology, but cold hard quantifiable facts that uphold our hard-fought traditions of individual liberty and justice for all.  Elites need not apply.

MachineGhost wrote:

Pointedstick wrote: There's a reason why primitive tribes practicing human sacrifice, genital mutilation, or pooping in the river never became great civilizations (if there was ever to be any statement I could make that would permanently bar me from entering the liberalism clubhouse, this would be it, BTW).

Huh, I'm guessing liberals don't see the utility in utilitarianism.  As a former libertarian, my political position now is that whatever metaphysical-economic-utilitarianist action maximizes the public interest is what is right and proper.  And I sure don't mean that based on political propaganda or ideology, but cold hard quantifiable facts that uphold our hard-fought traditions of individual liberty and justice for all.  Elites need not apply.

Then you would seem to be a vaguely technocratic Conservative, because that is basically their position, even though few might put it in those terms or even understand it. Conservatism is all about keeping social institutions that work, and social institutions that work would be the ones that have evolved to have the most utility for the most people over the longest period of time, as evidenced by their continuation. Liberalism, in its focus on exceptions to the rule, and on individuals instead of collectives, works to destroy this by pointing out the inevitable ways in which certain people are excluded, marginalized, or disenfranchised, and by championing the interests of those outcasts at the expense of the majority. Conservatives don't care because deep down they understand that societies are made up of cohesive groups, and cohesive groups always result in a few losers, outsiders, and rebels.

For the record, I find myself being pulled ever closer towards conservatism and away from libertarianism, too.

And what are you, PS?

Reub wrote: And what are you, PS?

I don't know. I feel like it changes daily. But as of right now I feel like an old-school conservative with libertarian, technocratic, and elitist leanings.

Changes daily? So then, after the Jihadists conquer the Middle East, Africa, and Europe and start blowing things up on a regular basis on our homeland you may change your position closer to mine?

Pointedstick wrote:

Reub wrote: And what are you, PS?

I don't know. I feel like it changes daily. But as of right now I feel like an old-school conservative with libertarian, technocratic, and elitist leanings.

The Dark Enlightenment

Pointedstick wrote:

MachineGhost wrote:

Pointedstick wrote: What it doesn't support, IMHO, is the idea--only ever expressed by liberals, in my experience--that since these things are social fabrications or metaphysical figments of our imaginations, that they ultimately have no particular significance, importance, or moral weight; because if one takes that position, one must logically take the same position for everything else, which is simply unproductive nihilism that endlessly frustrated me in college and probably contributed to my dramatic rightward shift.

Sounds like Nirvana to me! 

Nirvana would be not even feeling the need or desire to participate in this discussion due to its meaninglessness. But within the context of a discussion about competing ideas, declaring that everything is meaningless or relative in order to avoid having to debate the issues on their merits is just rude.

Well I hope you don't think I'm saying everything is meaningless.  Though my points have nihilist over-tones at times, I'm simply asking that we take a step back and make sure we're not stubbornly asking to have our cake and eat it to, and if we truly ARE going to do something on the basis of "rights," let's examine all rights.  If we're doing it on the basis of the utilitarian benefits these myths we call rights provide, then let's explore that, but on the basis of utilitarianism.

What I see though, is not a bunch of people discussing things from a utilitarian standpoint, but instead, as in most debates, people bouncing between rights-based and utilitarian arguments.  They hop on their rights-based moral high ground platform when they feel themselves losing a utilitarian argument, and they hop into the "but let's be realists here" argument when they realize their "rights" are myths.

We've gotten pretty good (comparatively) at drawing the scalpel around those two sides of the debate, but I'll have to disagree with you that "everyone's a utilitarian now."  Besides of course, the wacky religious folks talking about God and those wacky deductive prove-it-to-yas talking about self-ownership.

If you're saying that "open borders" won't work for our country as a cohesive group with lots of useful myths we use to maintain peace, I would agree with you.

If you're saying that we have to round up people (and all the myth-busting we'll be doing along with that... taking them out of "their homes" and "their communities") and drive them out of this country down to Mexico to have a decent country to live in, then I'd have to disagree.

While having certain societal myths reinforced (borders, property, community, duty, etc) over the years has been the cornerstone of civilization, the picking and choosing of those myths, and abandoning them when inconvenient to another priority, has been the cause of some absolutely massive amount of genocide and relocation.  The Nazi government was VERY concerned with their own "community."  They just didn't like that Jews were a part of it... or were even the antithesis of it.  So they abandon any "rights" they had pretended existed and did the most utilitarian thing a group could do if they wanted a cohesive society. 

Reub wrote: Changes daily? So then, after the Jihadists conquer the Middle East, Africa, and Europe and start blowing things up on a regular basis on our homeland you may change your position closer to mine?

Our military goals are not served by ridiculous hyperbole. This is fearmongering nonsense and you know it. And if you don't, you should. It'll lower your blood pressure and you can stop taking all that aspirin.