onthebeach
Very interesting articles and good post.

I am perhaps interesting in that I am one of the refugee industry which I agree is parasitic, but I am not an ardent supporters of current policy, more 'asylum seekers' or more appeals for them.

However I don’t blame the refugees for coming, and I don’t blame anyone who profits from it from profiting from it. They are merely accommodating themselves to the provisions of the State, which is the source of all the irrationality, valuational chaos and waste on a grand scale. I blame the State for it, including my part.

The reason is because a State is by definition that group in society claiming a legal monopoly over ultimate decision-making, and the use of force, for a particular territory. The State lives by its compulsory takings from its subject population. It is this territorial protection racket that is the essence of the State.

For myself, I would prefer full-time productive activity, farming. But on my farm, pretty much everything is illegal! Every area of activity is regulated, and all these regulations restrict my freedom to earn a living, as well as imposing huge monetary and time costs on me. For example I can’t cut the grass – illegal. Can’t cut trees – illegal. Plant crops and hundreds of roos eat ‘em – can’t shoot the roos – illegal. Can’t get rid of dogs and foxes eating my lambs without asking permission and paying tribute to political overlords. The costs of complying with a thousand regulations eats up months of productive time each year. Their pretence to serve a productive purpose is false – these are parasitic galls.

The restrictions which government places on everything, more and more make productive activity uneconomical. It’s not my fault that they have done that – I’m against it! The choice it gives to every tax-payer is “either just be exploited, or be exploited and try to re-coup some of your losses by parasitizing back”. That’s it.

By comparison making money as a refugee lawyer is easy, plus it’s indoors, clean ...

(cont.)

I get to fly around and stay in hotels, there's no heavy lifting, no dangerous machinery, no animals, no sh!t, no digging, no getting dirty with oil and dirt and blood producing things that people VOLUNTARILY pay for.

Easy. The government just steals the money from someone else. But look how the people of Australia accept it and think rejecting it is mad!

You yourself do it:
“[the money] is diverted from other services the government is supposed to be providing” and “the electorate would prefer that the money is spent instead on such things as hospitals and so on”.

So not even you acknowledge the principle that people have a right to the fruits of their labour! Not even you defended their right to their own property! You only thought of it in terms of their having no right to that money, and the government having a right to take it and spend it on someone else's arbitrary political opinion of what should be spent!

Obviously the electorate would MOST prefer the money not be taken from them in the first place, otherwise the State wouldn’t have to use threats and force to get the money! That’s ultimately the difference between how the State funds itself, it’s employees and agents and the detention centres, and how the PRODUCTIVE class get their funds by voluntary payments.

Of course
“Government is the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.” Bastiat.

The solution is not for the State to spend the money on hospitals for gossake, it’s to greatly reduce its thieving it on a false pretence to manage society!

The important point is, the solution is not just to abolish the whole refugee system, but to reduce taxes by that amount, repeal whole swathes of laws that rob Australians like me of our freedoms, reduce the size of government accordingly, and negate the State’s territorial coercive monopoly. Only those who want refugees should have to pay for them – voluntarily - and they should pay all the costs.

Jardine K. Jardine

If you go back through a few of my posts you will find that I am first a critic of big government. We now serve the State and any freedoms we have are concessions. The State is supposed to serve us, not the other was around. We have politicians who say that the measure of the worth of parliament is in its productivity - the number of new laws passed. Say what?!

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The restrictions which government places on everything, more and more make productive activity uneconomical. It’s not my fault that they have done that – I’m against it! The choice it gives to every tax-payer is “either just be exploited, or be exploited and try to re-coup some of your losses by parasitizing back”. That’s it.
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You do realize you're stealing from those less fortunate than yourself with the aid of thugs?
You're not taking it from the state, the state has no money only a big gun to put to the head of those who you steal from to pay you. And you justify it by saying there's no other choice?

Wonderful how our society is progressing eh? You're either with them or you're a sucker or a terrorist. I guess that's why they brought in the anti sedition laws.

And people laugh when I say our whole society is just made up of a bunch of despotic, tyrannical, parasites filling their own pockets at the expense of honest hard working Aussies.

Who is John Galt?

"You do realize you're stealing from those less fortunate than yourself with the aid of thugs?"

Yes I do, and I'm not saying I have no choice. The choice is to just be straight exploited with no corresponding benefit.

Although I see receipt of government handouts of any kind as parasitism I don't blame the people receiving them for the problem because I see that the very nature of the state - a monopoly of crime - compromises everyone who who is subject to it. The only principled choice anyone's got it is to be a slave in a totally one-sided interaction. Are you suggesting that's what I should do? That would leave all the statists living at everyone else's expense, and all the libertarians being exploited to pay for what they alone argue against.

*I* never argue in favour of political handouts including my own, but I constantly hear from Australians arguing for and assuming in favour of every kind of governmental interference in everything.

The solution is not to expect those legally entitled to something to not exercise their rights and take the benefit of entitlements that they are being mulcted to pay for. And I don't think Ayn Rand ever said that, by the way.

The solution is for people to stop believing and claiming that "we" are the State and the State represents us, and for the repeal both the interventions and the taxes that pay for them.