Haiti: Shades of FDR and the Jews by Jacob G. Hornberger

[archerships]

President Obama and other U.S. officials, who purport to be good and caring people through their delivery of U.S. taxpayer money to Haiti, have a message to the Haitian people. It’s the same message that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had toward Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany. The message is simple: No matter who much you are suffering, no matter how close to death you might be, don’t even think for a moment of escaping your conditions by coming to the United States.

Every day, a U.S. Air Force cargo plane spends 5 hours flying over Haiti broadcasting a recorded message, no doubt made at the urging of Washington officials, from Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador in Washington, stating: “Listen, don’t rush on boats to leave the country. If you do this, we’ll all have even worse problems. Because, I’ll be honest with you: If you think you will reach the U.S. and all the doors will be wide open to you, that’s not at all the case. And they will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from.”

via fff.org

Via Econlog.

Posted via web from crasch's posterous

Comments

[lds.livejournal.com]

It’s the same message that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had toward Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany. The message is simple:

"Don't worry; we're on the way with boats, planes, tanks, guns, and angry riflemen, and we are going to stomp-fuck the shit out of anyone who'd hurt you just because of your ethnicity."

That's what we actually said to the Jews in WWII. If only we could send that same message to Haiti!

[ernunnos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's disappointing. It should say, "Hey everybody, party at crasch's!" You're awfully free with other people's lives and livelihoods. It would be nice if you got to experience the other side.

[radiantsun.livejournal.com]

iawtc

[ernunnos.livejournal.com]

There is a finite amount of work that certain people can do, and a finite amount of desire for the things they can provide. Desires are infinite, but as you climb Maslow's hierarchy, satisfied desires do decrease, as do the number of laborers qualified to satisfy your remaining desires.

I don't need 100 maids to scrub my floors with toothbrushes for pennies an hour. I have a Roomba and a Dyson. I'm more interested in taking advantage of 1/1,000,000th of the output of the mind of a brilliant scientist who invents a new drug that cures the rare disease I'll eventually die from.

But the population of Haiti is only equipped to provide the former, not the latter. Talking about "labor" and "production" as though all labor and production is in equal demand is fallacious at best.

[ernunnos.livejournal.com]

No, even absent taxes and regulations, the marginal value of adding a new worker decreases, and the marginal cost of increasing population increases. Eventually, those curves cross. In fact, I would go so far as to claim that for most of the world, they already have.

[ernunnos.livejournal.com]

I would advocate compulsory birth control, but - absent immigration - Americans have already voluntarily reduced their breeding to replacement rate, so that thankfully isn't necessary. This self-control leaves us some breathing room to take advantage of marginal efficiency gains from small internal migration patterns. Large ones would cause issues, but at the moment, that's not an issue either.

I understand that you don't agree, but you're simply wrong. You're not alone. "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

It's not about taxes and regulations - it's just about working in a different economy period. Even if you've successfully run a small business in the United States, if you were to be dropped off in Somalia with no taxes or regulations, it would take you quite a while to figure out how to operate in a different culture and different economy, and there would be a period of adjustment for everyone involved.

So I would argue that it is really about the rate of immigration, though of course the total amount isn't an issue, since greater population increases both supply and demand (until we start reaching carrying capacity constraints, which we aren't really near).

[radiantsun.livejournal.com]

I don't think saying this means he's not caring. It just means he's not as caring about Haitians as you want him to be.

[darius.livejournal.com]

My god, does that plane really have nothing better to do?

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

You mean, other than save hundreds of lives when desperate people set sail in leaky boats and drown too far from shore, or die of thirst along the way?

[darius.livejournal.com]

I'd be readier to see it that way if the reason for makeshift boats were less artificial. As it is, it's waste compounded on waste.