Quote from dddooo:
How about 300 million - it's easy to find 300 million people in the world willing to move to America. So what are we going to do if the population effectively doubles overnight. Where are we going to get housing, roads, infrastructure, jobs, english language teachers, extra police, doctors, schools etc. If you believe traffic is a nightmare now imagine what it's going to be like when population doubles.
I don't think it would double overnight. For one thing, if we cut government services to zero, that reduces some of the demand, as that is a part of the incentive equation for some (though granted around 10% or so).
As far as jobs, there have many many cases in history where a government was worried about a sudden, massive increase in the labor force and if there would be enough jobs. A good example was when the military troops came home after WW2 to private jobs. These jobs *did* virtually spring up overnight. It just naturally happens, since the new people have their own new demand for goods and services, as well as productivity to create other goods and services (eg value as an employee or entrepreneur). So for example, if our population doubled, McDonald's would see a major increase in food demand, and need to hire a ton of people, etc. Now where the wages fall depends on the supply and demand of their skills and most importantly productivity and education. I totally agree that if nearly all the immigrants have few skills and limited education, (and English language skills), their productive capacity is MUCH lower. We would still create jobs-- but in this case you are looking at creating a lot of say $5 - $10 / hour jobs.. unfortunately, as opposed to average or better wages. This could be a crippling problem if we still have government welfare.. but seeing as the Libertarian proposal goes hand and hand to removing welfare that isn't an issue. To phrase it another way-- ok so what if there are now 300 million more immigrants? If *you* aren't paying for them, does it matter? They live their lives and you live yours. As opposed to now, where citizens are subsidizing other people (both other Americans as well as immigrants, legal and illegal). No wonder there is hostility. But if you weren't forced to pay a cent to them (not saying you might give aid through charity), it might be another situation.
Onto some other points like police, etc. With 300 more people, property taxes and other local and State taxes will be way higher-- and the states will have funds to add more police. Now here is a problem-- if the 300 million more people have much lower wages (due to productivity), then that can create some issues in the government sector jobs. Specifically, if that happens, then the budget for police can go higher since there are more people so more $ tax revenue, but it won't increase proportionally due to lower productivity-- so the average wages of police would go down.
Looking at some of the other issues like doctors and utilities, the Libertarians would privatize these anyway, and higher demand would naturally cause an increase here. I do agree that if 300 million people came here overnight, you simply can't build now power generators in 1 day, it takes 3 years (I'm guessing). This does create some logistical issues. The price of electricity would probably temporarily go much higher, and millions of people simply wouldn't be able to have it. At first people would move to states with the highest unused capacity etc, but that would only go so far.. I agree that would create problems.
Let's get to roads, and community planning in general. Honestly-- that is a mess even now in some cities, and I don't have a solution here. Much as I wish you could, I don't think you can quite privatize roads at this point without some major privacy issues at the very least, and many of the local governments can't seem to get it right. This probably would get really bad, and not sure what the answer is. I guess I'm agreeing with you in this particular case that a sudden doubling of our population would create major problems in this area.
The final issue would be simply one of culture. Let's say the immigrants aren't spread out from all over the world, but instead 95% of them end up coming from Mexico for example. For me, I don't mind. But some people would, understandably, feel that the entire culture of the country was chaning virtually overnight. Such as that is 300 million new voters, let's say they use their votes to take away President's Day and create Fiesta as a national holiday
(Btw I just went to a Fiesta in Spain and they are really fun). But culturally I can see how it could create friction.
Personally, I admit I am Libertarian / Capitalist, and like their ideas, and I like the direction of this but I would do things a bit differently. I would first cut out most government services immediately, but still keep the border as it is. But then I would open up the borders-- slowly, perhaps over 5-20 years depending on what can be smoothly handled, so that the inflows aren't a problem. Consider the alternative.. at least with the Libertarians, citizens aren't paying the fruits of their labor for services for illegal immigrants as is the case now. That is the current situation. I do see some major problems with the Libertarian proposal-- for sure-- but overall I think it is an improvement, at least if done slowly.
-Taric
Most people are too stupid to rule themselves.