craschworks

Why do people of goodwill disagree on immigration?
How do you measure the health of a nation? Geographic area under it's control? Population size? Median 'happiness' of citizens? GDP? Disease rates? Median longevity? Crime rates?

Is it better to be king in a poor country than a poor man in a rich country?

If Canadians dumped chemical waste into rivers that flowed into the U.S., thereby making Canadians richer, but making Americans poorer, American's would get upset. What if dumping the waste made the Canadians richer more than it made the American's poorer? Would it be okay then?

Should government policy take race into account when prosecuting crimes? For example, black men commit crimes at a far higher rate than white women. Should the standard for conviction of black men be lower than for a white woman, given the statistical properties of their respective populations?

How do immigrants vote once they get to the U.S.? Do their voting patterns differ significantly from the voting patterns of non-natives? Do they vote for welfare, welfare supporting candidates more than the native population, controlling for income? How do their voting patterns change with time?

What is the age distribution of immigrants?

What if immigrants agreed to be sterilized before they came to the U.S., would that satisfy the nativists?

Discuss the Grameen bank model of immigration.

Discuss Type I, and Type II errors. Rejecting net positive immigrants could cost us just as much as accepting net negative immigrants.

If the accepted immigrant population committed crimes, enlisted in welfare, and voted Democrat at levels comparable to the median U.S. voter, would we regard that as a successful policy?

Does immigration control scale? If immigration controls are desirable at the national level, would they also not be desirable at the city level? After all, a cities borders are much easier to defend. Allowing immigration control at the city level would also allow for controlled comparisons.

Discuss evolutionary reasons for xenophobia.

How do we change the structure of society to maximize the things we want, whatever those might be?

What exactly should we seek to maximize? Safety? Longevity? Good health? Freedom?
What if two or more values collide? For example, you could probably maximize safety by staying mostly in your room in a good part of town, never travelling, avoiding strangers, public places, cars. However, doing so would severely limit your mobility, exposure to novel experiences, ability to find a mate, etc.
Pleasure is not the only value. Otherwise, we could just hook ourselves up to an IV and a pleasure stimulator and live in bliss for the rest of our lives.
Cultures which did not punish slackers and drug users were less successful than those who did. Their individual members may have been less happy, but the culture as a whole became more widespread.

If individual values are inherently incompatible, what would be the best political
How do utilitarians measure costs and benefits? How do they assign

If rounding up black men and putting them on a reservation cost less than deporting Mexican immigrants, would a utilitarian argue that we should do so?

If a Mexican is forced to stay in Mexico, he is poor by the difference in amount between what he could make in Mexico vs. what he could make in the states. Likewise, the American consumer of his products is poorer

Stricter border controls may actually make immigrants more likely to stay, since they would rather

How much more can an immigrant make in the U.S. vs. their home country? How much would border control have to cost before the immigrant was indifferent to coming to the U.S. Given an X% increase in the cost of border crossing, how much of a decline should we expect to see in illegal border crossing?

How much would it cost to bribe a border guard?

Increased housing costs, crowding, pollution,

Individuals