Discount generic levitra How and Why I Changed My Position and Focus Towards US Immigration Policy

I’ve always been kind of an open borders guy. The ideal of it seems to have always precluded me from analyzing it closely, while by the same token, making it easy to dismiss even cautious arguments as xenophobic, racist, or both.
In a nutshell, I’ve always held that the problem with immigrants—”legal” or otherwise—sucking from the social teat is a problem with the social teat, and not immigration per se. If there weren’t all these “free” social benefits, then what’s the problem? Problem is, there are, and they’re not going away any time soon.
So now I find that my argument is quite bright eyed, superseded by numbers and proportions. Mathematics, basically. It took all of 6 minutes to completely change my view and also my focus. It’s a video, but it’s not an anti-immigration video. Rather, it’s a factual presentation of what amounts to pissing in the wind on US immigration policy—the implication being that the problem of vast poverty must be tackled at home, not here, and not Western Europe.
The scale of it is so ridiculous that in the four times I watched the video I just shake my head. What the fuck was I thinking?
Now, understand that I don’t see it as any individual’s duty to stay put and work for greater prosperity where they are. It’s their life and I can’t begrudge anyone for trying to improve their lot in it. However, the immigration policy here and elsewhere in the developed world seems to have gone from poor, hungry, downtrodden to relatively best & brightest, and what does that do?
Well, it removes the best people from the worst problems so they can come here and contribute to our economy, leaving those from whence they came worse off.
So, I began chewing on what to do that might be effective. I mean, our fucking, pathetic leaders have been dumping “aid” money at our expense into complete and obvious kleptocracies for decades. So do some of the big “charities” whose executive staffs rake in millions in compensation. All a big wink-wink, nod-nod scam.
But you can do something individually if you care about the problem and its massive scale. And guess what? You can make money doing it.
I’ll tell a little story first.
Way back when, like 2008 or so, I and an employee of mine at the time embarked on doing a startup company—a peer-2-peer lending platform, where I burned through $250k of my own and friends and family seed capital to create a consumer-2-business application where knowledgeable individuals could participate in loans to small businesses, incorporating a sophisticated algorithm. One could bid for amount and positioning in a loan that simulated 1st, 2nd, and 3rd position mortgages at different rates of return…and many other criteria. Think of it like a Kickstarter, but where instead of various perks, you get your money back, with interest, if the deal succeeds.
Small businesses are very underserved by banking products. Basically, under $250k, and it’s personal loans, not true business lending. Above that, banks base lending decisions on the P&L and Balance Sheet of the business.
At the time, there were two startups where people lend to other people. I tested out both Prosper and Lending Club with $1,000 in each of them. They lend to average consumers for any random reason. Our variant was to offer a platform where they could lend to small entrepreneurs, with a focus on specific knowledge. In other words, while you might not be a great angel or venture capitalist investor, you very well may have specific knowledge as a customer or employee in a particular business niche that does actually make you a competent investor in that specific area.
For example, those of you who hang around all the time in independent coffee houses might know a thing or two about a good loan application vs. a bad one. Or, you were an employee of some thing or other and might find good lending opportunities for folks running businesses in those areas.
Long story short, I lost money in both Prosper and Lending Club. Not much, but the losses on bad loans (I had substantial diversity, like a $50-100 slice in 10-20 loans on each platform) outweighed the returns on good loans. This is exactly why our model was lending to entrepreneurs, by folks with some special knowledge of the business as customer or employee. We gave maybe 30 VC presentations all over the Valley. A few nibbles, but the farthest we got was with Howard Heartenbaum and Andy Rapport of August Capital. Howard was bad cop, Andy good cop. They were really good to us. First the pitch, two more meetings for details, due diligence; but in the end, Andy said he could make a lot of good arguments to invest, but too many against investing.
The bottom line, and the chief reason everyone passed was that our technology was too complicated. I pleaded over and over again to look at the success of the many online trading platforms, even for complex options and derivatives—which I had actually done myself full-time for a few years—but to no avail.
So that was that.
I tested another platform too: Kiva. Only put $200 in it, $25 participation in 8 loans to some of the poorest people on Earth. Care to see how it went?
Yep, got back 100% of capital. This is, however, a charity; but a damn brilliant one, because it allows you to use your charity dollars over and over, and your only loss is interest (plus diminishing value via currency inflation), or the rare capital loss which on average is about .75 – 1.25%. So, at it’s worst, you lose $1.25 for every $100 you lend out.
But what if you could make up for both, plus make some money?
John Christiansen and I had a nifty little exchange in Facebook this morning in response to a proto-version of this post. Turns out, some credit card companies offer up to 5% cash back for payments to qualified charities that match certain parameters.
You can actually get pretty good “interest” with credit card cash back. US Bank has a card that lets you get 5% cash back on $2000 spending every 3 months for “charity” and Kiva counts. If you do 4-6 month loans its pretty good annual yield for pretty minimal risk (if you choose good field partners).
He cites this:
It’s long been an open secret in the travel hacking community that US Bank credit cards which have “charity” as a bonus category also bonus loans make through the micro-lending site Kiva.org. This is one of the first hacks that I took advantage of, since if you’re using a US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards credit card you can earn 3% cash back or 6% back in paid airfare by making Kiva loans. Many of those loans have repayment periods between 4 and 6 months, so if you have cash that you’re willing to tie up in these loans, you can earn a decent annualized return, even if you’re just redeeming your Flexpoints for cash back, instead of airline tickets.
I can hear the gears churning. No shit, you can make better than average returns for proven safe investments—Kiva has lent out $785 million with an average loss of under 1%—while helping the exact sorts of people that need help where they are, and it’s not handouts that just perpetuate dependance.
There’s even some question as to your returns being taxable, since generally, credit cards rewards are seen as discounts, not income (but, of course, if this catches on, the kleptomaniacs will put a stop to that).
Let’s run through a scenario I cooked up. Suppose you have a substantial, diversified investment portfolio? What if you took $100K and devoted it to Kiva? There’s even a platform to help make lots of loans in batches. So, you get that US Bank CC, fund $100K of loans with it, pay the bill with your investment account, then get $5,000 back.
As the loans are being paid back, you fund new loans with the credit card while you pay the bill with your proceeds. Alternatively, you could pick loans with short payback periods of 4-6 months, and end up paying some interest on your CC, offset by the cash you get back.
The bottom line is that this is a clear means towards helping people where they actually are, doing great, and making a little money at it, and somewhat forgetting about the whole immigration deal, save for the relatively few refugee and hardship cases.
Put a think on it.
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Leanne Baker December 3, 2015 , 10:17 pm Vote0
I listened to the numbers in the video, and I am not convinced at all. The “purpose” of immigration is not for Congress to “permit” quotas of persons to our country, based on their level of hardship. It is for individuals to choose where they would like to live, and to take the steps to make that happen. His conclusion also seems to belie his argument — if, in fact, most immigrants are the best and brightest and not the most destitute, why should that be discouraged? At the individual level, I think back to Ayn Rand’s characters in “We the Living” — often, the best and brightest are destroyed in their home countries, rather than being enabled to promote change.
Richard Nikoley December 3, 2015 , 10:40 pm Vote0
“The “purpose” of immigration is not for Congress to “permit” quotas of persons to our country, based on their level of hardship. ”
Yet, that’s basically how immigration to America happened well up through WWII. My own starving German dad, even.
Now we suck the best and brightest, and perpetuate an ASTOUNDING world poverty that will probably come back to bite our cush assess.
But, yea, read more Rand. Quote more Rand. Solution to everything.
Account deleted December 4, 2015 , 3:05 pm Vote2
https://reece.liberty.me/the-pragmatic-libertarian-case-against-open-borders/
Richard Nikoley December 4, 2015 , 6:13 pm Vote1
Nice thinking for yourself, Matthew, integrating facts as circumstances as they are above ideals towards preference.
Martin Brock December 4, 2015 , 10:24 pm Vote1
Let’s help them there? Really? He doesn’t say a word about how we’ll help them there. He only says how we’ll keep them out of here, by having Congress pass a law and enact it somehow, with border fences or whatever.
That the U.S. cannot unilaterally solve world poverty with liberal immigration is irrelevant to U.S. immigration policy. We can’t solve world poverty with micro-loans either. You could just as easily post a video with lots of gumballs illustrating the hopelessness of that approach, but such a video is not an argument against your micro-loans.
Jeffrey Tucker December 5, 2015 , 5:52 pm Vote2
yeah, not convincing to me at all. In fact, I’m at the point of thinking that the only real hope for this country is mass immigration. Certainly the natives have lost all affection for liberty.
Account deleted December 5, 2015 , 6:18 pm Vote1
@jeffreytucker Immigration by whom? Importing a bunch of socialists and theocrats from the Middle East is not going to improve matters.
Richard Nikoley December 5, 2015 , 6:27 pm Vote1
The problem is, Jeffrey, one does have a right to protect their life and property, band together in mutual consent, and contract with others towards the same and related ends.
So, ironically, I see your argument as collectivist at base. Unfortunately, the only means we have at our disposal beyond the legally specific and limited walls of our own homes to protect our property _and_ our beneficial associations with neighbors and partners (micro-culture, if you will; we are social animals, part of our nature) is by means of the State because they will prevent us by force from doing so ourselves. Same reason you’re obliged to call the police except in very narrow circumstances, and there’s no rational argument to make that one ought not call for protection outside the bounds of immediate self-defense, simply because the police are the enforcement arm of the state.
If the only means of your self-protection and preservation of you, yours, and your mutual associations is via the State, then I see nothing contradictory in availing one’s self of that means.
To put it another way, suppose we did live in a free society and some small community of say a few hundred tightly knit folks erected a wall an had a “zero immigration policy?” The only real difference is that people are demanding the State do that for them, since it’s literally the only legal means of doing so.
Kevin Victor December 5, 2015 , 7:00 pm Vote0
Perhaps there’s a pragmatic reason for not having open borders especially if you have personal stakes at hand. But it seems futile to think having immigration controls is going to help in the long run, as much as it is to believe the State can be diminished through certain policies over time.
Martin Brock December 5, 2015 , 11:14 am
@rnikoley You and a hundred tightly knit folks may erect a fence around an exclusive community in the United States. My sister lives in a gated community in fact. A private security guard must admit me every time I visit her, and no law requires anyone in the community to host an immigrant. You don’t need to force a uniform visitation policy on everyone in central North America for this purpose.
Martin Brock December 5, 2015 , 11:19 am Vote0
@reece Why would I expect Middle Easterners desiring a theocracy to immigrate to the United States?
Account deleted December 5, 2015 , 11:50 am Vote1
@restonthewind Because some of them are and Obama thinks that bringing more in is the right thing to do.
Martin Brock December 5, 2015 , 12:06 pm Vote0
@reece Which ones? Where has Obama said anything about bringing in theocrats?
Richard Nikoley December 5, 2015 , 12:59 pm Vote0
“You and a hundred tightly knit folks may erect a fence around an exclusive community in the United States.”
This doesn’t address my argument to Jeffrey, which is that if it’s not immoral to enforce a “no immigrants” policy amongst a mutually-associated group of property in a stateless society, the existence of an overriding state does not nullify that right of self, property, and mutual protection.
You’ve in essence said that I’m wrong because you have an “alternative” means under state domination, implying that it’s somehow as good as my qualified stateless solution where people are free from state police, state laws and statutes, half of their income confiscated and onerous protection-racket “rent” on the property they “own.”
But even worse, the deeper implication is that upholding the principles of anarchism is some sort of suicide pact, like saying ‘well, we don’t believe in police force (90% of what they do is initiatory), so you better not be calling them if you need immediate protection.
“You don’t need to force a uniform visitation policy on everyone in central North America for this purpose.”
What you need to do is protect your life, property and social associations and if immigration policy is the only way to effectively do that—in addition to having important amounts of your own stolen money go to support them rather that to at least minimally support and uphold your own communities—then there is nothing immoral about it, and in fact, to insist that vast hordes ought be allowed in on the basis of some poorly understood notion of the NIP, to benefit from money and resources that have been already taken from us, then you too are making a collectivist argument.
Martin Brock December 5, 2015 , 3:43 pm
@rnikoley It’s not immoral for you to exclude someone from your private property, but it is immoral for you exclude someone from my private property.
Martin Brock December 5, 2015 , 3:53 pm
@rnikoley If you have some evidence that someone on my property or someone invited to my property has violated your property rights, you may present your evidence against this individual. This process has something to do with my right to invite a person on the wrong side of some line you’ve drawn, far from both my property and yours, to inhabit my property only when we have identified the specific person.
Richard Nikoley December 5, 2015 , 4:59 pm Vote0
You’re barking up the wrong tree.
Nothing in what I’ve written implies _I_ have a right to violate your rights. But if my only legal means of protecting what’s mine falls exclusively to our mututal overloard, neither am I obligated in seeking _specific_ protections to incur duty to you that he not violate your rights in the process.
That said, sponsor all the poor immigrants you like, support them until your heart’s content, on your own dime.
Account deleted December 5, 2015 , 6:50 pm Vote1
@restonthewind He has not said it directly, but that is an accurate description of many of the people he would bring in.
Chip Marce December 5, 2015 , 8:22 pm
Looks like I’ll be the odd one out (again) and comment on the underlying idea with the credit card. It’s a fascinating idea. I’ll have to look into that charity. At first blush I think it’s a very clever way of addressing the underlying economic issues driving immigration.