By reaching a tipping point, I meant that when dependents reach an electoral majority, not just here but across the Western world, political attitudes towards importing workers will change. Pensioners do not share typical (misplaced) concerns about fewer jobs or lower wages as they would be net consumers of labour. Most that intended to move would be moving to a smaller house so any concerns about population increasing land values would be seen as a net positive.

Yes, workers will refuse to pay high taxes to fund pensions but not just non-whites. Labour will increasingly become a global commodity and workers will be able to sell themselves to the highest bidder. People won’t riot in the streets for lower taxes, they’ll just walk. Far from trying to shut out labour, I see us as competing with other nations to attract it. Worker benefits will be slashed as will punitive tax rates.

I don’t see an across the board shift in attitudes just yet. Mostly I tyhink this effect will be confined to predominantly white countries or at least countries with some common culture. In the long run, our language and culture is being spread around the globe by capitalism.

Despite the “legacy costs” attatched to our ageing populations and over-borrowed governments Western nations may well have enough residual wealth (infrastructure, stable society etc..) to attract workers over future world powers like China and India.

The welfare state is busted. I am not contesting that, merely speculating as to how it will meet it’s demise.

On your last paragraph on immigration, I agree — periodic and/or small-scale immigration has worked for Britain historically, but the current 40-year immigration situation has changed Britain’s make-up and has, since 1989 contributed to England’s loss of low-crime status.

Race relations are hurt by the Muslim Council of Britain and the Commission for Racial Equality, too.

I do think libertarianism is best for economics, but when someone else desides to distort the market, how do we respond to that? I don’t think the answer is always to just take advantage of the cheaper produce. Take for example the aircraft industry, Europe wouldn’t want to have no manufacturing capacity and neither would the USA, they would want to preserve what they considered an important knowledge base. Neither is going to allow their industry to be screwed over.

I don’t and never have, and never will think libertarianism is best for immigration policy. Ofcourse if I was a blank slater and believed there was no difference between different groups of people I would, but the fact is different groups people are different and as such there may be (will be) social problems if mixing these differing groups together.

I think Mark’s talking from a position of an ideal world. This is fine, when talking in a theoretical sense, but we must bear in mind that the order to events must be particular. We cannot have a completely free world until there is a quantum shift in the proportion of the world that is poor… And there are loads of other requirements. I am concerned that you’re losing faith in libertarianism as an ideal because of intermediate practical problems.

On your questions, I would pick two but with a revision:

New Zealand’s example shows us what can be done without subsidy not because it is remote, but despite it. If New Zealand is able to produce farm goods more cheaply even when the cost of global shipping is included, then we have to ask ourselves what would happen if Britain were to attempt it.

We already import food from New Zealand even though we have ‘subsidised’ food on our doorsteps. I think this shows that without the CAP our farmers would not struggle, rather they would flourish.

In the long-term, I think most people will come to accept, if they haven’t already, that Thatcher was right to stop subsidising the coal industry… The same will be the case about agricultural products that we can import.

Milk, though, needs to be produced reasonably locally and, ultimately, when the taxpayer is no longer burdened with the cost of subsidising inefficient milk production, they will have more money to spend on efficiently produced milk — the farmers and consumers will benefit.

On a quick detour back to your previous concerns, libertarianism per se, will not work all the time there are competing religions which genuinely believe that all other religions must be false. Most Christians, all Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, Zoroastrians, most Jews and tolerant Muslims are able to cope with that truth.

Conversations about an English Parliament illustrate the community segregation you speak about. Despite being part of the same country for 300 years, the Scots still have a largely different outlook on their Christianity and politics. Freedom to move around does not necessarily translate into freedom from communities.

I am taking this that you agree the market will put natural limits on immigration.

If Britain was to pull totally out of the EU, and therefor out of CAP, but our neighbouring countries continued to heavily subsidise their farmers what should Britain do?
1, Give our farmers ‘some’ kind of help to cope with the distortion?
2, The libertarian thing and just let them be screwed over and take advantage of the cheap food?
3, or what?

Its easier for New Zealand because they are some distance from other major producers so they don’t get as big an effect from the market distortion, but with our guys right on the EU doorstep and cheap food coming through the chunnel how is that gonna affect our guys?
I know libertarians don’t care, but I think there is more to a policy than the short term -/+, don’t you?

Britain is a small country, we can’t import the amount of ‘workers’ you would need, and besides that isn’t the solution as they will get old one day as well, it simply delays the problem.

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Saying our ‘multi-cultural’ community segregation is the fault of the welfare state is non-sense. In Iraq, Sunnis, Shi-te and Kurds have segregated themselves just fine. In Egypt Muslims and Christians segregate themselves. In Pakistani Muslims and non-Muslims live seperately. In America whites, blacks and ‘hispanics’ (Mexicans) seperate themselves into different communities. Segregation happens all over the world.

I used to respect libertarians because they seemed to believe in logic and science but now I realise you guys are the biggest blank slaters in the world, and thats why your ideology will never work.

Mass-immigration is the enemy of integration. It allows people to continually bring in friends from the home country instead of becoming involved with wider British community.
Leftist have got it all wrong, if you want better community relations you need less immigration not more.

Neither will border security or for that matter privatisation, meaningful tax cuts, an English Parliament, EU withdrawal or a working infrastructure. Things are going to keep getting worse for the forseeable future. Since I have given up worrying which party is going to expand government at the lowest rate I would rather think about what could be done if our leaders had any backbone or principles.

There are several things we should do first before starting to phase out immigration controls which would probably be over a generational time frame. However I believe that we should always try to move in the right direction. A good first step would be extending the entry rules currently applied to EU countries, to all the dominions and the US. Over time we should also expand the rules to other developed nations like Japan and to EU border states like the Ukraine and the former Yugoslavia. As more countries enter the developed world we should add them as well. For other countries we should gradually increase the number of visas granted and make employement conditions less stringent. Any person living here should be required to have health insurance from this point in and be denied any welfare benefits regardless of how long they have lived here.

I believe the tipping point will come when the number of retirees ovetakes the number of workers. When this happens we will have to start competing for workers to pay for our underfunded pensions schemes.