Or I guess, you bounce money through Belize or something.

Either way, it doesn't sound very effective.

"People will smuggle illegal guns from abroad. Or buy the parts and assemble them. Or get a machine shop and make them."

A regulation, no matter its aim, does not require 100% compliance to be an effective deterrent. I'm not saying this plan will work, but a generic "people will get around it" argument is not illuminating.

Well, kinda, but not to same degree. Wired money is obviously way easier to smuggle than physical goods...

In this thread someone said it's like trying to stop the import of illegal drugs. Regulations seem to work for Singapore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_prevalenc...

Deterring what? "Illegal immigration" or "people walking across the border"? If it is the former, then that plan is just so stupid to be of any value. Banning transfer of money from US to Mexico to make Mexico pay for "building a 10 ft high border-wall" is ... wow, just saying that out loud feels weird.

(PS: I'm neither an American nor a Mexican!)

I'm not making a judgment here, just trying to clarify the worldview.

Singapore has the lowest rates in the world. Sometimes regulations have the intended effect.

Candidate: "We're going to build a wall between us and Mexico. It'll cost us $7 billion."

Electorate: "Umm. That's a lot of money. Let's do something else with it."

If that's how people would react, they should react the same way even if we're getting the money from Mexico. Money is fungible, and as much as our hearts enjoy poetic justice, it shouldn't matter where it's coming from.

There are a couple of situations where we would still want it built, even if its cost exceeded what we were willing to pay ourselves. One is if this is a cooperative, non-zero-sum situation: if Mexico were getting some value from the wall, they might be willing to pay some of the cost, beyond what we can extract via tariffs and seized remittances. The other is if Mexico is terrible at negotiations, which is likely what Trump is assuming.

The break even point is around 60k.

Obviously I'm "sticking to the metaphor", but legitimately that Big Bend area is one of those reminders that this "wall" concept is ridiculous for other reasons. That area and others along the border awfully remote, which will make managing the infrastructure and obtaining people to work there a headache. It will also make building the actual infrastructure extremely challenging and probably quite expensive. Not that Trump would care, but it's certainly not an environmentally friendly proposal either.

If the economy is such where Mexicans still want to migrate, there's other possibilities. No wall will secure the sea for instance, unless you build that "wall" around the entire Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean. (Beachgoers won't be happy about that.) The wall does not stop exploitation methods such as visa overstays or smuggling in the heavier trafficked borders. Even the Berlin Wall -- well more fortified than any 2,000 mile could ever be -- was breached 5,000 times in its history, so there's a good chance that even these remote areas might get some activity.

How much is America willing to pay for "a wall" to stop the immigrants? Enough to wreck the economy? Well, that's one sure way to prevent Mexicans from crossing over. :)

Is that who we are?

It's weird that you prefer the people who have broken your own laws to enter your country, to the ones who have tried to go through your lawful process and failed. Where is your bleeding heart for all the would-be immigrants who tried to go were rejected by your legal immigration officers, who similarly might have no social safety net?

You cannot treat all of the world's ills as your own. You may have decided that illegal immigrants are part of the American identity, but a lot of the voters for Trump have not, and are rallying against that. Unless you convince them to treat illegal immigrants as part of their own, it's unlikely you'll find a "bleeding heart" argument to persuade them.

I haven't decided that illegal immigrants are part of the American identity, but I do consider the people not in America who are receiving money to be innocent bystanders (with the exception of drug money, but the cartels wouldn't be stopped by these sanctions anyway).

That was the heart of my point - with a limited budget of resources, you simply cannot help anyone. At that point, you are faced with some philosophical questions - should I be maximizing some global 'goodness' factor, or should I be working for the local group that I am supposed to represent? In the end, the leaders of democratic countries are elected to represent the will of their voters, not to better mankind(unless that is what the voters want!).

If Trump and his supporters believe that a wall will improve the situation for the US and American citizens, then I don't think arguments about the welfare of others(whom they might even view antagonistically) will sway them.

I found different arguments much more persuasive - arguments that removing illegal immigrants would not bring jobs back to American citizens, because they were a net economic positive and creating demand as well as supply.

However, these arguments seemed to be drowned out by the loud, resonating narrative on how evil and racist the supporters of Trump's policy were, which I can only imagine hardened their resolve to get it through. An especially easy angle that Trump could pursue was the disregard of rule of law by illegal immigrant supporters, which I feel could have received a lot more attention and understanding from Trump's opposition.

Okay? So fucking what? Saying "Today I am going to do everything I can to make sure I shoot myself in the face" is also a "goal-oriented" approach.

I can't believe what is happening to my country.

Now is the time for a startup to emerge that makes Bitcoin _EASY_! Easy like my-grandma-can-do-it easy. This actually finally might be the thing that makes BTC!

> The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment.

> Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished

> Increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime

Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=does+increasing+punishment+r...

And eventually the trade war turns into a shooting war. We've seen the script before.