09/01/2014
Immigration skeptics in general, and VDARE.com readers in particular, are familiar with the concept of privatizing profits while socializing costs.A firm, or an entire business sector, employs foreign workers at low wages, improving profits for the owners or shareholders. The costs of those workers — healthcare, education, law enforcement — are borne by tax-paying Americans. It’s a nice little racket.
Privatizing profits while socializing costs works outside the commercial sphere, too. Compassion has profits, in the form of the psychic rewards that come from knowing you have helped a fellow human being. Again, though, there are costs … which can be socialized.
That’s my reading of this story from Europe.
A millionaire couple have launched their own private rescue service ferrying migrants adrift in the Mediterranean to Europe.A common theme among commenters on the article is that people are fine with what the Catrambones are doing, so long as they, and the Pope, accommodate and care for the rescued illegals in their own spacious properties at their own expense.Inspired by Pope Francis, Malta-based entrepreneurs and philanthropists Cristofer and Regina Catrambone have spent millions of dollars of their own money on a 140 foot ship, which made its first rescue this weekend.
The Phoenix 1 picked up 227 migrants, who were floundering on an overcrowded wooden fishing vessel, before handing them over to the Italian Navy. [Millionaire couple follow Pope’s call to help desperate migrants — and save hundreds of Syrians and Palestinians sinking in the Mediterranean, MailOnline, August 31, 2014]
This is shortsighted. There are future costs to consider.
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