30 Days

Season two of 30 Days premiered last night. Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size Me fame, gets someone to experience something they generalize oppose for 30 days and films the results. Last night, a gun-toting, border-patrolling Minuteman moved in with a large family of illegal immigrants living below the poverty in LA. It was really good. If the other documentaries in the season are as good then it will give Lost a run for its money as the best current TV show.

The Minuteman's argument for his position was that it's the law of the land and as such it's his duty to go and patrol the border. Certainly laws should be respected, but they are a means and not an end. Moreover, the laws and policies are not always right, so his argument is not convincing - he needs to read Martin Luther King's Letter From Birmingham Jail to get some perspective.

Personally, I don't think the problem will be "sovled" until the root causes are addressed. i.e. Use a little "supply-side economics" and try to address Central America's vast poverty and poor economies. (Also, the American government's indifference to prosecuting employers who hire illegal immigrants also means that that there is a demand to match the supply of illegal labour - I read somewhere a few month ago that only a couple such indictments are handed down per year). Patrolling the border is necessary, but isn't going to stop people from trying to enter the US. i.e. If you are so poor you can't survive and support your family are you any worse off if you get caught at the border and deported? Not really. But there is always a non-zero chance you'll get through and end-up better off. So your expected returns are always positive, regardless of how well the border is patrolled. [It's simple statistics: Pr(Caught) * Punishment + Pr(Not-Caught) * Reward = 0.99 * 0 + 0.01 * 1 = 0.01 > 0].

After watching 30 Days, I watched Life and Debt, which was also good. It's a documentary about how the IMF and World Bank screwed Jamaica.