Comment by apostacy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by apostacy | Hacker News Reader

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> Put another way, no one wants to be the next Japan. Capable but ultimately stagnant.

Huh? I would LOVE to be the next Japan, as opposed to the next South Africa, Israel, India, Philippines, or Brazil.

Because with the massive demographic changes caused by immigration into Europe, they are ensuring unending ethnic conflict. The best they can hope for is that the different people can carve out their own enclaves and leave each other alone, only having small wars flare up occasionally.

The problems that Japan is facing are a BLESSING compared to the rest of the 1st world.

Nobody talks about the upsides of Japan's population decline. Japan is going to experience a major redistribution of wealth, as fewer people inherit more things. Land that was locked up for centuries is going to be sold to new people. Housing will become more affordable. Already, the chronic crowding is becoming less of a problem, as Japan has essentially "finished" their major infrastructure, and there are no new plans to build any new train lines or anything like that.

Something like 30% of our jobs are going to be eliminated in the next 20 years as self driving vehicles are rolled out. Even if immigration were cut to 0, we are still facing a work crisis regardless.

Does any nation really need any more unskilled or semi-skilled labor to grow? Check out this new Japanese drywalling robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sUJtl1V8A

The Japanese are embracing this as an opportunity to improve automation and benefit from the challenge.

Countries like Italy and Hungry are rolling out programs to offer financial incentives to people that have more children: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36297177

These are very solvable problems, but many governments are only making things worse.

I agree with this. Immigration from low skilled people who don't speak the language is simple not an economic boon for developed nations.

Western Europe doesn't have Foxconn jobs, agriculture is heavily mechanised and you need to train for 4 years to become a basic nurse.

Spending all day on a farm picking fruit is not my idea of fun, but I'm glad that there are people (from other countries) who are excited to come here and do it. I certainly enjoy the fruits of their labour. The same goes for waiters, cleaners, cooks, etc.

Fun? It's a job, not a hobby. A job which is underpaid because there's a near-infinite supply of cheap labor.

It is sickening that there are people from less developed countries that are so desperate that they will work in conditions that our citizens would otherwise find intolerable. You think this is a good thing??

We should be paying our own citizens enough money to pick fruit for us, and pass the cost along to the consumer. So what if an apple costs three times as much? We can afford it. And we wouldn't be selling our souls.

Besides, there will probably be robots doing these kinds of jobs in the next decade anyway. The strife caused by importing a large population of people who have nothing in common with the existing population is NOT worth cheap fruits. Seriously. How did you get conned into thinking this was a good idea?

You're being absurd. It's picking fruit, not working in a sweatshop. People from other countries want to do it. Who are you to tell them that they can't?

As long as the immigrant workers have the same rights and working standards as any other worker, what is the problem exactly?

> The strife caused by importing a large population of people who have nothing in common with the existing population is NOT worth cheap fruits.

Fuck off with this nativist bullshit. I am a proud citizen of London, one of the most diverse cities in the world. I love that every time I take a train I can hear someone speaking a different language. I am willing to burn this HN account to say: Fuck your ideology.

My grandparents came to Britain to escape such persecution, people who also talked about the "strife" caused by their existence. I do not come to HN to hear the same thing repeated back to me.

> You're being absurd. It's picking fruit, not working in a sweatshop. People from other countries want to do it. Who are you to tell them that they can't? > As long as the immigrant workers have the same rights and working standards as any other worker, what is the problem exactly?

Do you really think that ANYONE likes working these jobs? People are desperate enough to be willing to do them.

What you say are the same excuses that sharecroppers used to justify their exploitation. Yes, of course the coal miners "love" working here and spending all of their money at the company store.

Nobody in a developed country should be making so little money, it is bad for our society in many ways. It discourages literacy and social mobility, and incubates poverty.

> Fuck off with this nativist bullshit. I am a proud citizen of London, one of the most diverse cities in the world. I love that every time I take a train I can hear someone speaking a different language. I am willing to burn this HN account to say: Fuck your ideology.

We in New York, unlike London, have not laid down and surrendered to violence and terror. No, regular terror attacks are not "part and parcel" of living in a big city, despite the excuses of your incompetent mayor. Somehow mega cities like Tokyo and Beijing manage to have 0 terror attacks and beheadings. What is the variable between safe and unsafe cities?

> My grandparents came to Britain to escape such persecution, people who also talked about the "strife" caused by their existence. I do not come to HN to hear the same thing repeated back to me.

Did your grandparents come from a diverse country as well? If diversity is so wonderful, then why did they leave? How has diversity worked out for India/Pakistan? Have they overcome their differences yet? Seriously, how many centuries before the British even arrived was there already ongoing conflict there?

Why do you support transforming England into a place more like Pakistan if Pakistan is a place people do not want to live? Why?

And not all immigration is bad. Being against mass migration does not make you some kind of nativist monster.

I don't mean for you to feel attacked. I know that other people who criticize immigration policy might be hateful, but I am not.

You're deliberately ignoring the argument you're responding to.

> As long as the immigrant workers have the same rights and working standards as any other worker, what is the problem exactly?

No one is transforming England into Pakistan. That is a false characterization.

> No one is transforming England into Pakistan. That is a false characterization.

London now has acid attacks almost twice a day now [1]. This NEVER used to happen anywhere in Europe, only Pakistan and some other Muslim countries. Why is this happening now?

So yes, in terms of crimes like acid attacks, London is becoming more Pakistan-like.

London is also turning into the Pakistan of homophobia, antisemitism, sexual assault, and street harassment.

It is foolish to think you can import that many people without also importing their cultural values. And we like to tell ourselves that we will only get the things we like, and nothing we don't.

I am not attacking people who are immigrants. Most of them left because they wanted to escape these things. But if we pretend that these problems don't exist, then we have no hope of addressing them.

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/26/europe/london-acid-attacks-20...

Yes, all of these problems are 100% caused by immigrants, and no native-born person has ever been guilty of them. No, you're not attacking immigrants. I completely believe your rationalizations.

> Because with the massive demographic changes caused by immigration into Europe, they are ensuring unending ethnic conflict.

Ethnic conflict doesn't have to be unending. Often one side wins.

The issue about declining fertility rates in my mind is sustainability. Does fertility rate keep decreasing simply because there are now even less people as time goes on?

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