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Comment by welshwelsh | Hacker News Reader

The way I interpreted it is- cities and states should focus more on being great places to live, not great places to move your corporate office.

And although I'm sure this is not a popular sentiment, I think governments are too biased towards people already living in their jurisdiction, even if those people are there by mere coincidence (i.e. they happened to be born there). People shouldn't be held to higher standards simply because they were born somewhere else, which is something they don't control.

An ideal immigration policy would be to allow anyone making above the median income, or otherwise anyone who would be an "above average" resident to become a citizen instantly, and the government should work hard to attract these people. Conversely, they should encourage "below average" residents to relocate to more affordable/lower tier areas, and not give them any special privileges just because they are "legacy residents."

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> ...governments are too biased towards people already living in their jurisdiction...

That's a direct result of democratic government: people choose those who promise to work in their best interest.

If you dislike this, who would you vote for? Someone who'd look to "expel" you from your local community?

> ...making above the median income...

Ok, so instead of having diversity, you believe it's best if there is no intermingling of classes?

But then, why stop at above/below median? Why would the top 1% want you in their area? Or the top 5% in theirs? Or...

And why have the buck stop at income? I am sure an area would be proud to be home to an adult population that's 95% PhDs. And then they can split up between tenured professors or not.

Not to mention disallowing people from having a long term home as their circumstances bearably change.

This is so fundamentally not thought through.

Not to mention that people are already being pushed out from their "legacy" communities due to raising prices.

It is not "coincidence" that Chinese are born in China and Polish in Poland. It is their inheritance, their birthright, the fruit of their ancestors' labors. To tear out all connection to one's history by calling it "coincidence" is, frankly, sickening.

I wonder if someone born in a war torn region with few resources and no organized society would have the same opinion.

It is just a statement of fact that the geographic location a person is born is coincidence.

the term "coincidence" is weird. I read it as somehow relying on the idea that first, there is a person (like a soul?), and then, that soul is "coincidentally" put somewhere. Correct me if you think that's strange, but the idea of "coincidence" to me only seems to make sense if the person somehow predates the location of birth. But if that's not the case, as I would guess most of us believe, then there is no coincidence here, "just" a birth that is already positioned - and your nationality, heritage, culture, language are dependent on that birth. And hence, that is the frame in which a person can only develop - after that fact. And THAT is nowhere near coincidence...

I did not read it all as you did. “Coincidence” in welshwelsh’s comment was used to indicate who is deserving of the benefits of living in place X rather than place Y, where it can be reasonably concluded that X is overall better to live in than Y.

I disagree with nhchris’s response of

> It is their inheritance, their birthright, the fruit of their ancestors' labors.

Because there is no natural law that something is “your” inheritance, birthright, or that you have claim to the fruit of your ancestors’ labor. Might makes right is how nature works, and it just so happens that you were born in a time and place where certain “rights” are being upheld, and there is not a stronger party that wants and is able to take them from you.

You can even go further and replace place X and Y with parents X and Y.

I would say that if ownership of land and property are indeed a right... then being able to give that property to your descendants (or anyone else) is also a right.

Assuming the power structures governing the land allow that. See this example for how nebulous “rights” can be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce%27s_Beach

I didn't read this just materially. There's a language, customs, "ways of thinking" you inherit; also, there is an image, there are power structures and positions you're born into. Sociologists speak of different forms of capital: not just financial capital, also social capital, cultural capital, etc., that can all be "exchanged" for other things later (the relationships of your parents with other people, the ease qith which you can get an education title, etc)

and still: for the person born to "deserve" living with these benefits nebulously assumes the person, and the "deserving", were there first, and THEN you are born and by sheer chance, you got it - or not. Again, when you stop thinking this way, sort of "thinking of an abstract person" first, but rather realize that there are no abstract people, just real ones, this starts to feel weird.

We have history to help us answer your question.

The answer is: yes, people returned to many places after they were totally demolished, suffered from systematic resource drainage and were background of inhumane genocides. TLDR: massive scale war is nothing new.

Sadly

But you also have people that do not? My entire parents’ generation immigrated thousands of miles away to various places around the world and never went back (other than as tourists), and it was not even war torn or lacking in resources. They just happened to bet that they could provide a better life for themselves and their children elsewhere.

Yes, and they’re a distinct minority. Polling shows that even if they had the opportunity to go somewhere else, overwhelming majorities of people in Asia and Africa wouldn’t leave their homeland. Even in sub-Saharan Africa just a third of the population would leave if they could: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-mi.... In east and south Asia it’s under 10%.

This is, in my view, one of the reasons america is so culturally weird. It’s generation after generation of the most antisocial families from other countries.

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