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Comment by dudul | Hacker News Reader

You throw a lot of half baked assertions on this thread but it doesn't seem to go anywhere.

Who should a nation put first then?

I dont see the connection between how citizenship is acquired (AFAIK each nation is free to set the rules/laws that they think is fair) and if citizens should get special treatment or not.

If citizens can't get "special" treatment over non resident in their own country what's the point of countries?

How people become residents and what "rights" they have die to this status is part of the "social contract".

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A nation supports the people who agree to the social contract upon which the nation is founded, citizenship be damned.

Citizenship in the US is a profoundly broken system with a horrendous and racist past, and using it to decide who deserves the benefit of the social contract and who doesn’t is actively buying into the nationalistic and false idea that Americans are superior just because they were born somewhere and foreigners weren’t.

You wouldn’t argue that black slaves weren’t worthy of US protection and services until the 14th Amendment was passed, would you? You wouldn’t pretend like the US granting and then revoking citizenship from Mexican settlers repeatedly in the 19th and 20th century was acceptable, would you? Was the Chinese Exclusion Act acceptable?

A foreign life is worth exactly the same as an American life, and the difference is completely arbitrary.

You're now blatantly strawmaning. Nobody is talking about the value of a life or people being superior to others. We're discussing employment policies.

That’s exactly what is being discussed, even if you don’t realize what it is you’re saying.

Americans are not more deserving of jobs than foreigners, Americans are not better than foreigners.

Americans are free to rule their country as they wish that is basically the premise it's founded on. Deserve means nothing in this context.

Deserve means everything in this context, because I, as an American, am discussing with my fellow Americans how our country works and the principles upon which we ought to rule ourselves.

Those principles are heavily founded in “deserve”. You are watching some infinitesimally small part of that “ruling” process.

Citizenship is meant to limit external actors influencing the vote of who should represent the people of any given area, and being qualified to represent the people by virtue of a sustained commitment and longevity.

No, it's meant to determine which people have agreed to the social contract. Citizenship is not some sacred thing you must earn; simply agreeing to give up some freedom is all it takes to benefit from the social programs offered by a government.

The bureaucratic concept of "citizenship" is just a way for people to construct barriers of hate around the benefits offered by a nation while still forcing people to accept the sacrifices.

Are you putting other people before your family, friends or neighbors?

My family and neighbors aren’t occupying 3.7 million square miles and aren’t numbered in the hundreds of millions, so the analogy does not hold.

At what square footage does it start holding then? At what point do you start caring more for others than your family and vice versa?

When you aren’t the sole owner of the resources being managed. Once you establish a commons, you need a bureaucracy of some kind to manage it.

Like a shareholder company? So they should pay dividends to non stock holders?

No. But they shouldn't restrict sales based on birth / color, and allow everyone to buy-in. The problem here is that people who actually want to join/buy/agree cannot do so.

Man that's some serious goal post moving happening on this thread. We go from land superficy to land ownership - with a little sprinkle of "muh racism" because why not.

Is it about land superficy or about ownership? Can we establish a clear framework here instead of constantly jumping from one wishy washy thing to the other?

You aren't the sole owner of your house either. Even without a mortgage you are not. So if someone adhere to the social contract in your house I assume you let them in to do as they please (within the limit of the contract of course.)

The house analogy makes zero sense, as my house is not a commons (I am sole owner, even with a mortgage, methinks you don’t have one of these), but if it were then yes, anyone agreeing to the social contract of the government of my home would be allowed in or out.

It’s about how to manage shared resources amongst people who all have equal claim, which is everyone who has agreed to the social contract. When you agreed is irrelevant.

Frankly, I would argue that many people born in the US do not hold up their end of the social contract, and should thus take a backseat to immigrants who would come here and care deeply for the social contact in their place.

Zoning laws, property taxes, liens, HOAs. You live a fantasy, you never answer any question in replies and just keep jumping from one thing to another. Completely unproductive. Done here.

All of which I consent to and benefit from? You don’t understand what ownership or citizenship means, clearly.

Yes, you are done.

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