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Comment by willmarch | Hacker News Reader

I think judging any group of individuals as if they are all a single entity (be it through the lens of a particular majority view or a particular race) is discriminatory to the individual (hence discriminatory overall).

In your example (with made up numbers), if 20% are being denied citizenship and opportunity simply because they once resided in the same geographic region as another 80% (with different views), then that is discriminatory because they are not being viewed as individuals but are guilty by simply existing as part of a larger group that they have no choice over.

This is why we screen individual applicants, view each person as a single human with their own thoughts and needs, and judge everyone as an individual and not as a group; to avoid the wrong of discriminating against entire classes of people.

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State policies do not operate in this fashion. See, for example, the reality of importing 1 million people.

The existence of a state pressuposes two "classes" of people: citizens and non-citizens.

Citizens are those who have lived and died, who have laboured and been taxed, and have made the very state which is constituted by them -- and they are owed, by that state, a society they wish to live in.

Non-citizens are everyone else. They are owed very little, at best, not to be killed elsewhere; but certaintly, not even to be aided. Unless you want to divide the wealth of every nation by 8bn and watch all of it disappear.

In any case, to non-citizens nothing is owed. Certainly not being carefully scruitnized under a microscope to see if a border agent can detect a lack of cultural or ethical fit.

And in any case, such a fit can be determined by citizens themsevles. And polled, overwhelming, citizens of western nations have spoken. And they have seen your dice rolling at the border, and havent appreciated its concequences.

THe presumption you have on the consent of your fellow citizens to give what you eblieve is owed to other citizens of other states -- this presumption is extraordinary, obniouxous, and short-lived. And much of your attitue here is shortening it.

What state policies are you referring to? Laws/rights should apply equally to all people or else they are not really rights (are they?).

No, Enlightenment principles come from the idea that rights and laws belong to all people (citizen or otherwise) and the founders believed that to be "self-evident" and "unalienable" to all humans. The US Supreme Court has ruled as such again and again (non-citizens have protections of the US Constitution), and Enlightenment thinkers (and any decent person) would agree.

Your entire argument (and everything after) can be ignored because your premise is not just flawed, it is entirely incorrect (false) and goes against any principle of human rights that I'm aware of.

States are not the creations of the enlightment

I'll await your grant of medicare to the population of africa

Are you saying the population in Africa should not be provided healthcare? I fail to see your point here. If your argument is economic scarcity, then that can be solved eventually (and should be).

If citizenship isnt a line between two classes of people to which states owe obligations, then why isnt the USA obligated to pay for the healthcare of everyone in the world?

Why does medicare/medicaid end at the US border?

Because we don't live in a perfect world... yet. But we should always be working towards more prosperity for all, greater access to resources/services, more sharing of knowledge/assets, and improving the lives of all people on the planet (not just our preferred groups/tribes). Don't you think?

I think preferential attachment and the Pareto process world that we live in, means, that its in the nature of wealth to accumulate in proportion to wealth. And the only way to make the world rich is to exploit that process effectively.

Dividing the wealth of nations between all, even if it could be done, would be ruinous to all our weatlh.

We are a species of ape to whom the fruits of our labour acrew in proportion to those fruits. And we operate that way because reality does so. So nature has prepared us well to have familial and ethnic feelings which do well to preserve our wealth, or else, we'd all be ruined.

You may well hate that, and hate the world and our species for it. But bankrupsy and fables for children arent state policies.

If the Pareto principle holds naturally, why are you pushing for laws/policies to gate keep access to opportunities and access to wealth to force inequalities? Why do we need to make policies that discriminate against some, while benefiting others? (Isn't that antithetical to free markets and a denial of the Pareto principles' universality/inevitability?)

Nobody has discussed dividing the wealth of nations (including me, a rising tide raises all ships), but even if such a thing occurred (distribution of global wealth), it would be a hard case to make to call that "ruinous to all our wealth" (Whose wealth? Ruinous to what groups? What history/science is this view based on? Do more people gain in wealth than lose wealth?)

We are a species of ape (and often act like it as can be surmised from the tribalism proudly on display here) but that does not mean we should idolize apes and act as if we are apes in all areas of our existence.

Nature is a poor teacher of morality/ethics, which is why we have religious text and ethical treatises on how to act that does not recognize nature as the ultimate source of correct action, or else assault, rape, and murder would be legal (unless you deny those are worthy areas of thought and guidance?).

I respect evidence and truths, I do not believe the ideology you're pushing is supported by reality or necessity. I believe your ideology comes from fear of change and worries of scarcity, rather than any logical conclusions from first principles.

Here is a truth for you: The world has benefited greatly from the sharing of information and resources across borders (including human resources) and trying to deny hundreds of years of enlightenment progress flies in the face of all available evidence that the world is becoming more prosperous, more wealthy, more open, and providing more opportunities than was afforded by the protection closed nation-states that came before.

George W Bush tried that.

You can’t export democracy and economic prosperity at gunpoint. States must choose to embrace all those things you are talking about.

Change is painful and slow, that does not mean we should give up on change.

You can’t just change other people who are not yet ready or willing to change.

Empirical observation of the behavior of democratic demonstrates your position is not widely held.

Recent Supreme Court decisions are nowhere near your position. They have given the President a lot of leeway to deport non-citizens. If everyone geographically in the country had equal standing, this would not be possible.

The keyword in your comment being "recent".

The Supreme Court historically matches my argument (which is all that matters). The recent controversial rulings do not negate that the US has for hundreds of years extended the protections of the US Constitution to all peoples that are on US soil (including non-citizens).

It was only very recently that the Supreme Court acknowledged the protections of the US Constitution to all the people born here.

Immigration in the US remains popular.

But it reached a level where voters thought the rate was too high and uncontrolled and wanted more controls.

Far too many progressives support unlimited migration with no screening.

Conservatives and Libertarians seem more comfortable talking about treating everyone as an individual.

I know of no progressive that supports unlimited immigration with no screenings, that is a right wing talking point based on nothing factual.

I do see a lot of people on the right, some conservatives, and some libertarians calling for blanket bans on entire groups of people based on dubious claims and hypotheticals.

It's a hard argument to make that banning an entire country from opportunities/immigration is "treating everyone as an individual".

“No person is illegal” is a very popular progressive slogan and lawn sign and if that doesn’t mean unlimited immigration it doesn’t mean anything.

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