Next up, "Down with immigrants!" and "They took my job!" - very ugly tide of anti-immigration sentiment rising in the UK, largely because migrants are prepared to work, and native brits are not, as they feel entitled to a record contract and a pony.
If you have to compete with people that are more desperate that you, you are not going to like that. This is true for Brits and for Indians.
But I suppose it's easy (but lazy) to make a moral play of this.
Downward pressure on wages is good for some people but not most people. Of course the immigrants have a right to the good things of life also, and I don't have a solution, but don't make these issues more simpler than they are.
It makes more sense if you take a Darwinian viewpoint. Survival of the fittest and all that. In the US this happened a couple of hundred years ago as the native population got wiped out by European immigrants (or invaders). In case of the UK, as an Indian, I consider it fair comeuppance for the two centuries that Brits enslaved my country! And, by the way, I'll have some fish-n-chips with that NHS plan, thankyouverymuch.
Darwin never made this claim, nor is it part of natural selection. Natural selection doesn't select for the 'fittest', it selects for the 'fit enough'. It's a minimum threshold, not a maximizing algorithm.
Secondly, the native population of the Americas was mostly killed off by Smallpox. Though military superiority played a role, second to the pox was load bearing animals such as horses.
Interestingly enough, husbandry of large livestock like horses is where diseases like the pox come from. . . and Eurasia is where all of the world's largest domesticated animals come from.
So, Eurasians were able to slowly and gradually build resistance to these livestock oriented diseases.
Short story: Why did all the native americans die off? Pure random chance.
Not that Europeans are guilt free, they did some horrible, morally reprehensible shit. They just, even at their height, couldn't hold a candle to unadulterated, random cruelty of mother nature.
That being said, there is some sweet, sweet irony when the nations that soaked up the entire world's wealth through theft, murder, and subjugation then used it to build empires on the backs of slaves complain about cheap labor taking their stuff.
So enjoy the fish & chips and NHS!
Pretty much everyone knows Social Darwinism to be immoral and, on net, a bad idea.
>And, by the way, I'll have some fish-n-chips with that NHS plan, thankyouverymuch.
Fish-and-chips was actually introduced by Sefardi Jewish immigrants from the Netherlands :-p.
> Pretty much everyone knows Social Darwinism to be immoral and, on net, a bad idea.
Agreed. Fun side note / trivia: Some wag had Hubert Spencer (the proponent of "social darwinism") buried across the path and facing the grave of his intellectual enemy Karl Marx. It's a well-trodden spot in the lovely Highgate cemetery, and much as I dislike much of what Marx wrote, I love that so maany people make a pilgrimage there and turn their backs on Spencer.
Maybe we should be fixing their societies? Because letting 0,1% of people in third-world countries come and enjoy good things does nothing for their society in a long run, while it can do considerable harm (or good, for sure!) for the receiving society.
Sure it does. It alleviates the problem of the (often) explosive population growth, it brings in billions of dollars in remittances, and it allows future returnees to come with education and work experience which is, if not better, at least different from what the origin country provides.
There's a nice example in this week's TAL episode, regarding Kaiser Kuo, the American-born son of Chinese immigrants who "brought rock and roll to China" (by being one of the founders of Tang Dynasty). I think it's clear that the immigration of his parents was essential for his accomplishments.
It's like expecting every successful black person to dedicate all their time and resources to "fix the black community" - they have every right to do whatever they wish with their lives just like anyone else.
OP is welcome to go to India and try to fix poverty there if they'd like, leaving behind western comforts & privileges.
If I were a moderately successful 70-year-old with that attitude, I'd blow my money on vacations or cars before I died instead of leaving money to parks, schools, or starting a scholarship fund.
I personally feel no greater obligation to help other Jews (I happen to be Jewish) than I do to help any other ethnicity in any other country.
And just by the happenstance that I happen to have been born in 1 country (in which I no longer live) I feel no stronger obligation to mark that country as my community rather than another.
> It alleviates the problem of the (often) explosive population growth
Is 0.1% of the population leaving really enough to actually help with this? I'm pretty skeptical of that.
As for your other points, it seems that they all could easily be countered by pointing out the extreme "brain drain" that countries like India are experiencing -- the 0.1% that they're losing are some of the most talented and educated members of their society. That can't be good for them.
Your other points stand, but only if donor society is in relatively good shape. Indian emigrants may help India but I doubt Somalian or Libyan emigrants help countries they fled.
We are only beholden to our own actions, not those of our ancestors or people who carry the same passport as us.
Because that would be Imperialism, which only the Russians and Chinese are allowed to engage in these days.
That's now how the world works now, and the only way to get what you declare is fixing all the countries and uniting Earth.
Because, rights and privileges (for example, developed country social safety net) is a kind of capital.
what in the hell are you talking about? what rights? they're out to GET THEIRS just like everyone else, and they're more than happy to screw you over for it, as they should be. does that not sit well with you? boo fuckin' hoo.
like it or not, brown people are going to continue to come to the US and work/live here like they have for decades if not centuries. you can't stop it no matter how passive aggressive you get on the internet. they might even be smarter and/or harder working than you, which is a shock, i'm sure. and they sure as shit don't have to listen to your cockamamey ideas of staying in a shithole and "fixing" things they have no inclination or obligation to fix.
learn how to compete or die. in the real world nobody gives a shit what your skin color is or what your passport says. you just sound like a pathetic loser when you moan about people taking "your" stuff. if it wasn't them, it'd be someone else, most likely of your own skin color. this is America, land of opportunity, not the land of protectionist nativist crybabies.
Obviously we can't completely equalize the playing field (like tall, good looking people getting better opportunities etc), but I do think we should do as much as we practically can. That's why yes, I do think we should strive for open borders even though it will be significantly non-beneficial to me as a birth-lottery winner.
Although practically I think it will only work out if all or almost all countries will open their borders at the same time, to prevent 100s of millions of people moving into any single country at once. I don't think this will happen in my life time but I sure hope it does.
And on a more concrete note - if I'll have a chance of helping someone from a poor country come to Germany e.g. via offering them employment/visa sponsorship - I will prefer doing that compared to hiring a local.
You also lie to these people: you tell them that by leaving their communities they will land in developed paradise, but when they arrive they only see themself as 3rd sort, shunned by locals, without prospect of fruitful employment. Of course they'll radicalize.
If you are serious about wanting to make world better, you should implement something like american Green Card but on grand scale. Pre-select qualified applicants by testing (build emigration schools for them perhaps, where they learn how to live in developed countries), distribute entrance permits via lottery, shape their flow, monitor their destiny so you can at any moment prove they are happier than ever, don't hurt the receiving society and productive.
But this is obviously harder than "just opening the gates wide open" or "blaming for the lack of aforementioned".
Moving from one place to another should be their decision, just like a citizen from a poor city can decide to move to a richer city in the same country (or if you wish, a citizen from a poor EU state can move to a rich EU state - same reason why I fully supported poorer countries like Bulgaria, Romania & Croatia joining the EU & hope to see Turkey joining as well at some point in the future).
Not granting them that freedom reduces class mobility, even thought it's not the only element in the equation. We should definitely additionally also try to fix the other factors reducing or limiting class mobility.
But, is that politically possible? I would vote for serious resource investment in a plan for finishing the world poverty but I suspect it's not in the program of the political parties.
We prefer to organize military operations ¿!??, like the current European one against the "mafias" that "exploit" the Libyan illegal immigrants, instead of facing the roots of the problem.
I guess it's also lazy to make a moral argument against Jim Crow?
That's what you get when leftists legislate.
* Articulated leftist principles, as written in, say, the Communist Manifesto, AND
* The fact that these people mostly switched to the Republican Party after the Civil Rights Act was passed, and gave us the Southern Strategy of Nixon and Reagan that basically became modern "conservatism".
Nixon was a Republican mainly because he was anti-soviet. His domestic policies included wage and price controls, ending the gold standard, creating the EPA, federalizing medicaid and proposing an Obamacare-like health law. Nixon seems to support innguest's (unnecessarily partisan) point - opposition to civil rights does seem to require opposition to free markets.
"by identifying himself with a policy whose purpose was inflation's defeat, Nixon made it difficult for Democratic opponents ... to criticize him. His opponents could offer no alternative policy that was either plausible or believable since the one they favored was one they had designed but which the president had appropriated for himself."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon#Economy
I guess the 1970's Democrats were also not left wing?
Lazier than assuming that because by chance you were born in a particular country you're somehow entitled to get paid more per unit work than people born in other countries?
Lazy is to think that it's not human nature to try to defend whatever material progress they have.
Lazy is to argue that the market will solve everything. That the problem is going to be solved leaving workers to compete when, it's obvious that, without a determined effort to end poverty around the world, there is always going to be a limitless source of desperate people.
Lazy is to think that a race to the bottom is not the end game of the current system.
Is this necessarily the case? Average global wages have been increasing steadily, especially in developing countries, so if the current trajectory continues then eventually a stage will be reached where everyone has a "first world" income, even if that takes another hundred years.
It's not chance that I was born in a country with world-class freedoms, infrastructure, and and wealth. Previous generations of Americans made decisions, many good and many bad, that resulted in the current state of America.
I would argue that it's mostly fair for Americans to expect that their children, friends, and neighbors reap the benefits of their ingenuity and sacrifice.
I also think Americans should be exceptionally generous (I think they could do a log better), but to believe that everyone just rolled the dice so many decades ago and current Americans just happened to end up on top is to have a real nihilistic approach to history, governance, and culture.
To put it another way, people make sacrifices now to benefit future generations. I'd argue that it's lazy to ignore the influence of history on current affairs.
For the record I wasn't implying that the wealth of nations is due to chance. I just meant roll of the dice in that, if there are N babies being born in a given moment, and K of those births are in a well-off country, then a given baby has a K/N chance of being born in a well-off country. Which country it's born in is not the result of any decisions on the baby's part, although I suppose as you point out it could be a result of decisions made by its parents.
>I would argue that it's mostly fair for Americans to expect that their children, friends, and neighbors reap the benefits of their ingenuity and sacrifice.
According to Forbes[1], 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, and if one assumes those companies are a net benefit to America then immigration isn't necessarily a zero-sum game.
1. http://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2011/06/19/40-per...
It's a short hop to extrapolate that to the community, city, province, and country you were born in.
This is a moral preference issue and so we can have different views.
Take a less contentious example, good looking people are often thought of as better than their uglier (but equally skilled) colleagues.[1] This is a human cognitive bias, and it takes constant effort to correct for it.
So the question is, would you prefer a world where the halo effect didn't exist? And since it does exist, would you be averse to compensating ugly people for their misfortune. Do you think because they were born ugly they "deserve" to be treated worse/have less opportunities than their prettier counterparts.
Do you think their parents are to blame instead? Should we disincentivise ugly people from having their own children? After all, pretty people have been selecting each other for generations in order to have prettier kids.
Is it suddently OK to say such things? Denigrating country native population because they don't agree with you?
Native brits survived for thousand years so perhaps they can do so now without you worrying.
(Not a brit, but in my country this ugly tool gets applied all the time)
It's a way of lending Narrative to the purely economic nature of mass immigration -- we're expected to believe that it's about bringing in "innovators", or "hard-working people just looking for a chance", or "people who want to make a better life for themselves". In reality mass immigration is entirely about business and elites undercutting wages and replacing the local population with a cheaper one. It's the same for farm owners hiring illegals as it is for Mark Zuckerberg lobbying for more H1Bs.
There's a finite demand for farm work. But when SV succeeds in creating a new Google using H1B labor, it benefits whole country and also creates more jobs, even for native population.
And it does that from time to time.
No such thing as a native.
LOL
Ever heard of colonies?
Throw in a couple of plagues and failed crops as salt in the wounds and that's a wrap.
The massive influx of bouillon and spoils from the Americas were the only thing that kept up the facade for any length of time. Spain's problems were entirely domestic.
At least according to the history books I've read.
This is caused by influx of gold from colonies as far as my understanding goes.
Only in reference to white people.
The locals are not willing to work at salary levels the Biharis are willing to work..
You combine that with natural ethnic affiliations and social connections and you have a smart and powerful minority. Honestly, it's the same phenomenon as my Irish family had 40 years ago in municipal government. We had cops, firemen, tradesmen. If something needed to be done, you asked my grandfather and it happened. The difference is that those relatives had great high school educations (through the catholic church) in blue collar-ish jobs, while the Indian phenomenon is high end engineering.
If you live in the UK land prices have detached from wages. Really my only motivation for working hard in the UK was to gain the qualifications to emigrate.
The UK has big problems due to a collapsing economy propped up by land prices which it is using to print money. This then has knock-on consequences such as social tensions.
I think the newspapers in the UK have done a great job of exploiting everyone's grievances with house prices.
Some countries actually dream of having house price increases, I might want to point that out. It is a way to create wealth and increase standards of living very effectively.
>Print money
This phrase seems to imply they literally print money and everyone seems to pile on. Surely you know at the end of QE they will be removing the money from the system in the same way they added it in. QE ended in the UK ages ago.
Your last point amazes me. QE won't be unwound. Secondly when banks loan on land they create the money and this increases M4.
2/3rds of bank lending in the UK is against property.
Of course, I can't attest to where the banks lend their money if a large proportion of customers take mortgages it speaks for itself. I merely point out this is not an issue that is exclusively a UK problem.
The UK is one of the worst offenders. Without house prices more than trebling in nominal terms since 1997 much of UK "growth" would not be there.
Right now Cameron is post-queen's speech fluffing up right2buy which is basically an attempt to get more mortgages to get more cash as the UK stalls once again.
I've lived in a place where they struggle to get land prices going up and it's awful. It's way better to have the problem the UK has than to have it going down. Even the support infrastructure (police, etc) deteriorates to the point you get disgusted with crime. My car's side mirror gets stolen and even the police wouldn't care about it even If I have to buy it back from them.
In the UK its mostly surrounding London, there are parts of the UK where land is affordable.
I'm quite familiar with the UK's schemes including right-to-buy. Probably not a good idea since its just guaranteeing a portion of the deposit. Makes people buy what they can't afford.. (subprime?)
I might want to point out the UK is doing quite well alongside a great number of western nations (even though they're cutting their budget). I'm not politically inclined to Tories but this fact can't be distorted.
The answer is not to pump land prices by stopping the banks ramping them.
The UK is not doing well. If you look at flawed indicators like GDP, 10% of which is made up of imputed rent, then yes you will be fooled.
"Facts" can be distorted, in particular GDP.
The parts of the UK that are affordable are not affordable as the wages there are far lower. The loan to value in many places is bad and only tenable due to ultra-low rates which the UK is now boxed into.
Really I disagree with every single line.
Land value tax now please, and no income tax.
> anti-immigration sentiment rising in the UK
In the UK we will see a big spike in racism because instead of persuading people racism is wrong they simply suppressed it. Big mistake.
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" -- David Cameron
He's saying "I've had enough tolerating law-abiding citizens that disagree with Leftism". You know what comes after that.
> The UK isn't there yet, but it's getting there
The other way to interpret that is to think "oh wow, this internet person thinks that the UK is about to turn into something exactly like the USSR".
Which one do you think applies? Don't answer me, I don't care, answer yourself and ask what does that say about you.
I remember being a bit shocked by one of my school mates (on of the Ugandan Asians expelled by Amin) saying that he could understand voting for the BNP.
I just find the whole concept of nationality bizarre.
Then let go of it and call it what it is - cages for the tax cattle.