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Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

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Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#361

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #357
rayiner wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, it's not fine. There isn't a good kind of racism and a bad kind of racism. It’s not “racism” at all because it has nothing to do with “race,” which is a superficial construct. It’s about substantive differences in people’s worldview, beliefs, values, etc., which are relevant to living with people in communities and sharing a government with people. > But you're making, and re-making, a case for excluding people…

Madison, in considering whether the legislature should be limited to native-born citizens, had this to say: "[T]he door of this part of the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith." There may be countries in the world that don't have a moral obligation to allo…

The moral obligation to allow equal participation of different groups who are already here follows from the concept of democracy. But that does not imply anything about how people within a country should view prospective immigrants. That the founders embraced certain principles because they were dealing with a union that already included disparate groups. They never confronted, much less addressed, the prospect of immigration changing the culture of already established communities.

The moral question here is more fundamental than your over-generalization of the founders’ intent. Human beings have a right to self determination, and they have the freedom of association. You don’t lose that right just because you were born in America.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#362

Post by nhchris »

tptacek wrote: post #352
rayiner wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. It’s totally fine to not get along with other people—and certainly to not want to share a democratic polity with them—based on cultural differences. There’s no reason why people who escaped west to get away from elites should we to to share a polity with foreign elites who think the “common people” need to be carefully managed. Conversely, there’s no reason why folks who believe in rigid social hierarchy a…

No, it's not fine. There isn't a good kind of racism and a bad kind of racism. Much of your argument here is probably best directed to Publius, who disagrees with you directly about, well, all of this. There's a benign version of the argument you're making here, the one that protects cultural and religious tolerance while establishing some set of core values (pluralism, the rule of law, representative government, sep…

> I've got the founders on my side of this argument.

The limit citizenship to "free White persons of good character" founding fathers [1]? Or Thomas Jefferson, who considered that, when freed, Blacks should be "removed beyond the reach of mixture" [2]? James Madison, who wrote "To be consistent with existing and probably unalterable prejudices in the U. S. the freed blacks ought to be permanently removed beyond the region occupied by or allotted to a White population." [3]? Or Benjamin Franklin, writing "the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small [..] I could wish their Numbers were increased [..] But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind." [4]?

As an American you were probably exposed to much propaganda about how the US is a "nation founded on an idea", or similar nonsense. But as a foreign observer, let me assure you nothing could be further from the truth. Did you never ask yourself, if the founders were such racial egalitarians, how is it that, aside from the descendants of Black slaves (10%), the US was nearly entirely white (87.5%) until 1950? That leaves just 2.5% for immigration from the entire rest of the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/03/what-je...

[3] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s65...

[4] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-00...

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#363

Post by hellotomyrars »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #110
hellotomyrars wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> because they are a single issue voter. If they're a single-issue voter then - by definition - they are not voting against their interests. They just have different interests than you. Maybe you care about a million things, mostly revolving around taxes. Maybe all they care about is whether or not someone else can get an abortion. That's THEIR interest.

These statements aren’t contradictory.

The single issue of that voter maybe be the most overriding important issue for them, but it doesn’t mean that the consequences aren’t still a net negative for them (Or especially society as a whole).

To my previous point, they may be doing so with full knowledge or with partial knowledge. They may knows Candidate X supports Issue Y and that is their top line issue. They may not know Candidate X’s position on Issue A, B, or C.

Those positions may have an impact on what they would actually prefer to vote on.

Candidates are not single issue, even if voters are, but they often advertise them that way to limit single issue voters from knowing or caring about anything else they represent.

You can also vote for someone who says the thing you like or prefer but the reality of their plan is contradictory to the stated goal. (Preventing Medicare from negotiating drug costs will somehow make them less expensive, according to some candidates)

To be clear my point isn't to blame voters specifically. My point is that due to imperfect knowledge (Anywhere from willful ignorance to not learning enough about a candidate to the particular candidate straight up lying about things) people make choices in voting that can and do contradict their own interests.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#364

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #361
tptacek wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Madison, in considering whether the legislature should be limited to native-born citizens, had this to say: "[T]he door of this part of the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith." There may be countries in the world that don't have a moral obligation to allo…

The moral obligation to allow equal participation of different groups who are already here follows from the concept of democracy. But that does not imply anything about how people within a country should view prospective immigrants. That the founders embraced certain principles because they were dealing with a union that already included disparate groups. They never confronted, much less addressed, the prospect of im…

This isn't an over-generalization of the founders intent. It is the founders directly, clearly stated intent. I'm doing literally no extrapolation at all: you can just crack open Federalist 52 or whatever and read away.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#365

Post by tptacek »

nhchris wrote: post #362
tptacek wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not fine. There isn't a good kind of racism and a bad kind of racism. Much of your argument here is probably best directed to Publius, who disagrees with you directly about, well, all of this. There's a benign version of the argument you're making here, the one that protects cultural and religious tolerance while establishing some set of core values (pluralism, the rule of law, representative government, sep…

> I've got the founders on my side of this argument. The limit citizenship to "free White persons of good character" founding fathers [1]? Or Thomas Jefferson, who considered that, when freed, Blacks should be "removed beyond the reach of mixture" [2]? James Madison, who wrote "To be consistent with existing and probably unalterable prejudices in the U. S. the freed blacks ought to be permanently removed beyond the r…

I honestly don't care what foreigners think about our fidelity to the ideas of the founders; I'm making a simple positive argument about the clearly stated goal of the founders.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#366

Post by nhchris »

tptacek wrote: post #365
nhchris wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've got the founders on my side of this argument. The limit citizenship to "free White persons of good character" founding fathers [1]? Or Thomas Jefferson, who considered that, when freed, Blacks should be "removed beyond the reach of mixture" [2]? James Madison, who wrote "To be consistent with existing and probably unalterable prejudices in the U. S. the freed blacks ought to be permanently removed beyond the r…

I honestly don't care what foreigners think about our fidelity to the ideas of the founders; I'm making a simple positive argument about the clearly stated goal of the founders.

I've sourced my claims, so could you likewise show me this clearly stated goal? You mention Federalist 52 in your other comment, but wikipedia's summary says nothing about racial egalitarianism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._52

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#367

Post by nobody9999 »

nhchris wrote: post #351
nobody9999 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>at the price of slowly giving way to a new, immigrant population. What's wrong with immigrants? My father was an immigrant. My mother's parents were immigrants. Babies are "immigrants" from someone's womb. I'd note that all humans are immigrants to every place except Africa. Further, I'd ask why you care where the person (or their parents) who installs the side view mirror on your car at the factory comes from? What…

There's nothing wrong with immigrants. What's wrong is the old population will disappear, or be put in the perilous position of being a minority in the only territory they can call their own. Look at Ukraine while it was part of the Soviet union for how dangerous that can be - or the Rohingya, or Uyghurs, or countless other examples. Not to mention it is in the interest of any organism, any living being, to produce d…

>There's nothing wrong with immigrants. What's wrong is the old population will disappear, or be put in the perilous position of being a minority in the only territory they can call their own. Look at Ukraine while it was part of the Soviet union for how dangerous that can be - or the Rohingya, or Uyghurs, or countless other examples.

Americans aren't Americans because we live in America. Americans are Americans because we believe (or should. Do you?) in the Constitution and the rule of law.

Our society is based on those things, not place of birth.

One doesn't need to be born here for that. In making that argument, you're dissing our culture, society and ideals.

And which "minority" are you talking about? The Jews? The Italians? The Irish? The Russians? The WASPs? They're all minorities here. As are you. Except the part about being Americans. But you seem to not care about that part. Why is that?

"White" isn't an ethnicity or a separate grouping. Rather it's just a specific genetic adaptation to colder climates in the amount of melanin in the skin.

What's more, Natalie Portman from Israel, Arnold Schwarzenegger from Austria, Sergei Brin from Russia, Albert Einstein from Germany, Cesar Chavez from Mexico, Mila Kunis from Ukraine, Joseph Pulitzer from Hungary, Madeline Allbright from the Czech Republic and many, many others from every continent except Antarctica are all just as American as you or any other American.

>Not to mention it is in the interest of any organism, any living being, to produce descendants, so any policy that promises long-term sub-replacement fertility is dangerous from that point of view alone. It frankly boggles the mind this is something I have to explain.

And we do. The human population has grown from ~2.5 Billion to almost 8.5 Billion since 1950. I think that covers the "producing descendants" bit.

Because every human is very closely related[0]. In fact, so much so that a member of a hunter-gatherer tribe in the Amazon is likely to be more genetically similar to you than your next door neighbor or mailman[1].

And so, we're doing just fine in keeping Homo Sapiens (the only human "race" currently in existence, although broadly, our genomes also contain genes from Neanderthals and Denisovans) going -- more than tripling the population in ~70 years.

tl;dr: You're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too. Yuck.

[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-mo...

[1] https://genome.cshlp.org/content/12/4/602.long

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#368

Post by tptacek »

nhchris wrote: post #366
tptacek wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't care what foreigners think about our fidelity to the ideas of the founders; I'm making a simple positive argument about the clearly stated goal of the founders.

I've sourced my claims, so could you likewise show me this clearly stated goal? You mention Federalist 52 in your other comment, but wikipedia's summary says nothing about racial egalitarianism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._52

I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't care about the premise of your question, so there's not much for us to productively discuss here. I've been careful about the concepts I'm talking about ("culture" and "religion", both being Rayiner-provided examples of legitimate forms of discrimination). I'm not interested in doing comparative studies on this between different countries; that discussion will be a total mess.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#369

Post by selimthegrim »

rayiner wrote: post #310
lolinder wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a perspective that's really hard for someone in the US to understand. When people here make the exact same arguments that you're making, it sounds xenophobic and dangerous. It's the stuff of Trumpism and MAGA. However, in the context of a true nation state, the exact same words can mean something very different. When we in the United States try to claim that immigration would hurt our sovereignty as a people,…

> This is a perspective that's really hard for someone in the US to understand. When people here make the exact same arguments that you're making, it sounds xenophobic and dangerous. It's the stuff of Trumpism and MAGA. It’s hard for a minority of Americans, who happen to control the media and institutions, to understand. That minority is freaking out because Trump voters in Idaho have a similar understanding of nati…

This is essentializing. Do you think my ex boss who voted BNP, thinks Pakistan was a great country and used to call Prothom Alo communists and complain about Chhatra league has the same idea as your family about Bangladesh?

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#370

Post by nhchris »

nobody9999 wrote: post #367
nhchris wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with immigrants. What's wrong is the old population will disappear, or be put in the perilous position of being a minority in the only territory they can call their own. Look at Ukraine while it was part of the Soviet union for how dangerous that can be - or the Rohingya, or Uyghurs, or countless other examples. Not to mention it is in the interest of any organism, any living being, to produce d…

>There's nothing wrong with immigrants. What's wrong is the old population will disappear, or be put in the perilous position of being a minority in the only territory they can call their own. Look at Ukraine while it was part of the Soviet union for how dangerous that can be - or the Rohingya, or Uyghurs, or countless other examples. Americans aren't Americans because we live in America. Americans are Americans beca…

> Americans are Americans because we believe (or should. Do you?) in the Constitution and the rule of law.

I'm not American. But that's not the citizenship condition your founding fathers passed. It's not even the citizenship condition today.

> And which "minority" are you talking about?

It doesn't matter - all of them living in the US (or any other country) will be subject to the same sub-replacement conditions I argue are harmful to a nation, in the sense that a nation is not just the legal and ideological system, but also people.

> "White" isn't an ethnicity or a separate grouping. Rather it's just a specific genetic adaptation to colder climates in the amount of melanin in the skin.

You're saying human groups were separate long enough to develop different adaptations to the climate.. but no other adaptations? Despite your claim about how similar we all are, genetic tests easily determine geographic ancestry, as a PCA plot of genetic diversity shows [1]. The claim that we are more similar rests on single-gene variation, which is a meaningless test, since nearly all traits are polygenic. Even your claim about Neanderthal genes is wrong - sub-Saharan Africans don't have them. And Scientific American has admitted to putting political goals ahead of science [2], so their credibility in this area is nil.

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3D_PCA_plot_of_Xavan...

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-must-not-...

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