Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[thathopeyetlives]

I wonder if there’s possibly any way of imposing symmetry on the whole open borders thing, in a way that would matter.

[mitigatedchaos]

If you decide to split the difference and make some areas open borders and other areas closed borders to that closed-borders people can live by themselves while open borders people benefit or suffer from the consequences of their decisions, then open borders people will come back six months later and demand the closed borders areas be opened immediately as a moral demand.

If you decide to make open borders contingent on paying off closed borderers with money, the open borders crowd will decry this as immoral and unfair to the global poor.

If you make anyone who comes in via open borders the financial responsibility of open border-supporters, they will decry this as immoral and unfair, because they are individuals and the people they are bringing in are individuals, and culture has nothing to do with their behavior and this is all the fault of those dity closed borderers.

However, it isn’t actually possible to solve global poverty with open borders.  To meet the carrying capacity, the nations themselves must be made significantly more productive, and that means greater infrastructure and fewer children in order to concentrate parental investment.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

2020

Just for the record, regarding immigration issues: I feel that the current rate of roughly 1,000,000 immigrants per year is roughly acceptable for the United States.  (My statements elsewhere might have implied that I thought this was too high.)  I’m not particularly worried about most of the categories of immigrants currently arriving in the US.  I could be convinced for a higher number under certain conditions I won’t elaborate on now, partially because I don’t think they can credibly be offered due to political conditions in the United States, including ideological pre-commitments.

I predict at 80% that Trump will not lower the yearly immigration level below 800,000 by the year 2020.

I cannot accurately forecast the numbers on refugees.  The Trump administration originally planned to be more selective about refugee groups (particularly persecuted religious groups that are religious minorities in their country of origin), so we may see them make a grab for Christian refugees from ISIS, supposing some sort of support infrastructure (such as American churches) were set up to take them.  Alternatively, they may not, and the number of refugee admissions may crash.  I predict at 60% that average annual refugee admissions from 2017-2020 will be lower than under the Obama administration.

I predict at 80% that there will not be a new American Middle Eastern war by 2020, so long as Trump remains President and there is no major attack on US soil, defined as an ideologically-motivated terrorist attack with a death count exceeding 100.  (For the purposes of this prediction, American forces returning to Iraq and Afghanistan does not count as a new war.)

I predict at 80% that at least one more Sikh is going to get killed by some moron in America for ideological reasons before 2020.

I predict at 70% that one person will die from either Antifa violence, or violence by Antifa rivals by 2020, and this will make the national news.  I predict at 90% that this will not be intentional.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

Should the left spend more time wording messages to work on other emotions other than pity? For example, "increase immigration to Canada, because that is the most effective way to increase Canada's strength." (Targeted toward Canadians)

argumate answered:

There is a broader question here: to what degree are political movements about outcomes over emotional affiliations.

(And of course, “being about outcomes” is another emotional affiliation!)

[mitigatedchaos]

Keep in mind that people will see through these kinds of cynical ploys, Anon.  

The Left (at least in the US) has parts that have been actively cheering for the death-by-aging and demographic destruction of the native population.  The native population, quite frankly, has little reason to believe that movements that treat them as a fulcrum for leveraging the identity politics of all other groups will actually work for their benefit, so why should they believe them?  Especially when increasing the supply of labor will increase their competition, not just for jobs, but also for real estate, etc?  For that matter, why should they believe it’s in their interests to bring in immigrants on behalf of anti-assimilationists, who want a “salad bowl” instead of a “melting pot” model?  Who have shown no reluctance to throw the word “racist” at any criticism of immigration?  Who give free passes to actions influenced by foreign religions and ideologies that they wouldn’t to actions influenced by local ones?

Trust will have to be reestablished with actions, not branding.  And reestablishing trust is costly.  The Left must become willing to actually pay that cost.

Right now, I don’t see a reason to believe that will happen.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

What about the American PhD students the Iranian PhD students were taking grad school slots away from?

theunitofcaring answered:

I think grad schools should accept the best students for their programs. I think taking less qualified students because by random accident they were born in the country, instead of people who are actively choosing to spend their lives in this country, does not strengthen the country, it weakens it. 

And I think that the costs imposed by suddenly yanking the rug out from under someone who has been here five years are unacceptably high, and that if we decided to go full racist xenophobes we should at least be racist xenophobes with some semblance of trustworthiness and integrity by making the ban one on evaluating or accepting future students, instead of stranding people who have already built lives here. 

Doing it this way is not just horrible, it is demonstrating a willingness to be gratuitously horrible on a whim, and one of its consequences is that no one should ever again expect that the U.S. government will behave consistently or make it possible to make long-term plans that involve travel into or out of the country. And the cost imposed by that expectation is extraordinarily high. If you care about financial outlooks more than the lives of people stranded in foreign countries away from their newborn children (yes, I personally know of a case of that), you might care that lots of companies have frantically recalled departments of overseas workers lest they later not be able to return to the country, and that they’ve said research and development and their success as businesses will be damaged by the necessity of coping with an immigration system that is suddenly bucking wildly at the whims of an appallingly ignorant corrupt cronyist.

But mostly it’s just that if you think where people are born should decide what rights they have, then we’re fundamentally on a very different page about everything.

[philippesaner]

Also, Iranian students aren’t taking slots from American ones. 

Those slots don’t belong to American students, they belong to American universities. American universities that, demonstrably, would like to attract students from all over the world.

Kind of nice summary of nationalism, here. Declare ownership of other people’s stuff, get angry at foreign people for “stealing” stuff you never owned from you.

[mitigatedchaos]

1. Are those students staying in America after graduation?

2. Are their costs being, in any way, offset by US government spending, even indirectly?

3. Isn’t this position by default against any form of wealth redistribution, since that would be “declaring ownership of other people’s stuff”?

[philippesaner]

1. Some are, some aren’t. What’s it matter?

2. Yes, of course. And by the same token their money and their labour add to America’s wealth. I figure the balance probably comes out positively on both sides; if it doesn’t then that’s an issue to address. But not like this.

3. No. Wealth redistribution works partly by donation and partly by taxation. Obviously donation’s not declaring ownership of other people’s stuff, and taxation is a cost that we accept by making use of public resources. To be honest, though, I’m not sure what this has to do with the issue at hand.

[mitigatedchaos]

1. How much it matters depends on 2.

2. Quite frankly I do not trust that the pro crowd on this issue actually cares whether it’s net positive for America, much less America’s tax revenues. 

I agree that this was not well-handled, but considering that any opposition at all has been labeled as racist xenophobia over the years, I don’t see what incentive the anti side on this issue have to make concessions since concessions won’t get them anything.

The fundamental thing to understand about Nationalism is that nations are the roughly the largest projects where the benefits still mostly accrue to the participants (and their families).  That actually has to be enforced somewhat in order to hold and convince people to cooperate on the project over the long term.  Otherwise the optimal local strategy is to extract as much value as feasible and leave, since one and one’s descendants do not need to live with the consequences.

Nations still very much exist and very much are relevant.  Cultures are different and cultures matter, which is why everyone is constantly fighting so hard to change the culture in their desired directions.  Cynical foreign governments routinely act to undermine their competitors, so you can’t afford to be a doormat on the national level.

3. I’m probing for inconsistencies and expected to find them based on the behavior of most people on their immigration positions.  Do you support Basic Income or any form of state-sponsored welfare at all?  Because your language suggests a general rather than specific claim of this kind.  Limiting it to a specific claim would require special justification.  (For instance, arguing that the necessity of generating the wealth in the first place requires it.)

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Now, it’s true that America has something to gain from foreign nationals coming to study here - specifically, the exportation of American values, which contributes to global American dominance, which is in the interests of both Americans and the world economy (much like keeping the sea lanes open).  That’s the cynical Nationalist view of this and the one I actually support.

The thing is, what the anon is really asking is something along the lines of “I’m supposed to commit to the nation, but are the elites of the nation willing to commit to me?”  And a nation only works if enough people cooperate.

Anti-Nationalists don’t even seem to realize this, which is why they get blindsided by people like Orange Capitalism Man.