Zephyr
19hr ago
One great example of this being Reagan's whole speech where he basically says that immigrants of the time are in some sense more American than actual native born citizens with the argument that the immigrants (especially the ones fleeing the communist countries) understood this and held a love for the US and our economic freedoms and embrace of working hard for yourself and your family.
This is eminently reasonable; immigrants ... embrace of working hard for yourself and your family are not really what most people are upset about.
Most people are upset with immigrants who:
- Break the law (or otherwise act in an antisocial manner).
- Absorb resources (see Somali daycares, but also like, food-bank Indians)
- Act in favour of their country of origin instead of their country of choice.
- Undercut local labour so that everyone (except big businesses) is poorer.
If you eliminate (or even harshly cut back on) the number of immigrants, legal or otherwise, exploiting the above, I bet you'd see a lot more positivity towards them.
Zephyr
1d ago
Big scandal in NYC recently after a state hospital cut someone loose and they immediately went and stabbed someone in a Macys.
In the US, this is a scandal; in Canada, this is Tuesday.
Zephyr
1d ago
Okay, so I think I understand where our disagreement is coming from (thank you for the clarification on your position); I have been operating under the belief that the officers were attempting to arrest Good, and the action of being in front of the vehicle was as part of the arrest. If I understand your position correctly, you believe that the officer being in front of the vehicle was somewhere in the range of "being extremely negligent" to "deliberately there in order to justify shooting Good if she attempted to flee." As such, (I believe that) you believe that the officer should not be permitted to use the vehicle accelerating into him in his defense, as it was due to his own actions that it happened. Is that correct? (If it's not, please correct me; I'm trying to phrase this in a maximally "I am trying to understand" way, not in a "I am putting words in your mouth way", but I understand that may not come across via text).
Zephyr
1d ago
Either let them shoot you for fleeing, or don't. Don't say "they can't shoot you for fleeing" and then let them game fleeing into looking like a threat so they can shoot you for that.
The issue is that (as someone who does not want to be arrested) I can game-theory them into letting me flee under your rules. That means they literally can't do their job, as anyone who does not want to be arrested can force the issue by engineering a situation in which the officers can must choose between:
- Let them flee; or
- Get into a physical alteration with them
You have stated that #2 is not permissible - so it collapses back into #1, of every criminal must be allowed to flee.
Zephyr
1d ago
I feel like this is untenable, and would simply lead to no one at all being arrested. If officers are forbidden from physically stop me from fleeing, why wouldn't I just flee? Under your rules, they cannot put themselves in a situation where they could be in danger regardless of what decisions I made.
Zephyr
1d ago
The decision to speed off was not set up by the officer, but the inability to distinguish between two types of speeding off (fleeing and attacking the officer) was set up by the officer.
Does it matter at all that she actually struck the officer?
Imagine a hypothetical where I am on foot, and under arrest. The cops surround me (to arrest me). Would you say that in this situation that the inability to distinguish between "me fleeing" and "me having to attack an officer to flee" was set up by the officer, and as such, they do not have any reason to be afraid when I attack an officer to escape?
Zephyr
1d ago
I feel like there needs to be a name for the steelman that like, obviously isn't true and is a fig leaf for the money grubbing that the company wanted to do anyways. Like, does anyone actually believe that advertising is "connecting people to goods and services that will better their life"? Or that price discrimination isn't immediately used to capture all the excess value of a transaction*?
* So in theory, every transaction has two winners; both people only made the trade if they believe that the trade is worth more for them than what they're giving away (tautologically - would anyone voluntarily make a trade that they thought was all downside?) The issue with price discrimination is that instead of both parties capturing some excess value from the trade, one party captures almost all the excess value, while the other captures epsilon (as in, just enough to make the trade worthwhile, but no more).
Zephyr
1d ago
So I understand, you are saying that Good's decision to speed off when an officer is in front of her was set up by the officer in the same way as if he'd handcuffed a knife to his hand?
Zephyr
2d ago
Why? Under that logic, any arrest can negate fear for their life. An arrest is placing themselves into a situation with people who have not been following the law, who may decide to react violently to losing their freedom. If we followed your statement, then any arrestee has carte blanche to behave as violently as they want, as the arresting officer placed themselves into danger, so is not permitted to defend themselves.
I also think that your rules would make Good forfeit her right to behave in panic, if we followed them through. She chose to put herself in a situation that was deliberately antagonizing ICE, which (by your logic) means that it should negate or at least seriously make harder whether [Good] can claim fear for [her] life.
Zephyr
2d ago
Come on, this is a false equivalence. Try parking a truck into the parking lot of your local police department, then walk in while carrying a shotgun. Carefully observe which of these actions will cause more concern. Try to convince them that the real danger is your truck.
Now, try driving the truck through the front of the building and see what the reaction is.
The SUV here is dangerous when it is being pointed at a human being; hell, if she'd had a rifle in her passenger seat when she did this, I'd still argue that the SUV is the greater threat.
Now, if she either intended to run him over or did not give a fuck about killing him, I will concede that he was entitled to self-defense in an unlikely attempt to stop her.
If he had a reasonable belief that she either intended to run him over or did not give a fuck about killing him, I will concede that he was entitled to self-defense in an unlikely attempt to stop her. Self-defense standards do not require someone to be a mind reader, nor do they require that the other person has an intent to kill. It is permissible to shoot someone who is high out of their mind, but pointing a gun at a crowd, even if he is unable to comprehend how dangerous the gun is at the moment. It is also reasonable to shoot someone who yells out in anger "I'm going to fucking kill you!" and reaches towards what appears to be a concealed weapon (even if they aren't actually armed, and were simply going to whip out their dick or some such nonsense).
For the injuries she actually inflicted on him, a headshot was clearly an overreaction, I think most people will agree that letting people grazed by cars shoot the driver is generally a bad idea.
Just for fun, go stand in front of a parked SUV - and take a look at what you could see of the "driver". You'll notice that it is basically only the head, especially on a smaller driver (like, say, a woman).
Part of what bothers me about the Good case particularly is that there's nothing stopping a delayed legal punishment.
The part where she hit the officer with her SUV.
Edit: To clarify, it is reasonable for ICE to arrest her for being an obstacle to them carrying out their primary mission in the area. (And I'm not being cute with "being an obstacle" - she was literally using her vehicle as an obstacle). As part of that arrest, it is reasonable for them to demand that she get out of her vehicle. Her choice was to attempt to flee the situation, which still wasn't the reason she got shot. She got shot because part of her fleeing meant that she drove into an ICE agent, who now has reasonable cause to fear that she attempted to end his life.
Zephyr
2d ago
Also, citizens should not have to cower in their homes if there's an immigration enforcement officer in their neighborhood.
They don't have to do that.
Said citizens should also not have to fear using their right to free speech to express their opinions to federal officers, whom we are supporting with our tax dollars.
They're allowed to do that too.
What they aren't allowed to do is obstruct ICE officers, then flee arrest in such a way that the ICE officer has reason to fear for their life (by, say, accelerating an SUV into them).
Zephyr
2d ago
The thing is, if people had been reacting on this basis I think they'd actually have had a point; they didn't.
They reacted solely as "Poilievre is conservative, Trump is conservative, obviously Poilievre is going to immediately capitulate and sell Canada to Trump!!!" (Nevermind that Poilievre almost immediately denounced the tariffs, and numerous conservatives stated that "Canada is not for sale").
Zephyr
3d ago
I can think of a few examples of how better resource optimization can make things less good.
- There used to be a lot more friction around moving people around; someone who is a top 0.01% engineer might not have ended up with Google or NVIDIA or whatever due to not being as keenly aware of their level of skills. As such, you tended to get more talented people in more diverse spaces (as opposed to concentrating them all into 1 or 2 big companies). By the inverse token, people tend to be a lot more interchangeable in jobs themselves, as anyone better will have gone to a better paying position, so you are necessarily stuck with a bunch of people who are approximately the same level.
- I'd argue that there is less room for disruptors too; for example, card and tabletop games (like, say, Magic the Gathering), or even early PC games (like, say, Starcraft) did not have as much penetration as to what the "best" choices were at any time. A very popular thing amongst CCGs currently is the presence of the "netdeck" - as in, someone who buys the exact deck that the pros buy, then plays exactly that. In ye olden days, it was much more likely to find someone who had simply been playing games in a different circuit than the pros were, and had completely different tactics and builds.
Overall, very good post.
Zephyr
3d ago
It’s not so much a loophole as a central rule of the site. As a rule, we should treat people with viewpoints that are not our own as arguing in good faith, and (in the event that there are factual disagreements) we should treat them as coming from a reasonable place.
So for example, if someone were to say that the women in question did not know that they were ICE, and instead thought they were random thugs, we address it by providing evidence that the women did know.
One reason that it is a loophole is that someone who is not arguing in good faith can make up more stuff than even the entire community can rebut. Most people, when they are presented with facts that go against their arguments, but who do not wish to change their mind, evolve their arguments - in the case of the above, for example, someone would stop arguing that they didn’t know the people were ICE, and instead argue that the instructions were unclear, or that running did not deserve death in this case. However, a determined troll will instead just go and continue making the same arguments in another spot.
There was a very determined individual named Darwin a while back who was infamous for doing this - one of the moderators here (I believe Amadan) eventually called him on it and told him that if he kept ignoring what people were responding with he’d be treated as a troll, and darwin quietly slunk away. I encourage you to look up the exchange if you’re interested - it’s a good example of the loophole while also illustrating that the mods are aware of the issue, but can’t really address it until it becomes egregious. (And of course, as we’re more right than left winged, there is a delicate act of balancing responses - someone who posts a left wing take will get a lot of replies that rebut it, and simply doesn’t have the resources to reply to all of them per se, so there needs to be some space for honest mistakes)
Zephyr
3d ago
I'm actually fairly confident of the same thing - I've been fairly confident since the beginning that she wanted to speed off dramatically, and the cop she struck shot at her because he was struck by her vehicle. Lethal force was not warranted in hindsight, but of course he didn't know that at the time.
Zephyr
3d ago
I'm going to argue against this because I think it's a good shoot, but I don't want Opt-out's position representing mine.
It is reasonable to believe that someone who is obstructing lawful actions (as in, ICE) should be placed under arrest. It is also reasonable to have to use lethal force against someone resisting arrest (not in all circumstances, but in circumstances where they will be hurting others, or where they is reasonable cause to believe that they will hurt others).
I believe that if someone is going to ignore the cops' orders to get out of the vehicle, then drive into a cop afterwards, a reasonable and predictable consequence of this is that they end up shot. I believe that ICE had the right to be there, as immigration and border enforcement is a federal affair. Given that ICE is not receiving on the ground assistance from state police, I believe the best strategy they can do is arrest people who are in directly in the way. In this case, it ended in tragedy; the fault lies with the woman who had numerous off ramps to stop this situation, but chose to pursue it to the bitter, predictable end.
tl;dr - Murdering dissidents is bad, no one should aspire to that. Arresting people who are directly in the way of lawful action is good. Some percentage of arrests will end up in deaths, which is bad, but can't be avoided without preventing arrests from working at all.
Zephyr
3d ago
That's not quite true - the administration is hoping to make it obvious that ICE can and will catch you if you're in the states illegally. They're hoping to set up an environment that feels unwelcoming for illegal immigrants, which means that they need to raid blue states as well.
It is probably to the administration's benefit if they capture people behaving badly, but not their purpose; you can trivially prove this by thinking about what happens if the resistance to their actions disappears.
If the blue states stop protesting ICE, ICE is still going to be arresting illegal immigrants. If ICE stops arresting illegal immigrants, then the protestors will stop protesting ICE (presumably; there is a chance that they simply swap to anti-Trump protests, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt). As a result, we can intuit that ICE is opposing illegal immigrants, while the protestors are opposing ICE.
Zephyr
3d ago
There really isn't - I think you underestimate the amount of TDS there is outside of the US. Seriously, we went from "liberal party may fit inside a minivan" to "a few seats shy of a majority" based not even on the CPC being seen as pro-Trump, but being seen as insufficiently anti-Trump.
If it helps, even Trump believes that he caused the LPC to win.
Zephyr
3d ago
One thing I don't think you've considered is that a lot of right wingers are actually fairly willing to accept immigration; their sticking point is that it has to be of individuals who help the country.
So as a general rule, I'd consider all of the following to be places where immigration shouldn't be used:
- When the immigration is used to keep costs down or drive profit up for business owners (so bringing in minimum wage workers when there is a lot of unemployment amongst low skilled workers is net negative).
- When there is a shortage in resources that immigration will make worse (for example, if you have an 72 hour wait to be seen in emergency, or house prices are going to the moon, you shouldn't bring in immigrants unless they are directly related to alleviating those issues).
- When the cost of the immigrant is greater than the benefit we receive from them (for example, someone who commits crimes, or someone who requires welfare).
A lot of right wingers have decided "no more immigration" because they believe (and I believe too) that the blue tribe isn't going to respect any of the above. In Canada, our left-wing appointed judges explicitly look at whether a criminal conviction would impact someone's immigration claims, and assign lower penalties if they would. The dreamers reform in the US was explicitly predicated on the ideal that immigration law would be enforced in exchange for amnesty for existing illegal immigrants. There have been numerous allegations that Walz and other senior members of Minnesota's government knew about the Somali fraud, but didn't do anything about it.
If you want the right wing to accept immigration, then you need to be willing to make the following sacrifices:
- Kick out illegal immigrants.
- Kick out criminal immigrants.
- Kick out net negative immigrants (as in, those that consume more services than they produce).
- Credibly commit to keeping these standards, going forward.
Another thing that doesn't help is the hypocrisy inherent in a lot of the left-wing positions. Most recently with Biden, but with Obama too, there was an opportunity for the left to reform the immigration laws in the way they want. Instead, they chose to just not enforce the rules. If they thought their position was defensible, they'd push to change the laws to reflect what they actually want to do. The fact that they didn't implies to me either that they don't actually believe that the position they're taking is popular enough to win an election, or that they prefer to keep the leverage they have over the illegal immigrants (so they can force them to work for less under threat of deportation). Both are indefensible, from my perspective - the government is elected to do the will of their constituents, so doing something that couldn't win an election should be strictly off the table. And of course, the other position is no better than slavery.
Zephyr
4d ago
Yes, sorry, that should've been written more as independent clauses.
A better way to phrase it would be something like: When you are protesting, especially when you are breaking laws, you should expect to be arrested for it; if you are annoying or otherwise not supported by the majority, this goes doubly.
Zephyr
5d ago
I don't think this actually matters; her character doesn't determine whether it was a good shoot, what matters is whether the situation is one in which self defense an officer shooting an individual was permissible.
To be clear, I think it's obviously met here, even if all of the following are granted (and I don't necessarily agree they all were):
- The ICE officer was in front of the car deliberately, in an attempt to detain the individual in question.
- The woman was attempting to flee from the situation, not hit the officer.
Even given all that, the death of the woman is a tragedy - a tragedy of her own making, but still a tragedy. Baying for the blood of your enemies is something that reflects a poor character, and is corrosive to your soul. Them calling for your blood is a reflection of how horrible they are - don't justify it by being the monster they want.
Zephyr
6d ago
Did you watch the first video link? Specifically, the first few seconds have:
- A pickup truck with blue and red lights flashing in it.
- Someone saying "get the fuck out of our neighborhood".
- Two individuals coming out of the truck, one of whom says "get out of the car" twice, then "get out of the fucking car".
So unless the video is a fake, she was not being told to leave, and I think it is reasonable to assume (based on #1 and #2) that these individuals were at minimum police of some form, and probably known to be ICE.
I'll take that trade-off; even if you disagree with the authority of the government, disobeying an armed individual and taking actions that make you look like a threat can result in death, so both people FAFO.
I'd appreciate it if the other half of the deal also came through (as in, given the January 6th individuals were charged with assault and interference with officers, I'd appreciate it if the people obstructing ICE were charged with the same). Or alternatively, that both groups are pardoned.
Edit, to clarify a bit:
I'm of the opinion that although you have the right to protest, your right ends where others begin - so gluing yourself to the highway, impeding officers by blocking their cars in, blowing up cop cars, and assaulting individuals all are things that you can and should be arrested for. This is a good thing - if people agree with your position, there will be outcry against your arrest. Part of the reason that the civil rights movement worked was that the police were put in a position where they had to arrest people for things that are hard to consider a crime - things like being black in a whites-only diner, or sitting in the wrong spot on the bus. But an important point here is for the protest to work, the government needs to arrest you for breaking the law, and most people can't agree that the actions you took deserved you being arrested.
The "Just Stop Oil" protestors who keep attempting to deface works of art should expect that they'll be serving jailtime for their actions - because the act of protest is the act of committing crimes in an attempt to prove the laws unjust. Acting surprised when you are protesting in an annoying and illegal way for a cause that the majority does not support gets you arrested is just not examining how protests actually change things.
I am very frustrated by the number of protestors who seem to not have any understanding of how this works; if the government simply reacts to your protest by doing what you wanted, then it wasn't your protest that did it - it's what they wanted to do anyways.
To clarify more on what I mean; if you have a glut of people in a certain profession, then the wages for that profession will be lower (aka, it's a buyers marker). One thing that we saw here in Canada was that we had a lot of positions that were unable to be filled (at the current wage) shortly after the pandemic; this obviously leads to companies competing to get workers into them, which is good if you are a worker. I do acknowledge that increasing the size of industry will provide more jobs overall - the issue becomes when immigration is used as a "depress wages" button. I had the exceeding misfortune of doing job applications shortly after Canada got 5m+ new immigrants (as in, roughly 2.5% of our population); it was a nightmare as every position I applied for had 150+ applicants in the first 30 seconds. Eventually, the industry will be able to absorb them; but it won't be fast, and I only have these 80 odd years on earth. If the industry supports it in 5 years, I'll have lost 5 years where I could've been earning better wages (and as everyone knows, investing makes earlier money grow much more than later money).
To be fair, in an ideal world (for me, personally) I'd be the only person providing the service that I'd do, and I'd be able to name my price. In reality, I have a lot of sympathy for not driving people out of their home because they can't get a job there. People who were born in a country don't really have the option to leave and go elsewhere - especially when they're middle class. What this ends up being is a situation where businesses hire from the immigrant pool, knowing that they are less willing to pursue labour and employment code violations (as that may get them kicked out), which saves them money. The people who lived there before can no longer do so because the businesses have done a form of gentrification to them, pricing them out of the market. And the wealth inequality grows worse and worse.
Specifically with regards to birth rates, there is an upper limit to how quickly women can produce children - and once a country has reached a place where children don't often die young, there are also resource constraints on them. I think it's unreasonable to assume that women would suddenly jump to producing 8 children per woman when our current TFR is around 1.5 or so; even if they did, this still behaves very differently than having a similar number of immigrants pumped into the system. Women can only produce 1 child every year or so (give or take); there is time to see the developing trend, and build more housing, add more jobs, etc. as the children reach maturity. By comparison, dropping the immigrants in at around 1m per year leaves no time to expand; there are physical limitations on how quickly a business can build a new factory, or new houses can be built. As we've seen up here in Canada, the government inviting the immigrants in took no care in making sure we had space for them.
Edit: Sorry, I wrote this while I was super tired, so a lot of the points blended into each other - if you want me to write it up a bit better, let me know and I'll re-do it.
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