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Let me try to guess what's going on here? There's a really obnoxious bait-and-switch that white supremacists tend to do (it's really important here to emphasize "supremacist"). Everything is at first justified through the lens of something like meritocracy or "master morality ---look at how inferior these examples of other races are, or look how "multiculturalism" is just "slave morality" where the strong are forced to support weak parasites (since Nietzsche is on everyone's mind again from the recent ACX post) .
However, when push comes to shove, it becomes very clear that their true motivation is not any kind of meritocracy or "master morality" at all---it's just wanting the members of the group they're part of to have increased status for the sole reason of having been born into that group. This is of course decidedly anti-meritocratic.
Posts like the OP's are a great way to highlight this contradiction (I tried something similar with this question posted on the old site). If you're actually going to judge some people as superior to others because of their achievement and greatness, no reasonable judgement is going to come out the way white supremacists (and racialists more generally) say it will. It really emphasizes that they have no basis for their positions besides naked, defecting-in-the-prisoner's-dilemma selfishness.
Of course, all the liberals hate the argument because you're judging some people as inherently worth more than others and all the racial conservatives hate it because the judgement is actually by merit instead of what they want: arbitrarily putting the group they were born into on top. See also the Nietzsche article's description (section X) of why everyone gets mad a Richard Hanania despite him being the only actual "honest-to-goodness Nietzschean master moralist".
In summary, think of this as "Ok, Mr. white supremacist, I'll grant you your stated motivation that we should follow some kind of 'master morality' and judge some people as superior and therefore of greater worth than others, let's see where that actually takes us. Oh, it should actually make you sound like Richard Hanania, supporting skilled immigration and all, instead of whatever you are. You really don't have any grounding in your policy preferences besides naked selfishness in favor of your birth group do you?". Whether the OP actually believes that you should rank people this way is less interesting.
Neither master morality nor slave morality nor selfishness have anything to do with it. I expect to be treated differently in my own house compared to the plumber who comes over to fix the taps. If my mother suddenly started calling the plumber her son, then gave me a fiver and threw me out onto the street, I'd be horrified. Who wouldn't?
If I went to Italy, or Bangladesh, I wouldn't expect to be treated like a native because I'm not one. If I stay in the (foreign) country I'm in now, I will never become a CEO because they want local companies to be owned by local businessmen, and that's fine, that's the deal. Likewise if I move to a village in Derbyshire or something.
This is sort of my point: if someone is able to positively contribute to the country they immigrate to, integrate well into the social fabric, be involved with the local community, etc, then it's their country too (I'm not going to use your "house" framing since that manipulatively plays on intuitions about small family groups that do not at all apply to countries of millions). You judge people by their actions instead of where they arbitrarily happened to be born.
Of course someone with OP's absurd level of contempt for such a large fraction of his country's population is at the very least not integrating well into the social fabric. However there are many other people that satisfy all the above requirements that you would arbitrarily exclude to their and your own country's loss.
You are explicitly rejecting any sort of meritocracy here---is that actually what you mean to do? It is complete nonsense to have a privileged class of "natives" who through no hard work of their own are forever in a separate superior class that is locked out to everyone else.
(@jeroboam, look how quickly we get someone saying that all immigrants, even the positively contributing ones, should be forever treated as inferior)
I wouldn't say it's complete nonsense. No filter will ever be perfect, so if you allow mass migration with naturalisations and descendant-of-immigrants citizenship, you are likely to see some level of cultural/political supplantation. That makes immigration potentially a win-lose, with the "lose" being the marginal native voter agreeing to it who values culture over economy. Having no naturalisations for people from different cultures might be enough to make that a win-win and get the immigration legalised... at least, assuming that it's not reneged on by Parfit's hitchhiker.
I might not be fully sold on this logic, but there's an argument there.
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This is a straightforward clash of worldviews. I have a positive sense of my people as a people with a thousand years of shared history and shared culture. Clearly you don’t feel the same and neither of us are going to argue the other into their favoured moral intuitions. I am not manipulatively trying to sneak in inappropriate intuitions to win an internet argument, I am describing my sincere opinions.
We literally have the words ‘homeland’ and ‘motherland’, so I’m hardly the first to feel this way.
Again, you are unintentionally trying to force my reply into your preferred moral framework. Superiority and inferiority are entirely irrelevant. Many migrants are clearly superior to at least some native British on all counts, but that doesn’t make them native. In many cultures, guests are treated with a solicitude greater than family, but they’re still guests and expected to behave appropriately. Real relationships with real people cannot be ranked on a strict 1D scale.
If we’re talking bad analogies, the idea that if you don’t import literally every person in the world who is better than your stupidest native person, you are basically like a nepotist hiring his brother seems very tortured to me. This is the reason I stopped being a liberal - it is absolutely incapable of considering the actions of people at any scale other than the individual.
No, I’m not. Saying that because I don’t want mass immigration (>50k people a year) I would be happy with selecting people for jobs at random is a big leap of logic.
Look, clearly we aren’t going to agree, because our axioms are too different, but we can at least try to understand each other. If you genuinely believe that any group feeling on a larger scale than family can only be based on selfishness at best and bigotry at worst, then obviously you’re going to end up against nativism. However, try suspending that assumption for a moment and see what you get.
Ok, let's try this if you're interested in discussing at an annoyingly meta level: I don't see this belief
as an axiom, but rather a necessary conclusion from deeper principles justifying morality. Specifically, I 100% agree with the very end of this article
Scott Alexander of course always says things way more eloquently than I can. The (admittedly extreme) individualism you're calling out isn't an axiom, rather, at our current level of technological development, it's the best way to achieve all the good things---to exalt and glorify civilization, etc. See here and ymeskhout's broader point in the original post.
Actually that helps me understand you a lot better, thank you.
I agree with all of this. The thing is, my shining example of all that we could be is Victorian Britain circa 1850, which clearly involved individualism but also religion and a profound sense of who we were as a people. I'm not saying it was perfect, but it was pretty damn good, and could have been a lot better if we'd had modern technology and levels of economic development.
Now, in your linked comment you basically say that times change and the latter things resulted from the 20th century pivot towards extreme individualism. I used to think so too, but it no longer seems self-evident to me. The rise of countries like China (which did badly under full communism but OTOH pretty clearly hasn't embraced liberal individualism now) on the one hand and the decay of Britain / Europe / US despite those countries not becoming measurably less individualistic has muddied the individualism <-> prosperity relationship considerably in my eyes.
You might also say that you're primarily in favour of full individualistic meritocracy rather than individualism per-se. Tautologically, getting the most effective possible person for the job is most effective, at least on an individual-level, short-term scale. Whether that's true on a longer time scale, I don't know. My sensibilities are affronted by blatant nepotism and discrimination(*) but at the same time I think a big part of the dysfunction that Western societies have gone through in the last few decades has been essentially a sublimated cry of despair on behalf of middle-class people who are exhausted by the perpetual struggle not to fall from their current position and resentful of the constant pressure to strive for positions they can't realistically achieve. I suspect the majority of people were mostly happier with more structured expectations and a somewhat more rigid social structure. (I would be interested to know how you think things will end up: do you envision a natural slackening of the rat race one day, or a continued and perpetual struggle? If the latter, the resultant technological progress and prosperity may not be worth the candle.)
So I think I see where you're coming from, but I broadly disagree on how we get there and how adaptive modern liberal globalism is. I think we need a mostly-homogenous, high human capital society with a relatively but not completely inflexible social structure, where it's possible for the most intelligent people to rise in rank and to move around but doing so is neither common nor expected.
To return to our original point of contention, I also have a strong sense of my people as a people, and I care about maintaining my homeland's culture. 20 years ago, when I thought that liberal globalism really was hugely beneficial, I pushed those feelings down and supported mass immigration because I thought it would be worth it. Now, it seems very obvious that mass immigration wasn't and isn't worth it, and so I strongly oppose mass immigration. Discussing this with people, I was horrified to find that many people who I thought were likewise patriotic pragmatists aren't - some actually do regard people as completely fungible, and others support mass immigration in order to destroy a traditional English culture that they despise.
(*) For me, this depends on scale. Only considering your friends and family for a job is very bad, only considering those in your local church is pretty bad, only considering those within 100 miles is understandable most of the time, only considering those in your country is basically fine. 60 million is a big pool.
In your linked comment, you talk about Von Neumann, Einstein, and Edison; I'm happy to let the few thousand literal geniuses in the world go wherever they like. Say, those with IQ > 140 if you want something quantitative.
I'm going to first go even more annoyingly meta: I'm not so happy with this sentence because it seems to be framed as just a personal preference that can't really be justified by more than "I personally like it". Everyone sort of has "inner values" based on such idiosyncratic preferences, but it always feels to me very morally wrong to try to argue with others by nakedly stating them (in harsher words, this is what I called "naked selfishness" before). Rather, you ought to find universal reasons that work for everyone---either extremely compelling "poetry" to convince others to have your same idiosyncratic preferences, or better, links to universal values like reducing suffering. Obviously you have a lot of these universal reasons which are explained more later in the post, so this is a nitpick. Also obviously, I have nakedly selfish reasons for preferring individualistic meritocracy since it gets close to my shining example of something like early 2010's San Francisco Bay Area (before housing availability/infrastructure issues really started kicking in). However, if I can't find universal reasons to support it, I should seriously question whether this preference is reasonable. At the very least, I should never expect them to be compelling to anyone else and keep them to myself.
So now lets get into the universal reasons.
I don't have much personal experience with Britain/Europe, but I don't really see much decay in the US, not coincidentally, the country where individualistic meritocracy is the strongest. Particularly in technology, the US continues to produce world-changing breakthrough after breakthrough---AI systems, fracking, mRNA vaccines, etc. Though it's hard to feel this because of relative status effects and short memories, people in the US have more than they ever used to---bigger houses, better cars, more variety at the grocery store, better entertainment, etc. It's also not a coincidence that the technological breakthroughs in the US come from its most individualistic, diverse, and open areas like San Francisco or Cambridge, MA.
I would even say that the most compelling explanation for decay in Europe is actually this attitude, which is far more prevalent there:
This promotes a sort of closed-mindedness and resistance to change. If you want scientific and technological progress, you need novel ideas. If you want novel ideas, you need to be tolerant of weirdos, immigrants, and outsiders. Conversely, if you close yourself off to the unusual socially, you're also going to lose the drive to create the new technologically---"why do we need more, our village is good as it is!".
Finally, 60 million is not a big pool at all. I'm in math, and the median best mathematician from a region of 60 million doesn't hold a candle to the world's best. Furthermore, agglomeration effects are really important for new ideas so it makes a big difference if one country can concentrate high-performers in one place. I guess if you're making this exception:
then it's not so bad (though 145 IQ is 3 standard deviations which is on the order of magnitude of 1/1000 people so there are around 10 million of them in the world. This is smartest kid in your year in your school district level, not world-changing genius).
I think this is the most compelling argument against my point. As far as naked selfishness goes, I much prefer the rat race since it pushes me to achieve much greater things than I would otherwise. At some level, you can justify it in this way: sacrifices we put up with currently to make the future better. However, I think a much better justification is that the people happy with the rigid social structure were those on top. For everyone else, being at the bottom is even worse if you're forever stuck there and there's nothing you can do about it. Having hope and agency over your life is really important for happiness, and if sacrificing the top 10% to stress is worth it to give this to the bottom 90%, then that's a worthwhile trade. I realize though I might just be typical-minding here---maybe as you say the chance to rise makes most people more stressed and unhappy than being stable in even a pretty low place.
Either way, once society is wealthy enough that everyone's non-status needs are met, I expect the rat race to eventually resolve itself by splitting into a million parallel races so that everyone can feel high-status by being in the top 1% of something---some niche video game, sport, academic field, etc.
As the final point:
Do you have universal reasons why maintaining your homeland's culture (in more of a sense than various minority groups are able to maintain their cultures within US-style multiculturalism) is important? I think there's something around monocultures being bad---like you can argue that my vision of progress coming from all the new ideas from mixing cultures is sort of a dead end since it won't work anymore once everything is mixed and homogenized. Again, however, I think US-style multiculturalism resolves this issue pretty well.
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Also, for the sake of clarity I would like to state that I believe the optimum level of immigration is not zero. I sympathise with the above people, and would like to take some of them.
However, I do not believe it follows that, because taking in any given one of these people would benefit the country, taking all of them in their millions would. I believe that the optimal proportion of non-natives in society is approximately 1-2%. Enough to act as grit in the national oyster, but not to change its character.
We are taking far, far more than that and so I currently oppose immigration.
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Well, this isn't true. My brother arbitrarily happened to be born the same parents as me, but that fact plays a much stronger role in our relationship than any other achievements of his.
I don't think you can take a particular Motte poster's position on immigration as particularly emblematic of broader societal consensus.
You continue to use this bad analogy equating interactions with small, <Dunbar number groups with countries of tens of millions, so lets go into more detail here. In your social life you can judge people by all kinds of arbitrary things that made them closer to you. However, you can't do that in professional settings where you're interacting with larger groups of people. For example, if you're organizing a party, it's ok to invite your brother over someone else just because they're your brother. If you're an HR person a big company, it's not ok to hire them for a job over someone else for just that reason.
This is a huge part of the western value of professionalism.
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This explanation doesn't match reality. In the US and the UK, many minorities have incomes which far exceed those of the main genetic stock. And there is very little outrage about this. To a first approximation, no one is mad about all the Asians and Jews who came to America and immediately vaulted to the top of the status ladder.
People are angry about the immigrants who commit crimes and just make the country a shittier place generally.
Sometimes, it really is that simple.
It really isn't just this, however deeply I wish it were. I encourage you to try writing something defending skilled immigration on this forum and see what sorts of responses you get.
Hey! I thought you liked my reply!
Unfortunately, that conversation was more the exception than the rule, not to mention that there seemed to be an easy compromise resolution that didn't harm either of our conflicting values.
There are definitely enough other posters here that do not produce very good replies.
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One our mods is a skilled migrant from India and his posts about his struggle get massive upvotes.
Some professions and peoples are simply seen as net accretive to a society, and people trust their gut instincts on who is a decent fit. Doctors are always welcome, fruit pickers and garbagemen flip on either side, landlord 'investors' are parasites, foreign preachers are threats.
More than anything else though, humility is expected. No one expects effusive genuflection and simpering from foreigners, but sneering entitled assholes are unpopular regardless of origin. Irish travelers are probably more unpopular than jihadis, but that doesn't mean some sneering IIM money mover disparaging the locals will be ignored when the purge comes. Doctor Human will have people of note standing up for him, the parasite coterie will be thrown to the grinder regardless of origin.
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Oh hi, I was just looking at this absolute clusterfuck of a situation after arriving in Scotland and wondering whether it was worth wading in while jet-lagged
You're right. I've written many a word about my desire to emigrate from India, and I would say that almost 95% of the feedback I've gotten was supportive. In fact I'd go so far as to say that the support of pseudonymous strangers on this niche internet forum made a great deal of difference, especially when I was at my lowest.
I would say that people are more inclined to be nice and welcoming to me than the modal immigrant. I'm well spoken, clearly preferring the way most of the Anglosphere or the West works to the point I decry most aspects of my own country and, as @Forgotpassword points out, a medical professional is a rather sympathetic figure. How many people want fewer doctors around? (The answer is existing doctors, but their power only goes so far).
I hardly think the West or its denizens are literally perfect, but they're still a gross improvement over how I've spent most of my life, and a very important difference between me and the Count is that I don't bite the hand that feeds.
I have absolutely no desire to see the West become more like like the Subcontinent. I'd rather not see a flood of unskilled immigrants bring the welfare system to its knees, or cause a breakdown of the religious tolerance and high trust a place is known for. I'm perfectly content with the existing British elite, and were they to gradually admit foreigners into their ranks, I'd much rather they be westernized by the time they hold power rather than nakedly bringing in the mores and behaviors of their home nations.
All I can really say is that people are a great deal more welcoming to a would-be immigrant when they're not actively sneering at them. Of course, Count makes a great deal more money than I do and is effectively unimpeachable thanks to Western norms of freedom of speech, so the reader is welcome to decide who's in the right here, or who is being rewarded for it. I just consider it an immense privilege to be let in here in the first place, and I'd rather not make people regret that decision.
I would say that I don't bite the hand that feeds me either. In fact this is a charge I would lay at the feet of the lower classes rather than apply to myself. They are the ones who firstly live off the taxes people like me pay and then instead of displaying gratitude towards us instead come out and say we need to tax the rich more. End result is that not only do we fund their lifestyle but we also continually get told that we aren't doing enough!
I don't think at all the that lower classes of the UK feed me in any way whatsoever. It's amazing how little value I get in the UK for how much taxes I pay. It's significantly worse than mainland Europe too where at least if you are a high earner and you get laid off you're given a big portion of your salary (think 70%+) for a period of time by the government until you can find a new job. The idea there is that because you put in more previously, now you are entitled to get more out of it. They have a contributory system.
The UK on the other hand has a redistributive system. My reward for losing my highly paid job here is that due to having more than £16,000 in savings I am not even eligible for the standard benefit the unemployed get in the UK! Sure you can say I benefit from living in a modern well run state but there's nothing particular to the UK's people or culture that gives rise to that. I would benefit in much the same way were I living in Singapore, the UAE or Japan all of which have very different social systems.
What I do benefit from in the UK's global tier financial prowess but that has nothing to do with the common man who if anything is envious about our success and keeps trying to bring us down a peg. The structures that enable me to have the job and earnings I have are the product of elites, not the proles.
Religious tolerance I agree is good. Trust though, as argued by Bryan Caplan in his Open Borders book, is highly overrated. There are clever ways around it that if you're smart enough to navigate mean you can live basically similar lives in a low trust environment as you do in a high trust one.
I want to see the welfare system destroyed, it's corpse burned, the ashes grindered and launched into the sun. Western whites won't see sense through reasoned argumentation on why the welfare system is a capital-B Bad thing for humanity and I think bringing huge amounts of low tier immigrants with very different beliefs and lifestyles until they viscerally feel disgust at their taxes going to support the degeneracy is the best way to get it dismantled (note: this is not to say these people are more degenerate than low tier westerners, it's just a different kind of degeneracy that westerners won't be as accepting of).
Free Speech is amazing. I only wish we had something more like what the Americans do in the UK. Truth be told my belief system is very similar to that of the early Liberals of the 18th Century: it's fundamentally Western in origin but very different from the current zeitgeist in the West.
Isn't a lot of this the reason for the rioting, though? The local untermensch are frustrated by the decision of their 'betters' to import foreign untermensch who make their untermensching lives less pleasant (and frequently are the beneficiaries of programs and efforts to integrate and advance the foreigners that locals don't have access to) whilst fighting for resources.
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This comment makes me vaguely uncomfortable.
On one hand, sure, someone who has such a deep level of contempt for a large percentage of a country's population probably should not be welcomed into that country. However large of a salary they earn, they're not going to be contributing positively to the welfare of people they more-or-less think are subhuman.
On the other hand, immigrants that do positively contribute on net in all aspects of society (i.e. not just monetarily) deserve to be welcomed. From the inside view of an individual person, it's morally commendable to always be grateful for what you have and not think you deserve anything. However, from an outside view, you shouldn't expect that high moral standard from others who do actually deserve the welcome.
And sometimes its just so satisfying to see white supremacist rhetoric about certain groups turned back on them this eloquently. The whole idea of judging large classes of people as subhuman and worthless is absolutely despicable, but sometimes you just want to say, "ok fine, I'm done with this, let's just accept your premise that we should do so. Wow, the 'worthless' groups aren't actually who you thought they were. Look at that, guess it's not such a good idea for you after all".
Why would it make you vaguely uncomfortable? As far as I'm concerned self_made_human's attitudes are perfectly valid, and should really be the norm for all immigrants. Is it the deference for white people that makes you feel uncomfortable?
Sorry, should've explained this more: basically, you're asking for people to shoulder an additional burden for the sole reason of where they happened to be born, something that was completely out of their control. Furthermore, this burden isn't some temporary thing, but forever---the skilled immigrant always has a responsibility to feel grateful and not believe they deserve things natives do and nothing they do over their entire life can change this.
I don't like this unegalitarian implication.
I do not believe that gratitude is a burden. Also, the immigrant by virtue of their citizenship is entitled to the full rights that that citizenship affords. I don't think its fair to say that conservatives or self_made_human don't believe that lawful immigrants don't deserve things that natives do, given that they've followed the appropriate pathway and contribute to the native's land.
My expectation for anyone who lives in western countries is to be grateful for that privilege, native or immigrant. As far as I am concerned, I am being egalitarian when I expect immigrants to feel grateful; I have the same expectations of them that I do for natives.
Broadly speaking, I think you're seeing a deference or obeisance from self_made_human that simply is not there. His gratitude (or any immigrants gratitude) does not preclude him from enjoying the fruits of western society. He explicitly states that he wants to move to western society to enjoy its benefits. I'd even say that many immigrants (professional ones at least) do not particularly care if they are welcomed or not; they just care about living and enjoying western society itself. The sense of immigrants deserving something is in my opinion non-sensical. Immigrants immigrate to better themselves, not to bless the natives with their contributions; expecting natives to be deferential to immigrants just foments division and resentment.
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For a typical person, I think they'd be uncomfortable for broadly that reason (Well, I think a conservative wouldn't find it uncomfortable initially - but they absolutely would once you point out the dynamic)
I agree - but obviously that can't happen in the current state. The official line is that all races are equal - and in this worldview self_made_human's attitude is deeply problematic, and a manifestation of trauma from the White supremacy enforced upon his ancestral homeland during colonization (if that were the case - I would also find it deeply uncomfortable)
I'm not sure how you'd envision this actually becoming a norm (maybe you're just idly wishing) - I don't have a serious proposal.
I wonder how far you'd get by "just" by making HBD common knowledge, and no further interference - how would a typical "brown" person (here I mean neither White nor Jewish nor East Asian) react to the knowledge that the ultimate cause of the dysfunctions in their old home is not White supremacy, the government, or even the culture - but the actual race who make up the country (which includes them!)
I mean this is already going to make them feel guilty - especially if they were progressive (these would be the main source of principled people who oppose SMH's sentiments): this whole time it wasn't White people causing the problems of the world - it was you! (The arguments about how White people are guilty of perpetrating White supremacy by being complicit, "silence is violence", etc - these are all still true on the meta level - except now you realise you're the one causing harm)
Also - in the case of a indidivual skilled immigrant, it is indeed a mutually beneficial arrangement. But obviously the benefit to the immigrant is massive compared to the country, to whom each specific person is just a rounding error - so already a kindness is being payed by actually affording them all the same legal privileges as the natives despite having all the leverage (in the non-HBD world - this is something the immigrant is morally entitled to since the country is only such a nice place to live because they stole resources from the 3rd World - how else could a tiny island of a few million people, of equal competence to all other humans, manage to have so many nice things?)
Well said, I wasn't quite sure what about my comment made him feel discomfort, but this seems like a good explanation.
I'd be genuinely perplexed if the Brits managed to give me any trauma, given that they fled the place about 50 years before I was born. They didn't really bother my grandpa, and sure my dad suffered greatly as a consequence of the half-assed Partition and ensuing civil war in Bangladesh, that was also far before my time.
I wonder if the people who claim to value lived experience uber alles would accept mine, or consider me to have mysteriously internalized something something.
Indians and most other "brown" people are race realists when it's convenient to them. They'll happily look down on Africans, for example, but most would throw a fit if you claimed they were as a group worse than Whites or East Asians.
I prefer my worldview be honest and coherent, so I don't bother. So what if the average Indian is dumber than the average White person? No skin off my back, I know my intelligence and that it runs in the family, why ought I particularly care?
At the end of the day, as long as talented individuals of an underperforming group have a way to demonstrate their qualities and be judged on their individual merit, I'm content. You could be black and score super well on the SAT, at which point coarse discrimination on the basis of race ceases to be relevant for the most part. Or you could be a Jew whose mother was too fond of the wine while pregnant, and be SOL regardless of the expectations others have of your group.
Most Westerners have their opinions of Indians informed by the fact that they usually only meet the tiny fraction that was talented/lucky/hard working enough to move away. I got to live with ~everyone else, and while I think they're perfectly fine people, they're not in the same class. Skimming off the top of a billion and change will get you incredible talent no matter how the average fares.
Indeed. Of course, it's also conveniently ignored that places that started out poorer than dirt, like Hong Kong and Singapore have sprinted ahead and might be better off than much of the West, while other areas languish no matter how much money you throw at them. I wonder who they're supposed to have ripped off, or what they've had stolen from them when there was little to steal.
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Alternatively, your moral resistance to racism observably diminishes so long as it's aimed at the "correct" race. Suppose the Count is wrong on the particulars, and an examination of the statistics reveals that, in fact, migrants in the UK are "worse", by whatever standards you are now flirting with, than the native underclass (and note the obvious dishonesty of comparing all immigrants to only the worst of the natives). If it turns out the natives are in fact better, does that mean the white supremacists had a point all along, or does it just prove that your entire interest in the topic begins and ends with its utility toward bashing the outgroup?
Between this and the luria-posting last week, Hlynka continues to age like fine wine.
This is not a reasonable argument that is worth replying to. Please don't reply to my posts---I'm not interested in discussing things with you since it's extremely tedious and unpleasant to deal with this sort of mess of malicious misinterpretation.
In this situation, I understand why you might choose to exercise the block button. However, I’ll ask you to avoid such a substance-free dismissal. If you aren’t going to respond on the merits, please don’t discourage others from doing so.
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Him being a skilled medical worker and humanizing the process are parts of that, though. Nobody's saying foreign doctors should be kicked out, but moreso that importation of people to fill pointless laptop sinecures which could go to locals preferentially due to producing little but emails and meetings.
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It's hard to tell a particular guy that he should deport himself, especially when he's a pillar of the community. But that doesn't mean you can't get an anti skilled immigrant polemic up voted.
You can get anything upvoted if it's insightful enough. The claim was that a post defending skilled immigration would be received poorly, not that one opposing it would be received well.
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You have evidence, then, that those claiming meritocratic principles here are opposing all immigration? There are certainly people here against all immigration; nationalists see skilled immigrants as competition and the less-skilled ones as trouble. But they're open about it.
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