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The anti-immigration argument expressed in this post seems too strong. It seems to be along the lines of if there is any kind of downside from immigration then immigration is bad. But I don't think this is a realistic benchmark for any government policy. The positives have to be weighed against the negatives. Maybe certain classes of immigrants are net-negative and a better immigration policy would be able to discriminate against these people but I don't think the UK is at the point where all immigration is net-negative.
The anti-immigration position starts with endorsing the claim that when Chopin moved from Warsaw to Paris, that benefited the French, and when Marc Isambard Brunel fled France and ended up in England, that benefited England. What makes it the anti position is the additional claim that you can tell whether Chopin can play the piano; you don't have to admit half the population of Warsaw to get the musician. And you can tell that Brunel knew about civil engineering; you don't have to admit any Jacobins to get your tunnel under the Thames.
So no, you don't have to weigh positives and negatives. Let the positives in, keep the negatives out.
The core of the pro-immigration position is "You cannot tell whether Chopin can play the piano. If you want the positives, you have to accept the negatives, so weigh them and choose."
Given that the argument here is about crime committed by the British-born son of immigrants, we don’t get to choose at that level of detail. (You get to choose the parents of your 2nd-generation immigrants, but anyone who has raised kids knows that only gets you so far.) If your goal is zero serious crime committed by descendants of immigrants, the only way to get there is zero immigration.
The UK breaks out crime statistics by folk racial categories which don’t distinguish between “Black” sub-populations (Jamaicans and Somalis are the high-crime groups) in the way you would need to do to answer this question properly, but anecdotally immigrants from Christian Africa in the UK and their descendants are better behaved than the natives.
Similarly in the US, Nigerian Americans will happily point out that African Americans are the ones being 13/52.
I don't actually think I have ever met anyone in my life that had anything bad to say about the Nigerian Americans.
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Do you see this "better" immigration policy on the horizon anywhere in Europe? Is anyone calling for cutting out sub-Saharan Africans or MENA migrants specifically while maintaining your hypothetical improved immigration system?
If not, why not?
Denmark specifically has stricter requirements for MENA countries afaik.
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Poland welcomed $BIGNUM Ukrainians while having limited enthusiasm about other migrants and being poorer than Germany, Sweden and UK and therefore migrants themselves preferring to go elsewhere?
Note also border wall and illegal pushbacks of migrants imported by Łukaszenko and Putin (with illegality ignored by basically everyone, including EU).
EU is busy bribing countries in north Africa and Turkey so they will apply violence to keep migrants out.
I suspect that’s going to bite Poland in the ass eventually, but for different reasons.
Do you have specific predictions in which way it will go wrong?
they are selected for "we run away from war", and for "fuck Russia" part there will be no to little disagreement
no idea why they would activate after Ukraine loses (and I guess that if they want they could go to East as partisans)
nope, it is not
It is Russia who invaded because they could not accept not being a superpower anymore
alternative (helping Russia to be superpower or pretending it is) would be worse
what would be even motive, reasoning and strategy here?
Which one? Because it ranges from "utterly impractical in covert terrorism" and "they had it already" with side of "trying to do MH17 will end with partitioning your country if you are Ukraine, not Russia".
Well, the United States overthrew their government to replace it with one less neutral to Russia, then they pressured them to be more and more militant towards Russia while arming them to the teeth, then after the invasion Boris Johnson scotched the potential peace deal, then the lead Ukrainian negotiator got mysteriously shot in the head, then NATO law makers procrastinated for 9 months before sending any of significant armaments they promised, so I would say it’s true.
Anger when they realize they got their country destroyed based on a bunch of fake promises from people who didn’t really care about them at all.
As for your first point, the normal people will all have to stay behind and suffer but the ideological hardliners like what’s left of Azov Battalion will probably make it out. Those types usually do.
The use of passive voice in "they got their country destroyed" is truly vicious here. You think those people will mysteriously forget who was doing the bombing and invading of their country?
Some people have a really strange sense of geopolitical justice. When USA feeds color revolutions to expand its sphere of influence it's a bad misguided greedy choice of the corrupt hegemon, when Russia rolls the tanks and artillery into their neighbours to expand its sphere of influence it's a purely natural consequence, a forced reaction, just water flowing downhill and not agency.
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not USA
I would say that Russia invading was stronger factor here
I wish, sadly it was not really done
Somehow I doubt that Ukrainians were enthusiastic about Budapest Memorandum 2.0 no matter what Boris did.
And Russian proposals were bonkers and were effectively "can you dismantle your army so it will be easier to invade"?
By April 2022 Poland send more than 200 tanks (240 from what I remember). And Mig-29 fighters (after doing it officially collapsed they were transferred as "spare parts", confidentially in large enough numbers to assemble some new planes). I could dig more for sources but 240 tanks counts as counterexample, you are not as well informed as you think on this topic.
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Poland is a great example, thanks.
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Mass migration as exists in Britain blatantly violates the rights of the native people, to national existence and self determination and leads to violence that is covered up and downplayed by the establishment, in addition to discrimination against the native Britons which is happening in terms of AA and in general transforming are lower caste. Especially where the issue has to do with ethnic group relations.
Britain is also an incredibly totalitarian police state were opponents of this are being arrested and were serious crime is prioritized over persecuting dissent.
At such, you are essentially supporting the eventual destruction of the British people and their current and increasing mistreatment and violation of their rights. That is a transformation into increasingly oppressed second class citzens, until they become a small minority, and under threat of even more radical parties acting worse, or no longer exist as a group.
Of course if rules of the multicultural Britain, about racism were enforced equally, the consequences of advancing such notions would be severe. But one sided application is part of those rule. But even if the absurdly draconian and one sided rules weren't enforced consistently and equally, there is a problem with that position and its influence and with the existence of a network with worldwide adherents whose agenda is to harm groups like the British. There is also a national security lens. Britain has a national security obligation to suppress the faction that promotes mass migration that is so enormously destructive and racist against Britain and the British people.
Outside of the interest of Britain in particular, there is a universal value and an international justice interest in supressing anti european extremism that denies native europeans their legitimate rights and supports their national destruction and transformation of their country into ones were until they are second class citizens with their historical homeland putting Muslims, Blacks, Jews and others above them. Although this interest isn't numerical, the way I see it, international institutions should be captured by people who don't think Europeans are exempt from the national rights that other group deserve. And then enforce a punishment against the networks promoting the opposite agenda, and of course not allow such people to rise through ranks of running things and remove this moral hazard. I would advocate as superior to a situation where it is worldwide group vs group limitless conflict, that we try to impose reasonable reciprical rules worldwide.
Part of this should of course include deportations of plenty of people who got paper making them fake X nation from cultural marxists who are hostile against their own nation (and timing also plays a role, with most mass migration being relatively recent), such as foreign supporters of mass migration, and affirmative action type politics who have been used for the crime of purposeful demographic displacement and replacement but not to deport everyone of foreign background. Not only mass migration ought to stop but the one that already has happened is of an illegitimate nature and a policy that already violated a) the opinion of native majority b) even more importantly than their opinion against mass migration, their interest and right, not to be replaced in their own homeland. Which also comes along with their interest not to be replaced by hostile foreign tribes that retain a foreign identity which is part and parcel of mass migration of a foreign ethnic groups and can't be separated.
However some level of limited migration can be legitimate. Britain should have net negative migration at this point and for quite some time. But you can have a few into the many, who respect the nation of the many, and understand it is the homeland of the natives and willing to make a life there without deconstructing the nation and its legitimacy. Nor are they in sufficient numbers to screw them over, and nor are they being disrespectful. So mass migration of hostile foreigners is inherently an illegitimate agenda that violates the human rights of the native people, which is why it isn't an accident that anti-native ideologues support it, because it helps them do all of their agenda to screw over the native ethnic group, and put above the migrant ethnic groups.
Moreover it is possible for a certain nation state and limited civic nationalism to coexist, provided the later recognised the first. Opposing any nation state leads to communist like soviet new man oppressive societies, and in the current context also comes along with putting migrants first, something that those supporting or oppossing mass migration, should be aware of, and have a duty to be aware of. And a random observer would expect them to be aware of.
Current Britain is one of the more exemplary failure of the ideology of war against nation state.
Anyhow some migrants can be closer to host nation and more easier assimiliable, in addition to the case of others who are small in number and selected for human capital and more important than IQ, friendlyness (with ethnic similarity also working as proxy for that in many cases). The few can more easilly mix and become the many, provided they have the mentality of doing so and don't retain an identity hostile to the natives. Paper Brits like the stabber and many of the rioter counter protesters should not be in places like Britain, but in their actual homelands that they hold greater connection with than they have towards the English, Welsh, Scots, etc people.
Supporting mass migration should qualify as a criteria for recognizing an individual as putting the interest of foreigners first and disregarding the interests of the natives and their ethnic groups. It is a very hostile act. Should matter when considering deportations both in terms of patterns of groups and in terms of specific individuals.
On the other side, it is a prerequisite of a good migrant, or descendant of migrants to support shutting down the door behind them and to like the native nativists more than foreign migrants outside wanting to come in. The state should control such sentiments not only by inviting far less, deporting people after the criminal error at expense of its own people of letting too many whcih inevitably have these hostility, but also should both select those with pro native sentiments, but also try to enforce and encourage among migrants the duty to respect their host nation and their people. Over the sadistic disregard of them that we see as the rising sentiment today. Hence, the kind of people who ought to be prioritized, those more likely to be net drains, criminals but also those who are hostile and make things into a two tier society, even if they are otherwise economically competent.
Additionally, good migrants of foreign ethnicity who proportionately to the natives have to be a smaller proportion, because mass migration of foreigners is itself is a hostile and immoral act should support some level of deportations against the bad migrants that are taking over the country of the Britons and part of the disrespect and two tier society. There is certainly a problem of native, antinativism though that also deserves attention. There is also a possibility for some migrants being in their sentiments of less severe form of extremism and deradicalized. Although too many numbers is it self an issue but I don't care to promote the specific minitia of how this should be enforced since I don't really have a strong opinion on that, but the general template is the obvious response to antinative policy, sentiment being enforced and colonization.
Indeed WW2 provides lessons. The problem of the mid century Germans wasn't that they opposed migration, or didn't like the genuinely evil and european hating Frankfurt school and familiars, which should never have been allowed to take root in USA and from then elsewhere, but that they tried to invade and greatly replace other nations and also disallow them from being nations, having national independence and institutions. Disrespecting legitimate rights of other ethnic groups including atrocities relating to that. Ironically there is a shared element between Frankfurt school types who see their outgroup nationalists as authoritarian personality insane and evil and Germans who were saying that the Russian or Polish nation is a threat, and even modern types like Soros and fellow travelers who consider modern European nations a threat to Jews, Muslims and other so called minorities who actually some of them are worldwide not quite such a small minority.
Well, there were also deportations, including through violence which isn't an example to follow at end of WW2 from places Germans have been there for long, but also there was a reversal of the agenda of Germans to Germanize parts of Europe and replace the non Germans. The later element which was about stopping colonization is the lesson here, not to follow the course of any side fully from WW2 since a lot of bad behavior around even among the less badly behaved parties. And of course in age of decolinization, Europeans left from many countries which also took property restrictions in addition to in some cases, deportations which included a more violent nature than what I advocate.
But Europeans aren't seen as wronged by this, and in fact people claiming to support decolonization claim that mass migration is the new form of decolonization which is of course about colonizing Europeans. In general the correct idea of national rights as part of international justice is commonly accepted, and in fact even plenty of strong reactions can be excused. Well, I am not looking for that, but looking for rules that are consistent in general and protect Europeans and others affected by this too (like perhaps Japanese might start to be targeted), but also with special attention towards those targeted for destruction, to the extend this network is active. International organizations like Amnesty international that pretend that Europeans aren't indigenous, should not exist and that is the fig leave of those who either pretend the rules don't exist, or come with excuses not to apply them to Europeans, or simply don't understand their value.
The agenda to end the existence of Europeans in their homelands is a criminal extremely racist agenda that is against international justice, and the crime of trying to diminish Europeans as a hated dhimni minority is a crime against humanity. Which definitely means that the media who are an organ of masisve power and massive responsibility promoting "mass migration", or a political party having such an agenda, raises to the level of advocating and implementing the kind of things that should not be allowed and makes perfect sense to consider treason. Same for ideological NGOs, or ethnic supremacist organisations advocating on behalf of other groups and expense of Europeans and the general network that makes those working together for such agenda.
Even for laypeople, they have a moral obligation, whatever their ethnicity to not advocate for this, but things escalate when one reaches important institutions where such agenda should not be promoted. Internationally oriented perspective and institutions and also nationally oriented ones where it affects theirs, and people who have both perspectives in a certain mixture, should reject agendas to destroy Europeans or any particular group of ethnic groups, and assert the protection of peoples and their homeland as an obvious core value. So, not only in Britain but international NGOs, or the agenda that results from the leaders of EU, UN, NATO, etc, etc, should of course support the rights of Europeans in their own homeland.
I keep entertaining the idea of buying up a shithole island like Crypto Island and declaring in its sovereign charter that literally everyone in the world has automatic citizenship in Anarchyisle. No one would EVER want to move there of their own volition, but every country struggling to deport noncompliant migrants can just pay the dropoff fee to dump Anarchyisle residents here*. None of this stateless bullshit, everyone has jus sangui from mitochondrial eve.
Right now MENA migration is not waves of invaders swarming a fence, but family imports or rubber boats offloading two or three people every few minutes across vast unmonitored territories. The slow invasion is not Noticed at the borders, and Noticing concentrations is just proof of racism. Anarchyisle solves the meta of origin falsifiability by simply saying no human is illegal.
*For the extremely low fee of USD1000/month per 100 residents I will throw in internal border enforcement as well, hiring Mindanaon or Ugandan private security who have no qualms about hitting malcontents and extremely lax body camera maintenance procedures.
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There's a bit of a weasel going on with this argument.
I am actually willing to admit that immigration taken completely as a blind, nonspecific, aggregated economic phenomenon is probably a net positive, although this assumes an overly simplified utility function/value system. And perhaps ignores likely long-term second-order effects.
But the negatives (increased housing costs, increased crime, depressed wages for low-skill labor, and loss of social trust) are almost entirely borne by the middle and lower economic classes. They can't afford to move to native enclaves and they have much less political influence to keep immigrants out of their existing communities.
The positives will disproportionately accrue to the upper class professionals/elites whose skilled jobs are not threatened, who can send their kids to selective private schools and can use their clever NIMBY policies to keep the actual immigrants away without triggering accusations of racism. And the neighborhoods they live in are already too expensive for immigrants anyway so it doesn't even put much upward pressure on their housing costs. Cheaper labor and goods and political influence and the warm and fuzzy feeling of giving a disadvantaged minority a leg up are all unalloyed goods for them, so of course they will continue to support the same policy.
And this is of course exacerbated if the government's formal or informal policy is to favor immigrants for monetary handouts, jobs and/or slots in the good schools. Or if they implement policing/justice policies that treat immigrants with kid gloves while natives get the full force of the law.
Cheaper labor costs is generally a benefit to a nation so long as it translates to lower prices for critical, basic goods and services. But the specific kind of labor immigrants provide in this case is almost universally unskilled, which means both that high-skilled (i.e. the kind that produces the most value/unit!!!!) labor does NOT become cheaper... and in some cases demand for skilled labor like doctors or bankers will increase with immigration which will push those prices UP! Immigrants need medical care and financial services regardless of their contribution to society.
So the phrase "immigration is a net positive" can be true in a broad sense but still not accurately describe how the actual citizenry experience it in their day-to-day lives.
If it turns out that it's a net negative for ~50% of the population, an almost neutral factor for another 30%, and then a MAJOR benefit for that last 20%, overall it could be characterized as a positive if you collapse it down. But then the question is *why should 50% of your countrymen be forced to absorb the costs?"
And more to the point, if 50% of the country absorbs the cost, they may be motivated to vote against immigration, but if the other 50% of the country believes its a net positive, they'll vote in favor of it happily... and in a democracy that probably means the half who are getting the shit end of the deal keep losing the votes.
There's also the question of whether or not you count the wellbeing of the immigrants themselves in the equation. Because a third world migrant moving out of a hellish ghetto in their home country to a slightly-less-hellish ghetto in a wealthy country where they get a small welfare check is indeed better off, and so including them in the equation makes the case that immigration is good stronger... but also feels like cheating.
"If we import 1 billion foreigners who are each made 5% better off by migration, and 10 million natives are made 25% better off by migration, but the other 90 million natives are made 50% worse off, its a massive net positive to the group as a whole and thus morally required!"
"Okay, but explain the assumptions about why the 'import 1 billion foreigners' step was necessary at all? Surely there are other options we could try that don't impose such costs on the natives?"
"I just told you, it makes them better off on average."
"Right but it seems like you're conflating the interests of the 1 billion foreigners and the 100 million natives even though you don't have to?"
"Shut up, bigot."
"Also, I can't help but notice that you are likely to be one of the 10 million natives whose life is better off..."
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Okay.
What positive does the average Brit see from mass migration into the UK?
Is it their wages being pushed down? Is it the difficulty in unionising when infinite scabs are on the table? Is it the pressure on housing? The NHS? The welfare state? Is it the vibrant sectarian conflict we now have on our streets?
Brits get cheaper deliveroo and chip shops open past 5pm. This offsets the loss of social cohesion and local employment, and to claim otherwise is to prove ones fealties to Farage.
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The usual answers given revolve around economic prosperity, which doesn't exactly seem to have materialized.
The other argument is around caregivers for the NHS and the aging population. Which doesn't have to map well to prosperity.
But I'm not sure just how many of the migrants are selected for that specifically.
I will speak specifically to Singapore, though to be honest the USA had a version of this previously: guest workers are a fantastic deal for everyone involved.
Short term migrant workers for the most part do not want to live in the new land they are working in. Earning 3x their home salary is still 1/2 the required salary in their work country, so they prefer to suffer temporarily then go home to their families and live like kings there. It is the surplus of exploitable social resources that incentivizes staying on and bringing the family over. Guest workers certainly are exploited relative to local standards, but willing buyer willing seller. Even the UAE kafala has improved significantly since 2016, and for all the complaints of slavery there is still no shortage of applicants for construction and care jobs in these places.
Except displaced citizens. If there are citizens who would do the job the guest workers did, but would charge more for it (because their cost of living was necessarily higher), they're going to lose out from a guest worker program. Sometimes this isn't true because the if you had to hire people at citizen prices, the job just wouldn't get done, but it's hard to tell in many cases.
That certainly is true for the PMC here, where we are constantly reminded of our inferiority by an endlessly imported class of Chinese and Indians and Malaysians, but the cultural dissonance is only moderate, with no welfare resources to be exploited by foreigners and lead to local resentments.
Guest workers here are primarily in the construction and domestic worker segments, where there was never sufficient local population that existed to service that demand. Singapores status as an entrepot colony meant that most civil construction works were conducted by Chinese and Indian (by nationality) labourers, with little local populations that were displaced economically. This continued into the modern era, where rapid industrialisation saw most labourers (Chinese and Indians stuck here after the chaos of the Civil War and Partition) in post-independence Singapore prefer to work in sheltered factories instead of outdoor construction. We had Malaysians and Taiwanese imports at first, then now it is Indians, Thais and Burmese, with Filipinos preferring to work in middle office roles. Locals certainly bemoan the presence of foreigners, but even with outsize pay for locals they still leave some jobs unfulfilled, so the companies appeal the Ministry of Manpower for more foreign worker allotments and said allotments are granted.
To extend this scenario to the west, the main example I would use is farmhands. These men were never the locals of the farm area who want to work in backbreaking outdoor work, and instead have historically been displaced itinerants seeking shelter and employment. Farm owners certainly bitch about having to rely on foreigners now, but in olden days a drifter from Oklahoma is as much a foreigner in California as a Mexican was, and doubtless similar disparaging would occur for Buffalo vs White Plains New Yorkers. Hell, even the family the next farm over with one too many hands to work their own plot might as well be barbarians as far as a homeowner is concerned.
My point is that guest workers are a historically tested solution to the problem of 'I need cheap labor but I want to kick them out when I do not want them anymore.' Some domestic populations would lose out, but compared with 'bring them in and they will also bring in their family and we give them citizenship in 20 years time' guest workers are a clear winner.
You could just have 0 immigration as well, and I think we can look to Japan and Chinas eager embrace of gynoids for a model on how that would pan out, but we are still a few years away from that. More research is going into making human form factor robots fuckable instead of workable, and what that says about humanity is for a different thread
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You don’t need actual immigrants to fill specific jobs like that, you can just bring in guest workers who know UK wages will go a long way in Kenya or India and so they’re willing to go home afterwards. The UK chooses not to do this, maybe to prop up the general population of low-skill laborers so they have their delivery drivers and the like.
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Why?
Why?
I mean, I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse. As I've already stated in this thread, I am myself pretty ambivalent about immigration, insofar as it (A) tends to benefit me, personally and (B) tends to economically benefit nations, on average. But when immigration yields a specific, horrific crime against the indigenous population and people get upset about that, telling them to weigh the overall positives against their negatives seems like a non-starter, argument-wise.
In other words--I actually agree that the positives have to be weighed against the negatives. But I disagree that this is the sort of thing that can be resolved by aggregating the relevant interests. If the costs imposed on, say, working class Britons is sufficiently high, then they have good reason to reject immigration even if the aggregate utility rises--for the same reason that the government cannot permissibly harvest your organs against your will when doing so would save five or twenty or even a thousand lives.
You could replace everything in this argument with the case of George Floyd. When policing yields a specific, horrific crime against black Americans and they get upset, telling them to weigh the overall positives of policing against their negatives seems like a non-starter, wouldn't you agree?
And yet, I don't recall you ever making that point five years ago. Perhaps you were just silent, perhaps I don't have Gattsuru's eidetic memory and you'll correct me, but I think it much more likely that you'll split hairs about how the UK rioters are morally justified while BLM was not now that the shoe is on the other foot.
I'm personally ambivalent. What you say is true, and the statistics people give about police brutality and immigration are also, presumably, true. It's not particularly surprising for people to react this way, but at the same time, western democracies need to find a way to adapt to the viral nature of the internet, social media and ubiquitous cell phone recordings without sliding into chaos or authoritarianism. Violent crime has decreased significantly since the 90s in the USA, but it certainly doesn't feel like it given the constant sensationalism in social media and news feeds. And yet, any centralized effort to block production or consumption of viral news is antithetical to our values. Millenials and boomers are probably screwed; maybe the zoomers will become sufficiently desensitized to snuff and viral videos that we'll return to equilibrium after people born before ~2005 die off.
If we didn't have police George Floyd would have likely been killed far earlier by one of the people he had wronged.
If there were no police, and a man pointed a gun at my pregnant wife to rob her, I would kill that man. Not even as a matter of immediate self defense, but as a preventative measure. I can't in good conscience risk his continued existence. Most of all for the safety of my family, but for others as well.
Without police, people take justice into their own hands. A police free existence is not one where everyone lives in harmony free of police oppression, it is one where racialized small communities wage eternal war against the enemy living across the block.
The crips and the bloods are literally the modern ur-example. There was no police to defund, and in that void the racial black utopia of mutual community uplift manifested itself in gangsta rap monies being funneled into West Hollywood real estate.
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Chris has me blocked, so this is more for the record, than anything, but I guess there's things I can't let go of...
Ok, let's try:
On one hand: sure, this isn't fair, Chris has moderated his views since then, and his comment can be read as a warning for us not to make his past mistakes. On the other: it's not like people here are defending riots, like several high-profile progressives used to, so it's just a tiny-bit rich to hear have him try to hold people accountable for what they did or didn't say 5 years ago.
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Yes! In fact I thought of this exact example as I was writing my comment, as well as some other, more hyperbolic ones (imagine saying of the Trail of Tears, "but look at the aggregate economic benefits of forced relocation!").
No, I can't imagine that I would have done, though like you, I do not memorize my own post history. At a guess, I probably posted something critical of the rioting, and BLM specifically seemed to clearly be a grift from the word "go." However while I am not quite an "ACAB" person I am actually pretty negative on policing generally (I am weakly anti-death-penalty, I am firmly opposed to private prisons, I am strongly against militarized police, etc.)--though in cases where greater policing seems clearly called for, I am also unimpressed with extant alternatives. So I probably just didn't say anything about that particular part of the unrest at the time; in general, this space has always been very bad at guessing my politics.
Long story short--if I should have been making this point five years ago, why aren't you agreeing with me now? Or if you are agreeing with me now, why dwell on some past possible disagreement that may not have even occurred?
Not at all! But please do note that I've never deliberately made any statement, in this thread or elsewhere, justifying or excusing or even sympathizing with rioting. I've kept my discussion here strictly to protests and counterprotests (and one very explicit call to violence from a counterprotester with a modicum of clout). I'm against rioting; in fact I do not even particularly care for public protests. I don't attend them, I have sometimes been inconvenienced by them to no positive end. But I do not oppose protests, provided they are peaceful and do not interfere with my commute to work. I just so rarely understand them; the people protesting almost always seem confused and contradictory and self-sabotaging.
I am reminded of something said much, much longer ago than five years:
Perhaps this space is very bad at guessing your politics because what you choose to reveal is inevitably right-coded, modulo my perspective being skewed towards top-level posts as I rarely dig that deeply into the comments.
Would you agree that the majority of opinions on this site regarding BLM and the George Floyd riots were negative? And would you agree that the majority of opinions expressed on this site are positively disposed towards the UK riots? I perceive this as hypocrisy, as I agree with you that black Americans rioting over George Floyd are conceptually similar to white UK citizens rioting over the stabbings. How else can I point out this hypocrisy? I suppose I could make my own top-level post, but I'd inevitably be forced to link to specific examples, and drag you in regardless...
Perhaps it's disseminated hypocrisy, and everyone has internally consistent views, but then...why? I know your answer is that I'm just overly sensitive to right-wing viewpoints after years of coddling, but given that you received only mild pushback to your post (and the back-pushers were immediately dogpiled by multiple people), and I can't remember the last time anyone said anything remotely charitable about BLM (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), where are all these ideologically consistent people? And why do they censor themselves so strictly along partisan lines?
I neither agree nor disagree with you on the object-level. I'm sympathetic towards the people who protest and riot after this kind of violence, but I've also been convinced that the decrease in policing over the last several years has been worse for most of these communities. I just want ideological consistency.
In that case, I anticipate that the median person here would make the argument that the BLM protests were illegitimate because Floyd was a criminal drug addict who died of COVID and Fentanyl, whereas the UK rioters are justified. Do you disagree?
True Republicanism and rule by philosopher kings has never been tried.
That being said, I think my prediction of boomers and millennials dying off is much more likely to come true than a plot involving the kidnapping and brainwashing of a couple thousand Mediterranean slave-children. The argument isn't that the zoomers will be wise philosopher kings, but having been raised in an age of social media and ubiquitous cell phones, will be better adapted to the current environment than we are. In the same way that my generation is much better at using Facebook in a sane way than most Boomers.
Undoubtedly there will be some other future shock involving AI and VR that gen alpha will be better positioned to weather, but one problem at a time.
I don't want you to think I'm ignoring your post; I've read it, I just don't have much more to say about it. I don't really want to get into a lengthy relitigation of the BLM stuff. I do think that I see a ton of hypocrisy from the left right now, and flipping that into accusations of hypocrisy on the right is probably warranted on many of the particulars. But this is something I really hate about politics: the unapologetic and consistently deployed meta-hypocrisy of people being intensely hypocritical in the act of accusing the other side of hypocrisy. Every accusation of ideological hypocrisy carries within it an equal and opposite accusation. If anyone who was openly praising BLM rioting wants to now come forward and openly praise the anti-immigration rioting to demonstrate their ideological consistency, I have yet to meet them. That is why I tried to highlight what I felt was being buried under the bullshit: several children are dead.
I say this with warmth in my voice and a sad smile on my face, but... you should probably get used to disappointment.
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It isn't an economic issue. It is the UK no longer being British. It is the loss of a people, an identity, a culture och sovereignty. The UK belongs to the people who built it for the past thousand years and those who will inherit it for the next thousand. It isn't up to the current people to give it away to strangers.
It actually is. For better or for worse, having a democratic society means that the people get to make such decisions.
The people have voted for lower migration at every election for as long as I've been alive. It has never once been delivered.
Sure, I'm not saying the elected representatives necessarily correctly deliver on the will of the people. Lord knows they rarely do in the US. I just think it's inaccurate to claim that the people living in the UK don't have the right to decide to let in a flood of migrants.
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Have they? At the last election 14.3% of voters put their support behind the party who most credibly promised to stop immigration. Many more voted for the Tory and Labour parties, who have demonstrated no interest in doing so.
Every Conservative prime minister since Cameron said immigration is too high and promised to reduce it. Tony Blair said immigration was too high and promised to reduce it (in 2005!). Kier Starmer said the same. I think we agree that these parties lack credibility on the issue, but you can hardly argue that voting for politicians who promise to reduce immigration doesn't count as voting for lower immigration. Especially since UK Prime Ministers usually resign after they lose an election, which means that in each election, the voters are voting for a different potential government.
Plus, a general election is not a single issue referendum on immigration. It's voting for MPs under a massively undemocratic electoral system which essentially forces voters to choose between the two main parties. The fact that Reform didn't win a majority is in no way evidence that people support higher immigration.
I don't dispute that people in the UK want lower migration. But as you say, elections are not single issue referendums and tradeoffs need to be made. People also want lower taxes, more services, less debt, and free ponies. You can't get everything you want, and you have to discern who is going to make the tradeoffs you want.
A growing number of people are deciding "no, actually, I really do want lower migration at the expense of other priorities" and voting accordingly. But clearly it's not yet enough to force the UK parliament to give it to them.
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That is because the people living there are the current stewards of the country. That doesn't mean self interest. Just like parents make the choices for a family doesn't mean that the choices purely reflect their needs.
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In any society, democratic or not, it is only the current people, by definition, who get to make such decisions. Not the dead or the unborn (whether the right sort of unborn or not).
I don't understand how that disagrees with what I said?
It doesn't, it's an addition.
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The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.
If the English lower classes don't want mass immigration, they have to find a way to stop it. Voting for people who pretend to care about it clearly doesn't work. Protesting in the streets about it or on twitter clearly doesn't work. The judiciary is firmly against them so that won't work either. And they are all disarmed so terrorism is not a realistic proposition.
I don't really see any recourse there. Looks to me like these people are fucked.
The UK has readily available petrochemicals.
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Because they also want and vote for economic growth. And both parties internal projections show limiting immigration prevents economic growth and also that the economy is most people's driving issue.
It's a simple straight forward calculus. When we did (when I worked for the Tories) internal polls and asked people would they accept an overall lower standard of living in exchange for reduced immigration they said no. Overwhelmingly. Over and over and over again. Everywhere.
So the recourse is to start actually valuing lowering immigration over other factors. Just like the Tories flipped on lockdowns in record time they will do the same on immigration. They aren't attached to it for principled reasons. Simply practical.
Wouldn't this same logic hold for all sorts of other policies that did and continue to get enacted? I'm thinking of stuff like carbon taxes, tariffs, tax raises etc. It's plausible that economic considerations held back anti-immigration measures, but if that were an essential part I'd expect more or less total gridlock on a large number of issues where, in reality, there don't seem to be any hesitations at all for the Western political class in comparison to immigration.
Well it depends on what the voters think the trade off is. If the voters buy that carbon taxes will get them less pollution, then that may be a trade off they are willing to accept, to an extent. Especially if they believe the bulk of it will fall on say corporations rather than themselves. Likewise if you say to voters we will tax you more in exchange for better services or more NHS hospitals then that may be a trade off they will accept. Or not (see below).
And I am not saying that there is no ideological commitments that override what voters might think, but that even these are often subject to practical considerations. In general Labour prefer higher taxes to pay for more or better services. That is one of their ideological cores. But Blairite style neo-liberalism still won out because voters were simply fed up of the more blatant tax and spend policies combined with union problems through the 60's and 70s. Whereas even though the Tories generally ideologically prefer to cut taxes, Liz Trusses budget tax cuts were very unpopular to the extent that it ended her leadership.
If the Tories as a whole were anti-immigration at their core, then they may have been willing to risk economic issues and loss of voters in return (though big business is a significant bloc for them), but they aren't really. They just aren't really pro-immigration either ideologically, except in the neo-liberal sense that free trade and cheap workers are positive economically.
There are some things the parties care a lot about they are willing to risk losing votes over to an extent (though the shift to the economic right under Blair and back again under Corbyn, and then back again again under Starmer) shows that even some of the pretty fundamental beliefs are up for grabs if they are unpopular enough. But they definitely are not going to risk votes/the economy for things they don't really care about.
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I don't buy it.
Immigration is something the blue tribe just wants.
The blue tribe didn't start from the position of, how do we improve the economy, and then searched around and found immigration as a good policy for promoting economic growth. The blue wanted immigration and looked around for ways to justify it. Sure, they also believe the justification(trust the science), but the justifications are not to convince themselves, they are to convince those damn red-tribers.
They really want to live in a 'diverse' world, with ethnic restaurants, and friends who speak English with an accent, who have weird fun customs, different clothing, and different skin tones.
They are absolutely attached to it.
We are talking about the UK here, while there is an urban/rural divide it isn't as significant politically. London/Home Counties vs North/Midlands is probably more salient, although that is also complicated by coastal malaise as well. Alongside Upper/middle/working class divisions of course.
I can assure you the English Tories I worked with 10-25 years ago did not fit the blue tribe stereotypes you are mentioning here.
This should not be surprising, since the Blue/Red tribe paradigm is attempting to explain subcultural divisions amongst White Americans. Applying it to the British seems wrong-headed.
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I can buy that blue tribe is driven by an ideologically motivated positive outgroup bias.
But it isn't just blue tribe or it would have ended when they lost elections. What about the Tories? What about the business owners?
Blue tribe does not cleave easily along political parties. It is the culture of the college educated elite, and generally holds across western nations. The soccer hooligan and the NASCAR redneck have more in common with each other than either does with the Yale Conservative or the Oxford Liberal, and vice versa. The college educated elite like diversity and want to live in a multicultural world, they want to go to the sushi restaurant with their black friend and watch the India vs Pakistan cricket match while drinking a microbrew. It's their culture.
Which is exactly why it does not change much with lost elections.
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Uh, I thought there wasn’t really an English red tribe, although some of the upper crust was assimilated into the blues?
Why are we importing American cultural divisions that don’t exist over there to impose on a straightforwardsly age-and-class based set of objections?
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Those projections showing that immigration would benefit economic growth have played out so well, haven't they? I guess economists can still appeal to "but imagine how much worse it would be," but I can't imagine that's a winner either.
Well there is a reason that those supporting Brexit had to make sure to blast how it wouldn't impact the economy. Even though it probably has. Which just made politicians even more scared of cutting off immigration ironically.
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That's a bit of a rigged poll, though. You let people project their worst fears into "lower standard of living", and the only thing economists can actually back is "GDP line not go uppy anymoar".
Well I am paraphrasing form a whole bunch of polls and focus groups and the like over near 20 years. It is true you could reduce how much people valued the economy over immigration by rewording the questions and because the Tory part has internal splits on immigration, we often had different polls with different skewed wordings. But on all of them even worded to try and side with immigration as much as possible, people always valued essentially "line go up" over reducing immigration.
Even in focus groups where you might run through various scenarios in detail, and in some cases where we trying to see under what circumstances people might give different answers, it was pretty much always "It's the economy, stupid".
Now part of that might be because the Conservatives are seen as the party of being good with the economy. Or were at least, so Labour might get a little more leeway with their supporters. But they also have a much smaller (though still existent!) anti-immigration faction, so they aren't even looking at the question as hard in the first place. And of course some of their supporters are very pro-immigration. So it will have to be the Conservative party if anyone I would suggest. Though some of their anti-immigration faction has boiled off into UKIP and then Reform nowadays, so the internal faction balances has likely shifted.
But essentially if Tory modelling indicated they would win more votes than they would lose from cracking down on immigration, then they are likely to flip. There are few pro-immigration idealogues within the party. Though the farming lobby comes close I suppose, for many of the same reasons as in the US. Low-paid Eastern European labor helps British farms be competitive.
Well, since you don't remember the exact wording, the whole conversation is kind of moot, but coming back to a generic "it's the economy stupid" is an unconvincing argument. Sure, if you tell people they can either choose high unemployment or high immigration, they might go with high immigration, but that's not a particularly supportable claim. If you talk about "the economy" in generic terms, they might fill-in the blanks with things that matter to them the most.
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I think we'd need to see a counter-factual of a Western European country that hasn't allowed mass immigration.
Does Hungary count?
It's not Western.
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The better parts of Eastern Europe are shaping up to be this counterfactual. For what it's worth, places like Poland and the Czech Republic have little crime and no ethnic tensions, and maintain their culture.
Those are good examples and Poland and Czechia have also seen high economic growth. The one caveat is that much of this growth is simply catching up with more developed neighbors in the EU.
My theory is that a fully developed country like say, Germany, would not suffer lower economic growth if immigration was reduced by 90%. I just don't see how importing low human capital workers from dysfunctional societies can be a positive.
At this point though, the damage is done. Even if Germany and France cut immigration to zero, they now have a sizeable racial underclass much like the U.S. does. They are finding out how thorny of a problem that can be.
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Note: it remains to be seen how Ukrainian migrants/refugees will work out long term in for example Poland. Now we are up a bit from "literally zero ethnic tensions", but still relatively low on overall scale.
Haven’t Ukrainians who managed to convince much wealthier countries they’re refugees been largely a net positive in those countries? I’d think more culturally-similar Poland would benefit even more.
"net positive" does not eliminate ethnic tensions, especially in country that used to be monolingual and monoethic.
For start, there are some people who lost on the changes or at least perceive themselves as losing or just hate that someone else benefitted more than them.
And there are some conflicts but more of "call with speaker enabled in train" rather than "create organised rape gang and blackmail police for years". Still, induces nonzero ethnic tensions what is noticeable when we used to have basically none.
For example https://konfederacja.pl/ (party on right, with most significant enti-EU, for free market, pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine, with bunch of clowns but has enough support to be elected) has constant anti-Ukrainian content, including attacking people in Poland.
That’s fair, but Ukrainian refugees are pretty much all women and children and the languages are pretty close to mutually intelligible, right? Like if holland got invaded and all the Dutch women and children moved to England I predict they’d assimilate pretty well, and that’s about my mental model of the difference here.
close to but not mutually intelligible
And among Polish women (who are more likely to compete with new people) acceptance of Ukrainians is markedly lower
so far it goes relatively well
note that "some ethnic tensions" is from perspective of place that had none of them, where violence/racial/ethnic tension are far, far, far below USA ones and so on
Really? That's fascinating. It would definitely create a contrast with the west, where my understanding is women are more accepting of immigration than men.
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Switzerland maybe?
Switzerland has very high rates of EU and non-EU immigration.
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Switzerland literally has the highest percentage of foreign-born population out of all Western European non-microstate countries.
Yes, but 85% migrants are from Europe, and 44% are specifically from other first-world countries like France, Spain, Germany, Austria, the UK and Italy. Also, there is no low-skilled foreign helot class being imported as in the US and UK. "The admission of people from non-EU/EFTA countries is regulated by the Foreign Nationals Act, and is limited to skilled workers who are urgently required and are likely to integrate successfully in the long term. There are quotas established yearly: in 2012 it was 3,500 residency permits and 5,000 short-term permits." Further, the Swiss don't appear to have nearly the problem of islamic radicalization that France and the UK do, and aren't shy about tackling it when it looks like it might become an issue.
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