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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29299 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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I think brain-draining the entire world to our advantage is monstrously immoral, so I'm as opposed to this as any other immigration scheme. I should think any morally consistent nationalist would feel the same.

No, that makes no sense. Making our nation better even though it makes your nation worse is something perfectly consistent with nationalism. Nationalists consider the well-being of their own nation to be of far higher importance than the well-being of any other nation.

In what sense? It helps the individuals in question, since they'll make far more money and have a bigger impact in America. Sure, the countries we drain from lose their best talent, but... we have no moral obligation to support other nations, if we perhaps a practical one.

I suppose I'm a nationalist in the sense that I'm an American patriot, but that doesn't mean I support the reification of the concept of the nation as some sort of moral entity in general, let alone that I think that some nebulous concept of the "rights of the polity of Bangladesh" should take precedence over the good of the best Bangladeshis who would be enormously benefited by becoming Americans instead.

Can you give some specifics on why you feel this way? Right now, this post is just "boo outgroup" paired with a "no true Scotsman" logical fallacy.

I am in favor of global brain drain for American benefit primarily from a national security perspective with a secondary concern / ambition that localized talent network effects could speed the development and introduction of truly game changing technology (provided de-regulation happens on an aggressive scale, particularly around nuclear and other energy sources).

That being said, I am 100% opposed to all illegal immigration, do not believe in amnesty regardless of duration of one's illegal stay, and don't see how a general humanitarian obligation to do what we can for the downtrodden of the world somehow extends all the way to "free guarantee of all privileges of American citizenship ... without actual citizenship."

Isn't this also true on the level of cities & states in the US? CA/NY/TX soak up the top talent, but even within each of the states, the directionality of it is pretty stark.

They at least still pay federal Tax.

I'm confused. /u/gilmore606 was claiming that skimming the top off the rest of the world is immoral for other reasons. Your response is seemingly unrelated.

And surely the Chinese or Indian Silicon Valley bro is paying a bare minimum of $80K in fed taxes. More if you count various CA/local taxes in there.

When cities skim the top talent from the countryside at least they're paying taxes in the same country, which isn't the case for immigrants.

But the people in those cities will still absolutely complain about "but we're subsidizing the countryside", and feel justified waging the culture war against those who they no longer consider their neighbors despite having grown up there.

Which, come to think of it, "brain drain generates a surplus that keeps countries that were escaped from in poverty" is probably a pretty good feels-y argument for first-world nations propping up third-world ones.

Not all nationalists care about the concert of nations. I think "me against the world, me and my family against the world, me and my nation against the world" is quite coherent nationalist ethics.

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