This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Why not just cut off H1B entirely and family reunification, etc. Only leave maybe the modified O-1 system and limit the numbers but that also has its own problems.
Just cause foreigners are capable doesn't mean it is good to have them running your country. So you need to implement controls to keep them few and compliant. Or you end up with Indians banning the American president on twitter and running things along with other ethnocentric migrant groups and ideologically aligned liberals.
You need to also care about friendliness when selecting people in addition to competence. So for such purposes you are also selecting for people who are more like those who make disproportionately the math Olympiads who are east Asian nerds who aren't charismatic who are a) smart b) unlikely to run things. And so select against those whose skills and proclivities make them good social climbers and might be inclined to coordinate with their own foreign ethnic group or with others for such purposes. To the extend competent foreigners are to be chosen it must be few, friendly, and mainly smart nerds who don't want to run things and keep them as workers, but not managers.
That and obviously a country should give priority to those competent from their or similar ethnic groups over groups that are more foreign. With again special attention made on friendliness. Some ethnic groups might hold grudges against yours, or more likely to be a nationalist fifth column, despite being closer culturally. Baltics shouldn't prefer Indians because they aren't Russians, but of course a larger % of Russians threaten more fifth column activity and so it makes sense to prefer for example French over Russian migrants.
I mean, my preference is that we just reinstate pre-65 national origins, so if you want to bring in 10,000 Indians you need to bring in 100,000 English, 100,000 Germans, 30,000 people from the former Austro-Hungarian empire etc. But clearly that's unlikely to happen.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link