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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   26010 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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That’s literally the entire concept of America, we’re a country of people who had the resolve to cross oceans to seek a better life. Every single one of us apart from the Native Americans and those descended from slaves meets that description.

Now we’re suddenly going to rewrite it?

who had the resolve to cross oceans to seek a better life.

It's a nice story but the world has changed. Oceans have shrunk, they're now about three podcasts - or a good-sized audiobook on double speed - wide. On top of that, people have way more access to their original society than in the past. This works for America, in terms of how many people are Americanized, but it doesn't just work for America.

The world is smaller, more nations are willing to cater to expats looking for a low tax rate.

America is still the best deal on the table and shows every indication of remaining so (so they're net importers of the Sunaks and Scheers of the world) but there are substantial differences from whatever idealized sort of migration or migrants from the good old days you're appealing to.

It still takes something to uproot your life and move to a new country and culture 1000s of miles away from everything you’ve known.

It’s a big part of the reason why immigrants so often outperform native stock of Americans economically. They’re the people who were willing to dive in and risk charting a new course.

The common counterpoint to this is that they mostly just come here because even an illegally-low wage is still more than they can earn busting their butts back home. I wonder if "we shouldn't pay the cost for other countries being poorly-run" would be a strong counterargument to immigration.

It is not. The concept of America is being pioneers. Joining an established place where prosperity exists is unamerican in many ways. A Ugandan attempting to start a moon colony is at least somewhat American. The same guy moving to New York is basically 0% American.

So now literally nobody is American in America since there aren’t any frontiers left in the country.

Many people still embody the spirit of their pioneer ancestors.

Nobody more so than immigrants in my opinion

Starting a new life in a foreign land

Is not pioneering in any sense when that country is more developed than your own. It is, in fact, the opposite

Disagree, immigrants come and typically work far harder than Americans who are comfortable and lazier. Those are the people with the pioneering spirit, willing to build something new for their families. That’s why immigrant groups outperform Americans economically in so many different fields. Vivek was right.

A huge part of the immigrant performance story (which is silly to discuss as one group, but the successful groups) is their propensity to cluster in our already very high income cities that also tend to have high salary floors for mildly successful white collar workers. If these groups were really embracing pioneer spirit they would be far more over-represented as 1st founders of risky businesses. Given their income and educational attainment, they aren't crushing that metric at all.

Rather it was communities from western Europe who wanted to have their own states where they could have their values and their way of life.

And they built one who’s principles y’all now question.

If you wanted a blood and soil type country with deep ethnic roots you can try to move to one. The US is a pretty bad option for those who do like that sort of thing.

It was communities from the British Isles who subsequently dealt with catastrophic, culture-destroying immigration from the rest of Europe, sure. That America is rich in spite of that is an achievement, but it’s ridiculous to pretend Ben Franklin and the other founding fathers wanted America to be a melting pot of every European nation from Tromso to Odesa.

What do you mean British isles? You literally would let Irish people in? That’d erode the fabric of the nation.

I think that large scale Irish immigration was highly deleterious for the US, but it’s happened now and they’re largely assimilated, plus Ireland is now rich enough (and still quite a small country, with a now-low birth rate) that ongoing inflows would be minimal. Plus there were always some Irish in the US, although more at the start were from Ulster or Protestants/settlers in general.

In what way was it deleterious?

Curious because I’ve never actually heard a serious argument that it was!

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