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PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   29651 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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Or you could put your skills to use making your home country less of a shithole so that you don't need to immigrate

This is simply not doable in Venezuela, short of an armed takeover. Mexico has some bright spots but it’s not the sort of thing talented individuals can improve.

Right, but a multiplicity of individuals makes a group. I’m sympathetic to their case but emigration is acting as a release valve for the kind of pressure that formed first world countries to begin with.

Is this supposing that the inflows of immigrants are high enough that, if one were to indoctrinate, train, arm, and organize them, that they could be a force large and powerful enough to overthrow Maduro and suppress Chavismo into oblivion? This might be true, but I would like a reminder on the numbers involved.

No, it’s saying that change tends to arise from the efforts of frustrated, resourceful people. Those people are (understandably) deporting themselves from the countries that need them.

As far as I can see it, the efforts required by the frustrated and resourceful people of places like Venezuela are "demonstrate and coordinate sufficient violence to force the Maduro regime to either step down or be thrown down." This is a tall ask, but it is the bar that the Maduro regime has set, given the multiple rigged elections, suppression of political opposition, and militaristic displays of tyranny. Peacefully forcing change looks very unlikely over there nowadays, unless Maduro dies in office and his successor forgets to rig the election that's supposed to let them take over in his place.

I really meant longer term. People fixate on revolutions but even tyrants have children. And those children make friends, and they get fed up of living in a shithole and being patronised by foreigners and maybe they don’t shoot the fellow with bright ideas about policing right away. Britain hasn’t had regime change since 1700 but government has changed hugely.

The premier first world country was not formed that way; it was formed by emigration.

Seriously? Your advice to someone born in Venezuela or in Mexico is to stay and use their skills to fix their countries? Those places are like San Francisco on steroids. The government stops any value from being built or protected, and if against all odds you do manage to build some wealth it will immediately get stolen from you by the government or by criminals.

Just because it is in our best rational interest to stop them from immigrating doesn't mean it isn't in their best rational interest to try escape from those hellholes. Even if, democracy being what it is, a large enough number of them will turn first world countries into more of the same, much like Californians escaping to Texas and Florida vote for the same policies that made them leave.

From "Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Saying “People who buy dangerous products deserve to get hurt!” is not tough-minded. It is a way of refusing to live in an unfair universe. Real tough-mindedness is saying, “Yes, sulfuric acid is a horrible painful death, and no, that mother of five children didn’t deserve it, but we’re going to keep the shops open anyway because we did this cost-benefit calculation.” Can you imagine a politician saying that? Neither can I.

My concern is that many of these people are the reason their home countries are San Fran on steroids. Moreover, even if the first bunch are not they create linkages to future immigrants that might be.

Pretty much this. If we really wanted to stop some illegal immigration, the most optimal thing to do would probably be to delete shit governments from across Central and South America--but very few people have the appetite or political will to even consider such a thing.

EDIT: I've even raised a similar point before.

Or you could put your skills to use making your home country less of a shithole so that you don't need to immigrate

Nobody's got that much skill in some countries (e.g. Haiti), and almost nobody has it anywhere.

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