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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   29676 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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A thought experiment that is somewhat too large for the small scale questions thread.

Picture for a moment that a first world, rich, western nation decides to implement an open borders policy. Anyone who lives in a foreign nation can, at any time, apply for and receive permanent residency visa and be entitled to work and live in this country. There are no upper limits on the numbers of the people that may settle in the country using this method of entry.

However, there is one restriction. Only women and girls are permitted entry. Y chromosome owners are not permitted entry through this system and the fullest force of the law will be unleashed against any man who is found to be illegally within the country.

This approach should, theoretically, neutralise right wing arguments against open borders. These arguments either have an economic basis (a vast surfeit of labour will decrease pay and bargaining power for domestic workers) or a social basis (large amounts of unmarried, low skill men will cause unrest, violence and buggery). While the labour disruptions remain, a critical mass of unsettled women is unlikely to fuck shit up in the way that a critical mass of unsettled men are. Indeed, if we look to the current debate around migration in europe, there is an undercurrent of violence and hostility present in predominantly male migrants that wouldn't be the case if they were mostly female. The Ukranian migrants generated no such disruption because they were majority women and children.

Assume for the purposes of this argument that the male only border control is fullproof and has no workarounds. What are the effects of this open borders system? Are there any consequences I have not forseen?

Women have a net negative fiscal impact for most of their lives. See page 23, Figure 16 for a graphical breakdown. Basically, women cost the state more than they provide in taxes until the ages from 40-64, (where the net capital impact doesn't even reach 5000 in the positive at its peak). Across their lifetime this translates to a net cost to society from a fiscal perspective.

Couple of reasons:

  1. Welfare and social programs are tailored more toward women than men.
  2. Women earn less money overall. Feminists call it the wage gap, anyone who looks at the issue knows that for various reasons, women work less hours, tend to choose careers that are not as lucrative, are less likely to negotiate a higher pay, retire earlier, among many other factors.
  3. Women have lower workforce participation.

Some caveats:

  1. Data is for New Zealand
  2. Women have not participated in the workforce for as long.
  3. Young women are starting to outearn young men . Mostly due to more women graduating from college than men in combination with the massive social campaigns/programs to get women into higher-paying fields. Whether these women will continue to outearn men as they age only time will tell.

My question is, why should these rich Western nations allow women and girls entry? What are the benefits of doing so? There has to be an upper limit and there is no reason why we should prioritize providing jobs/work for migrants especially when people in the country are already struggling to find jobs. I'm pretty sure it's typically illegal male migrants that work under minimum wage difficult blue-collar jobs, not women. And since these are women coming in, and this is a nationally approved program, there is no way that these women will be allowed to work at an under-minimum wage rate. The only argument I could see how this policy is a net positive for the country is that this can lead to an increase in the birth rate, but the children of the next generation are going to have the same opinions/beliefs that lead to the birth rate issue. So this is merely a band-aid solution with a whole list of other potential issues.

Let's not forget women are the ones who mostly voted for lax immigration policies that have led to the issues we see in these Western nations today. What's stopping these women from becoming a large enough group to influence other women to change this policy? After all these migrant women would likely want to bring their family over if they can.

A bit of a stretch for this point, so feel free to criticize this as I do not have strong evidence for this thought. This migration policy could potentially increase terrorist threats against Western countries. What happens to the males in the countries these women are leaving? As the gender ratios further shift to more males, resentment in these countries will rise. And unlike China, which is mostly caused by China's policies, the gender imbalance will be caused by a clear external party (Western nations). Someone with a vendetta against the western nations could channel the increasing tension amongst young men in these societies and point out how western nations are siphoning their women away and use this to increase conflicts and start terrorism against the Western countries.

It lowers the standards men must live up to. Could be good or bad.

This will be my first comment outside of Reddit.

Assume for the purposes of this argument that the male only border control is fullproof and has no workarounds. What are the effects of this open borders system? Are there any consequences I have not forseen?

Here are some new consequences: Fewer native male bachelors, more children being born, less aggression in the native population due to male sexual needs being met more easily.

And, if I recall correctly, research from economists on the dynamics of the sexual marketplace shows that societies with more women tend to become more liberal, and societies with more men tend to become more conservative. When it is easy for men to find partners but difficult for women to find partners, society ends up with more liberal sexual mores, fewer restrictions on public nudity, and a cornucopia of other subtle changes in laws that can be indirectly traced back to the supply and demand of romantic or sexual partners.

I would expect such an immigration policy to receive bipartisan support.

On the flip side, while America's male-to-female ratio goes up under this immigration policy, the corresponding ratio in emigrating countries will go down. Leading to sexual marketplace dynamics that result from a high male-to-female ratio. That includes social conservatism, religious fundamentalism, and a thirst for revolution among a population of men that are destined to die as virgins.

So the equilibrium is a distorted version of Henry Kissinger's general foreign policy: The US military gets entangled in foreign wars, and then lets in immigrants from the countries that we're disrupting. Except that events will happen in reverse: the foreign wars will be caused by the immigration policy.

While the labour disruptions remain, a critical mass of unsettled women is unlikely to fuck shit up in the way that a critical mass of unsettled men are.

Not in the same way, but I'd bet you'd see a mass wave of prostitution (and related vices like narcotics) and negative impacts on family life and the social fabric.

The Ukrainian migrants generated no such disruption because they were majority women and children.

I’m open to being corrected, but barring the Roma weren't people from Eastern European EU countries also able to migrate en masse without causing much disruption? A part of this might be just that Eastern Europeans don’t have insurmountable cultural differences with Western Europeans.

It’s very likely that large numbers of Eastern Europeans moving to Western Europe after 2003 did depress labor prices in blue collar jobs, particularly in the skilled trades, construction and so on. That said, a lot of anti-EE prejudice was really kind of a substitute because opposition to non-EU immigration was considered more taboo.

In some cases there were local cultural issues caused by it. Boston (England) is one example, eg. pub owners and locals complained that pubs closed because Poles preferred to drink cans on the street or at home instead of in the classic British way.

Roma aren't that numerous and they are one of the least liked migrant groups. They have created plenty of problems with low level crime.

I have seen it argued somewhere (unfortunately I can't remember the source) is that significant gender imbalances in either direction exacerbate inter-gender hostility and conflict, as the more scarce gender is locally incentivised to overplay their market advantage (evoking hostility on the other side while also not cultivating the qualities in themselves that would enable them to have a successful relationship after the age where biological wiring towards pair bonding tends to kick in) while the more abundant gender is incentivised to "cartelise"/form an internal power structure that controls access to partners of the other gender (because random stats rolls mean you inevitably get some individuals who are more skilled at exercising power over others than at winning in a free sexual market, and the market can't clear).

Based and redpilled Hungary hears you.

That'd actually be the one sort of lenient/liberal/open-borders immigration policy guaranteed to actually, realistically cause enormous anger and resentment among the normie masses.

Gender specific restrictions aren’t even necessary. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are full of young male migrant laborers but violent crime by them is very rare.

The primary issue with mass immigration to the West is that migrants and their descendants are entitled to citizenship, which confers four main things:

  • Unlimited permanent residency for oneself and one’s descendants
  • The right to bring over additional family members (chain migration)
  • Access to welfare
  • Political power (ie the vote)

These issues aren’t problems inherent to legal population movements. They’re problems inherent to the modern western concept of immigration.

Solving the issue (in terms of new immigrants, not existing ones) is easy. Just do what the Gulf countries do, ban any route to permanent residency or citizenship, end any birthright citizenship, ban all dependants for those making under 300% of the median salary, and enforce immediate deportation as soon as a migrant worker stops working. End all rights for those on student visas to stay more than 2 weeks after their course’s end date unless they can secure a job that pays above some (high) amount. If you want to be even more sure, enforce a rising labor tax on migrant workers that increases with each year they spend in the country, so employers will send workers home after at most 5 years.

Don't Gulf countries also have sharia law and quick punishment? It looks like it efficiently reduces crimes of low IQ high time preference people.

Yeah, but illegals in America doing shitty blue collar work also have extremely low crime rates(their children do not), there’s probably selection effects with people who do low level work badly enough to move.

One of the first immigration restrictions in the US had the goal of reducing the number of Chinese prostitutes.

This approach should, theoretically, neutralise right wing arguments against open borders.

Work visas for a subset of of the population is not the same as open borders. Open borders means anyone can enter for any reason. You're using these terms interchangeably.

My immediate objection is to the lopsided gender ratios that this would produce. As seen in China, lopsided gender ratios are not good demographics to have for a country.

Many insects have extremely shifted sex ratios in favor of females due to Wolbachia. And it looks like that it's more good for them than bad.

Wrong species.

Could you please state why?

...are you seriously asking this? I'm not an insect. If you want to claim some observation of insect behavior has even the slightest relevance to human society, the burden of proof's on you.

What kind of negative effects does the excess of women produce? Excess of men is thought to cause violence and unrest, but this mechanism doesn’t work with women, because they are not nearly as aggressive as men are.

One can observe post-Soviet republics to see the long-term consequences of rather lopsided sex ratios which stem from the carnage of World War Two and endure to this day, although to a more limited extent. To give an overall picture, according to the Soviet census of 1959, the female:male ratio in the 35-50-yrs-old cohort was a whopping 7:4. (I’ve read this in a study of war economics during WW2, I can dig up the source if you want to but right now I can’t be bothered.)

It goes without saying that this leaves an advantageous mating market for men in general, but this has wide-ranging repercussions of its own. In such an environment, the usual life paths of men become relatively easy to follow: you finish your studies and then find a relatively OK job without difficulty (after all, employable men are scarce), you’ll also find a wife of your liking easily unless you’re physically/mentally disabled or affected by some rare illness.

Life becomes a routine more or less, and pathological male behaviors such as drunkenness, sloth, gambling etc., which have dire consequences in a society with a normal sex ratio, have more limited penalties in yours. This will mean many men, especially midwits, basically letting themselves go and turning into alcoholic morons, sloths, bums. It’s not wonder that complaining about men being drunkards, cheaters, couch potatoes, bad fucks etc. is a favorite pastime of Slavic women. Of course, one reason many of their men behave in such ways is because even in that state, women are willing to fuck them, for the simple reasons described above.

Women are willing to fuck hot chad men and also actively prefer drunkards to teetotallers despite of what they complain. Alcohol usage didn't drop in post-Soviet republics as new cohorts emerged.

Agreed, but also women have lower libidos than men, so even if they were as aggressive, this wouldn't be as bad.

It results in polygamy.

...which is bad with 1:1 gender ratio because it creates sexless men who cause violence and unrest. How is is it bad with without sexless men?

It reduces paternal investment, for one thing.

And also number of children women has to be bear (for same population growth) also decreases, so I guess it's a tie.

It only leads to polygamy if women have to get married. If they don’t have to get married they may choose to stay single rather than get polygamously married.

Screwing up the dating market, for one. China has the opposite problem with vastly more men than women as a result of their former one-child policy, and that leads to a ton of men being unable to find a partner. Analogously, an excess of women would leave a ton of them unable to find a partner. Of course China has more demographic problems beyond that (namely having more old people than young) but you get the point.

Analogously, an excess of women would leave a ton of them unable to find a partner.

There's no symmetry here, though, because biologically, a woman can partner with an already-partnered man in a way that a man can't partner with an already-partnered woman. It's sure to cause problems, but I don't think screwing up the dating market is one of them.

Based off of lopsided ratios in some colleges it would lead to a lack of commited relationships and other downstream factors.

This is a plot in Ali G except they only accept hot refugees. Are we really at the point where Sasha Cohen skits are top level comments?

Are we really at the point where Sasha Cohen skits are top level comments?

I feel like it's been that way for a while. It's just that we usually get either Brüno or Borat rather than Ali-G.

I don't know. Are we really at the point where a concept can be declared off-limits for thought experiments because a comedian made fun of it once?

I wasn't actually thinking of that when I wrote this. My mind was more on the potential for reduced violence.

Re: the surfeit of labor—wouldn’t this still generate such an imbalance? It’s not all construction and agriculture. Service and retail would love to have a giant surplus of labor.

And that’s before considering any effect of remittances. People who subscribe to the more mercantilist view will still be critical.

People descended from Mexican immigrants disproportionately vote Democrat. So the effect of this policy would still be to create more Democrats.

Yeah this needs the insertion of "post menupausal" women.

This approach should, theoretically, neutralise right wing arguments against open borders. These arguments either have an economic basis (a vast surfeit of labour will decrease pay and bargaining power for domestic workers) or a social basis (large amounts of unmarried, low skill men will cause unrest, violence and buggery).

Perhaps some “right wing” arguments within the Overton window.

The immigrants, especially those of fertile age and younger, would disproportionately come from low human capital regions of the world, especially given self-selection bias. Like men, these women and girls would still need places to live and food to eat, but not have the means or ability to provide for themselves. Seeing as most of both the left and right are highly susceptible to female tears, their food and shelter would be footed by tax-payers, as well as that of any offspring they have in the mean-time.

One might posit that 100% female-biased migration would have the benefit of giving local men more dating options in the present and future. However, any girls would presumably be coming with a female guardian, in particular their mothers, and women with children aren’t exactly inspiring as dating prospects for most men. The same low human capital regions of the world also produce women that have had children at an early age and would otherwise be physically unattractive to local men only interested in pretty childless women.

Like men, women pass down 22 autosomal chromosomes and a sex chromosome to their offspring. Any future children of the immigrant women would inherit these chromosomes; any daughters they bring already have. Furthermore, given assortative mating, these women (and their daughters) would likely be having children with local men low in socioeconomic status and cognitive ability, thus producing more offspring to enter the underclass.

The US runs colossal deficits each year, so a given “right wing” man would likely prefer that any immigrants, even if all female, to be at least close to average US white and Asian cognitive ability in order to have a decent chance for them and their descendants not to make things too much worse. After all, US women are already net-tax recipients relative to men.

It’s probable that the immigrant women and their daughters (and their combined descendants) would join the Coalition of the Fringes—which would be unfavorable to a “right wing”-er—potential producers of more foot-soldiers in the anarcho-tyranny arc of the United States. Furthermore, even aside from financial economics, there are known downsides, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns with regard to such an immigration policy relative to its benefits, including a re-molding of “culture, institutions, and politics,” as @Walterodim put it.

Assume for the purposes of this argument that the male only border control is fullproof and has no workarounds.

Okay, but at some point not too long ago the concept of women’s beauty pageants and women’s sports were thought to be fullproof with no workarounds, as well.

Well it would frustrate and destabilize the remaining populations of all the other migrant/targeted countries, now that they're living in a cuckold fantasy where their women are going off to sweep floors and marry rich foreigners, while the men have to stay home. "Why can't I get a wife? Because of them inviting away all our women!"

And it does nothing for the final, cultural argument that 'England is for the English', 'Japan for the Japanese'. Even if there were no economic problems, a lot of people just want the place they live to remain the same, demographically, from birth to death. They don't want to hear foreign languages or be led by foreigners, they want national homogeneity.

What are the effects of this open borders system?

Who enforces it? aliens? Because I expected it to be modified basically immediately, as the first effect.

The Ukranian migrants generated no such disruption because they were majority women and children.

Yes, but it was not the only factor. If we would similar scale of refugees from say South Sudan and all of them would be women and young children we would have far bigger problems.

This approach should, theoretically, neutralise right wing arguments against open borders.

They do not, in fact, accomplish this. I will still think the median Somali woman has a net-negative fiscal position, that her children have a net-negative fiscal position, and that the family's expected impact on culture, institutions, and politics is not to my liking (regardless of their merits). Violence and crime have never been my primary complaints about mass immigration, they're a couple factors.

In practice violence and crime is the primary complaint that the public have with mass immigration to the West and long has been. Taking our jerbs is secondary and largely confined to the US (both on the h1B Indian and Mexican laborer sides); Swedes aren’t worried about Somalis taking their jobs. Even Brits weren’t as worried about Poles taking their jobs as some Brexit-related commentary suggested.

It seems relevant that the US maintains consistently lower unemployment rates anyways, though.

Life on welfare is probably worse in the US than in much of Northern Europe.

Relative to the median? Or overall? I can buy that greater social equality in Denmark or Germany puts welfare recipients closer to the average standard of living, but that’s probably as much because the US standard of living is much higher as it is about more generous benefits.

Edit: a quick google suggests Texas'(one of the stingier states relative to income) unemployment payments are something like four times Germany's, and disability is 40% more. I could have inaccurate information and there could be other programs making up the difference, but that points strongly to "Germany has greater social equality between the middle and welfare classes than Texas because the middle class has a lower standard of living, not because welfare pays more".

In ~99% of Texas, a car is necessary to live, and loan payments, maintenance, fuel, insurance, etc. eat up a huge amount of money compared to public transit costs in Copenhagen or Hamburg.

Not to mention the whole healthcare-prices debacle, or daycare for any kids.

The very poor in Texas don’t pay for their healthcare(and if you’re on disability you’re on Medicare), and the point of being on welfare is that you don’t work, so you don’t need daycare. Cars are potentially relevant, though, but it seems relevant that gas costs half as much and poor people drive beaters that you can’t get a loan on(because they’re worth so little it’s not worth it to repo, and also because they have bad credit and can’t get a loan). Maintenance might be expensive but they just drive around without insurance most of the time.

Does the middle class actually have a lower standard of living in those countries? From the way I see it, I don't think that's the case at all. Sure, relatively speaking obviously it's lower, compared to their own lower classes. I would make the argument that it's possible that prices are going to adjust to whatever the middle class can afford to pay, so all you're doing with lower class/middle class inequality is making life worse for the lower classes with little actual benefit for the middle classes. (And I really don't care about relative benefit, as I think that's not a healthy way to view things)

Based on apartment/house sizes, yes. I’ll grant that Germans have fewer cars partly because they don’t need them, but they also just generally have less stuff in smaller houses.

In practice, this would result in very small population flows I expect. In terms of downside, I think at minimum increased intrasexual competition among women would make this system undesirable for them. I also disagree that it would assuage anti-immigration sentiment: within families it is women who generally propagate culture to children. This system would still result in some degree of ethnic and cultural change which is the actual reason people dislike immigration.

You would just reorder who hates immigrants. The female vote would shift 90% anti immigration maybe even 100%.

You could still make a hbd argument against it but my guess is males who lean red would suddenly love the policy. Even retired teachers with a 50k a year pension could move to a trailer park to have a cheap second family at 70 years old.

I highly, highly, highly doubt this. For all the talk online about men finding more pliant traditional women in foreign countries, in real life, in a very blue city, no women even in a roundabout way is upset about it happening. Some sympathy for the women who don't know the type of guy they're marrying, but that's it.

I hate to break this to you, but most of the men who have to order in wives from poorer, less successful countries have to do so for a reason.

In a country w/ 350 million people, even allowing all of the women from foreign countries who want to come in is not going to affect the ratio, as much as you think. That's not even getting to the part where it turns out, all the foreign women moving here aren't going to be 9/10 tradwives who want to become homemakers and raise good traditional children.

No one disagrees that people importing foreign wives have something wrong with them. I specifically said a retired teacher could afford a new wife. So that’s a 65 year old guy with a 60k pension getting a 24 year old. A 25 year old college grad with good work is going to want a 22-25 year old mate. But when he’s 40-50 he’s going to be thinking about getting a 22 year old immigrant wife.

On the surface, that sounds like the upside: lots more women, now men have the choice and pick of the litter.

Lots more prostitution etc. as women who are not highly-skilled and are saturating the labour market for low-value work need to find some way to make a living. Sounds great again for men, doesn't it? Now even the most incel of incels can surely find some desperate female to give him the girlfriend experience?

But if you're shifting the population to be majority female, think about it. Are these immigrant women and girls getting the vote now, if they're fully legal citizens? Now you've got a majority of women with the vote, and it is now worth the while of whatever political parties there are to court them. Now women's issues are the ones getting attention. All the feminists of whatever stripe, all the pro-immigrant leftists or progressives, are going to be out there trying to woo them.

As for red/right-wing men? If they're perceived as exploiting the new immigrant female population (see increase in prostitution and sex work), then the women's coalition gets to use its newly-acquired clout to press for anti-porn, anti-sex work, etc. If you're trying to appeal to the God and family right wing section of the population, you ain't gonna do it by saying "And the advantage of this influx of women is cheap and plentiful whores!"

Though you may well be able to appeal to them with "all these new nurses, care workers, teacher's aides and so on mean we can now invest even more in healthcare, education and the kind of social services that depend on soft and people skills and willing hands to feed, bathe and dress the elderly".

Generally the pattern is that wives vote the same way as their husbands. That's especially true for immigrant women.

Also, women aren't a monolith that all votes together. In the US, there's been more women voters than men every year since 1980, and yet there's still zero women presidents and the majority of congress is male.

Generally the pattern is that wives vote the same way as their husbands. That's especially true for immigrant women.

But what about the women with no husbands, both immigrant and native-born? If the sex ratio is being tilted in favour of "more women immigrating every year", there are going to be women with no spouses/committed partners, because the guy will always have in mind that he can get a hot immigrant chick.

Do you think the women, in the example above of the 65 year old teacher getting a 24 year old immigrant bride, are going to be happy about that? That their husband is likely to dump them for the newer model? Or the " 25 year old college grad with good work" with the "22-25 year old mate" but when they both hit their 40s, he dumps her because "But when he’s 40-50 he’s going to be thinking about getting a 22 year old immigrant wife"? And the immigrant women who end up with bad partners, out of desperation, are not going to remain content with the situation either. Tilting the ratios in that manner may well drive women to vote differently, even from any husband they may have.

"In the US, there's been more women voters than men every year since 1980, and yet there's still zero women presidents and the majority of congress is male."

And yet the Democratic Party is in thrall to "women's issues" (see abortion rights). Shift things enough so that there are a lot more women with the vote, and a lot more women unhappy with the state of affairs from replacement new young women coming in every year, and then you may see changes with Congress and even, eventually, the presidency.

You obviously couldn’t have this type of policy in a Democracy especially one with the female right to vote.

Even if on net it’s maximizes utility.

The one area this sort of works is for those people with no lack of resources. The Cali Cartel boss Rodriguez got a new wife roughly every ten years. He still hung out with his old wives. And Elon Musks pulls this off.

With the last though if America had the Star Trek make anything for free device and refused to share the tech it may be possible.

Are these immigrant women and girls getting the vote now, if they're fully legal citizens?

OP says "permanent residency", not citizenship.

So you don't have to worry about it.

I was going to say that the consumer culture would rapidly become more female but I don't know what that means when you have women from vastly different societies mixing in huge numbers. The Western "feminists" will be outnumbered and diluted.

The Western "feminists" will be outnumbered and diluted.

Maybe. Or maybe the model of Westernisation, where these women are coming in without men to enforce the culture and mores from 'back home', will instead mean they adapt to the Western way of living and they want the same rights, freedoms, and shiny trinkets.

How 'traditional, demure, stay at home good wife' is Ilhan Omar, even if she makes a point of having her head covered?

Obviously the "stay at home" section is not going to play. But ,frankly, lots of "traditional" cultures do not just assume at this point that the women will be Betty Draper, they can't afford to.

But there's a lot more to "Western feminism" than that. That's just the motte.

But there's a lot of ideas on sex differences, public expression, the whole therapy culture and speech codes and such that are much more culturally specific to educated middle class Western women that their supposed client peoples don't share, and those people no longer need to depend on them as the defenders of their residency...

There's also just going to be a lot more of them. Muslims (to stick with this example) in Europe are less liberal AFAIK. If you remove the selection effect on American Muslims and they start forming their own enclaves...things might look very different.

The Ukranian migrants generated no such disruption because they were majority women and children.

And also because Western Europe was legitimately the nearest safe country, the Ukrainians didn’t hike through a dozen others to get to a more generous welfare state and in fact seem to have a decent labor force participation rate in the countries they’ve gotten to.

I expect there’s be lots of Filipina and East Indian women showing up and hoping to land a local husband(let’s be real, black women aren’t going to do well as mail order brides even if the men have to do less work) and lots of African women cleaning houses for cheap, with the end result of readily available domestic labor for a generation.

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New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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