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I'm not a conservative so I don't worry about these things. As for them, I don't expect them to do anything other than stop bitching about people who need handouts and then asking the government to set policies that are basically handouts for them. And if you want AI to do legal services, be my guest; I'll make more money undoing the mess...
Hypothetically speaking, you're in the state of Washington. They vote in some progressives who decide that established lawyers have to hire assistants in order to train them for the bar exam bypass. The new hypothetical regulation leads to lower profit per case for you, with the same or additional work. Additionally they vote in some new taxes just for the stuff you like to buy.
Do you just take it, give up on some stuff? Do you move to another state and have to leave family and friends behind? Do you retrain for a completely different career that you can still live decently from? Do you complain in a bar with a bunch of your lawyer buddies until you decide that you will take some kind of action to lobby against the new regulations?
Also would actions like jan6, starting a border patrolling militia or targeting open-borders-supporting politicians qualify as 'having agency' for somebody complaining about economic stress from immigration?
On the other hand, I'd say forming a union definitely counts as having agency for (left-wing) workers who feel unfairly treated by their employers.
I raise my fees to cover the cost of the assistants. There's not even a competitive disadvantage to that since the laws apply to everyone.
Well in the hypothetical that was not an option. Whatever hypothetical progressive regulation also gives preferential treatment. For example law firms headed by women/diversity get preferential treatment in court over you, or their costs get partially subsidized by the government, making you less competitive.
I think it's best that reorient ourselves to the initial topic of discussion. I apologize since my initial comment was a bit opaque and my replies were hastily written on mobile, so let me clarify the crux of my argument — There's an outward stereotype, mostly perpetrated, for lack of a better term, by the right, that agency is an inherently right-wing characteristic. The argument goes that if conservatives are more likely to blame one's failures on individual factors, most notably lack of effort, while liberals are more likely to point to external factors like structural inequities. I was trying to rebut this presumption by saying that right-wingers don't take this argument to the end of its ideological tether, since they temper their otherwise libertarian free-market principles with calls for restrictions on immigration and trade in the guise of protecting American workers. That's all I was saying. When pressed, @Walterodim made reference to J.D. Vance, who has, in the past, complained about the tendency of lower-class white conservatives to repeatedly make bad decisions and blame their misfortune on external factors, be it the economy, China, Obama, the government, immigrants, etc. My comment was intended to point out two things: First, that these sentiments aren't limited to lower-class conservatives but are prevalent among successful ones as well, and second, that Vance himself has echoed the same sentiments himself since he entered politics and had to cater to the class of people he criticized in his book. That's all I was saying. I wasn't making any particular argument about my own policy preferences or trying to criticize other people for theirs, just disagreeing with categorical statements about the belief in personal agency among liberals and conservatives that a lot of comments were making. I certainly didn't intend to go down this road. And while I place most of the blame on myself for this misunderstanding, I do think you made an assumption that I was following this thread more closely than I actually was, and your comment, as we lawyers like to say, "assumes facts not in evidence".
But while we're here, I might as well respond to your comment. I'm not conservative, but I am a liberal free-marketer who generally believes in what I call "welfare capitalism", which is mostly laissez-faire but allows for government interference in the case of market distortions and for some kind of welfare state. As such, I believe that a free market should be the default, and while interventions are permissible, they have to be justified. And this isn't just my default; it was the default throughout most of American history. The Constitution says nothing about immigration and very little about market regulation, and indeed the country didn't make any serious attempts at regulating either until well into the 20th Century. So when you ask me what I'd do about the passage of some particular law that was passed that threatened my livelihood, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that my opinion wouldn't be influenced by the fact that I'm directly affected. But whether I actually try to get the law overturned would depend on whether I think it's a good law. What I certainly wouldn't do is directly advocate for rent-seeking legislation, like having the state cap annual bar admissions to drive up the price of legal work. If there are stupid laws on the books that are having the effect of disadvantaging workers in the Rust Belt then I'm all in favor of getting rid of them, and I'd agree that the left advocates for plenty of stupid new laws that would have this effect. But opposition to them isn't what I'm talking about. What conservatives are advocating for is deviating not just from the default, but from the status quo, by passing additional immigration and trade restrictions for the express purpose of benefiting a favored class. And that's not exactly an expression of self-agency.
I didn't mean to go too off-track either.
Well then I could say that whatever you're doing now would be even more admirable and self-agentic if you were blind or something, so why not just burn your eyes out?
Leaving the borders swinging wide-open is the national equivalent of blinding yourself in my opinion.
I believe that it should have.
What about the Naturalization Act of 1790?
I said no serious attempts, not no attempts; the Chinese Exclusion Act is actually a better example, since the 1790 act didn't prevent anyone from coming here, just from becoming citizens (and in those days you didn't need to be a citizen to vote).
And a lot of people on the left believe that it should have included a lot of things that it didn't that you'd probably find abhorrent and that doesn't change anything. Your preference is your preference, and the default is the default; it's what we started with, and if you want to change it the burden is on you to demonstrate that it's necessary. I'm not saying that your opinion is illegitimate, just that it doesn't have any moral high ground over other opinions that the left holds that are also obvious examples of rent seeking.
I hate to do this, but this is almost literally a textbook example of a straw man argument. No one outside a few on the far left is advocating open borders. The current argument about the border is whether to raise numbers up a bit or restrict them further, and whether Biden's current manner of dealing with the border is enough. Border patrol agents are still working. People are still getting deported. The argument boils down to whether Biden should be taking actions that may or may not actually have any effect.
The far left doesn't advocate opening borders, the borders are already open. They just attack anybody who wants to do anything about it.
If you deport a thousand people and let in a million, you are still technically 'deporting' people.
Yes, we get told that arresting gang members would not do anything about crime, until somebody does it and then 'at what cost???'
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As ever so slight of a tonal objection, I want to note that I didn't feel pressed by @Chrisprattalpharaptr, who brought up a point that I basically agree with. Looking back at the exchange, I realize that I didn't say as much, as that's my mistake, so I'll addend it now - Republican politicians love playing the victim routine and many of their constituents reward them for it. I offered Vance up not because I felt particularly pressed, but because I was engaging in the thought exercise of which Republicans don't act that way.
Zooming out to the broader point, I think we can relate that to something that's come up a number of times in this thread, which is that the reality of high-status Blue Tribers is that they certainly don't act like they believe that that people are but ships adrift, subject to the currents. That's actually one of the things that I think is most interesting about the conversation is the contrast between expressed opinions on the power of personal responsibility and the exercise thereof.
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This is why people talk about luxury beliefs. AI can't do legal services at half your rate. New immigrants, especially illegals, can't either. You can be rest assured that your ability to sell legal services depends on a bar exam, many years of education, and a lot of overhead costs such as opening an office. It's not possible for someone to undercut you because he's willing to live in poverty, forcing you to live in poverty in order to compete.
I could say the same thing about any American, though. Believing the United States should restrict trade and immigration is a luxury belief for Americans, almost all of whom have jobs and live decent lives compared to people in say, Guatemala or Venezuela. We all have the luxury of being born in a country where a shitty job at a convenience store pays well above what most of the world is making.
A luxury belief is not a belief that someone should be harmed, or else "bank robbers should be jailed" would be a luxury belief. It's a belief that harms someone you supposedly care about while not harming yourself.
So that's not a luxury belief because your opponent doesn't care about Guatemalans (or claim that restricting immigration is good for them). If you explicitly are willing to say "I don't care whether immigration hurts blue collar workers", then supporting immigration wouldn't be a luxury belief for you, but themotte frowns on putting such words in people's mouths.
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Would restricting trade and immigration harm Guatemala or Venezuela? Don't the people of these countries suffer from all their capable people seeking higher wages in the US?
Adjusted for cost and quality of living? I've seen interesting discussions between born-in-Africa immigrants and African-Americans, and the natives made a good point that being born in a broken family and broken community makes hustling harder.
American businesses may have the highest wages for the lowest qualifications but they have also perfected the art of destroying the bodies and soul of a people.
Dunno about Guatemala, but Venezuelans suffer mostly from their country being a socialist shithole that, as yet, hasn't totally collapsed into anarchy. Venezuelans staying in their country and improving it to the point that immigration to the US is no longer as attractive first requires Maduro to be removed from power, along with Chavismo being purged so thoroughly to a degree that might look rather sinister.
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