Why would you voluntarily create a job scarcity in your own population? Immigration reduces wages, increases prices, strains public services and causes overall decrease in Quality of Life.
Just look at the state of the USA with 28% immigrant population.
Just look at the state of the USA with 28% immigrant population.
Which STILL has the 6th highest GDP per capita (10th if you count tax-haven microstates and overseas territories).
Centuries of mass immigration built the US economy. Y’all are acting like economics is all zero-sum and more people = everyone is poorer, but the amount of jobs doesn’t stay constant as the amount of people increases. The US always had an influx of immigrants to fuel the ever-growing economic machine.
There’s plenty of reasons why a lot of people in the US can’t afford to live in cities, etc. None of it is because of immigration, it’s mostly corporate greed and stupid zoning laws.
Because people fear having their culture and race replaced by immigrants. Even if they’re not overtly racist, few people wish to become a minority in “their own country.”
The US is famously a melting pot, and yet we still have a bunch of descendants of white immigrants from Europe who fear that South Americans will take over; that Mexican culture will replace good old-fashioned hodge-podge Western European culture. That their language will become less dominant. That they’ll find themselves strangers in their own country.
It’s usually an indistinct fear. It seems obvious from the verbiage in the dog-whistles, but white European immigrant descendants don’t want to become second-class.
Now, if we treated our own minorities well, they wouldn’t be so afraid. They wouldn’t be afraid that they’d be the ones with Hispanic cops kneeling on their necks; or that Hispanic immigrants would be living in giant homes and they’d themselves be the ones having to eak out a living as seasonal workers.
I think it’s not despicable to want to preserve your cultural heritage, your cultural language, and to have your country legislated with the values you grew up with; but people react poorly when they think it’s happening.
What I most despise in the Republicans in the US is that they’re advocating for preserving cultural values that never existed broadly in the US. The closest subculture to what they’re pushing is a return to the Confederate South: religion, and white supremacy. The Confederates got their asses handed to them, but the racist fuckers never gave up their values, most most Americans are blind to what their real agenda is. And they’ve been good insurgents, cleverly taking advantage of weak areas in our democracy to return power to a minority: themselves. It’s been said and it’s true: if America was a true democracy and we selected leaders by popular vote, no Republican under their current platform would ever be president again.
Anyway, getting back to your question: immigrants bring their own culture with them, and very few completely abandon it and adopt the culture and language of their new country. This dilutes the host country’s native culture, and people are afraid of that. In the US, it’s the highest form of hypocrisy, because our native culture displaced the indigenous culture, and now we’re afraid of someone else doing the same to us.
I agree with everything up until you said “dilutes”. I would argue that immigrant cultures don’t dilute the host country’s culture, they add to it. In other words, the culture that was there still exists in the same amount and in the same “concentration”, and immigrants bring their culture to newly developing areas of the country/state.
framing is important though. Nobody considers a cocktail ‘diluted’ even if that’s technically applicable, the resultant mixture usually improves the beverage.
But the fear isn’t so rational. It’s like a fear that the cocktail in your example will replace the original vodka whether they want the cocktail or not, or that the vodka will be so diluted by seltzer that it will functionally cease to exist.
It’s like a fear of gentrification of the country as a whole.
It’s also important to remember that the US is a huge exception in this regard as well. Most other countries are like 90%+ native population, and immigrant populations tend to be sort of isolated from the wider national culture due to things like language barriers, and they often set up little “bastions” of their native culture locally wherever they live. We even see plenty of that in the US as well. While there are many distinctly US cultures across the country that are derived from a variety of backgrounds, there are tons of “enclaves” of European culture that make it blatantly clear where immigrants from certain countries settled. In Boston, the culture of Chinatown is distinctly unique and separate from the wider culture of the city, which largely has ties back to Ireland (and is very proud of it). And both of those are distinctly different from where the Italian immigrants settled, who effectively have their own districts of cultures descended from Italy regardless of where they immigrated to.
The word has negative connotations, but I stand by it. I an not saying there result isn’t stronger, but if you extend cultural mixing out to the maximum - say humans and the planet survives another thousand years, and global travel is no harder than traveling to the next town over - what you end up with is homogeneity, and this would be sad, I think. Imagine it: the entire world speaking some pidgin derivative mashup of Mandarin, English, and Hindi, with essentially the same culture everywhere on the planet. Just as has already happened, languages are lost, because nobody speaks them natively anymore. All that’s left of the original cultures are some UNESCO sites and preserved old movies. I can’t say the world wouldn’t be stronger for it, but in the process, something irrecoverable is lost.
Definitely agree with your points but maybe “dilutes”. Isn’t the right term. I don’t think they’re worried about their culture being “watered down” or “thinner”, but replaced.
I had a recent conversation with my brother that fits here. We grew up the same, but he became more conservative and moved to a conservative area, or maybe I became more liberal and moved to a liberal area. I’ve been exploring cooking, and actually this has been several conversations where I’m excited over learning about preparing a different cuisine, being able to appreciate what that brings, and he responds with “why can’t you make regular American food?” “Diluting” the cuisine we grew up with would be to use salsa instead of ketchup or mayo. But I have entire meals replaced with new and different. I have a much bigger spice cupboard full of new and different. I make meals that he doesn’t understand, doesn’t know how to prepare, so he gets defensive about what he is comfortable with being replaced
I don’t disagree. In fact, I think a strength of US culture is the diversity in embraces. I do feel sorry that this came at the cost of indigenous cultures, but the end result has been a wonderful melting pot, ruined only by Laissez-Faire economics and some badly wrong turns in how we do Capitalism. Plus the inherent bigotry that hypocrite descendants of immigrants are unable to recognize. Or, worse maybe, an attitude of “we stole this land fair and square, and now it’s our’s and everyone else fuck off!”
All I’m saying is that my personal preference would be that this not happen to the entire world. I’d like to visit Germany and see a historic Germany, not another version of America with different preserved buildings. I’d love to visit the Basque region and immerse myself in Basque culture, not some mashup globalized culture selling Basque trinkets, which no-one uses at home anymore, to tourists. It’s selfish, I know.
The difference is US culture is bland and stupid. Its con artists, police and shitty corporate bullshit. In fact the last time the US lost a major cultural element it was slavery. I think its about time ditch some more bullshit. The con artists need to be tried for fraud, the police need to be disarmed, the supreme court dismantled and the corporations razed.
This diagram helps to show that you and Hadriscus agree on the order of the posts, but not on how to describe it. That’s pretty interesting to me.
4, 2, 1, 3 – labeling the posts from top to bottom with which order they should then be read. So the first post is read forth, the second post is read second, etc.)
3, 2, 4, 1 – listing the order that the posts should be read if they were understood to be labelled in 1-4 top-down. So we should read the third post first, the second post second, forth post third, …
The fact that neither can agree on how to describe it yet agreeing on what is so wrong in the first place is just an additional data point on how stupid Twitter numbering is. I find that fascinating.
Well played. Now let’s have the fundy tell us how water covered the earth and drowned everybody but then the world was repopulated. Wait… is there some incest required for that to be true? OH NO!
Noah is a Babylonian “deluge myth”. Judaism didn’t even exist until 1,000 years later:
It tells of how Enki, speaking through a reed wall,[v] warns the hero Atra-Hasis (‘extremely wise’) of Enlil’s plan to destroy mankind by flood, telling the hero to dismantle his house (perhaps to provide a construction site) and build a boat to escape
This means that originally the flood was caused by one god and mankind was saved by another. That’s a better explanation than “God was angry but bipolar, so he saved one family and killed everyone else.”
A lot of Europe did so and for this exact purpose. Immigrants are net contributors of tax money and help a lot with demographics. Now however European countries have a sizable portion of their countries as immigrants and it turns out a lot of people feel like their culture is getting lost.
Add that up with corruption is more out in the open, austerity after the 2008 financial crisis generally failed as a policy and people are very prone to believe “Immigrants are to blame” and vote for right wing parties since they run on an anti-establishment platform.
The left generally believes that we need more immigrants and more social programs and so on but there has been a massive crusade on tax rates which hinders the governments ability to pay for them.
This is all coming together now and the far right narrative is being given a chance in Europe with their anti-immigration stance.
In my opinion this is basically the centre-right trying to get votes by cutting taxes, end up taking on massive debt or gutting quality of life social programs so the only way forward is to fuck over minorities and making the most vulnerable people suffer for the greater good. But tax the well-off, rich, wealth, land, capital gains, profits? Nooooo, can’t do that because they fund the political parties. 🙃
homeless are a symptom of many things. healthcare. lack of rentals. lack of employment. lack of social services.
but what is known is that there has been a huge increase in the rate of population growth in Canada in the last several years, along with a decrease in natural population increases (lowering birth rate) and a massive increase in immigration. While housing is an issue, there were never enough spare beds for the increase, and never could be, in the time frame they were required.
Unless you live there, your visit to BC likely did not involve needing to use any of those systems or services. You saw the country through tourist eyes.
Clearly. They must have hid the Mad Max dystopia from me. Excellent job. I am walking around Victoria thinking it’s a cute mini-Seattle and really they started BBQing humans babies for food when I turned around.
There’s a podcast called Behind the Bastards, Robert Evans is the host. Podcast about terrible people in history, Evans and guests have left wing politics and “crude” humor…it’s awesome
Either way, the fetus of a woman who wants an abortion is up her vagina without consent and is therefore a rapist. Deadly force is permissible in the act of removing a rapist from their victim.
If it is a person, then yes, it could be considered a rapist, and subject to forcible removal at the mother’s will. If it is not a person, it is merely an unexpected growth, and subject to forcible removal at the mother’s will.
The ridiculousness of the former scenario tells us that, for purposes of deciding whether the mother is entitled to remove it, the fetus should not be considered a person.
I love that bait, hahah. Rape aside, woman had to take into account possibility of a child when she had sex. Same with her partner. Sorry, but that’s the biological reason sex even exists, and denying it because we found good methods of contraception does nothing because even these methods are being advertised as not 100% effective.
So, no victims there other than the poor unborn child.
That “rape aside” is doing a lot of heavy lifitng there and conveniently sweeps away the need to actually address anything that isn’t the “had sex, your fault” narrative you seem to be espousing here.
Especially given that there is little to no effort being given to exemptions of any kind.
Nobody is denying that sex is how babies are (usually) made, i mean apart from the “this book is the literal truth” christians i suppose.
or you’re trolling, in which case, congratulations…i guess.
I slightly do troll - in a sense of presenting fully opposite view to the one provided.
And the"rape aside" is meant to do the heavy lifting. It’s there as a heavy notion that shit happens. Forced sex, rapid health declination, getting too drunk to think logicaly (…although from what I know, then it’s also rape, no? Or I misunderstood), or simply finding out your body can’t handle birth. These are all valid reasons for abortion.
But by all means, consequence of sex is having a child, and people - this is my own fully subjective opinion - seem to be bewildered by this notion. By all means, people always should take into account that sex ends with children without precautions, and still may end with children with, and be responsible about it. Not call a consequence of their actions a parasite.
Is she obligated to report that rape? Is she obligated to accuse someone? Is she obligated to prove she has been raped? Is she obligated to cooperate with an investigation into her rape? Is she obligated to even claim she had been raped?
The answers are “No, No, No, No, and No”. Since she is not and should never be under any sort of obligation to do any of these things, you don’t know and can’t know that she was raped. Yet, by your argument, as a victim, she is entitled to an abortion.
With your philosophy, you could presume that any particular woman seeking an abortion has been raped, and is simply not reporting it for whatever reason. She is entitled to her abortion.
I didn’t aim to proclaim “women need to admit to rape to get healthcare”. I countered instead calling fetus a rapist - an actively and wholly out of control of a woman agressor. No, unethical situations aside, both parties knew what consequences are there. No use getting pissed at someone/thing because of your own stupidity.
I put rape aside because it wasn’t aimed at discussing this part in depth but…if you want, why not. First of all, women, as you wrote, are not obligated to admit to being a victim of rape. And yes, in the way I described it above, it’s suggested that rape victims are entitled to abortion. However, the mental jump to then switching the logic around that any woman looking for abortion was raped is simply illogical in the same manner that saying only alcoholics buy alcohol is. In the dystopian version of the world where abortion is fully illegal except for unexpected and unethical situations like rape, I think that yes, women would have to admit to being a victim to receive medical help. There’s simply hardly any other way.
However, the mental jump to then switching the logic around that any woman looking for abortion was raped is simply illogical
I agree, but I didn’t say that they were raped. I said you could presume they were raped. You are perfectly capable of making and choosing to make that presumption.
I think that yes, women would have to admit to being a victim to receive medical help. There’s simply hardly any other way.
There most certainly is another way. You are under no obligation to ask. You don’t need to create an obligation for her to tell. Even if you did ask and she did tell, she could have some reason for lying and claiming it was consensual when it actually wasn’t, so you can ignore any answer she gives.
The “other way” is to allow you to presume that she meets whatever criteria you believe necessary to justify and permit abortion. If you need to believe she was raped, presume she was raped. If you need her life to be in danger, go right ahead and presume her life is in danger.
One last point: You are under zero obligation to presume that her sexual encounters were consensual. If you choose to presume consent, I’d like to know your rationale for doing so. And I’d like to know how fairly you will be treating a rape victim seeking an abortion if you presume consent that was not granted.
About presuming she met any criteria: If our aim is to limit unneeded abortions, then this approach is not only invalid, but also damaging. It will work against the target of removing casual abortions while also removing a lot of weight behind act of rape. The second part is dangerous because it could lessen actual amount of help for victims. Also, this means that woman would have to prove she’s a victim - by gaining second opinion, most probably with the help of police, maybe could be done by medical specialist. I’d honestly rather lean onto the other, to remove need for criminal investigation if such is unwanted by victim.
About last point: I choose to presume consent because great majority of children is conceived consensually, and as such this is default, and I’d treat a rape victim as a rape victim, not much to say about that one. Case by case.
The only “unneeded” abortions are those that are forced on the mother against her will. Every other abortion is “needed”. (We have not previously considered forced abortions in this discussion, and I see no compelling reason to delve into them now. I mention them only in demonstration that the mother’s needs are valid, so the only abortion that is “unneeded” is the one that she has determined to be unneeded: an abortion forced upon her without her consent.)
The second part is dangerous because it could lessen actual amount of help for victims.
The only “help” our hypothetical victim has requested is an abortion, and she hasn’t requested it from you. She has requested it from someone ready, willing, and able to provide that help. Neither she nor that provider want you to be involved at all. She hasn’t asked for your help; she doesn’t want your help. Why are you choosing to involve yourself? What “help” are you going to force on her against her will?
About last point: I choose to presume consent
I’ll stop you right there. The rest of your argument is likely true, but the truthfulness of that second part does not justify the first part. You don’t get to make that “choice”.
The only time it is reasonable to presume consent is when you are actually presuming innocence. Where an individual is accused of committing a crime by acting without consent, presumption of innocence requires us to presume consent until proven otherwise beyond the shadow of a doubt. As our situation does not involve anyone accused of a criminal act, there is no valid justification to presume consent.
#You may never infer consent from silence.
If your personal code of morality only allows you to accept abortion in the case of non-consent, you may presume non-consent. You can satisfy your own morality by accepting the possibility that she was raped, and just doesn’t want to talk about it. You can simply presume she meets your arbitrary criteria; you have no need to actually prove her status to any degree of certainty.
The only “unneeded” abortions are those that are forced on the mother against her will.
Abortion is killing off another human being, so it’s not really that black and white. Also, I agree that forced abortions are, at the very least, unneeded.
The only “help” our hypothetical victim has requested is an abortion, and she hasn’t requested it from you.
What I meant by help is therapy, societal support and the like. If we just presume that every woman wanting abortion is a rape victim, these forms of help would loose support due to lessening the weight of situation.
Why are you choosing to involve yourself?
The only place I chose to involve myself initially was in calling a human being brought into this world through people knowing what they are doing a parasite.
I’ll stop you right there.
It was you who wanted to kniw my rationale. I simply responded.
As our situation does not involve anyone accused of a criminal act, there is no valid justification to presume consent.
Meanwhile, however, you require others to presume that there’s a rape victim. This means there’s criminal act, and thus is a valid justification.
If your personal code of morality only allows you to accept abortion in the case of non-consent, you may presume non-consent. You can satisfy your own morality by accepting the possibility that she was raped, and just doesn’t want to talk about it. You can simply presume she meets your arbitrary criteria; you have no need to actually prove her status to any degree of certainty.
I’ll be honest, only at this point I actually got what you are going for, but sadly, it applies both ways and depends highly on someones morality. While I cannot say in good faith that I would choose life of an unborn baby over it’s mothers health - be it mental or physical - there are people whose moral compas wouldn’t allow to simply accept killing off such child. There are also more reasonable - in ny opinion - people who simply don’t want us to kill off unborns due to the mere convienience.
My point from the get go was, however, to not treat creating a new living being from activity meant for doing just that as a surpise and/or punishment. For people to think about what they are doing, and what consequences may be.
It’s actually a pretty simple question, and has a simple, straightforward answer. The fetus does not become alive until its survival needs can be feasibly met by someone or something other than the mother. Until it is biologically capable of surviving the death of the mother, it is alive only as a part of the mother’s body.
An infant does require considerable support. It will die if neglected. But, the support an infant requires can be provided by any caregiver. Dad, grandma, or an older sibling can feed an infant. Doctors can provide it with IV nutrition.
To you it seems simple, but this is a philosophical question that hasn’t been answered for over a century. You can reason for any point in time to be the point it becomes a person.
I maintain that debating fetal personhood is a huge mistake because it goes down a philosophical road where you can’t clearly define things like when someone feels pain.
There is a much simpler reason to make abortion legal- for the same reason it is not legal to harvest a corpse’s organs without the person’s consent before they die or the reason you can’t be forced to donate a kidney. Being forced to use your organs for someone else’s benefit against your will is illegal in every other situation. Even if it means a human will die without them. That doesn’t matter if it is something that will eventually develop into someone with full human rights or if it has them already. It’s just not relevant. It’s about the rights of the person whose body will be used.
It was mostly just Catholics who were anti-abortion before the 70s. Then the Baptists discovered it was an issue they could latch onto and others followed.
And it wasn’t just a political reason the Baptists latched on to it. They realized legal abortion meant less white babies because you’re a lot less likely to be able to get one if you’re poor.
Even then water is only wet sometimes. Extremely cold ice isn’t wet for example. It’s quite dry until you reduce increase* its heat enough for it to become wet again.
Most of water on earth is wet. It’s not a default property though.
Because salad is boring and fat-shaming is the last kind of bullying still considered acceptable.
I was out on my bike the other day and someone yelled “YOU FAT BASTARD”. Fortunately I’m pretty thick skinned and have lined up a few choice remarks for next time.
Imagine if fat had been replaced with black, or Chinese, or gay, etc. They’d be in jail for committing a hate crime quicker than I could get to the nearest Greggs.
Oh feck off. Most gyms are mostly predatory money grab schemes.
Better to reduce your sugar intake and focus on physical activity with practical effects. Clean your house, do some gardening, volunteer in the community, play some sport you actually like. Gyms are for losers!
But being fat is not the same as being black. People do not get sick and die 30 years earlier because they are black, for instance. People are black not because they ignore physical exercises and eat too much. I don’t support bullying, but acting like this is a normal condition that we should cherish is wrong.
People do die 30 years earlier because they’re black - thats often how racism works…
Imo how do we know what “normal” is and has that been the case for the last 1000 years? The Japanese have employed sumo wrestlers to serve in a sport, for instance. I think its fair to say fat shaming is a more modern phenomena that’s occurred more recently as high calorie low nutrition food became mass produced and microplastics have accumulated in all our bodies.
Did you equate health issues caused by lack of physical activity and excessive eating to racism? I can’t even… Okay, if you want to ignore all the medical and scientific evidence, ignore them. It is your body and you are the one to face the consequences.
This was in a conversation about what kind of abusive behavior is acceptable. Do you think it’s also acceptable to be mean to athletes because they too cause damage to their own bodies?
No, I was correcting YOUR comparison. I think shaming racists is quite good, while shaming fat people is misguided.
ignore all the medical and scientific evidence
The point here is that our value judgements about health aren’t medical or scientific. Risky behavior isn’t universally frowned upon by society. Often its encouraged.
In the US, for instance, automobile accidents are a lead cause of death for people under 35, yet we don’t treat driving with the same disdain as smoking or obesity. As far as “lack of physical activity” goes, car accidents represent a major source of injuries, which do make people less able to keep up healthy lifestyles. Yet again, little disdain.
Smoking is a great comparison here, because if you want to take the medical literature seriously you can’t just handle it from the consumer end, you also have to deal with industries that employ swaths of food scientists to make bad food addictive and cheap.
All in all, I do think we could benefit from thinking about why we shame people for things and ask ourselves if we’re applying these judgements in a consistent way.
Why should they? How about we just accept that a shrinking population is the best way to keep the earth sustainable?
Japan sure doesn’t have enough land to sustain everyone without global trade. When that global trade ends in a few years due to global food shortage, Japan is cooked. Better to reduce the population as much as possible until then.
The birth rates are low because of the terrible environment that doesn’t support having and raising children. All you’re doing is importing more people who will also barely have any children within a generation or so. Mass immigration is just throwing bodies at the bottom of the pyramid scheme. You can see this in action in Canada where housing is absolutely unaffordable, but large numbers of immigrants are brought in who have to work for shitty wages and live with multiple families in a single rental unit.
The screaming about low birth rate is because corporations want to keep a high labor pool so they can drive down the price of labor while keeping up demand for consumption.
The screaming about low birth rate is because corporations want to keep a high labor pool so they can drive down the price of labor while keeping up demand for consumption.
It's not only that. By the time you want to retire, there won't be enough people to pay taxes for your retirement fund. With more young people than old, that is less of a problem.
This is one area where we’re supposed to benefit from the greatly increased automation. We don’t need a huge mass of people doing make-work. The current situation is that we force people to do make-work to continue making on-paper profits which mostly go to a tiny set of wealthy people. The current situation is unsustainable even if population growth increased because it’s a pyramid scheme. The system relies on infinite growth.
But isn’t it better to have a few years but then growth vs absolute death spiral due to low population which we would have to increase immigration for regardless
The problem is that most of the growth goes to the already rich as they pay immigrants poorly and make them pay high rents (hence the need to have multiple families living in a single unit). It’s still a death spiral, just with higher profits for the rich few. The only way to make it not a death spiral is to force the rich leeches to stop sucking the blood out of everyone else.
The problem is that birthdate is dropping even faster in those countries. An even bigger “problem” is that in general life is getting better, even in developing countries. There is no infinite supply of immigrants waiting to save the developed world.
Encouraging immigration is far from a panacea. It will work for a few countries, for another generation or so, but you can see the end of that coming
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