Comment by mk89 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mk89 | Hacker News Reader

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> But no, you want more. You want luxury life, you want to keep the rest of the world underneath you.

Why does wanting more imply having people underneath you?

Your comment is full of frustration, hatred and anger, it doesn't have any argument in it. I hope you can see that.

The main issue stems from the fact that Europeans have a different lifestyle, therefore, moving forward for them implies having actually higher wages, not lower ones, in order to have at the end of the month some free days of vacation, health insurance for the family, etc etc.

The comment you are answering to says exactly that. It didn't mention anything like "let's send them back" or whatever it is, as you seem to imply with your words. It was an honest observation (backed up by economists, by the way, just google that) about the fact that by giving more work to people who get less money won't do anything else than lowering the salaries for the entire sector. Of course, it will give people from other countries a possibility to work and make it, however, as a local citizen wishing to improve my country and the average income, why would I care about people coming from other countries? I mean, what do I get in return?

> however, as a local citizen wishing to improve my country and the average income, why would I care about people coming from other countries? I mean, what do I get in return?

The main point of contention is not about whether this would improve the quality of life of the average EU programmer. It is about concealing what is just naked self-interest (i.e. concern about one's own wages) with noble talk of 'inequality'. I don't think there's anything wrong with concern for one's own interests, but trying to phrase it as a worry about something else comes off as a bit disingenuous.

Secondly, this just smacks of protectionism. If everyone thought the same way, we would have nowhere close to the diverse array of goods available to the modern consumer at such low prices.

What's wrong with self interest and protectionism?

My family comes first.

I don't want to be part in the salary race to the bottom for the sake of lower prices and consumerism.

"it increases the inequality putting all the gains in the hands of the employers."

That was not noble talk of global inequality, they meant it increases inequality on the labor market between capital and workers. So it was also a self-interested (and correct) statement.

You're confusing protectionism with protecting one's borders. Protecting one's borders and awarding more rights to the country's own population than to the rest of the world is the status quo and the only recipe for success we know.

> why would I care about people coming from other countries? I mean, what do I get in return?

This is a pretty stunning question.

Most people care about people other than ourselves. Most people sometimes do things to benefit others, even if they don't "get in return", as you put it, and they expect others to behave similarly. For example:

1. A billion people base their religious beliefs on venerating the self-sacrifice of God dying and/or giving-His-only-begotten-son to help others.

2. Most people believe that people other than themselves can have subjective experiences of joy and pain. Most people would take a little time out of their day, for instance, to help an abandoned, injured infant, even if they would never "get anything in return" for their selfless act; even though the infant can't promise them anything in return or prove that they are suffering, people see a suffering child and feel a sort of basic level of empathy.

3. Almost everyone who has political opinions is arguing not primarily about themselves, but about people more vulnerable than them who are being hurt by existing policy or will be helped by new policy - usually large classes of people that the arguer will never meet.

4. The idea that other people matter is so incredibly common, we diagnose people who cannot experience it with a medical condition sometimes informally called "sociopathy"

So I'm going to assume you know that most people expect you to care about people other than yourself, and I'm going to assume that you actually do care about people other than yourself.

Now try to imagine what it would be like to extend that empathy to foreigners.

That's it. That's the whole trick.

Good luck!

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