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Comment by jpalawaga | Hacker News Reader

Your premise is flawed. If I create a new nation and my nations social contact is one norm: no outsiders, then you can't simply be a national by agreeing to the contract.

In practice, nations prioritize their own citizens, in the same way you will prioritize your family. Do you abandon taking care of your family because it would be "more fair," to take care of someone on the other side of the planet?

Your countrymen should have aligned values, cultures, goals, missions, etc that prioritizes them. That's the fabric of society.

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The problem you’re ignoring is that there is not a 1:1 correlation between citizenship and people who agree to the social contract.

Everyone who gives up freedom to the state is entering into a social contract with that state, citizenship or no. Once those people enter into that contract, they deserve all of the rights and services the contract provides.

By tying the contract to citizenship, you provide a way for racists and nationalists to steal from the people arbitrarily determined to be noncitizens, usually along racial lines.

At the same time, if a surplus of noncitizens enter and suddenly the country's ability to provide for all of its people is strained, wouldn't that be a grave disservice to the citizens? What would be the difference between a citizen and a noncitizen then? Not that a country like the US is reasonably providing for a large portion of the populace anyways, so I suppose that's a moot point right now.

No, as these people who are part of the influx, once accepting the social contract, are no better or worse than anyone else who has agreed to the social contract, citizen or no.

Besides, all evidence suggests immigrants benefit a society substantially more than they harm it. In the US for example, noncitizens consume significantly fewer national resources while still paying the full amount of taxes expected of citizens.

I don't deny that immigrants are beneficial at the moment. However, some people aren't going to have jobs. Besides, it's not as if noncitizens should be paid less just because they can survive with those wages. I'm saying that if the US actually cared for all of its people, I'll say present immigrants included, there won't be room for an arbitrary number of new immigrants. Are you going to try to stretch that limit until something bad happens? I have no interest in excluding people of "other races" or something like that, but pragmatically, I think the line needs to be drawn somewhere at some point.

There is no "pragmatic" limit. As more people arrive, more jobs are needed to support them, more jobs are made available as a larger pool of workers able to do a wider variety of tasks for wages that allow for corporations to turn a profit. It's a self sustaining cycle.

The general rule here is that unless there's an obvious reason to deny equal people something you've given other people, you shouldn't deny it in the first place.

> The general rule here is that unless there's an obvious reason to deny equal people something you've given other people, you shouldn't deny it in the first place.

Of course. The problem is that your view of the economy is optimistic, perhaps dangerously so. Let's hope we never reach the limit and have a concrete problem on our hands, I guess.

My view is not optimistic, it's reflective of reality.

This viewpoint appears somewhat naive and unrealistic. It's important to consider that there are literally billions of people who might be willing to make certain sacrifices and agree, or at least pretend to agree, to a social contract just to migrate to the US. What would happen in such a scenario? Society could collapse. To get a clearer perspective on this, it's worth examining what started happening in the European Union around 2015 when there was a substantial influx of immigrants from Africa and Asia. It created huge social tensions. Look at the rising crime rates in Sweden (majority from immigrants, that's not some right wing propaganda but actual statistics, just google it), the increased popularity of far-right parties like AFD in Germany or neo nazi parties in France or Italy. I am grateful that this perspective is in the minority because the consequences of the proposed decisions could potentially harm society. There will always be individuals who exploit divisions and tensions between groups to gain power. Don't forget that Hitler was elected in democratic society.

Society would not even come close to collapsing, that is unrealistic.

As much as a weather forecaster's is, I suppose.

I’m not predicting anything.

Preach it fellow human. I sometimes am baffled by how little a damn people in privileged positions can give about others. All they're interested in is preserving their position of privilege, and their political views and philosophy on life will typically reflect that. Personally I would give citizenship and a free house to any good hearted hard working individual and not give a damn where they come from. Our whole society would benefit if we didn't have to waste so much of our brain power just on surviving.

> Your countrymen should have aligned values, cultures, goals, missions, etc that prioritizes them. That's the fabric of society.

12% of the US population are second generation immigrants [0]. Obviously, third generation percentage is even higher.

Good luck reconciling that with your thoughts on what a "nation" should be.

[0] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

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