Comment by otterley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by otterley | Hacker News Reader

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> people on both sides of the aisle are happy with the status quo

Did you mean unhappy? That's always true of a democratic system. Making everyone happy is impossible, so we strive for something that tries to make everyone equally unhappy (if not in kind, then at least in degree).

> You may well be right but the only way to know is to try change and see what happens.

I don't think that's necessarily true. Logical people can follow the math. And if people can look past their own biases and limited horizons (which I know is not always possible), they will also clearly see that the world as a whole is much better off, and that even if they feel poorer, they themselves are objectively better off from a quality of life perspective, especially when compared to previous generations. I realize it's a difficult sell, but it is true.

The downside risk of erecting barriers is much worse than the upside risk. For those of us approaching retirement without a guaranteed pension to look forward to, the prospect of having our savings significantly diminished is incredibly scary. And poor people should be frightened, too, because maintaining their existing standard of living (which, BTW, is much better than it ever was, historically) is about to become much more difficult.

I've never seen a cogent and defensible theory of a nation that's economically and socially better off for most as a result of putting up higher barriers to trade and immigration. ISTM anyone who wants to eliminate free trade is cutting off their nose to spite their face.

> I've never seen a cogent and defensible theory of a nation that's economically and socially better off for most as a result of putting up higher barriers to trade and immigration

That suggests you’ve just got a simplistic worldview that ignores variables. Do a thought experiment: say you replaced 200 million americans with Bangladeshis overnight. Would the country be better off or worse off? Obviously worse off. The things Bangladeshis think and believe and do that make the country the way it is—everything from corruption to littering to overthrowing the government—won’t change just because they step foot on american soil. They’d immediately vote to turn America into an officially Muslim socialist country, like back home.

Now, if you agree that 200 million Bangladeshis overnight would be bad, but say 100,000 Bangladeshis a year would be fine, you’re applying unstated assumptions about the rate and quality of assimilation. Which you likely have no empirical basis for assuming.

I would say your assertions about free trade are similar. You’re looking at a simplified model of the world that leaves out important variables and then declaring that free trade has no downsides.

Wow, dude. You've really revealed your true colors with this comment. You could have articulated a well-argued defense and chose to write this instead? It reeks of prejudice and carries a "great replacement theory" sympathetic vibe. Talk about a simplistic worldview. You should be ashamed of yourself.

I think it's time to close this discussion.

You’re the one pretending to have a “cogent” view of free trade and immigration, but what you wrote is just knee-jerk moralism. You’ve apparently developed a view of immigration that rests on ideological axioms about the fungibility of people, the degree to which people are responsible for the state of their societies, etc. You have no basis for believing that. You’re the one who should be ashamed for trying to shut down conversation because you’re triggered by the notion that countries are the way they are because of their citizens, and those citizens carry their culture and behavior with them when they immigrate. Those are fundamental questions underlying the issue of immigration and you can’t even look them in the eye.

I used Bangladesh as an example because I’m from there. My entire family on both sides going back to time immemorial is from there. Yet half my family left Bangladesh for the west. We didn’t leave because we were desperate—like most skilled immigrants, we were affluent back home. We left because we didn’t want to raise our kids in a society run by Bangladeshis.

Bangladeshis, in the aggregate, are very different from Americans on numerous cultural dimensions. You seem to think either we’re not (self-evidently false), that those differences disappear when we set foot in America (false), or that those differences are superficial and don’t alter the society around us (more debatable, but based on my experience and analysis, false).

You cannot form a cogent view of immigration policy without delving into the link between culture and societal outcomes, and the stickiness of cultural attitudes in immigrants. Otherwise you’re like a hippy complaining about nuclear power even though you don’t know anything about it.

Good materials:

https://paulbacon.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/z...

https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...

https://docs.iza.org/dp17569 (Dutch study about net contribution of immigrants; look at p. 39, showing how immigrants from different cultures have different contribution levels even adjusted for education)

People have been immigrating to the Americas since its discovery. The actual natives to this country, in fact, have been almost fully extinguished by European immigrants and are now largely relegated to reservations on the least-desirable places in the country. They are the ones who are poor and bereft; and their culture is practically extinct. So, don't lecture anyone, especially someone well-educated in American history, about how immigration can change a place.

Nevertheless, modern immigration doesn't change a place that dramatically and for the worse, especially when it's controlled. If you read your history, you'd know that every wave of immigrants to this country has been met with fear, contempt, and opposition (including my family's, as starving Jews escaping the Third Reich). Yet, in the long term, the feared outcomes--similar to the ones you describe--never came to pass. America doesn't look like Italy. It doesn't look like Ireland. It doesn't look like Israel. It doesn't look like Mexico. It doesn't look like Vietnam. It doesn't look like India. Maybe certain neighborhoods do for a while, but that's actually one of the nice things about America: that you can go spend some time and enjoy the fruits of a different culture without leaving home. Yet they're still subject to American laws, regulations, and supervision.

And immigrants don't get to vote, so they don't have much political influence for a long while, even locally. Remember, too, that it takes a supermajority to amend the Constitution, so for immigrant culture to have a serious impact on the USA itself would take generations, to the extent it ever does.

I never suggested that immigration should be entirely unregulated and that people and cultures are fungible. That's a straw man you created. And the fact that you are assuming that's the situation people want and the inevitable outcome that will result reveals who you are, and yeah, I'm going to fucking moralize on it. Racists and fearmongerers are evil, even those who hate their own kind. Your own argument supposes that morals are a part of transplantable culture, and let me tell you: Racism, fear, absolutism, and contempt for outsiders are not American values. Perhaps you need to work better on assimilation, yourself.

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