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I really really like Europeans. I love their zest for life. Their focus on supporting people as a basic human right. But in order to do these things, you need money and you need muscle. Unfortunately both of those things are obtainable on a scale of difficulty approximated by the most competitive global players, which are currently the US and China. Unfortunately that means you have to work a lot harder or spend a lot less on social programs or some mix of both.

I don’t see a way around this and Europe is suffering because they don’t seem to want to accept this reality.

Nah we are doing just fine. We're not suffering, I much much rather live in Europe than in the US. In fact I wouldn't even visit the US anymore.

We just have a problem with an aging demographic but this is a temporary problem.

>We just have a problem with an aging demographic but this is a temporary problem.

Unless we nuke the pension systems in Europe it's not a temporary problem, but rather one for the next 15-20 years.

That is temporary. 15 years ago was 2011. Not exactly a long time. And we've had a lot worse to deal with than some pensions, like covid.

> We don't have a huge immigration problemq

My Bangladeshi parents were in London in 2023 and they were shocked by the number of immigrants. My mom was very upset because it blew up the idea that the immigrants would act and talk exactly like British people who just happened to be less sensitive to the sun. They’re retaining their differences, they’re participating in politics in ethnic blocs, they’re raising their kids with their own culture and values. It’s the opposite of what her generation had hoped for—London becoming more like Dhaka instead of Dhaka becoming more like London. This is because you’re letting them in too fast, in groups that are too large.

You’re also letting in the wrong kind of immigrants. You want immigrants who dislike their home countries and want to leave and westernize. You don’t want to take refugees, who are generally people who are forced by external circumstances rather than internal motivation to leave their homelands.

I think that's the point. I don't think assimilation was the goal. You can just see why people want immigration. It's purpose is to create ethnic blocs with distinct cultures. The West kind of built up this gigantic resistance to itself, I suspect, because of Nazism (or the reaction to it in anti-Nazism/anti-fascism to be precise). I think the belief is that Nazism is an inevitable form of the west that has to be stopped with intervention by the state. I think that's evil and don't believe that myself. But clearly a lot of people do. Around the time of JFK's victory, immigration was also viewed as an asset for the growth of urban politics. So immigration is a tool used by a postwar elite to maintain power.

Yes, assimilation was the marketing ploy, not the goal. The goal is ethnopolitical clientelism: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/a-tammany-hall-f....

> My Bangladeshi parents were in London in 2023 and they were shocked by the number of immigrants.

Surreal comment. Tourist: "There are so many tourists here"

> it blew up the idea that the immigrants would act and talk exactly like British people who just happened to be less sensitive to the sun.

Was that ever a requirement for immigration?

Of course they're not going to 'act and talk exactly like British people'.

> You’re also letting in the wrong kind of immigrants.

Yes, South African racists are a much better demographic.

> You don’t want to take refugees, who are generally people who are forced by external circumstances rather than internal motivation to leave their homelands.

As a grandson of people who were at some point refugees: this is utterly despicable.

> Was that ever a requirement for immigration

Yes, that’s how immigration was sold and it’s the pillar of the moral case for it. The pitch was that differences were purely superficial—like actors wearing different costumes at Disney World—such that it would be irrational to have any feelings or judgment of them. Maybe they’ll like to eat curry instead of beans on toast. But it would be irrational to judge someone just because they eat curry—many British people eat curry too!

This concept that the differences are superficial such that judgment would be irrational was central to the moral case. If immigrants are more than superficially different in terms of social, cultural, and civic thoughts and behavior, then it’s rational to oppose immigration purely on those terms. Judging superficial differences is irrational, but judging substantive differences is rational. You can judge whether, say, different attitudes towards extended family are better or worse for civic life in a democracy, and whether you want to participate in the same democracy with more people who have different attitudes than your own.

> You have an entire generation of people in the west socialized to think that a Bangladeshi will be just like a British person soon as they set foot in London.

It did not appear from your comment that this was a person in the west socialized to think like that but another immigrant who thought like that. Which makes it a completely irrational response. The fact that they weren't tolerant themselves of others like themselves is what makes it utterly surreal.

If there is one thing I'm proud of for NL (and I can't speak for the UK, I haven't spent enough time there but I have spent enough time in Canada to have some idea of how things work there) then it is that for the most part people here get along. My kids have friends across all cultural groups here and they visit there and those kids visit here. Never a single issue.

The only issues that we do still have is a lot of latent racism in small towns and concentrations of crime (across all cultures, including those lily white Dutch) related to drugs and such. The people that want to blow this out of proportion are the ones on the far right, typically their main reason for their stance is that they are afraid that new entrants are going to compete with them for social security. And to some extent they have a point.

But refugees should always be permitted to flee from wars, famine, natural disasters and whatever else can happen to people outside of their control.

I'm Dutch but I left the country long ago though I still regularly visit.

But I think the Netherlands is taking too much credit for being tolerant. It's not anymore. It was in the late 90s but I'm the 2000s things changed and lately it's particularly racist and intolerant. Not just against immigrants but also LGBT minorities especially trans people. I find the so called 'funny' memes from the people I still know there despicable. And I've already discommunicated the worst ones in this regard. Lately even people who were formerly nice have become rabid racists.

And in a recent election the extreme right won more than a third of the votes.

Where I live in Spain it's honestly a lot more tolerant. Although even here the extreme right are on the rise, unfortunately.

That is a problem all over Western Europe, which is really annoying. The extreme right (and unfortunately also the not so extreme right) is fomenting a lot of this, but fortunately on a local level they are not yet very effective unless you go into the smaller towns. I spend a lot of time in two places in NL, a small town (40K population) and one of the larger cities (by Dutch standards) 300K pop. Obviously there is a world of a difference between the two but overall, and compared to other countries that I'm familiar with I'd say we are still doing ok. Whether it will remain like that I would not dare to say. Agreed that LGBT minorities, trans people have it harder than it was a few years ago and this really irks me. Again, here too the extremists are pushing for this and in turn they are making a lot of people feel like this is now normalized again to the point where they no longer need to hide their bigotry. At the same time: this was always there, it was just better hidden.

Another problem is that the rise of social media has given bigots the world over a large enough echo chamber that they feel supported, even though their direct environment does not support them.

> Lately even people who were formerly nice have become rabid racists.

This is not something I have seen yet but that could be luck of the draw.

> And in a recent election the extreme right won more than a third of the votes.

Indeed they did. But: that percentage wasn't all that different in previous years overall, if you add up the various splinter groups. They were just less vocal and they did not have international ties the way they do today. This is an extremely dangerous development.

> Where I live in Spain it's honestly a lot more tolerant.

I believe you.

> Although even here the extreme right are on the rise, unfortunately.

Yes, it is like a cyclic thing that is driven by the loss of lessons learned from the past. NL is in a particularly difficult spot here with our history in Surinam, former dutch Indonesia and the slave trade. We've done some very ugly things and a lot of that required de-humanization of other people to a degree that it still stains our culture in a very significant way.

Lots and lots of crimes were committed, lots of mistakes were made. It will take many generations to come to some kind of new equilibrium. It certainly won't happen in my lifetime, and probably not in my kids' lifetimes either.

concentrations of crime (across all cultures) related to drugs and such

The way you phrase it suggests that the crime problem is independent of immigration, which is just false. For example, children of two foreign born residents are 5 times more likely to be criminals than children of two native Dutch people. The people have every rational reason to oppose immigration if such a rise in criminality is the outcome.

> > The only issues that we do still have is a lot of latent racism in small towns and concentrations of crime (across all cultures, including those lily white Dutch) related to drugs and such. The people that want to blow this out of proportion are the ones on the far right...

> The way you phrase it suggests that the crime problem is independent of immigration

Not really. It’s still possible to “blow this out of proportion” even if the distribution does not factor along immigration status.

> The people have every rational reason to oppose immigration if such a rise in criminality is the outcome.

It’s not rational to respond to a 5x prevalence (simply using your figure for the sake of argument, and assuming that future immigrants are similar to past ones) as if it were 10x or 100x, and that seems closer to jacquesm’s point.

Ask Vivek Ramaswami how well it works for Asians to aspire to be kindred spirits of white supremacists.

That’s like saying: “ask liberal white people how well it works to aspire to be kindred spirits of black nationalists.” Or telling liberal Christians that, despite their efforts, many Muslims still consider them “infidels.” Liberal whites obviously don’t hold their opinions in order to ingratiate themselves to non-whites or non-Christians. Likewise, their political opinions obviously aren't swayed by the fact that some people in their coalition dislike white people or Christians.

You're smart and well read and these are the counter examples you come up with? I've got another one with similar real world applicability: ask the pastry chef who wants to hang with the gluten intolerant.

But pastry chefs can hang with gluten intolerant people. Butchers can also hang with vegans! And political parties often are comprised of people who do not like each other, but agree on political goals.

Mate, wait until you hear about how British immigrants integrate or rather don't, overseas - oops, sorry, I mean expats, which is they prefer to call themselves.

Yeah, and it pisses off the locals everywhere they go. Now imagine if they did all that and also were from cultures that didn’t know how to queue properly.

But no-one is posting about how you're destroying Australia by letting all the British migrants move there and refuse to integrate.

Maybe they're posting about it on the Costa de Sol though?

Australia is a British offshoot so that would be weird. But the people from e.g. Spain certainly are posting about that.

I'm afraid you might have misunderstood the point I was making about immigrants. I am a legal immigrant myself and do not propose kicking out (legal) immigrants.

Restricting immigration to those with skills the country requires at the time is sensible policy. Allowing millions into the country in an orgy of performative empathy with no plan for integration or converting them into productive members of society isn't.

My point is that there is a cost associated with this, and the EU is paying it in spades. The money spent addressing these issues comes at the expense of investment in things that make the country more innovative (education, trades, streamlined regulatory structures...), or have a stronger defensive posture.

Self-evidently, life isn't exclusively about WHO has the money. Having options, however, IS exclusively the result of who has the money. When the EU have restricted their options through these voluntary and unwise choices, they have to depend on someone else's help. That someone is going to want their pound of flesh.

"Fascist" seems a little over the top to describe these views.

> “Fascist" seems a little over the top to describe these views.

You’re committing a fallacy of association and then attributing that fallacy to the parent comment. Not great.

“Fascists blame everything on immigrants...” is the logical equivalent of what they said.

I beg to differ. My original comment did not blame immigrants for anything; rather it discussed the result of the EUs immigration policy. Fascism was irrelevant to the point being made, and your understanding of the fallacy of association might warrant adjustment...

> We don't have a huge immigration problem. The immigrants are blamed for everything by the fascists, just like in America.

You are confidently wrong about the plain meaning of the quoted sentence. I was going to chalk it up to getting confused about the passive voice, but this deflection makes the misinterpretation seem intentional.

> My original comment did not blame immigrants for anything; rather it discussed the result of the EUs immigration policy

What do you think the word blame means

This is what I mean. There has been no policy of "allowing millions into the country in an orgy of performative empathy". It is quite hard for someone from outside the EU to obtain residency. There are some exceptions like former colonies being allowed easier migration which is only fair.

There has been one incident during the Syrian war where Angela Merkel said "wir schaffen das" but there was no coordinated grant of immigration rights in any way. And these were mostly legitimate refugees from the Syrian war.

Europe hasn't forgotten that many of us once were refugees not too long ago.

It's a problem because the right-wing keep blowing it out of proportion, but it's only based on racist underbelly feelings.