Testing Chat Episode VI: Return of the Chat

[Ralin]

Immigration to a certain extent is very cruel. It allows rich white countries to skim the best and brightest of every other ethnicity on the planet off the top, which helps contribute to leaving their homelands mired in poverty and disease.

I would be more sympathetic to this idea if those same rich white countries weren't usually the ones exploiting the poverty-mired homelands for cheap manufacturing and such.

How does that undermine her point?

[Gands]

It doesn't really. But I dislike the idea of exploiting the people without allowing them to move to the other side of that fence.

That said, I'd be interested to know if there's any incentives which encourage people to migrate from the rich countries to the poorer ones to bring their expertises or whatever.

[RogueIce]

Also I just got back from watching X-men: Days of Future Past, and it was the best superhero film I've ever seen. They had a fight scene in the fist ten minutes that was better than the one at the end of The Avengers, easily, and they just got better from there. Plus: actual characters! And problems that weren't solved by punching them to death! I was worried that with so many characters, it wouldn't work, but it... did. Almost perfectly. I was also worried that Wolverine would end up taking all the oxygen in the room, but he was very much a supporting character.

There is the usual complaint that the history of the X-men is forty years of middle-class white men telling minorities that they should be nice to their oppressors, but frankly that's a much less horrible message than what most superhero films have.

So yeah. Ya'll should go watch it.

It is an awesome movie and I heartily second this suggestion.

[magic princess]

Both are wrongs. One serves as a cheap band-aid for the other.

[Ralin]

It doesn't really. But I dislike the idea of exploiting the people without allowing them to move to the other side of that fence.

That said, I'd be interested to know if there's any incentives which encourage people to migrate from the rich countries to the poorer ones to bring their expertises or whatever.

I keep hearing that more and more Chinese people who emigrated to the US for education or business are starting to go back in one way or another because of a combination of the economy, financial and research incentives (can't do good stem cell research in America!), difficulty adapting, etc.

I know I'm hoping to settle in Hong Kong and think I have a workable plan for how to do so, if that counts.

[F.J. Prefect, Esq]

Why is it a human right for populations to cross boundaries? This ideology presupposes that human individuals should be allowed to choose wherever they live on the planet... Essentially breaking down the boundaries and virtues of the state as a body. Since I believe there are actual benefits to the function of a distinct nation on a distinct land

This idea that people being able to move freely across borders and settle in other countries has in some way undermined the State as an institution is bogus.

[Jung]

This idea that people being able to move freely across borders and settle in other countries has in some way undermined the State as an institution is bogus.

I imagine the borders of old timey big states like the Roman Empire must have leaked like a sieve. They generally seem to have survived that.

[F.J. Prefect, Esq]

Actually I think you'll find that the immigration of Goths, Visigoths, Gauls and Vandals destroyed the Roman Empire

[F.J. Prefect, Esq]

Yes I am aware that is not actually what happened and the Rome persisted for centuries both in the west and the east

[Ralin]

This idea that people being able to move freely across borders and settle in other countries has in some way undermined the State as an institution is bogus.

I imagine the borders of old timey big states like the Roman Empire must have leaked like a sieve. They generally seem to have survived that.

They also did a shitload of other things we probably aren't willing to admit we're willing to do, and they lived in a pretty different world. Don't know if they even really had a state in the same way we understand it.

[Big Orangutan]

Yes I am aware that is not actually what happened and the Rome persisted for centuries both in the west and the east

By the 7th century AD wasn't the Roman Empire pretty much a busted flush as a real super power and more like a large regional power that stubbornly held on until the 15th century? But I'll concede that migrating nomads of Germans, Berbers, and Arabs on the periphery provinces had little to no effect on Roman hegemony when it was it was in its military/economic prime. Also the mass migration of peoples in Late Antiquity and Medieval eras happened on a more incremental scale in comparison to the mass movement of people seen today.

[magic princess]

*shrug* My perspective is that I broadly and strongly support the rights of indigenous peoples, including native Americans, Australian natives, etc, but that it isn't logically consistent to do so if you don't also allow that, whether or not you personally would be in that situation, native English people have the right to be concerned over an erosion of their own control over their own land. I'm pretty sure that in the 1640s the Wampanoag didn't think there'd be six million whites living in Boston at some point in the future! But swamped they were. And my arguments are essentially the same of those of the broad indigenous movement just, I think, applied consistently across all ethnic groups. As part of a settler population, people from the US and Canada especially have no context to understand this and shouldn't talk. To some extent it's "just desserts" for all the time English people inflicted it on natives around the world, but once again, two wrongs don't make a right.

[evilsoup]

My maternal grandfather trekked across the Hungarian countryside and went over barbed wire before ending up here. My paternal grandfather came here from Ireland to make a decent life for himself, because there was nothing at home for him. I wouldn't exist if it weren't for immigratoin.

So, you know, fuck off.

[evilsoup]

And comparing eastern European migrants coming over to the UK in order to work as plumbers, electricians, labourers, cleaners and carers within the existing system to acts of imperialist genocide is amazingly shitty.

[adr]

I wouldn't exist if it weren't for immigratoin.

I wouldn't exist if it wasn't for rape.

Personally, I'm on the side of erasing all borders and having totally free movement along with the rest of the global revolution, but a fallacy is a fallacy, things might have worked out OK this way, but there's no saying that the parallel 'you' who would have come about without the immigration wouldn't have turned out ok too, and besides, sometimes good things can come from bad actions without making those actions themselves good.

[Jung]

I'm pretty sure that in the 1640s the Wampanoag didn't think there'd be six million whites living in Boston at some point in the future! But swamped they were.

Those situations seem very different. The thing that really hurt (indigenous) American societies was the immigrants didn't integrate into existing societies but rather marginalized the existing societies and replaced them with their own societies, leveraging the greater military and technological capabilities of their own societies to do so.

[evilsoup]

That's a good point adr.

Now, magic princess, what's your position on asylum seekers? If you would allow them and not allow economic migrants, why? Is economic oppression less real than racist/homophobic/etc. oppression?

The brain drain argument is an interesting one; similarly, the wealthy elites of poor countries will often move their wealth to rich countries, which is also terrible. Those aren't problems I have easy answers to (my long-term answer would be 'global socialist revolution', but I wouldn't call that easy). However, it is also irrelevant in the case of UKIP, where the big fear is mass migration of low-skilled workers from Romania wanting to come and live here on benefits in a taxpayer-funded spaceship and also simultaneously take working-class jobs for low wages (the benefits thing is a load of shit invented by the right-wing press; the taking jobs/lowering wages thing actually has some truth to it). In fact, this has the exact opposite effect of a brain drain: Poland has done very well out of the EU in general, and specifically has seen benefits from Polish workers over here sending their money back home.

*shrug* My perspective is that I broadly and strongly support the rights of indigenous peoples, including native Americans, Australian natives, etc, but that it isn't logically consistent to do so if you don't also allow that, whether or not you personally would be in that situation, native English people have the right to be concerned over an erosion of their own control over their own land.

In a just society, we wouldn't have a need for specific rights for indigenous people. As we don't live in a just society, and those peoples don't have the means to affect that kind of change, specific protections are necessary.

The people supporting UKIP, and the leaders of the party, could support causes other than being awful to foreigners. The leaders don't because, though they like to present themselves as being 'outside the establishment', they are actually doing very well out of the existing system. The followers don't because they are told to be afraid of foreigners by the right-wing gutter-press (while the only serious party that actually is outside the establishment -- the Greens -- are ignored, because they don't say interesting things about the gays causing floods or fit the chosen narratives). There may or may not be a theoretical argument to be had about immigration, but in fact, right now, it is used as a distraction from the much more important issues, a form of false consciousness.

So, yes. Many people in my country have radically different views from me; that doesn't stop them from being wrong, and it doesn't stop their views from offering succour to actual bricks-through-windows racists.

[Gands]

And my arguments are essentially the same of those of the broad indigenous movement just, I think, applied consistently across all ethnic groups.

Interestingly, lots of indigenous people I know here are keen to get out into the wider world, because of varied indigenous issues in Australia. Many plan to move to the UK, and some China.

If I stayed in Australia based on my own indigenous roots, I'd have to move from Sydney to the old Wanaruah lands.

[thejester]

*shrug* My perspective is that I broadly and strongly support the rights of indigenous peoples, including native Americans, Australian natives, etc, but that it isn't logically consistent to do so if you don't also allow that, whether or not you personally would be in that situation, native English people have the right to be concerned over an erosion of their own control over their own land. I'm pretty sure that in the 1640s the Wampanoag didn't think there'd be six million whites living in Boston at some point in the future! But swamped they were. And my arguments are essentially the same of those of the broad indigenous movement just, I think, applied consistently across all ethnic groups. As part of a settler population, people from the US and Canada especially have no context to understand this and shouldn't talk. To some extent it's "just desserts" for all the time English people inflicted it on natives around the world, but once again, two wrongs don't make a right.

I imagine it must be pretty blissful being so totally submerged in your own intellectual conceits

[Ralin]

My maternal grandfather trekked across the Hungarian countryside and went over barbed wire before ending up here. My paternal grandfather came here from Ireland to make a decent life for himself, because there was nothing at home for him. I wouldn't exist if it weren't for immigratoin.

So, you know, fuck off.

What exactly is so great about you existing that we (general we, I'm not English) should let other people emigrate because they remind you of your family?

[magic princess]

The easiest answer to the very legitimate conundrums you all raised is to not have a deracinated culture, but rather one in which each subcultural/ethnic group is able to negotiate its position relative to others. Saxon (my error--Saxtonite) and I had an interesting conversation on this and broadly I support the establishment of Neu-Afrika in part of the United States as a result of it. Basically I've come to the conclusion that establishing one set of rules for each ethnic group is a form of imperialist genocide and internal autonomy is preferable. I've been very influenced by some of the concepts for the Donau Confederation, the reformation of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy so that instead of just Austrians and Hungarians, each ethnic group had its own state with its own set of laws and its own legislature.

Or, quite simply, part of racial equality is actually acknowledging that the Seneca are just as good as dead white guy secularist philosophers of the Enlightenment at writing laws, and the laws they come up with should be applied to themselves just as much as dead white guy secularist philosopher laws are applied to white Anglo-Saxon Americans.

[magic princess]

Of course I'm speaking from a very conservative viewpoint, so your mileage on my proposed solutions may vary -- since I see culture and cultural innovations as something inherently worth preserving, and a fundamental part of the human experience that is not worth completely destroying for the sake of an idealized standard of quality of life which may, in fact, not meet the ideal of people in certain ecological-cultural contexts at all. But basically Earth is an extremely complex system and a lot of my arguments lately are on recognition of the fact that most indigenous cultures represent multi-thousand-year adaptations to a particular ecoregion and that we have nontrivial problems with the prospect of ever coming up with a technological solution to how to live in each distinct region of the planet; copying the cultural conceits of each region however also transfers the implicitly adaptive knowledge of how to survive there. Harsh lives make harsh ways can effectively explain many problematic beliefs, and frankly, the scientific-rationalist worldview has just made life harder on marginal people like me. For example: Hijra had three thousand years of acceptance into a cultural niche in India, and then the British instituted rationalist laws based in their notion of morality which allowed no exceptions. Enforced those laws with cannon for two hundred years. Impressed them into the local culture. Now everyone is worse off.

The notion of a universalist morality implicit in the idea of world socialist revolution advocated here, I have come to believe, is the most poisonous event on any kind of person outside of the central 60% mean of a population who ever tries to live on this earth. All that the rationalist modern world of capitalist democracy has done is create rigid and inflexible religio-cultural combinations: Look at the UK, where homosexuality was only banned in the 19th century. It was only the rise of a bourgeoisie who had modern notions of morality who aggressively lobbied, under the guise of the Liberal party, for criminalization of homosexuality and pornography.

[thejester]

you are an actual loony tune

just fyi

[magic princess]

you are an actual loony tune

just fyi

It is glorious to be mad. Embrace the Mad! Sanity is for the weak...

[Jung]

^ For what it's worth I find your ideas very interesting.

I disagree with a lot of them but I find them interesting.