Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[Gavagai]

2 TheHumanHydra. The problem with the case for unlimited immigration is that it breaks down when taken to extremes. I currently live in Estonia, a very small European country with a population of a little over one million people. It is very implausible to say that if we settle ten million Arabs here overnight, then nothing bad would happen. The fact that open borders do not seem to work in extreme cases makes it difficult to advocate them as a matter of principle.
One, of course, can respond that immigration will self-regulate and Arabs simply would not want to move to Estonia in such numbers. But they would stop moving only when the situation in Estonia is as bad as at their home and this is not what Estonians want.
How can we explain the results of our thought experiment? Here is what I believe to be the most convincing answer. Each individual is both an asset to a community and a liability in a sense that he both adds value by extending the system of division of labor and subtracts value by putting pressure upon public services. Typically, each additional member would be a net benefit for a society but there are cases when it is not clearly the case, migration from poor countries to rich countries may be one of them: citizens of poor countries are culturally unprepared to participate in the modern economy. This problem is aggravated by two additional factors:
1) Modern rich countries are welfare states which provide a historically unprecedented amount of public services. Even though many of them are typically denied to fresh immigrants, it still makes immigration more costly than it could be.
2) If the number of immigrants is small, they face a very intense pressure to assimilate and, typically, assimilate very quickly. But when you have many fresh immigrants from the same place, they have means to avoid such pressure indefinitely.
Once all of this is understood, it becomes clear what immigration system is the most rational one. You need to estimate the additional load which every new immigrant from a certain country would put upon your public services system and give away residence permits to people from this country on the condition that this amount of money is paid to the state treasury. It can be further tweaked to make exceptions for certain categories of migrants (e. g. those with PhD degrees do not need to pay anything) and make it sensitive to the overall amount of migrants with the same cultural background (ones a certain quota is filled, the price for new permits goes high). The payment should be made anew every year. After N years if a person is employed, pays taxes, has no criminal record, he is considered to be assimilated and given a free permanent residence.
This system should replace all other migration mechanisms and long-term visas for work and study. If liberals want to help those they call "refugees", they are very much welcomed to pay for them from their own pocket. I think, it is very fair

[T-hawk]

The Refugee Fallacy:

1. Somebody should help them!

2. We are somebody!

3. Therefore we should help them!

[AdrienIer]

If the EU and the US/Canada don't help refugees, who will ? It's not a fallacy because n°2 is not accurate : we aren't just "somebody", we are the best possible "somebody".

[darrelljs]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co...population

The U.S. really doesn't take that many in, comparatively.

Darrell

[Japper007]

The Refugee Fallacy:

1. Somebody should help them!

2. We are somebody!

3. Therefore we should help them!

A strawman, in the correct way it would be:

1. Everybody should help them
2. We are part of everybody
3. Therefore we should help them!

If you think we are the only somebody who is going to be helping in this scenario you are plain wrong. The vast majority of refugees are in or near the area they are escaping from, with little intent on moving onwards except when driven by need:

-Most Syrian refugees are in Turkey, Iraq and other bordering countries, there may be a couple hundred thousand Syrian refugees in Europe, but there are a couple million in Turkey alone.

-The amount of African refugees (a few hundred thousand) in Europe is vastly inferior to the amount that remained in Afrika near areas of conflict (100's of millions literally).

-Most South-American refugees are still in Mexico or other latin-American countries

The vast majority of everybody involved with helping refugees are already not European or North-American. We are actually slacking compared to the rest. And the only reason we are is because we are not near enough to the conflict to be forced to deal with these issues.

Now if you intend to argue that we should help the locals take better care of the refugees to take away the incentive for their moving on, then I agree. But I've found that most people who oppose helping refugees are also the people:
-opposed to foreign aid, how do you expect Third World countries to deal with refugees when they can't even afford to maintain and develop their own nation?
-who opposed the EU deal with Turkey that would've helped better regulation of refugee flows
-oppose international institutions that are working to fix the refugee problems (like the UN)
-vehemently oppose, or at least not donate to, NGO's like Cordaid.
-support Isolationists like Trump

...so forgive me for being skeptical at best.

It just baffles me, they say we shouldn't fix the problem, we shouldn't help the locals fix the problem, then who should?

EDIT I crossposted with Darrel who brought up the same point with the actual numbers to back it up. Thanks!

[Krill]

A strawman, in the correct way it would be:

1. Everybody should help them

Do you see the issue with this assertion?

[Japper007]

A strawman, in the correct way it would be:

1. Everybody should help them

Do you see the issue with this assertion?

Obviously not, or I wouldn't have posted it.    I don't make a habit of posting things that I already know are problematic. Mind telling me what your problem is with it at least? As it is this isn't really a contribution to the discussion.

[TheHumanHydra]

2 TheHumanHydra. The problem with the case for unlimited immigration is that it breaks down when taken to extremes. I currently live in Estonia, a very small European country with a population of a little over one million people. It is very implausible to say that if we settle ten million Arabs here overnight, then nothing bad would happen. The fact that open borders do not seem to work in extreme cases makes it difficult to advocate them as a matter of principle.
One, of course, can respond that immigration will self-regulate and Arabs simply would not want to move to Estonia in such numbers. But they would stop moving only when the situation in Estonia is as bad as at their home and this is not what Estonians want.
How can we explain the results of our thought experiment? Here is what I believe to be the most convincing answer. Each individual is both an asset to a community and a liability in a sense that he both adds value by extending the system of division of labor and subtracts value by putting pressure upon public services. Typically, each additional member would be a net benefit for a society but there are cases when it is not clearly the case, migration from poor countries to rich countries may be one of them: citizens of poor countries are culturally unprepared to participate in the modern economy. This problem is aggravated by two additional factors:
1) Modern rich countries are welfare states which provide a historically unprecedented amount of public services. Even though many of them are typically denied to fresh immigrants, it still makes immigration more costly than it could be.
2) If the number of immigrants is small, they face a very intense pressure to assimilate and, typically, assimilate very quickly. But when you have many fresh immigrants from the same place, they have means to avoid such pressure indefinitely.
Once all of this is understood, it becomes clear what immigration system is the most rational one. You need to estimate the additional load which every new immigrant from a certain country would put upon your public services system and give away residence permits to people from this country on the condition that this amount of money is paid to the state treasury. It can be further tweaked to make exceptions for certain categories of migrants (e. g. those with PhD degrees do not need to pay anything) and make it sensitive to the overall amount of migrants with the same cultural background (ones a certain quota is filled, the price for new permits goes high). The payment should be made anew every year. After N years if a person is employed, pays taxes, has no criminal record, he is considered to be assimilated and given a free permanent residence.
This system should replace all other migration mechanisms and long-term visas for work and study. If liberals want to help those they call "refugees", they are very much welcomed to pay for them from their own pocket. I think, it is very fair

Thanks for your thoughtful response. Of course, unlimited immigration is inadvisable (what I said was 'as widely as possible').

(The following is directed at ipecac as well.)

Darrell's post prompted me to check immigration figures for Canada and the US. The United States has roughly nine times the population of Canada. As you are aware, Canada has a more developed welfare state than the US. According to Wikipedia, the United States takes in over a million immigrants each year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigratio...ted_States). According to Stats Canada (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-6...06-eng.htm), Canada takes in about 235 000 immigrants each year. For the United States to pull its weight, I would expect it to take in roughly 2 115 000 immigrants per year. Actually, I would perhaps expect the United States to take in more, because it provides less services to its people and immigrants are expected to contribute less to the tax base than others (disadvantaging Canada on an economic basis per immigrant compared to the United States -- unless Canada's merit system counterbalances this, I'm unsure).

[Krill]

A strawman, in the correct way it would be:

1. Everybody should help them

Do you see the issue with this assertion?

Obviously not, or I wouldn't have posted it.    I don't make a habit of posting things that I already know are problematic. Mind telling me what your problem is with it at least? As it is this isn't really a contribution to the discussion.

There is no hostility in my post, intended or otherwise. I do not wish to engender those emotions in others here. Nor do I want to be patronising. But if we want the two short answers: you are applying an ethical base to everyone that other people may not, and in reality don't, agree with. Some people do not agree that they have to help.

The second is the amount they have the help. You gave a blanket statement. To the extent that help could be anything, evening allowing people into their own home, is something they should do. You don't see that there are degrees of help that are different degrees of reasonable?

[Krill]

Also, why has RB evolved back into Apolyton? This is the OTF all over again.