Europe submits voluntarily

[angelo]

Do you think that once the Jews have all been killed, that the Palestinians will live in peace?

They would most likely fight each other. In fact they've done this already. However Palestinians and Jews at peace could advance the area both technologically and economically.

A realistic rational person would know that's just a Pipedream. It won't and can't happen. Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews at school, that Jews are the spawn of Satan. They demand nothing less than Jews becoming extinct, or at best their slaves.

 

[Jayjay]

Leftist politics: The underdog is always right.

It's very obvious who's the underdog in the Middle East, and it's not the Palestinians.

You have to be disconnected from reality to say that Palestinians aren't the underdog. Sure you have a bunch of Arab countries claiming that they support Palestinians, but at the same time they are keeping them in refugee camps and funding Hamas and other groups who keep destabilizing the internal Palestinian politics and keeping them in chaos. Only reason why palestinians even exist as a distinct nationality is all the shit they've had to take from everybody, Arabs and Jews alike.

I've said it before, I'd rather take Palestinian refugees in Europe than Iraqis. They deserve it a lot more.

 

[angelo]

It's very obvious who's the underdog in the Middle East, and it's not the Palestinians.

You have to be disconnected from reality to say that Palestinians aren't the underdog. Sure you have a bunch of Arab countries claiming that they support Palestinians, but at the same time they are keeping them in refugee camps and funding Hamas and other groups who keep destabilizing the internal Palestinian politics and keeping them in chaos. Only reason why palestinians even exist as a distinct nationality is all the shit they've had to take from everybody, Arabs and Jews alike.

I've said it before, I'd rather take Palestinian refugees in Europe than Iraqis. They deserve it a lot more.

Jordan is their natural home. But I do agree that non radicalised Palestinians would most likely make better citizens than Syrians or Iraqis.

 

[Bomb#20]

That's an odd way to formulate it. Syria and Afghanistan is sending Europe adult free labour. The whole cost of raising them has been taken by someone else. These refugees will of course only add to Britains wealth helping them to look after the poor and elderly. Studies show that it isn't even a net cost short term.

Do you have a link, that we may find out what assumptions these studies made in order to foretell the future?

All the sources off the top of my head are Swedish. But it's not hard to google. I found a bunch. Just look for a real economist explaining it in their own words. You know... a person who knows numbers and stuff. The Internet is awash. But you'll have to actually make an effort.

This issue is just like debating evolution. There's no shortage of fundie Christians denying evolution and posting all their evidence against it. It's still bullshit. There's no shortage of racists with web-sites about the high cost of immigration. It's still bullshit. Today we have quite a few well documented mass immigration events where the world was nice enough to provide a control group. The mass immigration from Cuba to Florida in the 90'ies was one such event.

So to summarize, your argument is as follows:

Step 1. Cubans immigrating to America have been observed to financially benefit Americans.
Step 2. ?
Step 3. Muslims immigrating to Britain are going to financially benefit the British.​

What's Step 2?

Actually, it's perfectly obvious what Step 2 is. Step 2, apparently, is that you're entitled to extrapolate from America to Britain and you're entitled to extrapolate from Cubans to Muslims because you're assuming people's productivity and externalities are independent of their culture. That's just an article of faith. People believe it because they've embraced a religion that requires them to believe it in order to be considered good people. There's no empirical evidence for it. The only argument for it I've ever heard anyone offer amounts to "If you say culture matters then I don't need to refute it because you don't really believe culture matters; you really believe race matters and you're lying about it, you vile racist liar.".

By all means, feel free to offer a different Step 2 if you can think of one. Alternately, feel free to cite a study that's not about some other immigrants to some other country, a study that shows these refugees will of course only add to Britain's wealth and aren't going to be a net cost even short term.

The debate is about culture. Ie, how threatened should we feel about kebab consumption skyrocketing and that new mosques are being built.

Do you sincerely believe that anybody who objects to skyrocketing immigration objects because he feels threatened by kebab consumption skyrocketing? If you do, why do you believe something so asinine? If you don't, why did you write something so asinine? Do you think anybody on the other side will be persuaded that he's wrong because you belittled him? Do you think someone will say to himself, "My god, I thought I was afraid that they'd scare away most of the Christians and atheists in my town and then impose shariah on us who are left behind; but Dr. Zoidberg has opened my eyes to the fact that I'm actually afraid of shish kebabs. What a fool I was. I guess mass immigration is actually a good thing."?

Yes, it is asinine. It's just xenophobia. Fear of the different because it is unfamiliar.

Apparently my complex question was too complex for you. Let's try this again.

Do you or do you not sincerely believe that anybody who objects to skyrocketing immigration objects because he feels threatened by kebab consumption skyrocketing?

But racists/xenophobes aren't comfortable when their racism is revealed, so they dress it up in language that make it sound like they have real fears. But none of it holds up to scrutiny. Not when a real economist looks at the numbers.

Do you believe ad hominem arguments are valid?

I come here to learn and/or test my own opinions. I love when I'm wrong and get scholed on stuff here.

"But racists/xenophobes aren't comfortable when their racism is revealed, so they dress it up in language that make it sound like they have real fears" is an unfalsifiability engine. Do you believe that giving yourself permission to use an unfalsifiability engine is an effective way to learn and/or test your opinions?

 

[DrZoidberg]

All the sources off the top of my head are Swedish. But it's not hard to google. I found a bunch. Just look for a real economist explaining it in their own words. You know... a person who knows numbers and stuff. The Internet is awash. But you'll have to actually make an effort.

This issue is just like debating evolution. There's no shortage of fundie Christians denying evolution and posting all their evidence against it. It's still bullshit. There's no shortage of racists with web-sites about the high cost of immigration. It's still bullshit. Today we have quite a few well documented mass immigration events where the world was nice enough to provide a control group. The mass immigration from Cuba to Florida in the 90'ies was one such event.

Yes, it is asinine. It's just xenophobia. Fear of the different because it is unfamiliar. But racists/xenophobes aren't comfortable when their racism is revealed, so they dress it up in language that make it sound like they have real fears. But none of it holds up to scrutiny. Not when a real economist looks at the numbers.

...I don't come here to persuade anybody of anything. I come here to learn and/or test my own opinions. I love when I'm wrong and get schooled on stuff here. But persuade.... never. I admit I'm a sucker for adulation. I'm just human.

No. I get why somebody might enjoy this. I just don't. Small minded, red-neck fascistoid idiots living in constant fear of some vague undefined unknown, mostly just makes me sad. In the same way as it makes me sad to hear about some religious person having anxiety about going to hell. It's people battling their personal demons, and externalising them. It's just tragic to see.

It's been pretty obvious that you don't "come here to persuade anybody". But it's equally evident are not here to learn either; anyone who dismisses counter-factual sources with name-calling (e.g. "racists/xenophobes", "small minded", "red-neck fascistoid idiots"), relies on hand-waves rather than cites, and confesses that he is a sucker for adulation is NOT someone who "loves it when (he) is wrong".

However, I willing to pretend (for the moment) you would like to learn something; that behind the spewing facade is a decent fellow who actually knows that his scoffing at the opposition's sincerity and motivations is not a form of serious argument but a form of psychological avoidance - a coping mechanism to deal with unwelcome views. If so, I am more than happy teach.

First, I am highly skeptical of the claimed economic benefits by your uncited sources. In the US the measurable Net Economic Gains from immigration have been very small.

Yes, US natives (or Swedes) might gain from immigration IF we ignore social costs or externalities. The economic argument for immigration is that it increases the number of workers in in certain economic sectors. Because of the additional competition in the labor market, the wage of native workers falls. At the same time, however, native-owned businesses gain because they can pay workers at lower wages, and many native consumers gain because the lower labor costs lead to cheaper goods and/or services. If we ignore social & externality costs, the gains that accrue to business owners, immigrants, and those who use or consume immigrant services will exceed the losses suffered by native workers - hence the 'whole' net economy does better.

This model is valid; the gain is distributed to some Americans (or Swedes) and the foreign persons, and the loss in wages is distributed to native workers.

However, the gain is very small. In general, the economic estimates for the US have suggested that the economic gain is less than .1 percent of the GDP...about 15 billion a year or 46 dollars per person. (See, among others, the National Science Academy study).

Second, Immigration also causes a substantial redistribution of wealth, away from workers who compete with immigrants and toward employers, immigrants, and consumers of immigrant services. Native workers lose because immigrants lower or retard wages while Employers gain because immigrants lower or retard wages. These wealth transfers are far greater than the net economic gain for the whole.

Third, most economic studies EXCLUDE the social/externality cost. These negative costs include social conflict, crime, housing, education, food stamps, and health care. Nor do they include cost to the environment (e.g. water usage), land use, air pollution, or congestion. When this is compared to the meager gains from immigration, the balance is that immigration (in the US) has been a net loss, especially for the native born workers.

So the immigration debate is not over the size of the economic pie, but over wealth transfer and social/externality costs.

If you start there, you will have actually learned something.

This assumes that immigrants don't start companies. It also assumes that immigrants don't bring valuable skills that are in ways better than those of the natives. I also suspect you have an outdated (17'the century mercantilism? ) view of the economy. It's not a zero sum gain. In societies with good infrastructure (western countries) there's seemingly no limit to how many people can be crammed in a small area where, the more people = the faster expanding economy. It's not perfect nor a strong effect. But it's not a negative effect. We haven't found the limit yet. Holland is the world's most densely populated country. Their economy is fine.

Western style countries have such efficient infrastructures that it's quite easy to become a productive member of society, producing more than what is consumed. Increased options and competition is just good for any economy.

In any society there will be a hierarchy of status. Those at the bottom will be the most criminaly inclined. Immigrants tend to make up the bottom strata of any society. But here's the interesting bit. It doesn't matter which ethnic group dominates the working class. In countries with low or no immigration it's the countries own ethnic groups that fill those same criminaly inclined spots. At the end of the 19th century there were American studies on what in the Swedish culture made us so violent and criminal. In hind-sight, all pseudo scientiffic bullshit. We were just the latest immigrant group to USA. After us came Italians and Jews and Swedes became behaved ano orderly. Jews and Italians became the criminal ethnic group. It's easy to look at crime statistics and look at what ethnic groups are there and draw faulty conclusions about how criminaly inclined and moraly corrupt that culture is. Racists do it all the time. Still bullshit.

 

[angelo]

That's all fine and good. But there are many who rather live on welfare. Some studies have found that more than 80% of asylum seekers are still on benefits five years after receiving asylum. One of the reasons why they head for generous welfare countries of Europe rather than poor welfare places like Eastern Europe.

 

[Bomb#20]

A declared neo-nazi running into a school wielding a knife, selectively stabbing brown kids - "hope".

You're inside a subthread based on this post, you know?

And? Are you suggesting that the circumstance that DrZoidberg's argument with Jayjay was a spinoff from your argument with maxparrish implies that the referent of DrZoidberg's stereotype equals the referent of maxparrish's horror story? In the words of the master, "even you can do better than that!"

The people DrZoidberg was referring to were... let me find the quote... oh here it is: "Europeans in general". Is it or is it not your contention that Europeans in general are declared neo-nazis running into a school wielding a knife, selectively stabbing brown kids?

Ask yourself this: if your policy position on immigration were correct, would you need to use such epic logic fails to defend it?

Epic logic fail right there, on your side.

Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that I'm guilty of epic logic fails, rather than just pointing out that you should keep track of the conversation a bit better lest it appears you refer to neonazis stabbing kids as bearers of hope: That still is no argument that I'm wrong. Just like a hypothetical scientifically illeterate person claiming that if the sun revolved around the earth, we would see a tail like we do with comets, i.e. making epic logic fails while arguing for heliocentrism, is no argument for a geocentric universe.

I didn't offer your epic logic fail as proof that you're wrong; I simply invited you to take note of it and do a little apparently much needed introspection. If you find you have better arguments for your position, perhaps you'll start using them, making the introspection a win-win. And no, your post didn't point out that I might be making it appear I refer to neonazis stabbing kids; your post misrepresented my post as referring to neonazis stabbing kids. My post referred, as anyone with a modicum of reading comprehension could tell, to the "unwashed masses", as DrZoidberg called them in the post I quoted, not to something in some other post a couple of steps back in the discussion chain. Taking the stabber as the referent couldn't even make sense -- I was quoting "1984". Orwell wasn't talking about the proles rampaging against ethnic minorities; he was talking about the proles ceasing to obey the Party. The parallel to DrZoidberg describing how the "unwashed masses" no longer blindly obey and respect figures of authority should be obvious.

For decades those DrZoidberg calls "liberal elite and a liberal establishment" have been carrying out policies that the "unwashed masses" perceive as not being in their interests; they've gone along with them because of "traditional subservience to anybody in a position of power or authority." The establishment shows no sign of willingness to even consider reversing these policies, so the only hope for their reversal lies in the masses no longer going along with them. The Party will no doubt continue to tell the proles that the policies really are good for the proles, and will continue to insult and belittle the proles to try to bully them into keeping quiet about their unbelief. But the proles are not stupid enough to believe massive immigration is good for them, and their willingness to be bullied into silence has eroded.

 

[DrZoidberg]

So to summarize, your argument is as follows:

Step 1. Cubans immigrating to America have been observed to financially benefit Americans.
Step 2. ?
Step 3. Muslims immigrating to Britain are going to financially benefit the British.​

What's Step 2?

What? My argument is that immigration is rarely a negative for the economy. Regardless of who immigrates to where. Why would you even need a step 2? How about this:

1. Cubans immigrating to America have been observed to financially benefit Americans.
therefore
2. Muslims immigrating to Britain are going to financially benefit the British.

Actually, it's perfectly obvious what Step 2 is. Step 2, apparently, is that you're entitled to extrapolate from America to Britain and you're entitled to extrapolate from Cubans to Muslims because you're assuming people's productivity and externalities are independent of their culture. That's just an article of faith. People believe it because they've embraced a religion that requires them to believe it in order to be considered good people. There's no empirical evidence for it. The only argument for it I've ever heard anyone offer amounts to "If you say culture matters then I don't need to refute it because you don't really believe culture matters; you really believe race matters and you're lying about it, you vile racist liar.".

By all means, feel free to offer a different Step 2 if you can think of one. Alternately, feel free to cite a study that's not about some other immigrants to some other country, a study that shows these refugees will of course only add to Britain's wealth and aren't going to be a net cost even short term.

This is special pleading. I think the weight of evidence is on you. Culture isn't some big unchangable monolithic thing. People adapt to incentives. If you live in an economy with few opportunities you're not going to try very hard. Because that would, over time, crush your self-esteem. Move a lazy slothful Ghanian to Stockholm and chances are pretty good he'll stop being lazy. Economy and technology comes first. Culture adapts around those two.

Here's the Wikipedia article on the Cuban flash immigration of 1980. The studies are linked from the article, if you're interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariel_boatlift

The debate is about culture. Ie, how threatened should we feel about kebab consumption skyrocketing and that new mosques are being built.

Do you sincerely believe that anybody who objects to skyrocketing immigration objects because he feels threatened by kebab consumption skyrocketing? If you do, why do you believe something so asinine? If you don't, why did you write something so asinine? Do you think anybody on the other side will be persuaded that he's wrong because you belittled him? Do you think someone will say to himself, "My god, I thought I was afraid that they'd scare away most of the Christians and atheists in my town and then impose shariah on us who are left behind; but Dr. Zoidberg has opened my eyes to the fact that I'm actually afraid of shish kebabs. What a fool I was. I guess mass immigration is actually a good thing."?

Yes. Xenophobia isn't a rational fear. It's just anything that is different. Maybe kebabs aren't the best example... since they're pretty commonplace here. But it's that kind of stuff I'm talking about. Being worried about Sharia laws in the west (it's never going to happen) is just stupid. But behaving like it might happen creates the illusion that the phobia is rational. But most racism is about really asinine stuff, like weird smells in the pantry at work or people not sharing your references.

I come here to learn and/or test my own opinions. I love when I'm wrong and get scholed on stuff here.

"But racists/xenophobes aren't comfortable when their racism is revealed, so they dress it up in language that make it sound like they have real fears" is an unfalsifiability engine. Do you believe that giving yourself permission to use an unfalsifiability engine is an effective way to learn and/or test your opinions?

I think it's falsifiable. The fears of racists can be picked apart and analysed individually. If the stuff you're afraid of is unlikely to the extreme, then it's phobia. Let's take the fear you mentioned. Sharia courts in the west. Will never happen. An incredibly retarded fear. They have Sharia courts around Europe where people can go for mediation. But adhering to the Sharia courts rulings is voluntary. They're not real legal courts. They're like kids going to grand dad to ask who's to blame in some dispute among them. Or a couple going to couples counselling. But still European racists shit bricks when they hear about it. Go on about it as if we now have Muslim rule in Europe and so on and so forth. It's just so incredibly retarded.

 

[DrZoidberg]

That's all fine and good. But there are many who rather live on welfare. Some studies have found that more than 80% of asylum seekers are still on benefits five years after receiving asylum. One of the reasons why they head for generous welfare countries of Europe rather than poor welfare places like Eastern Europe.

I can think of reasons for this that have nothing to do with laziness or a culture of laziness in their home countries.

 

[whichphilosophy]

They would most likely fight each other. In fact they've done this already. However Palestinians and Jews at peace could advance the area both technologically and economically.

A realistic rational person would know that's just a Pipedream. It won't and can't happen. Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews at school, that Jews are the spawn of Satan. They demand nothing less than Jews becoming extinct, or at best their slaves.

No doubt many Palestinians say that, especially those who lost their homes.Some Jews believe God gave them the land including Palestinian properties. Some Palestinians want all Jews out. Others say keep those whose ancestry stretches before 1948.
Ironically if there was peace in the area the whole place could boom economically out of tourism and technology.

 

[arkirk]

That's all fine and good. But there are many who rather live on welfare. Some studies have found that more than 80% of asylum seekers are still on benefits five years after receiving asylum. One of the reasons why they head for generous welfare countries of Europe rather than poor welfare places like Eastern Europe.

You seem to resent that asylum seekers are smart enough to go somewhere where they might just get the help they need. Yup, you don't stand in line to go to skid row. Use your head. Many of the refugees have limited educations but even with that, they know how to maximize their efforts. White people in Australia pretty much are refugees or worse....criminals or offspring of criminals. The U.S. and Canada are quite the same.

 

[angelo]

That's all fine and good. But there are many who rather live on welfare. Some studies have found that more than 80% of asylum seekers are still on benefits five years after receiving asylum. One of the reasons why they head for generous welfare countries of Europe rather than poor welfare places like Eastern Europe.

You seem to resent that asylum seekers are smart enough to go somewhere where they might just get the help they need. Yup, you don't stand in line to go to skid row. Use your head. Many of the refugees have limited educations but even with that, they know how to maximize their efforts. White people in Australia pretty much are refugees or worse....criminals or offspring of criminals. The U.S. and Canada are quite the same.

The one great difference been is that the white settlers/invaders/ whatever you wish to tag them with, actually built the countries settled up from scratch to what they are today. These middle eastern freeloaders contribute nothing but actually cost a hosting nation billions of taxpayers dollars.

 

[Bomb#20]

White people in Australia pretty much are refugees or worse....criminals or offspring of criminals.

Are you saying there's something wrong with being the offspring of criminals?

 

[whichphilosophy]

That's an odd way to formulate it. Syria and Afghanistan is sending Europe adult free labour. The whole cost of raising them has been taken by someone else. These refugees will of course only add to Britains wealth helping them to look after the poor and elderly. Studies show that it isn't even a net cost short term.

Do you have a link, that we may find out what assumptions these studies made in order to foretell the future?

All the sources off the top of my head are Swedish. But it's not hard to google. I found a bunch. Just look for a real economist explaining it in their own words. You know... a person who knows numbers and stuff. The Internet is awash. But you'll have to actually make an effort.

This issue is just like debating evolution. There's no shortage of fundie Christians denying evolution and posting all their evidence against it. It's still bullshit. There's no shortage of racists with web-sites about the high cost of immigration. It's still bullshit. Today we have quite a few well documented mass immigration events where the world was nice enough to provide a control group. The mass immigration from Cuba to Florida in the 90'ies was one such event.

So to summarize, your argument is as follows:

Step 1. Cubans immigrating to America have been observed to financially benefit Americans.
Step 2. ?
Step 3. Muslims immigrating to Britain are going to financially benefit the British.​

What's Step 2?

Actually, it's perfectly obvious what Step 2 is. Step 2, apparently, is that you're entitled to extrapolate from America to Britain and you're entitled to extrapolate from Cubans to Muslims because you're assuming people's productivity and externalities are independent of their culture. That's just an article of faith. People believe it because they've embraced a religion that requires them to believe it in order to be considered good people. There's no empirical evidence for it. The only argument for it I've ever heard anyone offer amounts to "If you say culture matters then I don't need to refute it because you don't really believe culture matters; you really believe race matters and you're lying about it, you vile racist liar.".

By all means, feel free to offer a different Step 2 if you can think of one. Alternately, feel free to cite a study that's not about some other immigrants to some other country, a study that shows these refugees will of course only add to Britain's wealth and aren't going to be a net cost even short term.

The debate is about culture. Ie, how threatened should we feel about kebab consumption skyrocketing and that new mosques are being built.

Do you sincerely believe that anybody who objects to skyrocketing immigration objects because he feels threatened by kebab consumption skyrocketing? If you do, why do you believe something so asinine? If you don't, why did you write something so asinine? Do you think anybody on the other side will be persuaded that he's wrong because you belittled him? Do you think someone will say to himself, "My god, I thought I was afraid that they'd scare away most of the Christians and atheists in my town and then impose shariah on us who are left behind; but Dr. Zoidberg has opened my eyes to the fact that I'm actually afraid of shish kebabs. What a fool I was. I guess mass immigration is actually a good thing."?

Yes, it is asinine. It's just xenophobia. Fear of the different because it is unfamiliar.

Apparently my complex question was too complex for you. Let's try this again.

Do you or do you not sincerely believe that anybody who objects to skyrocketing immigration objects because he feels threatened by kebab consumption skyrocketing?

But racists/xenophobes aren't comfortable when their racism is revealed, so they dress it up in language that make it sound like they have real fears. But none of it holds up to scrutiny. Not when a real economist looks at the numbers.

Do you believe ad hominem arguments are valid?

I come here to learn and/or test my own opinions. I love when I'm wrong and get scholed on stuff here.

"But racists/xenophobes aren't comfortable when their racism is revealed, so they dress it up in language that make it sound like they have real fears" is an unfalsifiability engine. Do you believe that giving yourself permission to use an unfalsifiability engine is an effective way to learn and/or test your opinions?

If we take in manageable amounts of skilled people and genuine asylum seekers than this will benefit the UK. There are real concerns about security when hundreds of thousands of people come in without ID and cannot be checked, sometimes for years. At the same time allowing masses of economic migrants causes a brain drain in the countries concerned.

 

[Bomb#20]

So to summarize, your argument is as follows:

Step 1. Cubans immigrating to America have been observed to financially benefit Americans.
Step 2. ?
Step 3. Muslims immigrating to Britain are going to financially benefit the British.​

What's Step 2?

What? My argument is that immigration is rarely a negative for the economy. Regardless of who immigrates to where. Why would you even need a step 2? How about this:

1. Cubans immigrating to America have been observed to financially benefit Americans.
therefore
2. Muslims immigrating to Britain are going to financially benefit the British.

We need a step 2 because the argument as you present it is a formal logical fallacy, called a "Non sequitur". If you don't need another step between your premise and your conclusion, that means you don't need logic and are able to believe things because you want to believe them.

Actually, it's perfectly obvious what Step 2 is. Step 2, apparently, is that you're entitled to extrapolate from America to Britain and you're entitled to extrapolate from Cubans to Muslims because you're assuming people's productivity and externalities are independent of their culture. That's just an article of faith. People believe it because they've embraced a religion that requires them to believe it in order to be considered good people. There's no empirical evidence for it.

This is special pleading.

Huh? "Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption." What standards are you claiming I applied to some and exempted others from? Or did you mislabel whatever fallacy you meant to charge me with?

I think the weight of evidence is on you. Culture isn't some big unchangable monolithic thing. People adapt to incentives. If you live in an economy with few opportunities you're not going to try very hard. Because that would, over time, crush your self-esteem. Move a lazy slothful Ghanian to Stockholm and chances are pretty good he'll stop being lazy. Economy and technology comes first. Culture adapts around those two.

In the first place, I've never met a lazy Ghanaian. In the second place, is laziness seriously the only cultural trait you can think of that impacts a group's average productivity and the externalities they impose on others? In the third place, why on earth would you assume that the fact that culture is highly mutable implies that opportunities and economy and technology are going to be the decisive factors in how a culture evolves? The current state of an entity constrains how it will evolve in response to environmental changes. Benefiting from flight can make theropods evolve wings but it can't make sauropods evolve wings; likewise, if you give a Muslim the opportunity to learn math and science and metal shop it's not going to turn her into an aircraft mechanic if her brother beats her up for acting too Western whenever she shows any inclination to grow up to be something other than a baby factory.

And in the fourth place, the cultural differences between Cubans and Muslims are only half the issue; there are also cultural differences between Americans and Britons. The U.S. is an immigrant assimilation machine; the UK is good at integrating people of other cultures by comparison with Sweden. If European governments would make some bloody effort to copy the U.S. instead of looking down condescendingly on "American conditions" while encouraging immigrants to live in monocultural enclaves and live on welfare then you'd have a lot less of a problem. Why would a slothful immigrant to Stockholm stop being lazy if Swedes who think he's come to take their jobs get their government to stop him from working?

Here's the Wikipedia article on the Cuban flash immigration of 1980. The studies are linked from the article, if you're interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariel_boatlift

What's Step 2?

Do you sincerely believe that anybody who objects to skyrocketing immigration objects because he feels threatened by kebab consumption skyrocketing? If you do, why do you believe something so asinine?

Yes. Xenophobia isn't a rational fear. It's just anything that is different. Maybe kebabs aren't the best example... since they're pretty commonplace here. But it's that kind of stuff I'm talking about. Being worried about Sharia laws in the west (it's never going to happen) is just stupid. But behaving like it might happen creates the illusion that the phobia is rational. But most racism is about really asinine stuff, like weird smells in the pantry at work or people not sharing your references.

No. Just stupid is assuming that because you're a Christian and the reality of your God is just really, really obvious to you, that means it's really, really obvious to everybody else too, and the people who claim to be atheists know perfectly well that your God is real and they're just being dicks about admitting it because they're mad at Him.

"For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, so that people are without excuse." -- Romans 1:20

That is exactly what you are doing. Your opinion that Sharia in the west is never going to happen, and it's just stupid to think it is, has no goddamn bearing on the question of whether the people objecting to skyrocketing immigration are concerned about Sharia or are actually put off by kebabs, weird smells, people not sharing their references, and/or race. When you contemptuously dismiss the concerns people voice, and you impute different, shameful concerns to them on the grounds that you don't believe their stated concerns are reasonable, that is you being an illogical reality-avoiding bullying religious bigot. Stop doing that.

I come here to learn and/or test my own opinions. I love when I'm wrong and get scholed on stuff here.

"But racists/xenophobes aren't comfortable when their racism is revealed, so they dress it up in language that make it sound like they have real fears" is an unfalsifiability engine. Do you believe that giving yourself permission to use an unfalsifiability engine is an effective way to learn and/or test your opinions?

I think it's falsifiable. The fears of racists can be picked apart and analysed individually.

Of course it's unfalsifiable. You've introduced your conclusion that they're racists as a premise. You're begging the question and you're poisoning the well. If they say something racist you'll conclude they're racist and if they say something non-racist you'll conclude they're lying and are actually racist.

Brian: Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand? Honestly!
Girl: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.
Brian: What? Well, what sort of chance does that give me?

If the stuff you're afraid of is unlikely to the extreme, then it's phobia. Let's take the fear you mentioned. Sharia courts in the west. Will never happen. An incredibly retarded fear. They have Sharia courts around Europe where people can go for mediation. But adhering to the Sharia courts rulings is voluntary. They're not real legal courts. They're like kids going to grand dad to ask who's to blame in some dispute among them. Or a couple going to couples counselling. But still European racists shit bricks when they hear about it. Go on about it as if we now have Muslim rule in Europe and so on and so forth. It's just so incredibly retarded.

Ah, the R-word. You call them retarded; they call you retarded; that has all the makings of a substantive debate where each side can present reasoned arguments for why its opponents are a bunch of retards and we can all bring evidence to bear and have a nice elevated and intelligent conversation about who is and who isn't "a friggin' 'tard." Well, elevated and intelligent by PD standards, anyway.

But that's not going to happen, is it? Because your fundamental goal here isn't to have European governments adopt the best policy or even to prove your preferred policy is right, but to be the hero of your own narrative. And your narrative requires that your opponents be racists. You'll always call them racists, evidence or no, because you have a psychological need to believe that about them, won't you? Thomas Sowell had it exactly right: "The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy".

So decide which R-word you want to use. If you call anyone a racist again without direct proof, that will constitute an admission that there's no point in anyone else treating you as a person who can be reasoned with. You want to be a religious fanatic, that's your option.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Homeless Italians?

How widespread is this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkTiWCeL8CM
Are Italians sleeping on the streets while refugees are being allocated living space? I am not sure if only a few or a lot are affected.

 

[DrZoidberg]

What? My argument is that immigration is rarely a negative for the economy. Regardless of who immigrates to where. Why would you even need a step 2? How about this:

1. Cubans immigrating to America have been observed to financially benefit Americans.
therefore
2. Muslims immigrating to Britain are going to financially benefit the British.

We need a step 2 because the argument as you present it is a formal logical fallacy, called a "Non sequitur". If you don't need another step between your premise and your conclusion, that means you don't need logic and are able to believe things because you want to believe them.

If all immigration to a modern western economy from anywhere by any group is financially positive then it follows that the Cuban immigration to Florida as well as the Muslim immigration to the UK will be financially positive. The Cuban dissidents were, on average, not well educated. These two waves immigration are comparable demographic-wise. They are equivalent. The only difference is that one group is Christian, and the other Muslim.

This is special pleading.

Huh? "Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption." What standards are you claiming I applied to some and exempted others from? Or did you mislabel whatever fallacy you meant to charge me with?

Yes, special pleading. What difference does it make if the impoverished refugees are Christian vs Muslim?

I think the weight of evidence is on you. Culture isn't some big unchangable monolithic thing. People adapt to incentives. If you live in an economy with few opportunities you're not going to try very hard. Because that would, over time, crush your self-esteem. Move a lazy slothful Ghanian to Stockholm and chances are pretty good he'll stop being lazy. Economy and technology comes first. Culture adapts around those two.

In the first place, I've never met a lazy Ghanaian. In the second place, is laziness seriously the only cultural trait you can think of that impacts a group's average productivity and the externalities they impose on others? In the third place, why on earth would you assume that the fact that culture is highly mutable implies that opportunities and economy and technology are going to be the decisive factors in how a culture evolves? The current state of an entity constrains how it will evolve in response to environmental changes. Benefiting from flight can make theropods evolve wings but it can't make sauropods evolve wings; likewise, if you give a Muslim the opportunity to learn math and science and metal shop it's not going to turn her into an aircraft mechanic if her brother beats her up for acting too Western whenever she shows any inclination to grow up to be something other than a baby factory.

Ehe.... I think you're not aware of what goes on in poor countries. This is not a Muslim thing. This is a poverty thing. Extreme social control of women is endemic in any impoverished society or community. If you take a family like that and place them in a western country, it takes a generation to die. The children raised in the western country will probably not share those values. It dies quickly. And it's got nothing to do with any superior "western values". It's just a poverty thing. When we in the west were poor, ie 100 - 150 years ago, we had the exact same situation regarding social control of our women. We didn't commit honour killings. But we would shun our women and cut them off from the family. Which is as good as killing them, considering how the society looked like then. This tradition vanished as people got wealthier. There is a ca 50 year gap between wealth and when this effect is reached.

In India, where they're right in the middle of this transition, you can easily track this social change if you overlay mean incomes with honour killings. Or any other metric for violence against women.

Compare it to Sweden. Sweden started to Industrialise in 1860. In 1894 (I think it was) Swedish women were allowed to own property in their own name. In 1921 Swedish women got the vote. This is mirrored in the social change of women in society.

In Sweden, our most publicised "honour" killing was in a Kurdish family. The murder of Fadime. Very often she is used as evidence about the evil of Muslims and the Muslim views of women. The problem is that Fadime's family were Christian. They fled here because they felt persecuted as Christians.

And in the fourth place, the cultural differences between Cubans and Muslims are only half the issue; there are also cultural differences between Americans and Britons. The U.S. is an immigrant assimilation machine; the UK is good at integrating people of other cultures by comparison with Sweden. If European governments would make some bloody effort to copy the U.S. instead of looking down condescendingly on "American conditions" while encouraging immigrants to live in monocultural enclaves and live on welfare then you'd have a lot less of a problem. Why would a slothful immigrant to Stockholm stop being lazy if Swedes who think he's come to take their jobs get their government to stop him from working?

I agree completely. One caveat though. I think the UK are good at assimilation. They have the highest proportion of their immigrants working compared to any other country in Europe. But yes, we should look more to USA in how they assimilate immigrants. They're apparently. Somali immigrants to USA are prosperous, while the Somali immigrants to Sweden are struggling and often on welfare. They're from the same social groups in Somalia. So these two groups of immigrants should have the same potential of being prosperous. Obviously Sweden is doing something wrong.

Here's the Wikipedia article on the Cuban flash immigration of 1980. The studies are linked from the article, if you're interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariel_boatlift

What's Step 2?

I think you've failed in arguing why we need a step 2. The immigration waves are comparable in every way that matters. I think you've made some hand-waving regarding Muslim culture that I fail to see how it applies?

Your opinion that Sharia in the west is never going to happen, and it's just stupid to think it is, has no goddamn bearing on the question of whether the people objecting to skyrocketing immigration are concerned about Sharia or are actually put off by kebabs, weird smells, people not sharing their references, and/or race. When you contemptuously dismiss the concerns people voice, and you impute different, shameful concerns to them on the grounds that you don't believe their stated concerns are reasonable, that is you being an illogical reality-avoiding bullying religious bigot. Stop doing that.

Ok, fine. How do you justify a resistance to Muslim immigration to the west then? If there are no rational arguments against it, it only leaves the irrational. And that's phobia.

I think it's falsifiable. The fears of racists can be picked apart and analysed individually.

Of course it's unfalsifiable. You've introduced your conclusion that they're racists as a premise. You're begging the question and you're poisoning the well. If they say something racist you'll conclude they're racist and if they say something non-racist you'll conclude they're lying and are actually racist.

I can't follow you. If somebody says they're against Muslim immigration because they're worried we'll get Sharia courts in Europe then it's an irrational fear. We can analyse how likely that is to happen. Which is zero percent likelihood. At least without being invaded by Azerbaijan or Indonesia. Then we can put it in the box labelled "xenophobia". And go through all objections in that manner one by one. If all objections are in the xenophobia box then it can be dismissed as an irrational fear of the different, ie racism/Islamophobia.

Ah, the R-word. You call them retarded; they call you retarded; that has all the makings of a substantive debate where each side can present reasoned arguments for why its opponents are a bunch of retards and we can all bring evidence to bear and have a nice elevated and intelligent conversation about who is and who isn't "a friggin' 'tard." Well, elevated and intelligent by PD standards, anyway.

But that's not going to happen, is it? Because your fundamental goal here isn't to have European governments adopt the best policy or even to prove your preferred policy is right, but to be the hero of your own narrative. And your narrative requires that your opponents be racists. You'll always call them racists, evidence or no, because you have a psychological need to believe that about them, won't you? Thomas Sowell had it exactly right: "The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy".

So decide which R-word you want to use. If you call anyone a racist again without direct proof, that will constitute an admission that there's no point in anyone else treating you as a person who can be reasoned with. You want to be a religious fanatic, that's your option.

Are you trying to derail this discussion because you know you have no arguments? It's the impression I'm getting from this last bit.

 

[TSwizzle]

If all immigration to a modern western economy from anywhere by any group is financially positive then it follows that the Cuban immigration to Florida as well as the Muslim immigration to the UK will be financially positive. The Cuban dissidents were, on average, not well educated. These two waves immigration are comparable demographic-wise. They are equivalent. The only difference is that one group is Christian, and the other Muslim.

And there in lies the rub.

 

[Trausti]

If all immigration to a modern western economy from anywhere by any group is financially positive then it follows that the Cuban immigration to Florida as well as the Muslim immigration to the UK will be financially positive. The Cuban dissidents were, on average, not well educated. These two waves immigration are comparable demographic-wise. They are equivalent. The only difference is that one group is Christian, and the other Muslim.

Where did you come up with that? How does mass migration of people from moderate to low IQ nations benefit recipient nations with moderate to high IQ? Wouldn't that drag the average national IQ down? How would it be financially positive for, say, Germany to trade its average national IQ of 102 for, say, the Syrian average national IQ of 83?

This is already weighing down once high educational achievement in Sweden: http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/08/immigration-helps-explain-swedens-school-trouble/

If it is honestly thought that mass immigration is financial pixie dust, then one ought to direct the flow of migrants to countries which actually need an upsurge in their GDP - like Niger, Yemen, or Myanmar. But it is the Western countries, which are already well-to-do, where the flow is encouraged. Should you poo-poo that IQ actually matters for long-term financial prosperity, cling instead to a moral position that it is wrong for the Western countries to hoard all that migrant vibrancy.

 

[bilby]

So basically a free and liquid market in any commodity is a good thing, unless that commodity is labour?

Unfettered immigration goes a long way towards improving the liquidity of the labour market - a market that is typically highly illiquid even before states impose counterproductive restrictions on the flow of that commodity across their borders.