4 ms·

No. I'm making an analogy to racism. It's not actually racism but only because of the arbitrary choice of classification. We usually think racism is bad so we s

No. I'm making an analogy to racism. It's not actually racism but only because of the arbitrary choice of classification. We usually think racism is bad so we should logically also think prejudice against foreigners is bad for the same reasons. It harms people simply because of how they scored on the lottery of birth. Just as racism does.

tedks 11y ago
So you believe that nation-states should not be self-interested? I think if you hold such a radical agenda, you should be up front about it, rather than arguing by analogy to topics people want to distance themselves from. You're advocating the dissolution of nation-states in the conventional sense. This is a fine thing to advocate for, but one certainly isn't a racist for not supporting this particular radical agenda that you happen to have. Are you also a communist, or at the very least, do you believe that inheritance should be abolished? After all, inheritance is a literal lottery of birth in the same way race is. And finally, as someone who is posting on the Internet, you have either won the lottery of birth in a direct way, or been blessed with enough intelligence to overcome suboptimal birth conditions and thus have won the lottery of birth in a more indirect way. What are you doing to address the harm your privileged position does to the world? Do you live a life of poverty and give all your money to Waatsi?
- aianus 11y ago
  > I think if you hold such a radical agenda Nationalism is stupid. What's so radical about feeling I have more in common with an Indian engineering student than a white American factory worker? I'm not a saint and I'm not simply going to give all of my money away, whether I deserve it or not. However, I'm not going to whine about foreigners stealing my jerbs either. If it's so easy for someone half the world away to steal my job I didn't deserve it in the first place.
  - tedks 11y ago
    You won't give up your cushy tech lifestyle to feed starving african babies, but you expect a blue-collar worker to give up his job to feed a guy in Dehli?

tedks 11y ago

So you believe that nation-states should not be self-interested? I think if you hold such a radical agenda, you should be up front about it, rather than arguing by analogy to topics people want to distance themselves from. You're advocating the dissolution of nation-states in the conventional sense. This is a fine thing to advocate for, but one certainly isn't a racist for not supporting this particular radical agenda that you happen to have. Are you also a communist, or at the very least, do you believe that inheritance should be abolished? After all, inheritance is a literal lottery of birth in the same way race is. And finally, as someone who is posting on the Internet, you have either won the lottery of birth in a direct way, or been blessed with enough intelligence to overcome suboptimal birth conditions and thus have won the lottery of birth in a more indirect way. What are you doing to address the harm your privileged position does to the world? Do you live a life of poverty and give all your money to Waatsi?

aianus 11y ago
> I think if you hold such a radical agenda Nationalism is stupid. What's so radical about feeling I have more in common with an Indian engineering student than a white American factory worker? I'm not a saint and I'm not simply going to give all of my money away, whether I deserve it or not. However, I'm not going to whine about foreigners stealing my jerbs either. If it's so easy for someone half the world away to steal my job I didn't deserve it in the first place.
- tedks 11y ago
  You won't give up your cushy tech lifestyle to feed starving african babies, but you expect a blue-collar worker to give up his job to feed a guy in Dehli?