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"Nobody has that figured out. For now the answer for developed countries involves allowing in immigrants to make up for the deaths." No - this is false. There

"Nobody has that figured out. For now the answer for developed countries involves allowing in immigrants to make up for the deaths." No - this is false. There's nothing to 'figure out'. We simply don't need as many people. We'll have to deal with it a some point in the future, but there is no imperative for America to keep adding more people willy nilly. The 'we must add bodies' ideal is just an extension of national corporatism.

emodendroket 9y ago
Besides elder care and pensions we also live under an economic system predicated on endless growth.
- alexasmyths 9y ago
  "we also live under an economic system predicated on endless growth." Yes, but it does not have to be this way. It's just the way it's designed for now.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Of all the reasons you might seek a post-capitalist economic order "maintaining ethnic homogeneity" is among the least compelling to me.
    - alexasmyths 9y ago
      That's great. I suggest it's probably not a huge factor for most people. But there's a huge amount of information embedded into culture - ideas, mannerisms, forms of education, language, social strata - it goes far, far beyond 'language and cuisine'. Large scale immigration wipes that out and does not replace it with a new culture, rather, a 'globalized' set of values - and a Starbucks on every corner. So in the interests of having actual 'diversity' on planet earth, because as of today we are witnessing an 'extinction event' of culture, we might want to consider the impact of some of our policies. Immigrants (and FYI I've been an immigrant at stages of my own life) are mostly just regular people, and so we don't want to play into the hands of xenophobes or 'racial purists' or whatever, but at the same time, we have to recognize the imperative of culture itself. Is all.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        I think there's only a hair's breadth separating "shut the border to preserve culture" and "shut the border to preserve our ethnicity" considering how frequently rhetoric for the former slips into the latter. To be sure, a large group of immigrants can change the host culture (for instance, in American English we have any number of Yiddish-derived words that, in my experience, are not really commonly understood by English people), but I think the idea that the result has to be a homogenized, corporate, ersatz culture is wrong. Japan itself, as it exists today, is clearly the result of tremendous, unmistakable foreign influence -- most notably, but hardly exclusively, Tang Dynasty China and post-war America. Ultimately, I guess you could say that as a person married to a foreign woman of a different ethnicity I have some personal investment in the opposite ideal.
        alexasmyths 9y ago
        Admiring one's own culture, or the culture of another, and recognizing the value of them, isn't a 'thin margin' away from xenophobia, I think. FYI I live in an area where I'm a tiny ethnic minority English speaker among a sea of people who are of a different culture, including my GF and most of my friends. I've also lived around the world as an ex-pat/immigrant/minority. I think global mass immigration will lead to a single (or maybe a small group of), globalized, commercial civilization(s) without culture, and we will lose most of what makes us great. It's happening right now - and quickly. We will eventually defeat climate change - but once we lose culture, it will never come back. So that's a real thing. There's no reason that a nation must continue to have 'more people' so I don't see why people must continue with the arbitrary demands of 'more people'. The motivation for 'mass immigration' is mostly commercial and partly social - there are globalist forces who wish to move masses of poor people to rich countries. This is not a crazy Breitbart conspiracy, here it is on the UN's web site: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/migration/migration.htm http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/migration/migr... The title alone is Orwellian. And just as there are xenophobes/bigots out there, there many who relish the thought of wiping out successful cultures for various reasons. When we think about 'retirement' or even 'retiring early' often that's a little bit aspirational ... where would we want to live, if we had the choice? Well - people don't chose to live in the 'suburbs' near an 'IKEA' and a 'McDonald's' and a 'highway'. Generally, I think most people, from most backgrounds, chose to live in a place that has some kind of cultural context - either their own, or another, but certainly not the globalized Starbucks Suburbs. Our 'global policies' right now are focused very much on the material, not the things that ultimately matter to us because they're a little more intangible.

emodendroket 9y ago

Besides elder care and pensions we also live under an economic system predicated on endless growth.

alexasmyths 9y ago
"we also live under an economic system predicated on endless growth." Yes, but it does not have to be this way. It's just the way it's designed for now.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Of all the reasons you might seek a post-capitalist economic order "maintaining ethnic homogeneity" is among the least compelling to me.
  - alexasmyths 9y ago
    That's great. I suggest it's probably not a huge factor for most people. But there's a huge amount of information embedded into culture - ideas, mannerisms, forms of education, language, social strata - it goes far, far beyond 'language and cuisine'. Large scale immigration wipes that out and does not replace it with a new culture, rather, a 'globalized' set of values - and a Starbucks on every corner. So in the interests of having actual 'diversity' on planet earth, because as of today we are witnessing an 'extinction event' of culture, we might want to consider the impact of some of our policies. Immigrants (and FYI I've been an immigrant at stages of my own life) are mostly just regular people, and so we don't want to play into the hands of xenophobes or 'racial purists' or whatever, but at the same time, we have to recognize the imperative of culture itself. Is all.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      I think there's only a hair's breadth separating "shut the border to preserve culture" and "shut the border to preserve our ethnicity" considering how frequently rhetoric for the former slips into the latter. To be sure, a large group of immigrants can change the host culture (for instance, in American English we have any number of Yiddish-derived words that, in my experience, are not really commonly understood by English people), but I think the idea that the result has to be a homogenized, corporate, ersatz culture is wrong. Japan itself, as it exists today, is clearly the result of tremendous, unmistakable foreign influence -- most notably, but hardly exclusively, Tang Dynasty China and post-war America. Ultimately, I guess you could say that as a person married to a foreign woman of a different ethnicity I have some personal investment in the opposite ideal.
      - alexasmyths 9y ago
        Admiring one's own culture, or the culture of another, and recognizing the value of them, isn't a 'thin margin' away from xenophobia, I think. FYI I live in an area where I'm a tiny ethnic minority English speaker among a sea of people who are of a different culture, including my GF and most of my friends. I've also lived around the world as an ex-pat/immigrant/minority. I think global mass immigration will lead to a single (or maybe a small group of), globalized, commercial civilization(s) without culture, and we will lose most of what makes us great. It's happening right now - and quickly. We will eventually defeat climate change - but once we lose culture, it will never come back. So that's a real thing. There's no reason that a nation must continue to have 'more people' so I don't see why people must continue with the arbitrary demands of 'more people'. The motivation for 'mass immigration' is mostly commercial and partly social - there are globalist forces who wish to move masses of poor people to rich countries. This is not a crazy Breitbart conspiracy, here it is on the UN's web site: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/migration/migration.htm http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/migration/migr... The title alone is Orwellian. And just as there are xenophobes/bigots out there, there many who relish the thought of wiping out successful cultures for various reasons. When we think about 'retirement' or even 'retiring early' often that's a little bit aspirational ... where would we want to live, if we had the choice? Well - people don't chose to live in the 'suburbs' near an 'IKEA' and a 'McDonald's' and a 'highway'. Generally, I think most people, from most backgrounds, chose to live in a place that has some kind of cultural context - either their own, or another, but certainly not the globalized Starbucks Suburbs. Our 'global policies' right now are focused very much on the material, not the things that ultimately matter to us because they're a little more intangible.