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Please don't complain about being downvoted. This isn't slashdot.

by bb88 8y ago

jjoonathan 8y ago
The suppression of dialogue surrounding immigration far exceeds downvotes in scope and severity. In fact, the suggestion that tosser00001's main point had anything to do with silly internet points is a minimization/redirection tactic that is itself a more important instance of the very thing being complained about.
- dnomad 8y ago
  > The suppression of dialogue surrounding immigration far exceeds downvotes in scope and severity. The problem with the anti-immigrant zealots is they never provide any evidence for their paranoid fantasies about immigrants increasing unemployment or supressing wages. People who actually study the economic impact of immigration in the West have generally concluded it has insignificant impact or improves the economy. What do you do with people who, with absolutely zero evidence, continue to blame immigrants/Jews/aliens? You downvote and move on.
  - flukus 8y ago
    > concluded it has insignificant impact or improves the economy Just because it improves the economy doesn't mean it's improved the lives of all people in it. With the detachment of wage growth from economic growth in recent decades you can probably expect people to stop caring about what's good for the economy altogether pretty soon, economic growth is just an abstract number disassociated from the reality of most.
    - dnomad 8y ago
      > With the detachment of wage growth from economic growth in recent decades And you think immigrants are responsible for this? Or are they simply being used as a sacrificial scapegoat because nobody wants to address the raging inequality in the West?
      - flukus 8y ago
        > And you think immigrants are responsible for this? Entirely? No. Partially? Yes. Most notably immigration has a huge impact on housing and the ever increasing demand for it. This alone is responsible for much of the fall in living standards.
        dnomad 8y ago
        > Most notably immigration has a huge impact on housing and the ever increasing demand for it. Do you have any evidence at all for this claim or is this just something you made up out of thin air? I mean, no offense, but I remember when Brexiters were claiming the same [1] earlier this year and it was quickly proven to be nonsense. Maybe you can do a better job? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/13/housing-minister-dominic-raab-defends-claim-of-immigration-pushing-up-house-prices https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/13/housing-mini...
        flukus 8y ago
        > Do you have any evidence at all for this claim or is this just something you made up out of thin air? I need a citation for "more people == more housing demand"? I really don't care what academics say about the cause because they're divorced from reality. The reality is that as a single, well payed software developer with no kids I'm now on the downward slope of paying off the mortgage of my small studio apartment. My father at the same age had 2 kids, a stay at home wife and was on the downward slope of paying off their 4 bedroom house with a huge yard and a pool, all on a minimum wage job. Yet economists keep telling us how much richer this generation is.
        toofy 8y ago
        > I need a citation for... > I really don't care what academics say about the cause because they're divorced from reality... I feel like this is unfair... We should be here for good faith discussions--not to set up arbitrary goalposts which it would seem are impossible to reach.
        8y ago
  - adwn 8y ago
    > The problem with the anti-immigrant zealots is they never provide any evidence for their paranoid fantasies about immigrants increasing unemployment or supressing wages. Ironically, your post also contains zero evidence for your claims.
  - chrchang523 8y ago
    The overwhelming majority of people who still claim in 2018 that "anti-immigrant zealots never provide any evidence" are either knowingly lying (disengaging and pretending not to remember when they do encounter an intelligent objector) or have Bayesian priors amounting to religious zealotry which make it impossible for them to recognize evidence for what it is. As an example, I posted the following a few months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17384668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17384668 ): "Private business was just one of several examples I gave to illustrate principles which hold across a wide range of scales of human organization. It is straightforward to verify that they don't stop holding at nation-scale. A good place to start is Lee Kuan Yew, who's both one of the only leaders in history to preside over the entire transition from Third World to First World for millions of people, and an architect of what's currently the most open immigration policy among Chinese-majority states. Singapore is a multicultural place whose government is widely acknowledged to have one of the best technocratic track records in the world, and they spent considerable effort on trying to get immigration policy right, iterating through alternatives while deliberately taking a popularity hit; what were their conclusions? Or what are the odds, under your stated worldview, that two of the closest things to actual open borders existing in 2018 are (i) the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, which lets almost anyone stay as long as they can support themselves ...but ranges from 74 to 81 degrees N latitude, and (ii) the United Arab Emirates, which has more than five times as many expats as actual citizens, the largest number from India ...but ruthlessly maintains a two-tiered society, where even people who were born in the UAE and have lived there their entire lives are exceedingly unlikely to be granted citizenship unless they are Arab? Contrary to claims that nothing like open borders has ever been tried, the existence of cases like this make it abundantly clear that this area of policy space has already been subject to substantial exploration. And every surviving result has an obvious and unusual force that does something similar to what traditional immigration controls accomplish in most countries, such as Svalbard's -40C winters. This is, to put it mildly, not a likely result if traditional immigration controls no longer have a useful function." It may not be the final word on this subject. But it certainly points out several relevant, usually-neglected pieces of evidence. What did I get from my conversation partner as a reward? A downvote and no further response, of course; they weren't actually interested in truth or dialogue. The more I see this, the more strongly I advise everyone else to prepare to do whatever is necessary for self-defense against these people.

Please don't complain about being downvoted. This isn't slashdot.

by bb88 8y ago

Please don't complain about being downvoted. This isn't slashdot.

The suppression of dialogue surrounding immigration far exceeds downvotes in scope and severity. In fact, the suggestion that tosser00001's main point had anything to do with silly internet points is a minimization/redirection tactic that is itself a more important instance of the very thing being complained about.

dnomad 8y ago
> The suppression of dialogue surrounding immigration far exceeds downvotes in scope and severity. The problem with the anti-immigrant zealots is they never provide any evidence for their paranoid fantasies about immigrants increasing unemployment or supressing wages. People who actually study the economic impact of immigration in the West have generally concluded it has insignificant impact or improves the economy. What do you do with people who, with absolutely zero evidence, continue to blame immigrants/Jews/aliens? You downvote and move on.
- flukus 8y ago
  > concluded it has insignificant impact or improves the economy Just because it improves the economy doesn't mean it's improved the lives of all people in it. With the detachment of wage growth from economic growth in recent decades you can probably expect people to stop caring about what's good for the economy altogether pretty soon, economic growth is just an abstract number disassociated from the reality of most.
  - dnomad 8y ago
    > With the detachment of wage growth from economic growth in recent decades And you think immigrants are responsible for this? Or are they simply being used as a sacrificial scapegoat because nobody wants to address the raging inequality in the West?
    - flukus 8y ago
      > And you think immigrants are responsible for this? Entirely? No. Partially? Yes. Most notably immigration has a huge impact on housing and the ever increasing demand for it. This alone is responsible for much of the fall in living standards.
      - dnomad 8y ago
        > Most notably immigration has a huge impact on housing and the ever increasing demand for it. Do you have any evidence at all for this claim or is this just something you made up out of thin air? I mean, no offense, but I remember when Brexiters were claiming the same [1] earlier this year and it was quickly proven to be nonsense. Maybe you can do a better job? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/13/housing-minister-dominic-raab-defends-claim-of-immigration-pushing-up-house-prices https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/13/housing-mini...
        flukus 8y ago
        > Do you have any evidence at all for this claim or is this just something you made up out of thin air? I need a citation for "more people == more housing demand"? I really don't care what academics say about the cause because they're divorced from reality. The reality is that as a single, well payed software developer with no kids I'm now on the downward slope of paying off the mortgage of my small studio apartment. My father at the same age had 2 kids, a stay at home wife and was on the downward slope of paying off their 4 bedroom house with a huge yard and a pool, all on a minimum wage job. Yet economists keep telling us how much richer this generation is.
        toofy 8y ago
        > I need a citation for... > I really don't care what academics say about the cause because they're divorced from reality... I feel like this is unfair... We should be here for good faith discussions--not to set up arbitrary goalposts which it would seem are impossible to reach.
        8y ago
- adwn 8y ago
  > The problem with the anti-immigrant zealots is they never provide any evidence for their paranoid fantasies about immigrants increasing unemployment or supressing wages. Ironically, your post also contains zero evidence for your claims.
- chrchang523 8y ago
  The overwhelming majority of people who still claim in 2018 that "anti-immigrant zealots never provide any evidence" are either knowingly lying (disengaging and pretending not to remember when they do encounter an intelligent objector) or have Bayesian priors amounting to religious zealotry which make it impossible for them to recognize evidence for what it is. As an example, I posted the following a few months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17384668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17384668 ): "Private business was just one of several examples I gave to illustrate principles which hold across a wide range of scales of human organization. It is straightforward to verify that they don't stop holding at nation-scale. A good place to start is Lee Kuan Yew, who's both one of the only leaders in history to preside over the entire transition from Third World to First World for millions of people, and an architect of what's currently the most open immigration policy among Chinese-majority states. Singapore is a multicultural place whose government is widely acknowledged to have one of the best technocratic track records in the world, and they spent considerable effort on trying to get immigration policy right, iterating through alternatives while deliberately taking a popularity hit; what were their conclusions? Or what are the odds, under your stated worldview, that two of the closest things to actual open borders existing in 2018 are (i) the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, which lets almost anyone stay as long as they can support themselves ...but ranges from 74 to 81 degrees N latitude, and (ii) the United Arab Emirates, which has more than five times as many expats as actual citizens, the largest number from India ...but ruthlessly maintains a two-tiered society, where even people who were born in the UAE and have lived there their entire lives are exceedingly unlikely to be granted citizenship unless they are Arab? Contrary to claims that nothing like open borders has ever been tried, the existence of cases like this make it abundantly clear that this area of policy space has already been subject to substantial exploration. And every surviving result has an obvious and unusual force that does something similar to what traditional immigration controls accomplish in most countries, such as Svalbard's -40C winters. This is, to put it mildly, not a likely result if traditional immigration controls no longer have a useful function." It may not be the final word on this subject. But it certainly points out several relevant, usually-neglected pieces of evidence. What did I get from my conversation partner as a reward? A downvote and no further response, of course; they weren't actually interested in truth or dialogue. The more I see this, the more strongly I advise everyone else to prepare to do whatever is necessary for self-defense against these people.