4 ms·

> But no, you want more. You want luxury life, you want to keep the rest of the world underneath you. Why does wanting more imply having people underneath you?

• finolex1 7y ago
  > however, as a local citizen wishing to improve my country and the average income, why would I care about people coming from other countries? I mean, what do I get in return? The main point of contention is not about whether this would improve the quality of life of the average EU programmer. It is about concealing what is just naked self-interest (i.e. concern about one's own wages) with noble talk of 'inequality'. I don't think there's anything wrong with concern for one's own interests, but trying to phrase it as a worry about something else comes off as a bit disingenuous. Secondly, this just smacks of protectionism. If everyone thought the same way, we would have nowhere close to the diverse array of goods available to the modern consumer at such low prices.
  • ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    What's wrong with self interest and protectionism? My family comes first. I don't want to be part in the salary race to the bottom for the sake of lower prices and consumerism.
    • somebadguy 7y ago
      Get working then instead of whining in HN Jokes - we all know you're an incel
  • blub 7y ago
    "it increases the inequality putting all the gains in the hands of the employers." That was not noble talk of global inequality, they meant it increases inequality on the labor market between capital and workers. So it was also a self-interested (and correct) statement. You're confusing protectionism with protecting one's borders. Protecting one's borders and awarding more rights to the country's own population than to the rest of the world is the status quo and the only recipe for success we know.
• jbapple 7y ago
  > why would I care about people coming from other countries? I mean, what do I get in return? This is a pretty stunning question. Most people care about people other than ourselves. Most people sometimes do things to benefit others, even if they don't "get in return", as you put it, and they expect others to behave similarly. For example: 1. A billion people base their religious beliefs on venerating the self-sacrifice of God dying and/or giving-His-only-begotten-son to help others. 2. Most people believe that people other than themselves can have subjective experiences of joy and pain. Most people would take a little time out of their day, for instance, to help an abandoned, injured infant, even if they would never "get anything in return" for their selfless act; even though the infant can't promise them anything in return or prove that they are suffering, people see a suffering child and feel a sort of basic level of empathy. 3. Almost everyone who has political opinions is arguing not primarily about themselves, but about people more vulnerable than them who are being hurt by existing policy or will be helped by new policy - usually large classes of people that the arguer will never meet. 4. The idea that other people matter is so incredibly common, we diagnose people who cannot experience it with a medical condition sometimes informally called "sociopathy" So I'm going to assume you know that most people expect you to care about people other than yourself, and I'm going to assume that you actually do care about people other than yourself. Now try to imagine what it would be like to extend that empathy to foreigners. That's it. That's the whole trick. Good luck!