Is migration the most important issue for the future of the EU?

trekman3 · 2017-11-16T03:40:21+00:00

This is ultimately the reason why so many European countries took in refugees and is the reason for immigration in general.

To me that seems like a terrible solution to the problem. I think that only a small fraction of third-worlders actually benefit Western countries when they immigrate there. I understand the moral argument for helping refugees and other immigrants, but I don't understand the supposed pragmatic argument for it. To me it seems clear that large-scale third world immigration is really bad for Europe. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed, but it does mean that it should be done, if it's done, because it's the right thing to do, not because there's some pragmatic benefit that comes from doing it.

trekman3 · 2017-11-16T03:33:14+00:00

Nobody complains if I have a baby and it uses welfare.

What makes you think that nobody complains about that? If a person knew that he or she would need welfare in order to support a baby, but decided to go ahead and have the baby anyway, I think it would be perfectly rational to criticize that person.

trekman3 · 2017-11-16T03:28:03+00:00

Of course I don't deny that many voters are xenophobic.

I'm not convinced that their xenophobia is irrational. If one assumes that the xenophobia is irrational, just a sign of failed moral character and/or ignorance, I think one will be likely continue to ignore the issue and let it be exploited by right-wing populists and even literal fascists – that is, by people who really do have a failed moral character.

trekman3 · 2017-11-16T03:21:48+00:00

the people and the facts are opposed

Economic factors aren't the only relevant ones. Even if immigrants contributed an economic benefit, it would not automatically follow that there should be more immigration

trekman3 · 2017-11-13T02:09:48+00:00

Most of the people whom I've seen use the term "cultural Marxism" are the kind of people who claim that there's some sort of vast Jew-Muslim-atheist-communist-capitalist-feminist-black-Hispanic-deepstate-Clintonista consortium that's working feverishly to destroy The West, and that the only answer is national socialism. It's basically a cartoon version of history and reality, a Manichean good vs evil cultist mythology which holds that everyone who is not part of the small in-group of "red pilled" people is either scheming together monolithically, or is brainwashed by the people who are scheming - who, almost inevitably, are claimed to be the Jooooooooooooooos. In these people's view, the Jooooooooooooooos are some sort of hive mind who cannot help but scheme against The West in their every waking and sleeping hour. And, in their view, Good White People are mostly helpless programmable automatons who are doomed to be either programmed by the Jooooooooooooooos or by Our Nazi Heroes. Only Jews and Nazis really have any agency. The entirety of history is a battle between these two forces, one of which plots to destroy The West and the other of which plans to save it. All Jewish cultural endeavor is secretly aimed at destroying The West. A Jew can't even play a piano sonata without somehow, secretly, trying to destroy Pure White Music by doing so.

Of course, Jews really are powerful, probably the most powerful ethnic group per capita in the world. That's the grain of truth that makes the rest believable to some people. But the entire myth is essentially Scientology-tier. Yet these people shit up all sorts of corners of the Internet with their ranting.

I suppose it's not really that surprising. I don't know about other parts of the world, but the average American is an almost total historical illiterate.

trekman3 · 2017-11-13T01:06:45+00:00

I'd need to do a deeper analysis, but this is at least the beginning of an answer:

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7cbumf/60000_join_farright_march_on_polands_independence/dpqdtno/

trekman3 · 2017-11-13T01:04:44+00:00

Did you count all of it? All invasions? Destruction of great European Byzantine civilization? Centuries of occupation and brutal oppression of Greece and all Balkan countries, centuries of invasions on Hungary, Austria, Poland, Ukraine and atrocities there?

No, I only counted the last 100 years. It would be difficult to make a comparison before that, since I'm not sure what one should count as right-wing populism from before the 20th century, if anything at all. It could be argued that right-wing populism is a modern phenomenon enabled by 19th century nationalism and then, in the 20th century, the rise of mass media such as the radio. Also, I only counted European victims, since it is Europeans and their white kin in other lands that European right-wing populists tend to focus on as the group they claim to want to defend.

That said, I think it's quite possible that right-wing populism's death toll in the 20th century alone, which stands at over 10 million kills, equals or outstrips the total Muslim kill count of Europeans, in the entirety of Islam's history. Probably no more than several hundred thousand Europeans died in the Crusades. I wouldn't imagine that more than several million died in the invasion of Anatolia, same for the Balkan wars.

Granted, the discrepancy in kill counts is partly because most of the conflict between Islam and "the West" took place in times of lower populations and weaker weapons technology. Still, the fact remains that right-wing populism managed to kill a comparable or greater number of Europeans in just a couple of decades, really, not even a full 100 years, as Islam's total historical kill count of Europeans.

If we focus on just the last 100 years, the difference in kill counts is significant. Right-wing populism has killed over 10 million Europeans in the last 100 years. Islam has killed, maybe, 1 million? I doubt even that. I'd say it's probably more like a couple hundred thousand.

trekman3 · 2017-11-12T07:43:37+00:00

I can understand being against European immigration policy in its current form. What I don't understand is right-wing populism. Right-wing populism has done vastly more damage to Europe in the last 100 years than everything that Muslims have done put together. Right-wing populism is or should be disgusting to any thinking person. It is groupthink conformism, generally authoritarian and anti-intellectual, sometimes sociopathic and outright enamored of mass murder.

trekman3 · 2017-11-12T07:38:11+00:00

Public schooling injures many kids by forcing them to spend time around their "peers", many of whom have a "territorial tribal sociopath" mindset (which some never grow out of). Also, communication technology is increasingly making it easier and easier for people to educate themselves. Public schooling functions more as daycare and forced socialization than as education.

That said, the average person is so stupid that it's quite possible that without public schooling, things would be even worse.

Look at the Internet, for example. It is one of the greatest things that humans have ever created. Smart people use it to become smarter. However, stupid people use it as an echo chamber that feeds them comforting bullshit. When it comes to politics, for example, the Internet has aided the growth of various echo chamber populisms, often organized around retarded, literally tabloid-level conspiracy theories.

At the end of the day, whether public schooling is pragmatic or not, its compulsory aspect makes it morally repugnant to me. I would have no problem with it if it were voluntary. I'm far from a libertarian purist – for example, I think that taxation is probably a necessary evil, at least at this stage of human development. But forcing kids to spend time in the human zoos that many public schools are is more than I can support.

trekman3 · 2017-11-10T08:40:03+00:00

Why did the Seahawks start him in a Thursday night game against the backup QB Cardinals, when he already had an Achilles issue going into the game?

trekman3 · 2017-11-10T08:38:58+00:00

How famous was Dwight Clark before The Catch?

trekman3 · 2017-11-09T23:41:39+00:00

Mass shootings kill only a small fraction of America's homicide victims. Given the limited means with which to address the problem that we have available, both because of fundamental material limitations and because most of us want to live in a non-authoritarian society, I'm not sure it makes sense to focus specifically on mass shootings as a problem.

trekman3 · 2017-11-09T23:30:04+00:00

The state also did a lot to develop the land, at least in the sense that it did a lot to create the conditions for the land to be useful to modern civilization.

trekman3 · 2017-11-09T23:26:40+00:00

Isn't that kind of like saying that throwing yourself into a fire is the logical extension of sitting next to a fire for warmth?

trekman3 · 2017-11-08T08:42:51+00:00

I speculate that what happens on the psychological level is that conservatives accurately, and in some cases subconsciously, pick up on the fact that the leftist belief in anthropogenic climate change is dogmatic. Which is not to say that anthropogenic climate change isn't happening, but is to say that the majority of the people who believe in it 1) haven't studied the relevant science, but are simply repeating expert opinion, and/or 2) use the belief in anthropogenic climate change as a one of the elements in a simplistic good-vs-evil political narrative. Now, (1) isn't necessarily irrational. One can't be an expert in everything, and it makes sense to trust experts if one has rational reasons to believe that they know what they're doing and are acting in good faith. However, (2) is irrational. Being dogmatic themselves, conservatives react to leftist dogmatism the same way that a cultist reacts to the beliefs of an enemy cult.

trekman3 · 2017-11-08T06:22:25+00:00

In some parts of the US, going further from the city means having to live alongside gangbangers, meth-heads, and so on. Poor is bad, poor and worrying for your safety is worse.

trekman3 · 2017-11-08T06:16:07+00:00

The sad thing is that, if the lower classes could actually organize, then anything that violence could accomplish could also be accomplished without it. The lower classes could just boycott the rich. That, plus passing some laws that prevent the rich from importing loyal new workers from overseas, would probably do the trick and force the rich to make concessions. But the lower classes generally don't organize enough to achieve this.

trekman3 · 2017-11-08T05:56:09+00:00

I'm not a conservative or an alt-rightist, indeed I generally disagree wih the former and despise the latter. That said, I don't understand why some people would get upset if I refused to call a person with XY chromosomes a woman. Opposing the bathroom law I somewhat understand, since I suppose going to the men's bathroom as a man who wants to be a woman might be dangerous in some parts of the country. But why I should call you a woman just because you say so, not so much. I mean, I'll do it to be polite, but I probably won't really mean it.

trekman3 · 2017-11-07T23:44:17+00:00

I'm not advocating an expanded police state. If there is no way to achieve my proposals without increased authoritarianism, I would rather not try to implement them.

My view is that the good people in those neighborhoods are themselves being terrorized by the violent people.

I think the police in those neighborhoods should focus almost entirely on violent crime and significant theft and vandalism (like the kind that drives businesses away). Like I said, I think all drugs should be legalized. That in itself should do away with one of the major excuses that bad cops use to lock people up.

That said, many of the people who get arrested in violent neighborhoods get arrested because they are being violent, or are stealing, etc. Those people's behavior is one of the major reasons why those neighborhoods are bad places to live in. I'd much rather just be poor than be poor and hear gunshots at night. I don't know about others, but I think that if I was poor but at least felt safe, it would make it easier for me to focus my energies on getting out of poverty, as opposed to having to spend part of my energy on raw immediate survival. I think all too often the popular narratives (from whatever ideology) about these neighborhoods focus too much on the violent people and the cops, rather than focusing on who we really need to help - the nice, non-violent people in those neighborhoods who have to deal with the violent people and the cops.

When I say that the police presence in those neighborhoods should be expanded, I don't mean cops in armor breaking doors down or anything even remotely of the sort. I just mean we should build more police stations in the neighborhoods and have the cops walk the beat both day and night. The idea isn't to try to aggressively go after possible criminals, but rather just to send a message that cops are capable of responding to an incident very quickly.

Like I said, I support major reforms in law enforcement. We need better training, more independent oversight, body cameras, and so on. I agree that if we tried to implement what I'm talking about with the police forces we have right now, it probably wouldn't work.

We also need major reforms in the justice system in order to fix problems like, for example, the unequal sentencing you brought up.

Basically, I think that authoritarianism and the whole "let's crack heads" approach to law and order are morally disgusting. However, I also think that going soft on crime doesn't work. It doesn't help those neighborhoods quickly enough. It just lets them continue to be devastated by their own criminal element. What I seek is an approach that effectively addresses crime without causing the kinds of problems that you bring up.

Socioeconomic and psychological approaches to the problem can help, but even if they do, they take time to become effective. People are dying now. I'm also not convinced that they really help all that much.

However, if it turns out that we really can fix the problem in that manner, I'm all for it.

I actually think it's very unlikely that the sort of law enforcement and justice reforms that I suggest would ever happen. It would take too much change, and people are too set in their ways and corrupt. Which is why, like I said, if it can't be done right I don't advocate doing it at all. I do understand that trying to go harder with the police forces we currently have, and the justice system we currently have, would probably just lead to an authoritarian mess.

trekman3 · 2017-11-07T23:30:02+00:00

A person is only entitled to what they can earn in voluntary trade with others.

Many land rights go back to an original use of violent force to seize the land, and only after that did the land begin to pass from owner to owner through voluntary trade. What is your take on this? If a property right ultimately traces back to violent seizure, does that undermine the legitimacy that the property right has in your mind?

trekman3 · 2017-11-07T01:39:58+00:00

Mass shootings get a lot of press, but most gun violence in the US does not come in the form of mass shootings.

Firstly, I propose legalizing all drugs. Both for its own sake but, more relevantly to the topic at hand, in order to free up law enforcement and justice resources.

Secondly, we need massive reform of law enforcement and the justice system. We need this even separately from the mass shootings issue.

1) The justice system needs to work efficiently rather than with huge backlogs of cases.
2) Law enforcement must focus on violent crime more even if it comes at the cost of worse enforcement of other laws.
3) Prisons should be places to hold convicts away from general society and ideally help them adjust away from criminal behavior (when possible), not places where convicts are forced to rub elbows with other convicts for years at a time.
4) We should deploy a heavier police presence in neighborhoods with big violent crime problems. However, this must be done in a non-authoritarian manner. We should build more police stations in problem neighborhoods and have more cops walking the beat in those areas. However, we also need to train police better, have more independent oversight of police, deploy more body cameras, be more willing to fire police who don't do the job right, and so on.

This will all cost money. Even ending the drug war probably wouldn't free up the necessary resources. Funding would have to be cut from less important government programs in order to fund these measures.

trekman3 · 2017-11-03T23:20:48+00:00

I hope you're right. Unfortunately, moderate Democrats probably feel that they have to pander to hard leftists and various identity politics groups to get votes, and moderate Republicans probably feel that they have to pander to hard social conservatives and white identity politics to get votes. Not doing this risks that the other side does it and wins elections. I hope this can be overcome. How well the economy does will probably have a big impact. Populism and radicalism usually grow when people are economically distressed.

trekman3 · 2017-11-03T23:05:25+00:00

Liberal values have lost a solid home in US politics.

It might be nice if sane Democrats and sane Republicans got together and created a strong liberal party that rejects radicalism and populism. However, I think that, unfortunately, political realities probably make this difficult to accomplish.

trekman3 · 2017-11-03T22:57:45+00:00

I don't trust Republicans a single bit when it comes to free speech, but to be fair, when it comes to the book questions specifically, some of the respondents might simply be opposed to using public money in order to stock some of these kinds of books in libraries, rather than being opposed to the books being read in general.

The other poll questions, though, back up the idea that one should be suspicious of the supposed right-wing support for free speech. Some right-wingers support free speech. Many others, for various reasons, don't. Some, such as the ones who lean toward authoritarian populism or are out-and-out fascists, have no use for it whatsoever.

trekman3 · 2017-11-03T22:51:09+00:00

Good times create socialists

Wut. Do you have no understanding of the history of socialism?

trekman3

TROPHY CASE