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I love all the posts calling him arrogant and elitist for pointing out something, in a critical manner, that by their nature are arrogant and elitist: nation state borders.
Those things that make people who've done nothing feel entitled to more resources than other people by virtue of where their mother was hanging out when she popped them out.
I think dwelling on their artifical, self-serving nature is healthier than taking them seriously in any other sense than the threat of state violence for failing to pretend that they're sacred.
Humanity, not to be confused with your own individual greed or birth lottery results, would be far better off abolishing them. They bring nothing to the table but dehumanization, death, and inequity. Most, even most who consider themselves to be on the privileged side of the imaginary line in the dirt, have far more in common with the people trying to get to the privileged side than the miniscule populations of sociopath humans that use them to secure and metastasize their ego score hoards, the entire point of them.
Yes and no.
Borders may not mean a lot when you just pop out of your mother.
But when you have worked 30-50 years building a place in a certain way you may actually have some legit entitlement on all that you built and worked for.
It's a complex issue. We've seem some countries have bad issues because bad inmigration politics.
I know it's against the dogma to even dare to talk about inmigration policies with anything that's not "open borders". It's a sin and the inquisition will promptly come after me for just mentioning that massive inmigration did not improve one particular country. And that a too "welcoming" policy was a proved failure.
But reality beats any kind of dogma, propaganda or illusion. And as rational thinking human beings, when the dogma fails we are required to actually notice it and act accordingly.
How do the people living in squalor benefit despite working usually even harder with less protections than that worker who worked 30-50 years having their building being protected from those people's opportunity to do the same? What's wrong with that worker's 30-50 years of building yielding a little less so that none of them toil 30-50 years for basically nothing? The one born on side A isn't more deserving on the basis of being birthed on side A, that's nonsensical.
You seem to be looking at this from a tiny nation state citizen concerned about threats from "the other" viewpoint rather than a holistic, humanistic viewpoint.
Self-serving self-interest doesn't impress me. In most cases, such notions should be socially condemned. It's the reason humanity is on the brink of destroying our habitat and are currently killing one another all over.
The most destructive notion humanity was ever inspired to have was "ok... But what's in it for me?" Only cruelty, greed, and gluttony has ever come from such lines of thought.
kinda sucks to be less free than the fucking geese
Self-interest is the principal motive of migrants though. Instead of staying and trying to work to improve a bad place they chose to move to an already better place because it's better for them.
They literally move because the other country have something good in it for them.
Why ask for some pristine selfness to some people but not to other?
I'm a member of the working class. I do get my income exclusively from work. I'm not capitalist, I work hard every day for what I have. So the amount of selfness and sacrifices that can and should be asked to me are small.
Between members of the working class solidarity must go both ways to work.
There's no class solidarity if I, as a worker, am treated like some kind of capitalist oligarch that does not deserve what I have.
You being against other laborers plays into the hands of our shared common enemy that created and maintain this mass desperation under threat of state violence they've captured.
If you want to get a reasonable amount of the value of your labor, you need to look up, and not lose your focus of who your enemy is, not across an imaginary line at people those multinational oligarchs have made even more desperate for their famies than you.
I believe you aren't a capitalist, but if you aren't an all too common capitalist worshipper, no laborer should be your enemy, regardless of geography. They use that "compete against one another, here's a knife, want to win? Then your neighbor has to lose" mentality to suck us dry.
I'm not against other workers. I would gladly work to produce weapons for them if they need to depose some oligarchs that does not allow them to stablish a workers society in some place.
What is bot reasonable is to give up on 90% of the world land and just suppose that the few places that have achieved some level of quality of life for a worker are the only place where all people are supposed to be. That just does not work. Not for them, not for me. Not for anyone. That policies are only going to destroy the few places we have built where workers can have good lives. And then... what? When europe is no longer a good place to live where is people going to emigrate to?
Emigration is not a solution to world problems. Is just ignoring a problem.. How letting all capable workers from one place move to another makes the former place better for workers?
As I said, I'm open to other forms of class solidarity to solve issues. If I can do some to improve a country which have issues so that country is more livable I'll do it, because it's a long term good solution.
But massive inmigration solves nothing. It just ask for a big sacrifice to me to improve other lives. And again working class can do only so many sacrifices before it start thinking about itself.
Also. Inmigration is not even as class conscious as painted. We all know that we have that much inmigration only because capitalists need workers that are willing to accept less money for more work, not for any other reason. They are used as meat and oil for keeping the shareholders profits, in societies where native workers are asking for better salaries and won't be easily exploited.
But massive inmigration solves nothing. It just ask for a big sacrifice to me to improve other lives. And again working class can do only so many sacrifices before it start thinking about itself.
Works every time.
Except my country barely have billionaries. It's called a tax hell, and regulated hell by every bussiness man.
And rich people are the ones actually pushing massive immigration because it gives them cheap workers and weakens their country of origin so the can do nasty bussiness there.
Rich people here are actually the ones telling us that immigration is the best. Even the far right and conservative parties tells us that we need tons of immigrants.
Also migrants are taking away their own cookie. Letting themselves be in a weaker position in a foreign country to be exploited. Instead of taking control of their country and build another place where bussinessmen cannot fuck with them with ease.
I promise you it is not a matter of personal sacrifice buddy, immigrants aren't stealing our jobs/wages; Our employers are already taking care of that. If anyone is going to be sacrificed its gonna be the owner classes.
I think this idea that immigrants are to blame instead of those who are exploiting them is a fear/anxiety based on resource scarcity, but it fails to account for the artificial nature of that scarcity.
Our world has been, and is being, plundered by capitalist interests that throw us some crumbs to keep us docile. And like a starving dog we snap and growl at anything, anyone, who might take our share even without conceiving that our masters are the ones who've stolen from us.
Eat the rich.
Not saying there are stealing jobs. Or that they are the culprit of everything wrong.
Only thing saying is that mass inmigration have negative effects. Some of them is allowing capitalists to keep hiring for cheap and exploiting people.
Eating the rich is not opposed to a rational migration policy. Quite the contrary. As I said the ones benefiting more from mass inmigration are indeed the rich. Changing migrational policies is one effective way to hurt the super rich.
The weapons you would support being sent to free them in some hypothetical better world, in this world are used to oppress them. These places aren't poor because the people just did a bad job at managing them, they are poor because they were bombed and looted.
You can go to the US's policies in South America, their policy of keeping it under control as their own "backyard", how the School of the Americas cranked out death squads, how neoliberalism was born with the sponsorship of a fascist coup in Chile, and how the Chicago School taught countries to privatise and disinvest from public infrastructure.
You can look at the IMF and the World Bank putting out predatory loans where the rulers of countries are bribed to sell out their own people, leaving them impoverished and in debt.
Or how the United Fruit Company kept several countries under its thumb, coining the term "banana republic", so you could buy cheaper bananas.
Further back you can look at the rape of Africa, where European colonial powers did a campaign of unmitigated atrocities for decades, setting up imperialist structures that keep many of those nations subjugated to this day.
Or you can look at the modern example of Israel, which is sponsored by the US specifically to project power in the region. The extended wars fought by the US in that region are purely to maintain control over their oil.
I'm just pulling these off the top of my head. This is a tiny fraction of all crimes done to keep poor countries poor.
Neoliberalism works to ensure free flow of capital but restrict the movement of people, so that when their infrastructure is destroyed and they have nowhere else to go, they will be desperate enough to accept extremely low wages.
If you're going to claim to be class conscious, you need to educate yourself on these issues and learn to have solidarity with workers everywhere. Talking about how you don't want to sacrifice anything to make others' lives better is the opposite of what we need to win the class war, especially when your better quality of life was bought with their blood.
I'm not American. But I'll give a clear example about my country.
In Spain people used to migrate to Latin American. As life was better there. It was only until the 70... That the trend changed. We became a democracy and started fighting for working rights. And that worked. We made our country a better place. And people starting coming more and more snd more and now they are coming in mass.
From this 40 years where migrational policies changed. And Spain moved from beeing poorer that Latin American to richer. We did not colonize anything, we didn't use slaves, became s colonial power, invaded any other country or organizing any coup in any place, we did not divide Africa or done anything bad. Countries can get better without exploiting others. We got better by fighting for worker rights and making this place one of the places with more worker security in the world. That made us richer, that made us a place desirable for inmigration. I shall not accept negation of the worker struggle, and the worker sacrifices that achieved this by any identity-policy propaganda, where people are based or good based on their skin tone or the country they were born in. We achieved what we got without exploiting others. The FMI tried to destroy us as well and we managed to overcome it with socialist politics. We must now defend what we achieved, were are entitled to it, as we fought a lot for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Empire
"Migrate".
Are you for fucking real?
Like literally research a single fucking thing that you are saying.
Ah yeah, the spanish empire from many centuries ago. Whose colonies are full from spanish inmigrants because latin America was richer than mainland Spain. You know that you are talking about something similar to the relationship between UK and the US/Canada don't you? Old time colonies that got, in fact, richer that the mainland country. Is the US exploited by the UK? Is the US poverty fault of the British empire? Do you know that fucking Texas was part of the Spanish empire? Do we own Texas some reparations?
You don't know anything. You have a dogma.
Do a research on Spanish inmigration please.
And don't go to fucking 15th century.
Go to 1800s 1900s. Search for the "gallegos", search for "hacer las americas". Spanish people used to go to America to be servants, to be cleaning workers...
Spain has been a very poor country for many many years, until very recently.
Why ask for some pristine selfness to some people but not to other?
"Pristine selflessness?" This is a strawman, no one is asking any such thing. It also feels a little like a false dichotomy, as there are many stopping points between "selfish opportunist" and "pristine selflessness."
I wish I could upvote you a thousand times.