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@bmdrocks21
If they are on net providing more labour at a lower cost then they're not a public charge. If anything, the conservative argument is that we should forgo certain economic gains in order to preserve a certain culture, and as a kind of indirect welfare for the native working class.
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@ResurgetExFavilla
Marxist class analysis doesn't ignore the structure of the state, anyone who has read even a little of Marx would know that. And it's irrelevant because I'm not employing a Marxist analysis at all.
By subordinating political dynamics entirely to the "forces of production," Marxist economism construes the state as something like a clear reflective surface upon which the divisions among classes are projected. If we instead understand the state as an economic entity, which uses scarce means to achieve the specific preferred outcomes of its 'owners' or constituents, then the opposition between the proletariat class and corporate structures becomes more complicated.
Communism is explicitly internationalist. Most fascist governments were culturally diverse, including Italy, Spain, and most of all Portugal's corporatist Estado Novo which adopted Lusotropicalism, a complete repudiation of ethnic solidarity, Russia and China are both extremely culturally diverse, with the USSR being a strong contender for the largest number of distinct ethnic groups under a single polity in the history of the world. In fact, it is the combination of large geographic territory and diverse population which lead both Russian and China to historically tend towards highly centralized, authoritarian governments, both under Imperial rule and Communist.
There is something profound in what you are getting at here. Nationalism, even of the most blood-and-soil kind, originates in a kind of unification of disparate lineages and blocks into a single, politically effective unit. However, for a state to legitimate far-ranging corporate control over that field, I still think a narrative of common heritage and identity is required. This is precisely why I called it a "myth." It is especially revealing in this regard that, even with their doctrinal opposition to nationalism and the supposedly internationalist quality of the socialist struggle, the Soviets increasingly needed recourse to a sense of "soviet patriotism" in order to construe the Soviet empire as a vast family, or community of equal brothers, and often did invoke, despite themselves, their Russian national heritage.
If you intravenously give someone glucose, their body will be very productive, but it will also quickly shut down and die because this isn't how the body has evolved to function. Is the purpose of human society to make people happy and allow them to raise their families in peace, or is it to produce as much useless junk as humanly possible?
I think this is a central disagreement, just as others above have been making the common comparison between a nation and a person's household. I believe there are fundamental problems with metaphors of society being like a body, like a person's home, and so forth. And so with vitalist notions of the 'health' or 'vitality' of a nation I think we have a key to reactionary mythology.
An expanded workforce does not increase the influence of the working class because scarce resources are more valuable.
I was talking about political, democratic influence - as you mentioned the working class being "incapable of organisation."
Country certainly used to have meaningful lyrics, and the same can be said of rap, but those days are long gone.
Modern art, in my view, is less about the lyrics or articulated message which portrays the individual genius of its creator. We can see this in modern abstract art or in electronic dance music: the communicated message is broadened into abstract patterns that reflect rhythms, flows, and areas of focused attention. These abstractions can much more easily translate between cultures: an energetic beat or a collage of colours can be understood much more directly than an articulated cultural artifact that expresses the individual genius of an influential figure. In my view this dimension of electronic music gets to something much more fundamental to music itself, which is that it emulates the expressive parts of spoken language while removing the particular intentional elements that need translation.
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@ResurgetExFavilla
The left constantly points out that the right uses cultural friction to divide the working class against itself and reduce solidarity, and they they're right. Because of this, multiple cultures within a society make it much easier for a corporate entity to solidify its power because it creates multiple fracture points in the working class for them to exploit
You seem to be assuming a Marxist class analysis which ignores the corporate structure of the state itself. It is inevitable in any society that various firms will attempt to "solidify" their power, but in multicultural societies with strong markets it is much more difficult to establish the kind of totalitarian control possible elsewhere. Both the communists and the nazis and fascists required a myth of shared heritage and national identity to rationalise their rule. All these systems claimed to represent workers' solidarity, and leveraged cultural hegemony to legitimate their claims.
Free movement of labor is not 'an essential component of the market'; that statement is prima facie absurd since markets have existed long before labor mobility has.
Although thinkers like Ricardo had not developed the theory of marginal utility, and were thus confined to theorising rudimentary markets within the bounds of the 'closed commercial state,' even in the 19th century we can see the germs of globalisation that led to the massively expanded global production cycle that exists today. Labour mobility, in my opinion, is an essential component of today's market, which produces goods at a scale and efficiency which was previously unimaginable.
The bad combination of a widening wealth gap, a working class increasingly incapable of organization, and endless credit bubbles and speculation on bad debt severely destabilizes governments.
It is unclear how much of what you listed is related to immigration, but immigrants have proven to have a very high social mobility, and are likely to reduce the gap between capital owners and workers. As for working class organisation, this is not a preoccupation of mine, but if immigrants were legalised and able to join unions, claim the minimum wage, and so on, this expanded workforce would presumably greatly increase the influence of the working class.
People aren't more creative nowadays. Far from it. The combination of multicult and the metastatization of pressure to conform within online/urban/suburban communities has lead to the bleeding of separate, vibrant cultures into grey, consumerized porridge, It's the exact opposite.
Which genre today is inspiring more people, rap or country music? Which is experimenting more with sound, exploring new territory? I don't see what you are referring to here, since it seems to me that there is much more creativity in art today than ever before, and especially so in multicultural urban areas.
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@bmdrocks21
Within our borders, you cannot hire whoever you want.
You said that government's responsibility is to its citizens, so how does it have the authority to tell them who they can or cannot hire?
American workers aren't a disease. There is no deaf/blind influence at all.
The dysfunction is that supply of labour theoretically outweighs the demand, so that you are attempting to prop up the price by placing artificial limits upon the supply. Artificial scarcity causes deadweight loss, which means that maximum productive efficiency (market equilibrium) is not achieved. The burden caused by deadweight loss can be measured on a utilitarian scale, which is where the analogy to blindness comes in. Economic mobility is tightened by the pressure placed on the production cycle.
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@Creeperofmines
Them Mexicans need to stay in their broke ass country. We can’t be supporting no broke illegals and at the same time giving up jobs to people who grew up in America
How can they be lazy and needing support if they're also taking away jobs?
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@bmdrocks21
I was giving an example of something not usually reserved for individual citizens. Something a GOVERNMENT must do. A democratic republic is a form of government. A government has a responsibility to its PEOPLE, which are citizens within its BORDERS.
In my view, laws should by decided by the people and not imposed by the state, but this is a different subject.
A citizen can house a foreigner if they want. That foreigner doesn't have the right to take others' jobs or vote, though.
So they can't employ whoever they want?
You are putting way too much power in the hands of business owners and taking it from workers.
If we could cure some people of deafness or blindness, there would be less deaf or blind people left in society. That would mean that those remaining deaf or blind people would have less power and influence in the culture. Therefore should the government step in to prevent the cure from being given? If we cured blindness, we would be taking power from blind people and putting it in the hands of non-blind people. In the same sense, if we improve the economy and make more people wealthier, this would in effect be also placing power in the hands of wealthy people. But in the long run, I am trying to expand the circle of people who have influence in society, and I believe that your solution would narrow it.
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@bmdrocks21
I don't know if writing and enforcing laws is something usually reserved only for individual citizens.
How is that relevant? Also, it is the purpose of a democratic republic to achieve just that.
The government is an entity created by its citizens for the purpose of protecting its rights and providing for its interests. I do say that the US government has a duty to its sovereign people more than it does to people in Zimbabwe. That is the whole point of having a country.
If that is the case, if a citizen wants to let a foreigner live with them in their own house, who has the authority to stop them from doing so?
Employment is for the mutual interest of the employee and the employer.
This is a totally subjective measure. If prices were simply paid to satisfy the interests of the recipient, we could not understand differences in price between the various products and services in the economy. These variations correspond to the differences in objective utility provided by the products or services offered in exchange.
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@bmdrocks21
You are using very odd terminology here. Are you using country and "corporate body" interchangeably?
In a corporate body, unlike other mere clubs, companies, or groups, power is consolidated into a single entity that enjoys rights usually reserved only for individual citizens. This is just what you are ascribing to the US when you invoke the idea that cultures can be violated, or that the desires or sovereignty of the "culture" of the US ought to be prioritized over those of the individual members of society.
Your laws might help some businesses make larger profits, but you are screwing American workers.
Is the purpose of employment not the productive utility it adds to the economy? How is it not corruption if you have workers doing unnecessary or under-productive labour to create an inflated measure of their value?
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@bmdrocks21
Why are you neglecting their collective desire to keep those people out while you champion the right of the singular people who wish to violate a group's desire?
These groups have a right to band together and form enclaves or clubs based on whatever culture they prefer. I fully respect the rights of individuals to join groups based upon common interests and to attempt to have these interests represented politically. However, their ability to consolidate their power into large corporate bodies should be curtailed. We live in a unipolar world, and for the US to feign a stance of self-enclosed egotism is naive when the balance of geopolitical influence is tilted so disproportionately in its own favor.
I don't want Americans' wages to get decimated and their working conditions to be destroyed, but apparently that is completely what you are in favor of. The goal of countries is to look out for the interests of their citizens, and you are robbing citizens of the ability to look out for each others' collective interests.
Why are workers paid a wage? It is a measure of their productivity, and the whole reason people are employed is in order to produce goods and services. You are proposing to impose limits upon the labor pool, effectively diminishing the productive capacity of that economy, in order to artificially bolster the bargaining power of the working class.
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@bmdrocks21
And why should people from crappy nations be able to force their will to enter our flourishing nation against the will of our people?
The whole argument of open borders is that nobody should retain control over territory by force. If there were open borders, "people from crappy nations" wouldn't need to "force their will" to move wherever their labor is most required, because they would be allowed and incentivized to do so.
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@Greyparrot
Let's see as a trial period if Mexico will allow any American to work and settle down anywhere they want to in Mexico. Not just the rich Americans, any American. Let's see how Mexican citizens react to becoming Americanized over time. So far, they don't seem very eager to give it all away.
Of course I would support that "trial period," but I still don't see your argument as to prioritizing protection of particular cultures above free movement and free association. A multicultural society would allow multiple cultures to coexist, without any consolidating its power to exploit the others. Again, you are making attempted appeals to hypocrisy rather than actually arguing against the policy.
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@Greyparrot
Open border philosophy represents a return to Colonialism, where inferior local cultures were morphed and destroyed by a dominant, invasive, and aggressive culture.
This is Dinesh D'Souza style mental gymnastics. You are trying to stretch the meaning of concepts to malign something you disagree with by comparing it with something most people already agree is bad, instead of actually making an argument against it.
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@Greyparrot
The more aggressive culture imposes its will in a clash of cultures. Open borders facilitates this, as it did in the past with the destruction of Native American culture and today with the invasion of an aggressive Islamic culture into open borders EU.
The fact that you are calling the imperial decimation of native americans "open borders" indicates that you are applying a wholly misleading and ideological construction to try to equate two totally incongruous things. Immigration and violent imperial invasion can be easily and clearly distinguished. What you are proposing is in fact an imposition upon people, because you want to limit their freedom of movement and association, as well as imposing an economic cost upon them. You are proposing a culture that would be imposed by force upon the individuals within that culture.
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@bmdrocks21
So you are against welfare because it forces costs on people? And you are against culture because.....?
There is a difference between being opposed to something and not wanting it imposed upon people against their will. In a social order based upon free association, people would be able to subscribe to any of the social forms you like, but their ability to consolidate them into corporate monopolies would be curtailed.
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@Greyparrot
So I take it you're Okay with the destruction of Native Americans? For the good of humanity right?
No, I don't agree with aggression upon the possessions or autonomy of others. It would be perverse to compare, say, the consolidation of state power by way of imperial conquest in America, Australia, or Israel, to individual immigrants moving to another country to live and work there.
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@bmdrocks21
Yeah, how about we don't let the third world decimate our social safety net and disrupt our cultural unity, sound good?
Unlike conservatives, I don't think social policies or cultural forms should be instituted by force, especially if they are imposing a cost on people.
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@Greyparrot
Countless cultures and civilizations were lost due to open/weak borders. Open borders only favors the stronger and more aggressive cultures.
In my view, it is a benefit for people to live in a society which promotes the most rational and prosocial habits and reduces the influence of isolating or unhealthy ones. The market provides just this kind of metric for selecting among cultural patterns. I don't see why you wish the cultures you are referring to were preserved if they were "weaker" by your own estimation.
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Open borders is the principle of free movement. It refers to the ability of people from any country to live and work wherever they wish, and its main function is to increase the pool of labour available for increased economic production. Advocates for open borders say that this would double world GDP, and that restrictions on movement constitute an unethical state incursion on the ability of individuals to associate freely based upon voluntary contracts. Critics of open borders argue that increasing the labour pool reduces the bargaining power of the working class, or that cultural differences will make the immigrants too dangerous or lazy to make the economic benefits worthwhile.
In my opinion, free movement is the most important human right. When individuals are given the widest possible horizon of people who they may associate with, the boundaries of human creativity are expanded. Free movement of labour is an essential component of the market, and the existence of multiple cultures within a society reduces the capacity for any one corporate entity to gain a foothold and consolidate its power into a monopoly.
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