• distal@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    [1]

    The thing is, immigrants are the perfect victims. They often don’t have…

    The problem is that people are not able anymore to discern things. What you say it could be true but the problem is that it applied mostly to illegal immigrants.

    I think the distinction of legal and illegal immigrants serves as a foot in the door for culture war distraction. First there is about needing to surveil some immigrant communities because of terrorist acts associated with foreigners, then it’s about not wanting to take in refugees because other nations in the EU are not putting in enough of an effort, then it becomes an issue of illegal immigration – which is synonymous with undocumented immigration. The step after that is introducing legislation to make working visas less of a certainty, usually that’s coupled to worse working conditions. Lastly deportations, nowadays called remigration, strip large sections of immigrants and those with an immigrant background of citizenship. This furthers an erosion of basic rights and puts those affected in a position where it’s do or die, which means proving your worth as an immigrant to state and industry.

    Furthermore, many currently legal and working immigrants have histories of undocumented migration, receiving government aid, and some even have engaged in illegal activity.

    True, some people are assholes also to legal immigrants (stupid people alway exists). Most people have not problems with the immigrants that work and partecipate in the society but with the immigrants that live by petty crimes.

    Many voters of right wing parties don’t have a probblem with immigrants as long as they’re the right immigrants in their view. Immigrants are disadvantaged though and this makes some turn to crime. Crime that could be in large part prevented if these people had their needs better met. Trying to kick out criminal immigrants potentially makes the problem worse because it puts them in an even more precarious situation where they are even more incentivised to do crime. This creates pressure for the vast majority of immigrants who by the way are not criminals to conform even harder.

    Criminals doing petty crime are not able to find regular employment when the state cracks down on them. They walk into the arms of human traffickers, which does not decrease the crime rate in any way. At best, crimes are made hidden or moved geographically.

    Many nationalists force use immigrants because left wings (and other btw) parties make it too easy to use them as bogeyman: it is not too hard to point your finger at them saying “they are all criminals” when looking at situations in the cities (I always use the Milan Central railway station as example).

    Reformist-progressive parties are in power in urban areas where inequality is high. They are not able to change anything because the entire country’s economy is built in such a way that creates significant discrepancies in wealth, which is magnified in urban areas. The left leaning parties are not sending the “bad” immigrants elsewhere because A. it costs money and B. it does not address the cause. This does not seem like a local left wing party problem, they seem like a correlation at best.

    As I said elsewhere, years of immigrations left unchecked has caused the society to switch from the “they need help” mentality to the “they are all criminals, we don’t need them” mentality, offering an easy target to nationalist forces even because everyone else refused to look at the problem.

    I think “unchecked immigration” is a misnomer. I would not say that immigration was ever left unchecked, immigration has always been a gigantic cornerstone of policy.

    I would not commit murder because I think doing it is enough of a punishment. My not-terrible upbringing has led me to dislike such acts. I have nothing to gain from just murdering people and that has rather little to do with punitive consequences

    The basic question is: would you think that people would do something illegal if they would be sure to be caught and punished proportionally to the crime ?

    I’ve answered this numerous times in great detail at this point and the answer is yes and besides, there is this assumption that just “bringing people to justice” is most important in order to prevent crime. There are crimes that have high clearance rates, meaning that on paper a very high number of reported crimes are figured out. People still commit these crimes and it’s sort of a ‘mystery’ of the justice system why that is still the case. Well, clearly there are factors, which I have previously pointed to, that go beyond catching the bad guys and punishing them for effect.

    The phrasing here is a little unclear to me. I presume you mean that you want to preserve the potentiality of becoming a state servant or business owner. Statistically speaking (and logically speaking) workers don’t just move up the ladder. If everyone could the system as it is would implode and we know that it’s self-correcting against collapsing in on itself. As a worker it’s very difficult to start a business because you need money and time to plan. Oftentimes you fail because the real world is noisy and certainties are few.

    No, I mean that I was s state servant (I served in the militay like every other man did up until 20 years ago) and I was a business owner.

    Thank you for clarifying.

    But your point is wrong: everyone can try and that does not mean that everyone will succeded. There is nothing that can stop me to try to become again a business owner, only my choice to not be one.

    This, with the exception of the very last part, is what I was saying. Sure, you can try to become a business owner, there are no limits to you choosing to. The important distinction here is trying and being. As someone who works, you likely have rather few resources to fund a business. You won’t be able to provide as much collateral on loans as people with capital, i.e. people whose property works for them. You are significantly disadvantaged.

    And likewyse there is nothing that stops me to try to become a state servant again if not objective things: I am too old to join again the army or I have not the correct studies for a certain work in the state apparatus for example.

    Certainly. But you have duties and in the army example those duties entail grave acts such as taking another’s life and giving one’s own. Then again the army is a low hanging fruit since they’ll take all kinds of people. It’s good that you realise that there are certain prerequisites that the vast majority of people do not have when we turn our eyes away from the army example. This gate is education and education is highly determined by the financial situation of one’s parents.

    And society do not implode because someone move up the ladder.

    Yes, when one person moves up the ladder society does not implode, but what I was saying is that society implodes when a fair chunk of people can simply choose to move up the ladder, by applying themselves better for example. If everyone became self-employed, you’d be back in feudalism and that simply isn’t efficient enough in order to sustain industrial production.

    But the punishment here does not come out of thin air. There is a monopoly on violence that is in the hands of the state.

    The alternative is a never ending chain of personal vendettas.

    I don’t think so. The state, police and monopolies on violences are a recent phenomenon. History is littered with systems where social conduct was shaped without purely punitive or violent measures. Who is to say that the nation state is the end-all-be-all?

    It is a problem that the UK and the EU created. It is a problem of the contradiction between the local level and the international level. This problem is quite relevant for the EU, because it signals greater antagonisms affecting the entirety of Europe.

    The UK created the problem when decided to leave the EU. Think about EU like a private club: you could enter if you are a member. You leave the club, you can no longer enter. Who caused the problem ? The club which follow its rules of you that decide to leave the club thinking that you could still enter whenever you wanted ?

    This does not really engage with the argument. States don’t have responsibilities like people. They don’t join private clubs as it were. The rules you are seeing are a result of negotiations based on leverage and generally this is in the interest of the most powerful nations. First the EEC (EU-predecessor) is created out of a strength in numbers calculation. The United States and the Soviet Union are blocks that could overpower any one member of the EU, but as a regional alliance the scales can be balanced. The rules of the EU are based on that. It’s not a rules-first thing, if it was Hungary would have long been kicked out for repeatedly flunking the rules of the EU flagrantly.

    Assuming rules are static and respected: Wars cause innovation because either side seeks to win. Technical novelties are extremely important. You may not see mustard gas be used or soldiers being blinded by lasers, but you might have to deal with new technology for which no specific laws exist. There are these magical battle technologies called autonomous drones and autonomous turrets.

    That does not means that everything is allowed. The use of every weapon, old or new, ultimately has a resposinble: who gave the order to deploy it.

    Of course it does not mean that everything is “allowed”. So long as there are states there is war and there is an incetive to come up with new ways of brutalising your enemy. My argument is this, mustard gas wasn’t banned prior to the end of WWI, then it got banned. Nuclear bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Nuclear aspect was legal at the time. Now there are many states that have pledged to not use nuclear weapons.

    • gian @lemmy.grys.it
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      5 days ago

      I think the distinction of legal and illegal immigrants serves as a foot in the door for culture war distraction. First there is about needing to surveil some immigrant communities because of terrorist acts associated with foreigners, then it’s about not wanting to take in refugees because other nations in the EU are not putting in enough of an effort, then it becomes an issue of illegal immigration – which is synonymous with undocumented immigration.

      Ok, assuming you are right, what would be a solution to try to solve the problem with illegal immigration and all its consequences ?

      The step after that is introducing legislation to make working visas less of a certainty, usually that’s coupled to worse working conditions. Lastly deportations, nowadays called remigration, strip large sections of immigrants and those with an immigrant background of citizenship. This furthers an erosion of basic rights and puts those affected in a position where it’s do or die, which means proving your worth as an immigrant to state and industry.

      I think that here you are wrong. If you make working visas less viable the local worker gain something in my opinion. Companies still need workers and now they have a smaller pool to choose from.
      What make working condition worse for everyone (local population, legal and illegal immigrants) is that when you have a lot of illegal immigrants an unscrupulous employer can simply hire one of them at a fraction of what he should pay a legal worker.

      Furthermore, many currently legal and working immigrants have histories of undocumented migration, receiving government aid, and some even have engaged in illegal activity.

      That’s true. And the difference is that these people enter the country illegally (perhaps) and then begin the process of regularizing their status.

      Many voters of right wing parties don’t have a probblem with immigrants as long as they’re the right immigrants in their view.

      Which basically means that people has no problems with people who work honestly and contribute to the society.

      Immigrants are disadvantaged though and this makes some turn to crime. Crime that could be in large part prevented if these people had their needs better met. Trying to kick out criminal immigrants potentially makes the problem worse because it puts them in an even more precarious situation where they are even more incentivised to do crime. This creates pressure for the vast majority of immigrants who by the way are not criminals to conform even harder.

      The question is: since a country can absorbe a certain number of new immigrant every year, why we should allow in people we know we cannot handle in a decent way ?
      This way you are simply ruining the society (where people will start to look at extremist like a solution, think AfD) and the immigrant, both the already legal ones and the new legal ones, to not talk about the illegal ones.

      Criminals doing petty crime are not able to find regular employment when the state cracks down on them. They walk into the arms of human traffickers, which does not decrease the crime rate in any way. At best, crimes are made hidden or moved geographically.

      The point is to have less crime avoiding to have people on the country that need to live by petty crimes. And to do this you need to keep immigration in check.

      The important distinction here is trying and being. As someone who works, you likely have rather few resources to fund a business.

      I don’t need too much. The fund you need depends heavily on what you want to do. Currently I could easily open a consulting business that can sustain my family in the end, and I don’t need too much resources. I simply choose not because I like better to work 9-18 and then be free.

      You won’t be able to provide as much collateral on loans as people with capital, i.e. people whose property works for them. You are significantly disadvantaged.

      No, I am not significantly disadvantaged. Or better, it depends on what business you are thinking about. In certain cases you are right, in other you are wrong.

      Certainly. But you have duties and in the army example those duties entail grave acts such as taking another’s life and giving one’s own.

      If this is done to defend me or my familiy from someone who want to kill us, I honestly think is not wrong. It should not be necessary, I agree, but I would have not a problem to kill an enemy soldier who has as target to kill me and my family.

      Then again the army is a low hanging fruit since they’ll take all kinds of people.

      No, they will not take all kinds of people. To enter the army you need to meet a minimum level. In may case the problem is that I am too old now, but when I enlisted people were excluded because they were deemed unsuitable, for physical or psychological reasons.

      It’s good that you realise that there are certain prerequisites that the vast majority of people do not have when we turn our eyes away from the army example. This gate is education and education is highly determined by the financial situation of one’s parents.

      No, it not a problem of education, I met all the requisite regarding the level of education, I simply studied a branched that are not that requested (mechanical and then IT). But the minimum level required is basically the compulsory education, for which parents are helped if needed.

      I don’t think so. The state, police and monopolies on violences are a recent phenomenon.

      If you define “recent” as the last three thousand years, then I agree.
      In every society starting with the ancient Egypt there were some sort of justice system that was handled by the state, and sometime with way more violence than today.

      History is littered with systems where social conduct was shaped without purely punitive or violent measures. Who is to say that the nation state is the end-all-be-all?

      For example ?

      This does not really engage with the argument. States don’t have responsibilities like people.

      But States are made of people.
      Maybe the correct phrase would be “the people from UK created the problem…” but my point stand.

      They don’t join private clubs as it were. The rules you are seeing are a result of negotiations based on leverage and generally this is in the interest of the most powerful nations. First the EEC (EU-predecessor) is created out of a strength in numbers calculation. The United States and the Soviet Union are blocks that could overpower any one member of the EU, but as a regional alliance the scales can be balanced. The rules of the EU are based on that. It’s not a rules-first thing, if it was Hungary would have long been kicked out for repeatedly flunking the rules of the EU flagrantly.

      Even joining a private club is a negotiation, albeit a much simpler one: you agree to follow a set of rules when you join or you decide the rules if you are a founding member of a new club.

      But the point is: UK founded the club, taking some advantages for itself, agreed while being a member to a certain set of rules and then exited the club thinking that the rules would be still valid. That is the basic reason why Britons were deported from other States and people from other Stated left UK.

      Nuclear bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Nuclear aspect was legal at the time. Now there are many states that have pledged to not use nuclear weapons.

      Nuclear is legal also now. What prevent the use of nuclear weapons is the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine, nothing else. Nobody is so stupid (not even Iran or Putin) to belive that they can launch a nuclear attack and then survive the retaliation.

      • distal@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        [2]

        Maybe the correct phrase would be “the people from UK created the problem…” but my point stand.

        Putting it this abstractly says very little about causality.

        They don’t join private clubs as it were[…]

        Even joining a private club is a negotiation, albeit a much simpler one: you agree to follow a set of rules when you join or you decide the rules if you are a founding member of a new club.

        There is much more at stake in a union of states. A private club between individuals is not a good analogy. Almost every aspect is different.

        Nuclear bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Nuclear aspect was legal at the time. Now there are many states that have pledged to not use nuclear weapons.

        Nuclear is legal also now. What prevent the use of nuclear weapons is the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine, nothing else. Nobody is so stupid (not even Iran or Putin) to belive that they can launch a nuclear attack and then survive the retaliation.

        No leader is this stupid or brazen, yes. But I have established that states can act in a quite stupid way. Aside from nuclear weapons being legal or not, there are states that have agreed to not use them in a codified fashion.

        I remember that back then, a soldier was required to disobey an illegal order, it was one of the first thing that was said to a new soldier.

        Well, that doesn’t translate in practice.

      • distal@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        [1]

        This will be my last response, as I believe I have explained my positions sufficiently. I don’t believe in debate for the sake of debate, even if it can be fun. This is not to accuse you of causing undue debate – I don’t believe you did. I can only dedicate so much time and energy to responding to people.

        I think the distinction of legal and illegal immigrants serves as a foot in the door for culture war distraction[…]

        Ok, assuming you are right, what would be a solution to try to solve the problem with illegal immigration and all its consequences ?

        I don’t believe undocumented immigration to be a problem. If anything immigration as a problem is a construction to conveniently justify not changing the present state of things on a fundamental level, which would require rethinking and undoing the domestic/foreign dichotomy and with that also many aspects of (private) property, since private ownership is based on exclusion on multiple levels: Personal, stockholder-wide, national, etc…

        Aside from that I don’t believe that a critique becomes valid when an alternative is offered. Also, critique can often mean a behaviour or line of argument should be avoided full stop, for example when I have the option of threatening someone to get money back. A. A person might return money out of a more intrinsic motivation B. I might not get much from demanding my money back as that entails expending valuable time. I can go around justifying all kinds of facts of life, but that wouldn’t get me any closer to answering questions beyond the level of phenomena. So I better not focus on creating justifications of present phenomena at all.

        Lastly, in order to advance I need to diagnose what is going wrong. I can not provide solutions to nothingness. Solutions by definition have causes and reasons. Critique is a necessary first step and can stand exist as is without going beyond scope.

        The step after that is introducing legislation to make working visas less of a certainty, usually that’s coupled to worse working conditions[…]

        I think that here you are wrong. If you make working visas less viable the local worker gain something in my opinion. Companies still need workers and now they have a smaller pool to choose from.

        The super low paying jobs where immigrant employment is high now have to be done by local workers. That is not a gain. Industries that rely on highly specialised and educated workers from abroad like healthcare are less able to address demand, that in turn drives up prices, which hits workers (and the unemployed) the hardest.

        What make working condition worse for everyone (local population, legal and illegal immigrants) is that when you have a lot of illegal immigrants an unscrupulous employer can simply hire one of them at a fraction of what he should pay a legal worker.

        Yes of course, that is why it makes a lot of sense to give undocumented immigrants the chance to become documented immigrants. A “legal” immigrant can demand more pay without fear and thereby raise wages for the vast majority of people by a little. I’m not talking about creating massive social programs and giving away citizenship, just a little tweak that could go a long way. Unfortunately politics as of late makes decisions that favour the market.

        Many voters of right wing parties don’t have a problem with immigrants as long as they’re the right immigrants in their view.

        Which basically means that people has no problems with people who work honestly and contribute to the society.

        I think I have shown it’s difficult to even determine what a “right” immigrant is. I think this view of there being right and wrong immigrants is on a basic level a false dichotomy.

        The question is: since a country can absorb a certain number of new immigrant every year, why we should allow in people we know we cannot handle in a decent way ?

        I doubt that “we” can know these things and supposing “we” did, what is then stopping “us” from applying this logic to citizens who are not on their best behaviour? If your answer to this is “No, we can’t. We a have responsibility to other countries to not sully them with the worst of our own”, then what is keeping this exclusionary logic from putting citizens into forced labour camps or killing them?

        This way you are simply ruining the society (where people will start to look at extremist like a solution, think AfD) and the immigrant, both the already legal ones and the new legal ones, to not talk about the illegal ones.

        I firmly reject this notion.

        Criminals doing petty crime are not able to find regular employment when the state cracks down on them. They walk into the arms of human traffickers, which does not decrease the crime rate in any way. At best, crimes are made hidden or moved geographically.

        The point is to have less crime avoiding to have people on the country that need to live by petty crimes. And to do this you need to keep immigration in check.

        Crime is decreasing in spite of immigration. Immigration is not well correlated with crime and better understood through economics like the ghetto tax and so on. You are imagining a problem.

        The important distinction here is trying and being. As someone who works, you likely have rather few resources to fund a business.

        I don’t need too much. The fund you need depends heavily on what you want to do. Currently I could easily open a consulting business that can sustain my family in the end, and I don’t need too much resources. I simply choose not because I like better to work 9-18 and then be free.

        I don’t place much emphasis on anecdotes. I mean good for you, but the statistics look different.

        You won’t be able to provide as much collateral on loans as people with capital, i.e. people whose property works for them. You are significantly disadvantaged.

        No, I am not significantly disadvantaged. Or better, it depends on what business you are thinking about. In certain cases you are right, in other you are wrong.

        You are significantly disadvantaged. A big consulting firm will outspend you, will already have a name for itself, and potentially swallow you if you become too big. I am 100% right here with the exception of the few startups that win the business lottery at best, and even that case I am not really incorrect since I take stochastic effects in that vein into account.

        Certainly. But you have duties and in the army example those duties entail grave acts such as taking another’s life and giving one’s own.

        I would have not a problem to kill an enemy soldier who has as target to kill me and my family.

        You have more in common with the “enemy” soldier than with the people that put you both into war. You don’t get to see the president in person just like that, the enemy soldier you do see.

        Also it is your job to kill the enemy soldier along with their family potentially. Everyone says they’re defending themselves.

        Then again the army is a low hanging fruit since they’ll take all kinds of people.

        No, they will not take all kinds of people. To enter the army you need to meet a minimum level. In may case the problem is that I am too old now, but when I enlisted people were excluded because they were deemed unsuitable, for physical or psychological reasons.

        They won’t take all kinds of people outside of war or tensions. The situation changes when an army is involved in a war. Project 100,000

        Throughout history armies have been famous for using, as it were, less capable troops as cannon fodder. War, war never changes.

        I don’t think so. The state, police and monopolies on violence are a recent phenomenon.

        If you define “recent” as the last three thousand years, then I agree.

        Police forces have only existed for only four-hundred years, and that is a charitable estimate. Modern humans have existed for more than 100,000 years as hunter-gatherers that were internally relatively peaceful.

        In every society starting with the ancient Egypt there were some sort of justice system that was handled by the state

        Ancient Greek and Roman societies are the first to have justice systems with legal professionals. Before that you had religious courts. Those had more in common with divine rituals than the careful application of law. Contradictory as it may sound to modern ears, laws did not start out as legalistic code.

        Previous societies, that weren’t states as you know them, were structured quite differently. Feudalism required peasants to give a share of their crops to their lords. There were no banking systems, which only begin to start popping up in Italy by the 14th century and it took banks three centuries to become widespread in Europe.

        States as centralised holders of capital have only been a thing since banking, taxation, free trade, and employment became central. The removal of barriers to finance is signalled by Cromwell and the French Revolution, among other things. See the development of economic freedom.

        There are arguments to be made about cities being precocious, but my point about the state being recent still stands. At best states are 5,500 years old, the fully developed nation-state is maybe only 350 (probably closer to 250) years old.

        and sometime with way more violence than today

        That is highly subjective. In terms of destructive power I think modern weaponry is the most violent by a long shot.

        History is littered with systems where social conduct was shaped without purely punitive or violent measures. Who is to say that the nation state is the end-all-be-all?

        For example ?

        Some Native American societies, aspects of Maori society and a few other Polynesian societies.

        This does not really engage with the argument. States don’t have responsibilities like people.

        But States are made of people.

        Yes, but group behaviour is different from individual behaviour.