Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being an insufferable reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man Fox News boomer. No one yet has guessed a scholar, or multiple people. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
The email clearly says that the US already has the technology, and that China only recently attained it. So no risk of the US knocking down a drone and stealing the tech.
No.
Unlike a strategy game, technology is not universally shared across a country the moment any part of the country gets access to it. If [insert technology here] is a highly-sensitive, advanced, and secret technology, it means that technology is not being used in the commercial sector. If it was being used commercially, it (a) wouldn't be a secret, and (b) wouldn't a monopoly possession for long. Everyone would be aware of it and stealing it immediately and incorporating it itself, unless you start inventing unobtanium requirements to allow a monopolgy.
If the drones are a state secret- regardless of whether they are an American state secret as well or not- then any risk of anyone in the US knocking down the drone is a risk of the American corporate sector stealing the tech, regardless of whether some other US government lab had something similar already.
The entire point of the "show of force" in this case would be a demonstration that China has this novel propulsion system and can successfully deploy it over the US. "Why drop nukes on Japan, it would so much cheaper to just drop conventional bombs?"
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's a bad demonstration concept for such a point. For a demonstration to work, it needs to be clearly identified as a demonstration as opposed to something more banal and normal, and it needs to be clearly attributed to someone in particular.
The drone swarms were not a self-evident demonstration of technological capability because unknown drone incursions can be done by literally anyone with the budget for commercial off the shelf drones. There is no technological need for 'gravity drive' drones. Somone may have been yesteryear years old when they learned that governments have a hard time tracking such things, but it's been discussed for over a decade at this point. This wasn't even the first media cycle about unknown drones over locations.
Nor are the drone swarms self-evidently Chinese in origin. Precisely because the drones are in the technological capacity of any commercial UAS producer, the drones would need to signal a characteristic / capacity that only the intended signaller could do. Otherwise, anyone could claim credit, or mis-attribute. While unique technology could be a signal, there is no evidence that a unique technology was used, because everything that has been verified is well within conventional COTS capabilities. In fact, more immediate suspects- not yet disproven either- include Russia, due to the far more proximal and relevant deterrence issue of the Ukrainian arms issues of the time.
If the Chinese wanted to send an unambiguous, exclusive signal that they had a unique capability able to reach the US, they could literally just upload a video of it on TikTok.
Instead, the attribution of the Chinese plan hinges on... the credibility of a hostile and possibly mentally unwell dude.
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
The thing that sticks out to me about the 'gravitic drive' drone claim is just... why?
The claim that it's China is fine in and of itself, though it could be any number of other actors who have a motive. It's the claim that these specific drones have super-special high-tech propulsion.
Even if you believe this is a secret technology hidden by both the US and PRC governments, and thus the US 'has' the tech, the US civilian sector does not, and that's where you start getting into a risk-vs-reward of how it's not just a risk if the US government captures an drone to steal the tech, but if anyone else in the US happens to knock down a drone to steal the tech. Which, given the characterization of many of the actual drones, would totally be possible with... a non-gravitic drive drone.
Moreover, the gravity drive claim is totally unnecessary because, again, other drones. You don't need a special high-tech Chinese drone to fly over sites and do a show of force to insinuate what you could do if you wanted. You could use a low, commercial-off-the-shelf Chinese drone, like they do in Ukraine. Not only would this be far cheaper, it's also be far safer (negating risk of tech loss) and increase your attribution defense (if only the PRC could do a grivitic drone, it lowers down the possible culprits).
The gravitic drive claim is an element that weakens rather than strengthens whatever other points might be had. Literally removing it entirely would make the China claims more credible, since it adds on additional credibility requirements (that the PRC could use secret tech in such a way, and that the PRC would use secret tech in such a way) for no real benefit.
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
I can't answer that, but I would sincerely say that just because they wouldn't take you doesn't mean there aren't plenty of worthy public service volunteer activities you can do regardless. They don't come with the paycheck or prestige, but taking one half-day a month to clean litter from public places (cost- pair of gloves, some trashbags, and a litter-picker), help with a public festival setup, or even just visiting a retirement center to entertain the elderly are all worthy parts of contributing to a community and one's own spiritual/moral/civic health. Especially if you are in a position to help organize and lead others to contribute the same.
Strangely, fewer people have a desire to burn down their communities if they've spent sweat and hours making it better, and tend to have better feelings towards those who have similarly exerted themselves in shared efforts.
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
Oh, I'm quite willing to entertain that he was in the hospital, though I would also be willing to believe he publicized the claim to protect himself from charges of hypocrisy. I just find it degrades his point regardless- both because arguments that certain things are worth going to hospital (or jail) over fighting for is an argument for fighting out of the hospital you're already in (if he was physically capable of leaving), and because even if he was incapacitated for the time he was in the hospital, that in no way covers the opportunities of protest-fights he had a chance to join in before or after his claimed infirmity.
Ultimately, people who argue that others should accept the consequences to life and limb to prove their sincerity don't get to hide behind infirmity.
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
Yeah, I remember that. True Canadian girlfriend / 'I totally would enlist but medical deferral' vibes.
When an angry young man acts like a manipulative old man, it muddies the waters.
We've no particular reason to believe Kulak is actually angry, given Kulak's own professed standards of what people should do if actually angry over issues of social immorality. These includes violent, illegal actions that get people arrested / thrown into jail / exposed to significant violence and personal risk. We know Kulak has not done these things, because when opportunities have arisen- including opportunities in the past (such as the Canada trucker protests) that he called for violent resistance over- he neither joined or acted violently.
Instead, Kulak calls on other people to act violently. In fact, he makes a deliberate strategy of it, much as he has admitted his deliberate rhetorical strategies in other social media spheres (such as his technique for luring in leftist critiques by feinting a weaker position to invite a weaker critique for him to counter-attack).
These are not the characteristics of an actually angry young man. They are, however, classic characteristics of older men who cold-bloodedly use escalatory rhetoric to get other people angry, and manipulatable, for their own ends. Sometimes these ends are ideological, see the 20th century, and sometimes these ends are personal profit motive, see Kulak's substack. A historical example would be the old man by the fire who counsels young men of the merits to going off to fight and die bravely in battle to protect their homes- not only is he not going to join them, and not only is he the one benefiting if they die to protect his place by the fire, but if he had followed that advice himself he wouldn't be there to give it.
So when an angry young man does not act like an angry young man, does not follow the advice he gives to angry young men while making them angry, and stands to personally benefit from angry young men following his advice while he abstains...
Well, it's not impossible for it to be closer to the truth, but there's a lack of any particular reason to believe so.
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
One of the examples that comes to mind, albeit loosely, was the Covid Canada trucker protests, which were the generally peaceful protests of Canadian truckers just driving into various Canadian cities / border crossings to snarl traffic and such. It was a bit embarassment to the Trudeau government, which took escalating actions against them, including probably to almost certainly illegal government actions on top of the already-contestable nature of COVID restrictions.
KR at the time was arguing vehemently on not just the justification for, but moral requirement, for violent resistance to the Canadian government crackdown, including the sort of over-the-top accusations of the moral rectitude or sincerity of anyone who did not join in the violence.
IIRC, KR was posting from Canada at the time, or at least acknowledged he could have gotten there, and could easily have easily joined the protests himself. He didn't.
In fact, I want to say he also made some sort of appeal about how he could do more good in rallying for the cause than joining the fight, but there are a lot of deleted posts from those old reddit threads and it wouldn't really change the point.
KR is the sort of revolutionary vanguard who will never, ever, be found in the vanguard, even as he lambasts the masculinity/morality of others who don't answer the call. Cause, you know, the vanguard is dangerous, and his skills (and comfortable living) come from writing calls to action rather than taking action.
Rotherham is in large part the reason I don't comment on this forum anymore.
And here I thought it was because you got a job as a self-employed writer.
It's certainly not like this community has changed much over the last decade. In so much that this community consisted of cucks, faggots, and race traitors, it certainly never stopped you from comfortably nesting here and regularly returning like birds of a feather. The Rotherham abuses are more than two decades old, have been talked about for more than a decade, which is to say they largely predated this forum. It never stopped you from joining or staying or casually shooting the breeze with your peers, those cucks and faggots and race traitors whose company you preferred rather than not coming around again and again.
No, what changed was that you struck it big(ish) with substack, and now you're in the same social-economic context of self-employed persons everywhere, particularly those who start to make money from their hobbies: there is no such thing as a paid holiday.
Any time you spend posting in your old hobby jaunt for free is time you're not spent producing content for your patrons and sponsors. Moreover, they are paying for the schitk, and you are under the economic pressure to conform. Fortunately the schtick isn't as an actual revolutionary of any sort- heavens knows you've never taken the sort of stands at personal risk you've demanded of others if they were true to their beliefs- but that's the charm. No one expects you to, anymore than anyone expects the old man at the fireplace who lectures the young vikings on the virtues of bravery and sacrifice and dying in battle rather than growing old and tending to the fire. It's comforting and interesting and if it ever gets inconvenient, the easily accessible irony can be used to dismiss the messenger.
But it does require writing to keep the audience of paying consumers who would listen to the words of a man who chose the company of cucks and faggots for a decade. The requires a regular grind for content, all the more so because, what, 10% goes to substack and its certainly not-Jewish founders? If you write elsewhere- like here- for free, you aren't being paid for it.
It's a rough life, being a cog in a not-at-all-Jewish capitalist media machine. Who can blame you for being led by the profit-motive elsewhere?
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
The Soviet experience (and practices) in Afghanistan have always been my go-to thought when someone makes an argument about how the US could have won Afghanistan if it had just been willing to be tougher.
Say what you will about the Soviet intervention, but a lack of brutality was not the issue.
Rhetorical repetition theory works again!
Thanks for answering. I sometimes do that for the effect, and it's good to know it worked / was appreciated.
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
This is tangential, but your points on infering motives from qualification criteria brought to mind a video on a completely different context you might enjoy as something to listen to on the way to work / in a workout.
Perun, an Australian defense-economist youtuber, recently made a video of how you could use reasonable-sounding arguments to justify objectively terrible decisions. In his context, it was a 'if you were a spy for an enemy country, how would you sabotage defense procurement for a country wanting to build up forces for a possible invasion against your true-loyalty country,' the principles behind it are more broadly applicable.
It comes to mind as a parallel because the very direct contrast between stated and real motivations, and one where you have to persuade people to accept things against their interests, while hiding your own. It includes ways to shape / manipulate qualification and testing systems to build a more credible case.
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
I mean, we are talking about a guy who called a rescue diver a pedophile for not taking his offer of assistance (that might not have worked).
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
Yes, though it's less about weapons than regulation affecting coordination.
Timothy McVeigh's truck bomb was made with large amounts of agricultural fertilizer, diesel fuel, and other elements, many of which would normally be seen together. It also occurred in 1995, where the internet was reaching a point to facilitate cross-country and cross-agency coordination, which is how an 'untraceable' purchase- the anomalous cash purchase of his vehicle- became the investigation's cue that he was a primary suspect (as opposed to someone whose vehicle might have been stolen for the plot).
This applies to other examples and cases, including drug processing. As a result, it's a pretty common practice internationally that stores that carry regulated materials of interest (ie truck bomb or illegal drug precursor inputs) have to maintain and report transactions of even legal/unrestricted items at certain thresholds. When certain thresholds or combinations are met- say you start buying tons of agricultural fertilizer when you aren't in the business of farming- then a system flag registers and later a regulator and/or investigator comes to ask a few questions, possibly with a warrant if you aren't feeling cooperative.
What this means for terrorism is that would-be terrorists have to resort to less and less capable alternatives to avoid automated detection thresholds, as the things more capable are also more regulated and easier to detect. Hence our fireworks car bomb rather than a fertilizer car bomb, or Britain facing knife-attacks rather than gun attacks. But these alternatives are less regulated precisely because they are less dangerous, and you get to a point where even actual IEDs- like to pressure cooker bombs used in the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 kill fewer people (3) than just driving a vehicle into a crowd.
This is a similar effect from the role of domestic surveillance technologies used to limit the ability of terrorist cells, and leading to lone wolf terrorism.
If you can monitor mass communications, you can pick up the coordination messaging between group members.
If group members can't coordinate, either they find more secure forms of communication- losing the benefits of the higher-tech comms (such as coordination over distances, access to experts/advisors)- or they decrease the number of members in a group (fewer members = fewer potential comms).
Since the lowest number of members is 1- who by definition has no need to actively coordinate with anyone else- this makes that person very hard to detect in the coordination phase. Typically reports of found would-be lone wolfs either find them in the radicalization phase (where you watch whose talking with radicalizers), or in the preparation phase (where they get caught due to poor tradecraft due to not having the coordination with advisors on what to do and how).
Start stacking these effects together, and gradually you go from 'a group of middle eastern terrorists coordinating how to hijack a series of airplanes simultaneously' to 'guy rents truck.'
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
Could America have changed Afghan culture in 20 years anyway? Sure, but that would probably have required heavy-handedness to the point of genocide, which i doubt Pakistan would have agreed to act as a staging ground for.
At the very least, it would have required taking over the education system by both controlling the curriculum and forcing children to attend it, to which your point still applies.
As a 'rule', you can force significant culture change in as little as a generation, but that also doesn't mean that you make the changes you intended to / wanted.
(A campaign of forced schooling under western tutelage would have likely both significantly negatively impacted the rural farmers who depended on their children for labor, causing major economic issues, and would have led to the Taliban/insurgents deliberately targetting schools for mass casualty attacks, with all the cultural impacts that normalized / endured school bombings might have.)
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
Did the US even try over there?
Yes.
Was the whole thing just an excuse to put taxpayer money into rich people's pockets?
No.
People just nod and smile about the whole thing, like "of course we spent $2.3 trillion and got nothing for it other than neutralizing Al Qaeda, that's just how the government works".
The only people I've personally met who would nod and smile at that characterization were not supporters of the ISAF coalition.
It's kind of weird to me that there isn't more outrage about the whole thing.
Why? The level of weirdness would be consistent with the weirdness of your preceeding three questions.
Ultimately, outrage is not an inherent response to policy failure. Outrage is not the same as anger, but even anger is not only response- disappointment, shame, disgust, contempt, mockery, and more are additional options, and there was (and still is) plenty of that to be found.
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
I used to be far more active on the Motte, but have sunken back into semi-lurker status as life has gotten in the way. Maybe this is a sign for New Years resolution to become more active with commenting again.
Nomination goal successful, then? (On the part of whomever nominated you, I mean.)
The mods have mentioned in the past that the QC rollup is one of the few 'carrots' they have to encourage good posting. If your sincerity comes off well enough to pass two basic rounds of muster (the nominators interest, and the mod review to select it from the pile), consider that an endorsement of that sort of resolution.
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
that entire paragraph sounds to me like there is an assumption of infinite jobs up for the taking, something that is not true. The displaced 25 years old coder has to work in McDonalds now that they were replaced from their job by a HB-1 and thus a teenager than in other circumstances would have occupied that position spends the rest of his time playing videogames. How do you square that?
By questioning an economic model where the next-best job for a coder is a McD's, but then noting you just made the economic case for migration more compelling, not less, by increasing the relative net-gain for the economy by the implication of the relative value equivalence of the two jobs.
First, there do not need to be infinite job openings for Coder to just undercut the entire market of existing coders equivalent to himself by accepting paycuts. The fewer job openings the stronger this angle is, because there doesn't need to be a new job opening for Coder to displace some other Coder-employee in the work force. The reason Coder wouldn't do this (beyond skill issue) is that Coder's self-interest is that the paycut will still be preferable to the McD's job until the McD's job is preferable to a coder-with-paycut.
If you present a model where a coder's next-best-job is as a mcdonald's clerk, and not a as a coder-with-a-paycut, then you're presenting a model where the economic value of the coder and the mcdonald's clerk are both roughly equivalent. There are a lot of jobs that are IRL inbetween the value / income spectrum of software coder and McD's employee, and if the coder wasn't already taking them for his own self-interest, that would indicate they weren't options because they were over his/her value threshold. That implies the Coder's value of net-1 is closer to the value of Mc'D's job than Coder-with-paycut.
Just the setup of the premise requires that Coder > McDonald's Clerk > Coder-with-paycut. If that coder-with-a-paycut was 20% reduction and that was still worse, then that would mean C = 1 > McD > 0.8, meaning McD is somewhere between 1 and 0.8 net value. Coder wouldn't take the McD job over the Coder-with-cut transition otherwise.
But that means the McD net value is greater than net 0.8. For the economy to get a net less from this transition when Migrant-Remittancer comes in, the net-value of the migrant-remittancer would need to be 0.2 or less. If Migrant was 'just' 0.7, that would mean the two of them together are 1.5, which is great net gain of 50% over Coder pre-migrant. If Migrant was 'just' 0.3, it'd still be a net gain. For this to be actively negative- when the next-best job is McD's paycheck level- you have to start having some really weird or extreme issues... and if those are true but Coder's former employer still prefers the migrant to them, that implies bad things about Coder's actual and absolute value.
In the real world, if someone's next-best job from a technical specialist position is entry-level menial labor like McD's, that starts to imply that Coder was incompetent and over-paid, and possibly only employed as a coder in the first place as a result of some form of corruption.
checking your source one problem I see is that their source looks to be themselves and isn't available to peruse and the last bit of "is re-ingested into the local economy, or saved." what they fail to say is that the saved wealth goes with the migrant worker to his country of origin when he leaves, be it permanently or during vacations.
It doesn't actually matter what the exact numbers are for the relationship to be valid. You're confusing a demonstration that was explicitly simplified with a foundational claim.
The 15% remittance rate was used as a baseline, not a dependent claim, to demonstrate that a modest multiplier effect (1.2 for a 15% remittance rate, when multipliers can range far higher) would address the argument of net value leaving the economy from allowing migrants in the first place. If you change that remittance rate up or down X%, then all that means is that the multiplier rate requirement for that relationship to stay valid would go up and down. But the argument doesn't rest on a claim of what the multiplier actually is, and so contesting the remittance rate (which could just as well be lower- remittances are after essential expenses, which take %s of poorer people's income) doesn't contest the argument.
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
Thanks. That does indeed shift my opinion a bit, though I am still not convinced that immigration (and especially our current H1B program) is overall a net good. The discourse from the pro-immigration side on Twitter (and your analysis, if I am reading you correctly) is that more immigrants = more people working = more net GDP, thus a net gain to everyone. But what if individually it results in a loss on average (e.g., the average native-born American goes from a net-1 job to a net 0.8 job? "An-even-better net-1.1 job enabled by the migrant (now net 1.6)" seems very optimistic.)
Then we're shifting the goalposts of whether the standard of success is harm to the economy, or the average current worker. Rather than a criticism, though, I am very sympathetic for that concern! The neoliberal consensus cracked because the advocates argued there would be no losers, and then stood by as regions were devastated because the multiplicative effect worked in reverse as industrial areas de-industrialized and saw money leave. Nations have a responsibility, or at least a compelling electoral interest, to the losers of economic disruption. We are in the midst of an ongoing political realignment of American class-politics, and new alliances are being made / tested that couldn't have credibly tried before.
But that's a social/political argument, not an economic argument, even though it was initially provided in the form of an economic argument. This is part of why the 'nativist' arguments against migration also get discredited- because they try and seize various mottes ('immigration is bad for the economy') which is relatively easily cracked. (Another one is 'migrants don't pay taxes'- the amount of tax-capture of even undocumented migrants is quite high, because many of the methods of undocumented migrant hiring don't involve evading things like payroll taxes or sales taxes and so on.)
The harder argument is whether migration lowers average jobs. This is also a much older argument in which the American cultural acceptance of capitalistic costs / lower social cohesion / constant churn that leads to a general view on how wealth is generated to make those net-1 jobs in the first place. Net-1 jobs are a result, not the start, of a system process, and that system is constantly raising and lowering the net-benefit of jobs based on market demands. Regulations to protect established interests- like people who want to avoid competition- are the same as regulations that raise costs for consumers who could benefit from not only primary actor savings (the consumer charged more due to input costs), but secondary market benefits (the consumer who is charged less, can now spend more on other people's other things).
Like, say that formally net-1 job is now a net 0.8 job. So what, if that transition (lower employment costs) can translate into second order benefits beyond those two participants (say by raising 20 other jobs by net +0.01). Then we're quibling over division of spoils, not net loss. Which goes back to being a social/political rather than economic argument.
But this argument gets very convoluted, hard to explain in clear terms, harder to prove, and politically difficult at best compared to simpler and stronger (even if wrong) memes.
I am not a nativist, not entirely persuaded by pure culture war arguments, and like most folks who grew up in the "colorblindness is good" and "America is a melting pot" beforetimes, I really want to believe that infinity immigrants (or infinity minus the fig leaf we use to supposedly filter out those who will be a pure drag on the economy) will benefit us overall. But I have to admit, I am coming around to the anti-immigrationist position. You seem to be saying that the arguments Elon and Vivik are getting ratioed for on Twitter are actually correct?
I am... neutral on the position of a platform I make a point to avoid? I'm not familiar with their specific arguments, and I don't consider myself enough of an expert in the relevant policy fields to have a strong option. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if politically contentious people were being ratioed for politically contentious views, especially if other actors (including those with bot nets) had an incentive to maximize the impression of opposition. I wouldn't be surprised if they got ratioed regardlless of correctness.
I will say that arguments that appeal to per-unit quality over volume are quite often wrong, and more so when there's a self-serving interest on the part of the person making them (which is almost always true if they can't compete with volume). From a system / population performance level, 'better' is often less important than 'good enough', and as long as you have 'good enough' then more is generally better. This applies in system engineering (not over-engineering to raise costs), manpower (you don't need the best person in the world, only the best person who is good enough and available), ethics (demands of moral perfection obstructing imperfect improvements), information (overly complicated long-form arguments are less compelling than floods of simple-but-generally-sound constructs), and so on. This was long a regular refrain for why Chinese manufacturing wasn't a long-term industrial threat- because China wouldn't be able to compete on quality. Well, China has quality-enough that a lot of quality and more expensive producers went out of the business or went out of the country.
Part of the issue with the visa issue is that economic benefit is a necessary component of the advocates of either direction not coming off as selfish, as their position of advocacy probably really does benefit them. Someone is urging more a more distorted form of the 'ideal' market. This is where general market theory would go into consumer surplus / savings concepts, where artificially higher restrictions- such as maintaining a cartel dynamic- creates market inefficiencies that rob the consumers of market efficiencies.
And this creates the issue that employees resisting HB1 visas are not consumers in this model- they are producers, and their employers are their customers, and the HB1 visa market debate is a debate of how many producers/suppliers of labor should be allowed in the market. As a supply principle, ease of entry into a market increases supply, thus lowering costs and increasing quantity provided. Which is why labor unions exist- as a measure to restrain supply.
Historically the American labor movements have lost that fight, or at best had only conditional support. I have no strong feeling how it will turn this time, in part because (a) I don't think it matters on economic truth, and (b) I think some of the controversy is just an extension of politics.
What's your view on fiscal multipliers from local consumer spending?
The basic premise of the multiplier effect is that the benefit to GDP is larger than the actual amount of currency spent, and while there are different types / uses / implications, a basic point is that the value gained from the local spending by the remittance-sender can be more than the actual dollars spent. The UN estimates that on average migrants send only about 15% of their income back home as remittances. Of that remaining 85%, if you have a multiplier effect of 1.2 you're at 102%- i.e. not only not losing net money, but even still ahead.
Of course, that assumes a global standard of remittance %, but it also assumes a low multiplier effect of only 1.2, as opposed to something lower... or considerably higher. In the US I've seen variations as high as 2, as in a dollar spent is doubling in value of the economy. While there are general theories for the variations- local spending has higher multiplier effects thanks to more immediate reuse than spending on international chains where the money goes away- it's generally understood to be positive.
As long as it is positive, however, you have to have some very wonky dynamics for the addition of a migrant- and thus an additional job to the economy- to produce less net multiplier benefit than the job sans the migrant.
Say you have a net-value job worth net-1, standard benefit to the economy. Even if the remittance-migrant taking the job lowers the net benefit to net-0.5, the person who the migrant-taking-the-job affects (displaces) has to go from a net-1 job to a sub net-0.5 to provide a worse net effect... as opposed to a worse-paying net-0.8 job (new net gain of 1.3 versus 1), or an-even-better net-1.1 job enabled by the migrant (now net 1.6).
This is, uh, not the common economic case over time. It's not impossible for it to happen- if people are permanently unemployed and don't re-enter the workforce- but for that to happen at a systemic level you're probably talking far more along the lines of 'barbarians have sacked civilization and are enslaving the artisans' than 'remittance-migrants are undercutting salaries.'
Returning to the remittance, though- as long as the balance of the relationship is favorable (more benefit than harm), then you're just seeing a cost tied to a net-benefit. As long as that holds true- as long it remains a net benefit- then you want to scale up, not down, that cost, because the scaling of the cost is also scaling the benefit.
For example, go back to our UN % of remittances as 15% of income. Wiki estimates the US was the world's largest source of remittances at 148 billion in 2017. For simplicity, let's round that to 150 billion in remittance outflow.
If we take that UN 15%, that means that 150 billion of outflow is a result of 850 billion not outflowing. Which, in turn, means $850 billion for spending on the normal things that already eat up the %s of income, like taxes / housing / food / transportation / healthcare / and so on.
Since the outflows (remittances) and inflows (everything else) are tied to the same entity (the migrant with both categories attached to them), 'saving' $150 billion by blocking the worker from arriving in the first place also means not gaining- also known as losing- the $850 billion they weren't sending out of the country.
That's not impossible to be the 'right play,' but it's making some serious assumptions.
If you don't make new assumptions though- then as long as the ratios and relationship hold true, the bigger the cost, then by consequence the greater the net benefit.
If remittances stay at 15% and the remittance relationship is net positive 150 billion < 850 billion is not as good as 150 trillion < 850 trillion
It doesn't actually matter how big the outflow goes, because what matters isn't the absolute cost, but the relative relationship. You could argue the merits of tweaking the relationship- it'd be better if the remittances were a lower percent over time- but that already occurs. It's called generational turnover, which corresponds with both assimilation (migrants establishing roots) and generational turnover (people being more willing to send to still-living parents than dead ones, and less willing to send money to cousins than siblings).
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
Kudos to the pilots. Allegedly russian ground directed the plane over the caspian sea, where if it had crashed there would have been no immediate evidence of the AA.
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
except, I suppose, insofar as any super-Dunbar group of people is an abstraction.
Subjective groups beyond your cognitive limits to maintain would certainly qualify as more conceptual than evidential in my book.
Dean
Flairless
9mo ago
Not quite. It's not that nothing is important, but rather that certain objections start to lose value when they amount to special pleading rather than an actual standard of differentiation.
Think of it as analogous to swimming in the rain. Not wanting to go outside when it's raining because you don't want to get wet is fine. Not wanting to go swimming because you don't want to get wet is fine. But if you are getting in the pool, getting out because it's raining isn't compelling on 'because rain gets you wet' grounds. There may be other grounds of leaving- a storm, a need to prepare other things for the rain, what have you- but the specific 'because I'd get wet' basis isn't compelling if you're already wet.
In decision-cost frameworks, costs cease to be disqualifying objections if they're shared across the proposed courses of action. That doesn't mean costs aren't worth controlling.
This is inventing justifications to rationalize continuing to assume the conclusion that there is a novel tech-based reasoning, as opposed for considering alternative hypothesis that don't require the assumption in the first place.
Simply as a matter of risk-management, there is no reason to have secret test flights within the continental US in risk of other actors the first place.
Again, this is a bad signaling scheme. If the US government rather than the US public were the intended audience, the demonstration would have been in places for special US government attention rather than US population attention.
Note, also, that you are interjecting new theories that the originator didn't claim to support the originator's theory. The dude who killed himself did not claim China sent a private communication, and he happened to (somehow) be privy to it. Instead, we are evolving the conspiracy theory where the guy not only had knowledge of secret technology, but also had access to secret lines of communication between the American and Chinese governments, while his means of knowing either weren't important enough for his suicide note.
Again- Drones intruding in places they are not supposed to be is not new, novel, nor does it require exceptional technology. A super-secret-high-tech drone that acts within the spectrum of commercial-off-the-shelf drones is indistinguishable to a government from the typical variances (benign and malign) of commercial-off-the-shelf drones. What made last quarter's drone reports notable wasn't the mechanics of them happening, but the unusual amount of media attention about them from three different media news cycles, none of which were from the same impetus (or which claimed novel technologies).
If the goal is to have a secret-awareness with only the US government of a new super-capable Chinese UAV, however, there is much simpler- and safer- locations to do so. Namely, Guam in the Pacific (a critical US strategic site for any US-China conflict), or any US carrier group in the Pacific. Not only would these have far greater signalling potential of military penetration capabilities, but they'd have the benefits of securing Chinese technology capabilities/limits by hiding from the Americans what the Chinese 'equivalent' can/cannot do.
Instead, what happened returns to the point that there is no clear public signal, despite having allegedly been done in public places for signaling purposes, revealing no obvious new technological capability despite significant public demonstrations, with no clear attribution beyond the requisite assumption of one of various potential actors.
This is reversing the burden of proof to assume secret evidence to assume a conclusion.
'The drone is made of classified technology' is just one of many basis for a classified briefing. Other reasons include not knowing the technology of the drones and wanting to keep that limitation secret, knowing the technology of the drones but the means of knowing being secret, whether drones and/or purpetrators have been identified/caught being secret regardless of technology secrecy, the briefings revealing the secret capabilities or vulnerabilities of air defense capabilities in north america best kept secret lest copy-cat terrorists want to emulate, etc. etc. etc. The evidence of classified information is not proof of evidence of the conspiracy of the hour- if the contents of classified briefingers were so easily determinable, there would be no use.
Until evidence is provided, there is no evidence. If you simply want to quibble over the semantic need for 'that we know of,' sure, but the premise remains the same: until you have evidence that a unique technology was used, you do not have evidence that a unique technology was used.
Similarly- and by extension- in the absence of evidence by the departed that the claimed unique technology exists, he has not provided evidence to back his claim. A claim is not evidence any more than an accusation is proof.
The potentially mentally unwell guy provided no facts not explained by commercial off the shelf technology and his own probable mental state that made suicide on new years eve seem like a compelling message strategy.
On the other hand, there is no available facts indicating gravitic drives, novel technologies, or sudden changes in Chinese threat campaigns to start flying top-secret world-super-power-only technologies over some American metropolitan areas in a country with over a million lawful drones and who knows how many more unregistered drones.
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