UwU
18d ago
I think the weakness with this analysis is that it focuses mainly on Russia for the first two points and misses the context for Ukraine. Point number two is even more dire for Ukraine than Russia, especially manpower-wise. There's really no solution for it other than getting Western countries to send troops, and I don't see that happening.
My read is that Ukraine in 2025 is similar to Germany in 1943 -- everyone who knows anything about the war knows that the loss inevitable given the strategic picture. But still, they have to play pretend to keep the public morale high and go through the motions just in case Ukraine rolls a series of nat-20s, or to maximize its negotiating position, or to squirrel away more personal wealth. But just because the war is inevitably lost doesn't mean Russian propagandists are right and Ukraine is just two weeks away from collapse. It can still drag the war out for two more years and inflict hundreds of thousands more Russian casualties.
UwU
19d ago
I think what you've wrote so far in the previous two comments are reasonable, but the key thing I'm still caught up on is why you don't think such discrimination can motivate someone to de-transition.
Like with the example with the clown suit guy going to interviews, surely when he gets rejected often, he might rethink the clown suits? Okay, maybe not all the time, because there's institutions preaching clown suits acceptance, but a percentage of the people who de-clownsuited give this as the reason is at least plausible?
Or perhaps the example where folks with atypical tattoos and piercings getting treated adversely by society, surely it's understandable that some percentage of the people who covered up their tattoos or gotten rid of their piercings can point to this as the reason?
UwU
20d ago
And structurally black people are probably more advantaged than whites but it's a different thing to argue that racism doesn't exist.
UwU
20d ago
Did your argument change from "they are not being discriminated" to "they are and it's good"? Because that how it reads.
In the previous comment your argument seemed to be the discrimination shouldn't count because they are trivial and tiny, but in this one it seems like you are agreeing that the discrimination is material, but that it's justified. If my interpretation is wrong, please clarify.
UwU
20d ago
Do most mottizens live in a woke utopia or what? Do you just internalize values from international corporations, governments (up until 2025 for the US I guess), public schools, Hollywood? I certainly don't in general, and also specifically for the trans topic. Most people don't either, especially on the motte. So what's with this willful ignorance
Sure, if that's the modal "discrimination" they face. But it isn't.
Let's explore your scenario further. Telling them "because you are tall, broad-shouldered and square-jawed, it will be exceptionally difficult for you to convincingly pass as female no matter what medical interventions you undergo" is not really where the discrimination occurs.
If my friend is tall, broad-shouldered and square-jawed, and he wants to transition to be a woman, I'd try to use that argument to dissuade him. Why does that argument hold any persuasiveness at all? It's because we know if he actually transitions, he/she would face great adversity in the society as a manly, ugly, non-passing trans-woman.
And if they are tall, broad-shouldered and square-jawed, and they decide to transition, but half-way through, pre-op, they feel the society treat them as a freak, or a sexual deviant, or mentally ill, or just an extremely ugly woman, and they decide to not go through with it. Is that really inconceivable?
UwU
21d ago
Just to be clear, are you claiming that trans women are treated better by society than how normal men are treated by society? Like, not just in academia and such, but society as a whole?
UwU
21d ago
The study is saying discrimination happens and that it functions as a motive for de-transitioning. In JTarrou's first comment, he says the discrimination is a "fantasy" and it's not a real external reason to de-transition. But it seems to me that even "not-unjust" discrimination can function as a motive to cause people to de-transition. So at the very least you are using a different definition than him, would you agree?
UwU
21d ago
In the least exciting sense, non-passing trans people are facing social discrimination similar to fat people, or ugly people, or visibly mentally ill people. But if you are ugly and can choose to not be ugly, or if you are fat and can simply choose to not be fat, wouldn't you choose that? Similarly, if a trans person discovers that they are treated worse by society while transitioning, then couldn't it be a conceivable motivator for them to stop transitioning?
UwU
23d ago
No democrat believes they are Putin in that scenario, so there's no contradiction there.
UwU
23d ago
None of them are up for reelection in 2026, and no one will remember this in 2028.
UwU
1mo ago
Yes you can be right. It's also possible that "white men" specifically has especially negative connotations in progressive circles, enough to make the democratic decision-makers use a different label for the "good ones".
These are just theories after all, and we are just engaging in bulverism without having a real progressive here to defend their ideology.
UwU
1mo ago
The one theory that resonates with me is the left has used the word "men" in so much negative context that it is now stigmatic. So they needed some other synonym to denote benign men without the negative associations.
UwU
1mo ago
Let me first say what he did was wrong and I support him exiting the race and resigning from any public office he currently holds. I hate politicians like him.
But I don't really care that partisans on the motte are pearl clutching. If Trump said similar things in a leaked private chat, like calling Kamala's kids little communists or whatever, or he'd shoot Hilary twice, you think that would move the needle at all? Nope. We are far beyond that point.
UwU
2mo ago
Isn't any sort of immigration a wage suppression tool?
Yet we, the United States, need it. We have 4% of the world's population and a fertility rate of 1.62 (also for the "race conscious crowd" amongst us, don't look closely at which race has the top fertility rates here). We need immigrants to maintain our long-term economic domination, or at least to slow down our decline if it is inevitable. If China or India gets their shit together, they'll out-compete us on demographics alone, and it's increasingly apparent that at least China is getting its shit together.
If we need immigrants, I rather they be from the top percentiles of other countries.
UwU
2mo ago
I'll try to reply to the first point since the other two aren't really quantifiable.
I think currently the new grad situation in tech is predominantly caused by two factors: over-supply due to A LOT of recent CS grads and AI having a disproportionate impact on the lower tier of tech jobs. H-1B has always existed and I've not seen evidence that companies are hiring a lot more than they did several years ago. So new grads are mainly not finding jobs right now due to an over-supply issue and AI rather than competition from H-1B.
However, I'm not saying that just because H-1B's impact on new grads is limited, we shouldn't try make their experience better by fixing it. I recognize this is a problem. As you may notice in my first comment here, I advocated for a sliding tax that specifically targets the lower compensation band that will improve new grad's competitiveness against similarly skilled H-1B applicants.
UwU
2mo ago
Well there goes most of my complaints.
To be clear:
1.) This is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition.
2.) Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will NOT be charged $100,000 to re-enter.
H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the country to the same extent as they normally would; whatever ability they have to do that is not impacted by yesterday’s proclamation.
3.) This applies only to new visas, not renewals, and not current visa holders.
It will first apply in the next upcoming lottery cycle.
I'm surprised they removed the fee for renewals too.
UwU
2mo ago
The policy is "directionally correct" but the effective date should be pushed back several months to lessen the immediate shock and the dollar amount has to be reduced to be more effective at encouraging good behavior while discouraging the bad ones.
Even FAANG can't afford 100k on top. The median total comp for an experienced engineer (IC4, IC5) is somewhere around 300k-400k and adding 100k on top of that means H-1B is effectively dead in the water. From personal experience working at big tech companies, it's not the H-1Bs that scare me, it's the off-shoring. Even at FAANG, I'm seeing entire teams getting moved to Brazil and Europe, and for head counts to only be assigned to non-US locations. Eliminating H-1Bs will only hasten this move.
Access to the us labor market should be expensive. There a lot of negative externalities associated with the kind of inequality the us has now and enacting policies which increase wages are one of the best ways to address this. As an aside if you want to understand how detrimental this program has been in terms of suppressing wages for technical professionals just go onto https://www.clearancejobs.com/ and look at how much more these roles pay compare to similar roles in other industries where hiring foreigners is mostly prohibited.
Can you quantify exactly how much the gap is? I looked around and it seems like for comparable roles at Boeing, the salary is in the ball park of median H-1B tech salary. If the difference is small, like 10-20k, then it's more appropriate to levy a smaller fee than 100k.
I posit there's two different worlds in H-1B, one rife with abuse and the other working-as-intended. All the H-1B workers I've met at FAANG were great workers, no different from native born Americans, and they were not paid less. We should solve the abuse problem but not eliminate the program entirely.
Thats not what H1-Bs are for though. The EB-1A is the "genius visa", and it does not appear to have the $100,000 fee.
I don't only mean rockstars or literal geniuses. It's still very worth it to brain drain the top few percentiles of labor from other countries, even if they are not geniuses. Considering we only import tens of thousands per year and there's over a billion people in the work forces of China and India, it's not a stretch to think that we are getting their cream of the crop. And to the extent that we are not, due to cheating and abuse, then that's something we should fix.
UwU
2mo ago
This may be "directionally correct" but it's too much and too sudden. This is currently positioned as a direct fuck-you to H-1B holders and the companies who hire them, with policy goals secondary. If they want to fix the abuse problem long term of companies underpaying H-1B, they can put a sliding salary tax for companies hiring under the median H-1B wage, up to a cap on the median wage. E.g. if you pay your tech guy 100k and median is 130k, then pay an addition 15k to the government.
Currently there are two problems:
- America has only 4% of the world's population but 25% of the GDP. We need to brain drain other countries to ensure economic dominance in the long term.
H-1B allows us to do it by attracting the best and brightest from other countries. ~100-200k H-1B holders in the country is only 0.1% of the 160M workforce, which is evidence that it is used to attract exceptional talent, for the most part. Top companies like FAANG plays by the book here, they do not generally pay H-1Bs less than local talent, they just want the best people.
- There's H-1B abuse in lower tier consulting companies, where they use H-1B as a source of cheaper labor.
This is the problem the administration should fix by adding taxes and fees.
The difficulty is to solve both problems at once. I don't think the program is perfect, but effectively killing it will be detrimental to the US in the long term. Yes, instituting a 100k/year fee on top for every H-1B employee will effectively kill this program.
UwU
2mo ago
I'm not sure where our disagreement lies. If your point is that the two are not the same, it's true. In my first post I didn't say they were the same, in fact I pointed out that they were different.
If your point is that advocating for state violence is as mundane as paying for a watch like in the Monty Python skit, then I disagree. The takeaway for most is still that "my opposition deserves to die for their crimes" and it does endanger the target, just not as much as an unqualified call for violence.
Secondly, jake said:
Had Kirk agitated for and supported violence against his opposition -- actual violence, not the child's "you said mean words"
And you seem to agree that Kirk "literally [advocated] for violence"?
UwU
2mo ago
It's still advocating for violence.
Sure, "my political opposition should be tried for treason and then shot" may have a thin veneer of plausible deniability to chronic overthinkers like you or I, but most people from both sides are just going to hear "my political opposition should be shot".
Yes it would be a war crime. Why do you think there's so much ink spilled down thread about whether the second strike was to sink the disabled boat and the deaths were incidental or that it was done specifically to kill the survivors? You are not allowed to kill shipwrecked crew who are out of combat.
What say you to this: "Am I understanding this correctly that shooting the fighter plane down and killing the pilot would be fine and legal, allowing the pilot to bail to be eaten by bears in the woods is fine and legal. But strafing the parachuting pilot to "finish the job", that is crossing a line, that is a war crime?"
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