This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Raising the Price of Admission
I find myself immensely frustrated by Trump's recent moves to cut down on immigration, especially replacing the EB5 with his new golden ticket scheme.
I've always wanted to move to the States, but by virtue of being Indian, and in a profession with strict regulatory requirements, it was never easy. As of right now, I can't sit for the USMLE if I wanted to, but I believe that is a problem my uni could solve, unfortunately I'm locked into the UK for at least 3 more years and don't have the time to breathe down their necks.
If I wanted to spend $1 million for the old EB5, I'd probably have to sell a significant fraction of my familial assets, and they're not mine yet, I have a sibling and parents to think of. The fact that we even have that much, when my father made $50k at the peak of his career as a OBGYN surgeon, represents a lifetime of my parents being frugal and living beneath their means. My dad started out from scratch, a penniless refugee, and all his life he worked tirelessly to make sure his kids wouldn't have to work as hard as he did. To a degree, he's succeeded. I nearly make as much as he does, but that's virtue of grinding my ass off to escape India. I had to settle for the UK, whereas I'd much rather be in the States.
The EB-5 program already functioned as a high barrier to entry, requiring not just capital but also the ability to invest in ways that met the job creation criteria. By raising the price to $5 million, the U.S. is effectively signaling that it no longer wants "entrepreneurial upper-middle-class" immigrants - it only wants the ultra-wealthy. The problem, is that the truly ultra-wealthy already have multiple options. The US is relatively unique in dual-taxation, and has heavier taxes overall when compared to some of the alternatives. They can buy citizenship in other countries (Malta, St. Kitts, etc.), take advantage of residence-by-investment programs in the EU, or just maintain an arsenal of visas that allow them to live anywhere they please. The U.S. loses out on exactly the kind of people who were willing to put down roots and contribute significantly to the economy while still needing the opportunities that U.S. citizenship provides.
If Trump (or any administration) wanted a truly meritocratic system, they should be auctioning off a limited number of economic immigrant slots each year. That would at least allow market forces to determine the actual value of U.S. residency. A points-based system, like Canada’s or Australia’s, could also make more sense: prioritizing skilled professionals over sheer wealth. A million already strongly filters would-be immigrants. Five is exorbitant, especially if it's a flat sum.
(Let's leave aside the other requirements, such as running a business that creates a certain number of jobs)
Jevon's paradoxmakes us expect that increasing the price of a good by 5 times will not 5x the revenue. It'll decrease it in expectation. If Trump prizes himself as a businessman, this should be clear to him.
Even the abolition of birthright citizenship strikes me as a violation of the American ethos. It was certainly being abused, anchor babies being a case in point, but when even green cards are this hard to get, prospective skilled migrants greatly appreciate the peace of mind that their kids are entitled to citizenship provides.
End it for illegal immigrants if you have to, why lump in everyone else there legitimately? I wouldn't mind people using their visitor visas to get a fast one in being debarred too, but I look at the current state of affairs with great dismay.
At any rate, I'm not an American. I do wish I was, and my impression is that most of you would be happy to have me. Well, I'm used to life being rough, and the UK isn't the worst place I could be. I still think that even from an absolutely monetary point of view, this is a bad plan.
I hope I've made a decent case for why you're not getting much out filtering the immigrants for quality at that point, and the ones who are that loaded are probably not nearly as keen. They're easily Global Citizens for whom nationality is a formality.
Well, I'm still going to see if I manage to figure out the USMLE thing by the time my training in the UK ends, but there must be thousands of skilled immigrants in a similar boat, just noticing a rather significant leak in it. Then they're confronted by a sign at Eliis Island that just any ocean-crossing vessel won't do, they need a yacht. We don't deserve to be clubbed in with those who break the rules.
EB-5 is already over for Indians and Chinese, with wait times of over 5 years. At the current rate and as a doctor, you are probably better grinding for EB-1 or going for a nonimmigrant visa and hope you get lucky and figure something out. The fact is that the number of Indians with the means and desire to immigrate is absurdly, overwhelmingly large. Any system that doesn't just unleash total replacement of the native population (see Canada) will inevitably the majority of well-meaning fine people who want in. It's like the admissions system to Harvard, where there's no illusion that they're selecting the "best" or even any idea what the "best" might be, but irregardless they have to keep 97% of applicants out.
Anyways, don't blame Trump for changing EB-5 because you weren't going to get it anyways, and either way the number of spots on EB-5 is so small that it was destined to be overrun irregardless.
Specifically the EB-5 number is so small that the actual immigrants themselves are unlikely to have any substantial impact in the long run. The entire program isn't for the benefit of the immigrants, but just a slightly roundabout stimulus program that is hopefully slightly less wasteful than direct helicopter money. Anyways with such a small number of spots, any impact that could be made is going to be through an even smaller number of exceptional people, and idk if changing the cutoff will make it more or less likely to admit unicorns, but I also don't think it's obviously worse.
Then you definitely won't be getting it if they implemented an auction.
I would be happy to have you, but not 10 million of you.
Every so often I see these horror stories from Canadians complaining about how a flood of Indians has absolutely raped the commons. Their beaches flooded with creepy leering men, people shitting in public, massive nepotism and scams, services falling off a cliff as they get staffed up by Indians. It made me wonder what would happen if 50% of the extant population in my county was supplemented with Indians like Canada has seen.
There is this cute little nature preserve down the road from me. In the summer kids like to play in the river at a shallow. There is only parking for like 8 cars, enforcement is nonexistent, and it's honor system to clean up after yourself and not destroy the commons. It's hard to imagine that surviving. If the stories of off the boat Indians shitting in bodies of water like it's just what you do are true, it's fucked. To say nothing of the more disturbing and obnoxious light sex pestery. Akaash Singh had this great bit about what it's like being leered at by a hundred Indian men on a train in India that I can't find now, but his predominantly Indian-American crowd was laughing their asses off at how much they recognized it, so I assume it was based in some kernel of truth. The "You can't make me go back! Anything but that!" attitude of second generation Indian-Americans is profound. But it's not the weather or the land they want to be away from. It's other Indians.
The kid's parks here have these great little "take a book, leave a book" bins that my daughter has loved, and they've done a lot to get her excited about exploring books. It's hard to imagine these not being stripped bare or otherwise ruined given the stories of almost purposeless pillaging for the sake of pillaging the commons that I've heard out of Indian over run areas of Canada. Taking for the sake of taking just becomes expected. Maybe it has less to do with Indians specifically and more the low trust aspects of multiculturalism. I don't know. I only know it happens.
And then there is the shameless nepotism and scamming. It's more or less known that if you make the mistake of putting an Indian in charge of hiring, suddenly your company is hiring only Indians. That most resumes from Indians and credentials from institutions that service mostly Indians are completely fake and can't be trusted. I've seen repeated stories out of Canada that local education institutions which have leaned into servicing Indians have become so overrun with fraud, employers have begun just chucking applications from those institutions in the garbage. Been burned too many times.
Everyone has dealt with the completely detached from the outcome attitude of Indian call centers. When we lived in a major city, we had similar experiences with Indian doctors we visited. There is just this overwhelming sense they don't care. They don't have any duty to service. Any investment in outcomes. There is a script, they get paid, what more do you want? My wife constantly struggled with lingering issues that several Indian doctors (why were they so dominant?) just made scattershot prescriptions for, before finally getting in with an Asian American doctor who was actually invested in solving her problems.
Now my wife constantly has to work the phones because of my daughter's health issues and the vagaries of our insurance. Luckily, she's usually talking to actual employees at the local doctors office, lab office, insurance company, etc. It's already a frustrating, opaque process where the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, and often neither of them know anything. But generally the people want to be helpful, and so even though the system is fucked up and frustrating and a pain in the ass, it ends up being a moderately collaborative effort and even though it takes my wife 4 hours of working the phones and being on hold constantly, things get accomplished. Now I'm not going to say something dramatic like my daughter would be dead if all these people were replaced by Indians, her issues aren't that serious. But somebody's probably would be if past experience is any indicator. I've never had an experience where an Indian went one millimeter outside of the minimum of their job description to service a customer.
I've complained before about my own experiences working with Indians. The Vivek's of the world speak in broad terms that these Indian workers are just better than me. They work harder, longer, for less pay, and they're probably smarter than me to boot. People here, when I've complained about the fecklessness and passive aggression I'm met with when trying to get an Indian to actually complete their task, respond with things along the lines of "They're just being smart, avoiding work and getting paid all the same." Seems like some sort of merited impossible to me. It's not happening, and also when it does it somehow still proves they're better than me.
I often struggle with notions of where I will flee to when America is ruined. My way of life is disappearing, my culture is being squeezed out, my history is being erased, my co-ethnics aren't reproducing. But where would even have me? Could I even blame them for not letting me in, for fear of Americans ruining their country the way we ruined our own? Sometimes you see Japan pop up as an option. A lot of embarrassing weebs think they know what Japan is like because they've digested a lot of Japanese media. Sometimes they even move to Japan and get on...ok. I remember watching this old video by Super Bunnyhop before every video he did was somehow SJ adjacent. He was talking about how these Americans were setting up bars where you could play a library of old games on consoles. In theory, this should be legal in Japan. But they were sued by the companies that owned the rights to those games all the same. They decided to fight this in courts, as is their right. But the native Japanese viewed this with scorn, it's just not what you do. Damned Americans and getting all legal about shit. Whatever it is about Japan that makes it so attractive to American's, I'm 99% certain we'd ruin if even 1m of us moved there. Especially if we just formed insular expat communities or overran certain areas. I can only imagine how obnoxious an American ghetto would be in Japan.
I've seen very little self awareness from Indians about what they are really fleeing from, or what makes them different. And to whatever degree self_made_human thinks he "knows" America and wants to live here, it just seems like an embarrassing strain of weebism to me. He imagines there is some mechanism by which he could come here, but that very same mechanism wouldn't play a part in destroying America, just the same way I'm certain 1m Americans would seriously fuck up Japan. There is almost no mechanism you could devise that would filter the "bad" Americans out of Japan, because our culture will ruin theirs. You let in the top 1m Americans, and they'll just serve as the vanguard for the next 10m even worse Americans because they'll be sympathetic for, and even long for, the shitty culture they fled from.
It's probably all inevitable. Civilizations rise and fall. It's just such an existential horror to know yours is falling and may not even survive your posterity.
I've posted about this extensively on TheMotte. But here it goes again.
Since the 70s, Canada has imported India's lowest-skilled. While Indians were considered model immigrants everywhere else, Canadian-Indians were busy committing 9/11-level terrorist acts. Canadian-Indian bad actors are part of a large web of criminal gangs, human trafficking rings, and drug distribution cartels. Trudeau turbocharged this problem by opening the floodgates. In India, the flight of uneducated and unskilled migrants to Canada was rampant enough to become a meme. Many among us (governments included) warned Canada that these channels were being exploited to facilitate crime. Trudeau did not heed our advice. The outcomes are a result of Canada's stubbornness.
Indian immigrants in other nations do not have the same demographics. They're well-integrated, peaceful, and high-earning versus conservative, uneducated, and of flexible morality. Of course, #NOTMOSTCANADIANS, but you get my point. Projecting Canada's problems with ethnic Indians onto other nations makes no sense, and the statistical differences prove my point (crime, earnings, education).
Ethnic Indians are 5% of Canada's population.
You're scared of the bogeyman. These people don't exist.
I have never met an Indian who shits in bodies of water. I've never seen it among people I know in India, let alone outside the country. The kind of Indian who does it can't speak one sentence in English, let alone get a passport or a visa to ever exit the nation. I don't want to laugh at their misfortune. Street-shitters are a desperate and downtrodden class of people. They're barely tolerated in AC restaurants in India, let alone a foreign nation.
Ah, I'll leave this for another day. The ABC vs. Chinese or ABCD vs. Indians conversation is strongly colored by insecurity, ungroundedness, and colonial mindsets. For now, I'll say that it has little to do with their dislike of India. India (and developing nations in general) run on survivalist mentalities based around class systems. Second-generation Indians are insecure about their place at the top of the survivalist-Indian hierarchy. Their actions should always be viewed with that fact in mind.
You have causality backward. White people are unwilling to work for wages that desperate Indians agree to. This makes it so that the only people who meet the hiring bar and are willing to accept the wages are Indian immigrants. Similarly, Tier 3 Canadian institutions start cash-cow programs with little educational, career, or prestige value. The only kind of person who sees value in such a program is someone with ulterior motives. The program gets fraud-friendly candidates because it’s structured to only draw fraud-friendly candidates.
While we're exchanging anecdotes, my experience has been the opposite. Doctors back in India are caring, invested, and treat you like a human. I've found American doctors to be cold and impatient.
My experience couldn't be more different. My Indian (and first-gen Chinese) coworkers clearly work harder and produce higher-quality outcomes than the natives. But the natives keep getting rewarded because the company can't afford to lose citizens.
Yeah, Vivek felt resentful and hurt in his comments. I don't agree with his comments, but I can see how your average white person would feel attacked by it. Fair enough.
Yeah, it has to do with your co-ethnics. Indians (among other first-gen immigrants) are more spiritual, family-oriented, and 90s-American-like than native 2025 Americans. Your complaints are rooted in Gen Z Americans rejecting classically American values. Don’t point to us immigrants. This is all you. If it is any solace, this seems to be a global problem. Everywhere, urban kids of the next generation are rejecting ideas that their 'elders' held close to their hearts. Time is ruthless.
I see your point. For every Indian who seeks integration, there are smart and educated Indians who ghettoize. It's how immigration works. Jews, Italians, Cubans, etc.—they all ghettoized in their first generation. In time, they integrate.
I don’t agree with your Japan analogy, though. America exported every part of its culture for a whole century. It forcefully molded workers at other English-speaking corporations into pseudo-Americans. America is a 'global' phenomenon. Irrespective of the truth, that’s the image it portrays and sells. If immigrants drink the Kool-Aid, then that’s on America for shoving it down our throats. You might argue that this was the doing of the filthy globalists, and it isn’t the will of 'true' Americans. But to me, that just sounds like you saying that you're a powerless normie who is angry about being powerless in their country. If you didn’t want to be flag bearers of globalism for 50 years, then you should've found your way to power and reversed the trend. Even in 2025, Trump may cosplay as a nativist, but he's as global coastal elite as they come.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link