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 -
Breaking news: Trump is saying he will not be deporting illegal immigrants who work on Farms and in Hotels.
Gavin Newsom is claiming it for a win for the violent riots that have taken over LA and other major cities.
This is a bit of a let down for Trump Supporters and anyone who wants to take America back from those who were not invited. Especially with Gavin Newsom rubbing it in the public's face. Especially with American Approval of deportation efforts have been increasing.
Trump's rationale appears to be:
Hotels/farms are low hanging fruit, it's easy to pick up illegal immigrants from these locations.
After swooping these groups first, then the only applicants to these positions (at the wages the farms and hotels are willing to pay) are the criminal illegal immigrants.
So focus on criminality first.
Does this mean that, once every last criminal is deported, he will then do sweeps of farms and hotels? Left ambiguous.
One problem is the effect of exploitable labor goes in one way. Over the past 2 decades, Landscaping businesses that employed high school students and ex cons went out of business because they couldn't compete against undocumented workers.
If one farm gets raided, and one farm growing similar things does not get raided for another year, then the first farm needs to hire more expensive people and raise prices while the second farm will still benefit from the lowered wages. The farm that got raided first goes out of business first, the second farm maybe gets to buy up the first farm, then when they are inevitably raided they still stay in business and make more money now.
It's not fair. It's not fair that the government has not enforced its own rules surrounding hiring employees uniformly across industries.
The fair thing would be to deport 100% of everyone deportable all at once. The shock of that will be destructive to every industry that is predominately illegal immigrants.
The next fair thing might be to deport 10% of employees in every business all together, then another 10% later, and so on until the bottom is reached.
Of course, the above two "fair" plans are ridiculous. We do not have the man-power to do it.
Any other fair ideas? Besides Trump's new plan of "Don't try to tackle this right now."
An infinite supply of slave labor is as much of a resource curse as infinite oil. As the people become a less crucial resource, it warps the incentives of those in power away from investing in the people towards exploiting their cursed resources. Rome collapsed as landowners farmed their estates with slave labor, and foreign mercenaries were hired for defense. Meanwhile Roman citizens were given bread and circuses. On the other hand, the Industrial revolution was kicked off by a labor shortage, which spurred investment in things that would skyrocket labor productivity.
How low is "unemployment" really? Teens don't work anymore. Men don't work as much as they used to. You also have to remember that labor is substitutable. Nobody is suggesting that high school students go work on the farm. We're suggesting that high school students work at McDonalds, and the possibly legal Mexicans who currently work at McDonalds can go work at the farm, both at higher wages than are currently paid for those jobs. And no, working a service job is not a degrading thing to do for a kid.
Labor is substitutable for capital to a degree If wages go up, that doesn't directly translate to a 1:1 cost increase to the consumer, because farmers can choose to use techniques that save labor but require more of other inputs such as chemicals or equipment.
Goods are substitutable too. If prices for some goods go up, consumers will choose to buy other goods that are less affected. So the overall cost of living will increase less than the increase of the affected goods. For me, beef has been expensive recently, so I've been eating more pork, which is dirt cheap. This is in stark contrast to across the board inflation, where anything and everything is up.
If you paid enough and also improved working conditions, you could guaranteed get better people to work on the farm. And if you did hire high IQ high conscientiousness people to do the work, they would actually do a better job than the illegals. All the "experiments" to get local people to work on the farm failed because they didn't seriously try and it was too easy to give up and say it's impossible. If your life is on the line you'll find people to do the work.
That's the illegal immigrants. Given the same IQ and conscientiousness, they're far more likely to do low-paid farm work than american citizens for what should be obvious economic reasons. If we got rid of the illegal immigrants their likely replacements would be stupider and less conscientious.
What do you suppose America's worst and dullest are doing right now, presuming you're right that they're dumber and more impulsive than illegals?
They're in prison, living off welfare that illegal immigrants are ineligible for, or employed in sectors that actually have to check for employment authorization and consequently have pay more as a result. For example, cashiering at big box stores. Walmart actually make an effort to hire people with work authorization (though Warlmar's contractors are a different story.) American citizens have strictly more negotiating power than non-citizens so for the same level of intelligence and conscientiousness, they're eligible for better jobs. Or to restate that in another way-- for an equivalent job and pay rate, the noncitizens are probably going to be smarter and more conscientious (because if they weren't, the employer would just hire a native in their place.) See: every story about attempting to hire americans for farm work instead of illegals.
Actually, I can personally attest to this being true because I spent a few weeks detasseling corn as a teenager. The attrition rate for the program was incredibly high and included myself-- american teenagers just would not stick around. I found out later that the bulk of the work ultimately ended up being done by migrant labor. So self-evidently, the immigrants were more conscientious than the natives.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Most of that is students and retirees. If you look at the male labor force participation rate aged 25-54, it's 89.5%. Number is going to be higher for white men. Perhaps the MAGA Maoists want the students and retirees to work in the fields as part of their Bangladeshification campaign.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LRAC25MAUSM156S
What happens if the Mexican decides he'd rather stay at McDonalds and the employer decides he'd rather keep the Mexican than cycle through a bunch of high school students? Is central planning the economy on the basis of race part of the plan?
MAGA Maoism. Take computer programmers and make them do the job of Bengali peasants, but we'll be 10x richer than Bengali peasants because of high IQ. It has the same vibe as "guy who says he supports eugenics to piss of the libs, but opposes any actual eugenic policy because it supposedly conflicts with his religion." You know IQ-realism is based, but disrespect actual high-IQ people working high-IQ jobs.
Nice strawman. The namecalling really helps your argument too.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not sure about this. For one, while you made good point about cost/substitution, there is a ceiling on how much you can pay farm manual labour.
Especially because of how seasonal the work is. No first world citizen wants a job for 6 months and then ??? for the other 6.
IT freelancing may disagree, unstable short-term work is acceptable for some if it pays N times more.
N depends on situation, but for extreme cases can become hilariously large. I assure that many would be fine with 2 weeks of work and then ??? if you get yearly wages in that time of work.
Yeah totally agree, just doesn't fit great with the economics of farm labour.
But maybe it would, we'll never know because it's easier to just exploit Mexicans
Farm labour could be in theory much more profitable but it is in general low-skill, replaceable workers, minimal starting costs to switch workers and so on. So it will go toward low-cost workers.
In theory it could pay two or three times more, but relevant food prices would increase (note: it would not affect all food, for example grain production in developed countries is highly mechanized, but strawberries picked manually one by one would noticeably increase in price).
But yes, it is not going to happen any time soon.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's a lot of seasonal work in the First World, construction perhaps being the most common.
Yeah I stand corrected on this, although I think farm labour has far too many negatives and will never pay enough to make Americans think it's worth it (demonstrated by the current situation) but with enough market distortions/minimum wage I'm sure you could get there.
Whether society is better at the end, hard to know, and we never will, because everyone in power, despite saying otherwise, loves exploiting Mexicans instead
The work not being done until the wages raise to a level where workers are willing to do it is not a market distortion, it is the market working as intended.
Illegal immigrant workers are the market distortion; international borders (not market forces) that have very stark difference in cost of living on one side compared to the other create the incentives for people to go work for way below local market rates. Not that I'm arguing for open borders, but that is one situation where governments create bad incentives (by not having an open market with a poorer neighbors) for reasons that can be desirable for other reason than economic, and where it should also work to compensate for it (by policing illegal immigration properly to counter the incentives they've created).
No they aren't, at least not any more than importing any other economic input is a market distortion. Telling an employer that he can't use labor from Mexico isn't fundamentally different than telling him he can't use iron ore from Australia, or electronic components from South Korea. You can make public policy arguments for why certain market distortions are necessary, but they're only distortions if you presuppose some kind of Peronist ideal where the only economic activity that matters is that which takes place inside your own borders. As @AlexanderTurok says, MAGA Maoism.
why are you ignoring the "illegal" part of the argument?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah fair I misspoke
I think what I mean is I predict trying to replace illegal immigrant farm workers with American farm workers would reduce American agriculture competitiveness worldwide and make Americans very mad about the price of their food.
Hence why politicians love to talk a big game but never do anything to actually fix it (punish businesses who hire illegals)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That’s not true, if you’ve lived in or near a beach town or ski town there’s plenty of serving staff who only work in a restaurant a portion of the year, every year.
They just work like crazy to make enough money to support themselves on a part time job or unemployed for the remainder for the year.
It’s like a tour of duty. There’s lots of industries that are hyper seasonal and / or are intensive for short amounts of time.
Oil workers are like that, for example. Fisherman, cowboys, that’s just off the top of my head.
Some people really love the freedom of working extremely hard for part of the year and consequently fucking off for the rest of the year.
We've got plenty of this sort of seasonal work up here in Alaska — and not just the oil workers and the crab boats, but also a lot of tourist-adjacent jobs, ranging from seasonal airport baggage handlers to RV park attendants.
More options
Context Copy link
That's a great point actually
I'm concerned that all these jobs are significantly more productive than farm labour, and thus command higher wages.
I guess we can price floor farm work wages but I have a feeling Americans will freak the fuck out when strawberries get more expensive.
I live near a popular tourist area, and we get flooded with Eastern European's on guest worker visas every summer. The jobs are in hospitality, which isn't that much more productive than farm work, if it is at all.
Yeah fair enough
I've been vibe analyzing this so happy for feedback lol
Shame we'll never know because Trump backed off
We can't really say that based on this. Total number of hotel and farmworkers in the US is around 4 million. Even if they're all illegals, there's 20+ million illegals in the US, and some estimates put the number much higher. "Target that group last" is very different from just giving up altogether.
I'm really not a gambler by nature but I'd be willing to put money down IRL that there is never any coordinated significant deportation of farm workers in the USA during Trump's term
Maybe a farm worker or 1000 will get inadvertently sniped as ICE roams around, but there's no shot they deliberately up the pressure on farmers. My basis for this reasoning is the fact red states don't bother to use e-verify or crack down on the American farm owners who freely choose to hire illegal immigrants, despite claiming they hate immigration and there being some relatively straightforward solutions they refuse to use.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Three events that took place separately over about four centuries.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link