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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25957 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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ICE has conducted its largest ever raid targeting... Korean automotive workers at a Georgia Hyundai factory?

ICE has released a video of its raid on Hyundai–LG's Georgia battery plant site, showing Korean workers chained up and led away. South Korea's foreign ministry has confirmed over 300 of the 457 taken into custody are Korean nationals.

We don't have all the details, but from what I can glean most of the Koreans were in the country on B1 buisiness visas, which allows the visa holder to attend business meetings and conduct training, but does not allow for "labor". The factory involved is brand new, having opened less than a year ago, which would explain why they needed so many Koreans (Hyundai is a Korean company) to get operations off the ground.

One defense of these kind of raids is that it doesn't do America any good to have foreign companies build factories in the US if they are going to staff those factories with an imported workforce instead of Americans, but it is far from clear that was happening here. I don't doubt that many of these B1 visaholders were "working the line" and as such technically violating the terms of their visas, but that's how foreign investment works. If you build a brand new specialized factory in an area that doesn't have factories of that kind, the local workforce will inherently be inexperienced and unsuitable for the facility. You can't teach people how to run the factory without, well, running the factory.

The big question is what this means for foreign investment in the United States. If you were in charge of a foreign manufacturing corporarion, would you want to build a facility in the United States if there is a good chance your own employees would be arrested for running the company's facilities?

Does nobody have respect for the rule of law? This seems related to the concept of incentivizing lying that came up again in the recent ACX review: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-participation-in-phase

If you have rules and laws and you consistently don't enforce them, then you reward and incentivize rule breakers and liars. We have immigration laws. First and foremost, we should enforce the immigration laws. Then, after doing so, if we find out that we don't have the optimal level of immigration then we should change the number of immigrants we allow.

If foreign manufacturers are forming plans to build facilities in the United States, they should form their plans with the intention of hiring primarily locals, with whatever management or trainers they bring in having legal visas. These plans should involve carefully screening hired laborers to make sure they are legal. If their plans have already factored in plans to hire illegals but are worried about getting raided and choose not to, then good. They should either reformulate their plans to follow the law, or take their business elsewhere.

If we establish a precedent of enforcing immigration laws, then investors will take them into account and the economy will equilibrize accordingly. If we then end up with more American factories, or foreign factories with American workers because a hole was opened up for them to fill, then good, and we have more jobs for Americans. If not, and there ends up being a shortage of factories because we genuinely need the foreign expertise, then we'll be able to observe that and stick some more visas in the immigration budget. And then they'll be legal, and we'll have control over how many there are.

In no world is "make harsh laws and then fail to enforce them because they are too harsh" the correct decision.

Does nobody have respect for the rule of law?

Based on priors, I am doubtful that they were meaningfully violating the law.

So far, Trump has been less of a Kantian paladin who enforces the laws of the land whatever the consequences may be, and more of a petty tyrant who uses "I am just enforcing the law" as an excuse to punish his enemies.

  • You are in the US on a perfectly legal visa but ICE does not like your tattoos? Go to an El Salvador mega-prison without any due process.
  • You are employing illegals on your farm or in your hotel? Don't worry, wise king Donald has decided that he is fine with that, nobody will arrest your workers. (Also, as illegals lack social security numbers, I am wondering how you can even pay them without breaking federal labor law.)

In some cases, Trump seems to be targeting cities for harsh ICE enforcement simply because they did not vote for him.

Is it possible that Hyundai was blatantly cheating with their visa? Certainly.

But my money is on them being targeted because CW-wise, electrical cars (except for Tesla) are a technology of Trump's opponents, or because South Korea has lately not spread their ass-cheeks to Trump's satisfaction.

The South Koreans now probably wish they had built their factory in a more reliable partner country like China instead.

Based on priors, I am doubtful that they were meaningfully violating the law.

Reuters: Workers say Korea Inc was warned about questionable US visas before Hyundai raid

Many South Korean workers were sent to the U.S. on questionable documents despite their misgivings and warnings about stricter U.S. immigration enforcement before last week's raid on a Hyundai site, according to workers, officials and lawyers.

For years, South Korean companies have said they struggle to obtain short-term work visas for specialists needed in their high-tech plants in the United States, and had come to rely on a grey zone of looser interpretation of visa rules under previous American administrations.

When that changed in the early days of U.S. President Donald Trump's second term, some workers were denied entry to the United States under statuses that did not fully allow work, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen workers from various companies, government and company officials, and immigration lawyers.

Many of the people arrested were skilled workers who were sent to the U.S. to install equipment at the near-complete factory on a visa waiver programme, or B-1 business traveller visas, which largely did not allow work, three people said.

"It's extremely difficult to get an H-1B visa, which is needed for the battery engineers. That's why some people got B-1 visas or ESTA," said Park Tae-sung, vice chairman of Korea Battery Industry Association, referring to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization.

One person who works at the Georgia site told Reuters that this had long been a routine practice. "There was a red flag ... They bypass the law and come to work," the person said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

LG Energy Solution is working with Hyundai to build the factory.

Officials at LGES were aware of the long-standing issues and some of the companies' employees and contractors were reluctant to travel to the United States for fear of being denied entry, two of the sources said.

@CertainlyWorse @faul_sname @JarJarJedi

B-1 visas do allow some types of work - I bet LGES argues that the workers were there "to install, service, or repair equipment/machinery purchased from a foreign company", or "to train U.S. workers to perform these services", both of which are permissible activities under a B-1 visa per CBP's own documentation provided that the workers do not receive compensation from a US source.

If the workers did receive compensation from a US source, that means someone fucked up somewhere, but my guess is what actually happened is that CBP disagrees with LGES about whether the activities these workers engaged in qualify as installing, servicing, or repairing equipment/machinery purchased from a foreign company, and decided that the appropriate course of action was to chain these workers up and make a self-congratulatory press release about it, and that we will hear any follow-ups about the outcomes of this raid in terms of findings of actual wrongdoing.

(Disclaimer: IANAL, TINLA)

You are in the US on a perfectly legal visa but ICE does not like your tattoos? Go to an El Salvador mega-prison without any due process.

I've had this idea bouncing in my brain for some time now, what is the purpose of gang identification tattoos/color matched clothes/hand signs. It's ingroup signaling. Ingroup signaling for a criminal organization. Want to go after gangs? Make gang tattoos illegal, make "wearing the gang uniform" illegal. That way you deny one of the primary benefits of being in a gang. Respect.

This is pretty much anti-liberal, though. People should have freedom of association.

Germany kind of did this for an infamous gang called NSDAP. Display their symbols in public, you get a fine. Of course, this also means that we constantly get told by Americans how horribly unfree we are.

And it does not stop the fascists from rallying if they simply pick a different symbol or color. In my opinion, the main benefit was always more symbolic -- victims of the previous iteration of fascism might have to endure similar ideas and rhetoric, but they at least get spared of seeing the swastika banners again.

For gangs, this will simply get you into a cat and mouse game. Gangs will adopt to using more deniable symbols. And what do you do about a Yakuza missing a finger? Tell them that they must wear gloves in public?

In the current political climate, this would also be extended to the opponents political groups the minute it is passed. Neither side will stop at just banning MS-13, either they will want to ban the confederate flag or the trans flag.

This is pretty much anti-liberal, though. People should have freedom of association.

You know, I guess I'm fine with anti-liberal. People shouldn't have freedom of association with a gang.

And what do you do about a Yakuza missing a finger? Tell them that they must wear gloves in public?

Infinite jail time. Yakuza tats? Forced to have them removed or stay in jail, same for the random MS-whatever tats or tears on the face tats. The tats are a costly belonging symbol, tune the cost to infinity. They've already banned the confederate flag and decided it's open season on people wearing trump hats.

And it does not stop the fascists from rallying if they simply pick a different symbol or color.

Please don't tell me none of them came up with the idea to use the Quadruple Progress Flag.

I'm not going to praise Trump for his commitment to equal enforcement of laws. But the problem is not the enforcement here but the lack of enforcement elsewhere. The problem is the past decade of non-enforcement giving the company an expectation that the laws were a formality that they shouldn't take seriously, and giving all of the other companies a free pass so that they all have to skirt the laws to remain competitive.

I agree that this is a problem, but the solution is more enforcement (and more predictable enforcement), not less.

Based on priors, I am doubtful that they were meaningfully violating the law.

"Meaningfully" here covers a lot of ground. Doing disallowed work while here on a B-1 is violating the law, whether you think it's meaningful or not. It's fairly obnoxious to arrest bunches of employees who likely had no knowledge that their employer was using the wrong visa, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a violation of the law.

You are in the US on a perfectly legal visa but ICE does not like your tattoos? Go to an El Salvador mega-prison without any due process.

This does not appear to be a real example, but a reference to Abrego Garcia, who was not here on a visa at all.

Would you put up money on a bet that at least half of the people arrested were unambiguously violating the rules of their visas?

Which side? I'd guess that more than 0 but less than 10% of those arrested were not violating the terms of their visa. It's still obnoxious to do a raid; I'd expect violations like this by a corporation (especially when they were countenanced by the previous administration) to be handled via a warning/demand to the corporation. Of course, if they were warned and just didn't listen... there probably isn't any escalation that isn't obnoxious.

I would not be surprised if half of the workers were arguably violating the terms of their visas, but I expect the modal case here looks like "a worker for one of Hyundai's subcontractors was here on a B1 to suprvise the installation of equipment, and demonstrated to a worker on site how the machine was supposed to be hooked up when they're technically only allowed to describe" not like "Hyundai shipped in 500 Koreans on tourist visas to do unskilled construction work building the factory". In other words, I expect that the majority of detainees were authorized to work in the US, but I would be unsurprised if some were doing types of work they were not authorized to do, though I expect the majority were at least ambiguously authorized to do the sort of work they were doing.

Under my model I would be unsurprised if e.g. DOJ and Korean company disagree about whether work should fall under "contracted after-sales service" or "supervising installation of equipment". But under my model "chain them all up" is not a reasonable response to "people who are not flight risks were doing normal business things but we think they might have technically violated the terms of their visa, we'll find out in court".

I am unsure if there are any good and timely metrics but I would be quite surprised to see e.g. table 42d here showing 475 more (or even half that more) noncitizen enforcement returns to South Korea in 2025 than in 2024 - for reference the current latest data is 713 returns in 2022. (The latest available year here is 2022, so it might be a while before 2025 daya shows up). And my read is that DHS would enforce if they have even a vaguely plausible case of visa violation, so I think absence of this particular evidence would be evidence of absence of such a case.

There might be less janky ways to operationalize this, I'm open if you have ideas.

I was reading a translated Twitter thread by a South Korean experienced in EPCM and while I can't find it now there were a couple of things he said that stood out:

  1. It was difficult to quickly train up workers to operate these newly created factories in an economically feasible timeframe to be profitable
  2. American wages were higher than South Korean wages which made it difficult to turn a profit on the EPCM because of early bidding wars for the tender from Hyundai. On top of that, the factory gets more efficiency out of 'Kimchi warriors' (김치워리어) that are willing to work long hours and 6 days per week over American workers.
  3. Historically SK workers had been able to get in to the US on the ESTA Business/Training visas even though it wasn't appropriate for the factory line work/other labor that the Koreans were doing.
  4. Visa laws suddenly enforced due to new administration and Pika? ensues.

Do we want to live in a country where the government ferociously enforces all laws unconditionally to the letter? Or should the executive have some discretion over how sharply it enforces them?

I can appreciate the argument that if we don't want a law enforced so rigidly we should fix the law, not let the executive be lawless. But I think the failure modes there are probably worse than just allowing the executive some discretion.

Some discretion is okay. But too much creates a lack of feedback. If you have a terrible law that is stupid and leads to bad results and then enforce it 1% of the time, then it becomes a tool of tyranny for corrupt administrations to selectively persecute people they dislike for other reasons and use the law as an excuse. And the average person who keeps their head down won't get targeted, won't complain, and might not even notice. If a terrible law were enforced 90% of the time then people would realize it's terrible and throw a huge fuss and the democratically elected officials would be forced to fix it. If it's almost never enforced it can sit on the books unnoticed until it can be weaponized. There are way too many laws, nobody knows all of them, and the majority of law knowledge comes from word-of-mouth. Congress could have passed a law in 1982 saying "It's illegal to own a rubber chicken" and then literally never enforced it and it's just sitting in a book somewhere waiting to be weaponized. Would you know if they had done that? Or they passed a law saying "It's illegal to own an object with these properties:" and there's some hundred paragraphs of convoluted nonsense which eventually translates to apply only to rubber chickens if you're a legal expert. I suppose if you're a company trying to start a rubber chicken factory and you hire lawyers to go over all the laws the lawyer might notice the law and tell you about it, but they'd also tell you that it's never enforced or interpreted that way and all the other rubber chicken factories ignore it, so you're fine.

But it's a weapon, and it exists because nobody notices or cares because it's not enforced. A principle that laws should be enforced most of the time prevents these weapons from sitting around at the enforcer's convenience. We should not live in a world where everybody breaks laws every day without realizing it, but selective enforcement allows this to persist. The failure modes of too much enforcement are temporarily worse than too little, but it brings transparency and forces the lawmakers to fix it, making a better long term scenario.

Do we want to live in a country where the government ferociously enforces all laws unconditionally to the letter? Or should the executive have some discretion over how sharply it enforces them?

The alternative is living in a country where everyone is guilty, so the government can justify targeted persecutions by saying the persecuted were violating the laws.

Staffing a factory with hundreds of foreign workers on visas which don't allow them to work doesn't seem like an appropriate situation to apply executive discretion. This isn't a confused tourist jaywalking, this is industrial (literally) scale immigration fraud.

Some laws that exist clearly go by the unstated rule that says "for display purposes only." At best when it comes to liberality, laws exist to make you think twice before breaking them; not prevent them from ever being broken. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that when it comes to immigration though, that people don't run afoul of American laws with ease. And actual legal immigrants have it harder than anyone in this regard.

This. Even if one thinks that it’s a good or neutral thing to staff this plant with foreigners, that’s not the scenario and it’s not what tax payers subsidized BILLIONS for.

I think this is a misunderstanding. I believe a large majority of those arrested here were construction subcontractors not Koreans running the facility. It was overwhelmingly Hispanic construction workers raided.

If I’m wrong, I’m happy to be corrected. I’ve read various extremely conflicting reporting

Reuters:

The negotiations to release about 300 South Koreans who were detained have concluded and processing for their release from custody is ongoing, South Korea's presidential office said late on Sunday.

U.S. federal agents arrested about 475 workers at Hyundai's car battery plant in Ellabell, Georgia, on Thursday in the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of the Department of Homeland Security's investigative operations.

Associated Press:

More than 300 South Korean workers detained following a massive immigration raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia will be released and brought home, the South Korean government announced Sunday.

U.S. immigration authorities said Friday they detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals, when hundreds of federal agents raided Hyundai’s sprawling manufacturing site in Georgia where the Korean automaker makes electric vehicles.

Well damn. I stand corrected

Kudos! Let us all follow your example. And since I'm exhausted enough to be effectively drunk at the moment, allow me to further, without license or invitation, tell you that I think fondly of you in general and am always happy to see your name show up.

One defense of these kind of raids is that it doesn't do America any good to have foreign companies build factories in the US if they are going to staff those factories with an imported workforce instead of Americans,

It does, of course. The Koreans also participate in the local economy.

Hyundai Raid Rattles a Hot Spot of Growth in Georgia

In the suburb of Pooler, that promise seemed to already be coming true. The population shot up 22% between just 2020 and 2024, according to census estimates, to around 31,000. Demographic data lags behind, but community leaders estimate half of that growth has come from Koreans.

Suddenly, the single Korean restaurant in town had to compete with around half a dozen others. The newly opened Costco, locals said, started carrying Kimchi, dried seaweed and mandu dumplings. New homes sprung up by the dozens, and Korean families moved into planned neighborhoods with streets named Blue Moon Crossing and Harvest Hill.

The raid and its fallout shocked the auto industry, and South Korea. Nowhere is that shock more apparent than in a place like Pooler, where a new Korean community had taken root. Some said they felt betrayed by the raid, especially after Korean companies made such a massive investment in the U.S. Others said they believe that improperly documented workers have brought undue scrutiny upon those who are here legally.

“You can feel the tension,” said 51-year-old Hoseong Kim, an American citizen and local pastor, also known as Robin. Like many Korean immigrants, Kim took on an American name to “fit in better” with American culture.

The result was demographic replacement.

The result was demographic replacement.

Oh no, what was presumably a sleepy town is now much less sleepy but also has a sizable ethnically Korean population. Dried seaweed in the newly constructed supermarkets. The horror.

And they don't even shy away from culturally appropriating honest White American names or religion. Who knows, within a decade, they might speak better English than the people who have been living there for generations. What is happening in Pooler, GA is basically White Genocide.

Seriously. Generally, there are a lot of NIMBY laws in the US, so I will presume that the locals did get some say whether they wanted an Korean-owned battery plant in their backyard or not. Industry always has advantages (e.g. all the perks that come with a higher population, like supermarkets, better selection of schools or healthcare) and disadvantages (new people coming to town, higher rents).

To claim a demographic replacement, you would have to show that the demographic group which was previously living there has been net emigrating from Pooler at significant rates: if I mix cookie dough and add 200g of flour to 100g of sugar, I can not describe the outcome as "the sugar has been replaced by the flour", that is just not what "replacement" means.

It is when you're talking about the sugar bowl.

What am I missing here is let's assume they want to import a lot of Koreans and put them to work in a factory. Maybe Americans are dumb and can't work or something. I'm not saying it's true but let's assume every reason you can think of is actually true. Why couldn't they make all those workers legal? With all the fanfare about the project it's certain they could make all the papers in order if they wanted to. ICE couldn't do a thing if you have legal workers with proper documentation. I can see only one reason: illegals are cheaper and easier to control. They wanted easier exploitable workers. If that's true, they need to be punished for this, very hard. If they are feeling "betrayed" by the fact they can't violate the laws of the country they're doing business in, maybe some hard and painful reality check is due.

Others said they believe that improperly documented workers have brought undue scrutiny upon those who are here legally.

If they are here legally (and working legally), what is the problem with scrutiny? No scrutiny could have done anything to them, if their status is in order, ICE could check it a thousand times and still couldn't do anything.

Why couldn't they make all those workers legal?

Work visas (H-1B and H-2B) are capped. They would be competing with every other company in the country that wants to bring in foreign workers.

They would be competing with every other company in the country that wants to bring in foreign workers.

Good. That's how it should be. And given how much hype was about that project, they probably would have not much trouble carving out some quota for this - it's several hundreds people, compared to Big Tech companies who get thousands and tens of thousands of slots. They could even make a special allocation, it's Biden admin after all, it's not like they'd say no to anyone. They just din't bother to because why bother if the law is dead anyway and anything goes.

Good. That's how it should be.

Why? Let's say the US has X amount of specialized talent and thus they can only do Y amount of productivity with in a year. If companies in (or investing in) our country are so productive and there's enough market demand that they want to do >Y creation, then why is it good to cap them artificially?

Now I know, the general response is "because those jobs should go to the locals!" but the thing is, talented local people already have jobs. If they're hard working and capable, then they're mostly already doing their part in achieving Y (or doing something else in another industry) because companies want them.

As any hiring manager knows nowadays, the job pool is mostly incompetents, liars, lazies, addicts, or otherwise unwanted because of a serious flaw. It's the same way that dating apps like Tinder are mostly used by the unpleasant and unwanted, the good ones are already picked through. Of course just like the apps there's often some amount of pickings but they're limited and get scooped up quick of course and we're still overall limited to Y production.

Now maybe that's what we as a society want, jobs programs for the lazy drug addicted idiots being put in roles above their worth, and we're willing to sacrifice efficiency in key industries for it. And maybe it's worth it if we put hard limits on economic growth and only allow Y production no matter how much market demand exists.

But that's a discussion with some hard tradeoffs is it not?

then why is it good to cap them artificially?

Because importing foreign workers in massive amounts have costs. Assimilation capacity is not infinite. And breaking assimilation processes - and the host culture - has societal costs that everybody is going to pay. Cultures have value, and breaking them has costs. Immigration is not quantity-neutral. One immigrant is not going to cause any significant strain on the system and in general case will contribute to the society and increase general welfare. One million of immigrants, brought synchronously into the country are going to cost non-linearly more, and may cause profound changes in the society, which may not be for the better. That's why you need an "artificial" cap - it's only artificial if you don't consider externalities. The process is not linear and not neutral towards time scales - it's like I asked you to drink 100 gallons of water. If it's over a year, you probably would be healthier for that. If you try to do it all at once, you will die. It's the same water, but not the same rate.

but the thing is, talented local people already have jobs

I am not sure that's actually true. Even for the market I have the most experience with - computer programming - looking for a job, if you aren't ok with shitty job that pays peanuts, it is a very frustrating and nerve-racking experience. Having to answer the question "why should we pay you X if we can hire a cheap foreigner for X/2" does not make it any easier. And in my experience, getting cold-hired by a company that does mass outsourcing, without knowing somebody on the inside, is next to impossible now. In most cases, they won't even bother to talk to you. Even if you know you are much better worker, the people who make hiring decisions just don't care. They tell the public they have massive shortage of talent and need thousands of H1Bs, but try to send them your resume, and they won't even bother to read it, it goes straight to the reject pile. Sorry, I don't believe it anymore, I think it's a con. H1Bs are just cheaper and easier to handle, that's all. I can only imagine how much worse it is in places where prices are the only thing you can compete on.

we're willing to sacrifice efficiency in key industries for it

You're saying it as if any of the key industries have a slightest idea about how to measure efficiency. I know for a fact in my industry, nobody has a faintest clue how to do it. It's either "if we hit the deadline - which has been invented arbitrarily based on what some marketer promised to some analyst bigwig because they had one too many cocktails while golfing - then we are golden" or "we're making money? Cool! Let's make even more money!". There's no some "efficiency" science behind it and nobody has a slightest idea how to make it. It's all done by the seat of one's pants, and people that by either luck or talent can pull stuff out of their asses that is better than other get billions and people that are unlucky don't, and that's how it goes. Let's not pretend we have some science behind it, nobody does.

But that's a discussion with some hard tradeoffs is it not?

Yes, but not in a way you present it. It's not uniform, as I mentioned. Accepting a small amount of immigrants is almost always going to be net positive, especially if selected by any sane criteria (skin color is definitely not one of the best, but even that could work up to a limit). With increased quantity, costs raise non-linearly and the tradeoffs become more and more hard. There is a wide area where the net is still positive, but this area is not infinite. Eventually it comes to a point where a select few players reap all the benefits and the rest pays massive, sometimes society-breaking externalities. It's not uncommon - a lot of modern politics is based on emphasizing benefits for select few and covering up externalities for the rest - this is one of the prominent examples.

If companies in (or investing in) our country are so productive and there's enough market demand that they want to do >Y creation, then why is it good to cap them artificially? Now I know, the general response is "because those jobs should go to the locals!" but the thing is, talented local people already have jobs.

With the labor force constrained to the people currently living here, when we want to do >Y production, we can bid up the wages for it, or we can figure out ways to produce more efficiently, both of which are strong, socially-positive alternatives to simply capping production. Importing more workers achieves neither.

As any hiring manager knows nowadays, the job pool is mostly incompetents, liars, lazies, addicts, or otherwise unwanted because of a serious flaw.

You have gall, I'll give you that.

The other effect keeping to a fixed pool of labor provides, it seems to me, is that there is less incentive to simply write off the sort of people you evidently hold in such contempt. If we cannot simply export jobs or import cheap foreign labor, we have a vested interest in keeping our people from turning into human waste, and a vested interest in salvaging absolutely any of them that we can. It appears to me that you are rating these people as worthless in order to continue the process by which they lost their worth.

I was recently reading an article about drug problems, and it mentioned the communities that have been blighted by drugs "since the economic upheaval of the 90s". the 90s was when we started buying in to the pitch you're making here. I remember that pitch when it was new, how there would be some disruption but the economic prosperity would lift all boats. I remember small towns with their town squares, full of bustling businesses and broad-based prosperity. I drive through some of those old town squares now; they're uniformly ghost towns, boarded up and crumbling. We were foolish to buy the pitch then. Buying it now requires a special sort of derangement.

Adopting your view necessarily means devaluing our countrymen. If I'm going to devalue my countrymen, I'm going to do it for more fitting reasons than pecuniary interest.

Why couldn't they make all those workers legal?

It appears Hyundai was doing what previous practice had established to be "legal-ish" enough for federal enforcement purposes...only then the new administration started enforcing the letter of the law, not the cozy de-facto waiver that had been in place previously.

If they are here legally (and working legally), what is the problem with scrutiny? No scrutiny could have done anything to them, if their status is in order, ICE could check it a thousand times and still couldn't do anything.

If ICE has an error rate of 1%, if they check legal workers a thousand times they'll do something the worker won't like 10 times.

If ICE has an error rate of 1%

And where does this number come from? Given that all records are computerized and South Korea is not some shithole where people are not expected to have documents, 1% error rate would be staggeringly high. I would say one in a million could be, maybe, explained away as a computer glitch or something (though computer glitches don't really work this way, but maybe) but 1% is a horribly high rate of error when all you need to do is to look up a record in the database. Nobody in their sane mind would let a database into production that has lookup error rate of 1%. And these data are duplicated - if you are a legal worker, who signed all necessary forms, and somehow, by some unexplained glitch, your record got erased, you'd still possess your copy of documents, and so would your employer. Who has enough money to hire the best lawyers, it's Hyundai, not some mom-and-pop corner bakery. So even if that error - which can not be as frequent as 1% - happened, it would be easily corrected. And of course, any instance of such error would be immediately published on the frontpage of NYT, WaPo etc. Since I do not observe anything like that on those frontpages - I must conclude it did not happen, and ICE rate of error in this case was effectively zero. I don't claim it is always equal to zero - they are humans and use computers, and those both are always unreliable - but in this particular case, I'd like to see some proof.

Given that all records are computerized

Oh, right, forgot about that. Let me change my estimate to 15%. To err is human, to really foul up requires a computer.

Seriously, I don't think an error rate much below 1% for this type of thing is a reasonable estimate.

And errors HAVE occurred. Abrego Garcia got sent to El Salvador despite a ruling saying he shouldn't be. A citizen spent 3 days in immigration detention after a raid. You really think the government is going to have a negligible error rate and never detain the wrong Kim Sung Park?

A citizen spent 3 days in immigration detention after a raid

I notice both you and the article you referring to use a very peculiar way of describing it. They never say he was accused of being an illegal immigrant or sent to detention center for illegal immigrants. They only say he was arrested "during" or "after" raid. And he was working as a security guard at a company employing a lot of illegals, where a huge clash between ICE agents and pro-open-border rioters happened. Want to hear my guess of what happened? He tried to be a big tough man and mess with law enforcement. He got arrested and spent a weekend in a jail downtown LA. Nobody ever thought he is an illegal immigrant - but guess what, being a citizen does not allow you to mess with law enforcement without consequences. At least not that time.

I can not prove this - because the article you quoted, in full agreement with modern journalistic standards, neglected to ask the other side for a comment. Other sources say he was "arrested on suspicion of assault" - but no charges were brought, likely because proving any of it in court would be tough, given the chaotic nature of the riots. It very well could be that they went overboard with detaining him for 3 days without access to attorney (most likely boring reason being it was a weekend) - if so, he has a valid claim against them, and would likely prevail in extracting some compensation (it's LA after all, pretty much every judge there would be his friend) - but it has absolutely nothing to do with ICE errors misidentifying citizens or legal workers as illegals. ICE never claimed he's an illegal. They detained him at the scene of a riot, and they may have acted ham-fistedly doing that - either because they were pissed by something he did, or because they were pissed in general by the riot - and in both cases they were wrong to deny him access to the attorney. I have heard about a number of cases like that over the years. They are infuriating and completely wrong, but they have nothing to do with immigration errors.

There's not really any information available aside from what Retes provided, since ICE hasn't commented at all on it.

A lot of people, when asked for example of when something happened, do not immediately reach for an example where there's no information available whether something happened or not, and present it as their example of something happening. Because if they do it, other people might conclude they really do not have any better examples.

since ICE hasn't commented at all on it

I guess this report from CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/11/cannabis-farm-worker-in-california-dies-day-after-chaotic-federal-immigration-raid.html saying:

George Retes complied with federal officers when he arrived to check on friends and colleagues who might have been affected by the raids, but instead he was arrested on suspicion of assault, according to immigration officials.

is just my hallucination? Or they lied claiming immigration officials told him that? Why, in your opinion, CNBC would lie about something like that, and what is your source for accusing them of lying in this case? How do you know ICE hasn't actually commented even though CNBC claims they did?

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Abrego Garcia got sent to El Salvador despite a ruling saying he shouldn't be.

You are seriously claimin the case of Garcia is the case of legal immigrant who has been mistakenly deported because of data error? Or you just bringing him around because "ICE man bad"? If I were to defend the cause of less ICE enforcement, Garcia is not a good example for you. He's absolutely, without any doubt, an illegal immigrant and a criminal, and unless your goal is to prove "the open borderers would absolutely make no distinction and would demand not to deport anyone, in any case, for any reason, and all their insistence on due process is just a smoke screen to make law enforcement effectively impossible because they just don't want any immigration law enforced at all" - unless that's what you are about to prove, you should really not mention Garcia. He definitely is not an "error", and the only reason he is in the headlines is because Democrat open-borderers made him a showcase for blocking any deportation attempt, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. Their current claim is it's impossible to deport him because the whole Western hemisphere is itching to imprison and torture him. This is just ridiculous.

You are seriously claimin the case of Garcia is the case of legal immigrant who has been mistakenly deported because of data error?

No, I'm saying he was a case of someone mistakenly deported to El Salvador due to an ICE error. I'm not defending the cause of less ICE enforcement (In an ideal world I'd prefer something less harsh than we have now, but we probably need what we have now as a correction); I'm pointing out that increasing ICE scrutiny on people can cause serious problems for them even if those people are perfectly legal, because the scrutinizers can make errors.

From context, it's pretty clearly a guess. However, it lines up with manual data entry error rates for general tasks, so it's probably around correct.

I don't think you can compare the accuracy of database that had to be manually checked at least by three independent sources (the government, the employer and the employee - each one would alert if the name in the work permit, for example, would not match the passport name) to the raw data entry accuracy. Could the typist make an error? Sure. But the error would be corrected way before the ICE raid. And even if it weren't - the employee could easily show the work permit they were issued!

But even easier - if the error rate would be so high, we'd hear by now about legal Korean workers being deported for nothing. Did we hear about that? If not - why not?

I think what happened is that they brought in workers - maybe on legal visas, but without work permits - without bothering with all necessary documentation, because under the previous administration, even people who just walked across the Mexican border without documents were not deported, who would think about deporting actual Korean workers with documents working in highly advertised project? Open borders, baby! Then the administration changed, but the approach to documentation did not. Now, it's time for consequences.

That's probably about right for the application processes. What is it for spot checks, which would (presumably) happen to immigrants with illegal coworkers? Also, it doesn't have to end with deportation. Just fighting through bureaucracy another time is annoying enough to merit mention.

Given that in this case they just came in and deported 300+ people, it's not a "spot check" where you check the papers from random people. They knew this factory uses illegal workers, and they knew exactly who those were. And the reason they knew likely was exactly because all the docs were there, it's not the situation where people sneak over the border and have to be caught when they climb on the river bank - it was an organized effort that was blatantly ignoring immigration law out in the open, because that's how it had been done for the last 4 years. And this raid was a signal it's not how it's done anymore. As Democrats used to say before Trump, nobody is above the law.

"Legal immigration" is an even more insidious form of demographic replacement. In a couple more generations, the native white population will have virtually no political power.

What "native white population"? USA is formed by people who came from outside the territory, the native population is not "white". Is Trump "native"? Who qualifies as "native"?

You think this is a hard, gotcha question, but it's really very simple.

To ourselves and our posterity covers it plenty well enough.

There was an ethnogenesis in the 18th century, and we descendants are native to this continent. For your questions, the answer is, "do they have ancestors who were included in the preamble of the constitution?" The answer to the two questions are the same.

Indians or other tribes can be native to their own tribe, but they are not native American, because they are not American.

we descendants are native to this continent

You aren't, that's not what the word "native" means (and awfully bold of you to claim the whole continent, I think Mexicans and Canadians would disagree but screw them, right?). But at least I can see what you mean now. OK, so Trump is not a "white native". Too bad for him I guess, but that's at least some solid foundation to start with. A bit of a problem you'd have is not only Trump ends up out of the game - you'd end up with about 10% of population of purebloods, and the rest of the populations would be mudbloods - descendants of people who immigrated after 1776. Since you are further qualifying it as "white" the percentage is probably even less - you will need to eliminate anyone who had non-white blood - and mixed marriages, while not common, weren't exactly out of the question. Since anybody who came in after 1776 must be deemed irreversibly insidious and affected with inborn desire to plot to overthrow the "white natives", which can not be overcome - I don't think your case is looking good. The "demographic replacement" that you are so afraid of happened long, long ago, and you are not the American people anymore. I don't know how to call this group other than "purebloods" but being such a tiny minority it certainly can not pretend to represent "we the people" as a whole. The best you could hope for is a protected minority status.

And, of course, I am not aware of any intent for the Founders to adopt this stance - that only purebloods are considered true Americans (or "natives"). Otherwise there wouldn't be such thing as "naturalization" which confers the same legal status on an insidious mudblood as previously was available only for purebloods. Why put such things in the Constitution if they thought like you are? There's no reason. Because they did not. They saw it as a political and social project, which anybody who identifies with the goals of the new nation, its laws and its customs, is welcome to join, not some breeding exercise. And they certainly did not think anybody who didn't jump in by the time the United States was formed is forever an insidious enemy of every American.

I didn't claim the whole continent, my forefathers did, and then asserted that claim.

They, and I, are native sons of this land.

I think Mexicans and Canadians would disagree but screw them, right?

You forgot to attach the yes_chad.jpg. Or maybe it's yes_james.jpg.

I don't particularly feel the need to respond to the rest of the flanderization of my post. I'll simply say that progeny doesn't mean pure blood progeny, but if you have 0 ancestors in the british colonies in 1776, or no ancestors in the United States in 1789, when that document was written, then I don't consider you American in any way.

ADOS and the Indian tribes are also native, but they are not American.

I didn't claim the whole continent, my forefathers did, and then asserted that claim. They, and I, are native sons of this land.

You, of course, realize that these two sentences are contradictory. You can not "claim" territory that you are the native of. "Claiming" only applies to territories you previously did not inhabit. Irish never "claimed" Ireland - they just lived there. Chinese never "claimed" China - they are Chinese because they are in China, and had been there since forever. There's no need for "claiming".

And, you seem to have a mighty broad ancestry if your ancestors claimed all the territories of the continent, including Mexico and Canada. The only problem that "claiming" them does not do anything - Mexico and Canada are still there. Are you going to war with them to liberate your ancestral territories anytime soon?

but if you have 0 ancestors in the british colonies in 1776, or no ancestors in the United States in 1789, when that document was written, then I don't consider you American in any way.

Too bad for you almost every American - or at least vast majority of them, by now - is not American for you. Good thing is nobody cares. America just had elected a non-American president and he's doing a decent job so far, and it will continue going in the same vein, without regard to weird pureblood claims. As I said, your worst case scenario had long past happened, so you need a new one now.

ADOS and the Indian tribes are also native, but they are not American.

ADOS are definitely not native - they were brought in against their will and this process is well documented. People that were by hilarious mistake named Indians are natives, and if they are not American natives, then what they are natives of I wonder? Narnia?

Oh cool, you're taking on BurdensomeCount's mantle. I'm not in a place to argue with you right now (and wouldn't if I were) but gosh that's kinda neat.

It's not BC's mantle. Practically no one outside the US makes the distinction between the Pilgrims, the Ellis Islanders and the post-Hart-Cellers. The line is drawn between the Indians (feather), the ADoS and everyone else, aka people chasing the American Dream.

I suppose it would be gracelessly American of me to react in shock at foreigners not recognizing that we have a culture.

I draw the line between the pre-Clovis people and the feather Indians. Just because they successfully physically removed the indigenous population doesn't mean they get a pass.

None of today’s immigrants even attempt the naturalization test of hunting a mammoth.

You're going to have to spell that out for me.

Koreans, really? It's demographic replacement by the least fertile demographic in the world?

At any rate, it's not clear to me that addition constitutes replacement.

Weeds in my lawn replace the grass. Weeds in my garden beds replace the flowers and herbs I want to grow.

Wherever there is competition for scarce resources, like living space or sunlight, addition is replacement. You're just playing word games to deny your opponents their highly effective rhetoric (replacement).

I'd argue that you're indulging in word games more than I am - in this case, comparing Koreans to weeds while implying that resources in Georgia are scarce, or that the presence of Koreans reduces prosperity for others. I think this is a misrepresentation of the scenario. Is the state of Georgia like your garden bed? Are the Koreans choking out native Georgians? That's not clear at all.

It's not even clear how race or ethnicity is relevant - if the issue is that Koreans consume more resources, wouldn't it also be a problem if native white or black populations increase? All people consume resources. We just generally don't view this as prohibitive because Georgia possesses ample natural resources (nobody is starving!) and because people produce resources as well.

The metaphor you're making just doesn't make any sense.

I'm comparing people to plants and just like a plant where it's not wanted is a weed, a person where they're not wanted is a foreigner.

They can go back to their garden, where my kind of plant isn't allowed to grow.

I think this is a misrepresentation of the scenario. Is the state of Georgia like your garden bed? Are the Koreans choking out native Georgians? That's not clear at all.

The garden is the country or state. Citizens are both the plants and the gardener, just as man is both sculptor and marble.

Foreigners do suppress native birth rates, even more so when they are of another race. They compete for housing and employment, driving the cost of the former up and the wages of the latter down.

It's not even clear how race or ethnicity is relevant

I can't force you to see something you're choosing to ignore. It's clear as day to me, as obvious as the nose on your face.

People like their own kind (kind as in kin).

the issue is that Koreans consume more resources

If you want to grow a dandelion bed, then grass is a weed. If you want a lawn, dandelions are weeds. If you want a rose garden, both grass and dandelions are weeds. The problem isn't Koreans, it's grass in my rose garden, or dandelions in my lawn.

Are you a Georgian? I still haven't seen any evidence that Georgians hate Koreans or are opposed to their presence in the state. Why should it be the null hypothesis that Georgians want these people out? Nothing in the top level post quoting the WSJ indicated that natives have any problems with the Koreans, and the Koreans seem to contributing well to the local economy and cultural acclimatising to American ways, including by taking English names. I can find the full article by archiving it and there seems to be positivity there, including by Georgian government officials. Some local union workers have complained, but it also seems like most of these Koreans have come legally, consistent with Georgia's laws.

I mean, this mostly seems like a model minority situation to me. Koreans have mostly come to Georgia via the legal process, which Georgians themselves established via their state government, and those that have come have respected the local culture, worked hard, and tried to fit in.

Now, sure, maybe native Georgians hate them for some reason and want them to go, but you can't just assume that as your starting point. Be careful not to typical-mind here - maybe you don't think Koreans should live alongside Americans, but it is hardly clear that that is a majority opinion in Georgia.

At any rate, some Koreans coming to Georgia to live and work there, if consistent with Georgia's existing laws, cannot be said to constitute 'replacement' in any reasonable sense of the word.

You can't help but put words in my mouth.

The null hypothesis is the preamble of the constitution: we do this for ourselves and our children. Not for Koreans. No hate required.

And the Georgians agreed to these terms, at least until their partners failed to honor the agreement and then conquered Georgia. I don't think what they wanted for themselves has mattered since 1865, and certainly not since 1964.

Regardless, since 1789 states have not been allowed to set their own immigration policies, and so I need not be a Georgian, merely an American.

I can see nothing in the constitution that says that states or communities are not allowed to welcome migrants. I think you're reading a kind of racial bias into it? I know you didn't mention specifically, but I think it is significant that this conversation is about Korean migrants, and not white or black migrants from elsewhere in the US.

It seems to me that you are assuming, on a highly speculative basis, that Georgians are strongly opposed to living alongside Koreans. I see no evidence of that, nor that the democratic will of Georgians is to get rid of this Korean community, Koreans in general, or Asians in even more general.

The least fertile demographic in the world is parsis, I believe. Koreans are like, fourth or fifth- behind some not-technically-a-country groups like manchurians.

It's spelled out in the article. Foreign food, foreign languages, and foreign customs are becoming dominant in place of the native white population.

Are they really?

In the 2020 census data, Pooler had a population of 25,711, of which Asians made up 6%. Going off the numbers in your excerpt, the Asian population is now up to about 14%; a large increase for sure, but still a minority. Assuming none of the recent arrivals are white, the white population has declined from 54% in 2020 to 45% in 2025, hardly what I'd consider replacement-level demographic change even in the worst-case scenario. This isn't to say that the locals aren't entitled to have their own opinions on their community demographics, or that it could become true demographic replacement in the future, but your assertion here seems mostly baseless.

Also come on, changing one's name is absolutely evidence of assimilation, not perfect evidence nor sufficient evidence, but evidence nonetheless. It sounds like you've taken the Arctotherium-pill writ Asian migration, and while I can't contest the raw stats he highlights I'm still skeptical of the strength of his claims. (Honestly, I don't trust him in general, he comes off as much more cunning and calculated in his rhetoric than other HBDers, who mostly seem quite genuine.)

Yes, they are really.

More than doubling of a population share in five years is absolutely ground-shaking.

Assuming none of the recent arrivals are white, the white population has declined from 54% in 2020 to 45% in 2025, hardly what I'd consider replacement-level demographic change even in the worst-case scenario.

In 2000 the area was 87% white. If going from 85% to 45% in twenty five years isn't replacement to you, then you're being dishonest. The demograpgic replacement isn't in the future, it's in the past, and you're pretending it never happened.

I trust Arcto more than you, as I don't think you're being genuine, either. Admit what's obvious, first, and maybe we can go from there.

I didn't bother to check the numbers before 2020, mea culpa. I'll grant you the broader narrative of massive demographic change, though I'll note that until recently the increase in the non-white population seems to have come mostly from homegrown minorities and not imported migrants (so not "foreigners" per se); I suppose that to you the difference is moot. I still don't think that the recent Korean influx specifically was that big a deal, since there's a proximal reason for them to be here and East Asians aren't particularly known for chain-migration.

No excuses or exemptions from me, not anymore. All foreigners, every single one, the women and children and paper citizens included, are unwelcome. No leniency or accommodation for at least twenty years, if not 60 to match the duration of replacement.

homegrown minorities

There is only two homegrown minorities: africans and indians. If you're talking about Hispanics then they're just as foreign as the Asians.

East Asians aren't particularly known for chain-migration.

You and I seem to know different things.

At least you half admitted that the Americans have already been replaced, but it didnt make one whit of difference to you.

Yes, I was talking about blacks re. "homegrown minorities", but some fraction of mestizos are definitely "homegrown" in the same way, at least in Texas and California.

No leniency or accommodation for at least twenty years, if not 60 to match the duration of replacement.

Why not forever? What will have changed by then to merit any tolerance of foreigners, if their presence is so noxious now?

it didnt make one whit of difference to you

You clearly care about this matter on a visceral level. I don't. So it is.

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The quoted article points out that many of them are adopting American names "to fit in better", like the pastor. Doesn't sound like people who don't want to assimilate.

That's typical of Koreans who aren't intending to assimilate (or stay), so it doesn't really mean anything.

Assimilation is largely a myth but even if it weren't, changing a name is hardly evidence of it. Do they speak foreign languages, eat foreign food, practice foreign customs?

Most importantly, do they politically agitate in favor of their racial group and dilute the political power of the native white population? Even if there economic benefits to the native population, and that's hardly a given, that doesn't excuse transforming the local community into a non-white area in a generation. The white Americans in this community did not ask to be abused and erased.

The white Americans in this community did not ask to be abused and erased

Realistically, if you’re hiring for factory hands among the population of south GA, they’re going to be black.

Assimilation is largely a myth

Doesn't match my experience. I've seen a ton of assimilated second-generation Asians, for example - most of them don't even speak the language of their parents (somewhat inconvenient when you need to translate something in Chinese and you know this guy whose parents are definitely from China but turns out he at best knows Chinese at kindergarten level, or less), don't associate exclusively with their ethnic community, don't keep any old customs (maybe except occasional family holidays or such). And of course I know many, many assimilated Jews. And, Trump himself is an assimilated second-generation German - we don't see him speaking German or donning lederhosen on Oktoberfest, do we? (I'm not sure that's what real un-assimilated Germans actually do, but whatever they do, Trump doesn't do that).

It does match my experience. Even when mostly assimilated, foreigners remain very, very foreign in ways you can't always see.

The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk--
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control--
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land Shall repossess his blood.

They think and vote and act on juries as if they're foreigners, and once you notice that, a name change becomes meaningless.

Even when mostly assimilated, foreigners remain very, very foreign in ways you can't always see.

Yes, I must admit, I never understood Trump's love for greasy fast food. Those Germans and their Teutonic ways...

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Asians form their own ethnic interests groups and overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. These ethnic interest groups agitate to the disadvantage of the native population. When the native population protests they are called racist.

Asians form their own ethnic interests groups and overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

This is how assimilation into Blue America looks like. No such thing as current Democratic party platform is conceivable in Asian countries, it is purely American creation.

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Asians form their own ethnic interests groups

Some do, sure. But there's no such thing as "Asian ethnic interests" - why Vietnamese, Indians, Koreans, Chinese, Sikh and Indonesians would have the same interests? I've met many people of different Asian descent, and they had very varied interests - I can't imagine how a single group would be able to represent them.

These ethnic interest groups agitate to the disadvantage of the native population

Do they? Any substantiation of that? I am sure some particular group of, say, Indians may agitate to the disadvantage some particular group of, say, Norwegians (of course, when I say Indian, I mean American person of Indian descent, and so on). But (leaving aside the definition of "native population", which I am sure you will provide me with in the other branch) claiming every Asian group always would advocate a policy that is contrary to the interest of every single "native" group seems to need a very extraordinary proof. At least it is not at all obvious why it would happen, so if you want somebody to believe it it makes sense to try and prove it.

When the native population protests they are called racist.

I am pretty sure if you think that every Asian by their mere genetic buildup has interests that are all the same and are always opposed to the interests of all people who are not Asian, that is the textbook definition of racism. In fact, if I needed to define the set of ideas that are based on this assumption, I would think "racism" is the best term that would describe it. I mean, if the race is the sole criteria you are looking at, how else would one call it?

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You said in place of. What's your evidence for that? I just distinguished between addition and replacement.

I don't have a Wall Street Journal subscription, so I can't read the article itself, but I would be very shocked if the WSJ was pushing a line about demographic replacement - especially since the portions you've quoted sound sympathetic to the Koreans.

Of course the WSJ is sympathetic to the Koreans; it's a liberal and immigration friendly paper. What does that matter? The article states that foreigners are moving in and the population of the natives is going down. I would characterize this as demographic replacement through immigration.

Is the native population declining? Your quotes didn't say that, and as noted I can't read the article.

I think degree matters as well. If a native population goes down by 1% while at the same time some migrants move in, I wouldn't consider that replacement. I think the word 'replacement' suggests a wholesale removal. Is anything like that going on?

If a majority of the population growth is non-native then the native population is proportionally declining. That's what the quote I provided says. It's not 1%, it's much higher.

The naive white population of Georgia didn't ask to be replaced by foreigners. I have found @Dean is quite articulate in explaining the insidiousness of demographic replacement. Maybe he can answer your questions better than I can.

The naive white population of Georgia didn't ask to be replaced by foreigners.

The did ask to replace the native red population of Georgia, though.

Sure, that's why I was probing you a bit about what the lines are, in order to precisify what your concerns actually are. I didn't want to leap to conclusions and assume the worst.

That said, I'm not particularly keen on you outsourcing your opinions to someone else. Dean is a very articulate poster here, but one thing Dean cannot do is tell me what NYTReader thinks.

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Many people care about their local community and don't want it to change. Whatever the details are regarding the fertility rate of the established white population in the area versus the fertility of the new group is really secondary. The large infusion of new people from a different culture will change things. That is something that many people don't want, and understandably so. They are invested in the way things are, maybe for many generations.

Is the native population declining?

even if they aren't things will change. But white americans don't have very high fertility rates so we can assume that the established white community probably doesn't have such overwhelming fertility rates such that they make the influx of new people irrelevant.

I wouldn't consider that replacement. I think the word 'replacement' suggests a wholesale removal.

Fine. How about dilution? The existing population, and their community, and their culture will be diluted, which is bad enough. Concentration is just as important a variable in community strength as raw numbers are. At the very least, as the original local population is diluted their collective political power is equivalently diluted. So there is an objective reduction in the power they have over their home.

And dilution becomes more threatening due to the fact that white communities in America are generally pretty weak in terms of cultural vitality. Having a large influx of foreigners who might have more vitality and a stronger sense of community means that the new comers can punch above their weight comparatively. As dilution occurs the threat of actual replacement becomes greater, and the ability to resist it is diminished.

You can prefer dilution and cultural change in exchange for increased economic investment, but many don't. It seems like you're being intentionally avoidant about the concern.

If the concern is cultural change, I think that's valid, and I'm open to a discussion about that.

That is, though, I think a different concern to 'demographic replacement'? I take demographic replacement to suggest an agenda of, well, replacement - that is, not just a community changing through migration and integration of people of new cultural backgrounds, but rather the elimination of the existing population, and new people taking its place.

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Seems to be going on in London, and many small towns in the US with which I am personally familiar.

No idea if it's going on in this specific case, but NYTReader is pointing to the problem in a broader context and suggesting that 'bringing back' business to America is actually a bad thing if it means staffing that business with foreign labor.

Given this, your insistence on picking at micro-scale technicalities occurs to me as pedantic and obnoxious.

OliveTapenade is correct to question the validity of "demographic replacement" of white Americans by Koreans. I mean: trying to catastrophize Costco selling kimchi or a few Korean restraunts opening.

I'm sure the Hyundai plant has Koreans in it. Those (hundreds?) of immigrants aren't "replacing" us.

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Ezra Klein in the pages of the NYT on why the Democrats need to Shutdown the government.

TLDR: Trump is an authoritarian.

Back in March, Democrats justified keeping the government open by saying that the courts were restraining Trump, that a shutdown would only accelerate his executive power, and that markets were already punishing his recklessness re tarrifs. But now with Trump firing dissenters, using federal agencies against political enemies, and enriching himself and his allies through foreign investments and unchecked power, Klein says that none of those arguments hold anymore. The Supreme Court is now backing Trump on key issues, DOGE’s chaotic dismantling of the bureaucracy has slowed because Trump loyalists are running it, and the markets have largely adapted to the new normal.

Maybe the markets have normalized, but we shouldn't according to Klein. Democrats are politically and morally failing by continuing to fund a government that has become an instrument of authoritarianism. He outlines how Democrats could frame a compelling message around corruption and abuse of power, citing Senator Jon Ossoff’s July speech as an example of effective messaging that ties everyday struggles (like high medical costs and housing insecurity) to elite corruption. Specific examples the firing of agency heads like those at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Defense Intelligence Agency for political reasons, targeted investigations into critics such as Senator Adam Schiff and Attorney General Tish James, the FBI’s raid on Bolton’s home, masked ICE agents now conducting raids without identification or warrants, and National Guard troops being deployed to cities LA and DC.

Nothing good ever follows when Ezra Klein starts the sentence. The dems lost fair and square, they brought their current predicament on their own. They are so unpopular at this point a good chunk of the population would actually be down for God Emperor Trump and his bloodline lineage.

Who wouldn't want crown prince Baron?

Anyone who is familiar with the Five Good Emperors and why it wasn't six.

Because Marcus Aurelius - the coward that he was - lacked the strenght to at least disinherit his useless son Commodus, or even better to strangle him in his crib? Baron is no Commodus.

The unpopularity of the Democrats is part of Klein's point, though. Their own base is unhappy with them, it seems partly because they are not perceived as doing enough to fight or to interfere with Trump's agenda.

And... they would seem to have a reasonable mandate to do that. Opposition parties are, in fact, supposed to oppose the government party and hold it responsible. The Democratic members of congress have obligations to represent the people who elected them and to make decisions that they perceive as in the interests of the country as a whole. The American constitutional system does not ask representatives to shut up and roll over just because the president is from a different party.

I don't think a government shutdown is a good idea myself, or a good move for Democrats, but Democrats absolutely should use the positions they have to do things that their voters want, or that they think is good for the country, and both those principles mean opposing some of what the government is doing.

I realize hypocrisy is a built-in part of being human, and of politicians in particular, but if the dems do this then all of the crap they said about Republicans being obstructionist, unwilling to compromise, etc. back in the Obama era when they tried similar strategies will make for some very easy (and easy to go viral) soundbites.

Oh, sure. I expect both Democrats and Republicans to make up rules on the spot to justify whatever it is that's in their advantage to do. Neither side is particularly scrupulous or principled.

What I mean is just that, in this context, I don't see any reason why the Democrats shouldn't try to do things that they think their voters might want, or which will obstruct their political opponents. Trump winning the presidency in 2024 does not imply that the other side ought to sit down, shut up, and let him do whatever he wants.

Jonah Goldberg often criticises the concept of a 'mandate', and I think he's broadly correct. If we're going to invest a lot in mandates, every individual member of a congress has a mandate, and in the case of Democrats, that seems a lot like a mandate to oppose the Republicans, or oppose Trump. "You lost fair and square" is a bad objection to Democratic congressmen pursuing their own mandates. Politics is always going on all the time, power is always being renegotiated, and no side is entitled to their enemies laying down arms.

Just reversing partisanship isn't always a good tool, but it is helpful sometimes. If it were a Democratic president and obstructive Republicans in congress, would the same people agree that Republicans lost fair and square and ought to just let the president do what he wants? I don't think so. I think they'd want congressional Republicans to use all the leverage they have to extract concessions or limit what the president can do.

"You lost fair and square" is a bad objection to Democratic congressmen pursuing their own mandates. Politics is always going on all the time, power is always being renegotiated, and no side is entitled to their enemies laying down arms.

In the words of Nancy Pelosi, "elections have consequences."

What does that have to do with the point under discussion?

Jonah Goldberg often criticises the concept of a 'mandate', and I think he's broadly correct.

It has to do with this part.

In what way does Pelosi's comment have any bearing on that?

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Klein is making a cope argument. It may be cope because the Democratic decision is driven by internal politics and he's trying to justify it, but the conclusion does not follow from the premise.

If Trump is an authoritarian because he is using largely established executive powers to reshape (and reduce) the executive branch and remove Democratic-favored official from the executive branch, it becomes more, not less, important to pass a budget. This is because the spending laws are where Congress gives the legal stipulations for what Trump can, and cannot, do with money from Congress, and can/cannot do to the agencies receiving money from Congress. Most of what DOGE was able to do with regards to agencies like, say, USAID, was precisely because Congress had never passed a bill inserting language stipulating a size / appointment process / etc. Because there was no Congressionally-dictated form of the created-by-the-executive-not-by-law agencies, what was made by the executive could be unmade by the executive. In turn, when Congress has given stricter stipulations for things in its power to, this has been the legal basis by which the more enduring court orders have managed to be upheld by.

If / when Klein's shutdown argument comes to pass, Trump gains, more power over removing select officials and ending disfavored programs, not less, because the government shutdown is- by definition- a result of Congress not authorizing the government to spend as much money on people, places, and things not already covered in other legislation. Moreover, Congress has already legislated who has the legal authority to prioritize closures, dismissals, cancellations, and so on in case of a shutdown... and that person is the executive. DOGE showed its limits relatively early in how much authority it had over direct employee terminations (which is to say- basically none in legally-structured agencies), but the Executive has a lot more freedom in choosing which parts of the government to turn off first, and longest, during a shutdown.

Where this time is different- and where the Democrats are setting up for an own-goal as far as preserving the institutions they want preserved goes- is that Trump can basically use a government shutdown as a legal basis for broader scale agency suspensions of contracts / efforts / etc. in ways he couldn't/didn't during the supplementary period. DOGE showed its limits on direct manning by having basically no actual authority over other departments or legally-obligated programs. In a shutdown, the executive gets to formally categorize members of departments by their judged level of essentialness. Non-essential people go home, and don't get paychecks, and keep not getting paychecks until either the shutdown is over, or they quit and get another job.

The parts of the US government most resilient to the effects of a shutdown due to how the legislations are structured are also the parts the Republicans are most comfortable with. The parts of the US government most affected by a shutdown are the parts the Democrat party cares most about.

The main way the Democrats have to keep those programs around is to make their continuation a matter of law. Legally obligating the government to shut it down is the same vibes-based thinking that droves most of the list of the last paragraph of alleged abuses that are largely not.

Yeah I dunno. I held my nose and voted for Harris. That said, If Trump has any disciplining force against him, it's the judgement of equities markets. We continually rack up all time highs during his terms and he shamelessly chickens out if the markets are spooked even slightly. That's actually incredibly reassuring?

This isn't just a rich people concern. Most Americans are unwitting capitalists, their retirement funds hold public companies and public companies are majority owned by retirement funds. The health of equities markets are the wealth of Americans.

I know markets aren't a complete moral compass but they're also not best friends with tyrants either. The authoritarian framing just doesn't hold up.

Ideally Trump would also be guided by, like, a moral framework but in the grand scheme of things this is still pretty good. It'd be pretty miserable to have a morally upright social justice hero that was completely indifferent to declining markets, for example.

Would shutting the government actually get the democrats what they want? Or would Trump just continue to govern by executive order and campaign on democrats shutting the government down?

Yes, but really no.

The democrats want to fight, and if shutting down the government counts then it's getting what they want by definition. However, a lot of the democratic party has reversed the causality on the nature of the government programs they want to keep open. Those programs are not preserved if the government shuts down; rather, a government shut down obligates those programs being closed. Moreover, existing law gives the executive significant leeway in determing who is deemed an essential person and who is not, with non-essential persons basically being sent home and thus unabled to execute any desired programs. These may be what you'll think of as executive orders, but Congress is the root of those authorities.

At best, the democrats can try to take enough other programs that the Republicans care about hostage to coerce the Republicans to protecting / restoring the programs the democrats care about. However, this is a relative pain tolerance issue, and, well...

Well, at least the Democrats can claim to be fighting if the Republican trifecta passes stopgap bills.

History has shown the executive has some flexibility on what stays open and closes in government shutdowns --- see Obama fencing off normally-unstaffed NPS facilities like the National Mall or Mt. Rushmore.

I would at least be slightly concerned about Trump running with it as a massive expansion of the DOGE cuts without accountability for the failures. Something like "Oops, this means we have to cut all [nonessential] grants to universities. Guess who gets to decide what is essential? Would be a shame if we couldn't catch up on budgeted spending within the fiscal year."

However, a lot of the democratic party has reversed the causality on the nature of the government programs they want to keep open. Those programs are not preserved if the government shuts down; rather, a government shut down obligates those programs being closed

I think the other way to read this that isn't confused is that Democrats think Trump being visibly responsible for closing down those programs will generate sufficient public backlash to preserve them or at least force Trump into paying a larger price than letting him walk to his goals slowly would extract.

Trump is not really super ideologically driven on most things and has shown himself willing to bend on things that are unpopular.

I wanna see the shitstorm that will unfold if the dems actually do try to shut down the government but trump aligned sectors within it just continue operations as normal.

Remember when Joe Biden deliberately let in and imported 10 million people for no other reason than he wanted to? Yeah and the republican house just sat there and funded it all over and over.

The house did try to negotiate a "deal" and got somewhere but unfortunately Biden wouldn't budge on the "inport millions of people" part so the deal dieded.

If the democrats shut down the government without even a list of concrete demands that they want, they're going to look like absolute clowns and take all the blame. The only way to win a shutdown or win threatening a shutdown is to makde demands so reasonable and commonsense that the other party will look bad not giving in.

imported 10 million people for no other reason than he wanted to

I'm annoyed by the "imported" framing. Biden didn't wake up one day and go out of his way to coax ten million people into coming to the US. These ten million people wanted to come, and Biden's government elected to not use violence to stop them. This is how any pro-immigration Left-winger thinks of the issue, and you are asking the wrong question at a very deep level if you wonder why they "want" to bring in millions of people. It's simply liberalism taken to its furthest extreme. These people want to come, therefore what right have we to infringe on their freedom by stopping them? How could any amount of missing paperwork justify bringing lethal force to bear against a human being? That's the impulse, and it is a fundamentally moral, compassionate one.

Let this not be mistaken for a pro-open-borders argument on my part. I obviously think America can't afford to let in literally everyone who wants in, for the same reason a private person can't afford to let all the homeless people in town crash on their couch. It's just not reasonable. But it is obvious why someone would "want" to do it - would feel a moral impetus to do it - and the "imported for no clear reason" framing obscures this, which is at once uncharitable to the decision-makers, and obscures the underlying issue of naivete which needs to be confronted head-on if anyone's minds are going to be changed.

Maybe this is a nitpick, but isn't this exactly what people generally mean by "imported?" In 2021, the US imported an average of around 2.39 million metric tons of steel a month. All of that steel had international sellers that wanted it sold and all of it had US buyers that wanted to buy it. I wouldn't say that Biden imported it (if your annoyance with the framing is merely the centering of Biden's role in the process, I don't have a firm position on that subject) but he certainly 'elected to not use violence to stop them.' Conversely, he did forbid the importation of Chinese cars, knowing that order would be enforced through violence if necessary. Those manufacturers want to sell us their cars, what right had he to infringe on their freedom by stopping them?

Illegal immigrants, with few exceptions, wish to come to America to sell their labor; sell fractions of their own lives. It seems entirely appropriate to describe that as 'importation.'

How could any amount of missing paperwork justify bringing lethal force to bear against a human being?

In many instances this is uncontroversial. A pardon is paperwork, after all, so everyone executed by the state or killed in an altercation with the police dies for lack of (certain) paperwork. I don't think this is an especially tortured analogy; pardons and visas are both official endorsements granted to specific individuals the authorities deem worthy that stay punishment for otherwise illegal behavior.

As a matter of fact, I suspect that the vast majority of otherwise justified lethal force could be prevented (or at least rendered unjustified) via appropriate paperwork, given that by the numbers almost all of it is military in nature. (Crime, obviously, is not otherwise justified. Self defense is, but self defense kills a negligible number of people per year compared to war. Police actions are a bigger slice of the pie, but still far, far less. And while some force exercised in war is not justified, surely defense against an unjustified war is.) And any military action could have been countermanded and it is for the lack of that paperwork that the lethal force is brought to bear.

People accept this because paperwork actually means something. The paper doesn't matter at all -- doesn't even exist in a lot of cases in the digital age, I'd imagine -- and trying to reduce official judgments to paper is just ignoring their actual significance; the oft-repeated observation that 'money is just paper, man' comes to mind. Somehow this realization never actually leads to us throwing off the chains of capitalist oppression.

I'm annoyed by the "imported" framing. Biden didn't wake up one day and go out of his way to coax ten million people into coming to the US.

My understanding is that Biden's administration expended significant effort, resources and taxpayer dollars to directly facilitate the entry of foreigners into America in very large quantities. This included far more than passively declining to enforce our numerous laws against illegal entry, and included flying planeloads of such people into the American interior on the Government's dime, and then releasing them into our communities, possibly while directly subsidizing their material needs. It also involved things like expending government resources to remove and to attempt to remove border obstacles, with the goal of directly facilitating illegal border crossings by foreigners.

My understanding is that positive actions like this resulted in millions of foreigners settling in America, in addition to millions more who were able to cross because of Biden's additional, "passive" refusal to enforce immigration laws and the border generally. Am I mistaken?

Let this not be mistaken for a pro-open-borders argument on my part.

Okay. What's your view on the proper way to enforce immigration and the border? If we are not letting literally anyone who comes in, who should we let in? What's your understanding of how many people have come in during Biden's administration? Was that number about right, too high, or too low? What should it have been, and what should have changed to prevent immigration past that amount?

I'm annoyed by the "imported" framing. Biden didn't wake up one day and go out of his way to coax ten million people into coming to the US.

He rather did, and then continued doing it for years.

The Biden administration conducted a number of policy changes upon taking over from the trump administration, changes intended to increase the retention rate of migrants and well communicated to migration-related interolutors. These were changes to a status quo, done deliberately and systemically, with predictable and openly desired results by involved elements of the Biden administration. Biden made multiple domestic legal efforts to broaden the inflow potential, spending non-trivial political capital, to shift the status quo into a more publicly receptive position.

These ten million people wanted to come, and Biden's government elected to not use violence to stop them.

Unless one wants to redefine the term violence, enforcement of migration laws is not violence.

These people want to come, therefore what right have we to infringe on their freedom by stopping them? How could any amount of missing paperwork justify bringing lethal force to bear against a human being? That's the impulse, and it is a fundamentally moral, compassionate one.

Compassion without consideration of the consequence and harms imposed onto others is not compassion.

Rather than compassion, the Democratic stance on migration is much more accurately characterized as a luxury belief, a performative display undertaken only so long as it does not become onus. This was most notably when the Texas migrant bussing began, and then Democrats began panicking at the fiscal burdens of accepting and housing a fraction of the migrants that they'd been in Texas and elsewhere for years.

Self-righteousness and punting the costs onto the outgroup may be a fundamental impulse, but it is not particularly moral.

enforcement of migration laws is not violence

Yes, it definitely is. Legitimate violence is still violence. I don’t mean that as an aspersion, and I’m not convinced @WandererintheWilderness did either. I was surprised to see you take it as such. Would you have objected if he said “elected not to use force” instead?

compassion without consideration…is not compassion.

Yes, it is…sometimes. The obvious example would be charitable giving, or other acts where the cost is presumed to fall mostly on the giver. I would extend this to a number of general social courtesies. If I forgive someone for a mistake, it’s not because I amortized the social cost of not deterring another offense.

More to the point, I think pro-immigration advocates have considered the costs to others, and insist they’re small. Since the migrant busses were subsidized by Texas and Florida Republicans, the recipients could assign blame without reconsidering that belief.

Compassion without consideration of the consequence and harms imposed onto others is not compassion.

Isn't it still compassion, by definition, even if it is harmful? Not sure if the comparison is altogether valid, but violence used to prevent greater violence is still violence.

Unless one wants to redefine the term violence, enforcement of migration laws is not violence.

Sure it is. I mean the term purely descriptively; it's how the business of government happens. The authorities acquire a monopoly on legitimate violence, and use that terrible but awe-some power to enforce laws and regulations for the public good. Enforcing migration laws entails preventing people from crossing the border if they're not allowed to do so, and expelling them if you catch them post hoc. This involves a threat, either explicit or implicit, of physical violence if they don't comply. That's just how it works.

I regard runaway pro-immigration sentiment as a case of people getting irrationally squeamish about one particular area of enforcement, even though they are not consistent anarchists.

I mean the term purely descriptively; it's how the business of government happens.

You used the word pejoratively; it would not make sense as a moral argument justification if it were used in the purely descriptive sense that you now claim.

This involves a threat, either explicit or implicit, of physical violence if they don't comply. That's just how it works.

This line of argument has no limiting factor, and can apply as much to any interaction.

This internet interaction has an implicit possiblity of violence if certain boundaries are not obliged, since you could always turn to internet sleuths or hackers and seek to harm me if I annoyed you enough, or vice versa. Anyone weaker than you could infer an implicit threat of physical violence if they disagreed with you. Even people not weaker than you, but less interested in a topic, could take the firmness of your position as an implicit threat.

Fortunately, actual violence does not work that way, and neither do sound moral arguments resort to categorical pejorative redefinitions.

You used the word pejoratively; it would not make sense as a moral argument justification if it were used in the purely descriptive sense that you now claim.

Yes it would. Or, to put it another way, I meant it in the objective sense of "if you don't comply, the government will send men with guns after you". I don't know what to tell you. There is of course a kind of implicit pejorative there, in that hurting people is wrong in a vacuum. But like anyone sensible, I recognize that violence can be justified in many cases, to prevent a greater evil. The state having the theoretical authority to use violence, and wielding it as a threat to prevent more chaos and suffering, is one such case. This is all pretty basic stuff.

The moral argument brought forward by pro-immigration extremists (when they are not outright anarchists who reject the premise that state violence is ever justified) is that the harm caused to immigrants by repression efforts is greater than any harm runaway immigration could cause. This is a dumb position and checked out from reality. But it has nothing to do with "pejorative redefinitions". It's just an extremely biased analysis with regards to the harms and benefits on both sides. A coherent anti-immigration argument still has to acknowledge that at some level you're saying "were an illegal to ignore all warnings and come anyway, there comes a point where we would physically shove, hit, or shoot that guy until he was no longer on our side of the border". Such an argument simply involves saying that the benefits of such a policy outweigh the minor moral cost of that violence.

Biden didn't wake up one day and go out of his way to coax ten million people into coming to the US.

No, but the people whose organization Biden also belongs to actively did this.

These people want to come, therefore what right have we to infringe on their freedom by stopping them?

Why do we enforce laws against and obsess over human trafficking, but not illegal immigration, even though they're literally the same thing?

It's because one of them negatively affects the average left-wing voter (since when we say "human trafficking", we usually mean "for sex purposes", which means the average domestic woman's ability to demand a price for sex is adversely affected), and one is neutral to positive for that voter (since when we say "illegal immigration", we usually mean "for labor purposes", which means the average domestic man's ability to demand a fair price for labor is adversely affected).

and it is a fundamentally moral, compassionate one.

No, it's concern trolling laundered through a "moral, compassionate" lens.

which means the average domestic woman's ability to demand a price for sex is adversely affected)

The average domestic woman is not competing with literal prostitutes and the average domestic man is offended to imply that about his womanfolk.

No, it's concern trolling laundered through a "moral, compassionate" lens.

See my analogy elsewhere in the thread to pro-choicers who insist that pro-lifers can't possibly be sincerely concerned about the lives of fetuses, and have to be using it as an excuse to oppress women. No! You can disagree with the principles, or you can say (as I do) that this is an impractical way to implement those principles, but your opponents genuinely, sincerely hold those principles! Honest!

Your gloss on human trafficking vs. illegal immigration misses the mark completely due to this baffling refusal to believe that pro-immigration advocates care about immigrants' welfare as human beings, as an end unto itself. "Immigrants" aren't a means to some other end. Liberals approve of "illegal immigrants" because they think of them as individuals trying to act on their own desires whose freedom US border services are unfairly restricting; and they disapprove of "human trafficking" because they think of victims of human trafficking as slaves and abductees whose freedom is being unfairly restricted by the traffickers. This is entirely consistent, and incredibly obvious. If you do not grasp this, then your theory-of-mind of anyone to your left fails completely.

Your gloss on human trafficking vs. illegal immigration misses the mark completely due to this baffling refusal to believe that pro-immigration advocates care about immigrants' welfare as human beings, as an end unto itself.

Those may be their feelings, but closer examination of the actual facts of migration policy reveal this to be, at best, Mrs. Jellyby-ism. So much undocumented immigration is facilitated by truly horrific cartels/people-smugglers that the U.S. government has long balked from designating the cartels as what they are - para-state criminal enterprises fully deserving of the foreign terrorist organization label just like the Haqqani network, Hezbollah, etc. - out of fear that it would open many illegal immigrants to criminal liability for materially-assisting an FTO.

Oh, I agree.

Please don't just post "I agree" posts.

I think "I agree" posts serve an important purpose in situations like this one, where A says something, B replies to A, and then A says "I agree". In that circumstance, specifically A's opinion of what B said is highly relevant, and an upvote wouldn't give B that relevant information because upvotes are anonymous.

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There is much to what you say. It is also true that various leftists have, in unguarded moments, given much much more cynical arguments for immigration. For example, in the Blairite government in the UK:

Mr Neather was a speech writer who worked in Downing Street for Tony Blair and in the Home Office for Jack Straw and David Blunkett, in the early 2000s.

Writing in the Evening Standard, he revealed the "major shift" in immigration policy came after the publication of a policy paper from the Performance and Innovation Unit, a Downing Street think tank based in the Cabinet Office, in 2001.

He wrote a major speech for Barbara Roche, the then immigration minister, in 2000, which was largely based on drafts of the report.

He said the final published version of the report promoted the labour market case for immigration but unpublished versions contained additional reasons, he said.

He wrote: "Earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.

"I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn't its main purpose – to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date."

(Emphasis mine)

The Left support for immigration is a confusing mixture of:

  1. compassion towards immigrants
  2. cultural xenophilia and a desire for local non-native cultural enrichment
  3. economic beliefs that high immigration improves GDP and living standards
  4. a political belief that immigrants will support the leftists who are their allies
  5. discomfort with preventing immigrants getting what they want
  6. dislike of common reasons given by the right for opposing immigration - nationalism, anti-xenophilia, crime, religious differences
  7. discomfort following chains of thoughts that might lead to 5 or 6, and concern for the social consequences of doing so where their friends can hear it
  8. mistaken beliefs about the costs of immigration resulting from an ability to externalise them (e.g. the anger when immigrants were bussed to Martha's Vineyard and New York, the fact that lots of immigrants either work in the service industry or in warehouses)

I think it's important to point out as you are doing that people genuinely believe 1-3, but it's also fair to point out that darker motives 4-8 also exist and are not invalidated by 1-3.

I'd add somewhere in your list a feeling of guilt towards historical wrongs and a feeling that sacrificing their own countrymen's welfare in favor of immigrants' is somehow helping make up for it.

True

I think most of it is just economic, to be honest. The two-party consensus is that large-scale immigration is necessary for economic reasons - more workers enable more economic growth, and it fills out the bottom of the population pyramid, which is declining due to demographic transition. (For non-conspiratorial reasons - no one's scheming to reduce the native birthrate, and in fact the birthrate decline is global.)

When asked, neither party usually says that's the reason, though if pressed they will usually mention it as one among others, but I think it's the core reason and most of the rest is rationalisation.

When asked, neither party usually says that's the reason

The Canadian government will just state that business lobbying drove the approvals for temporary foreign workers, and Carney is being admirably clear that it is reason the program cannot simply be stopped despite the widespread belief it was abused after COVID

“When I talk to businesses around the country their No. 1 issue is tariffs, and their No. 2 issue is access to temporary foreign workers,” Carney told reporters.

The debate didn't really get moralized like down south, presumably because the PM had all the tools he needed to achieve his ends without dipping into asylum seekers, who seem especially aggravating.

Maybe. The numbers show that the economics aren’t working in Europe, and various parties have turned against it. Even the Left wing in the UK is nominally against it though for various of the reasons stated it hasn’t actually done very much.

Whether this is downstream of the economics not working out or other factors is hard to say.

Protecting one's borders is no more violence than locking the door to your house is violence to your neighbors. The left's position on this topic is, frankly, nonsense. Understanding it does not justify it.

Protecting one's borders is no more violence than locking the door to your house is violence to your neighbors.

Of course it is. Unless nobody ever contests your borders in the first place, of course you need violence to protect the border. Whether you beat, shoot or tie people up to stop them from crossing illegally, it's still violence. Necessary, advisable, ethical and desirable violence, but violence nontheless.

Well, it's less locking the door and more that one resident continues to invite guests in, only for them to find another resident trying to throw them out, cycling ad-infinitum.

Not that I support the former here, but a fair characterization would mention it.

The actions you must take to physically remove someone who's already in the country when they explicitly do not want to leave the country are violent however.

You may argue this violence is justified (I agree, somewhat), but if the ruling people are extremely averse to violence of government agents being televised, there we are.

Putting someone out who is in my house without permission is violence, in that the intruder is the one committing it. This is a basic axiom of English common law. I have already suffered an injury. It doesn't matter if the intruder is a beggar or the King of England, if he doesn't leave then I am justified in defending myself from the harms already committed.

Putting someone out who is in my house without permission is violence, in that the intruder is the one committing it. This is a basic axiom of English common law.

"Violence" is not a term defined at English common law, and the ordinary English meaning of the term has always included legally justified violence as "violence" and excluded non-violent crimes, let alone non-criminal torts like simple trespass. Breaking into premises has always been a marginal case.

There is a reason why the Libertarian Party pledge avoids the word, and instead talks about "initiating force"

This is a basic axiom of English common law.

Of course, it's trivial to cheat at that simply by declaring the entire nation in violation of that law, then proceeding to selectively enforce it only against those that improved the place.

I don't know why I keep getting replies which assume that I agree with this position when I specifically began my second paragraph with "Let this not be mistaken for a pro-open-borders argument on my part". I am not trying to justify it. I am only trying to get people to understand it. But I don't think OP did understand it, with that baffling talk of "for no other reason than he wanted to".

I am not trying to justify it. I am only trying to get people to understand it. But I don't think OP did understand it, with that baffling talk of "for no other reason than he wanted to".

It’s famously difficult to get someone to understand something when they don’t want to understand it.

Some of it has to do with it being very easy to ignore and talk past someone once you’ve pattern-matched them to “the Enemy”, even if you’re on ‘their side’…

…And some of it has to do with them thinking that they already understand the doubtlessly-malicious real motives of the Enemy, and not particularly being interested in being corrected- after all, how can you be sure that it’s not just Enemy action to try and sow uncertainty about the truth of their sinister motives, and attempt to sway your mind with their propaganda?

I recognize the steelman, I really do. I just really, really hate this argument. It boils my piss. The leftist framing of what is violence against them and what is violence on their part is always a definitional game that somehow excuses terrorism on their part but prevents speech on my part and thus I have an allergic reaction to the violence-discourse.

Isn't using men with guns to do something part of the standard definition of violence? How do illegal immigrants get removed from the country?

I'm actually a little surprised by the people pushing back on this one, as I don't consider it a "leftist framing." It's certainly compatible with a libertarian analysis as well.

Except for literal pacifists, basically every person on Earth agrees violence is acceptable under at least some circumstances, whether it be self-defense, carrying out a just/honorable war, defending ones property or whatever. The police and federal agents use violence to enforce the rule of law in society. I think the vast majority of ordinary people consider ordinary instances of police force/violence to be completely justified and necessary. Without that, you don't have the rule of law at all, you just have a bunch of suggestions and no means of enforcing them.

I agree that walls are not violence, though. But I don't think physical barriers are the primary way we prevent people from getting into or out of the country, or get rid of them once they get here.

I'm actually a little surprised by the people pushing back on this one

I'm not. In the US, at least, right-wing political violence is usually carried out under the guise of law enforcement. Violence by law enforcement is presumed justified and classified as not-actually-violence because it is (mostly) regular and (usually) socially sanctioned. To point out that law enforcement is, in fact, violence is to give left-wing critiques an exploitable breach in the intellectual firewall.

(One can still defend having laws and law enforcement with all of the above, but the point is to not have to in the first place)

Isn't using men with guns to do something part of the standard definition of violence? How do illegal immigrants get removed from the country?

"Worst argument in the world" people, when someone wants to have borders....

Did you read the rest of my comment? I'm not using "violence" in a pejorative sense here, I'm using it because within the linguistic resources of English it is the most general word available, unless I am very much mistaken.

Do you have a better word for that category of human activity that is more neutral? Because I personally don't think the neutral use of the word "violence" should be considered an attempt to try to sway an argument one way or another, because there are many instances where "violence" is morally acceptable and justified, maybe even necessary for the functioning of society.

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Probably because people suspect you are a liberal, and as a liberal, you don't have to agree with the position of an open borders progressive (or true libertarian) to help ensure that massive amounts of immigration happens. Progressives can just use the moral framework that you believe in to wedge in an argument that you can't reject, and therefore immigration that you can't stop. The only way you can stop it is by abandoning your liberal principles. Stopping peaceful migrants requires force that liberals aren't comfortable with. Even though they don't want that much immigration, they ultimately waste their energy on criticizing the only methods that actually work, which are the ones that involve use of force.

Borders and liberals coexisted for a long time before everyone lost their minds. And conservatives were equally useless at arguing against progressives on this topic, as the US demonstrated.

Yes, but their existence wasn't because of the liberals.

I don't know why I keep getting replies which assume that I agree with this position when I specifically began my second paragraph with "Let this not be mistaken for a pro-open-borders argument on my part"

Not doing this is surprisingly hard. But also, people just want to state their objections for the record, it's not necessarily aimed at you.

I don't know why I keep getting replies which assume that I agree with this position when I specifically began my second paragraph with "Let this not be mistaken for a pro-open-borders argument on my part".

Expectations versus reality moment. Important lesson. This is one of the, if not the, best places on the web for this too.

Back when we were on reddit I'd occasionally get bored and post in some other sub and pretty soon my blood pressure would spike and I'd crawl back here and be grateful for the levels of hostile and incompetent reading comprehension we somehow manage to maintain.

How could any amount of missing paperwork justify bringing lethal force to bear against a human being? That's the impulse, and it is a fundamentally moral, compassionate one.

…

the "imported for no clear reason" framing obscures this, which is at once uncharitable to the decision-makers

First of all, thank you for stating clearly the view from within the pro-immigration left’s mindset; it’s one that is based on moral precepts very different from the ones we usually hear about ‘round these here parts, and it’s always good to get a periodic reminder of how the other half lives (and thinks).

Nevertheless, I want to answer the above-quoted passages in good faith, as a not-especially-pro-immigration non-leftist (though I am myself a child of immigrants).

How, indeed, could missing paperwork justify the use of lethal force? In the first place, I would argue that lethal force is seldom necessary to enforce sane immigration policy: simply patrolling the border properly—much easier nowadays with autonomous drones—and enforcing citizenship requirements for any government benefits plus employer compliance with E-Verify or similar, together with harsh penalties for violation and immediate deportation of illegal aliens, would suffice in almost all cases. Still, it is true that deportation is ultimately backed by the threat of force, up to and including lethal force should the prospective deportee resist hard enough. How is this OK? Because the alternative—that is, that we should never enforce immigration law—implicitly grants to every would-be illegal immigrant the unilateral right to nullify American law! Once we let that camel’s nose into the tent, everyone will start asking, quite reasonably, why they should be bound to abide by laws they find immoral, or even merely inconvenient, and what can we say to them? “Actually, the law is subordinate to my particular moral code”? Well, why are your morals better than mine, and by whose authority do your morals supersede the law of the land? And, more darkly, how do you propose to stop people with very different morals from using the same argument, should they ever get their hands on the reins of power? I am reminded of the famous scene from A Man For All Seasons: “Yes, I’d give the devil the benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”

In short, respect for the rule of law—even when your morality disagrees with the law—is the ultimately the only way to prevent a Hobbesian war of all against all. In game theory terms, we most punish defectors, lest everyone think it’s a good idea to defect.

I would also argue that “imported for no clear reason” is the wrong framing—there is a reason, namely that Biden (or his handlers, or the Democrat activist class, or whoever else you want to blame for this decision) wanted to do so, and in particular wanted to do so out of the deeply-held moral sentiments that you have just articulated (in addition to base political considerations, of course). But even granting, charitably, that this policy was the result of well-intended moral judgments rather than mere political gamesmanship, I would say that the decision-makers here are very clearly in the wrong, and it is not at all uncharitable to say so.

The President is the chief executive of the federal government. That means his job is to carry out the law as Congress has created it (and as the judiciary has interpreted it): nothing more and nothing less. In particular, the President’s own moral scruples should play no part in how he faithfully carries out the duties of his office. I have no problem with the President using the “bully pulpit” to argue for or against this or that moral view; nor do I see any issue with an ex-President, in his personal capacity, acting according to whatever moral beliefs he may hold (see, e.g., President Carter and Habitat for Humanity); nor is there anything preventing the President from encouraging Congress to pass laws that accord with his morals. But when he is on the job, the President must hold his personal beliefs aside and execute the role that has been entrusted to him.

An analogy: would it be acceptable for the CEO of a public company to unilaterally decide to sell off all the company’s assets to raise money to give to charity? I would say no: the CEO is answerable to the shareholders, who endowed him with stewardship over their capital in the expectation that he would carefully husband the business to maximize their return on investment. The moral worth of the charity is irrelevant: if the shareholders want to, they can decide to donate to that charity with their own money—and if the CEO decides to give his bonus to the charity, or to briefly bring up the benefits of that charity at the next shareholders’ general meeting, then good for him! But in his capacity as CEO, he has but one mandate entrusted to him by the shareholders, which he is bound to carry out faithfully, personal morals notwithstanding.

employer compliance with E-Verify

Sorry, but this just doesn't do what you think it does. Even in the hands of the most scrupulous employers E-verify is hopeless.

I am 100% on the record that the Federal government should provide some accurate method for employers to verify that applicants are entitled to work (and, stretch goal, be continuously notified if that changes). That doesn't even remotely exist.

I don't believe Biden was unwilling to use force to stop border hoppers- he is, after all, a very moderate democrat with few firm convictions. I suspect that instead he wanted the workers. America, like most other advanced economies, has functionally full employment and a lot of blue collar jobs left unfilled. Japan, Poland, etc are doing the same thing.

"America, like most other advanced economies, has functionally full employment and a lot of blue collar jobs left unfilled. Japan, Poland, etc are doing the same thing."

A blatant lie, easily disproven merely by opening one's eyes. One does not get the millions of fentanyl deaths, the hollowed out Rust Belt, nor the millions upon millions drowning in debt because they literally can't make enough. Nor, for that matter, would you see the H1B shenanigans as employers post tech jobs exclusively in foreign papers, to try and find a loophole around posting requirements.

Good joke putting Japan in there, btw. A nation with employment stats more fraudulent than the US is hard to find, but Japan is up to the challenge, just straight up defining homelessness out of existence. Sorry, but no amount of sophistry is going to get me to pretend that a girl turning tricks to earn enough money to stay at an internet cafe for the night is not, in fact, homeless.

Sorry, but no amount of sophistry is going to get me to pretend that a girl turning tricks to earn enough money to stay at an internet cafe for the night is not, in fact, homeless.

I think a key point here is whether the room's rented on a semi-permanent basis.

I got stuck in motels for a month and a half back in 2022 (after getting summarily ejected from college), and it sucked, because motels tend to have specific dates booked out well in advance forcing you to move motels on a weekly basis or so. It still beats being under a bridge, of course, but it's a hell of a lot worse than having a home.

If the girl can actually hold a specific room for many months, that solves a lot of the problem and is closer to renting than to being homeless. If she has to move regularly, then that brings a lot of the issues with homelessness back into play.

The fact is that you almost never see homeless in Tokyo. I was asked for money perhaps three times in six years of living there. My understanding is that Japanese homeless are much more tractable than American homeless and the government mostly pays to keep them housed without too much trouble.

These stories are certainly disturbing but they're largely sensationalized rarities. Family support systems keep the majority off the streets even if they're personally broke. In the cases where you have a girl in the situation you describe it's almost definitely a case of some sort of seriously bad home life (eg molestation, etc) and not simply "times are hard in Japan." While living in one's parents' home well into adulthood may be odd to those from anglo or European countries, it's not such an anomaly here. When you have a girl who has opted out of that it's for a reason.

Homelessness does exist in Japan, of course, but it's miles away from the type of widespread homelessness you see in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. (I am only naming places I've actually been.)

Japan, Poland, etc are doing the same thing.

Why would that mean anything, let alone that the decisions is justify on material / economic grounds? World elites have remarkably narrow worldviews. Do you think gender self-ID was implemented in a good chunk of Europe for material reasons? Do you think there were BLM marches there because of how badly black people were treated?

Iran and Russia also have economic migrants.

Draw an ideological throughline between Japan, the USA, Russia, Poland, France, Japan, Iran, Germany, etc.

Japan has far fewer economic migrants than other developed countries. That has changed a little recently (and immediately prompted a turn to the right politically). Including them on this list seems unreasonable unless you count having any number of economic migrants at all. There is clearly a difference between what Japan has allowed and what Europe or the United States has allowed.

Just once I'd like to see an example of a country that didn't follow suit and suffered some horrible negative consequences.

Also: sure, I think the leaders of most of these countries are on board for the world depopulation train.

I mean... the communist block arguably qualifies.

Yes, they totally didn't do a whole bunch of other things that are more likely to be responsible for their outcome.

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I think you know at this point that very few people here buy into the moral imperative that liberals and progressives like to invoke when it comes to immigration. It's easy to place myself in the shoes of someone trying to come here from a less economically stable and more dangerous place. Of course I'd want to come here. That's not the point that people care to discuss, because the structural and cultural issues that have come about from Biden's policies take priority over the tiresome moral grandstanding.

Biden's government elected to not use violence to stop mass immigration which aligned with the progressive moral framing and aligned with our economic model that relies on cheap, exploitable labor. When his admin chose not to stop millions of people with force it had massive downstream effects. The "fundamentally moral" intentions behind that decision is no longer a political get out of jail free card, and that has to be demonstrated to the progressive and liberal-minded folk so that it can be made abundantly clear that this type of progressive immigration policy is a total nonstarter.

Certainly. But that does not change the fact that their belief in this moral imperative is the fundamental motivation of liberal policymakers. Ignoring this factor achieves nothing; it's on the same level as pro-choice activists who don't take pro-lifers' outrage about abortions-as-murder seriously and keep trying to second-guess their supposed true reasons for acting as they do.

For some maybe. For Democrats trying to win elections, it's a trend to latch onto to get additional votes.

It's ignoring in the sense that you will not convince the other side by using it as an argument, and that it doesn't carry the political weight that used to not even 2 years ago. It might drive your side to vote more, but it's a double-edged sword that also drives your political opponents to vote. Conservatives will have to contend with it, yes, and it cannot be completely ignored, but leaning into "morality" over practicality will not be a winning strategy for Democrats in the next election cycle now that we have examples of "moral" policy's impact on society.

He outlines how Democrats could frame a compelling message around corruption and abuse of power, citing Senator Jon Ossoff’s July speech as an example of effective messaging that ties everyday struggles (like high medical costs and housing insecurity) to elite corruption.

Oh, yes? Like the allegations about Nancy Pelosi and insider trading? When you start going on about elite corruption, you have two choices:

(1) Investigate the said corruption. This may mean you piss off your deep pocket donors, which means no money, which means oops we can't run the party.

(2) "Investigate" the said corruption, but don't do anything about it really. This means the voters now know, rather than suspect, you're a bunch of hypocrites and as bad as the other guys.

If Ezra is expecting Mr. Deeds to show up and clean house, he'll be a long time waiting.

Ezra Klein is a woke idiot who lied about Charles Murray to push blank slate liberalism and he did it knowingly, and not out of ignorance, because the narrative was more important than the truth.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IeWMw2hb4gY&ab_channel=Motte%26Bailey

So why should we believe him now?

Edit: Tretiak beat me to the punch, but I directly linked to the podcast he mentioned. Take a listen. If Ezra Klein posted here, on the motte, with the same tone and argumentation he did on the podcast, he'd be permanently banned within the hour. Why should we listen to someone who would be just as obnoxious as Alexander Turok or BurdensomeCount?

This is mostly an attack on various people. Such things aren't explicitly banned, but they are heavily treading into waging the culture war. I was going to make this just a warning. But looking through your history its basically the only thing we warn/temp ban you about.

5 day ban. It will escalate quickly if see this again, we shouldn't have to ask you a half dozen times to follow a specific rule.

Is Count gone for good? I hated hating Turok but loved hating Count.

If BC had any shame he'd never post anywhere on the internet ever again after he posted such vulgar blood libel, but God preserve us, he will likely return.

I've reached a point in my development as a man that I can appreciate a truly excellent villain, and should consider his departure a great personal loss.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IeWMw2hb4gY&ab_channel=Motte%26Bailey

The Intellectual Dark Web lives on in our memories. In case anyone else is curious here is the first CW thread top-level post on the discussion with Harris. Probably the first of several.

Ezra Klein is a woke idiot who lied about Charles Murray to push blank slate liberalism and he did it knowingly, and not out of ignorance, because the narrative was more important than the truth.

There's an argument to be had around the value of any given noble lie or paternalistic social engineering. Ezra Klein, however, is not the person to make these arguments, because he can't give much than an inch without falling into a crisis of dissonance.

Frankly I’m stunned that Ezra has ‘any’ audience at all. It’s even more concerning to me I live in a locality that’s colored by the mentality of his type of thinking. I understand the backdrop people like him are coming from, but he is a ‘horrible’ advocate for the cause. Sam could’ve had a much more sensible discussion about this with someone like Shaun. Ezra is too psychologically fragile and had a hard time stomaching and keeping down what he was hearing. He is not the guy for practically any subject out there.

I understand the backdrop people like him are coming from, but he is a ‘horrible’ advocate for the cause.

Is he? Refusing to engage with these claims is the cause. Giving them too much legitimacy would be the opposite of being a good advocate.

It's not an accident that the wonky side of the Left wing media system reacted much like the rest when this topic came up. The point of having wonks is so you can get some answer for how science can serve your values while drawing the line on what beliefs are worth taking seriously or investigating. So Vox will have Turkheimer on to both admit that IQ is correlated with X, Y and Z but also that anyone who suggests a gap with origins in genetics or one we can't easily change is suspect because of how far out ahead of their skis they are.

The point of Vox is that you don't need to consider Charles Murray because you already have the answers.

If Ezra wanted to refuse to engage the claims then he should’ve refused to appear on Sam’s podcast altogether. Agreeing to it and then looking like a fool trying to be obscurant over every point doesn’t only make you look disingenuous; it also makes you look like an idiot.

This isn’t an ongoing debate that’s being had behind closed doors in lab coats and under microscopes. What Ezra did was the equivalent of walking onto a debate stage and try to lecture an astronomer that the Earth is flat. Maybe he’ll end up appeasing everyone in his political circle who’s got blinders onto the world. To everyone else, he looked like a moron; because he was one.

I don’t know what anyone has to consult Murray over. Scholars like Richard Haier have already upheld his claims and have said Murray was being very conservative in presenting his findings. This says nothing of the idiots on the popular left circuit like Seder who contend Murray is a racist, while having never read his book. In fact, Seder hasn’t even read Murray’s Wikipedia page; if you think a man who married and had children with a one handed Thai Buddhist in a foreign country is a racist. You’ve exposed nothing but your own ignorance at that point. Most of his critics are idiots because they refuse to read or actually engage his arguments. Ironically, his conclusions are also very much in line with policy works like Ezra in the first place. It goes to show Ezra has likely never read a word of anything Murray ever wrote.

if you think a man who married and had children with a one handed Thai Buddhist in a foreign country is a racist. You’ve exposed nothing but your own ignorance at that point.

In fairness, there’s a non-negligible amount of genuine racists who include Asians alongside whites in the “civilized” category.

What Ezra did was the equivalent of walking onto a debate stage and try to lecture an astronomer that the Earth is flat. Maybe he’ll end up appeasing everyone in his political circle who’s got blinders onto the world. To everyone else, he looked like a moron; because he was one.

I wasn't making a moral defense of Klein, I think his behavior speaks for itself. But I think you're underselling just how many people have these same beliefs. Most people don't care and/or instinctively side with Klein (or know they should if they know what's good for them).

In this environment, this behavior can work or fill an important niche. Who is more likely to get a say in polite circles? Some Vox writer posting about an exciting study on some teaching intervention that showed IQ improvements or a more Murrayist take?

Ironically, his conclusions are also very much in line with policy works like Ezra in the first place. It goes to show Ezra has likely never read a word of anything Murray ever wrote.

I don't think you give Klein enough credit. He is a higher class of commentator than Seder. He reads. By his own account he has read and reviewed Murray, and at least knows Murray is for UBI:

The other thing you brought up his UBI work. The reason I bring this up is that, the reason Charles Murray’s work is problematic, is that he uses these arguments about IQ — and a lot of other arguments he makes about other things — to push these points into the public debate, where he is very, very, very influential. He’s not by any means a silenced actor in Washington. He gives Congressional testimony. He won the Bradley Prize in 2016 and got a $250,000 check for it. His book on UBI, it is completely of a piece with this. I reviewed that book when it came out. It’s an interesting book, people should read it, but it is a way of cutting social spending. According to Murray’s own numbers, he says it would cut social spending by a trillion dollars in 2020. To give you a sense of scale, Obamacare costs two trillion dollars over 10 years.

This is another book in a different way that is a huge argument for cutting social spending, which in part he justifies by saying, we are trying to redress racial inequality based on an idea that it is a product of American history, when in fact it is some combination of innate and environmental, but at any rate, it is not something we’re going to be able to change, and so we should stop trying, or at least stop trying in the way we have been.

Because Klein is cleverer than Seder he can see that Murray is offering a poisoned chalice. Vox is about enhancing the arguments of left-wingers so they can advance their agenda. Focusing on the short-term gain of having Republicans agree with you on one program when it undercuts the central pillars of that agenda would be deeply unwise. Social constructionism is far more useful to Klein than Murray's tactical (in his mind) retreat. Setting up a test that could obviate the need for any left-wing policy by attacking the basic assumptions is also incredibly unwise.

Klein doesn't want to cut social spending. Klein doesn't believe that such spending cannot solve persistent problems or that the government should accept that it can at best ameliorate some human capital gaps. Why would he want to? The alternate thesis is what allows his side to accrue power and, hopefully, fix problems. What's Vox's reason for being if the answer is that there's no clever move to be made, let's just stop people starving?

Harris understandably had no patience for engaging in the discussion given how the conversation started, but Klein basically states that not moving towards a more socialist and redistributive position when citing these facts is itself suspect:

This is something you brought up earlier when you brought up that quote from Murray about luck, and I think it’s an important conversation. I think that if you follow Murrayism on this, if you were doing it without the political commitments he brings to it, it actually takes you to a very radical and interesting place.

If you say that our IQ is genetic and environmental, but at any rate, it’s not our fault, because we don’t choose either one of those, and there’s not much we can do about it. Not just our IQ, but something you’ve said is that, you know, a lot of traits come down like this — the big five personality traits, determination. Look, you can connect genetic inheritance to divorce. I think it’s a .2 or .4 correlation. So, if you begin to believe that, actually you begin to ask the question of, should, do we deserve what we have? Should society be vastly more redistributed than it actually is? Should we be much less within this construct that what we’re getting, we’re getting because of hard work and determination and intelligence and the application of our talents? In fact, we need to move to something that is, I’m not literally advocating this, but more in the range of full socialism.

What I think is so interesting about the way he takes this debate — and I recognize this is not somewhere you took the debate, but I do think this is a useful thing to talk about — is that if you really did believe things immutable, if you really did believe that this was our inheritance both environmental and genetic and we can’t do much about it, then I think the implications of that are radical, and the implications aren’t that you take away help from people. It’s that you say pretty much what all of us has is primarily illegitimate. We didn’t do anything to earn it. I just happened to be born with the collection of talents that got me where I am. And as such, what we should spread around in society is much more vast.

Funnily enough, I don’t ever see people take that attitude on this. Again, the history of these ideas in America is they tend to be used to justify the status quo, not radically more generous versions of the status quo, but I do think that’s interesting, and I don’t understand why people don’t take that leap. I think that the implication of this is, it’s luck, and if you want to believe that — and, again, I don’t believe they’re immutable, I don’t think that’s what the evidence shows — but if you do believe they’re luck, I don’t think it takes you where he went in your conversation.

Believing in HBD is itself bad, but using it to cut state spending...beyond the pale.

I don’t know what anyone has to consult Murray over.

Murray seems to be the Bart Ehrman of intelligence research. Attacked because he's prominent, but there is also an incentive to make it a lot more about him than may be necessary, since it gives a certain view a convenient avatar to attack and to thus marginalize amongst your audience by proxy.

I wasn't making a moral defense of Klein, I think his behavior speaks for itself. But I think you're underselling just how many people have these same beliefs. Most people don't care and/or instinctively side with Klein (or know they should if they know what's good for them).

Virtually my entire critique of Ezra was the intellectual indefensibility of what he was saying. I wasn’t primarily talking about his moral characteristics either.

I’m actually very concerned about the number of people who think like Ezra does, because I live in an urban center that’s full of people as insane as he is.

In this environment, this behavior can work or fill an important niche. Who is more likely to get a say in polite circles? Some Vox writer posting about an exciting study on some teaching intervention that showed IQ improvements or a more Murrayist take?

Ezra would, sadly enough.

I don't think you give Klein enough credit. He is a higher class of commentator than Seder. He reads. By his own account he has read and reviewed Murray, and at least knows Murray is for UBI…

And that’s the sad part if people consider Ezra a cut above the rest, because his analysis is almost equally mediocre by comparison. If Ezra does read, he shows little in the way of his ability to comprehend and integrate what he’s read. And his appearance on Sam’s podcast in particular is but a small indication of that.

If Vox is trying to enhance the arguments of the left, then they’re incredibly bad at it. The best critique of Murray’s argument that could be characterized as ‘left-wing’ came from Chomsky in the appendix of The IQ Controversy which was published several decades ago. And it’s one that doesn’t begin with the premise of how butthurt you are over basic scientific facts. I suspect Sam had more than enough space to have a sensible discussion with Ezra about policy specifics, if only Ezra were able to get past the most basic hurdles in the argument; which he failed to do.

I don’t know how influential people like Murray are today. I suspect he’s hardly animating activity in the social sciences or having an analogous impact like the shadow of neoliberalism that Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys cast over our economic policy, which still rules the day, today. Maybe he’s inspired present day researchers like Razib Khan or others, but I don’t know.

I realize that I just duplicated your post - yeah, Ezra is a dumb policy wonk who is trying to pretend that he wasn't a fellow traveller of woke to push neoliberal policy. If he recommends anything, much like the anti-compass, we should do the opposite - because anything this smug prick recommends or advocates for is the the will of smuggest of LA radlibs.

he's like a less intelligent and more liberal and sanitized version of Matt Ygalsias

I understand the worry people like Ezra have. His appearance on the podcast was a horrible debate for him, but it was highly instructive for illustrating a similar view the left and the right both share. Ezra has a view of these topics that’s almost on par with the way the right-wing views the concept of a gateway drug.

Weed is an innocuous drug. We have known that chemically, medicinally and almost every other way you want to have it for a long time. So why do so many on the right remain so uptight about it even though society has become more acceptable of its use? Well because there’s at least one way a gateway drug retains a valid use as a concept. It’s proximity to everything else.

I knew a person once who wanted to open a dispensary in a state that had at that time fairly recently legalized recreational marijuana. And he was well positioned to do it. But after thinking over it for awhile he decided against it, because of the ‘type’ of clientele that’s mostly associated with smoking it. Yes, otherwise normal people also smoke weed, but we all know the popular images of the kind of people who use it. And those types of people do exist. In large numbers. And much of the time, those ‘are’ the kinds of people you’re dealing with.

But it goes even further than that and also puts you in proximity to other people. Hard drug users, or maybe not people who do hard drugs, but drug dealers who sell weed along with hard drugs. And that puts you in closer proximity if not outright in the same circle with those people. If you are a person who doesn’t want the risks associated with that kind of activity or it’s more than you want to think about from a business perspective as the person I was talking to, you’ll abandon the idea entirely just as he did.

Yes, of course IQ exists. Of course there are differences between people and populations. Just as there are height differences, skin tone differences, hair and eye color differences, the whole 9 yards. But these are all differences in a mundane sense and shouldn’t attract such significant attention to them that the KKK and every Neo-Nazi group closely follow your research activity and publication pipeline, and it places those people at the discussion table along with you; because these differences are truly inconsequential and meaningless. And yes, I don’t want those assholes at my table either.

Large swathes of my family are racially intermixed. Several cousins are half Hispanic. I have a red head cousin who’s been in a long-term relationship with a black man. When I was in high school I was in love with a black girl. But you can understand why the whole table becomes quiet and nervous if you bring up a topic like that, especially when large audiences are tuning in to see what you have to say. I think Ezra feels the same way. And I don’t blame him for it. But his approach for handling the matter is not one I would adopt. Sam was having a debate. Ezra was speaking to the mob.

The poisonous conception of the schoolmarmish imagination that ideas can be dangerous as drugs. That, for the good of people that certain ideas must be censored to prevent their 'radicalization' goes against liberalism and democracy.

Who, whom? Who are these exalted figures who get to determine what is and what is not permissible?

Trust the science, except when it goes against the narrative. Free speech and academic freedom, except when it upsets our deep-seated beliefs - that are not beliefs, but just moral decency.

I am tired of it all.

Weed is an innocuous drug. We have known that chemically, medicinally and almost every other way you want to have it for a long time.

Far from it. Plenty of people in psych wards would disagree strenuously with you.

I’m actually curious now. Got any stats and case studies on this?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2424288/

This study says people who used weed prior to age 18 were 2.4 times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia than those who hadn't, and rates scaled with heavier use:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2424288/

They also estimated that about 13% of all schizophrenia cases could be eliminated by eliminating cannabis usage.

You'd probably get similar numbers for tobacco use though -- I don't see anything there that establishes cause and effect?

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Huh. That’s interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Weed is an innocuous drug.

No it is not. Weed, unlike alcohol, has massive long term mental health consequences. Modern weed also isn't really a 'soft' drug; it's so potent that the ancestors would have recognized it as more like hashish.

Plus weed makes you lazy.

I was wondering when I would see someone make this comment.

(Not insulting you at all. But I knew it was coming. Lol.)

I mean, pot advocates never seem to address that weed isn't really a soft drug anymore; weed users are basically using hashish. Society harshly judges everclear drinkers in a way it doesn't for even straight whiskey drinkers.

I think that is more about the class signification than the percentage ABV. High proof whisky is seen as a premium product and the people who drink it as whisky connoisseurs.

You and I, I suspect have the same stance on this. I’m not a supporter of drug use and have never taken any drug in my life.

But on this particular point, you’re drawing up a distinction that isn’t relevant to what I’m pointing out. Is the problem ‘weed’ or weed smokers who are “basically using hashish?” I’m pretty judgmental in general of casual drinkers who help themselves on far too casually an occasion, never mind the scorn I have for truly intense drinkers. But there is a qualitative difference to be between comparison someone who picks up a joint and someone who picks up a container of everclear.

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I stopped listening to Ezra Klein ever since he appeared on Sam Harris’ podcast and looked like a complete moron.

Trump is a hiccup in our democracy. Until there comes a hard and fast dismantling of institutions, you can’t license the claim that he’s an authoritarian when the same system you approve of has also put all the candidates you’re palatable to in the same seat Trump is in right now.

That podcast episode kicked off the downward spiral of /r/SamHarris. It's also a great example of what reddit became across the entire site. The debate brought in tons of Klein apologists and progressives which turned the subreddit into a battleground. On one side you had liberals who simply accepted the available evidence (those siding with Harris), and on the other you had the anti-racists who alternated between the arguments of denying or questioning the data and labeling anyone who accepted it as racist (those siding with Klein). Boiled down, it was another example of secular evangelists spreading the framework of their religion: if data suggests uncomfortable conclusions about racial differences, the data is false and those who believe it are racist.

That debate and its aftermath had a significant impact on my perception of the social left. They weren't actually in favor of using objective truths to solve real world problems. They were only in favor of promoting specific moral "truths" while suppressing any evidence they deemed to be immoral.

That podcast episode kicked off the downward spiral of /r/SamHarris

Before that, the sub had a functional moratorium on all IQ topics on grounds of non-relevance to Sam Harris' work. After that...well, that went out the window and nothing good followed.

It really did seem to outrage people that a) it came up and b) we let the discussion go (I was a mod at the time). And those people never left and never got over Harris having the sheer gall.

But this wasn't the first place this happened. There really is something odd going on with reddit where a lot of subs end up degenerating into snark subs critical of the central figure.

That debate and its aftermath had a significant impact on my perception of the social left. They weren't actually in favor of using objective truths to solve real world problems. They were only in favor of promoting specific moral "truths" while suppressing any evidence they deemed to be immoral.

It was especially a blow because of who Ezra Klein was supposed to be. Vox was supposed to be the smart, wonky wing of the Democrat's base. You're supposed to be able to get the counter-intuitive take or someone chasing the data to the end. But, on this issue, they took the Rutherfordian line of "just don't worry about it" (at best).

Colors the whole thing.

we let the discussion go (I was a mod at the time)

Who were you?

But this wasn't the first place this happened. There really is something odd going on with reddit where a lot of subs end up degenerating into snark subs critical of the central figure.

Hm? It's a relatively common phenomenum in video game forums. Pretty typical tipping point culture.

Most fan groups have some fan distribution includes some balance of positive fans and disgruntled fans who more or less stay because being disgruntled becomes their hobby. Positive fans grow tired / bored with the content, while disgruntled fans grow larger as more people become disgrunted / have no where else to hang. Eventually, disgruntled fans hit a tipping poing towards becoming a decisive plurality as their toxicity starts to actively drive away positive fans, leaving a greater preponderance of disgruntled fans, making the forum a relatively toxic mess.

It's Vico's Barbarism of Reflection in action

I can understand the avoidance of IQ topics, given the incendiary nature of them, and to that extent I probably agree with Sam (and maybe Ezra?) that they probably shouldn't be so openly talked about. Too many bad actors.

Ezra just came off so slippery in a bad way in that exchange.

Harris criticized the Vox article that was written by another journalist. Klein then claimed he was editor-in-chief at the time, but didn’t assign or edit it, but that he stood by it, but that it’s ultimately on him as editor-in-chief, but that it was a good article, but that he can only speak from his perspective.

He also said:

"And by the way I’m not here to say you’re racist, I don’t think you are. We have not called you one." Of course, after that he went on to explain all the racially damaging things he thought Sam had done. To Ezra, I guess Sam was (is) effectively a racist, not an intentional racist. That was really the progressive argument in a nutshell for about 10 years.

"And by the way I’m not here to say you’re racist, I don’t think you are. We have not called you one." Of course, after that he went on to explain all the racially damaging things he thought Sam had done. To Ezra, I guess Sam was (is) effectively a racist, not an intentional racist. That was really the progressive argument in a nutshell for about 10 years.

Smearing someone as a useful idiot for racists at best then psychoanalyzing them for not taking it well...if we're talking about gall, that's up there.

This is one of the reasons I find it hard to be sympathetic now that the worm has turned and people are angry at having to share Twitter with people they think are too interested in the topic. People were absolutely brazen about being bad faith.


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