This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
ICE has conducted its largest ever raid targeting... Korean automotive workers at a Georgia Hyundai factory?
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?
Hyundai Raid Rattles a Hot Spot of Growth in Georgia
The result was demographic replacement.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link