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PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   3024 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 14, 2026

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Just something I feel tiresome since it's World Cup season and inevitably every major Western democracy is getting some variant of 'Don't like foreigners, what about RANDOM AFRICAN who kicked a goal for NATIONAL TEAM' spammed across social and news channels.

Am I the only one who finds it somewhat absurd that the native underclasses of most Western countries are essentially getting kicked out of a rare but real pathway to winning the athleticism lottery and becoming a professional Soccer or whatever-else player? I feel similarly about trying to outsource this kind of job as I do about outsourcing the bullshit bureaucracy non-revenue admin jobs at a Fortune 500 company in which, sure they could technically be done better but they're more about distribution of societal spoils than actually value driven.

I'm wearing a soccer shirt in national colors today. Because I got it for free and it was on top of the clean laundry pile. I couldn't give less of a damn about spectator sports.

I always, even from my very first memories of watching sports on television with grandpa, did not get how a team could seriously call itself the national or local team while also importing all their players from every corner of the world. It's always been absurd, and continues to be so.

I particularly don't like it since I feel like the current metagame both curtails the ability of native sons to actually get ahead, and it produces strange incentives for foreign imports where a very small population might manage to ascend through the ranks but there's also a plethora of foreigners who are solely pursuing lottery-ticket type careers exacerbating the amount that they cost to support. Having a popular understanding of life amidst one's recent immigrants that one needs to either be a rapper or an athlete to get anywhere is actively contributing to issues with assimilation.

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