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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38224 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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Cracking down on employers would be an immoral action, anyway. That sort of thing shouldn't happen; the problem isn't "the illegals have a job", the problem is "the illegals exist". Frankly, employing them is likely helping them keep their ongoing criminality to a minimum.

The only people who should be punished for illegals are the illegals themselves and their advocates.

It is illegal to employ illegal immigrants.

You're excusing one crime and demanding enforcement of another.

Yes, the problem with illegals isn't that they're illegal. If the Democrats could wave their hands and through genie magic render all illegals perfectly legal valid citizens, I'd still want them gone -- in fact, I'd want them gone even moreso.

I am not making arguments based on legality. I'm making moral arguments. When law and morality conflict, the law is in error.

Putting aside your take on the morality of the parties, which I think is ass backwards, the benefit of cracking down on employers is that it's a politically viable potential solution. If there are no employers for economic migrants, there will be no economic migrants.

The average American voter is not going to support shooting illegal border crossers. Nor are they going to support imprisoning families with their little kids at the border. And if you bus them back home, they'll be back within the fortnight. On the other hand, if prospective migrants know there's no opportunities in the USA, they won't come.

It's like how the HOA will tell you to secure your trash. They could just hire hunters to go after bears, skunks, and raccoons without imposing on you. But that solution is more expensive and makes people squeamish. By demanding an expensive and/or unpopular solution you're only guaranteeing a solution won't be implemented.

I agree the average American will not support shooting border crossers. I disagree the right cannot find electoral victory with non-shooting harsh enforcement, though, so your claimed benefit doesn't sway me. I fully believe the populist anti-immigrant right is capable of winning elections.

If no-one employs them, the incentive to come is much reduced. I think you have this entirely backwards. They only come because they can get work and have a better standard of living here. Fixing that is the only long term solution. Smugglers will always find a way, whether it is people or drugs as long as the demand exists.

Enforcement can certainly make it more difficult and reduce numbers. But if you really want none, then you have to stop the demand. Hiring an illegal worker is what attracts said illegal workers.

If no-one employs them, the incentive to come is much reduced.

And no cheap, exploitable under-the-table labor, either. A slave caste is useful, I just don't want it entrenched and influencing society. I'm fundamentally okay with the idea of Hispanic Helots -- I'm just not okay with it in the current world because we have this ridiculous notion of birthright citizenship and endless welfare parasitism.

I would, for instance, agree to support open borders if it came with muscular guarantees that these populations would not ever have voting rights or access to the public's welfare bucks, and would be forcibly kept in appropriate enclaves so as not to spoil the areas the rest of us live in.

Hold on just a second. Why are employers who break the law by hiring an illegal immigrant not immoral in the first place? Why do they get a pass when they refuse to do their part and verify that their employees are authorized to work?

I will not punish Americans for exploiting non-Americans. They are outsiders and lack any moral significance. Their employment, or lack thereof, isn't worrisome; the problem isn't the illegals having jobs, the problem is there being illegals. It's not the business' duty to enforce national sovereignty and borders, it's the business' duty to do the best they can for their customers and communities -- even if that involves breaking the backs of illegals. Wring them for all their worth while the feds sort them out.

You don't need to care about the non-citizens to worry about this, just about the effect on the citizens. It's like saying that you can't object to someone stealing from the cash register because cash isn't people and lacks any moral significance.

I do not object to the exploitation of illegals in principle, nor am I bothered by the mentioned potential consequences. Those consequences are a result of our dysfunctional government and social systems, not the exploitation itself.

Bullshit. The people who aren't US citizens have some inherent moral worth, even if it isn't as high as a citizen's.

Perhaps to you. But I'm not speaking from your perspective. If it was not clear, I began my post with "I will not...".

What a trivial response. Yes, we all understand that you speak from your perspective. I'm asserting that you are wrong. Or do you claim that your perspective is just that, unfounded and unsupported? Something that has about as much relevance to it as a discussion about one's favorite color?

You asked why employers would not be immoral. I told you why. That you disagree is noted but pointless -- there is no right or wrong in morality save that which we decide. What response are you expecting? I don't care if you think I'm wrong, I wasn't asking you for permission to have my moral values.

I'm expecting some kind of justification or elaboration. Your position is drastically out of the Overton Window, but you assert it as if it wasn't.

You want me to explain my values? It would have been easier if you'd just asked for that in the first place. I don't bother with this often because values, being terminal as they so often are, have no real value being communicated to someone with different intuitions. So I'll answer this for you, but I expect it to not be persuasive.

So, broadly, I reject notions of universal right and wrong. Whether something is moral or not is a personal choice we make for ourselves, which we then pit against the collective opinions of the society around us in the hopes of making our personal aesthetics the community norm. For myself, this moral aesthetic is tribal, with concentric rings of fidelity based on first personal and blood relationships and then on social and symbolic relationships. Me against my brother; my brother and me against our cousin; my brother, my cousin, and me against my town; my town and me against our state; my state and me against.. etc., etc.

The wider out those circles get, usually, the weaker the connection felt and loyalties owed. Furthermore, it is always moral to support an inner ring over an outer ring, provided that support does not violate a different inner ring. Some examples:

If my brother gets in a fight with a stranger, I take my brother's side. If my brother gets in a fight with my sister, I evaluate their conflict on its personal merits and intervene or not as I deem appropriate.

If my town is having a competition with other towns in the region, I support my town. I'll root for my local teams and prioritize local businesses. This extends up to the national boundary: I'll support Team USA over Team France in any given sport, and if I had to pick between the world dying off or America dying off I'd sacrifice the world in a heartbeat.

I am not swayed by any common brotherhood of man, so my widest circle of concern is the country itself. This is also the weakest circle, and it is on the threshold of ceasing to be one entirely due to the culture war; the more proof I see that 'the nation' is not really a coherent group that shares my values anymore, the less I feel a part of it. As it stands, the country is roughly split into Red America and Blue America -- I'm still loyal to Red America, but I've firmly checked out of Blue.

Relating this back to the illegals issue, it is simply not offensive to my moral sensibilities for the in-group to violate the out-group. Illegals have no positive moral worth whatsoever to me. I will not support punishing employers for skimming illegal wages and using them as cheap labor for the benefit of the rest of us. There is nothing you can do to an illegal, as an American citizen, that bothers me, other than helping them get here to begin with.

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The pragmatic problem with that, is that it gives the businesses an incentive to vote for and lobby politicians who will not then crack down on illegal immigrants.

If Farmers (an important lobby in rural Red heartlands) have an incentive to keep them, then Red politicians have the incentive to keep them. If you allow farmers to employ them, then the fed's will never sort them out. The Blues won't and neither will the Reds no matter who is in charge.

Yes, they have incentives to work against my interests. That's how coalitions work, unfortunately -- I don't begrudge the farmers their desire to profit, but it doesn't mean I'm willing to accede to it, either. The appropriate response then would be for the non-farmers, who are numerically superior, to vote out the politicians.

Right, but if you give them incentives to work against your interests, it becomes harder to achieve your interests. Hence removing that incentive will make it easier to reach your goals. Whether you morally condemn farmers, pragmatically you should work towards it. A two-pronged strategy. The reason Republican politicians don't do that is that farmer's lobbies are locally powerful.

Yep, it can be difficult to work against incentives. But I do not have any moral qualms with said incentives, so I can't bring myself to support removing them or punishing them. I am not a consequentialist; just because something would help me achieve a goal doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing to do. Sometimes, the ends don't justify the means.

I'm fundamentally okay with my peers having different political terminal values from me, and pitting electoral might versus electoral might. But I do not want to criminalize their behavior merely because it's not helpful to me.

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