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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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but existing homeowners are a powerful bloc.

Build new cities, then. It is incredibly frustrating to me to hear any blame for all of this garbage placed on the people that currently live in the places people want to go. How are people unable to see that this is the exact same argument that allows for massive immigration in the first place?

Hey bro, just decrease your own quality of life so that some people who don't currently live near you can live near you and get some of that quality you are currently enjoying.

No.

It's such an entitled mindset to demand that the locals re-arrange their city to make things convenient for someone who showed up two weeks ago on a dodgy student visa. Not everyone wants to live like they're in the Kowloon walled city.

And if you do want to live in Kowloon walled city, then good for you: go build it somewhere else where you don’t have to destroy the lives of the people living there.

Fully support building whatever configuration of city you can come up with, as long as the current residents are okay with it. If that means finding a place with no residents, then go do that. And by the way, I hope you power it with nuclear power, make cars illegal, ban Christians and whatever else you dream of. Go wild. Just leave me alone.

That's easy to say when every attempt at doing so is frustrated with extreme prejudice.

Turns out you've also made it illegal to build my libertarian paradise in the middle of a nowhere that I fully paid for. And people who try to do it despite this get evicted and shot by government goons. As they did in Kowloon.

"You can't build it anywhere near me and near me is the entire universe" is an interesting notion of being left alone.

Well what if I want you to leave me alone? What about that? Where can I go exactly that doesn't make it illegal for a man to build what he wants on his own property?

I'll go to the edge of the world, Mars if I have to, I just want to be away from the sort of people who think my property is their business but theirs isn't mine.

So is it spite or something? Some person won’t let you build Kowloon walled city so now you need to punish them by ruining their home?

I’m 100% on your side if you want to build a giant condo block out on the outskirts, out in the middle of nowhere, or even in the middle of the city if the residents want you to.

All I’m saying is: the people who live in a city have a right to have say in what their city looks like, just like the residents of a country have a right to say who immigrates into their county. The government should work on behalf of the people who currently live in their city/state/country, not on behalf of people who want to move there.

If me and my neighbors don’t want you to build condos here, then leave us alone.

The government should work on behalf of the people who currently live in their city/state/country, not on behalf of people who want to move there.

The problem is of course, as soon as someone moves there, the government now should be representing their interests too no? If you and 30 neighbors don't want condos, then 50 people move in and decide condos would be just peachy, you are outvoted and the condos should be built. You don't get seniority for length of habitation. That seems to be the logical outcome of your position if it just based on the will of those who live there?

Yes exactly. If a bunch of people move into the neighborhood and then all collectively decide that they want to bulldoze the houses they own and build condos, that’s what they get to do.

And what a perfect analogy for immigration this is! And why limited, careful immigration policies are so important! An Irish Catholic with 3 kids and a mechanical engineering degree who wants to move to Texas and work at SpaceX to work on starship? Come on in, buddy!

A single 24 year old Muslim man from Somalia who thinks we should execute gay people, has no education whatsoever, and calls himself a refugee? No probably not, specifically because the first guy already shares the culture of the place he’s moving and won’t really change it, and the second guy doesn’t and will.

Yes exactly. If a bunch of people move into the neighborhood and then all collectively decide that they want to bulldoze the houses they own and build condos, that’s what they get to do.

And when they vote to bulldoze YOUR house and build condos invoking eminent domain, because they have more votes than you?

How are you making a jump from “people can decide to bulldoze the houses they own” to “people can bulldoze the houses that I own”?

Yes eminent domain is awful. Down with eminent domain.

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