correct, and WHY is it being redefined?

ironically in a way its a perversion of the evolution of language.

if i call you a fascist, but the definition of fascism in most people's minds has still lagged to be literally Hitler, then its more impactful than what i want to redefine it to, i want people to think Hitler when i call you that. it's exploitation of the zeitgeist to make labelling theory more impactful. then Webster and others try and fail to keep up with the zeitgeist as the people move on to the next term to be weaponized.

this isn't even a left thing or right thing, both sides do it. in the last few years both parties have called people in office traitors, without even knowing the definition of treason.

Holy shit, that's sense.

I need to re-think my opinion of you now.

well its more in general the distinction between redefining words as a natural consequence of human language evolving, and redefining words as a replacement for an argument. Words can change meaning slowly or quickly, people can make novel associations that catch on, or bastardize old words and corrupt them until its accepted. Words and language only serve to express concepts, and as long as they're doing that job, there's no absolute baseline of purity to them and no reason to obsess over authoritative definitions. What does matter is when someone is trying to make that partisan political argument, and in lieu of any coherent logic they just try to force redefinitions of words to play upon stigma and specious reasoning. It generally boils down to the most basic and idiotic form of human reasoning where you assign prejudice to labels and categorize everything as either good or bad, so you want to apply good labels to concepts you like and bad labels to concepts you hate. Racism is bad, therefore my politics are anti-racist but people I don't like are racist. And so they try to redefine racism to say that explicit discrimination against white and asian people or in favor of black people isn't racist, but merely quoting well evidenced statistical numbers is a hate crime. You don't actually change any of the logic of the concepts being expressed, just poison the discourse of how they are expressed. Rather than words serving as a tool for communication. Semantics and pedantry are the most masturbatory exercise of unintellectual vanity

I wasn't claiming a dichotomy.

The debate was about which of the two is preferable. was essentially arguing that there are no good, substantive reasons to favor intrinsic growth over immigration, and from this assertion (implicitly but unmistakably) implied that a society favoring its own children over immigrants can only happen due to racism or xenophobia, hence all the drivel about ethnostates, fascism-lite and such. I laid out a non-racist argument why self-sustaining birth rates are preferable, one which hadn't been brought up yet in the debate.


A good mix of both things is of course possible and also optimal: bringing up domestic birth rates and combining it with a smart immigration policy.




In any case, the claim that "a society favoring its own children over mass immigration is fascism" is a very apt summary of what the political left believes in and stands for these days.
But hey, if half this sub wants to think of me as a clueless, out of touch, un-self-aware fool for saying that Democrats and liberals have zoomed to the left over the past 20 years, then so be it.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 2 2022 03:23pm

except it wasn't. I was drawing a parallel between void's position and ethnonationalism, which is pretty clear.

As for which is better, allowing lots of immigrants to come in and giving pathways to assimilation is by far the lower barrier. Having kids within your own country is expensive as fuuuuuck. An immigrant that works a basic job will probably out-contribute the vast majority of natives simply because they didn't go 18 years as a pure drain on the system.

What is it called where you don't think a qualified person should have a job based on fashion?

This post was edited by Skinned on May 2 2022 03:43pm

He was invoking a Darwinian argument: that the natural behavior of any group of living beings is to want to pass on their genes (and in the case of humans also their memes), and that it's deeply fucked up and - in a Darwinian sense - unnatural when a particular society would rather attempt to let strangers carry on its legacy and instiutions just to (hypothetically) save a few bucks on education and childcare spending. Which brings me to the next point:



This is only true if several conditions are met:

1. the migrant is qualified enough that he ends up in a job where he pays enough taxes to become a net contributor to society. No, a pool boy or uber driver is not gonna be a great boon. From a societal perspective, it would be more efficient to automate these jobs or to fill them with unemployed already living in the country.
2. the migrant is young enough to build up his own retirement plan and doesn't end up on Social Security. A guy in his 40s would be too old unless he's super qualified/productive.
3. the migrant doesn't eventually bring in a lot of low(er)-productivity relatives via chain migration.
4. the migrant is successfully assimilating.



You're probably thinking of cases where there's a bright young dude coming to a U.S. college, but China/India or so paid for his primary and secondary education. Yes, in cases like that, it would of course be a huge win if he stays after graduating and boosts the productivity in the U.S. rather than in his home country. But that's far from the norm, and no, Mexican high school dropouts are not making the U.S. a more prosperous place.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 2 2022 03:49pm

Immigrants whether first generation legal immigrants or illegal immigrants consume far more social benefits than they pay back in taxes or productivity. Its the second generation immigrants who are the net positive, and they're natives who spent 18 years as a pure drain on the system until they become contributors. Illegal immigrants are obviously a huge net burden, somewhere like 2-3x the benefits and services as household taxes, not surprising. But first generation immigrants up until social security age consume more social benefits than native households and contribute far less, being less educated and earning less. It takes something like 2-3 generations before its a net positive for immigrant households, benefiting more at the federal level (more income taxes, less senior benefits) and taking longer at state and local levels (more education, less sales taxes)

this has all been based on the prior waves of immigration, so it could be subject to change. If America had taken in a bunch of syrians and ethiopians and they lived in enclaves in segregated societies like sweden, I imagine it would be a huge net burden even into 2nd and 3rd generations. Minneapolis has something similar with the Somali population. Prior American immigration for centuries was bringing hard working and motivated people who worked low level jobs but raised their kids to the American dream, assimilating into the melting pot. Now its more about expanding a permanent underclass dependent on social services. And societal pressures actually discourage immigrants from advancing their family's achievement as overachieving Chinese kids are discriminated against in education.

Its really a Malthusian argument, that there isn't enough stuff for everybody in America, where we throw away food and have tons of empty space and buildings.

how do you suppose the domestic home grown population measures up against the standards you're holding the immigrants to?