Re: STATE-OF-THE-WORLD: It makes you want to cry

From: Randy (cryofan@mylinuxisp.com)
Date: Fri Jun 28 2002 - 05:44:44 MDT


On Thu, 27 Jun 2002 21:07:25 -0700, you wrote:

>Anders Sandberg wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 05:53:09PM -0400, Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
>>
>> Exactly my point! Not everything the Chinese government is evil/stupid,
>> but one should always be careful about ideas one finds oneself sharing
>> with it.
>>
>> Prime minister Göran Person told the media recently that he was all for
>> labour immigration, but only after all Swedes and current immigrants had
>> jobs. Which is a way of saying "never" that sounds nicer - but it is
>> still both a stupid and immoral policy.

How the hell is that "immoral"??!

> The same goes for most other applications of "you can get X, but only after you have achieved Y".

You can't have any pudding until you eat your meat. How can you have
any pudding if you can't eat your meat? Nuff said...

>I disagree. I've seen estimates that due to the economic and
>especially tech sector crunch there are on the order of half a
>million highly trained American technical workers unemployed.
>At the same time we want to increase the number of H1B visas for
>lower cost foreign technical workers. Free trade is fine but
>failing to take care of people or leave any room for them to
>exercise their skills without vastly lowering their standard of
>living leaves much to be desired in our so-called "progress" as
>far as it is manifest at the social and economic level of
>people's lives.

If this were a story on Fark.com, there would of course be an
"obvious" tag attached...

>There is nothing a priori immoral about taking care of the
>people already in one's constituency before adding to their
>numbers. There is nothing a priori moral about wide-open
>immigration without consideration of its effects. I thought we
>generally agreed here that morality is not a matter of absolutes
>in the first place. So how can it be "immoral" to consider the
>relative harm and benefit of a particular action at a particular
>time and place?

Samanatha, samantha, now maybe I am wrong, but did you not slander me
grievously on this same list when I broached the topic of cutting off
immigration, oh, a year or two ago? Or am I mistaking you for someone
else?



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