Guest post: Roost, meet chicken
Originally a comment by Rob on The motives.
When you’re part of a dominant culture, as I am, and I suspect most of us here, it’s always more comfortable to keep things much as they are. Sure let in some ‘ethnics’. It gives us great choice in restaurants after all, but at the same time we don’t want to deal with different language, religions, restrictions on marriage or schooling. Sometimes for good reason perhaps, sometimes not.
But western centrist governments have all wanted to promote some flavour of globalism, particularly with respect to free or low barrier trade. Ask most economists and they’ll tell you there is no truly free trade without free migration. Labour is a resource, and for a free market to flourish, that resource has to be able to follow demand. Most developed countries don’t want that of course. Partly through outright racism, partly because we’ve got it very comfortable thank you. Competing against migrants hungry for a better life and willing to work for it isn’t appealing. We also don’t like to be reminded that part of the reason so many people want to come to the west is because we’ve spent most of the last few hundred years fucking over their countries to enrich ours. Roost, meet chicken.
OB: OK. But where do you draw the line.? England (calling itself for the exercise ‘Britain’) conquered half the world, beginning with Henry VIII’s war on Ireland. But England was previously itself conquered by the Romans and the Norman French, and raided from the sea, whenever it suited them to do so, by the Danes.
As far as I can see, there has only ever been one rule operating throughout history: ‘If you can’t defend it, you don’t own it.’ And it operates at all levels, from the international down to the individual dwelling in a suburban street.
(I pay my taxes. If some gang of goons wants to invade my place, I won’t have to beat them off myself. I’ll just call the cops, and let them do it for me.)
Such ‘free marketeers’ are commonly in favour of selective deregulation. But they ignore the fact that the instituton of private property is the most fundamental economic regulation that there is. It controls ‘use value’.
Yes, this is the problem with the Woke division of the world into the strict categories “Indigenous” and “Non-indigenous” peoples. Is the category “indigenous” useful, perhaps even necessary, in some situations? Absolutely. But at some point the category begins to break down and crumble.
(I know, my comment is only tangentially related to the subject of the main post, but it’s related to Omar’s comment.)
Omar, as this is my guest post I guess I have to defend it, not Ophelia. :-)
I don’t have to draw a line. Clearly I’m not personally in favour of the unrestricted flow of people into New Zealand. My familiar, comfortable, and secular way of life would be severely challenged, if not destroyed. That doesn’t stop me from recognising why other people want to migrate or are refugees though. It also doesn’t prevent me from supporting New Zealand taking an annual quota of refugees and believing that we could and should absorb a greater number.
Sure, strength has always spoken, but that’s the law tooth and claw. Some of us would rather not live that way. The idealised goal of globalism is to lift everyone and create such a level of co-dependancy and understanding that war and aggression would be both inconceivable and unproductive.
Living in a country that survives through trade, is at the end of the world’s supply chains, and is amongst, if not the most, deregulated trading nation in the world, I recognise the tensions inherent in the economic and immigration stance we take.
I’m recalling economist Dani Rodrik’s somewhat famed trilemma, where you have three things: democracy, globalization, and nationalism. The trilemma is that you can have only two of them fully. So you can have democracy and nationalism, but no free trade with other nations. Or you can have democracy and globalization with a global government. Or you can have globalzation and nationalism with democracy being limited within nation-states. Things can be traded off in a way that you can partially have each all three of course, but never all three fully.
Migration falls under globalization, so if you want full democracy you have to make them citizens of whatever place they reside. This sounds feasible, until it runs up against deep nationalist sentiments that happen to be held by a majority, and they vote to not allow alien residents the right to vote. The compromise position is that you have a process to make migrants full citizens, although in the case of the many nations there are limits, or quotas, put in place that don’t allow just anyone to come. So no full globalization then either.
Rob: My apologies for overlooking that fine distinction. ;-)
J.A::
Most Muslim immigrants to Australia that I know and as far as I can tell are not religious fanatics and just want to get on with life and improve things for their families and communities as best they can. But lurking in the background and nursed along by the Islamic clerics, is the notion of the eventual world triumph of Islam and the division of the human population of the Earth into (superior) believers and (inferior) non-believers, or the ummah and the [choke! caaargh! splutter! hawk! spit!*] dhimmis. Added to this is the fact that, apart from the oil-rich states, the Islamic world is an economic basket case, due in great part to the stifling effect of the koranic education systems on its scientific and technical progress.
The triumph of philosophy (included in which is science) and liberal democracy over religion in the Western world took around 1,500 years, and is still in many ways a work in progress, particularly in the US of A. But Islam has contempt for democracy, and no place for it. Islamic believers thus qualify in a way as people infected with a contagious mental disease. Any non-Islamic society will import them in large numbers at its own peril, as I think the recent history of Europe has shown.
And right on cue, enter Fatima Bhutto.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/10/rage-men-lynching-priyantha-kumara-pakistan-india
Omar, being mistaken for Ophelia, even if as a complete oversight, is the highlight of my year. :-)
Rob,
I do not comment here under my real name. But I’ll let you in on a little secret.
My real name is Santa Claus.
In that case, I have a list…