Out of curiosity, why does being an immigrant make you lean towards conservatism? You realize one of the biggest conservative talking points in the past 4 years is how immigrants are “stealing” their jobs?
Not the comment author you replied to, but I didn't read it as 'I immigrated, therefore it infers I'm conservative". Rather I read it as they were stating two independent facts about themselves.
On the topic of the 'Talking Point' you're referring to. I don't know anyone who has voiced concern with legal immigration (I live in predominately conservative area). I will agree illegal immigration is a talking point.
Conservatives aren't a monolithic voting bloc, unlike what the media tells you.
There are conservatives who are okay with legal and high skilled/high paid immigration (which I am one). No one is stealing highly paid, trading, fintech, programming jobs, with above $200k/year salary here.
I can confidently say that ALL (100%) of conservatives, are not in favor of illegal immigration, and not in favor of low skilled immigration.
Some other points that conservatives are (some of these are libertarian, but conservatives and libertarian often have similar interests), which are aligned with me:
- Economy matters, bring back local jobs, bring back local manufacturing
- Small government, less government spending, less taxes for useless government spending, less wars, less meddling with other countries problem
- Personal freedom and responsibilities
- Self sufficiency
- No to unrestricted abortion
- No to stimulus checks
- No to constant lockdown
- No to UBI
- No to student loan forgiveness
- We can define what is a woman and what is a man
- No to defund the police
- All Lives Matter, including Asian and White lives
A lot of immigrants actually have the same interests aligned with conservatives, based on the points above.
I think immigrants know firsthand how it feels like to:
- Have incompetent government, corrupt government, corrupt media
- Have freeloaders everywhere taking advantage of the system, we are here to work, to make money, not to support those who don't
- Have violence on the street as a result of police have no teeth
- Asian immigrants, experience bias in not being hired/accepted into school, due to Affirmative Action and Diversity Inclusion practice. Asian immigrants on average, economically, actually less better than Blacks
So we don't want the countries where we immigrate to, to avoid the problems in the first place, to have the problems we want to avoid.
Immigrants also, prefer traditional gender/sex in society. Doesn't mean that woman can't be a plumber, sure they can. We just don't prefer gender fluidity/spectrum to be taught in schools to our children. The reason being, it introduces weakness to the population. Man should be strong, independent (not talking about toxic masculinity), and woman also have very important roles in society. Gender fluidity/spectrum contributes to confusion and undermines the future of the population. That's not to say we don't have trans in our society. We do, and we are okay with that, but they have to play by the rules of the majority. They can't go into man's bahtroom if they are born woman, and vice versa. They can't join woman's sports if they are born man. We are also not okay to make it normalized in school and getting shoved on it by the media.
There is way too much to unpack in this comment, so I'll just laser focus on how incredible it is that you somehow managed to rationalize "we are ok with trans people existing" and "they should live by the rules of the majority, not how they want to live" as two non-conflicting statements, when they are so very obviously contradictory. If there is a condition attached to a group of people existing, then you're not really ok with their existance.
How about this. Fences make good neighbors. You stay in your lane, I stay in my lane. We are as humans are different. Our values, our philosophies are different. Attempt to do multiculturalism and diversity will have push back.
In Asia, we don't want LGBTQ ideology to influence our children. The majority decides the rules. That's how in most societies are. I know USA and EU prefers the minority rules (as Taleb said, tyranny of minority), but most in Asia prefers majority rules. We don't prevent LGBTQ people from being employed, we don't kill them. Our understanding of what "oppression" and "offensive" means stricter than western understanding, where everything is offensive and oppressive.
Asia is mostly ethnic nation (like Japan, South Korea, China), not a civic nation. Even in a civic nation such as Indonesia, still prefer the rules of the majority. Harmony of the majority takes precedence compared to individual preference.
Now back to the US. US is mostly a free country, anyone can do anything here (for the most part). Hence personal freedom and individual responsibility:
- We don't want LGBTQ ideology in our children. We consider that our freedom, to teach our kids our ways. We don't want foreign ideology to be taught to our children who still can't think for themselves
- We value human beings who still cannot decide for themselves whether they want to live or die, to be killed by abortion. This is not strictly a religious issue.
After someone is born, then it is up to their families, themselves, to be a good functioning member of the society. If they become criminal, or if they become poor and stupid due to their own life choices, then it is not up to the society to help them with more social support. Personal responsibilities and individual freedom.
I'm saying for the most part because, there is no truly free society in this world. Every society has its boundaries, limits, and that's mostly decided by power struggle.
Hence why we have conservativsm, left ideology, right ideology. It is all power struggle. We don't pretend that you respect me I respect you we live in harmony and sing kumbaya. Because that doesn't exist. We are all different, and at some point the rules decided by "the others" will influence how we live our lives. So yes we are not okay with some rules.
The world is filled with contradiction. It is the way it is. You can use your religion, or lack of one, or humanitarianism, or any other ideology, to push your own agenda in your own little corners. We all do that. Let's stop pretending.
It's not too nice to have to leave your country just to get peace of mind.
But yeah, overall it's pretty nice not to care about those things. You quickly realize, caring or not caring make very little difference (if any). And you also realize you can be a lot more useful by not embracing divisive rhetorics.
Sorry, I think I didn't express myself properly. My point was that the people involved in those movements unfortunately are not allowed to stop caring about them, as the problems they denounce won't magically go away.
I understood your original comment, my answer was a bit off topic and sarcastic on purpose.
I clearly have met enough black people who would define themselves by their race and did not take part in any organization that just promote racial adversity.
I have even done a fair share of charity work in Benin in 2019 and so I have seen a fair share of people who clearly did not get any geographical benefit. For some of them, life was hard.
To these days I have yet to meet someone who got anything positive off the anti white rhetoric. It’s like a self help book, it might feel good, but it does not put any food on the table.
And so, since I have the freedom to do, I decide to vote with my feet and avoid any places that promotes this kind of ideologies.
I need calm to be able to think and all of this nonsense is impeding my capacity to think.
Plus, I prefer to pay taxes in a place that does not favor gender or racial quotas.
It wasn't even 30 minutes ago that I read someone defending a nuclear war as it would (paraphrasing) "solve the problem of overpopulation while also taking down some commies".
Oh yeah, I saw this one a few times both on Reddit and here with some delusion justification that we would be able to stop everyone else’s Nikes, but they couldn’t stop ours.
I like the regex example, but the others wouldn't pass code review from me, unfortunately. Reducing a couple lines isn't worth the code being less obvious.
The reason why I'm against self driving cars is simply the fact that they're cars at all. I sincerely have no idea why we are collectively spending so much time and resources to avoid the solution we've had for years: public transportation. I would much rather live in a world where I have to deal with the minor inconvenience that is waiting 20 minutes for a train to arrive but get to my destination cheaply and easily than all the insane beaurocracy and overhead that comes with cars existing at all.
> I would much rather live in a world where I have to deal with the minor inconvenience that is waiting 20 minutes for a train to arrive but get to my destination cheaply and easily
I'm much happier to put up with the expense, bureaucracy, and overhead of owning a car than I would be if every trip, every day of my life took 20 minutes longer (and for a lot of places I go, 20 minutes is an underestimate). If you'd choose the opposite, that's fine, but don't do things like banning cars that would restrict my choice. That's just as unfair as banning public transit would be.
We're in agreement then. My ideal world is one where we have cities designed for public transportation (including walking), which would eliminate or at the very least reduce the current problems those methods of transportation currently have for everyone, while the current system provides somewhat efficient transportation but only for those who can afford it. I think spending money and human resources into improving cars instead of public transportation just exacerbates that problem, so it just frustrates me on a personal level to see that this is the direction we're headed to.
Self driving cars could be the public transportation of the future. Like taxis with the fraction of the price. It would be something that would dramatically reduce the need for private cars in sparsely populated areas, and even reduce the need for short and medium length flights.
I love public transportation, but the possibility of low cost taxis is very exciting.
If you like public transportation, then I’m delighted. I hate it and don’t want it forced on me. I think that ultimately autonomous cars are likely to replace much of public transportation, or at least be a large part of such a system.
The problem is we're currently living in the opposite situation, one which is so normalized most people don't even realize it. We have entire cities built around and for cars instead of people, with public transportation treated as an afterthought and just walking to places not even considered as a possibility. I wouldn't want to force public transportation on people either, but pretending the alternative of forcing cars on everyone else is better, desirable or not current isn't productive.
The down payment is probably more significant than what your comment lets on. While I haven’t experienced this, it’s not uncommon to hear young people complain that their rent is more expensive than a lease and there’s nothing to be done about it because they can’t afford the down payment.
It’s not conspirational to assume that advertising and marketing is part of forming the status quo, by virtue of those fields literally exploiting human weaknesses to do so. If they simply reflected what consumer want, not only would they not have a reason to exist, but if they did they wouldn’t need to resort to endless amounts of FOMO to get you to buy Season 329 of their Battle Pass.
In 2022, it would be stupid to make a game that doesn't have some sort of battle pass and dopamine-drip progression system. Way fewer people would play your game and gamers would complain without them. People genuinely enjoy these systems, just like they genuinely enjoy reality TV over a documentary or TikTok over long-form Youtube videos. It's an obvious trend that won't be fixed if we misunderstand the issue and assume that people don't want these things and they're being pushed by advertising.
How do you know people want these things? Do you actually think “yay! I love that this new game has a battle pass system and lootboxes” is a common sentiment? The point is that there is no choice. Sure, companies are very likely making more money off these systems than otherwise, but to say this is because people want it doesn’t ring true to me, simply because they can’t just pivot to a similar game without them, or avoid it entirely. Games like Fortnite are so predatory on monetization that they strip you out of even choosing the base nothingburger characters available for free, instead randomizing which one you get per match to force you to buy something to even have a consistent player model you somewhat like. That kids, a demographic that’s by nature desperate to express themselves, spend piles of money on these systems is no surprise. Not to mention the fact that they’re too young to know there’s even an alternative at all.
There’s also mountains of evidence that contradict the statement that a game without a battle pass won’t succeed. One of the most profitable and respected MMOs currently is Final Fantasy XIV, a game that has nothing like it, in the genre that had micro-transactions and lootboxes before most people even heard the terms. Middle Earth Shadows of War is also a great game that was ruined by loot boxes and progression systems, where the outcry was so big that the developers completely removed them after the fact.
Two economists walk by an exotic car dealership. One economist points at a Ferrari and says to the other, "I want one of those." The other economist says, "Obviously you don't, otherwise you'd have one already!"
I took a sabbatical month between jobs, living in a (somewhat cushy) emergency fund, and while we were traveling my partner got sick with something and had to be rushed to a hospital. I called an ambulance at 7AM, and by noon she was back in bed, medicated and feeling much better. We didn’t spend a single dime, not even on the medication, and it’s crazy to me to think that if we were in the US that experience would’ve basically bankrupt us for no reason other than bad timing.
It’s in these moments that the fact that I’ve paid an absurd amount in taxes over the years just… disappears.
Who is "us" here? Abusive customers? I can't fathom someone coming into a store being nice as expected and a retail over fucking them over just because.
I worked as a tech guy in a store for about three years, more than 15 years ago. I had a lot of autonomy in deciding what I could and couldn't do, what I would charge, whether I would waive charged, etc.
At some point you just get jaded. You have this nice guy and it's all fine and you even go beyond what you need to do for them (sometimes even taking things home because they really needed it at 9am in the morning) and they're so thankful. And then they show up three days later even though you TOLD THEM you would take in home in the evening so they could have it by 9am the next day and they will shout at you over the €40 we agreed on like you just punched them in the face.
Then there are the people who will physically threaten and even assault you... Had a few cases of that too.
For those (profoundly) negative interaction you may have had a whole bunch of positive interactions, but negative interactions just register so much stronger. When you drive or cycle to work you may encounter hundreds or even thousands of other cars, but you only remember that one asshole.
It's been a long time since I worked there, and I've had some time to reflect on things and my attitude when I worked there, and I'm also a bit older now. But if you're in the thick of it in your 20s ... yeah, it's complicated. If you're not careful you get jaded, start treating everyone like a potential asshole, and after a few years it becomes harder and harder to really care like you probably should and did when you first started.
And for what it's worth, I do miss that job sometimes; I could really help regular folks in a very direct and satisfying way that I rarely do as a software developer.
I don’t know, but if it were me being subjected to that, all customers would likely start looking the same and I’d probably not be sympathetic to giving them the benefit of the doubt. I definitely could be wrong but I suspect there are a lot of tired retail workers out there.
