All we are is dust in the wind. (Song lyrics) Alex: Contra Tyler, the lesson of history is that few things are as effective at launching a revolution as is moral argument. Without the firebrand Thomas “We have it in our power to begin the world over again“ Paine, the American Revolution would probably never have happened. (
It is only the details that are unpredictable in chaos theory. For example, imagine an earthquake hits a room with a pencil balanced on its point. The final direction of the pencil may be highly unpredictable, but it falling over is not.
Similarly adding a third body to a two-body gravitational system often results in a chaotic outcome. However, it dramatically increases the chances of a collision. Some influence can be usefully and predictably different from no influence - even if the details of the outcome are unpredictable.
You originally argued that the "vast majority of such influences quickly disappear". This seems rather contrary to the findings of chaos theory. The problem is more often not that your influence "disappears", but that its effects are unpredictable.
I'm not sure that "tipping points" have to be as rare as (I think) you are claiming. I suspect that most people don't *want* to influence social events. Or rather, most people don't want to influence social events *enough*; it takes a lot of work to run a revolution.
Keeping with the metaphor theme: If we imagine the "great world events" as a boulders that began rolling, there might be a lot of them and they might be relatively easy to push. Maybe as many as 1 in 1000 have the intelligence/charisma/whatever to get things going. But less than than 1 in a million actually complete the climb up the hill to check if they are such a person.
The problem with your analogy between migration within a country and between countries is that where you have cultures that award very disparate status for the same income, the lower-paid workers become wage undercutters. (There are some jobs at some wages that "native" workers refuse categorically, which would force hire wages without the immigrants).
Although it hasn't been clearly posed this way (because of the left's confusion), the real immigration issue is one of economic equality. (Within a country—but across countries too--where undercutters may be found somewhere for every national wage.) In the U.S., restricting immigration historically has been one of the primary roads to some greater equality. ( http://www.aeonmagazine.com... )
At least in my country Finland, a blogger (Jussi Halla-Aho) changed radically the immigration debate, got elected and affected the policy. Relying both on stats, cases, hypocrisy of the opposition and moral argument. I don't care personally either way. But my nation is small. I doubt the same is possible in a country like US though.
Well, actually in the case of Jesus there were a lot of competing "prophets", it's entirely possible this was also the case with Muhammed. These things are usually about viral effects with many competitors and one person winning through what is 99% luck and 1% some minor advantage(s) that are really only apparent with 20/20 hindsight.
"On balance (from an economic perspective), immigration is good, not bad ..."
"On balance" does nothing for the individual unless there's a generous welfare state that distributes the benefits to all.
Also, immigration is only good, even "on balance: up to a point: I can assure you that if all of South America moved to the US and Canada or all of Africa to Europe or all of India to China then the US, Canada, Europe and China would have severe problems with housing, traffic, health care, education, crime and unemployment. Perhaps things would improve for the world population as a whole (that's not obvious though: even poor Africans would be giving up some things, like living space and relative social standing), but the populations of the US, Canada, Europe and China would be worse off and it is in their interest to vote agaisnt open borders when they have the chance.
"doing the work that many "natives" refuse to do."
Refuse to do or refuse to do for less than proper minimum wage?
If the question posed here is: "how can a random individual with the will to create a lasting, great legacy best proceed?" Then the answer is, it doesn't really matter what they do, there's too much coincidence, too many viral effects going on, too much competition. This changes when the person is not a random person but someone who is already famous and respected (like Thomas Paine) or in some other way influential, even being a male with at least average height, a chiseled face and a low voice increases your chances, hell just having the idea of wanting to create that legacy and not being too lazy to try probably already puts you in the top 10% (which still means you have millions of competitors). As a whole society can also produce great legacies if a lot of average people try and a few get lucky.
Why all this anti-migrant hysteria, especially when all of us (except the Indians) are descended from immigrants. Sure, some migrants are bad, but many more are good, doing the work that many "natives" refuse to do. On balance (from an economic perspective), immigration is good, not bad ...
Peter Thiele says that the only way to make money on a company is to figure out what you believe in that others do not, and that this is how most successful companies make money.
In other words, you're banking on the fact that people don't have perfect information, and that there are market inefficiencies. Perhaps Paine was banking on the same thing...
Imported toasters don’t consume handouts, undermine public education, demand racial quotas, impose linguistic divisions, bring a 50%+ illegitimacy rate, raise crime rates (a lot), make housing unaffordable, increase gridlock, consume scarce natural resources, etc.
People are not goods. Its an easy point (we fought a Civil War over this very subject). However, the market mania (and dominant cosmopolitan elitism) of our time has obscured this lesson. In the words of the late Swiss writer Max Frisch:
”We wanted workers, we got people.”
Max Frisch had something else to say that’s just as important. He wrote a play, “THE FIREBUGS,”
The play is a classic cautionary drama from 1958 in which a city is terrorized by unknown arsonists. Frisch compares the advent of the arsonists to the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia and to Hitler’s rise to power.
A quote from Frisch
“What everyone could see coming for so long duly came in the end: stupidity, never to be extinguished, now to be called fate.”
One of the best condemnations of Open Borders, ever.
It is only the details that are unpredictable in chaos theory. For example, imagine an earthquake hits a room with a pencil balanced on its point. The final direction of the pencil may be highly unpredictable, but it falling over is not.
Similarly adding a third body to a two-body gravitational system often results in a chaotic outcome. However, it dramatically increases the chances of a collision. Some influence can be usefully and predictably different from no influence - even if the details of the outcome are unpredictable.
For the purposes of your decisions, unpredictable influence is the same as no influence.
You originally argued that the "vast majority of such influences quickly disappear". This seems rather contrary to the findings of chaos theory. The problem is more often not that your influence "disappears", but that its effects are unpredictable.
But not large expected changes.
Note that the butterfly effect in chaos theory suggests that small random changes often go on to have enormous effects.
Tipping points are points in the space of the system as a whole, they are not features of particular people.
I'm not sure that "tipping points" have to be as rare as (I think) you are claiming. I suspect that most people don't *want* to influence social events. Or rather, most people don't want to influence social events *enough*; it takes a lot of work to run a revolution.
Keeping with the metaphor theme: If we imagine the "great world events" as a boulders that began rolling, there might be a lot of them and they might be relatively easy to push. Maybe as many as 1 in 1000 have the intelligence/charisma/whatever to get things going. But less than than 1 in a million actually complete the climb up the hill to check if they are such a person.
To be fair the guy had to go viral as a blogger first, that's pre-selection.
The problem with your analogy between migration within a country and between countries is that where you have cultures that award very disparate status for the same income, the lower-paid workers become wage undercutters. (There are some jobs at some wages that "native" workers refuse categorically, which would force hire wages without the immigrants).
Although it hasn't been clearly posed this way (because of the left's confusion), the real immigration issue is one of economic equality. (Within a country—but across countries too--where undercutters may be found somewhere for every national wage.) In the U.S., restricting immigration historically has been one of the primary roads to some greater equality. ( http://www.aeonmagazine.com... )
At least in my country Finland, a blogger (Jussi Halla-Aho) changed radically the immigration debate, got elected and affected the policy. Relying both on stats, cases, hypocrisy of the opposition and moral argument. I don't care personally either way. But my nation is small. I doubt the same is possible in a country like US though.
Well, actually in the case of Jesus there were a lot of competing "prophets", it's entirely possible this was also the case with Muhammed. These things are usually about viral effects with many competitors and one person winning through what is 99% luck and 1% some minor advantage(s) that are really only apparent with 20/20 hindsight.
"On balance (from an economic perspective), immigration is good, not bad ..."
"On balance" does nothing for the individual unless there's a generous welfare state that distributes the benefits to all.
Also, immigration is only good, even "on balance: up to a point: I can assure you that if all of South America moved to the US and Canada or all of Africa to Europe or all of India to China then the US, Canada, Europe and China would have severe problems with housing, traffic, health care, education, crime and unemployment. Perhaps things would improve for the world population as a whole (that's not obvious though: even poor Africans would be giving up some things, like living space and relative social standing), but the populations of the US, Canada, Europe and China would be worse off and it is in their interest to vote agaisnt open borders when they have the chance.
"doing the work that many "natives" refuse to do."
Refuse to do or refuse to do for less than proper minimum wage?
If the question posed here is: "how can a random individual with the will to create a lasting, great legacy best proceed?" Then the answer is, it doesn't really matter what they do, there's too much coincidence, too many viral effects going on, too much competition. This changes when the person is not a random person but someone who is already famous and respected (like Thomas Paine) or in some other way influential, even being a male with at least average height, a chiseled face and a low voice increases your chances, hell just having the idea of wanting to create that legacy and not being too lazy to try probably already puts you in the top 10% (which still means you have millions of competitors). As a whole society can also produce great legacies if a lot of average people try and a few get lucky.
Why all this anti-migrant hysteria, especially when all of us (except the Indians) are descended from immigrants. Sure, some migrants are bad, but many more are good, doing the work that many "natives" refuse to do. On balance (from an economic perspective), immigration is good, not bad ...
Peter Thiele says that the only way to make money on a company is to figure out what you believe in that others do not, and that this is how most successful companies make money.
In other words, you're banking on the fact that people don't have perfect information, and that there are market inefficiencies. Perhaps Paine was banking on the same thing...
Imported toasters don’t consume handouts, undermine public education, demand racial quotas, impose linguistic divisions, bring a 50%+ illegitimacy rate, raise crime rates (a lot), make housing unaffordable, increase gridlock, consume scarce natural resources, etc.
People are not goods. Its an easy point (we fought a Civil War over this very subject). However, the market mania (and dominant cosmopolitan elitism) of our time has obscured this lesson. In the words of the late Swiss writer Max Frisch:
”We wanted workers, we got people.”
Max Frisch had something else to say that’s just as important. He wrote a play, “THE FIREBUGS,”
The play is a classic cautionary drama from 1958 in which a city is terrorized by unknown arsonists. Frisch compares the advent of the arsonists to the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia and to Hitler’s rise to power.
A quote from Frisch
“What everyone could see coming for so long duly came in the end: stupidity, never to be extinguished, now to be called fate.”
One of the best condemnations of Open Borders, ever.