That EY is in favour of unrestricted immigration I don’t find too surprising, or objectionable, not that I would take his word on this—he’s not an economist.
Magical Britain might discriminate against Muggleborns, but at least it allowed them inside so they could be spat upon in person.
What I object to is the implication that British people think foreigners are not even worth spitting on.
And incidentally, don’t people get banned from LW? Even people who mass downvote are, it was said, as human as anyone else; who were said to be sapient beings, worth more than any mere unicorn. But who nonetheless wouldn’t be allowed to post in LW.
Edit: On more sober reflection, the last paragraph is not the most intelligent thing I have ever written. It seems to equate banning/exile with preventing immigration in the first place, and I suppose there are reasons why you might want a website to have powers a nation-state doesn’t anyway.
Any community, whether a website or a country, requires people with a shared set of norms (I probably what a more general word but I can’t think of one). To maintain this it needs some combination of training/indoctrination of newcomers and excluding people who don’t, won’t, or can’t accept them.
1) Countries are really big. There are multiple layers of sub-community, providing for much more diversity even in a country that isn’t about diversity. LW is multiple orders of magnitude smaller than Britain even with lurkers counted, and if we only count the regulars, the same can be said of magical Britain.
2) Countries don’t have a specific purpose. Websites often do (including this one, used in the example). On a website, simply going off-topic badly can be a bannable offense (not here, yes). A country trying to do that is farcical.
3) The example given above, that I was responding to, was about someone who was let in to LW, did some bad things, and was banned. This is the equivalent of exile. It was targeted and in response to an existing wrong. It was not done proactively for a broad category of people who had not done anything wrong.
4) Speaking of those people not doing anything wrong, “don’t, won’t, or can’t accept [the community’s norms]” might be a legitimate reason, but it was not the criterion applied in the example, even approximately.
Countries are really big. There are multiple layers of sub-community, providing for much more diversity even in a country that isn’t about diversity.
Yes, but you still need standards for said sub-communities to be able to coexist.
It was not done proactively for a broad category of people who had not done anything wrong.
Depends on the website and the situation. Hacker News, for example, temporarily disables creating new accounts whenever it is linked to by a mainstream source. Also if a bunch of people from 4chan decided to show up here, I suspect you’d support proactive measures.
Speaking of those people not doing anything wrong, “don’t, won’t, or can’t accept [the community’s norms]” might be a legitimate reason, but it was not the criterion applied in the example, even approximately.
What example were you thinking of? In the example of immigration to the GB, if you listen to the complaints of the people against immigration, many of them amount to the above criterion.
Hmm, you might be right—I was unsure about this sentence when I posted it, but, well, politics is the mindkiller. Edited. The reason I mentioned it is because it seems to me that there are perfectly good utilitarian reasons for banning people from places without denying their worth as a person.
That EY is in favour of unrestricted immigration I don’t find too surprising, or objectionable, not that I would take his word on this—he’s not an economist.
What I object to is the implication that British people think foreigners are not even worth spitting on.
And incidentally, don’t people get banned from LW? Even people who mass downvote are, it was said, as human as anyone else; who were said to be sapient beings, worth more than any mere unicorn. But who nonetheless wouldn’t be allowed to post in LW.
Edit: On more sober reflection, the last paragraph is not the most intelligent thing I have ever written. It seems to equate banning/exile with preventing immigration in the first place, and I suppose there are reasons why you might want a website to have powers a nation-state doesn’t anyway.
… so? The only ways I see that this provides an argument at all are so strained I feel like I have to be not grasping the reason you mentioned it.
Any community, whether a website or a country, requires people with a shared set of norms (I probably what a more general word but I can’t think of one). To maintain this it needs some combination of training/indoctrination of newcomers and excluding people who don’t, won’t, or can’t accept them.
These two things are far enough apart that arguing for one does not do much to argue for the other.
Yes, but the principal I stated is pretty general. Care to explain why you think it doesn’t apply in the case of countries.
1) Countries are really big. There are multiple layers of sub-community, providing for much more diversity even in a country that isn’t about diversity. LW is multiple orders of magnitude smaller than Britain even with lurkers counted, and if we only count the regulars, the same can be said of magical Britain.
2) Countries don’t have a specific purpose. Websites often do (including this one, used in the example). On a website, simply going off-topic badly can be a bannable offense (not here, yes). A country trying to do that is farcical.
3) The example given above, that I was responding to, was about someone who was let in to LW, did some bad things, and was banned. This is the equivalent of exile. It was targeted and in response to an existing wrong. It was not done proactively for a broad category of people who had not done anything wrong.
4) Speaking of those people not doing anything wrong, “don’t, won’t, or can’t accept [the community’s norms]” might be a legitimate reason, but it was not the criterion applied in the example, even approximately.
Yes, but you still need standards for said sub-communities to be able to coexist.
Depends on the website and the situation. Hacker News, for example, temporarily disables creating new accounts whenever it is linked to by a mainstream source. Also if a bunch of people from 4chan decided to show up here, I suspect you’d support proactive measures.
What example were you thinking of? In the example of immigration to the GB, if you listen to the complaints of the people against immigration, many of them amount to the above criterion.
Hmm, you might be right—I was unsure about this sentence when I posted it, but, well, politics is the mindkiller. Edited. The reason I mentioned it is because it seems to me that there are perfectly good utilitarian reasons for banning people from places without denying their worth as a person.