ibx

Are you being purposely obtuse? 

Africa is way better resourced. Plants grow all year round. You can eat pretty much everything. There is no real winter. The land is much easier to traverse since our ancestors lived mainly in the african steppe and Europe has dense forests making movement much harder requiring more resources for smaller distances. Also you need to have shelter in Europe requiring resources to build and maintain, in Africa your fine outside most of the time. 

If you don't prepare for winter, you starve in Europe forcing you gather more resources in shorter period of time. 

 

This is not rocket science. 

 

 

 

1 minute ago, brenthutch said:

What part of roughly did you not understand?  Can you give me an example of a Neolithic society that had measurably more resources than another? 

Any 2 neolithic societies where one lives in Africa and the other in Europe. 

double post

double post

18 hours ago, billvon said:

We have been changing this system for well over 200 years.  We now have a system that is a mix of capitalism, socialism and communism (think national parks - 'owned by everyone.')  The most successful systems use a mix of them - and are not afraid to change them continuously.

Then we are in agreement. It must have been a misunderstanding. 

14 hours ago, billvon said:

I disagree.  Capitalism has changed dramatically over the years.  We now have societal organizations that attempt (and often succeed) to mitigate the anti-social effects capitalism has.  They have worked.  It stands to reason that in the future, other mitigations will work as well.

 

Where exactly are you disagreeing with me? Taxes where always a part of capitalism which is a mitigation in itself. Capitalism is also not a monolithic system but implemented differently in many forms all over the world. The fact remains, that all countries that have implemented their version of capitalism have been more successful in nearly any quantifiable metric than countries that have not. 

13 hours ago, mbohu said:

This sounds a little bit like the idea based on "social darwinism" (correct me if I misinterpret you there) and the way I read that, this is really something that has been disproven pretty thoroughly by now. Even Darwin thought that competition was only one minor part of the evolutionary drive and gave much more importance to cooperation.

you do misinterpret me. I am not talking about social Darwinism. I am trying to talk about why the world is how it is and why you are bound to fail with your ideas because they ignore history and why things are as they are. 

I think competition/cooperation needs more nuance. It's not one or the other but a combination of both. Technology moves quickest during times of war with is nothing but a fight over resources.  So competition is a major driver for (technological) progress. Yet people in competing groups work together and cooperate to make it happen and they do this because they are competing for resources. 

13 hours ago, mbohu said:

Many of the most successful species are ones that display a tremendous amount of cooperation (alongside some competition) This actually is another sign to me how our system grew out of a specific philosophy of the time of Smith (and before) when there was a conflict between the ideas of the (mostly British) empiricists and the (mostly German) idealists. As far as economic systems are concerned, the Brits won out.

I agree, species work together to further their own survival in a world with limited resources competing against other species for the same resources. You already mentioned Darwin, then you know the most successful species are the ones that have found a niche. I also don't know where in my text I said anything that makes you think I am against cooperation... What do you think trade is? 

13 hours ago, mbohu said:

The incentives in the system are skewed to rewarding individual profit without regard to profit for the whole. If you study a bit of game theory you will see that systems that are set up this way (simple example would be the prisoner's dilemma) will always result in solutions that are sub-optimal. The outcome this system can produce is always worse than the best possible outcome within the system--and even that best possible outcome is worse than the best possible outcome in a system that is set up to reward profit for individuals that also maximizes profit for the whole.--see EDIT BELOW!(I know, the idea of social darwinism is that there is no "natural" system that can maximize profit for the individual and the whole. "win-win-win" scenarios are idealistic ideas of hippies that have no practical value. I disagree, and many system-thinkers do so as well.)

I agree that the incentives are skewed, yet it's exactly these incentives that make capitalism so successful. There was a political system tried  where people where incentivised to work for whole. Where there were supposed to be no class differences and so on. Remember what happened to that? 

I do think there is a more or less optimal system. It's called social market democracy and it works really well in Europe. The debate is always around the amount of redistribution which has to be constantly adapted to changing circumstances. 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

While money was originally designed as a medium of exchange representing real value (things, services, etc) it has been so decoupled from that value (financial sector, derivatives, derivatives of derivatives) that the smallest amount of interactions in the world are still representing any of that real value. If you want to make REAL money, you will not focus on activities that provide real value in the physical world. The incentives are to focus on activities that trade various abstract representations (currencies, stocks, derivatives, futures, even real estate but used only as an abstract symbol that does not maximize the utility of said real estate in the real world). 

I agree with that. 

 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

With an abstract medium to measure value (money) you run into the problem that it only measures a certain KIND of value and leaves many other kinds of value (resources!) out. We looked at this before but: The tree that provides tremendous value for the forest, the animals around it, the humans that breathe the oxygen it produces, etc, etc. has NO money-value as long as it stands in the forest (as this cannot be measured easily) but has very specific value once it is cut down and turned into lumber. Now it has value for ONE person only, but that value can easily be quantified in Dollars. (What's important to me here is that the person who cuts down the tree is not a "bad" or "immoral" person. He is a person that acts in accordance to the incentives of the system. If he wasn't doing that he would be a looser in the system, which also means he would have less and less resources and power within the system, making his "morality" and "goodness" irrelevant--because it has no power to change anything.)

I agree also. The problem is quantifying the value the tree in the forest. And if you take that line of thought to the end, the guy not being allowed to cut down the tree would leave him homeless and possibly starving.  

 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

All this together provides certain incentives for action. People who listen to these incentives will be successful in the system. Those who don't will fail.

What alternative incentives do to you suggest if not more access to more resources for the individual? I think that is the fundamental problem. Nobody has a full belly due to feeling well or working for the whole... Apparently you know German so I will quote Brecht: "Erst kommt das Fressen dann kommt die Moral". 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

Cancer is an often used example: When a cell stops to be connected to other cells (in its function and purpose) and starts working only for its own reproduction and benefit it becomes a cancer cell. Initially it benefits and reproduces its genetic code exponentially, outcompeting all the other cells around it. So it "wins" temporarily. However, eventually it kills the entire organism that it depends upon for its survival and self-terminates. So in the end it looses.
One can argue that it is in the nature of the cell to only look out for its own benefit--but that isn't true for healthy cells. They look out for their own benefit, but in a way that also benefits the whole. And in the end this is the more successful strategy...and it is also the more natural one, I'd argue.

Yes and that is why the capitalistic "cancer cells" are constantly being restrained by laws like taxation, anti trust and so on. In countries where this more prominent the societies are often more peaceful with less social problems. That's why we don't have a completely free market because it would have imploded long ago. Still, the personal incentives for people to reap direct rewards are fundamental for a free and successful society. 

 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

So these are arguments, why it would be useful to think about systems that are not self-terminating and yet have a relationship to our "nature" (keeping in mind that our "nature" is as much influenced by the system we grow up in, as it influences that system)

You are IMHO opinion wrong that this system is self terminating. It has proven pretty resilient over the last 400 years or so. It does require
constant updates though. If you look at the excesses of the 20th century you can see to what the alternatives lead to. 

 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

EDIT: The important thing to know about these game theory examples is that the preferred outcome of such games is not just sub-optimal for the WHOLE but is also sub-optimal for the INDIVIDUALS in the game, even though they each strive to maximize their own benefit. They each loose out, compared to what they could have gotten.

Yes, the fundamental problem of how to get people to work against their own interests. The only people that have made an art of this and been very successful is the GOP :-) 

 

14 hours ago, mbohu said:

Now: You may be right that we have no idea how to IMPLEMENT such a system, if we ever came up with it, given that we already know that "planned economy" does not work. But to me that is no reason not to think about the implications of systems (and especially the implication of self-termination).

Like I said I disagree that this system if self terminating and through constant updates is the most successful system we have. 

19 hours ago, mbohu said:

23 hours ago, jakee said:

I don't think you understand what he's saying. There is absolutely no reason to assume that he doesn't understand why the software market works the way it does. He's simply saying it isn't a natural system that works purely as a result of its own inherent dynamics.

Thanks.  Yes. 

Where he is wrong in the way, that the system was not designed. I will not use word evolved because billvon will take offense. But the system grew and was,is adapted to the current zeitgeist. It is impossible to design a system with the inherent complexity of the world. We don't even completely understand the current system. Otherwise making money at the stock exchange would be much easier. 

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23 hours ago, ibx said:

Mbohu seems to think you can develop a new market system from the ground up which is in some way superior to one that evolved over 350 years or so.

If you look at the history of philosophy, you will notice that at the time when our current system started evolving, there were many thinkers who thought up pretty much every element of the system long before it was implemented.

I would really like a citation for that. Keynes and Smith described an already established system. If you are talking about social contract theory, that could lead a free market economy but does not directly describe it... 

I would honestly be interested in those philosophers you speak of. 

 

19 hours ago, mbohu said:

I think it is worthwhile to think about what it would be like to have a system that is not based on rewarding short-term maximizing of personal profit. If the argument is that this is not possible and cannot be done because of "human nature", I would argue that first "human nature" is not independent of the systems in which it grows up, and second, that there have been many working systems before this one, that did not rely on "profit maximization" as their main driving force.

And here I think you have summarized the fault in your thoughts. 

Nature, including human nature was always about maximizing profits to ultimately have a better chance to reproduce. Just change the word profit to resources. Profit/money is only an abstraction for resources and the access to them that we humans invented to make trade simpler and to make quantification of resources comparable. Most of what happens in nature is to maximize access to resources. Like a wolf protecting it's territory for example or a seed flying a large distance. The ultimate driving factor is of course sex->reproduction, that's why woman for a long time where treated as resources, this is sadly still true today for some cultures (ISIS sex slavery). The Taliban not allowing woman to go to school are the effects of that thinking. 

Looking through all of history almost every conflict was fought over resources or the access to them and this is true until today(more resources = more woman, more sex, more babies and better chance of them surviving). So I would argue that "profit maximization" is integral to human nature and there was never a successful system where this was not the case. I would challenge you to name a single successful society in all of history where resource access/profit maximization was not the priority. 

Capitalism gave humanity a more successful way for more people to access more resources. Wars are expensive, trade is simply more effective at resource distribution, that is why it is the dominant system today.

All attempts to change this system have failed since they ignore human nature. 

This is of course simplified, but it's the gist of why I think you are wrong. 

I also apologize for my tone on the last posts.... I hope we can continue this discussion. 

8 minutes ago, jakee said:

I didn't say you were. I'm saying that's his point, it's logically coherent, and doesn't require any assumption on the part of the reader that he doesn't understand how software development works.

Maybe... but then as you said, software development is a terrible analogy. But after reading mbohus comments again in case I missed something I still think he lacks a basic understanding of why things are as they are. Why else invoke sw development as an example when there are much more obvious ones like anti trust, or the existence of reserve banks. Redistribution already does what he wants without some utilitarian dictatorship meddling in the market. 

15 minutes ago, jakee said:

I don't think you understand what he's saying. There is absolutely no reason to assume that he doesn't understand why the software market works the way it does. He's simply saying it isn't a natural system that works purely as a result of its own inherent dynamics.

We don't have a single natural system that works on pure market dynamics. That is exactly what I mean by the way our market developed, it started out very free and was continually adapted to emerging technologies and negative market forces. Anti trust for example is a necessary system to ensure the further existence of the free market. Mbohu seems to think you can develop a new market system from the ground up which is in some way superior to one that evolved over 350 years or so. That idea is especially insane when one wants to use the same metrics for success, in this case profit. 

15 minutes ago, jakee said:

 

Software may not be the best example because of copy protection, but wht about the entire patent system? Once an idea exists, in a pure free market success would come to whoever can understand and implement it the best. In our market you have to pay to be able to do that. It's an external notion of fairness that has been artificially imposed upon the entire market system. Point is you can't dismiss any other idea simply because it restricts pure market freedom, because the pure free market is a myth.

>Point is you can't dismiss any other idea simply because it restricts pure market freedom, because the pure free market is a myth. 

I don't think I am. I am however very skeptical of proposed systems that were developed and not evolved. 

See my Anti Trust example above. I am also for lots of redistribution which inherently limits the free market but is necessary for people to not die in the streets. 

When reading the examples of a new proposed market system, that contains for example the valuation of things that cannot be traded, I must call bullshit and also question the basic economic understanding of someone proposing those ideas. 

 

On 9/6/2019 at 10:31 PM, mbohu said:

I know, we should probably take this to a separate thread--but I guess in this part of the forum there really aren't any rules about this, so:  

There is this myth that somehow "market dynamics" (meaning the CURRENT system of international markets, including financial systems, fiat currency, international trade laws, etc) are a natural system that does not require huge interventions and a massive system of laws and rules in order to function the way it does. And then everything else (=different rules) is seen as unnatural and artificial--but this is a huge mischaracterization. Here is an example, from the industry I was in myself, and where I owned and ran a company with international reach:

This is of course vastly simplified like Yoink already said. And a big factor of why your Ideas are naive at best. You simply fail to understand why the market today works as it does. No software industry would exist if one could not recoup the cost of development. Also I think you simply fail to understand that the initial price is set by the producer any producer must also have the right to determin the price because he knows best what the investment was, intervening  in this would be, you guessed it, a planned market economy. The artificial scarcity is super important to make anything digital profitable and thus sustainable. Today this accounts for pretty much any form of information. 

On 9/6/2019 at 10:31 PM, mbohu said:

This is only one example where the current system already requires a tremendous top-down intervention to make it work. (=laws that make something that easily could be had almost for free by everyone, artificially scarce, so it can have value in the current system.) So it would be easy to argue, if you do have ANY such intervention, at least it should be the kind of intervention that has outcomes that are positive for the whole, and not ones that are counter-productive

(If our "team"--i.e. humanity--were competing against another outside team and instituted rules that artificially limited our team's access to freely abundant resources, the other team would surely laugh it's head off, and would out-compete us in no time.)

Yeah... Only we don't have outside teams. We are not competing with aliens but one another. This again reads like some communist fantasy where the proletariat unites. Where do you think the incentive comes from to out compete somebody? and would people still even be motivated to create great things without reward that you want to take from them since, they must now freely share their products. You see where this is a major reason for the failure of planned economies? This idea alone should prove to you what you are talking about here. 

Like communists you are completely ignoring human nature and so are bound to fail. 

 

On 9/6/2019 at 10:31 PM, mbohu said:

I think my previous comment made clear that this doesn't seem to be the case here. I would see his attempt at thinking about complete structural change of the system, as similar to what we did in the software industry: When we had a current version of a software program (let's say version 2.1), we would have a team that focused on minor updates to the software, to fix urgent minor bugs and maybe extend its functionality a little within the context of the current system. They would be working on the next 2.x release version and would be able to do these updates in relatively quick timeframes.
However, at some point, when limitations that were systemic to the current version became apparent, we would have a second team work in parallel to the first team, to envision a completely new version (3.x) which would eventually replace the old major version and may be built from the ground up without the limitations of 2.x. 
This is what I think he is doing here. It does not mean, minor updates to the current system don't have to continue, and it does not mean version 2.x wasn't a great step and wasn't better than whatever came before. (i.e. version 1.x)

So you think you can design a working Economy like a software product? You gonna revise the system in sprints? What specs are you gonna base your economies success on? This does sound suspiciously like a planned economy, don't you think?  

On 9/6/2019 at 10:31 PM, mbohu said:

Here I disagree that it would be impossible. I do agree, however, that a " Top down planned market economy" is not what we want by a long shot. We already know that this is a dead-end approach that could not even compete with our current system. (It really just was a slightly modified version of the current system anyway)

Then why do you think you can design an economy like a software product? Hubris at it's best. I suggest you read a little bit of history to understand how the current economy developed and why this a major reason for it's success and sustainability. 

On 9/6/2019 at 10:31 PM, mbohu said:

From what I understand, Daniel is instead looking at systems that simply could naturally out-compete the current system*), while at the same time obsoleting (the destructive kind of) competition within the system, as well as fragility, open loops that lead to exponential growth which leads to collapse, and some other features. Does such a system exist? We probably don't know for sure yet, but there are pointers in a direction that we may look into (which he discusses in other places) and the articles I linked to mainly describe some "design constraints" that such a system would have to have.

Naturally out compete a system, that more or less shits on the environment, shits on human capital and maximizes profits over anything else? 

Your're gonna have to change metrics by which you measure success, and as soon as you do that, any bloody system can out compete any other because the everybody is setting their own goal posts... 

 

On 9/6/2019 at 10:31 PM, mbohu said:

)* footnote: If you look at history, it was always the case that a new system was implemented or outlived an old system, because it simply out-competed it. Modern economics and democracy did not win over feudalism and monarchies, because they were forced upon us via a top-down approach, but simply because they were so much more powerful and effective that they simply outcompeted their predecessors. I think it is naive to think that the current iteration of our economic system is the last one and will not eventually be replaced by something significantly different. What may be unique right now is, that in spite of its incredible power (to lift millions out of poverty, for one thing), there are some design-problems that are now becoming apparent that put the current system on a path to likely total collapse at some point. This is something that sooner or later will have to be addressed. I, for one, am glad that some people are applying their minds to that issue.

It's too bad that the ideas offered here are completely void of reality and many of these ideas have been tried and failed spectacularly. 

 

 

13 hours ago, mbohu said:

Yes, I understand that you may read it that way, because at first it sounds somewhat anti-capitalist (since he is looking at the system from the outside and is pointing out the big problems it is facing) and we are so stuck in our thinking that we immediately assume he must therefore then be for the anthithesis of this system (i.e. "planned economy", communism, etc.)
But this is not at all what it is about. If anything--in regards to valuation--the article points towards expanding the valuation into ALL areas and one of the problems he looks at is, that valuation currently only includes "extractable" simple (or complicated) value and leaves intrinsic (complex) value off the balance sheet:

"An economic system that only recognizes extractable and accumulatable wealth. Where nature (the commons) doesn’t have a balance sheet. So unlike interactions with other economic actors that also have balance sheets, interactions with nature don’t have to be equitable, don’t require consent, and don’t require the ledger to balance. "

 

It' trivial to criticize any system form the outside while ignoring why this system is in place and secondly what makes it successful in the first place. 

The solutions he provides are simply incompatible with market dynamics, like the valuation example. Doing this would require a massive infringement on the valuation model the economy which would be impossible to achieve w/o a " Top down planned market economy". Take a very simple example:

Indonesia clears the rain forest for palm oil plantations. This is of course bad for nature, but good for the local and global economy. How would go about quantifying the damage done to the rain forest? And would this "number" have to be equal for all rain forests? And how would you go about explaining to the Indonesian people that have to remain poor because the rain forest has some intrinsic value decided by, well who would decide that? 

His ideas are utopian und completely unrealistic, don't seem thought out in any considerable way, which also explains his web design from 1995. 

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, mbohu said:

Redistribution doesn't provide a permanent solution either. 

So you're against taxes used on common goods like schools, roads, police and so on? In capitalistic society a certain amount of redistribution must happen if not the majority of the people live as indentured servants. Not letting people starve in the streets when they find themselves impoverished is also a nice thing for a society to achieve. I would say these things can be permanently solved by the right amount of redistribution, don't you think? 

The level at which this happens is open for debate, not the fact in itself. 

 

Edit: From your Link: 

>Our current global economic system is not only sub-optimal with regard to both goals, but is fundamentally unstable and ultimately self-terminating. 

Sorry I can't read this diatribe any further... 
Marx already predicted the end of capitalism among countless others and all have been  categorically wrong, that's just the beginning of the problems with this article. It reads like a call for a "planned economy" which has been tried with desasterous consequences. 

This quote alone should tell you all you need to know with whats wrong with this article:

"Valuing things that are scarce independent of actual utility leads to decreased system utility holistically (eg, cut down a forest to mine the gold under it and put it in underground vaults that provide no real utility to anyone – only fiat value)."

Valuation of goods without market input... Now that is a revolutionary idea! what could possibly go wrong? 

 

7 hours ago, Coreece said:

Here's some stuff on income inequality that I think follows that line of thought:

 

"research suggests that inequality raises the stakes of fights for status among men.

The connection is so strong that, according to the World Bank, a simple measure of inequality predicts about half of the variance in murder rates between American states and between countries around the world.  When inequality is high and strips large numbers of men of the usual markers of status – like a good job and the ability to support a family – matters of respect and disrespect loom disproportionately.

Inequality predicts homicide rates “better than any other variable”, says Martin Daly, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at McMaster University in Ontario and author of Killing the Competition: Economic Inequality and Homicide.

This includes factors like rates of gun ownership (which also rise when inequality does) and cultural traits like placing more emphasis on “honor” (this, too, turns out to be linked with inequality).

All types of homicide are much less common in the egalitarian Scandinavian countries than in the US. But disputes over male status are so much lower in such countries that while in the US, 77% of victims are male, only 50% are in the Nordic nations."

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/income-inequality-murder-homicide-rates

Yes. This seems intuitive, and seems to be backed up by science... The solution of course would be redistribution, but sadly we all know how that discussion goes in the US... The vehement opposition to redistribution is a majorly compounding factor in inequality. The insane arguments when discussing gun violence and health care on this forum by self described patriots are a good example.

 

 

17 minutes ago, kallend said:

But according to the gun lobby and the legislators it has purchased, the gun laws can't be the explanation.  So what is?  Are Americans just intrinsically nastier than the citizens of other wealthy countries?

Yes I would say so. This is one of the things that makes the USA so successful and at the same so miserable. Two better words would be individualism and opportunism. Both of these things are not nearly as profound in other countries. In Europe nobody has a problem with socialized health care for example...  The individual has higher standing in the American Psych than it has in the old country by far.  

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True, except for recent immigrants, the black identity in the U.S. is not an African identity. But a separate Black Culture that has evolved here. It does not apply to everyone of African heritage (again, huge generalization), but its development and continued existence has been used to help perpetuate the "us versus them" mentality that a lot of ignorant groups love to use -- and therefore has contributed to the perpetuation of separate cultures/identities in this country.

I totally agree. How boring on the internet... What are we going fight about?

Thanks!

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I haven't lived in Germany, but I have lived in Turkey. As I understand it (and please, do correct me if I'm wrong), Turks in Germany were not allowed full German citizenship, even if they were born there. Again, as I understand the evolution of the situation, this lead to the perpetuation of the Turkish identities and remaining ties back to Turkey. I do know many German Turks go back to Turkey to find Turks for their kids to marry as well as the arranged marriage you described of your classmate.

This is true for the first generation of guest workers. They where always seen as guests and not really expected to become Germans. One big reason for this, is that nobody wanted to define what it means to be German due to NS ballast. A discussion that is currently underway as well due to the influx of migrants.

The second and third generations however grew up in the German school system and if you where born in Germany it's simple to get the German or even dual citizenship. Most second and third generation turks to not want to leave Germany so integration should be a self interest but now they've been living in subculture their whole lives, add to that an undefined identity(are they turks or Germans?) and it gets complicated quickly.

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If you never have the opportunity to be considered one of the citizens of the nation, why would you bother trying?

Turks that wanted to integrate, learn the language and so on had no trouble integrating and becoming "Germans", it was not for lack of opportunity.
It was more of an expectation thing, the turks just wanted to work here and retire back in turkey. For most it was only temporary. In realtiy for most it was 40-50 years with many retiring here. Germans didn't require anybody to integrate because that would be nationalistic...

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his is a very ignorant statement -- as my comment above is also ignorant, though I admit my limited exposure to the situation and ask to be corrected. Slavery in the U.S. has only been rendered illegal for about 160 years, and interracial marriage has only been legal within my lifetime. Prejudices have been perpetuated to the point like the situation described above: it's easier to stay within a societal group that accepts you. Without the mingling, isolated cultures evolve in different directions.

I was talking about cultural exchange - not different societal groups. These things do not mean the same thing. The Africans that where forcefully brought to US as slaves had their culture violently stripped away and their identity erased. After being here for a hundred years there was not much left of African culture. It's why they invented a pseudo African identity last century. Kwanza anyone?

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The case of black vs white in the U.S. is remarkably on par with the case of Turk vs German, IMHO.
**of course, I also do realize that I'm speaking in generalities -- YMMV**

Also you really can't compare the african american situation in the US to the turkish one in Germany. See above for one reason. The situation only seems similar very superficially. It is fact so different that lessons learned in the US can be hardly applied to Germany and visa versa. The whole resentment thing due to the slavery is absent. The simple fact that the turks have a different nationality and a country with a long culture they can return to, makes both situations very different, don't you think?

We can only always speak in generalities about these things.

Thanks for engaging :-)

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"Our member Pharos has undertaken a research about the existende of FGM in Siria, 'Female genital mutilation in Syria? An inquiry into the existence of FGM in Syria'.

~40% of the so called refugees are not from Syria but from all over northern Africa and the middle east.

https://www.proasyl.de/thema/fakten-zahlen-argumente/

These are the numbers from pro-asyl a very pro immigration organisation. You don't need German to understand the graph.

That is one the biggest problems in the current debate. There is no differentiation between legitimate war refugees and economic migrants.

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Immigrants are not typically attacking Jews in Germany. Right wing extremists are. Immigrants generally are not far right. Certainly anti-immigration Germans frequently use the arguments. Like other anti-immigrant right wingers. That they only emigrate to live off western social programs.

Do you speak German? I can't find english sources to backup my claims atm. Plenty of German ones though just check sueddeutsche for example.

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Reality Check: Are migrants driving crime in Germany?
https://www.bbc.com/...orld-europe-45419466

This is a very hotly debated issue. The way the Germans report crime statistics makes it almost impossible to get reliable data due different reporting standards of the Bundeslaender.

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Without sidetracking debate too much. Germany's crime rate increased after reunification. Was there much suggestion that East-Germans are criminally inclined?

It's almost as if suddenly boarders where opened everywhere and the current world order was coming to end. Btw. It took a generation for the russian immigrants reach the same crime levels as native Germans. Normally these don't have a single reason. But letting a million people, many of them young males into the country without much perspective is going to have a effect.

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But the culture the US has now is a melting pot of a hundred different cultures. Every time a new flavor has been added there has been resistance - you can go back to Ben Franklin's time when he was ranting about the swarthy, stupid Germans, and how they wanted to Germanize the American colonies, rather than them letting the colonies Anglify them. And today we have hamburgers and Budweiser and frankfurters and kindergarten. If you told Ben Franklin that that would happen someday he'd have a heart attack - but today we think nothing is more American than Budweiser and hot dogs.

Yes, but you are still describing a melting pot of cultures from the same cultural landscape, Europe had been peacefully and violently exchanging culture for more than a 1000 years at that point. Hell, English aristocracy spoke french for a few hundred years.

I would argue, there is not much a difference between western European cultures of the era. Everybody grew up in the judeo-christian tradition and where influenced by the enlightenment thinkers. Adopting Czech beer and German sausages is not really that big of a leap.

People mutilating their daughters genitals, arranged marriages, groping woman on open streets, attacking jews in broad daylight, these are the things that bother people, not if somebody eats humus over french fries.

There is a concept in Germany called "Multi-Kulti" which means, that different cultures should live side by side without too much adaption, this was tried in Germany for about 30-40 years starting with the Turkish guest workers in the 60-70s. This was declared an abject failure by Angela Merkel in 2010 and leads to people here that learn German in Primary school after their families have been here for 2 generations.

Also ask the native Americans about how their culture was "melted" into what America is today.

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At the same time, we didn't adopt eugenics from Germany. (To be more accurate, we stopped progress on that front when we saw where it could lead.) We pick and choose.

That's true, also Germany took quite a few pointers from the US at the time.

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You asked for an example where diversity was increased very quickly and against the wishes of a lot of the native population. Allowing blacks to marry whites was an example of increased diversity in US culture (mixed-race families were definitely a very small and unaccepted phenomenon in the US at the time) and it was opposed very strongly by the populace.

Ok I concede that point. This is only true, though if define diversity through skin color. Culturally both whites and blacks are Americans. So hardly any cultural exchange was made.

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I agree that the majority is not always on the right side of history. We should learn from that, and have a little more tolerance of new ideas, new cultures and new (and more diverse) world views. IMO of course.

New Ideas must be very thoroughly vetted. The world is at a point where we know of every culture on earth, we also have a pretty good understanding of what life is like in those cultures and can make informed decisions. I would also challenge you show a new idea which has not been discussed ad nauseam.

The excesses of the 20th century have shown what can happen if new ideas are implemented too quickly without scrutiny.

The modern western world has a very successful way of doing things, and has increased quality of life for almost everybody on earth. We shouldn't be to quick to change that.

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Ethnic areas of cities has always drawn me to them for their culture and especially their food.

I understand that. It is a problem though, if the guy making your Kebab forces his 16 year old daughter to marry his cousin in turkey.

This actually happened in my high school class in 1995. The girl in my class just never came back to school after the summer holidays... the PTA found out what happened...

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>We, and I mean the western world have a certain way of doing things which has made
>our culture the dominant one.

And yet we use Arabic, not Roman, numbers.

I'm all for scientific exchange, that should be the universal language. Cultural exchange is a different thing since not all parts of all cultures have equal merit. Science is either true or not regardless of what you believe or in which society you grew up in.

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I'd say that bringing in people from other cultures helped CREATE those values. We base much of our law on English philosophical principles.

Yes English - which is in the same cultural landscape.

Most if not all of our values are based on the judeo-christian tradition and the enlightenment thinkers of western europe during the Renaissance.

I would gladly be pointed to a middle eastern or african school of thought with similar consequences for our society.

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And even then, we shouldn't toot our own horn too loudly there. The US was one of the last countries to ban slavery, for example.

As a German I totally agree with that sentiment. Yet constant whataboutism of things that happened generations ago will not further the discussion.

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The legalization of interracial marriage. When that case was decided by the US Supreme Court, most of the country opposed it.

I really don't know what you are trying to say here. If you're saying that the majority is not always on the right side of history, that is nothing new. That's what constitutions and bill of rights are for. Also the majority of people at least in Germany are not really opposed to mass immigration.

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You fail to see the value of diversity.

And that value would be?

I never thought I would defend Ron but here goes.

I don't think diversity for diversity's sake is always necessarily a good thing. This is a mistake that the modern left makes.

We, and I mean the western world have a certain way of doing things which has made our culture the dominant one.

We also have certain values in our society which are non-negotiable(Equality of Man and Woman, Basic Human Rights etc.)

Bringing in lots of people from cultures that do not share these values and ways of doing things leads to conflict.

Esp. looking at it from the European perspective I absolutely fail to see where increased diversity is making anything better for society as a whole.

This is especially true if diversity is increased very quickly and against the wishes of a lot of the native population.

If anybody could give me an example that states the opposite I'd be very interested.

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Part and parcel of the same thing.
Trump-led changes in the American spirit:
1. Hatred of brown-skinned people.
2. Hatred of immigrants.
3. Hatred of the poor (except when you need them for votes).
4. Hatred of the educated.
5. Hatred of anyone with a history of health problems.
6. Hatred of anyone with a gender identity other than traditional male or female.
7. Hatred of anyone with a sexual identity other than "straight".
8. Contempt for clean air and water.
9. Contempt for free speech.
10. Contempt for judicial institutions.
11. Contempt for our descendants (i.e. sticking them with a crippling national debt, and a fouled planet.
12. Contempt for anyone in the world who was not born a rich white American.
13. Contempt for the US's history as a world leader.
14. Hatred of anyone who is not an evangelical Christian.

I'm sure I've missed a couple of things, but that will do for a start.

Don

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I will not own any of the above.

It is hard to see ones bigotry directly spelled out, isn't it...

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You seem to think that because AI is, fundamentally, algorithmic it isn't true intelligence. However, natural intelligence is also built from fundamentally algorithmic processes.

At the moment nobody can even agree on what intelligence actually is...

Before agreeing on a universal definition every discussion about this topic is bound to fail because everybody is talking about their own interpretation of what they think intelligence means.

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He will be following in the footsteps of Scheisskopf.

Scheisskopf literally means shithead in german.