Western Civilization.

[AntiochusIII]

I haven't researched individual companies such as wal-mart. If they do such things well then they are bad guys, but as long as there are no laws against it they're no worse than any others doing it. However if they prevent politicians with programs of removing such exploitation by passing laws, they're evil. The companies that do lobbyist stuff to affect politics are a problem yes, but that a result of a weakened democracy.

You can call them evil all you want (and quite a few people do, certainly), but in the end they wins out with their cheap goods and large shares of the economic pie. Nobody wants to destabilize the economic pie for moral reasons. The economy is mainly driven by market forces, of which profit is the very heart of it all, and profit can be better gained by outsourcing to countries with less wages and less "annoying" regulatory laws overall.

Heck, even Futurama and Family Guy are outsourced to Korea.

Besides, if the likes of the Rwandan genocide does not interest the average American, how would something like bad conditions in shiny new Chinese factories ever worry them? (They'll worry about those shiny new Chinese factories taking jobs away, though. )

Well the desire for low cost products might be due to low wages and high taxes from the US government. Or if they despite that think they have to exploit other countries people then they can't really expect any third world countries to think they're nice, and can't have any decent chance at all of stopping terrorism, seeing as terrorism is the only way for the third world to fight back. That's sad, because I'm strongly against terrorism and think it should be solved by removing the causes of it.

Or it might be something simpler, say, human desire for the most out of the least. When people buy stuff, they don't think about international social implications and all that, but which one is the cheapest.

I don't really think those that argue that this will cause the downfall of Western Civilization to be on firm grounds, though.

I fail to see what you're upset about in my post. May I ask you whether you're a refugee from war or a luxury-seeking type of immigrant from not so poor regions? The ghettos are a result of these immigrants not being given the right and needed assistance to learn the local language to break their isolation, and a result of many who come from warring countries being apathic and in need of comfort like therapy and life strategy help to learn the bureaucracy of the country they come to. Most employers don't want to hire people who don't know the language. Call them racist or not, it's a fact and no government has been able to prevent that. Giving them knowledge of the language helps them more than anything.

I'm upset? Not at all. May be it's my fault for giving the wrong impression. Never mind that, the assistance you demand for immigration is all and good but they certainly aren't your weekly trip to the family's therapist, which is what you asked for in the first post, no?

Therapists imply that something's wrong with the psyche anyway, which is a pretty rare case, even among refugees from terribly devastated countries. Humans survive in much worse environments before psychology was born.

And I can tell you this: Life Strategy help = waste of time. That's not how people adapt. In terms of what one wants in life, it's always individual, always in the head. Simply walk into a high school "life strategy" (or whatever fancy names the schools come up for classes meant to "encourage students for college planning, bruhaha, lalala) and anyone will easily realize how worthless such an effort is.

Well luxury-seeking immigrants that have a decent life must realize that there are people who have a worse situation and must be given the immigration placs. Immigrants must also realize that the ultimate objective isn't to have the entire world living in Europe and America, but to make the third world inhabitable, stable, and peaceful so people can move back there. Sending foreign aid saves about 1,000 people for the same cost it takes to provide a luxury-seeking immigrant with money. It's a matter of helping those who need it most. And the ultimate objective is that these refugees can go home and rebuild their countries. Immigration for luxury is not desireable. We can help most people by sending aid money and use wise foreign politics that minimizes war and instability in the third world, while having a program where immigrants are to be sent back to help building up their countries. Nobody gains anything from having the few educated people in the third world moving to the western world - those who have education in these countries should stay there and help building up their countries. By accepting luxury-immigration instead of helping refugees, we decrease our abilities of helping the people who have the most difficult situation, and we also help undermining and destroying the third world. Such egoism is unacceptable. Not all people are aware of how this works however and now that we know that it works this way the information must be spread. Those who have already come to the western world must of course stay because they didn't know (and neither did the (ir)responsible western governments), but all future luxury immigration must be stopped as quickly as possible. Trying to stand in the way of such politics is to support the death of the refugees that have the worst situation of all.

That is all moralistic and all, but that's certainly not how's the world's run. Humans are creatures driven to achieve their betterment, not concerning themselves with the fate of the world at every little decision. Civilizations aren't built on socialistic grounds; for all the glorious proclamations of We The People as one, in the end it's the personalities that make up the general will.

Another point: nations look for their own interests, not others'. The United States of America wants its immigrants to be useful, not problematic, which is why it sets quotas which are more open to, say, Taiwan, than India and the Philippines, where more immigrants want to leave.

So you can certainly call my family evil for trying to join America (I'm not upset about that at all, mind you), but in the end it's just the classic American dream -- self-betterment, drive for success, search for opportunities, hope -- with Asians instead of Eastern Europeans this time around. (Actually, it's not really our fault to blame since the USA is the one who sets the quotas on immigrants anyway, and I'm certainly not entering the USA by illegal means). And of course, the natives all angry and demand that these "job-stealers" not be given so much "privileges." The parallel is amazing for students of history.

Which is why I'm one of those few happy-go-lucky people who don't really worry about the "Mexicans" conquering the USA and weighting down "our quality of life." The very frickin' same things used to be said by the great-great-grandsons of the British settlers as more and more Italians, Germans, Poles, etcetera, flooded the factories of Chicago and New York, unable to speak English, unable to properly integrate, trapped in cycles of low poverty, and exploited literally to death by factory owners willing to gouge profit. Social efforts ("Progressive Movement", may be also the New Deal) and time eventually win that out.

I blame it mostly on our governments for thinking that mass-immigration into ghettos and isolating immigrants there would cause integration. Also their failure to stop luxury-immigrants to give room for the refugees that have the most difficult situation.

The first reason is certainly valid, but I don't think the second is, for the problems with immigration in Europe.

It might be a "righteous" ethical issue and all that, valid on its own in other places, but it's not tied in with why Europe is so immigration-scared right now.

Back to the original topic, though, I certainly don't think Western Civilization is failing. The doomsayers are everywhere, at everytime, and things don't really happen that often. Barring nuclear fallout, I'll be enjoying HBO and junk food for quite a long time to come. May be Texan burgers will be less popular and Tacos more, and may be I'll have to scrap my elitism and learn Spanish later (elitism not driven against Mexicans, but against entering classes filled to the brim while I can take French and ogle at all the ladies there ), but it's not something devastating.