Less Immigration is Racist?

As I said there's a housing crisis. Someone compared us with Finland which eliminated homelessness.
But Finland had 5% growth rate in same time frame we had 30%.

Maybe an examination of the housing crisis, poverty should be done rather then blaming immigration ?
If you want to slow down immigration and the economic growth that comes with it in order to address the problems that perfectly reasonable request. But if your scaling back the home construction then the problem will just continue regardless as your not really address the core of the problem. Just slowing your own economic growth

government scaled back its flagship KiwiBuild programme, which had aimed to build 100,000 affordable home in 10 years – but managed to build only 47 in six months.
chronic illnesses of poverty, and rampant housing discrimination

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...m-un-expert-damns-new-zealands-housing-crisis
 
Maybe an examination of the housing crisis, poverty should be done rather then blaming immigration ?
If you want to slow down immigration and the economic growth that comes with it in order to address the problems that perfectly reasonable request. But if your scaling back the home construction then the problem will just continue regardless as your not really address the core of the problem. Just slowing your own economic growth

They scaled it back because they couldn't do it.

They over promised at election time looking at it financially. They had the money and could afford it. But they're all bureauctatd and academics and didn't really look at how many it could do.

Building consents are also on the councils and the Resource Management Act effectively blocks high density development.

Basically if local community interest groups protest enough they can build high density housing. It's so land developersvin the good old days couldn't just steamroll the locals and/or Maori.

They're also sprawling into some if the best agricultural land.

 
They scaled it back because they couldn't do it.

They over promised at election time looking at it financially. They had the money and could afford it. But they're all bureauctatd and academics and didn't really look at how many it could do.

Building consents are also on the councils and the Resource Management Act effectively blocks high density development.

Basically if local community interest groups protest enough they can build high density housing. It's so land developersvin the good old days couldn't just steamroll the locals and/or Maori.

They're also sprawling into some if the best agricultural land.

You have managed to roll out 800 new homes by 2021 which is well short of the target. avg around 160 new houses per year
I can undererstand the resistant to large public housing development by locals. As large concentrations of cheap public housing create a large number of problems as we have seen in the past. A scattering of medium townhouses, 3 story apartments of reasonable quality with mixed public and private is the way to go with these things. You also have to be extremely careful least you dont end up with a Redfern where we built brand new homes and then they were all trashed within a few years due to drug, alcohol and lack of ownership.

We have the same problems here but the covid slow down has meant that real estate markets gone into decline. And this is probably a good thing as we were headed for a crash with the way things were going
The Generational wealth issue isnt going to go away, and we need to do much more because we are essentially trapping most of a generation while living off their labour via high rents
 
(...)
And speaking of philosophy bringing utilitarianism into arguments is regarded as the last refuge of the scoundrel, as it can be twisted into justifying everything.

Samuel Johnson ?

The retreat to nationalism is often a flight movement born out of the mobilisation of the Sympathetic branch of our Autonomic Nervous System, our inner instinctual safety mechanism. In times of fear, or unconsciously anxiety, the tough get going, as we know. Physiologically, we close out hearts, experience other people as other and the word as hostile; we fly to where we can wall ourselves in and be safe.
 
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Looks like the teaching of philosophy really has deteriorated, this in an age where people spend over 20 years pretending to be having a formal education!

First the "deal with it" argument and now this unwillingness to understand basic facts about morality and community.



Morality does not arise individually. You learn it, take it, from your community. You can change it, pick and choose, even rebel against it,. but its a community product. And this is the beginning also of why community is important.
Morality is socially determined. Behavior is individually determined (yeah I know free will and all that but let's not get into it, please...)



And speaking of philosophy bringing utilitarianism into arguments is regarded as the last refuge of the scoundrel, as it can be twisted into justifying everything.



One of those moral systems has been around for hundreds of years, the other for thousands, and communities along with its necessary border conditions, those who are in and those who are out, have existed for all that time. Clearly these moral systems coexist nicely with community membership, which be definition means both inclusion and exclusion. You cannot just invoke christianity or utilitarianism and then state that they are agains borders of any kind, because they have been developed, spread, and exercised in societies with lots of borders.

Utilitarianism is hopeless as a moral system, I'm not even attempting to argue about it. Let's just say that the nazis were convinced that "clearing land" for the "superior people" was an utilitarian endeavor and leave it at that.

Christianity is an interesting case. It's universalist in outlook, but you also have the give unto Caesar what is Caesar's - it was already tainted with having to deal with politics even before its supposed founded got nailed (pun intended) over being politically inconvenient. Christianity as it developed never had any problem with gated communities: guilds, cities, kingdoms, national states. Welcoming a neighbor does not mean granting community membership to a neighbor. The neighbor welcomed into christianity would be unable to continue worshiping Zeus, or Isis. He would be required to convert to a different culture in the process. And if you want to invoke the Jesus of the gospels and say that christianity strayed from it, remember the cursing and the demands, not just the brotherhood under god. Remember the conditions for access to the kindgom of god...

Communities have to have borders, they can't just be open to anyone and everyone without requirements else they would cease to be a community. To expand of this discussion: this was and remains the silliness of the people taken in with the talk of "multiculturalism". Even in the cosmopolitan places that are usually given as examples of "multiculturalism" (think Venice of old or any other big trading place) there is a a set of laws, a power, or sometimes several sets and very well-demarcated communities each with its own. And those are the worse places because you can't jump from any group to another without risking being denounced as traitor, ostracized or even killed.
When embracing the current common idea of open and happy multiculturalism you idealize a false myth that never existed in history. Multiculturalism where it existed in some stable way was either closed, policed (think ghettos and quarters, or the ottoman system of separate laws, that kind of stuff...), or not peaceful at all. And sure you can end up with a synthesis but that means you drop the multiple cultures and created a single new one. And the required set of changes is usually traumatic to those involved.
I welcome your critique of my logic, this is a pretty rudimentary thought process. However I think you are being even more "rough". You say:
Communities have to have borders, they can't just be open to anyone and everyone without requirements else they would cease to be a community.
This does not seem to stand up to the available evidence. In the UK the first laws criminalising migration were brought in in 1906, in response to the latest wave of Jews escaping pogroms in europe. We have had many waves of migration before and after that, and they did not result in an absence of community. Sure, they changed the character of society to a greater or lesser effect, but that is the history of the UK. In a wider sense, there is a very good case to be made that the history of humanity is a history of migration, even that to be human is to migrate. There have certainly been instances of destruction of communities, particularly when a more advanced expansionist society has met a less advanced one, but it is not always and does not need to be.

Therefore if this is your axiom that makes criminalising migration moral I do not think it holds. Certainly not more than mine.

The other smaller point is that the acceptance of the good samaritan as a neighbour was not predicated on his religion but his actions.
 
In the UK the first laws criminalising migration were brought in in 1906.

Law establishing land ownership existed in the UK and elsewhere prior to 1906 and de facto limited migration in that in
many countries (a) all useful land was de facto owned by some one, some family or by some community, and (b) it was
regarded as illegal to just move in and settle on someone else's land. National laws limiting migration into nation states
may therefore be viewed as a rationalisation of those principles in that it was considered better for the state to prevent
large quantities of strangers from migrating in and then coming into conflict with those already settled in the nation.
 
Law establishing land ownership existed in the UK and elsewhere prior to 1906 and de facto limited migration in that in
many countries (a) all useful land was de facto owned by some one, some family or by some community, and (b) it was
regarded as illegal to just move in and settle on someone else's land. National laws limiting migration into nation states
may therefore be viewed as a rationalisation of those principles in that it was considered better for the state to prevent
large quantities of strangers from migrating in and then coming into conflict with those already settled in the nation.
Private ownership of land is a very different thing to criminalisation of migration. I suppose you could say there is some sort of progression, or that the one was used as a justification for the other, but that is pretty tenuous and certainly not a moral justification.
 
Most people are not mathematicians or abstract scientists, they perceive as themselves as existing in physical and local
communities and they often take the view that they have a form of moral shared ownership of the area associated with that community.
The moral ownership is based on the fact that they and their ancestors cleared the forest, drained the fields, built/bought the houses.

This perceptual concept of local rights exists on many scales and levels:

my shoes, my bedroom, our house, our street, our neighbourhood, our city, our county, our nation, our EU etc.
 
@Samson as @EnglishEdward mentioned there were other barriers to mass immigration which meant that no specific laws were necessary. Land ownership laws but also cost of travel, language barrier, local laws and rights (Switzerland still conserves the relic of granting citizenship ion the local level?). Even religion served as a barrier, at least promising to severely disadvantage newcomers, from outright ghettos to exclusion form social activities. The end result was that immigrants were mostly brought in, it wasn't just open.

This, to be perfectly honest, is still the case: countries do control borders, and governments relax controls when someone wants massive numbers of migrants in. Things don't just happen accidentally. When the other barriers to immigration were reduced with by technological change (cost of travel) or by social change (learning languages, local powers to exclude denied, secularization, etc), governments put up legislative barriers and the necessary controls. This has been a constant. You simply cannot find historical examples of "open societies". There were empires which moved population around and didn't much care about people moving internally but those controlled borders also. There too existed the in-group and the out-groups. And when out-groups came in in large numbers political instability followed.

Coming forward to the modern era, and closed to Europe, Venice was the quintessential example of a cosmopolitan city. Yet it had closed quarters for other nationalities settled there for business reasons! It stuck its jews in a ghetto. Sure it traded with anybody but it kept the groups separated. The practice of cosmopolitanism is different from the myth of it.
 
The english language is defined by use. Not by my use, but the general use in the english speaking community in general. This is very different from having no definition. I am trying to use it as it is generally used, not for moral pressure. If you want to define it I shall use your definition for the purposes of this discussion.
That's backward reasoning.
Any langage is defined by use on the long term, but that doesn't imply words don't have meaning. It just imply this meaning change with use (and, in this case, abuse). The emotional load of a word is based on its meaning, and it's precisely because of this emotional load that it's used as a weapon even when the meaning is not appropriate.
Abusing a word voids it of it's meaning and makes it useless for communicating.
I have been thinking about it (perhaps I should start by reading, but I have enough reading to do for work). It seems the most rigorous way is to define one's moral axioms and then work from them to practical actions. So you could start with some definition of utilitarianism. From there you could ask whether freedom of movement would increase the sum of happiness and well-being / reduce the sum of unhappiness and suffering. It seems to me obvious that it would, not least as it would reduce the incidence of wars if everyone had friends and family in all corners of the world. How to get there is certainly a question for a utilitarian, as it could cause disruption that harms people's well being, but the goal should be clear from this foundation.
First, utilitarianism is not morality, it's an attempt at efficiency. You can basically justifies anything, even the most heinous actions, if you can "balance the sheets". Propaganda is utilitarian. Scapegoating is utilitarian. That's a pretty terrible foundation to take if you're trying to speak about what is right/moral, because it explicitely doesn't care about morality, just about results.

Second, not it isn't obvious at all that complete freedom of movement would makes magically everything nice and cosy. I specifically asked you about the whole in-group/out-group and territoriality concepts precisely to remind you that they are normal psychological phenomenons, which go directly against large free movements of populations.
Few species tolerate encroaching on their territories (and humans are not part of those who do), and seeing people from the out-group coming in numbers is certainly NOT something that will go smoothly.
That's not even speaking of material problems, which are actually the subject of this thread, like housing and work and economical exploitation and so on.

You're simply ignoring the most basic human behaviour AND the blatantly obvious frictions visible all over the world when it comes to immigration here.
Others may take the teaching of Jesus as their axioms. It seems the most relevant would be the parable of the good samaritan. From that we could derive that we should treat those who come from geographically remote locations, are genetically distinct and have different cultures as neighbours.
That's not a reasoning here, that's just quoting Jesus. He might be right, he might be wrong, but this is not an argument, it's a "you should do this". The questions of the "why" and "is it good" aren't answered.
Both of these sets of axioms come to the same conclusion, we should not discriminate based on geographic origin, genetics or culture. As I said in the 2nd post of this thread, I am not aware of a set of acceptable (to me) axioms that would result in a different conclusion. I would be very interested in how you would derive a different conclusion. It is worth noting that I do not accept "everyone else thinks X" as any proof of X, as it has been shown to be wrong too many times, both historically and personally.
Your first axiom is downright false, the second is an appeal to religious authority. I'm still unconvinced (to say the least).

My take on morality : any morality that isn't applicable to actual humans, is crap and worthless. If you need to rewrite humans to be fundamentally different to make your system work, then it's wishful thinking, not something applicable.
Of course, ideals are fine, because they are by definition unattainable goals that people should strive for to improve themselves. But if Regular Joe can't reach the "good enough" without chaning his human nature, then it's not morality, it's brainwashing.

As such, morality needs to take into account that humans have in-groups and out-groups, and feel territorial. People dislikes when strangers encroach on their turf. People takes time to accept a newcomer in their group. People creates culture with time, and they are attached to it. All that is normal and not immoral as long as it's kept in check by not letting them act unjustly toward others due to prejudice.
Trying to ignore all this and shout "RACIST" in order to shame people into complying is actually what I see as much more immoral - not only it is intellectually dishonest, it also basically means you want to enforce imaginary standards to actual humans (notice that I'm speaking of the ABUSE of the word here, not shouting "racist" when the person is ACTUALLY racist, hence the importance of actual definitions and remembering WHY "racist" is actually bad, rather than letting it be applied nilly-willy). And even if you go with utilitarianism BS, it also simply fails in practice, as we can see in the serious integration and migration-related troubles that arise (it's what the OP is talking about after all).
 
But if Regular Joe can't reach the "good enough" without chaning his human nature, then it's not morality, it's brainwashing.
Sorry to butt in, but considering your constant emphasis on definition of language, that's not what "brainwashing" is defined as.

"human nature" is a convenient catch-all for "presumed facts". What is human nature? Why is it a justification for preferred said "nature" over our better (non-basic) instincts? Your argument seems to one of "it's not racist to instinctively be cautious of outsiders when inside an in-group". If it's not, I'm wrong, and I apologise in advance.

Which, if true, is fine. But doesn't excuse acts of racism committed by the in-group just because it happens to be in their "nature". It could be in someone's "nature" to be a sadist. This is not justification nor a defense of their sadism. It's merely an explanation.

When you say "actual humans", what do you even mean? We (nominally) better ourselves as a species over time. Advances in morality, cultural or philosophical enlightment, and so on, have often come at cost (or through strife). Sometimes people do have to be dragged, proverbially "kicking and screaming", through the gates of social progress. Gay rights have been a thing people have fought for for decades, and yet people can still be homophobic. Educating people and helping them overcome their prejudice isn't "brainwashing". And if a person doesn't want to be educated and wants to remain homophobic, then they're definitely (still) a homophobe. The same goes for notions of race and racism. Race being a mostly-invented thing aside (in-group / out-group being a good distinction here, thanks), if someone resists being educated (fairly) on what constitutes racism, and wants to keep discriminating on account of perceived race, they are a racist. End of story. Human nature is irrelevant to that person's choice.

Can it be difficult to overcome prejudice? Absolutely. But like many other things of "human nature" we have overcome over the years, it's not impossible. Nor is it "brainwashing" to try and help someone along that moral path.

(this is completely ignoring the fact that a theoretical in-group member disliking a "stranger encroaching on their turf" is very different from a theoretical white / Caucasian in-group member disliking a "stranger encroaching on their turf who happens to be black")
 
(this is completely ignoring the fact that a theoretical in-group member disliking a "stranger encroaching on their turf" is very different from a theoretical white / Caucasian in-group member disliking a "stranger encroaching on their turf who happens to be black")

Why?
 
There is a difference between disliking a stranger who happens to be black from disliking a stranger because they are black.
 
There is a difference between disliking a stranger who happens to be black from disliking a stranger because they are black.
Sure, I should've said "any white" and "any black". The point of discussion is apparently "human nature", and these instinctive feelings that people (apparently) just seem to have. If you instinctively reject someone from your in-group and they happen to be black, assuming no other differences, the instinct is because they look different.

At this point, in this context, you're not going to know anything else about the person other than how they look.

EDIT

I'm explaining this badly, but I'll leave the above up just for clear progression of discussion. Ignore the above, if you find it contradictory.

What I was attempting to separate out the differences in context between someone rejecting an outsider, and someone of a specific racial typing rejecting an outside of a different one. These are different hypotheticals, and should be treated differently.

Much like how Akka's argument (assuming, again, I'm reading it right) regarding morality is not a counterpoint to the existence of racism. His argument could be completely right and indicative of society and still be complementary to the existing of racist (or sexist, etc, et al) in-group / out-group dynamics. It could be human nature to be suspicious of outsiders, and it could still be racism (or discrimination of a non-racial form) to reject someone because they happen to be from somewhere else.
 
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Sorry to butt in, but considering your constant emphasis on definition of language, that's not what "brainwashing" is defined as.
brainwashing
/ˈbrānwôSHiNG/

Learn to pronounce

noun
noun: brainwashing
the process of pressuring someone into adopting radically different beliefs by using systematic and often forcible means.

Nah, seems fine to me.
"human nature" is a convenient catch-all for "presumed facts". What is human nature? Why is it a justification for preferred said "nature" over our better (non-basic) instincts? Your argument seems to one of "it's not racist to instinctively be cautious of outsiders when inside an in-group". If it's not, I'm wrong, and I apologise in advance.
That's a bit too much of a shortcut.
To clarify, I have three distinct main arguments :
1) "it's human to be cautious of outsiders and to favor in-group over out-group".
2) "racism isn't just interchangeable with preference or even discrimination".
3) "morality that ignore how humans work is worthless".

More about "human nature" below :
When you say "actual humans", what do you even mean? We (nominally) better ourselves as a species over time. Advances in morality, cultural or philosophical enlightment, and so on, have often come at cost (or through strife). Sometimes people do have to be dragged, proverbially "kicking and screaming", through the gates of social progress. Gay rights have been a thing people have fought for for decades, and yet people can still be homophobic. Educating people and helping them overcome their prejudice isn't "brainwashing". And if a person doesn't want to be educated and wants to remain homophobic, then they're definitely (still) a homophobe. The same goes for notions of race and racism. Race being a mostly-invented thing aside (in-group / out-group being a good distinction here, thanks), if someone resists being educated (fairly) on what constitutes racism, and wants to keep discriminating on account of perceived race, they are a racist. End of story. Human nature is irrelevant to that person's choice.
I thought I was clear with that. What I mean with "actual humans" is how humans are and not how humans "should be". We all accept a certain degree of greed, selfishness, loss of self-control and so on - "it's human" as said. It doesn't mean we let people go in a rampage about it, but we not just tolerate, but actually value, when it's "reasonable amount".
"inhuman" is in fact often used to describe such systems that ignore these parts and expect people to act "perfectly".
Would you blame someone who value his family above a stranger ? Would you blame someone who bar his door to a stranger ? Yet, in both case, the stranger might a much better person than the family or the owner. The pattern is here, we accept and value that someone can discriminate and favour, to a degree, the in-group over the out-group. Fighting prejudice is good, but trying to ignore the normalcy of such prejudice and erase the existence of their source is not.

Human society needs to be made for real humans, to blunt the worse of our instincts but still admit their existence and not try to twist and warp people into something different than humans, even if it's "better" in the eye of the ideologue (spoiler : the "perfect human" would be completely different in the eye of another ideologue anyway).
Can it be difficult to overcome prejudice? Absolutely. But like many other things of "human nature" we have overcome over the years, it's not impossible. Nor is it "brainwashing" to try and help someone along that moral path.
I'm going to be provocative a bit, and ask : what makes it "more moral" to fight prejudice than to rewrite how people feel ?
Not that I disagree, and in fact I specifically wrote in the message you answer : "All that is normal and not immoral as long as it's kept in check by not letting them act unjustly toward others due to prejudice.", but I think it's all about degrees, and tempering the problematic aspects of our instincts is only good up to a point.
(this is completely ignoring the fact that a theoretical in-group member disliking a "stranger encroaching on their turf" is very different from a theoretical white / Caucasian in-group member disliking a "stranger encroaching on their turf who happens to be black")
To me, this shows more your own prejudices, considering the formulation you used yourself actually implies that the color of the second person is only incidental to being a stranger, which is the main problem.
 
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That's a bit too much of a shortcut.
To clarify, I have three distinct main arguments :
1) "it's human to be cautious of outsiders and to favor in-group over out-group".
2) "racism isn't just interchangeable with preference or even discrimination".
3) "morality that ignore how humans work is worthless".

What follows from this?
 
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