| ▲ | philipallstar 4 hours ago |
| > There were so many things that I saw growing up as relatively solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of European unity and American primacy European unity works well in a world of mostly-stable populations. Having mass migrations from large, relatively empty countries, to pretty full ones, is going to make the full ones increasingly expensive to make housing for, to power, and to water. |
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| ▲ | bojan 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| "Full countries" is a lie. You hear it often here in the Netherlands. What they don't want you to hear is that 54% of the land in the country is owned by agricultural companies[0], benefitting a tiny fraction of the population. [0] https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/achtergrond/2025/14/feiten-en-cijfe... |
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| ▲ | philipallstar 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The Netherlands is completely tiny compared to many of the countries people are coming from, and the land is allocated. You can't replace the farms with suburbs throughout the country, and even if you did, then what? Is it allowed to be full then? Or should people still leave their much more land-rich origins to come anyway? | |
| ▲ | throwaway85825 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Are the people supposed to eat rocks? Agriculture takes a lot of land but people need to eat. If anything agriculture is going to require more land in order to be sustainable. | | |
| ▲ | bojan 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | People do need to eat, but over 80% of the Dutch agricultural produce is being exported. Also, good portion of it isn't even meant for human consumption. Think flowers or cattle feed. This is not about feeding the population or about sustainability. It's simply about profit. | | | |
| ▲ | selfmodruntime 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | well duh let's just import food from elsewhere (and completely ignore that foreign politic squabbles might crash this system) | | |
| ▲ | throwaway85825 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's not like countries that import the majority of their calories have frequent food riots or anything. |
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| ▲ | shimman 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Does EU have the USA problem where most farmers are basically sharecroppers where they are mandated where they can buy their seed, buy their fertilizers, where they buy their chicks/sows/calfs, what equipment they can buy, how they can repair their equipment, where they can sell their crops, and at what specific prices all from a single undemocratic corporation? In the USA it's basically corporations that run everything and drive the farmers into poverty where said corporations can then buy their land and rely on undocumented workers to keep the abuse going. From the outside EU farmers seem to have better labor relations, but don't know. | | |
| ▲ | greggoB 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Swiss here, living in a small town quite close to farmers. I would expect if it was the case here, I would have heard about it, given my proximity. I'm aware of this "arrangement" in the US, never heard of it happening anywhere in the EU - I haven't done a comprehensive study though, maybe someone with more knowledge can say more. |
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| ▲ | kaufmae 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| most of the immigrants are highly educated professionals, big tech, pharma and meds. it‘s not the „empty“. |
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| ▲ | oytis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I think at least in Germany it's not true - among people coming to Germany there are more refugees of various kinds than professionals | | |
| ▲ | jubilanti an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Germany and Switzerland have taken dramatically different responses to the migrant crisis. | |
| ▲ | qingcharles 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | These things aren't mutually-exclusive, though. | | |
| ▲ | servo_sausage 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Every statistic regarding refugee attainment shows that it is; unless you are proposing to limit intake to only the skilled. | |
| ▲ | oytis 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Technically true, but I don't think anyone tracks education levels of refugees. |
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| ▲ | philipallstar 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They definitely aren't, but whomever they are they still requires houses, power and water. | | |
| ▲ | panick21_ 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | And literally all the limits on those things are artificial. Its the same right wing idiots that want this referendum that prevent smart transportation infrastructure in cities, that delay important transportation investments, that prevent bike infrastructure, that had the brilliant plan of buying cheap energy from France and Germany and so on. |
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| ▲ | stymaar 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | France is mostly empty by Europe's population density standard though, so even though it was likely not the intent of GP, it kind of works in that context. | | |
| ▲ | ahartmetz 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | >France is mostly empty Which is so weird! France has large amounts of good farmland, some of the most modern (and unified, unlike Germany) government in Europe for a long time etc... no obvious reason to have just half the population density of Germany. | | |
| ▲ | stymaar 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's mostly a matter of when the demographic transition started: https://nitter.net/pic/media%2FGEDBLvOXUAANUlK.png%3Fname%3D... France used to be “the China of Europe” (which is why we kept being at war with the whole continent at once). Had France followed their neighbors' demographic, it would be home to more than 200 million people today. The demographic collapse of France in the 19th century, while Germany kept growing, alone explains the French defeat in 1870 (and then the two world wars). More data on that piece of history, and a hypothesis to explain it, here: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/frances-baby-bust/ | |
| ▲ | mschuster91 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > no obvious reason to have just half the population density of Germany. France was historically always focused on Paris, because that was where the Emperor was. If you were not a farmer, there was little reason to live anywhere but Paris or other large cities. In contrast, Germany historically consisted of thousands of small fiefdoms that each held some sort of local importance and each held authority of some sort. The Kaiser was pretty far away and only mattered in practice when the Kaiserreich was involved in some sort of conflict. |
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| ▲ | throw-the-towel 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Can you back up your claims? I don't have a dog in this fight, but do notice people ridiculing migrants as "doctors and engineers". | | |
| ▲ | tempay 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | As with everything it's complicated but it's more true than not: https://nccr-onthemove.ch/indicators/how-qualified-are-migra... More importantly, education isn't everything. Half the economy runs on work that doesn't need higher education and that locals largely won't do: cleaning, care, hospitality, construction. The Spanish and Portuguese speaking workers doing those jobs are propping up a standard of living for everyone. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway85825 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Won't do or won't do for slave wages? | | |
| ▲ | tempay 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I can't comment outside of Geneva but it's hardly "slave wages": * https://www.mission-geneve.dfae.admin.ch/en/manual-labour-mi... * (scroll to the cost breakdown) https://batmaid.ch/en/about-us | | |
| ▲ | throwaway85825 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | A better definition of slave wages is: After food, shelter and necessities is there something left over? Lately consuner spending is increasingly debt indicating that its not break even. | | |
| ▲ | tempay 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > consuner spending is increasingly debt Geneva has the highest minimum wage in the world precisely to try and avoid the "working poor". Also the "consuner spending is increasingly debt" is very US centric view. The situation in Europe is less extreme and totally absent in many countries. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway85825 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >locals largely won't do This is never true and just economic denialism. There is a market price for labor. If there is no supply at a given price it is not evidence that a market does not exist, only that the demand is mispriced. | | |
| ▲ | jjk166 24 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > This is never true and just economic denialism. There is a market price for labor. If there is no supply at a given price it is not evidence that a market does not exist, only that the demand is mispriced. There can be situations where the market for a particular type of labor does not exist. Populations aren't infinite, and if there are enough good paying, desirable jobs for full employment, then there may be no one available to do a job economically. For example let's imagine a hypothetical town where only residents of the town are allowed to work in the town, though they can provide services to those outside of the town. Let's say 100 people live in this town, and they are all doctors. There is a hospital in this town that needs 100 doctors to run. There are other jobs to be done in this town - someone needs to pick up trash, someone needs to mow lawns, someone needs to sell food, etc. Now if you pay someone a doctor's salary to pick up trash, they could potentially leave the hospital to do that job instead; but then the hospital is understaffed. Something isn't going to get done; indeed in this scenario where there are a lot more jobs to be done than people to do them, a lot of stuff isn't going to get done, no matter how good the pay is, and the jobs that are done will be insanely expensive. In this case you would simply allow people from outside the town to work in the town, or get more people to move into town. If you scale up this scenario to cities, provinces, and ultimately nations, it's clear that at some point you must choose between structural unemployment (ie number of workers greater than number of jobs to be done), bullshit jobs (people who would be structurally unemployed are hired to do unnecessary tasks), a managed economy (employment opportunities restricted to ensure necessary work gets done at any population level), or immigration/emigration of labor (labor supply varies to meet demand) regardless of wages. In practice you'll likely get a combination of the above. |
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| ▲ | dyauspitr 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That’s to the US. I believe in Europe it’s Arab hoipolloi | |
| ▲ | selfmodruntime 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | citation needed |
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| ▲ | epolanski 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Where are the full ones? Working age population is decreasing in Europe. It's only really major cities that suffer under development, and even among them it's just some, not the majority. And despite all the bitching, even extra-EU immigrants are a huge resource for most European countries. In Italy e.g. extra-EU immigrants contribute to 14% of taxes and receive less than 2% of benefits, as many of them come here as young adults and leave before qualifying for pension anyway so the bulk of social services (school and healthcare) is essentially largely subsidized by immigrants. In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net contributors to welfare state too. Yes, many among them stay poor, don't integrate and tend to fall for minor, petty and some for violent crime. What you hear little about are the insane dangers of organized crime like Italians and Albanians on the other hand, because they move hundreds of billions and are a drag to the economy in most of Europe. |
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| ▲ | xenonite 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net contributors to welfare state too. Interesting. By what cost does this measure loss of freedom due to increased surveillance, decreased freedom of movement especially for women.
Also increased cost and decreasing quality of police, law, education, or even street cleaning… |
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| ▲ | duped 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies' peoples wanted to move to Europe. Large scale global movement is indicative of failure to uplift the globe from violence, poverty, and climate change. It makes a lot more sense to me for the global powers who don't want mass migration to do something to fix its causes instead of retreating inward and succumbing to nativism. |
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| ▲ | rayiner 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies' peoples wanted to move to Europe. What an absurd assertion. Where did you learn that? Read up about Roman border control and immigration policy, and what they required of immigrants into Roman territory. | |
| ▲ | selfmodruntime 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There was no global freedom of movement. Ever. | |
| ▲ | wizzwizz4 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The second paragraph is a reasonable political position, but the first is blatantly ahistorical. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport#Antecedents. |
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| ▲ | teiferer 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > mass migrations > pretty full ones C'mon, why parrot this nonsense? There are no "mass migrations" and neither the European countries nor the US are "full". Yes the Europeans screwed up real integration across the board, but nobody is really working on fixing that. Easier to just claim to be full and the immigrants are causing higher crime rates so no more people in but oh demographics, please everybody make more babies! |
