Caring
- 2017-05-04
The opinion of a doctor who says that there's no America or political science is so invaluable.
American Political Science Review. There is no America. There is no political science.Evolutionary biology has approached status as a science the past few decades, but no true academic scientist would attribute genetic 'evolutionary mechanisms' to behavior of any type.
Behavior that affects procreation may have an impact on genetics over substantial periods of time. Political beliefs have no impact on procreation.
There may be a basis for the study of Republican behavior in male airport restrooms as having some genetic impact on our species.
Caring
- 2017-05-04
While there's some truth to that that the opposition to immigration is driven by the will to shield the local communities/cultures, there's plenty more behind the actions of politicians than many mainstream media followers can imagine. The issue brought forward is far more complex than "black-white--Asian-Middle eastern". America is an anomaly which has become inconvenient to some rich and powerful people who'd like to impose their will on the nation. Those few people have their vision which the country has not been built on, and their view is supposed to bring them some autocratic powers and allow them to make unilateral decisions in their own interests. All in all, the few billionaires in the White House are to create a new dictatorial capitalist system which is supposed to enrich few but impoverish many lives, and they are to close gaps in the area of demographics to do so.
People who oppose immigration do so because their communities that are predominantly white and have been for decades are suddenly being taken over by black people or Asians or Middle East. This dilutes the local language, English, and local culture.
FTinPRC
- 2017-05-03
American Political Science Review. There is no America. There is no political science.
Evolutionary biology has approached status as a science the past few decades, but no true academic scientist would attribute genetic 'evolutionary mechanisms' to behavior of any type.
Behavior that affects procreation may have an impact on genetics over substantial periods of time. Political beliefs have no impact on procreation.
There may be a basis for the study of Republican behavior in male airport restrooms as having some genetic impact on our species.
Silverboy
- 2017-05-03
I am sure it is an exciting place to live. You can meet all sort of eccentric people, and I like that. Probably similar to Bangkok where I lived in the late 90's. I had thought about living in Bangkok again, but the pollution and traffic drives me insane, so I settled on Pattaya instead. Near the ocean, clean air, great food, not that busy during the day, the hottest girls and the best nightlife on the planet after 8 pm.
I don't even like Brisbane-Gold Coast where I am now, just a massive urban sprawl these days. Cairns in north Australia is where I will live if I ever live full-time in Australia again.
BeenThere
- 2017-05-02
I just found this easy-to-read article in the LA Times of today called "Los Angeles hits a milestone: 4 million people and counting" (4 million is the city itself, while the population of the Greater LA is 18.68 million). If the link opens, you will see the evolution of LA with pictures from 1950 to now. Nowhere does it mention over population. Instead it talks about how the city has adapted to change.
BeenThere
- 2017-05-02
Part of the charm of LA is its horrible traffic (I am serious - we live with it, we hate it, but we kinda go around it, above it, under it....and mayor Garcetti is doing a great job at improving mass transit, and if trump the idiot stops blocking federal funding for our high speed train LA-SanFran, it will help decongestize the area) and the fact that it is a BIG metropolis where you can find anything. Lotsa creativity in LA (the movie industry, and now the software industry in the beach communities of LA). You can find everything and anything in LA; evidence is in the website called http://www.meetup.com: You want to meet people who ride pink harley davidsons, are vegan, love snakes and work in Hollywood? You ask it on meetup and you will find them or close enough.
I am not sure about the overpopulated thing. Housing is a bit insufficient (it makes the price of owning a house on the coast quite expensive). I have never seen the word "overpopulated" mentioned in any newspaper. I know that I wouldn't want LA to be any different.
Silverboy
- 2017-05-02
Really, I don't care if you "love" your illegals or not. Are you going to try to tell me your city is not overpopulated?
I don't understand this "bring in more people" mentality. Same in cities like Sydney or London. There are already too many people.
Even here where I live in Brisbane-Gold Coast I won't even drive my car outside of 10 am in the morning and 3 pm in the afternoon because of traffic congestion.
I also try to schedule airline flights outside of peak hours so I don't have to wait for ATC clearance, or be put in a holding pattern when coming home.
Basically more people = more problems.
BeenThere
- 2017-05-02
Some of the countries that you mentioned at the end of your (well-thought) post are in Scandinavia, with a socialist system that protects them from unemployment and unemployability due to illnesses. Everybody should have food and free medical care. That's a minimum in any evolved society. There days, the republicans at trying to gather a majority in the House of Congress (but the Senate - the other part of Congress - will likely block it) to remove the protection that Obamacare gives to people with pre-existing conditions/illnesses; under the new Trump plan, people with pre-existing conditions can't get coverage, or will have to pay an exorbitant price for it: Isn't it cruel???
To be frank, the attitude of the republicans comes directly from the civil war: They don't want black people to get medical coverage. All the other arguments are just window dressing.
Silverboy
- 2017-05-02
I am not saying the Japanese did not deserve to get bombed in WW2. They were an aggressor nation back then and as for the atomic bombs, they asked for it IMO.
It is true that other developed countries like the USA, New Zealand and Australia ( especially Australia ) have done much better economically than Japan over the past 20 years.
I don't think this is due to high immigration rates in the Western countries though.
The Australian businessman and philanthropist Dick Smith ( a smart man and not racist at all ) has raised his fears about high population growth several times and made a few documentaries about it.
More immigrants does not solve economic problems. It is a "giant Ponzi scheme" as Smith said. New immigrants also eventually get old and are a further burden on already maxed out social security and health systems.
Often, these migrants will be under-employed or unemployed. Unemployment among many African and Middle Eastern migrants in Sydney for example is very high. The "extra taxes" idea is a red herring.
More people means more freeways, more traffic, more housing ( a huge problem in some Western cities ) more rubbish, more urban sprawl and shopping malls. What about energy and water supply and security?
Dick Smith said that Australia's population should level out at around about 25 to 26 million people as this is mostly an arid country with already very large cities on the east coast.
In the USA you are different, your population is fairly evenly spread out with a much smaller percentage of the population living in the major cities. Still, by most measures, your country is also overpopulated.
It is interesting that the countries with smaller populations or lower population density seem to have the best standards of living. Ireland, New Zealand, Finland, Norway, etc. Maybe the USA, UK, Australia, we can learn from them?
Latina in LA
- 2017-05-02
Funny that you mention LA again. Some posters here have been telling you for months now that LA loves its "illegal" immigrants and is willing to lose a lot of $ milions of Federal money in order to remain a sanctuary city. And most of southern California is like that.
Besides, who would pick up the crops in the fields? Even right now, with some 2-3 million undocumented immigrants, California is SHORT of field workers (of course, Americans don't want to work in the fields). Same for hotel work. And many other industries.
We love our undocumenteds. We protect them. In exchange, they take care of us. They are hard workers. They are honest. They pay taxes. They send their children to school.
BeenThere
- 2017-05-02
Yes the Japanese society is very closed. With the following consequences:
1- They are very stubborn, they think they are right and historically this has given them the right to conquer and humiliate everybody around them. This is why the US had to send them TWO atomic bombs (one was not enough to change the mentality).
2- Japan has been in fiscal/financial stagnation since the 1990s, can't increase its inflation (required for growth), no matter what it tries. No growth in sight for its economy.
3- Their workforce is getting old and there is almost nobody to replace it. They don't know who will take care of the old workers when they hit their late 60s, 70s and 80s. Their society is so closed that it is shrinking itself into oblivion. The load will be on the shoulders of the tiny generation of millennials (imagine the taxes they will have to pay).
4- They have no cultural impact on the rest of the world. Nobody wants to be like them. If their islands sank into the ocean overnight, the world would not cry.
Silverboy
- 2017-05-02
No, I call this study hogwash. People who oppose immigration do so because their communities that are predominantly white and have been for decades are suddenly being taken over by black people or Asians or Middle East. This dilutes the local language, English, and local culture.
This has happened in many Western cities. Let you remind you that Asian countries don't have an immigration program. There is no such thing as immigration to China or Korea or Japan.
The Japanese are smart, they have the strictest immigration rules in the world, they don't allow Muslims, black people, or other Asians to permanantly live in their country.
Unlike China, Japan is a sophisticated society with a real culture.
This is how they have preserved their language and culture for so long. However, our stupid politicians in the West have no interest in preserving Anglo culture. There should be NO MORE IMMIGRATION in places like London, Sydney and SEQ ( South East Queensland ) in Australia, and places like Los Angeles in the USA. These are are already overpopulated and more migrants means even more problems.
Remember please that foreigners living in places like China or Thailand on short term visas is NOT immigration. There are also not enough of us to dilute Asian cultures. Some areas of cities in the West are having their white populations diluted down to almost nothing. Why should a old white woman be forced out of her home of decades just because Asian and black newcomers want to live in her street?
I feel you really have little understanding of this issue.
Fascinating! According to this study published yesterday in the American Political Science Review, some of the posters on this board who oppose immigration (even when they, themselves, live in foreign countries) would be "biologically motivated": People are conservative, not because of ideas or adherence to theories, but because they are physically disgusted by people who look different. That's an evolutionary mechanism meant to protect against infections brought by "the others". The study calls this trait the “behavioral immune system". It's inherited. My conclusion: Don't approach immigration foes with arguments, approach them with a bottle of Pepto Bismol.
Open immigration foes biologically motivated by racial, ethnic aversion, study says
Those especially fearful of infections and prone to disgust are most likely to oppose immigration by those of a different race or color.
This aversion is the result of a purported evolutionary mechanism that unconsciously steers people away from things that are different and perhaps threatening, the study said. It does so by making those things appear disgusting.
Moreover, the study says people hold conservative views because that defensive mechanism acts especially strongly in them, not because they have rationally adopted those views.
Invoking a hypothesis called the “behavioral immune system,” the study authors said that mechanism explained why political conservatives tend to favor restricting immigration.
“Our results suggest that people high in disgust sensitivity are not opposed to immigration because they are conservative,” the study said. “More likely, these people tend to be conservative because their behavioral immune system propels them to oppose immigrants...”
Stronger aversion to disgusting things was expressed by those more likely to oppose immigration of those of Middle Eastern origin than others, the study found. Presumably, the opponents were turned off by “an immigrant who is different from the American majority in terms of physical and cultural appearance.”
The behavioral immune system is a supposedly inherited set of instincts by which over evolutionary time, humans were programmed through Darwinian natural selection to avoid things that were likely to cause diseases or otherwise harm them.
“Because pathogens can be lethal but extremely hard to detect, the behavioral immune system evolved to be hyper-vigilant against unfamiliar stimuli, including unfamiliar individuals,” the study’s early version stated.
“In the evolved mind, we argue, differences in appearance (such as the color of one’s skin) are intuitively interpreted as cues of infectious diseases,Return to Index › Biological explanation as to why trump supporters are trump supporters