WoodScientist

At an individual level you are right. But this is more an issue with numbers. Immigrants do not just bring themselves; they also bring their culture. Think of it this way. Let's say Germany decides to bring over a million politically disaffected American progressives. How many mosques do you think those million people will want to build in their new home? Maybe one or two, there will be some Muslims in that group. But most of those million won't even be religious. And most of those that are will just help fill the pews of half-empty German churches. There won't be a titanic shift in the German religious landscape from these million American immigrants.

Immigration starts having issues not at the individual level, but the societal level. Too many immigrants too quickly, and people start feeling like their culture is being replaced. The slower assimilation happens, the more people start feeling like their culture is being replaced. The more culturally different the immigrant population is from the native population, and the more people feel like their culture is being replaced. And the more people feel like their culture is being replaced, the more they start voting for hard right parties like AfD.

There's nothing wrong with Muslims or with people building mosques. But I mention mosques because they are a highly visible symbol of immigrant populations with very different cultures, a symbol that right wing politicians gleefully exploit.

If Germany brings over a million disaffected Americans, what culturally disruptive things will they bring? I guess Germany will get some more McDonalds franchises and a few other American brands? But those million Americans really aren't going to stir things up too much. It's not like you're going to let the Americans bring their guns with them. They'll have to leave those behind. And the big gun nuts aren't likely to take Germany up on its immigration offer in the first place.

And just due to genetics, give it a generation or two, and you won't even able to tell who is descended from those immigrants without checking ancestry records. The first generation will be noticeably American, but the second, third, or fourth? Indistinguishable from the native German population. Completely assimilated.

Yeah it's a political tight rope. And you definitely wouldn't want to put in place any kind of horrific race or skin color requirements. You don't want some nightmare Nazi-esque racial fraction rule. Literally just, "did you have an ancestor from this country? Ok, you can come here." And yeah, if Norway decides to do that, then there will be some black Americans who happen to have some Norwegian ancestors who want to move there. And you have to be OK with that. There aren't millions of pure-blooded Norwegian Americans sitting around in the US eagerly waiting their chance to return to the homeland. There are instead people like myself. I have ancestors from all over Western Europe. The single biggest chunk of my ancestry is Norwegian, but that piece is still only like 1/4 of my ancestors. I have ancestors from Norway, Germany, France, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and bunch of places I don't even know about. For all intents and purposes, my ancestry is just "generic white American." American was once called "the great melting pot" for a reason.

It's a political tight rope. There's a good argument to be made for it from a purely practical perspective. If immigrants are needed, why not recruit immigrants from countries that are most similar to yours culturally? Sure, Norway and the US aren't as similar as Norway and Denmark. But there aren't tons of Danish immigrants just waiting for a chance to move to Norway. And while not the same, Norway and the US are a hell of a lot more similar than Norway and Afghanistan are.

If Norway imports 100,000 disaffected politically liberal Americans, how many mosques do you think those new immigrants are going to want to build there? Most probably won't even be religious, and most of those that are will just help fill the pews of the already half-empty Norwegian churches. There's nothing wrong with building mosques. But again, we're talking about cultural friction here. Too much change too quick, and people feel like their culture is being replaced, and they start voting for reactionary politicians. One population intrinsically causes less disruption in integration than another. And if you need immigrants, why not select from those immigrants that can most easily assimilate into the existing culture? Normally this is a moot point. There normally isn't a potential reserve of millions of culturally-similar immigrants that European countries could draw upon. But right now, due to the political situation in the US, there actually are millions of such potential culturally-similar immigrants.

There's a good practical argument, but it's hard to make the case without making yourself sound like a militant racist.

Ok, I really can't understand the dynamics of this arrangement. Not with the info provided.

So you don't actually build this product or service, you're just a middle man? Why not just have the vendor include the missing piece?

I think crucial details are being lost in the vagaries.

Can this additional part be obtained from a third party?

Intellectual property is a lie. Pure propaganda. You can own physical things. You can't own concepts.

Public domain is the default natural state of humanity. Copyrights, trademarks, and patents have only existed for a few centuries. For most of history, you could copy any song, work, or invention you wanted. Hell, for most of history, you claiming ownership of an idea would have been downright sacrilegious. God/The Gods/The Muses were the ones responsible for creative works; human creators were just the channelers of that divine will. In the Medieval era and earlier, artists didn't even sign their works.

Again. This is the natural state of humanity. We naturally have the freedom to build and create whatever we want from whatever inspiration we want, including copying others. That is after all how humans learn anything. Everything you have ever done, every behavior more complex than simple biological functions is something you learned how to do. Someone figured out how to make even the most rudimentary objects in your life. No one patented the first bowl. Someone just figured it out and everyone copied from there. This is the natural state of human beings. Knowledge is meant to be shared.

At some point however we decided that in order to facilitate the arts, science, and invention, providing a limited time restriction on people's rights was justified. We temporarily take away some of everyone's freedom to creatively express themselves. In exchange, we encourage authors, inventors, songwriters, etc. to create high quality original works.

Over time, this purpose has been lost and the fundamental nature of the arrangement forgotten. Rights holders started spreading propaganda, using the term "intellectual property." You are a victim of this propaganda. As if the ability to restrict the creativity of others is a natural right like the freedom of speech. Copyrights, trademarks, and patents are not rights. They are PRIVILEGES. They are a practical arrangement. To encourage you to create a thing, we restrict everyone else's freedom to use that thing for some period of time. But it's just a practical arrangement. It's not something you're entitled to as a creator by natural right.

Of course, the balance here has now all been thrown out of whack by corporations buying laws. Originally the term for copyright was just 7 years, renewable to 14. After that the temporary restriction on everyone's freedom ended. That was still long enough for creatives to make a living off of their work. But now it's been extended bit by bit, everyone's freedom restricted more and more, longer and longer. Now copyrights take everyone's rights away for generations.

There is a reason respect for copyrights is at an all time low.

While Fuck Trump, there is something deeply disturbing and creepy about constitutional monarchs.

You don't think that amongst their families in quiet hushed tones, they discuss and yearn for the prospect of returning to real power someday? They're basically tyrants-in-waiting. They're just quietly hanging out in the background, waiting for some crisis in democracy, some loss of confidence in the system, etc. Then, when confidence in democracy is at some historical nadir, they can sweep in and restore themselves to power and glory.

They're vultures. They're just biding their time, living the high life, pretending to be kind, benevolent, and harmless. Yet deep in their heart of hearts, they yearn for the power they know was taken from them. They know their ancestors had it. And they want it back.

You don't think it could happen? Democracy hasn't existed in European countries for all that long. There are many examples historically of royal restorations where royal houses returned to power, after periods out of power far longer than the existence of many European constitutional monarchies. The idea of a royal restoration returning the King of Norway to real power seems absurd. But by historical standards it's really not that absurd. Monarchy in Europe existed as a tradition for over a thousand years. Constitutional monarchy is just 1-2 centuries old, or less, in most European countries. Rome's Republic lasted half a millennia before it collapsed into an absolute monarchy. Don't dismiss the idea that the monarchs could return to power. I have little doubt that most of today's constitutional monarchs secretly dream and fantasize about the idea.

And that's what's so creepy about them. They may claim to truly believe in democracy. But if they really did, they would give up their crowns entirely. No one who really believes in democracy could accept a position that puts them as a monarch, someone entrusted by power from right of birth. Democracy begins with the proposition that all human beings are created equal. A monarch, however limited in power, is anathema to this. I don't care how constrained that power is. You cannot truly believe in democracy while serving as a monarch. In their hearts, every "constitutional monarch" dreams of the slim chance that they might see a royal restoration. They are vultures, simply waiting for democracy to get sick and stumble.

Truly, the French and the Soviets had the right idea on how to deal with royalty. Give up your crown or give up your head. That is how you deal with kings properly.

banished to New Jersey

That's almost as bad as being banished to Detroit.

Seriously. I wonder why European countries aren't massively jumping on this opportunity. Like every developed country, the nations of Europe need immigrants to prop up their demographics. Most of Europe's immigrants have been coming from countries in the global South. And while such immigrants have done well for the nations of Europe, there will always be less friction in bringing in immigrants from countries of more similar culture. Fuck any racists who hate Muslims. But the cold truth is it's probably a lot easier to integrate large numbers of politically liberal Americans into European countries than it is to integrate immigrants from Muslim countries. European countries desperately need immigration, but right wing politics is on the rise, in large part due to the frictions of immigration. Obviously American and European cultures are not the same; there are still very real cultural differences. But European vs. American culture is far closer than many other cultural pairings out there.

European countries do have some very limited ancestry-based immigration policies. But they usually only go back a generation or two. If your parent or grandparent immigrated from a European country to the US, you can get easy immigration in a lot of EU countries. But for most Americans of European descent, that immigration happened generations ago.

If the EU countries were clever right now, they could take advantage of this opportunity to bring in large numbers of disaffected Americans. They could offer relocation assistance, make it cheap and easy for educated American progressives to pack their bags and jump the pond. And in exchange they get workers in their economies they don't have to train to educate, and immigrants who would assimilate quite readily into the existing cultural milieu.

Hell, personally, I'm a typical American in that I have a hodgepodge of European ancestry. But my ancestors came over before 1900, there's nowhere in Europe I qualify for immigration based on ancestry. But if one of the countries my ancestors came from wanted to made it cheap and easy for me to return to the old country, I would jump on that.

Hell, the politics of it sell itself. Bill it politically as "bringing the European diaspora home."

Seriously. I remember Digg. My life's social media path has been slashdot->digg->reddit->lemmy.

I was there! I saw it all!

I want to see the comedy-of-errors timeline where Luigi beats the rap based on a technicality or jury nullification....He finally gets out of jail....Then he immediately does it again.

One of the reasons bigotry like this spreads is that even supposedly well-meaning people use dogwhistles like "biological woman."

"I promise fascism not now, but later" is not a viable strategy to fighting fascism. Democrats promise to not be fascists, but they also promise to ensure that fascism will come about in the future. Republicans are fascism now, Democrats are fascism later.