The problem with immigration?
Well, this is a narrow problem for now at least, and isn't going into all the complexities of different aspects. Because, there are many problems with immigration, many of which aren't about immigration at all, but the way culture and society function. However, an article from the Finnish news on needing practical nurses reminded me of this issue, as the estimate is that Finland will need 31,000 more practical nurses by 2040, which is almost a 35% increase from current levels. This is because of the aging population in Finland, as the birth rate is well below the replacement rate, and the only thing keeping the population growing, is immigration.
During 2023, there were approximately 45,000 more immigrants than emigrants, while deaths outnumbered births by nearly 13,000.
The population grew by 33,000 people. And of course, while a lot of that is immigrants, even a percentage of the births in the country are going to be to immigrants already here, right? This is what fuels the narrative of the "great replacement" theory, which has claims of being debunked. But is it really false?
I don't think so.
I just don't think it is driven by any purpose to do so, but rather, it is the economic incentives that are making the change, because the economy as we know it is a Ponzi scheme that is driven by growth. That growth isn't just population growth of course, it is also efficiency growth, which means that businesses driven to increase profits (money) will find more efficient ways of doing things to maximise the productivity of their staff. This leads to more being produced for less, increasing profits, but also decreasing the people needed to do so. This has other effects on the economy too.
Number of jobseekers in Finland rose by 27,000 last year. The unemployment rate still hovered around 9% in December, virtually unchanged from the previous month.
So, 33,000 more people in the country, 27,000 more jobseekers. This isn't a one-to-one correlation, because a lot of the job seekers are professionals who have been put out of work (myself included) due to profit-maximisation strategies.
Companies are not at fault.
All they are doing is sticking to the economic algorithm of increase shareholder wealth. And shareholders are not at fault, because all they are doing is working to maximize their own wealth through the available mechanisms. And the mechanisms aren't at fault, because all they are doing is what they are designed to do by the algorithm creators, which is to maximize money generated, because that is classified as improving conditions.
The lack of "fault" keeps going.
It is a cultural issue though, isn't it? Because this game of maximization has been in play for a long time in human history, and perhaps for its entire existence. The problem is that in the relatively recent past of the last few thousand years, the growth has been done through mechanisms like conquering, slaughtering, resource theft, slavery.... you know, all those lovely things from the past that we think are no longer present in our world.
But they are, aren't they?
While countries are largely unable or unwilling to expand their borders through war, the corporations are the new states that are warring on their behalf for market share. Wealth is largely the state, not the land itself anymore. Population size doesn't equate to high value anymore either. Conquering the marketplaces is the driver for expansion. Slaughtering and consuming other players in the market to expand borders, increase population, and consolidate resources to increase control and defences. Theft of resources both natural and human happens to maximise profits, such as taxes paid in places where the income wasn't earn to reduce tax burden. And slavery, well, just look at where production is in order to lower costs and increase profits.
The colonial times are not over. They have just shifted from land to wealth.
It is more efficient. Just imagine how much time, resources, bloodshed and effort it would take to conquer the lands to swell population size to 3 billion people. Yet, Facebook has done it successfully in less than twenty years. TikTok and Twitter are similar, as are Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft. These companies are generating more wealth than many sovereign states today, with far higher efficiency, and far lower obligation to the people.
Imagine if states said "You're fired" to citizens who didn't produce enough.
Corporations can be shadow states, without requiring any citizens, nor having to defend any borders. Not only this, they don't have to provide much relatively for those that generate the wealth for them, they needn't maintain infrastructure, they can reduce their costs of social obligation, and they needn't worry about dying, so they never have to even pay an inheritance tax.
Replacement is happening.
But I don't think it is any conspiracy to replace white people. black people, or whatever lays between, the replacement is of us as citizens, and the protections that citizenship used to bring. We are not people anymore at any level, we are human resources that are used to maximize profit for the organizations. Yes, it is a few at the top who benefit in their lifetime, but they themselves are just resources too, enslaved to the algorithm of maximizing wealth growth.
The base layer of the economy is at fault, because it isn't designed to improve human wellbeing, it is designed for wealth maximization. Wealth maximization untethered from human condition improvement, is always going to lead to consolidation of wealth and therefore power, into the hands of a reducing few, at the expense of human wellbeing.
See the problem?
Our culture is one of maximisation, but what we are looking to maximise is not human growth, it is wealth growth. Even if we were looking at human growth and wellbeing, perhaps we wouldn't care about the colour of skin at all, or perhaps the religious need that we seem to have, would have moved away from all of the religions as they currently stand, as well as all of the political ideology, and focused our religious needs on maximising human wellbeing in this world, now.
The need for nurses in Finland due to an aging population, isn't about replacement of Finns, it is because the current system is imbalanced and it has led to conditions where Finns are going to be unable to look after themselves. The global business models have no obligation to do this either, and instead, they will look to capitalise on the situation to grow wealth, by offering goods and services, including nursing staff at a cheaper cost to improve their bottom lines. And the governments don't care about citizen wellbeing either, as they are only looking to persist, to survive, to hold onto some control for relevance, so they can maximize their own interests, which align with those of the corporations.
Society is fucked.
The way things operate is fundamentally broken at the core, and as such, it drives the worst of us result, not the best of us result. This is always the result, because that is what profit maximisation drives through efficiency. It is about getting as much as possible, by offering as little as possible, rather than trying to offer as much as possible, with the resources available.
The potential of the resources we have available to improve humanity is immense, but that is not what we are doing with it. Instead, we look to generate wealth for ourselves as individuals, but that ends up generating an increasing amount of wealth for a few individuals and corporations, meaning that the Wealth gap keeps growing, as it should. It "should" grow, because that is what the economic algorithm has been designed to achieve, and it is working as planned.
But, people (including myself) are not encouraged to think about this macro view of the economy and the implications the system has in order to change our culture and behaviours to improve it. Instead, we are conditioned to focus narrowly on aspects that we have been told are important, like the colour of skin, or which religious tenet is correct. Useless shit that doesn't make anyone's lives better, but does create the conditions for marketplace maximisation of profits, and increased efficiency to improve the chances to further conquer, slaughter thieve and enslave.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
