I understand the difference yes, and I mulled over this for a good bit, it seems that you think that inaction which causes harm is less severe than harmful action, which makes intuitive sense but when you examine it closely it doesn't really hold up. It even has its own name, Omission bias.
Killing someone is far worse than letting them die. This doesn't mean the
outcome is better, but I didn't think that's what you were referring to. I'm surprised there's anyone that disagrees with this.
Really all this boils down to is the greater good theorem. If a plan/idea will save more people than it will harm, it's better than a plan that will harm more people than it will save.
You're forgetting to factor in nationalism. A dollar to my fellow countryman is worth two dollars to a foreigner.
In my mind that's essentially what the refugee crCIA boils down to. If we don't do anything, then lots of people will die.
Do you honestly believe this? I don't think their lives are awesome by any means, but there are neighboring countries they can flee to in order to escape the worst of it. If they can go to the US they can go to Jordan much easier.
We don't know how many, but it's gonna be a big number. If we take in some refugees, almost all of the ones that were going to perish will end up living far longer. It's definitely possible that some will not be nice people, but in the end the losses will be far less than the gains. That's the greater good theorem in action.
I looked up "Greater Good Wikipedia" and only found that it's the philosophy of the Tau in Warhammer40k. That said, maybe you're referring to
Utilitarianism. I actually do consider myself and my politics to be fairly utilitarian. That said however, most people aren't very utilitarian in their beliefs as pure utilitarianism would be consistently violating whatever rights people have "for the greater good." which is a path few want to go down. The result is that most people fall somewhere
in between pure libertarian and pure utilitarian in their beliefs.
The reason that crime rates tend to be higher in areas with lots of refugees is mostly a result of inadequate or nonexistent screening processes. If they took on a process more like Canadas where there is a rather thorough process, chances are there will be very little or no effect at all,
I suppose I have to look into things there and how they are, but I've heard quite the horror story from some of the most densely populated resettlement areas in Sweden and Germany.
and I'm definitely not demanding you vote for someone else. I'm not going to be happy that people vote for people I don't like, but I'm not going to think of them as bad people or whatever. I recognize that I can be wrong.
Well that's reasonable.
As an aside to both of you two, I think there's two basic points that can be debated with objective fact here:
1. The refugees aren't in
mortal danger, and inaction vs. action on the part of the Americans won't determine whether or not they live or die, since they can go somewhere else that's closer for resettlement.
2. The refugees tend to have a net negative effect on their host countries. I really need to get my stats on this one, but from what I've seen in Europe less than half of them consistently work, and they tend to have substantially higher crime rates.
I'll try and get actual sources to back these points up tomorrow.
