24 Comments

I found this quote interesting "Indeed, reading Achilli’s work makes me want to unleash this ethnographer on the restaurant or construction industry. I predict that he’ll discover an even stronger role for what he calls “morality” there."

Could you expand on the role of psychologically-sophisticated reputational model in the restaurant and construction industry? This sounds interesting, but I don't fully grasp the implication that you're hinting at here...

(I'm a former landlord, had extensive experiences with contractors and always found them suprisingly challenging).

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Yes, politicians, mainly from the right, in national parliaments and the European Parliament often say such things that "we need stronger borders and actions against smuggler in order to protect people". But "strong borders" are dangerous and actions against smugglers remind of actions as during the global war on drugs and security teater regarding terrorism = actions against human rights.

https://www.ilapi.org/article-content.php?id=167&t=EU%27s+Serious+Lack+of+Human+Security+%7C+Vladan+Lausevic

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Lori Loughlin paid human smugglers ~$500k to smuggle her daughters into UCLA. The university system imprisoned her.

Should we praise Loughlin and the human smugglers that tried to help her family? Should we condemn the universities for draconian evil of incarcerating such well intentioned people?

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You aren't responding to stories like this, are you? https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiTWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNubi5jb20vMjAyMi8wNi8yOS91cy9zYW4tYW50b25pby1taWdyYW50LXRydWNrLWRlYXRocy9pbmRleC5odG1s0gFRaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAuY25uLmNvbS9jbm4vMjAyMi8wNi8yOS91cy9zYW4tYW50b25pby1taWdyYW50LXRydWNrLWRlYXRocy9pbmRleC5odG1s?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

If so, I am not convinced. Staying in Syria is NOT worse than having your entire family fried in a slow cooker.

Admittedly, generalization to the entire industry from one incident is sensationalism, but the idea that smugglers are careless with human life still holds water to me.

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Does he talk about human trafficking?

I was involved in helping Ukrainians find homes and it was a big problem.

There are indeed bad actors who use chaos and lawlessness to prey on the weak. There are few, but they are highly organised through the darkweb and give each other tips how to get their hands on women and children.

I do agree with your conclusion 100% that permissive legal immigration / open borders would be the solution - but I suspect right now bad actors can indeed use the smuggler networks to their advantage and we likely don't have good data on it.

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Jun 29, 2022·edited Jun 29, 2022

What if we lowered the demand for migration? Why can we not make it more desirable to live in Africa or in Central America? Colonialism has been labeled a great evil but what the irony! The US, Britain and France stopped colonializing the world and now the world is coming to them.

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