Politics and immigration

`4:23:08`

And the reason I say that is that the Overton window does not open itself. It opens one nudge at a time by people risking a little. A little reputation, a little pushback, a little criticism, or maybe sometimes a lot of reputation or a lot of criticism or a lot of pushback. And I think the question of mass immigration in Europe was for many years this total taboo, and it still is in several European countries. Now, for reasons of maybe just chance and happenstance, they weren't in Denmark. The Danes started having the discussion around mass immigration and the consequences thereof in the mid-'90s. Really early. And some of it can be traced back to one man, Mogens Glistrup, who was a very quirky character. I remember him, seeing him on the TV in the '80s talking about the dangers of mass immigration. And this was at a time where-- I grew up in the '80s, and in the neighborhood I grew up in, in Brønshøj, in, what was it? '84, 99% ethnic Danes, people who could trace their lineage back to Danes who'd lived in that country for 1,000 years. The Danes have one of the oldest monarchies in the world, all the way back to Harald Bluetooth, who's literally who has named the standard Bluetooth. So well over 1,000 years. Like, there's a long lineage there of people who lived in the same place. And 99% of the people lived in that neighborhood. And then early '90s, I think it goes to 5% or something like that, and then at this point, it's down to around 60-something or 70%-... in Brønshøj.

That's a big change. And the Danes started noticing that or talking about that, that this was not an undivided blessing, that there were downsides to mass immigration in about the '90s. And the debate really roared through the 2000s in a way that didn't happen in the neighboring countries. So Sweden in particular just didn't have that debate at all. Total taboo. Same thing with Norway, same thing with other countries in Europe. And suddenly now, after some years after '15, where we had the big migration of a million Syrians walking up through the highways in Europe, and Germany choosing to take a lot of them and 30,000 arriving in Denmark and so forth, It's gotten more of a focus, right? Because this change has happened. And one of the ways I find that you can spot where sort of there's something that isn't right in the culture is, like, what are you allowed to talk about? What are you allowed to notice, actually, is how I should put it. And what I noticed in an essay, when was that? Only a year and a half ago as I remember London, was that I started coming to London in the late '90s or something like that. At the time, whatever, it's 59%, 60% ethnic, uh, Brits. And then 20 years later, we're down to 34% or something like that. Like, that's noticeable. Like, literally just walking on the street, you realize, well, this is a different city from what it was when I visited 20 years ago.

And if you went 20 years before that, you get back to similar rates as as what the Danes have. This was like a country of ethnic Brits in the 85s, 90s percentiles-... if you get further back. So that's a different country in a generation. It's okay to notice that. It's also okay to think, "Do you know what? I don't agree with that." "I wish it wasn't that way." I mean, if The last time I was in China was '19, 2019. I was in Shanghai. Um, it was all Chinese. If I, when I go back here this October, suddenly find that there's only 30% Chinese and then there's 70% other people, I'd be a little weird. I'd probably be like, "Uh, what happened?" And I would not take offense if the Chinese in that instant would go like, "Ah, we don't like that." So this idea that countries of Europe don't have a right to, A, notice what's happening and, B, oppose what's happening, I find just to be, uh, wrong, right? Like there's just-- I think there's a moral argument for self-determination, and we invoke that argument all the time in other regions around the world that like, oh, the people who live in that region, they have a right to self-determination, um for their country. And I think it's completely fair for, say, the Danes or the Swedes or the Norwegians to go like, "Well, we've been kingdoms here for a thousand years with a certain ethnic mix-up." It's a-- I mean, I'm a big fan of immigration. I'm an immigrant to the US.

Um, cherry-picked immigration where countries compete to attract the smartest, most talented people around the world is really good.

`4:28:30`

Merit-based is key here because there's actually virtually no illegal immigration in most of Europe. Southern Europe has some illegal immigration, but most of Europe does not have a big problem with illegal immigration. And the problem is with mass immigration of other kinds, and that you end up with demographics that are just totally different from what they were even a few short decades ago. And I think the countries of Europe would benefit from immigration. In fact, one of the interesting things about the Danes is they carry meticulous statistics on immigration. I'm not entirely sure why they're so detailed. Maybe it's all the way back to Mogens Glistrup and his discussion in the '90s, but they do. And what's clear from those statistics is that when the Danes have folks from the UK, France, the US show up, on average, those immigrants are really beneficial to the Danish state. They contribute far more than what they ask of the state. So the Danes should accept immigrants who do that, who contribute far more than they take. Then you look at other forms of immigrant groups. There was just a tally that came out last week from a Danish politician that had asked the, I think finance ministry to do this tally with the latest numbers. What does it cost the Danish state to have positive immigration? This case as I mentioned.

I think for the, On that list whatever, France, UK, US, they were all clustered around the same thing, about $25,000 net benefit to the Danish state every year. It's like, wow, that's very positive. That's average again, right? And then at the other end of the spectrum on the most costly immigrants was Somalis. They ended up costing the Danish state on average $28,000 a year. I think it's fair for the Danes to go like, "We'd prefer to get more French, Brits, and Americans and not so many Somalis."

`4:30:47`

That's a very taboo topic in a lot of circles.

`4:30:56`

I'm sure, but I also think-- I mean, I wanna take the steel man argument here. I do think that it, this can turn ugly, right? Is it possible for some of these things to just veer into overt racism that isn't founded in anything else but a hatred of other people? Yeah, that could happen. But that risk does not negate the need to have a discussion about the makeup of your country and what your immigration policy should be like. And I-- what I also find so funny is, especially in Europe, it's so kind of myopic that this discussion about whether Europeans should have a right to self- determination about what their countries look like, that standard seems to only apply there. No one is trying to tell the Japanese, "Hey, you, you're too Japanese." Like whatever, it's 98%, I think, in Tokyo that's, um--... Ethnic Japanese, right? Like, is anyone trying to tell the Japanese that their Tokyo would be a much better country if, if they were down to London levels of ethnic Japanese, that it was, whatever, 37%? I don't think so. So there's this weird almost self-loathing, in my opinion, I mean uh, Gad calls it suicidal empathy--... that permeates this stuff to a degree that I still haven't fully unpacked. Like, where is this coming from? Why is it that way? But regardless, I just noticed, hey, London looks different. I preferred the old London, as I would say I preferred the neighborhood that I grew up in in Copenhagen, how it looked in the '80s.

Like I-- I totally get how you can then jump five leaps and go like, "Okay, well-" That's racist. And I also, I don't care anymore. Like, this is a fair discussion to have. Countries and peoples have a right to set an immigration policy, and this notion that we shouldn't have any borders or, or even worse than that, it's all just a blank slate, that all peoples are just the same, and we can take people from one place of the earth and we can place them in another place on the earth and everything's just gonna work out hunky-dory. Empirically not true. Europe has been running that experiment since the '80s. It hasn't panned out well, and now there are forces in Europe who wanna undo that experiment, who want to end mass immigration as it's been run so far. And I happen to believe, and so do a majority of Danes and a bunch of other peoples that like, "Do you know what? Yeah, it hasn't been working how we've been doing it. We gotta make some changes." And I don't think that means, again, zero immigration. Again, I'm an immigrant. I think US, generally speaking, has benefited tremendously from immigration, but that's the kind of sleight of hand. Immigration depends greatly on who immigrates. And a country benefits when the people who immigrate are net contributors to the society, and in most cases, that they assimilate with the local culture.

If you come to Denmark and you wanna become a Dane, and you put in all the effort, and you contribute to so- society, I think most Danes would be quite happy to allow that in a reasonable number. If you come to Denmark and you don't wanna assimilate, and you are a net drain on society, and you live in a parallel society, it's also fair for Danes to say like, "Uh, let's stop doing that."

`4:34:58`

And then also, American culture is very different. This is a point I did not fully appreciate until living both places extensively. America has a culture of optional assimilation, where it is much easier and then much more condoned for someone coming from Denmark or Ukraine or wherever, come to America, buy into the American set of values and norms and culture, and then be able to be respected as Americans by other Americans. This is what's so funny to me when there's discussion like, "America is such a racist country." I'm like, "Have you ever been anywhere? Do you know what other countries are like?" Like, if you think America is the most racist country, you are simply misinformed. I mean, we're dealing with that, with time we've spent in Denmark. My wife is American of Scandinavian heritage-... but multiple generations in the US. Very difficult. Very difficult-... as a blonde, blue-eyed woman who's put in all sorts of efforts of learning the language and doing everything, still very, very difficult to assimilate to Danish culture. In a way where if that had been the other way around and she had been Danish and moving to the US, it would not have been that difficult at all. And this was the other thing. I mean, living in a country like Denmark with a, an American wife who is of Scandinavian heritage and has put in all the effort, and still realizing, man, assimilation is incredibly difficult, even when you're 97% there all the way.

Holy smokes, must it be almost impossible if you come from a completely foreign culture-... and foreign norms and the rest of it. And of course, that's what the stats I just quoted bear out, that the more dissimilar the culture is and the further it is the less likely to be successful.

`4:37:14`

Yes, but not just that alone, I would say. It's more of the great divide that happened around 2020, where I think a lot of these political fault lines really opened up. And I mean, the shorthand in the US, I think is were you woke or not? And clearly, I had a bunch of people that I thought I had good relations with for many years, who suddenly once that political fault line opened up, they were clearly just not anymore. And I think that's regrettable. And I think I've, I've tried to put an effort into, um, sort of both understanding where that comes from, in part because I've changed my mind on several of these topics over the years, and it was like, well, sometimes you just change your mind after time. Sometimes you change your mind after you get new information. There's all sorts of reasons and moments why you may change your mind, and we don't all change our mind on the same schedule or at all. Um, so surrounding yourselves and, and or at least interacting with people that don't think like you on every topic, I think it's quite healthy. I mean, I occasionally discuss politics with my brother. I mean, we don't quite see eye to eye on all these topics, and sometimes the discussions can get a little heated, but then they'll also calm down and we realize, all right, okay, so we don't agree on this, and then we agree on a lot of other things. We appreciate a lot of the same things.

Now, this was actually one of the things when we had our big blowup at Basecamp, I came to appreciate in a whole new way this- Earlier norm that talking politics or religion or money with strangers or even acquaintances, and certainly with colleagues, was just not a good idea. That you had a much higher likelihood of being able to carry a good working relationship with someone if you're not rubbing your political differences up against each other all the time. So I actually think liberals and conservatives should work together. I think the country would be much worse off if there's a complete separation between the tribes, and then there can't be any overlap or interaction. And I think that mingling is so much easier to do if you just don't focus on your differences all the time. Focus on what you like together. I mean, this is some of the people I've had unfortunately drifted from in tech. We had so much in common, so much shared love for, say, Ruby or other things and, like, isn't that unfortunate?

`4:40:38`

One of the great illustrations of that for me was when I watched a clip from William F. Buckley's show. I think it was called Firing Line or-

`4:40:46`

... something like that. And he had a member of the Black Panthers-... on his panel. It was quite obvious that those two gentlemen did not share a lot of politics. They were able to carry a conversation for, I think I watched it, 25 minutes. And Buckley's just asking, like, "So what do you think about this? What do you think about this?" And like, the Black Panther would reply as you would expect the Black Panther to reply in the '70s. Like, there was not a lot of sort of conciliatory tones. And I just thought, like, wow, that is so rare. If you had seen that show today, it would've been a shouting match. It would've been just accusations being hurled back and forth. The fact that Buckley was able to just have these conversations with people he vehemently disagreed with and still explore all the intellectual facets of their standpoints and letting them speak to those facets, talks of a lost era that I'd very much like to get back to. I mean, I always actually loved talking politics with friends that I trusted could talk about these topics in a way where it didn't have to be existential.

`4:44:33`

Yes. And I've tried to be more conscious of that, too. And then when I do choose to speak about it, it's usually because I have deliberated, and I think-... "You know what? This is worth it." Now, I say that, and then I also catch myself thinking the opposite all the time, that I follow some person or another for whatever their technical work, and then I-... learned or political standpoint. And I often do think, "I wish I didn't know that." So, it's hypocritical-... then to think that of other people and then go like, "Well, occasionally I will-... chime in on a debate that's controversial," and then you have to accept that there is a price to that. And I do think you should, and more people should, be somewhat conscious about that. And again, we're both contradicting ourselves here, but saying like, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could talk about politics in a more free and open forum and just intellectually turn ideas around?" Yes, it would. Is that currently possible in the climate of social media and so forth? It's quite difficult. Now, some of it could simply also be a moment, and we could get past that moment.

`4:45:49`

Maybe there is a way to get back to Buckley's conversation with the Black Panthers, even on social media, in a way where those discussions don't lead to the sort of just vicious mob cancellation nonsense drives that we've had, right? I actually think we're closer there now than we were five years ago. Like, the tribalism and the sanctions those tribes were able to exact on heretics in 2020 was way greater than it was in 2025. Certainly within tech. Now, I know if you're in academia, I mean, try going into the sociology department at I don't know, Harvard and mention some right-wing ideas. I don't think it's gonna go over very well, and I don't think you're gonna recover from it quickly. But in tech and in many other business domains at least, it is now possible to have an opinion that does not square with what the consensus was in 2020. That's for sure.

`4:46:56`

In the sense that every single round of drama shrinks. So it's like we've, we had this peak infection of mega drama around the same time every other community had a peak infection of drama around 2020. And then you just see, like, every time there's a new flare up, it's less. And the kind of people who are ideologically wedded to sort of that struggle just shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. And at this point, one of the best things that happened for X, in my opinion, was that Bluesky and Mastodon came around. Because it kind of was like this honeypot for just the most vicious individuals on X and Twitter at the time, right? Who just congregated here in an ever- shrinking echo chamber that just went through purity cycle after purity cycle and shrank every single time to the point that there were just not a lot left. And the people who are left now there, they're just out of sight, out of mind. And that's not to say that X is some sort of perfect place, or there aren't firing squads occasionally there, or there aren't... But there's less of it. Like, every single time I've been pulled into a Mastodon, or not been pulled in, just spectated from afar, thread, a Bluesky or whatever, it was like, "Oh, shit yeah, this is what Twitter used to be like. Jesus." And now you can actually be on X, as I am, and, like, 90% of my engagement is about cool Linux stuff, cool technology stuff. "Look, I discovered a new computer.

Can you see how fast it is?" And I can have those conversations with other people who are just also excited about computers. And then there's, like, 10% of it left that's like, all right, I'll chime in on something that's a little controversial, and we can have a little discussion there. And then we can just go back to being excited about computers. The algorithm is actually very good at finding stuff that you will find interesting, or s- I shouldn't say that, engaging. Sometimes it's enraging, but it is engaging, and therefore, revealed preference is that most people want a For You page. They don't want just a following feed.

`4:49:16`

Well, the problem is the reward function is engagement. And as soon as the reward function is engagement-... engagement's gonna follow base instincts, and here we go. But I also don't wanna be so negative. To me, and I get we all have our own personalized algorithms, and sometimes it gets a little much. But I would say, on average, over the last 10 years, this is the best X has ever been. And I say that as someone who cares about a lot of technology talk, a lot of Linux talk, and a lot of that. That that's able to happen now in a way where it doesn't constantly get gatecrashed by people who wanna drag it into some political discussion-... I find to be really awesome. I find actually X to be a great place to find that. Now, it's also a place to find other things, and we all have our own algorithms, so you can't make any declarative announcements about what X is or what it isn't. Your feed is probably totally different from my feed, and it's totally different from someone else's feed, right?

`4:50:28`

Is it, is it good for your feed or is it bad for your feed that you have to have it right?

`4:50:45`

I mean, I occasionally have a little bit of that where you just go like, "Wait, what? What are we talking about? What are you... Why would you show up in this way?" This is one of the reasons why I actually really enjoy podcasts, because I have found that even in long-form writing, when I make long-form arguments, people hear it in whatever voice they have in their head for me. And that often gets pre-programmed in advance of the arguments, just like, well, this guy is a, whatever, fascist. And then they hear the words and they read the words in those names. When they see or hear the actual tone of how I'm presenting the arguments, they may not agree with those arguments. I mean, many of them, of course, obviously don't. But it's much harder to just dismiss or hate someone like that. At least that's what I've found, and that's the response that I've gotten, that people are like, "Well, I had a certain opinion and then I heard you on Lex. That actually sounded much more reasonable."

`4:52:45`

So microcosm of this. There's a guy, Theo, I don't know if you follow him.

`4:52:51`

Um, we had a bit of a thing over the fact that we stopped using TypeScript-

`4:52:57`

... for a project, and he didn't like that and had opinions about that and other actions. And after that I thought like, what a bozo. And, and do you know what? I still think that was a bozo move, and then I can also think like, well, the dude's really into AI. He's trying all these models, and we can share some excitement about that, so I just started following him yesterday.

`4:53:16`

I was like, do you know what? I don't have to agree with you on everything. Uh, I don't even have to like some of the things that you did or said or whatever. I can follow you anyway. So if I can follow back Theo, then I think there's room for world peace here.

`4:53:43`

And either way, I just, you know what? My feed is more interesting when there's some people talking about things that I care about and yeah, I don't have to agree with you on everything. I just don't.