America with no post-1965 immigration: stronger or weaker?

[Richard Osborne]

The nightmare of OTL's web 2.0 didn't have to happen. Remove the combination of 1) ALOT of tech talent combined in san francisco 2) lots of indentured servants in the form of H1B visas and you don't see OTL's combination of 1) RAPID expansion of the sector 2) even faster expansion of labor in the sector so you have the early adopters/managers REALLY getting to set the cultural tone due to being able to REALLY cherrypick hires.

Remove all that and yo'd have an internet that'd basically be the internet of the early 2000s but extended to now, with the addition of (old youtube, not netflix style or modern post-cleanup of piracy/"trolling" youtube") video streaming being a thing.

"Boy oh boy millions of people are stuck in shitty poverty working in sweat shops instead of being in a environment where their skills can be fully utilized but I get to watch this cat play a piano on the YouTube so it was alllll worth it!" Not insulting anyone I just thought that was a funny joke. But seriously if there were less immigrants racist would just focus all their hate on blacks and Jews instead of leaving some for the Muslims and latinx. Shittier food and more eastern Europeans too. Russian food just won't fill a Chinese shaped hole in our hearts thou. Again not insulting anyone.

 

[AnonymousSauce]

"Boy oh boy millions of people are stuck in shitty poverty working in sweat shops instead of being in a environment where their skills can be fully utilized but I get to watch this cat play a piano on the YouTube so it was alllll worth it!" Not insulting anyone I just thought that was a funny joke. But seriously if there were less immigrants racist would just focus all their hate on blacks and Jews instead of leaving some for the Muslims and latinx. Shittier food and more eastern Europeans too. Russian food just won't fill a Chinese shaped hole in our hearts thou. Again not insulting anyone.

Tonkotsu ramen or GTFO

 

[marathag]

Russian food just won't fill a Chinese shaped hole in our hearts

Availability of Chinese Food* predated 1965. Popular in cities outside of the actual Chinatowns

*What's popular in the US as 'Chinese' has little to do with what 20th Century Chinese people were actually eating in China

US 'Chinese' cuisine had been Westernized since the Gold Rush, and was popular in the '20s onwards. Chinese restaurant owners could get visas, it was one of the few exceptions to the Exclusion Act.

 

[Richard Osborne]

Availability of Chinese Food* predated 1965. Popular in cities outside of the actual Chinatowns

*What's popular in the US as 'Chinese' has little to do with what 20th Century Chinese people were actually eating in China

US 'Chinese' cuisine had been Westernized since the Gold Rush, and was popular in the '20s onwards. Chinese restaurant owners could get visas, it was one of the few exceptions to the Exclusion Act.

There would be a LOT less chinese if our nation gave preference to white immigrants.

 

[marathag]

There would be a LOT less chinese if our nation gave preference to white immigrants.

As before, the popularity of Chinese increased while the Exclusion Act was in force. Why would it change for the worse with no reform in 1965?

 

[Richard Osborne]

As before, the popularity of Chinese increased while the Exclusion Act was in force. Why would it change for the worse with no reform in 1965?

I thought all asian immigration was banned pre-1965?

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

So what's preventing the equivalent of silicon valley from developing in Canada or the UK or Singapore?

So you think internet technology stagnates at early 2000 level forever?

yeah sorry I don't buy this is is like an AH in which James Watt dies so the industrial revolution never happens or Thomas Edison dies and the light bulb never gets invented

Geocities is alive in Japan. Nothing says OTL's development path of super-centralized megasites with 1984-type moderation with most people trapped into that part of the internet because of app stores was inevitable. The fact we've gone so far on a dystopian path otl isn't representative of most timelines in general imo. You could kill it as late as the early-mid 00s, nevermind reducing the amount of available workers in silicon valley with this thread's POD.

Even WITH immigration it could have been massively toned down in worlds closer to OTL. All you need is Internet Explorer 6 being even just below average instead of a security NIGHTMARE to reduce people's uh caution with browsing/willingness to go on multiple sites. Either that or nobody lucks out on on the smartphone on otl's schedule and Apple releases a white blackberry clone as an *iPhone. Do even one of these and imo you'd put a serious dent into FB/twitter even if outright killing them with a 2007 pod is sadly unlikely. Even just an ATL where RL name social media is confined to say the worst bits of the upper-middle class and 80% of americans don't bother with it would be a MASSIVE improvement.

 

[Lusitania]

People are debating about level of immigration. This thread was started by banned anti immigration person who wanted people to people to think that US would be better off if ALL immigration was stopped. Not reformed or limited but all immigrants banned from entering US. In other words no more immigration. America for Americans only and only those that arrived before 1965 are good rest not good.

 

[creighton]

Can we lock this and let it float into the abyss?

 

[jerseyguy]

for most of us history irish/italians wasn't considered white, and various "white" european ethnics hated each other as much as any white hated blacks back then. What you are talking about isn't too different from New York City in the 1920s.

The 1920s were the decade of a massive campaign for immigration restrictions, the foreign born proportion of the US population has reached similar levels to the 1920s (Reuters), and the 2010s have seen a nativist backlash as well. White ethnics being seen as white is the culmination of a decades-long assimilation process that occurred in background of practically zero additional European ethnics between 1920 and 1970. Any individual person can assimilate, but there's a tradeoff between the additional immigrants from a country each year, and the rate at which a new immigrant assimilates.

Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World by the economist Paul Collier goes into more detail about the factors that affect assimilation. The same variables can be used to predict the the rate of assimilation for any two given countries. For example, if there was a diaspora of 5 million Canadians in Brazil and 200,000 additional Canadians emigrate each year, it becomes easier for Canadians to immigrate because they can move to a Canada-town where there are poutine restaurants and every still speaks English and/or French.
Starting from the assumption that immigrants benefit the Brazilian (or any) economy, the economic benefit that each additional immigrants' labor provides would be subject to diminishing marginal returns, like other factors of production.
Eventually a part of the Brazilian electorate would probably start complaining about "those darned canadians with their poutine who don't speak portuguese", and advocate immigration restrictions. Without any additional Canadian immigrants for several years, the population of unassimilated Canadians would level off and then steeply decline, with the next generation becoming assimilated Brazilians in a country with more poutine restaurants and a Canadian version of St. Patrick's day or something.

 

[RousseauX]

Geocities is alive in Japan.

So? ppl still use AoL in America today too. Doesn't mean anything

Nothing says OTL's development path of super-centralized megasites with 1984-type moderation with most people trapped into that part of the internet because of app stores was inevitable. The fact we've gone so far on a dystopian path otl isn't representative of most timelines in general imo. You could kill it as late as the early-mid 00s, nevermind reducing the amount of available workers in silicon valley with this thread's POD.

Even WITH immigration it could have been massively toned down in worlds closer to OTL. All you need is Internet Explorer 6 being even just below average instead of a security NIGHTMARE to reduce people's uh caution with browsing/willingness to go on multiple sites. Either that or nobody lucks out on on the smartphone on otl's schedule and Apple releases a white blackberry clone as an *iPhone. Do even one of these and imo you'd put a serious dent into FB/twitter even if outright killing them with a 2007 pod is sadly unlikely. Even just an ATL where RL name social media is confined to say the worst bits of the upper-middle class and 80% of americans don't bother with it would be a MASSIVE improvement.

yeah I dunno about this part being possible you really think Browser is gonna be stuck at IE6 level forever? And nobody's gonna make Firefox equivalent in this alternative timelien?

Like Firefox started off as being coded by like 3 people: it doesn't take that much people/capital to make a better browser than IE6.

Like the problem is instead of looking at present day Social Media as the obvious consequence of internet existing and people sharing pictures/shit about their lives with each other you are looking at it as some circumstantial thing which only emerged because of a bunch of very specific companies. That really isn't the case.

Do even one of these and imo you'd put a serious dent into FB/twitter even if outright killing them with a 2007 pod is sadly unlikely.

Bullshit, social media is popular because people love sharing their lives with other people. It would have being popular regardless as long as people had internet connections.

Companies will make better phones, it's just a matter of whether you want those companies to exist in America or else where. If Apple doesn't make it foreign companies like Samsung/Huawei or some other companies would have done it instead. Or RIM would have made better blackberries because there's profit to be made. That's how capitalism works.

 

[Jellico]

I mean, the first and second industrial revolutions in Europe took off without the need for large scale immigration, so i don’t see why the third one couldn’t have come about despite the lack of labor from East and Southern Asia. In fact, the company that was probably most responsible for kickstarting the IT revolution was IBM, a company that was founded (under another name) in 1896, and sold its earliest computers in 1952. Intel is another early pioneer in this regard, which was founded in 1968, long before the advent of the stereotypical Indian IT-expert.



Also, i don’t think its accurate to say that a higher population automatically means that a country is richer, or more powerful. China has been the world’s most populous country for a long time, but it was only recently that it became a respected player on the world stage. Does anyone really believe that China would be better off if it had another billion people? There is a reason the China has pursued its infamous one-child policy, after all. Even if the US hadn’t allowed any immigration at all since its founding, not even from Europe, it would likely still be a very prosperous country, just much smaller than it is today. And let’s not forget, immigration into the US was very limited between 1924 and 1965 (possibly even later), which was also the period during which the US emerged as the world’s foremost economic, political, cultural and military power.

The first and second industrial revolutions were built off population books. You had people immigrating from the country to city and backwaters like Ireland and Scotland to England. You have British immigrants off to the Empire to steal resources and build markets, while groups like the Indians and Chinese are spreading around to run the place at a local level. And this is before we even consider the Americas.


China and India have been THE dominant powers for most of history based on the potential of their large populations and large navigable land masses. Some accidents of history have seen the Europeans be able to massively increase the productivity of their populations and resources but this was always going to be for a limited time.

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

snipped.

You spend lot of time on reddit/facebook/twitter, I presume. I suspect that's where your ah Whig History approach to the history of the internet comes from. Move the great recession a year early on web 2.0 gets nipped in the bud. Have one of the numerous potential lawsuits against facebook for stealing code early on, stick and make "social media" look like a bad investment and it's also set back or dead.

 

[BigBlueBox]

I thought all asian immigration was banned pre-1965?

Where on Earth did you get that assumption from?

 

[BigBlueBox]

In that post-1965 immigrants played a key role in enabling American economic growth, the United States will be weaker. More, since these immigration policies were an outgrowth of domestic racism, there is absolutely no reason to think a US that limits Hispanic and Asian immigration would be kinder to racial minorities like African-Americans. The United States will still be the single wealthiest country in the world, but it will be less populous and poorer than OTL.

Only if you make the inane claim that GDP = wealth. Using that logic China is wealthier than Germany.

 

[RousseauX]

You spend lot of time on reddit/facebook/twitter, I presume. I suspect that's where your ah Whig History approach to the history of the internet comes from. Move the great recession a year early on web 2.0 gets nipped in the bud.

I'm a software developer and I write code for a living

Move the great recession a year early on web 2.0 gets nipped in the bud.

this is just bullshit because the basis for web 2.0 was already largely in place by 2007, google/amazon/youtube/facebook were well established, I was looking for a job in 2008-2009 and despite everyone else in other fields being fired it was not difficult to get a job as a software developer

Have one of the numerous potential lawsuits against facebook for stealing code early on, stick and make "social media" look like a bad investment and it's also set back or dead.

No, even if fb didn't exist there were numerous other social media companies willing to take their place. This is like saying if James Watt gets sued for IP violation nobody will want to invest in steam engines again.

you are acting like this is a communist system where if you kill a designer or a design bureau or something it kills the technology, in a capitalist system as long as there's money to be made somebody will make it.

I personally -know- classmates/friends in school who got incredibly rich (as in 8-9 figures) doing startups which began in the late 2000s/early 2010s WHILE we were still in university. And I didn't go to school in America and they making software much more complex than early facebook. You got to be dreaming if you think nobody is gonna make a FB equivalent when all it takes is a couple of college kids to get the basics down.

with all due respect you come across as an old dude who really wants the old days back and think you can just freeze time lol

 

[JamesBond88]

Can we lock this and let it float into the abyss?

Why?

 

[Richard Osborne]

Where on Earth did you get that assumption from?

The Chinese Exclusion Act, The gentlemen's agreement, 1924 immigration act.

 

[rfmcdonald]

Only if you make the inane claim that GDP = wealth. Using that logic China is wealthier than Germany.

No, there is a demonstrated net positive effect to GDP per capita and even wages and immigration. It is limited, but it is real, especially when the immigrants involved are workers. What happens to the American agriculture sector without Latin American migrant workers, say? Capital can substitute for labour, but only to a degree—it is not a coincidence that West Germany ended up having to resort to immigrants on a large scale in the 1960s, after it exhausted domestic labour supplies.

 

[BigBlueBox]

The Chinese Exclusion Act, The gentlemen's agreement, 1924 immigration act.

The Walter-McCarran act already lifted any bans. The 1965 act just removed quotas.