Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Has this study been corrected for empire slant? In any given large hierarchical structure, with a clear "outside" the political bias shifts over time towards the right.

I guess in europe, Chat GPT is just center of the political map.



> I guess in europe, Chat GPT is just center of the political map.

Depends on the question. Most countries in Europe are a lot more restrictive on immigration than the US, but socialized healthcare is common.


> Most countries in Europe are a lot more restrictive on immigration than the US

They are not.

I'm an immigrant myself in EU. Know plenty of people that migrated to the US.


Unless "plenty" is ~100 million, then yes, they are. E.g. Italy has only 4.6% immigrants from outside Europe, and Ukraine has only 1.7% of non-European-origin ethnic groups.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy#Immigrat...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine#Ethnic...


And yet in most European countries there's a clear path to citizenship.

US is a popular destination because people are after money, not because it's good for immigration. Ask for all the H1Bs that risk being deported for being laid off, even after living many years over there.


Legal clarity and strict limits are not mutually exclusive. Nor do many European politicians pepper their speeches with "nation of immigrants" and "diversity is our strength", and when a mere million refugees came from the Middle East (to be fair, that is on top of all the non-European migrants already in Europe), that was a "crisis", and caused a significant rightward shift in EU politics.

For comparison, the US takes in almost 2 million legal immigrants per year (on a population of 333 million vs. EUs 446 million), plus however many illegal ones, and there is nothing like a "sanctuary city" in Europe.


Taking in a refugees is quite different to taking in a migrant who passes all your immigrations tests. Refugees need more social services, housing, healthcare etc.

Also, that number of refugees was on top of normal migration, making comparisons difficult.

The EU takes around 2 million immigrants from outside the EU per year as far as I can tell. I don’t know hot many move with the EU, it’s a lot.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...


> Nor do many European politicians pepper their speeches with "nation of immigrants" and "diversity is our strength"

It will be a chilly snowy day in the hellhole I hail from when I give credence to the platitudes a politician uses to pepper their speech.

I know why I picked the EU and not the US as a destination, at least.


Is the measure of restrictive immigration the number of immigrants that made it?

You could remove any rules on immigration to the US and I won’t be moving there. Some destinations will be popular and some unpopular whatever the rules.

Also, why are you not counting immigration within Europe when looking at European immigration?


> why are you not counting immigration within Europe when looking at European immigration?

That would make about as much sense as counting immigration between different US states. I know it's fashionable to pretend someone immigrating from a neighboring country is the same as from half-way across the world, but it's just not so.


Romanians moving to Germany (as an example) should definitely be counted as immigration. They are still foreign nationals for Germany, with the caveat that due to agreements within the EU they are free to live and work in Germany without any extra bureaucracy.

That said it makes EU countries actually a lot less restrictive in terms of immigration than the US. EU member countries are not in anyway way equivalent to US states.


Have you been to any many EU countries?

I have only been to a few, and the differences between them are massive, comparing them to US states isn’t even vaguely close to accurate.

It would be interesting to compare the two most similar EU countries to the two most different US states.


> Have you been to any many EU countries?

I was born and live in one of them, and have been to eleven others.


Have you been to many US states?

It’s a little baffling to me that you could find EU countries more similar than US states.


realistically no one would move to italy from a career prospective. Specialized work is paid peanuts, more often than less of juniors of same trade in France or Germany while dead end jobs pay less than peanuts bcs unionized contracts ( every job contract is modeled after union ones) arent renogatiated seriously from 30 years ago.

Ukraine instead has like 5K$ GDP/capita, making it less attractive than say Germany

Source: i'm italian


I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that the same positions would count as "center" in Europe while "left" in the US? And what would be an example of a "large hierarchical structure" without a clear "outside"?


> Are you saying that the same positions would count as "center" in Europe while "left" in the US?

Not GP, but yes – that is clearly the case.


I agree with this one. From a European standpoint, there is right-center, and more-right in the US.


Can you give me an example of such a position? I would argue that, for example, social programs in Europe are more popular, but still following a left-leaning position that is just more broadly accepted


Having universal health insurance available for everyone is a consensus opinion in Germany, no party disagrees with that. In the US "socialized medicine" is a controversial topic.


That's because we (in Europe) didn't know anything else and people are reluctant to change seeing the negative PR coming out of US. I'm pretty sure majority of people in Europe hate how our massive taxation is for the most part wasted.


Generalizing over the entirety of Europe is not useful, the countries and political positions are too diverse for that.

And at least in Germany I don't see anyone questioning universal healthcare. There are of course discussions on the details, but nobody is trying to abolish it. And while there are inefficiencies, the US health care system is even less efficient. So we would not save any money by making our system worse.


People really think that most of their taxes are wasted?


So a consensus position is by definition center? So (democratic) countries can't lean to either side of the spectrum because by definition their positions are supported by the majority, and thus a center position?


It depends on how you’re defining “the spectrum” of healthcare policy. If you placed all European nations on a spectrum comparing their healthcare systems, Germany would be on the right of the spectrum because the private sector has a significant role in their healthcare system. Countries like the UK and Denmark would be on the left of the spectrum because their healthcare system is mostly public. Germany’s healthcare system is only left-leaning if you include the US on the spectrum.


I don't mean a majority supports this position, I mean that really nobody opposes it at all. The US Republican position on health care is entirely outside the German political spectrum, it does not exist here in any party that is represented in parliament.


Typically, if there is no majority in opposition of a position, it is typically referred to as "consensus". I do not understand your argument. Germany has a left-leaning position on health care, historically introduced and defended by left-aligned parties but generally accepted across the spectrum. Just because the far right does not want to abolish socialized health care does not make it a center position, at least that is the argument I am trying to make


Why is this position left-leaning? It's only left-leaning from a US perspective.


Hm, that was the whole point of my argument I believe. That this is an inherent left-leaning position, regardless of who is subscribing to it; possibly because in the discussion on how to handle such healthcare, it defends the social and idealistic dimension ("left") rather than the self-responsible and pessimistic perspective ("right"). Now we can argue about political relativism and that no position is inherently and objectively "left" or "right" and it only depends on who articulates that position - and as you might have guessed this is an idea that I am slightly opposed to. Of course we can start with the Overton window and shifting beliefs and the possibility than in a century from now on, universal healthcare might be considered, for whatever reason, a hardcore right-wing extremist position.


That's an American perspective. The right, in Europe, support universal healthcare (because they own the companies that provide the services and receive the tax money). It's been this way for a very long time.

Therefore, characterising Europe as left wing on this issue is a mistake.


I believe the position you're starting from is already biased by the notion that only a left/right directionality can exist and that other degrees of freedom are not allowed in political systems. Of course this is why I think first past the post the the R/D split in the US is so bad.


oh boy you clearly have no understanding of health insurance.


I would say of the top of my head:

• Employee rights

• Health insurance

• Militarism ("What is an appropriate amount to spend on military")

• Global Warming


• Human rights (reproductive rights in particular).


Well even if you disregard ideologies, just the legislations that are in place influence what the center of a position could be.

For example in my country our right wing government had made good on a right wing promise to increase the maximum highway speed from 120kph to 130kph.

Some years later however it turned out that the presence of highways contributed to dangerous levels of nitric oxides (edited from nitrogen) in the air and a judge forced that same administration to reduce the maximum speed from 130kph to 100kph.

Now legislation (and reality) has changed a right wing position from being "disregard the environment, prioritise economy and increase the speed" to "disregard health, prioritise economy and increase the speed". The same position was basically transformed into a more extreme position due to the circumstances changing.

I imagine that same thing holds for many topics. It sure feels a lot more extreme to advocate gun regulation when doing so in opposition of school shooting victims. I generally support the idea of gun ownership, but the shootings definitely forced me to have a more nuanced opinion that shifted my position from the conservative side to the progressive side.


Air is mostly nitrogen, and that isn't dangerous.


Dutch media is terrible and refuses to name the actual compounds involved (NOx and NH3) because that would require them to distinguish between the different sources of this pollution. So they've just been calling it "nitrogen" and so you get people repeating the assertion that there are dangerous levels of "nitrogen" in the air.


Yeah, I don't know what the proper English name for those compounds is. Is it nitric oxides and ammonia?


Lmao no. Eastern Europe is definitely more right wing than the US on the social axis, and this is probably also true for westies.


This heavily depends on which part of policies you take into account. Many European countries are shifting to the right concerning migration. But when looking at the fiscal / economic policies of for example the PVV in the Netherlands (the far-right party of Geert Wilders) you will find that those policies are very comparable to left-wing parties.


that's what most people in Europe refuse to see. is common for even left-wing Europeans to hate on certain ethnicities, on other nationalities, to be very nationalistic in general.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: