Related: [Cause Exploration Prizes] Crime Reduction

I'd recommend talking to the Mealsquares team about their experience building a similar product.

Some interesting ideas, thanks for sharing.

It does seem a bit perverse to me to note that there is a new political party, with a relatively nascent policy framework and shallow bench, that nonetheless is polling as if it will win the next general election... and conclude that we should focus on building relationships with a different party.

I think this is often a useful distinction to keep in mind, but it's a mistake to regard 'contextualisers' as one close grouping in the same way that 'decouplers' are. There is only one truth, so in some sense all decouplers are the same, but depending on your political and social objectives there can be many kinds of context that one might feel have not been shown sufficient respect by a statement.

I prefer the original FYI. 

As a general principle I think the forum team should reject ~ all requests for additional bureaucracy. 

What purpose does it serve to suggest they should have smaller families?

Ok, I am tapping out. I didn't want to be involved in this conversation in the first place, and only replied because you and Dawn asked for clarification and sourcing which I assumed was a good faith attempt to learn about the world. But I see now you are more interested in picking a fight and casting aspersions on an imaginary person. Since this person apparently holds a bunch of views I don't hold - like that people should have smaller families - the person clearly isn't me, so there's not much point my continuing to engage.

I think you are confusing style with substance. All open borders advocates support broadly similar policies (reducing barriers to migration). ImmigrationWorks was not aiming to "more efficiently exploit" immigrant workers - it was aiming to increase their numbers. Whether this is framed as being good for the migrants (who get higher wages) or the natives (who get to employ them) a marketing issue, but whether or not your "your pro-social intentions get turned into exploitative outcomes" depends on the actual policies promoted - on whether more immigration is good or bad - regardless of whether partisan framing.

Without that context, there's a real risk of unintentionally spreading misinformation or giving a false sense of certainty. Several points articulated in your bullets are not aligned with my understanding of international law or refugee status, and the reference to Palestinian birth rates in the first bullet made me uncomfortable and concerned about where some of this information was sourced from.

The fact that Palestinians have high birth rates is, as far as I know, completely uncontroversial. Prior to your comment I have never encountered a single person who would question this! I was hoping to be able to timebox this discussion rather than provide detailed citations for what I thought were relatively undisputed facts, but since you insist:

• The Palastinian Ministry of Health say the crude birth rate is over 26/1000. For context, South Korea, a country with a very low birth rate, is around 5/1000, over 80% lower.
• According to 'Palestine Remembered', the crude birth rate among Palestinian refugees is even higher - over 30.
• Here is AP news reporting on a UN 'warning' about high Palestinian birth rates.
• Here is an article in Pubmed about birth rates being high.
• Even the UNRWA agrees the birth rate among Palestinians has been and remains high, though they credit themselves with reducing it.

Not only is this fact uncontroversial, it is vital for understanding the conflict. The total number of original refugees was much smaller than today; if their birth rates had been low rather than high, or their descendants living abroad not counted, the total number today would be dramatically smaller.

my understanding is that, under international law, refugee protections remain in place until people can either safely return home or voluntarily settle elsewhere.^[1]

I think this is incorrect in both directions.

Firstly, I think in many a lot of cases there has been no concern for the voluntary nature settlement. If we compare just to other post WWII population movements, I am not aware of any right of return being granted to (the descendants of) Germans forcibly migrated to Germany, nor Indians and Pakistanis after partition, not Jews fleeing Arab countries. With good reason - doing so would cause a lot of conflict for little gain.

Secondly, voluntary settlement elsewhere does not end UNRWA registration. You are welcome to look up the criteria for being removed from the UNRWA list - as far as I know the only escape is death (or being found to be incorrectly registered). You can be happily living as a citizen of another country, and your children and grandchildren after you, but the UNRWA will still consider them to be refugees. 

Thanks for sharing, this sounds very interesting.

Are the products hard to transport? It makes sense there would be a lot of need in Africa, but I am wondering why the production has to be local.