Would someone please give me an argument against right-to-work laws? It seems stupid to me to force people to be fired for not paying to be a part of a club that they don't want to be in.
12-11-2012 02:59 PM
#1
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Right-to-work LawsWould someone please give me an argument against right-to-work laws? It seems stupid to me to force people to be fired for not paying to be a part of a club that they don't want to be in. | |
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12-11-2012 05:03 PM
#2
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"Right-to-work" laws are the ones that mean you can't exclude non-union workers right? | |
12-11-2012 05:15 PM
#3
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Okay, then my question would be that since the unions aren't the one doing the hiring, so why should they be able to get people fired for not being a part of the union? If someone doesn't want to be a part of a union, why is it fair for the union to get them fired for it? | |
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12-11-2012 05:19 PM
#4
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Because people will not join, despite the social benefits being larger than the individual cost of membership. People won't realise this as they are inherently selfish so regulation is required. | |
12-11-2012 05:20 PM
#5
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Check this website here too (from Wikipedia): Bad for Indiana - Why "Right to Work" is Bad for Indiana and Bad for Hoosiers! - Home | |
12-11-2012 05:45 PM
#6
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reddit informs me MLK said right-to-work is bad, soooo if you think it's good yous a racist | |
12-11-2012 05:47 PM
#7
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12-11-2012 05:56 PM
#8
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can they actually get people fired? from the three seconds I've spent reading on it it sounded like the most a union can require is that you pay something towards the collective bargaining (which isn't allowed to be more than the union dues of a member), the rewards of which you are of course reaping. | |
12-11-2012 06:46 PM
#9
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I'm not really getting the question. Is there something you can link that says someone has been fired for not joining a union? | |
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12-11-2012 08:10 PM
#10
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Yes. Unions are implementing this as a strategy to be able to compete with non union contractors. Union wages are much higher than non union in most areas of the US so it's easier for non union contractors "under cut" the unions by bidding jobs at a lower cost. Which sounds like it's not a bad thing, bringing costs down, but one of the things that gets lost is higher skill level that comes with union apprenticeships. I mean, who do you want building your house? A skilled tradesman that went through 5 years of schooling or unskilled labor? | |
Last edited by supa; 12-11-2012 at 08:13 PM.
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12-11-2012 10:04 PM
#11
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And the point is that it's wrong to force them to give up that money or lose their job without their consent. It's theft regardless. | |
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12-11-2012 10:10 PM
#12
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Also, did you seriously just reference the most pro-union website ever? | |
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12-12-2012 01:19 AM
#13
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Unions, IMO, are fine as long as they emerge voluntarily and aren't backed by any government. Basically every government intervention on employment has not only been destructive to the economy, but ultimately has worsened the problems they have meant to alleviate. | |
12-12-2012 02:48 AM
#14
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Artificially setting minimum wages, as in union wage minimums or national laws, has an effect of helping the few seen at the expense of the many unseen. | |
12-12-2012 03:28 AM
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12-12-2012 03:47 AM
#16
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Unions are overrated. | |
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12-12-2012 07:46 AM
#17
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I agree with everything Renton and Penneywize have said on this in the few posts above, and thank you Pascal for helping me to stir the shit on this forum you manage. | |
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12-12-2012 07:04 PM
#18
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Unions were created because of unfair wages and unsafe conditions. With the government watching over those things now, unions are no longer necessary-most industries that are union can no longer compete with non union shops because of the unreal wages and forever benefits. |
12-12-2012 09:55 PM
#19
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Without collective bargaining the Gov't will eventually get rid of all the rights unions fought to get us in the first place. If you don't believe that you are seriously fucking delusional. | |
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12-13-2012 12:58 AM
#20
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THERE ARE NO UNFAIR WAGES. If a job is paying 2 dollars an hour, that is a reflection of the fact that way too many people are vying for that job. Raising the minimum wage to 8 dollars an hour just causes employers to hire 1/4 (or much less than 1/4) as many of those people and they usually pick them in discriminatory ways (see the black unemployment rate in America). Employers should pay employees the least possible amount they can to keep costs down and minimize the prices of goods and services in the economy, and employees should actively seek better options. It is the combined vigilance of the employee and employer that correctly determines the price of labor, there is no "fair." | |
Last edited by Renton; 12-13-2012 at 01:05 AM. | |
12-13-2012 06:19 AM
#21
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Ah economics. Where assumptions go unvetted and conclusions need to be screamed. | |
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12-13-2012 06:53 AM
#22
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Last edited by a500lbgorilla; 12-13-2012 at 06:56 AM. | |
12-13-2012 08:02 AM
#23
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So what can unions do to compete for membership now that dues-paying is not compulsory? | |
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12-13-2012 01:24 PM
#24
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12-13-2012 01:51 PM
#25
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Assuming everyone is well and fully informed. | |
Last edited by a500lbgorilla; 12-13-2012 at 02:00 PM. | |
12-13-2012 02:17 PM
#26
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Someone looking to find a job should have a decent idea of what others are being paid for the same work. I think it hardly requires perfect knowlege. Failing that, employers will want to outbid each other for labor once supply meets demand, a naturally occurring thing in a free market as people unwilling to work for the going rate move on to other fields. | |
12-13-2012 09:02 PM
#27
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Renton, most of your posts I've read of yours are brilliant, poker related or not. | |
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12-13-2012 10:28 PM
#28
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I'm prepared to go all out econ-tard up in this thread but I figured I'd spare you guys and just say that Renton is pretty much right. | |
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12-13-2012 10:55 PM
#29
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The bully analogy is curious because 1) it doesn't really apply since direct coercion isn't involved in the employee-employer relationship and 2) forcing an employer to pay unskilled surplus labor a minimum wage is bullying on a grand scale. | |
Last edited by Renton; 12-13-2012 at 11:04 PM. | |
12-13-2012 11:17 PM
#30
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While collective bargaining is still necessary to protect certain interests and economic standards for individuals, this is a pretty heavy-handed statement. Unions were far more necessary in the absence of a fully mature and accessible legal system. That machine is now too well oiled and Americans far too litigious to allow reversion back to when employers were able to employ toddlers and kill their employees without recourse. | |
12-14-2012 08:55 AM
#31
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Standard argument and I disagree. Mitt Romney said he wanted to make the US the most appealing place in the world to do business. In order to do that you'd have to drive down wages to below poverty level for just about everyone. His first action towards doing this would be to repeal the davis bacon act. What would make him stop there. The snowball effect could be devastating to workers. | |
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12-14-2012 09:28 AM
#32
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Mitt Romney isn't President, wouldn't have been able to auto-repeal the Davis-Bacon act if he were and the obvious next step after that if he was President and was able to have the Davis-Bacon act repealed wouldn't be a path to be able to employ toddlers and kill employees without recourse. Your argument is unrealistically extreme and assumptive. Let me follow. It's like saying Michelle Bachman is going to kick all the immigrants out and then, ldo, kill Mexicans next. She can't, isn't, and would never be able to. | |
12-14-2012 09:35 AM
#33
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I'm not trying to espouse the conservative point of view that poor people are worthless parasites, even if that's how it sounds. Wage controls don't counteract poverty in any way, it simply distributes the scarce resources in a more concentrated way which SEEMS to prevent poverty. Prices of labor in a price coordinated economy are reflective of that underlying scarcity which exists regardless of policy, the policies only seek to distribute the resources in a less equitable way; that is, to the few lucky folks who are able to score the fewer jobs which will exist under wage control than the alternative. | |
12-14-2012 09:40 AM
#34
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Renton and Benny are 100% correct. Supa, i know you said you are in a union, and your bias is clouding a pretty 1 sided argument. | |
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12-14-2012 11:56 AM
#35
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Last edited by spoonitnow; 12-14-2012 at 12:00 PM. | |
12-14-2012 12:08 PM
#36
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12-14-2012 05:11 PM
#37
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Well, we should also be clear. Renton seems very faithful to free markets. | |
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12-14-2012 05:18 PM
#38
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And this still seems like the most pertinent question, to me. If your state goes right-to-work, how do you move forward? Other than trying to undue it legally, what do you do to position yourself to grow? Union You. | |
Last edited by a500lbgorilla; 12-14-2012 at 05:23 PM. | |
12-14-2012 05:44 PM
#39
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Don't lump me in with Renton, you big lumpers. I'm not all for the free market. I'm also not anti-union. | |
12-14-2012 06:25 PM
#40
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Reton, etc: | |
12-14-2012 07:12 PM
#41
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Yes, I had a choice. Wait around a couple of weeks (or months) and try to dig up something better or take the job and not be homeless. I don't blame the guy cuz he's a douchebag and did what douchebags do. When I told him I was leaving he offered me what I asked for in the first place. I told him to go fuck himself. | |
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12-15-2012 12:01 AM
#42
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1) Probably, but anytime anyone makes a shitload of money in a free market, he got that money as a result of providing something that many people wanted or needed, often making a lot of money for a lot of people in the process, and often elevating the standard of living for a lot of people in the process. There is a real issue of limiting the power of these people AFTER they've made the money to lobby the government for their own benefits, but the answer is limiting government's ability to intervene in markets and limiting money's ability to influence politics. The answer is not making it more difficult for people to make money. | |
Last edited by Renton; 12-15-2012 at 12:06 AM. | |
12-15-2012 12:46 AM
#43
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meh, the argument just seemed terribly one sided, so I figured I'd ask some questions. Maybe they weren't the greatest. I am of no authority to really offer a solid argument either way. | |
12-15-2012 04:25 AM
#44
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Anti-capitalist arguments tend to revolve around a few basic fallacies: | |
12-15-2012 11:34 PM
#45
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I really enjoyed reading Renton's posts in this thread. +1 To just about everything he's said. | |
12-16-2012 02:07 PM
#46
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my uncle was a trade union boss, that was a good job, you do nothing, and get aid for that, better than poker. But I don't mean to say there's no point in being a member for an employee, dude, everybody is, why do u wanna be different? | |
12-17-2012 03:05 AM
#47
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If you're not working towards achieving your dreams, you'll find a job helping someone else achieve theirs. | |
12-17-2012 08:13 AM
#48
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12-17-2012 10:48 AM
#49
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Yeah the thing about wage controls is that they only really help those who are lower than average productivity. If you are a high productivity worker in a free market, companies will pay you more than the average productivity worker because they don't want to lose you to competitors who will outbid them. Only when they are forced to pay an inflated wage to those of mediocre productivity can they not afford to do that. | |
12-18-2012 03:46 PM
#50
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I'd also add I've probably learned more from FTR than anyone besides the few people closest to me. So thanks FTR! | |
Last edited by Vi-Zer0Skill; 12-18-2012 at 03:49 PM.
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12-18-2012 03:55 PM
#51
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I realize the government would be relying on imperfect information about the exact quantities of the resource that is economical to extract in order to decide how much of each specific resource to allow to be used in production in a given year. But so is the market! | |
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12-18-2012 06:25 PM
#52
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12-18-2012 06:39 PM
#53
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12-19-2012 02:17 PM
#54
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Thanks Renton. I've wanted to have a thorough, intelligent dialogue about this subject with someone who holds different opinions than mine for quite some time. | |
Last edited by Vi-Zer0Skill; 12-19-2012 at 02:21 PM.
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12-20-2012 12:03 PM
#55
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12-20-2012 12:23 PM
#56
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I can tell you from multiple anecdotes that at least in Cambodia, this is not the case. Outside of a couple major cities, Cambodia is vast countryside, and people are flocking to Phnom Penh to make as little as 50-100 dollars a month. The agricultural way of life sucks a massive dick. These people don't have the basics, electricity, running water, medicine, etc. | |
12-20-2012 12:30 PM
#57
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12-20-2012 12:42 PM
#58
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This is all so wrong. There may have been a temporary dip in life expectancy during the beginning of the industrial revolution, but the technological advances that came in its wake quickly drove the figure off the charts. | |
12-20-2012 04:20 PM
#59
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As most people do, you're confusing business with economics. It's extremely common because most people involved in making economic decisions are also businessmen, but they are two starkly different things that don't have as much crossover as people think. It's a very difficult subject to tackle, especially for somebody like me to who isn't academically trained, and I don't want to do it, but just keep in mind that macroeconomics disagrees with business logic in many, many ways. Even then we live in a world where the business logic wins out and we all suffer because of it |
12-20-2012 04:20 PM
#60
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In the other thread, you talked about how morals aren't absolute, and you listed these precious few things (3, to be exact) as being worth legislating: | |
12-20-2012 08:35 PM
#61
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12-20-2012 08:43 PM
#62
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Wufwugy, it seems like you are basically saying that the profit and loss model as an incentive/disincentive for creating business is incompatible with an ideal society and economy. Am I accurate in saying this? | |
12-20-2012 08:50 PM
#63
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I'm not. My criticisms are that in many ways the business view is incompatible with the macroeconomic view. An example is how the business view is that lowering wages is beneficial but the macroeconomic view is pretty much the opposite. We have found over history that businessmen have fared better under less "business-friendly" practices that promote healthier economics yet they still don't like those practices because they falsely conflate their micro-business logic with macroeconomics |
12-20-2012 09:13 PM
#64
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12-20-2012 09:26 PM
#65
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12-20-2012 09:32 PM
#66
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The best example is how businesses do better under Democratic administrations yet they still support GOP administrations more for reasons of business-friendliness |
12-20-2012 09:45 PM
#67
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I think there's entirely too small of a sample size and too much economic complexity to say this with confidence. Also, GOPs are not champions of free-market principles, they are just crony-capitalists of a different feather. | |
12-20-2012 09:52 PM
#68
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The issue with the "pure capitalism" or "pure free market" view is that it assumes an inseparable attribute of a society (government and regulation) is separable. The irony is that in order to ensure real free markets, they must be strictly regulated for in order to keep corruption at bay. Otherwise we end up with the natural progression of what turns to crony capitalism. The problems in our healthcare system are not due to some fundamental disagreement with capitalism, but have been purposefully constructed by too much freedom to manipulate the system by those who would do so. |
12-20-2012 09:55 PM
#69
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I do agree that the free market is an extremely good thing, but we have also been told to believe that the "special market" that overly supports things like oligopolies is a free market |
12-21-2012 03:27 AM
#70
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Oligopolies are fine so long as they aren't cartels. Certain industries must be oligopolies. For example, in order to be cost competitive, an automobile assembly line must make hundreds of thousands of units. Anything with large economies of scale benefiting the cost will be an industry with only a few major players. | |
12-21-2012 04:04 AM
#71
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Only in some cases, but often we end up getting the kinds of problems we now have due to broadband oligopolies, for one example |
12-21-2012 04:32 AM
#72
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I think we can basically agree that Wal-Mart has the monopoly on the big box supermarket/department store in most parts of the country. And yes they are of such a scale that it is difficult for them to face real competition. However, as soon as they begin to gouge prices, the incentive for a Wal-Mart competitor to emerge would be so large that billions would pour in from investors. People argue that their service is declining, but as we see there is also a market for big box retail that doesn't have such shitty service, which is why Target and Best Buy exist. | |
12-21-2012 05:45 AM
#73
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I wasn't using Walmart as an example of price gouging. And yes, as long as Target is what it is, Walmart's monopolistic attributes won't get worse than they already are, but that is entirely irrelevant |
12-21-2012 06:22 AM
#74
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Doesn't excess capacity effectively remove the threat of competition in any monopoly with large barriers to entry? Unless doing so is against the rules it becomes in effect a cartel. | |
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12-21-2012 01:04 PM
#75
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Wow seriously? How many companies right now are competing to be better than the Iphone? What is their power, hypnotism? Samsung practically gave away Galaxy S3's this winter yet people are still flocking to the iphone. Why? Because they make the best fucking phone in the world. I gladly dished out a few hundred bucks for my iphone rather than paying $50 for a Galaxy S3. And if we forced Iphones to sell for the same price as Samsungs, they a) wouldn't be as good quality and b) definitely would still be made in sweatshops in southeast asia which I know you're very much against. | |
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