xenophobia and nationalism are not racism. Lets look at this based on a utility function. My utility function includes an element of the utility of others. These others are weighted differently depending upon these others ‘importance’ in my mind. Firstly I value the happiness of my family over others so it would be weighted highly, followed by friends, extended family, neighbours, neighbourhood, region, nation, close nations (i.e. Australia).

All of these things are not necessarily racism. They are simply that I have a relationship with each person in this world and my relationship to Telecom employees in NZ is higher than Telecom employees in Manila. Yes in some cases that relationship may be tarnished by racist beliefs, but it is not a necessary requirement that I have racist beliefs in order for me to value people in my nation ahead of other nations – If I were to visit Manila and befriend locals, then my preferences would change, but at the moment I have a relationship with NZ and value the well-being of this nation. That is not racism – It’s nationalism. While sometimes it may be racism it is not necessarily.

I see – I was viewing racism and xenophobia in the same light. My primary view was that New Zealander’s were biased against non-New Zealander’s – I can see that xenophobia is a better term in this case 😉

Racism is really just a form of nationalism isn’t it 😛

Why not nationalism? Just to be picky.

I don’t agree – I don’t think the aid budget argument really makes sense, as I don’t give 80% of my income to other people in my country in the first place.

Fundamentally all nation states are more interested in the welfare of their citizens than in the welfare of other people – this type of separation is implicitly racist. People don’t like calling it racism – as they realise that a situation where we treat all citizens of the world equally would lead to far lower wages in developed nations like NZ.

If we really cared about the welfare of people equally, we would open our border to immigrants and let our wages fall – its just globalisation of the labour market.

Currently we have protectionism in the labour market – it benefits workers in developed countries, but it costs people in developing countries. I think the only reason we don’t want to face this issue in developed countries is because it would make us feel guilty.

In 50-100 years, when history classes look back at this period, they will view the type of labour market arrangements we have now as racism.

Capitalism is about everyone trying to get the best deal for themselves. Why should call centre workers in New Zealanders take it lying down? Efficiency comes from everyone optimizing. Besides, you could rewrite the same story and insert a country with the same ethnic mix as NZ (or as similar as is possible), but still have the same problem but clearly be unable to term it racism.