Thanks for writing this. These arguments are so obvious that it feels stupid to have to keep repeating them, but civilization is on the line, so have to keep doing it.
Thank you. It's truly amazing that these super obvious arguments even need to be made. You can't help but wonder if the intelligent people advancing arguments for a billion Americans and open borders are truly living in a fantasy world with no comprehension of human dynamics, or if they are arguing in bad faith.
I love cats and dogs. I truly do. I donate a lot of money every year to help all the stray and homeless cats and dogs. I'm such a sucker for them, I get mail every single day with some poor suffering animal with big eyes on the envelope, saying "please help me" and asking for more money. My own dogs live a life of unimaginable luxury in comparison to all the strays and starving, homeless dogs, and I wish they didn't. Yet what I DON'T do is just leave all my doors and windows open so that every stray dog and cat can move in. If I did, pretty soon my house would resemble the street they came in from, and it would be ruined for all of us, rather than helping them all live the nice life we do now. It's a silly metaphor in some ways, but I use it because it's the only way I've found to shut down people's knee-jerk reaction that I must hate foreigners just bc I don't think we can let them all in.
“You can't help but wonder if the intelligent people advancing arguments for a billion Americans and open borders are truly living in a fantasy world with no comprehension of human dynamics, or if they are arguing in bad faith.”
Seems pretty clear to me that most of the actually intelligent ones are arguing in bad faith for the purposes of amassing political power, while most of the midwit rank and file are clueless and believe it. Exceptions on both sides notwithstanding.
To be clear, I think Bryan himself really does believe what he’s arguing for, and he’s surely no midwit. And I think her argues *mostly* in good faith, even though he understands that his end goal of fully open borders, to the extent it’s achievable at all, it could only happen in the distant future.
In that respect it’s similar to his anarchy-capitalist stance on the eventual total elimination of the state, although on that point he is quite open(!) that it cannot happen until further into the future when many other changes have first occurred.
Also in fairness to him, I believe he argues as he does on this topic in a fashion similar to many of the global warming catastrophists: they each think if they make their extreme arguments, they might get some “every little bit helps” progress towards their goal from some people.
Of course, for people like myself, who are very much in favor of MUCH more legal immigration than we have now, his arguments are offputting and unconvincing, and imo move us collectively *further* from the better state, rather than closer to it
I wanted to add your argument against Bryan, he used Turkish people in Germany, which had underwent some modernization before, and more importantly was not quiet islamist until recently. Same in Tunisia, this makes a difference compared to Afghanistan or Syria.
In a part of your article, you wrote "populous" instead of "populace". That should be corrected.
Anyway, worth noting that a lot of the people who come to the US through the Diversity Visa Lottery are cognitive elites (at least relative to the populations of their home countries as a whole):
This makes sense because when it's very difficult even for cognitively elite people to move to the US, even a lot of them decide to try their luck by playing the Diversity Visa Lottery, sometimes more than once.
I also find it interesting that both Israel and the US remain *relatively* functional in spite of both of them having large Third World-origin populations (I mean proles, not just cognitive elites). The US has black descendants of slaves and Hispanics, while Israel has Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ethiopian Jews as well as Arabs. For that matter, Italy doesn't fare too badly in spite of it having a huge southern Italian population, which is duller, more corrupt, more nepotistic, and more crime-inclined than northern Italians are. But you are correct that importing too many underperformers is likely to have severely negative effects, especially when this isn't compensated by importing a lot of cognitive elites (like both the US and Israel do).
I want an immigration policy that allows smart and talented people to move over here en masse, including, if necessary, by using IQ testing to prove their talents and abilities, but also allowed culturally compatible people to seek refuge and better lives here in large numbers--just not so large that the US would be overwhelmed.
As a keyhole solution, the US and West can have much more open borders with the entire world other than both the Muslim world and Sub-Saharan Africa, from which immigration to the West will remain much more restricted.
TBF, Hanania did say that the question of whether mass immigration is good for Europe is debatable. He did say that it was a blessing for the US, though, possibly due to the data here:
Caplan is a true blue open borders advocate, to my knowledge. But even he proposed keyhole solutions such as only allowing entry to the US to people with an IQ of 98+.
Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest. I have nothing against illegal immigrants moving here in large numbers, especially if they are culturally compatible and are coming here for a better life. If they're genuinely refugees/asylees, then even better. But I also want this counterbalanced by us accepting a lot more cognitive elites than we currently do. I want the American project to succeeded, after all, and that requires a large concentration of cognitive elites to achieve this goal. If the US and Western countries in general will become too dumpy, then they would stop being attractive for cognitive elites--both for foreign cognitive elites and for their own cognitive elites, who might start fleeing to greener pastures.
The biggest issue with accepting working-class immigrants, even culturally compatible ones, is that in a lot of cases they and/or their descendants could become Trumpists/MAGA. Well, for Muslims, there is also the crime and radical Islam factor, though most of our own Muslims right now are cognitive elites.
As a side note, I wish that our cognitive elites had more children, on average.
"The biggest issue with accepting working-class immigrants, even culturally compatible ones, is that in a lot of cases they and/or their descendants could become Trumpists/MAGA..."
Yeah, but honestly, when you see illegal immigrants or their friends and relatives supporting MAGA in spite of Trump’s promise of mass deportations, or Arabs and Muslims supporting MAGA in spite of Trump thoroughly licking Bibi’s ass during his first term, then you really understand that a lot of voters, especially duller ones, don’t understand where their own best interests lie.
BTW, again, I can’t help but wonder whether the keyhole solution of much more open borders for the world other than for the Muslim world and Sub-Saharan Africa could be an OK one. It would still allow a lot of low-IQ people through, but also a lot of high-IQ people. The worst integration problems in the West (especially in Europe) appear to come with Muslims and Africans.
Another contra argument is opening border to muslim population can make them less muslism. This is quite opinable if you consider muslim immigration in Europe, a recent study in France about anti-semitism proved the most antisemitic act are committed by young muslims: https://www.fondapol.org/etude/radiographie-de-lantisemitisme-en-france-2/
Muslims becoming less religious doesn't necessarily make them easier to integrate. You are just left with ethnocentric, low IQ third world peasants. It's a toss up whether suicide bombings or grooming gangs are worse, but you don't have to have either.
Right. One sees a transformation from Islamic Muslim to Identity Muslim, or the adoption of an oppositional even LARPy Muslim self-conception that is even more belligerent than its prior sincere form.
Have been trying to put exactly what you said into words for a while about the LARPY Muslim who is not remotely religious or even prudish, but just a political Muslim that hates the west.
Thanks, I suspect it is somewhat correlated, but there's a complicated relationship where moderate religiosity makes it easier to 'integrate' (i.e. get a job and not be messed up), but irreligiosity and intense religiosity retard it.
Very hard to strike the right balance, perhaps impossible at scale because promoting the right level of Islam for person A will cause person B to flip out and become an extremist.
So we should ask if things like grooming gangs, antisemitism and terrorism are things connected with religion or ethnicity. In any case I think we are all on the same page about the issue.
I agree with Caplan to the limited extent that the Islamic world has talent that is just being wasted and from a selfish perspective the west can poach them with few issues. But we are not talking big numbers here.
What do you think about the argument that more immigration and diversity reduces support for statism, making American exceptionalism more likely to persist?
I also think Muslim immigration to Europe is a worst-case scenario. Other religions don't pose the same threat, and America has a much higher base rate of crime making it unlikely we'd see native/immigrant crime disparities like they have in Europe.
There is no evidence of this. Immigration has consistently moved politics to the left for decades. Just look at what’s happened on the coasts and nationally.
Why for instance do we have the ACA? Romney won as much of the white vote as Ronald Reagan did, but he lost. He lost because immigrants wanted free healthcare and Obama gave it to them. It’s right there in the numbers.
Trump is just what the GOP is going to look like in a world where the median voter looks more and more like some 93 iq mestizo. Paul Ryan doesn’t appeal to someone like that.
The literature on this “theory” basically boils down to the fact that the ex confederate states of the solid south wouldn’t vote for welfare for blacks. But you don’t have that kind of white solidarity in the rest of the country and even in the solid south immigration is starting to make non whites the majority and the democrats are starting to win elections and move policy to the left.
The most likely outcome of immigration is a loss is social trust, increasing corruption/incompetence, and a big welfare state combined. That’s a way worse combination than some reasonable well run social insurance system for high iq people.
The evidence is that on average the opposite is true. As people come from more statist countries, even if they want less statism than their former country, they want more statism than at least red-staters prefer.
The one exception to this might be folks coming directly from communist states (grew up in the Soviet Union or a satellite or Cuba). There I think your intuition might be correct, at least on average.
It's the one position in the world that can only be discussed if we solve every other problem.
In terms of maintaining a growing population, this is a legitimate concern given dropping fertility rates. But if you pick randomly, chances are you don't emd up with someone who is a net contirbutor (given the welfare state isn't going away tomorrow). Also, Reihan Salam from the Manhattan Insittute makes this pooint about how the nativist backlash is likely to be higher if you combine low native fertility rates with high immigraiton. In the past, when america received those high numbers, the organic population growth actually outstripped immigration. There is obviously not true anymore.
Thanks for writing this. These arguments are so obvious that it feels stupid to have to keep repeating them, but civilization is on the line, so have to keep doing it.
Thank you. It's truly amazing that these super obvious arguments even need to be made. You can't help but wonder if the intelligent people advancing arguments for a billion Americans and open borders are truly living in a fantasy world with no comprehension of human dynamics, or if they are arguing in bad faith.
I love cats and dogs. I truly do. I donate a lot of money every year to help all the stray and homeless cats and dogs. I'm such a sucker for them, I get mail every single day with some poor suffering animal with big eyes on the envelope, saying "please help me" and asking for more money. My own dogs live a life of unimaginable luxury in comparison to all the strays and starving, homeless dogs, and I wish they didn't. Yet what I DON'T do is just leave all my doors and windows open so that every stray dog and cat can move in. If I did, pretty soon my house would resemble the street they came in from, and it would be ruined for all of us, rather than helping them all live the nice life we do now. It's a silly metaphor in some ways, but I use it because it's the only way I've found to shut down people's knee-jerk reaction that I must hate foreigners just bc I don't think we can let them all in.
“You can't help but wonder if the intelligent people advancing arguments for a billion Americans and open borders are truly living in a fantasy world with no comprehension of human dynamics, or if they are arguing in bad faith.”
Seems pretty clear to me that most of the actually intelligent ones are arguing in bad faith for the purposes of amassing political power, while most of the midwit rank and file are clueless and believe it. Exceptions on both sides notwithstanding.
To be clear, I think Bryan himself really does believe what he’s arguing for, and he’s surely no midwit. And I think her argues *mostly* in good faith, even though he understands that his end goal of fully open borders, to the extent it’s achievable at all, it could only happen in the distant future.
In that respect it’s similar to his anarchy-capitalist stance on the eventual total elimination of the state, although on that point he is quite open(!) that it cannot happen until further into the future when many other changes have first occurred.
Also in fairness to him, I believe he argues as he does on this topic in a fashion similar to many of the global warming catastrophists: they each think if they make their extreme arguments, they might get some “every little bit helps” progress towards their goal from some people.
Of course, for people like myself, who are very much in favor of MUCH more legal immigration than we have now, his arguments are offputting and unconvincing, and imo move us collectively *further* from the better state, rather than closer to it
I wanted to add your argument against Bryan, he used Turkish people in Germany, which had underwent some modernization before, and more importantly was not quiet islamist until recently. Same in Tunisia, this makes a difference compared to Afghanistan or Syria.
Yep exactly. I attribute most of that to Turkish secularism , not western assimilation
Well written.
Couldn’t agree with you more.
In a part of your article, you wrote "populous" instead of "populace". That should be corrected.
Anyway, worth noting that a lot of the people who come to the US through the Diversity Visa Lottery are cognitive elites (at least relative to the populations of their home countries as a whole):
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/diversity-visa-program-holds-lessons-future-legal-immigration-reform
This makes sense because when it's very difficult even for cognitively elite people to move to the US, even a lot of them decide to try their luck by playing the Diversity Visa Lottery, sometimes more than once.
I also find it interesting that both Israel and the US remain *relatively* functional in spite of both of them having large Third World-origin populations (I mean proles, not just cognitive elites). The US has black descendants of slaves and Hispanics, while Israel has Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ethiopian Jews as well as Arabs. For that matter, Italy doesn't fare too badly in spite of it having a huge southern Italian population, which is duller, more corrupt, more nepotistic, and more crime-inclined than northern Italians are. But you are correct that importing too many underperformers is likely to have severely negative effects, especially when this isn't compensated by importing a lot of cognitive elites (like both the US and Israel do).
I want an immigration policy that allows smart and talented people to move over here en masse, including, if necessary, by using IQ testing to prove their talents and abilities, but also allowed culturally compatible people to seek refuge and better lives here in large numbers--just not so large that the US would be overwhelmed.
As a keyhole solution, the US and West can have much more open borders with the entire world other than both the Muslim world and Sub-Saharan Africa, from which immigration to the West will remain much more restricted.
I agree with everything you said. The US could use a lot more immigration but there's no reason not be selective when it absolutely can be selective.
This is the question the likes of Hanania and Caplan refuse to answer.
TBF, Hanania did say that the question of whether mass immigration is good for Europe is debatable. He did say that it was a blessing for the US, though, possibly due to the data here:
https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-09-26-braindrain/immigration.html
Caplan is a true blue open borders advocate, to my knowledge. But even he proposed keyhole solutions such as only allowing entry to the US to people with an IQ of 98+.
Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest. I have nothing against illegal immigrants moving here in large numbers, especially if they are culturally compatible and are coming here for a better life. If they're genuinely refugees/asylees, then even better. But I also want this counterbalanced by us accepting a lot more cognitive elites than we currently do. I want the American project to succeeded, after all, and that requires a large concentration of cognitive elites to achieve this goal. If the US and Western countries in general will become too dumpy, then they would stop being attractive for cognitive elites--both for foreign cognitive elites and for their own cognitive elites, who might start fleeing to greener pastures.
The biggest issue with accepting working-class immigrants, even culturally compatible ones, is that in a lot of cases they and/or their descendants could become Trumpists/MAGA. Well, for Muslims, there is also the crime and radical Islam factor, though most of our own Muslims right now are cognitive elites.
As a side note, I wish that our cognitive elites had more children, on average.
"The biggest issue with accepting working-class immigrants, even culturally compatible ones, is that in a lot of cases they and/or their descendants could become Trumpists/MAGA..."
A counterintuitive talking point indeed!
Yeah, but honestly, when you see illegal immigrants or their friends and relatives supporting MAGA in spite of Trump’s promise of mass deportations, or Arabs and Muslims supporting MAGA in spite of Trump thoroughly licking Bibi’s ass during his first term, then you really understand that a lot of voters, especially duller ones, don’t understand where their own best interests lie.
Thanks for the catch on 'populous' btw
No problem! :)
BTW, again, I can’t help but wonder whether the keyhole solution of much more open borders for the world other than for the Muslim world and Sub-Saharan Africa could be an OK one. It would still allow a lot of low-IQ people through, but also a lot of high-IQ people. The worst integration problems in the West (especially in Europe) appear to come with Muslims and Africans.
Another contra argument is opening border to muslim population can make them less muslism. This is quite opinable if you consider muslim immigration in Europe, a recent study in France about anti-semitism proved the most antisemitic act are committed by young muslims: https://www.fondapol.org/etude/radiographie-de-lantisemitisme-en-france-2/
Muslims becoming less religious doesn't necessarily make them easier to integrate. You are just left with ethnocentric, low IQ third world peasants. It's a toss up whether suicide bombings or grooming gangs are worse, but you don't have to have either.
Right. One sees a transformation from Islamic Muslim to Identity Muslim, or the adoption of an oppositional even LARPy Muslim self-conception that is even more belligerent than its prior sincere form.
Have been trying to put exactly what you said into words for a while about the LARPY Muslim who is not remotely religious or even prudish, but just a political Muslim that hates the west.
Correct. Studies show that religiosity is mostly uncorrelated with integration for the 2nd generation in Europe: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2019.1620417?scroll=top&needAccess=true#abstract
Thanks, I suspect it is somewhat correlated, but there's a complicated relationship where moderate religiosity makes it easier to 'integrate' (i.e. get a job and not be messed up), but irreligiosity and intense religiosity retard it.
Yeah and from what I’ve read, 2nd gen Muslims in Europe often go to one of these 2 extremes
Very hard to strike the right balance, perhaps impossible at scale because promoting the right level of Islam for person A will cause person B to flip out and become an extremist.
Just don't let them in, problem solved.
So we should ask if things like grooming gangs, antisemitism and terrorism are things connected with religion or ethnicity. In any case I think we are all on the same page about the issue.
This is a good article about how Islamic identity works in western countries as a sort of pan-brown super-ethnocentrism without necessarily its adherents being religious at all. https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/rakib-ehsan-and-the-natural-conservatism.
I agree with Caplan to the limited extent that the Islamic world has talent that is just being wasted and from a selfish perspective the west can poach them with few issues. But we are not talking big numbers here.
Chechens have been under Russian rule for over a century and yet they still aren't beacons of liberalism!
What do you think about the argument that more immigration and diversity reduces support for statism, making American exceptionalism more likely to persist?
I also think Muslim immigration to Europe is a worst-case scenario. Other religions don't pose the same threat, and America has a much higher base rate of crime making it unlikely we'd see native/immigrant crime disparities like they have in Europe.
There is no evidence of this. Immigration has consistently moved politics to the left for decades. Just look at what’s happened on the coasts and nationally.
Why for instance do we have the ACA? Romney won as much of the white vote as Ronald Reagan did, but he lost. He lost because immigrants wanted free healthcare and Obama gave it to them. It’s right there in the numbers.
Trump is just what the GOP is going to look like in a world where the median voter looks more and more like some 93 iq mestizo. Paul Ryan doesn’t appeal to someone like that.
The literature on this “theory” basically boils down to the fact that the ex confederate states of the solid south wouldn’t vote for welfare for blacks. But you don’t have that kind of white solidarity in the rest of the country and even in the solid south immigration is starting to make non whites the majority and the democrats are starting to win elections and move policy to the left.
The most likely outcome of immigration is a loss is social trust, increasing corruption/incompetence, and a big welfare state combined. That’s a way worse combination than some reasonable well run social insurance system for high iq people.
This is my sense too. I’ll read Richard’s piece but I’m not sure how he could be right about this.
The evidence is that on average the opposite is true. As people come from more statist countries, even if they want less statism than their former country, they want more statism than at least red-staters prefer.
The one exception to this might be folks coming directly from communist states (grew up in the Soviet Union or a satellite or Cuba). There I think your intuition might be correct, at least on average.
If the GOP will become a multiracial prole party, I'm unsure that it could maintain its opposition to expanding the welfare state indefinitely.
It's the one position in the world that can only be discussed if we solve every other problem.
In terms of maintaining a growing population, this is a legitimate concern given dropping fertility rates. But if you pick randomly, chances are you don't emd up with someone who is a net contirbutor (given the welfare state isn't going away tomorrow). Also, Reihan Salam from the Manhattan Insittute makes this pooint about how the nativist backlash is likely to be higher if you combine low native fertility rates with high immigraiton. In the past, when america received those high numbers, the organic population growth actually outstripped immigration. There is obviously not true anymore.
also, thank you!