I really like the article. It certainly highlights a cost to immigration that is rarely identified. Two comments though. (1) I guess the article identifies a cost of unskilled migration. The arguments don't really seem apply to highly skilled migrants because they typically won't enter the type of economic sector the article focusses on. (2) In order to strengthen the case against unskilled migration it would be useful to argue (and provide evidence) that whatever costs the non-linear niches create aren't outweighed by the benefits of migration (e.g. I assume many would argue that Americans are not particularly interested in the menial jobs some of these niches offer).
Ethnic niches are very common in the professional world too. Our local hospital system essentially got taken over by Indians.
One of the real negatives about NOVA is that these sorts of ethnic cartels are very common, which is easy to do in the government contractor space. This is something you will miss if you just look at a places median household income or whatever.
Can you get a job if your the wrong ethnicity?
What are the differences between how native and foreign doctors will treat you as a patient?
One common route of advancement for African Americans was the black hair care field. (E.g., Madame C J Walker made a million dollars around the beginning of the 20th Century by inventing a hair straightener). Retailing specialized hair care products to other blacks was a typical step up the ladder for enterprising blacks. But in the later 20th Century in many cities, African Americans got pushed out of selling black hair care products by straight-haired Korean immigrants.
Interesting, above all for the part concerning India. I would not lose sleep over the foregone ‘innovation gains’ in donut shops and motels in ‘flyover America’, however. It may be that the cost advantages of non-linear ethnic niches are what allows these places to have donut shops and motels in the first place.
I should have expressed myself better. I meant that operations such as donut shops or motels have a inherently limited potential for productivity gains. I further advanced the hypothesis that local markets in ‘flyover America’ may lack the minimum size to attract mote efficient operations, such as those of motel chains. Therefore, the alternative to small-scale ethnic businesses would likely be no business at all.
I would want to see the numbers in that assumption. A few percent improvement in capital situation will still allow the incoming group to more easily purchase existing properties as they become available, and over time ownership will shift en masse, without there being a question of the business not having been available to purchase in the first place: it was.
Yeah because people in that part of the country have been sitting around with their thumbs up their asses for the past 200 years. 🙄
The Central & Mountain time zones were full of donut shops and motels before the immigrants showed up and thwarted normal economic workings to their own benefit. That is the entire point of the article. Immigration is fracturing the national economy. The family business used to be a key pillar of the American economy, even in "flyover" states, and now immigration is destroying that path to self-sufficiency.
The author takes an interesting idea and makes sweeping conclusions which are not at all supported by the evidence. I'll list some of the problems.
The idea of "dominating" a niche is used inconsistently throughout the article. Sometimes it means 40%, sometimes it means 80%, sometimes it means nothing in particular. For example, there's no evidence given that "virtual all niches" in India are dominated by a particular caste. Also, if only 40% of a niche is occupied by an ethnic group, clearly, it's not impossible for outsiders to compete.
There's also no quantification of how important these "niches" are in a broader economy. Author asserts that these industries were important mobility vehicle. Possibly. But they're still a very small part of the economy. And the economy is an ever-changing beast. Aren't there other avenues now, which weren't open decades ago?
In the particular case of India, the author keeps trying to fit every wrong thing in India into his theory. He tries to argue that the labour shortages and very small size of firms in India are due to these ethnic niches.
India has a hundred different problems. It has a horrible schooling system which is directly responsible for a lot of the "skill shortage". And it has massive corruption, abysmal labor laws and inadequate credit systems which inhibit the growth of firms.
How does the author know that the "real" problem is ethnic niches and not these direct problems which have been pointed out for decades?
To decide between different explanations, author has to quantify the effect of the various factors, and he doesn't even try.
Edits needed: “Yet such an obsever would have been predicted that of some ethnic minority because organized crime is almost always organized along ethnic lines.”
One question is whether there are non-linear ethnic niches dominated disproportionately by regular Americans. For example, in Los Angeles, Japanese seemed to take over gardening by the mid-20th Century (there's a reference to the well-known proclivities of Japanese gardeners in a Philip Marlow detective story from the 1940s), followed by Mexicans in the later 20th Century.
On the other hand, I think the fairly similar job of Pool Guy was quite white in L.A. for a couple of more generations.
Powerful article. Well researched 🧲📚💯
Thanks for a fascinating look at immigration. You can be sure most have not looked at it from this angle.
I really like the article. It certainly highlights a cost to immigration that is rarely identified. Two comments though. (1) I guess the article identifies a cost of unskilled migration. The arguments don't really seem apply to highly skilled migrants because they typically won't enter the type of economic sector the article focusses on. (2) In order to strengthen the case against unskilled migration it would be useful to argue (and provide evidence) that whatever costs the non-linear niches create aren't outweighed by the benefits of migration (e.g. I assume many would argue that Americans are not particularly interested in the menial jobs some of these niches offer).
Ethnic niches are very common in the professional world too. Our local hospital system essentially got taken over by Indians.
One of the real negatives about NOVA is that these sorts of ethnic cartels are very common, which is easy to do in the government contractor space. This is something you will miss if you just look at a places median household income or whatever.
Can you get a job if your the wrong ethnicity?
What are the differences between how native and foreign doctors will treat you as a patient?
One common route of advancement for African Americans was the black hair care field. (E.g., Madame C J Walker made a million dollars around the beginning of the 20th Century by inventing a hair straightener). Retailing specialized hair care products to other blacks was a typical step up the ladder for enterprising blacks. But in the later 20th Century in many cities, African Americans got pushed out of selling black hair care products by straight-haired Korean immigrants.
What an article!
Great article!
Interesting, above all for the part concerning India. I would not lose sleep over the foregone ‘innovation gains’ in donut shops and motels in ‘flyover America’, however. It may be that the cost advantages of non-linear ethnic niches are what allows these places to have donut shops and motels in the first place.
"I would not lose sleep over the foregone ‘innovation gains’ in donut shops and motels in ‘flyover America’, however."
That is, unless you happen to live in 'fly over America'.
I should have expressed myself better. I meant that operations such as donut shops or motels have a inherently limited potential for productivity gains. I further advanced the hypothesis that local markets in ‘flyover America’ may lack the minimum size to attract mote efficient operations, such as those of motel chains. Therefore, the alternative to small-scale ethnic businesses would likely be no business at all.
I would want to see the numbers in that assumption. A few percent improvement in capital situation will still allow the incoming group to more easily purchase existing properties as they become available, and over time ownership will shift en masse, without there being a question of the business not having been available to purchase in the first place: it was.
Yeah because people in that part of the country have been sitting around with their thumbs up their asses for the past 200 years. 🙄
The Central & Mountain time zones were full of donut shops and motels before the immigrants showed up and thwarted normal economic workings to their own benefit. That is the entire point of the article. Immigration is fracturing the national economy. The family business used to be a key pillar of the American economy, even in "flyover" states, and now immigration is destroying that path to self-sufficiency.
The author takes an interesting idea and makes sweeping conclusions which are not at all supported by the evidence. I'll list some of the problems.
The idea of "dominating" a niche is used inconsistently throughout the article. Sometimes it means 40%, sometimes it means 80%, sometimes it means nothing in particular. For example, there's no evidence given that "virtual all niches" in India are dominated by a particular caste. Also, if only 40% of a niche is occupied by an ethnic group, clearly, it's not impossible for outsiders to compete.
There's also no quantification of how important these "niches" are in a broader economy. Author asserts that these industries were important mobility vehicle. Possibly. But they're still a very small part of the economy. And the economy is an ever-changing beast. Aren't there other avenues now, which weren't open decades ago?
In the particular case of India, the author keeps trying to fit every wrong thing in India into his theory. He tries to argue that the labour shortages and very small size of firms in India are due to these ethnic niches.
India has a hundred different problems. It has a horrible schooling system which is directly responsible for a lot of the "skill shortage". And it has massive corruption, abysmal labor laws and inadequate credit systems which inhibit the growth of firms.
How does the author know that the "real" problem is ethnic niches and not these direct problems which have been pointed out for decades?
To decide between different explanations, author has to quantify the effect of the various factors, and he doesn't even try.
Edits needed: “Yet such an obsever would have been predicted that of some ethnic minority because organized crime is almost always organized along ethnic lines.”
Fixed
—NC
One question is whether there are non-linear ethnic niches dominated disproportionately by regular Americans. For example, in Los Angeles, Japanese seemed to take over gardening by the mid-20th Century (there's a reference to the well-known proclivities of Japanese gardeners in a Philip Marlow detective story from the 1940s), followed by Mexicans in the later 20th Century.
On the other hand, I think the fairly similar job of Pool Guy was quite white in L.A. for a couple of more generations.
Great writing.
Global India is a horrific prospect.
Well observed on the aversion towards innovation and improvement among non linear ethnic cartels.
This plays a large part in the 'enshittification' so widely decried in the Anglosphere.