The terms "Left" and "Right" are problematic, and it would be better to abandon them altogether. Neither term has had much meaning since 1945, when both the traditional left and the traditional right fell into terminal decline and never really recovered.
That decline was partly due to political repression: McCarthyism against the Left and postwar épuration against the Right. But there was a bigger reason: the Center was doing a great job! For almost three decades we had a miracle of solid economic growth and solid population growth. And the fruits of that growth were more or less evenly distributed. Most working people could now afford a middle-class lifestyle. Families were being formed by people who, previously, would have remained single and on the margins of society.
So the Center had a sound grip on reality and was doing the right things. Unfortunately, that's no longer true. There is an ideological disconnect that spans the current political spectrum, which is now either Center-Right or Center-Left. I don't think we will get anywhere within that spectrum, at least not in the Anglosphere.
It would be better to accept that we are politically marginal and talk to anyone who is willing to give us a fair hearing. We in Canada have had Conservative governments, and they have been no better than Liberal governments on the issue of demographic replacement. In fact, they have been somewhat worse. It was a Conservative government that brought in global immigration in the early 1960s, and it was another Conservative government that hiked immigration levels in the 1980s. Today, "Conservatives" and "Liberals" are outgrowths of the same globalist consensus that has become dominant throughout the West.
Progressivism fits hand in glove with the global corporate state because both are supranational projects that consider borders and nations some combo of arbitrary, antiquated, unjust or discriminatory, and they are both totalizing in the sense that they have no end point or stopping place: for corporatists the goal is slapping a barcode onto every person place or thing on Earth; for Progressives, every human needs to learn the Good News about Structures of Oppression and be baptized in the new faith of identity-based maximum personal autonomy.
They both need to erase nations, cultures, traditions, norms etc, most especially the idea that a citizen with centuries of roots has more claim to a country than someone newly arrived from anywhere on the planet, and mass immigration, skilled or un-, helps them achieve all these aims.
Low skilled immigration isn’t really a problem for most leftists . Sure , it might harm the native workers , but the native workers are very well off compared to low skilled immigrants from third world countries. Unless the leftist is also a nationalist who thinks the well-being of the native population is much more important than the well-being of foreigners , there is no problem here . The non -nationalist leftist will choose for the very poor immigrants and against the relatively rich natives .
Well, and don't forget the self interest. The poor immigrants provide excellent low cost services to the people inhabiting our large cities. There is a French writer who wrote the Twilight of the Elites, Christophe Guilluy. He has the concept of the citadel. Cities are now populated by leftish thinking people that are quite well off. The normal working class have been chased away by poor immigrants that form a citadel around this inner city, providing the menial jobs for a price the native people would never work for. The natives moved away to rural and far away suburbs.
This model is incredibly advantageous for the leftish city dwellers. Nannies, barbers, nails, taxis, package delivery, cleaning, etc, etc.
And I think it is interesting to consider that this is a fractal problem. In the last century, the higher IQ children were extracted to the cities to compete with each other. This is a terrible waste because centrally you get maybe a few percentage better quality but it completely drains the rural areas of IQ. I am convinced many people would be so much better off belonging to the top in a rural area instead of a cog in Paris and the effects for the people around them would be enormous.
According to Steven Pinker, very few Harvard undergrads are admitted on merit (as in really high IQ) and very few in particular from middle America. Thus the brain drain from rural and heartland cities may not be nearly as great as advertised (or feared, in the case of Charles Murray). There may be more talent out there than assumed. The problem is the lack of a plan or a program around which they can organize electorally in order to overthrow the neoliberal governing elites. For one possibility at least see my book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
Btw, it is my theory that if we had a society in which anyone who worked hard and played by the rules (regardless of IQ) could reasonably look forward to a rich and fulfilling life, then most of the identity politics currently roiling our society would evaporate. Again, see my book for what that might look like.
For the part about how high-skill immigration is bad for low-income countries, this argument feels like when liberals try to use originalism against conservatives. Like, it doesn’t count and no one cares. At most, people will pretend to take it seriously swat it away on an unusually technical and minor distinction, like in the recent case against affirmative action.
But also, it doesn’t apply to many countries. For example, China has abundant potential high-skill immigrants. But, because its economic system sucks, China lacks adequate opportunities for those people, in both number and quality. Even for available opportunities in China, the job could be done just as well by someone of somewhat less skill, whereas the highest-skilled person could be fully and uniquely utilized only in, say, Silicon Valley (or wherever the leading edge cluster is). You can generalize from China to other countries that, although lacking a PRC, have limited/bad opportunities for high-skilled workers for other reasons having to do with culture or bureaucracy.
One of my favorite win-win examples of Eugenics and Statistics. A country with an average IQ of 100 and another with an average IQ of 90 could have an immigration policy that increases both of their national IQs. The lower IQ country sends a few people with IQs >100, and the higher IQ country sends many more people with IQs > 90.
What would be the effect of high IQ citizens of, say, the United States, emigrating to a low IQ country like Haiti? How might it happen? Corporations engaged in direct foreign investment, for instance, building factories, might bring large numbers of managers with their families on long-term assignments. A Peace Corp composed of high IQ unmarried individuals might end up marrying locals, and to the extent this happens the result would be positive in so far as future human capital is concerned. Think of them as a 21st century version of Christian missionaries, although of course no religious orientation would be assumed. I'm just thinking out loud here. See the political platform at the end of my book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNJTJ2R
The effect would presumably be positive for the current citizens of Haiti – particularly since Haiti has seen substantial brain drain, and didn't have a large smart fraction to begin with.
With regards to high skilled immigration , this also isn’t really a problem for leftists. The leftist can say : we are against selectively letting in highly skilled immigrants , everybody can come in , high skilled and low skilled . In that case the low skilled also benefit , since they’re free to move to wealthy countries , which they currently aren’t .
What I find most ironic about the radical left is that the look in horror at past immigration policies that had racial/ ethnic quotas because of their prejudicial nature. Yet they think the compassionate thing to do is to impose racial quotas on migrants once they arrive in the West, all in the name of equity. And those that oppose such quotas are the bigots.
Actually, the donor class (roughly speaking, the 10,000 wealthiest families in America) bankrolls both political parties. It also owns and/or controls all the major institutions in our society: banks, corporations, major media, elite universities, etc. We are talking about families with a hundred million dollars and up.
I have just one quibble with this really excellent analysis....but it's a big one.
"Those in the first group, by contrast, have at least partly altruistic motives – or they purport to have such motives."....Impossible to prove of course but 70 years of observing middle class lefties leaves me in no doubt that the number with truly "altruistic motives" is actually very small whereas the number who merely "purport to have such motives" is very, very large - albeit they are not being actually mendacious. On the contrary they genuinely believe their own pretty story and do so because a) it is so deliciously self-flattering and b) they have a low threshold of self-deception.
Possibly the clearest article I've read on the subject. It's the kind of article I'd send to my more progressive friends because it's both short and, as far as I can see, irrefutable.
The obvious counter-argument is that if this logic is true, we should also stop people moving from Liverpool to London or vice versa since, by definition, they are harming the working classes in either the place they leave or the place they travel to. But we all kind of know that would be false, even if we have a localist slant to our politics.
The answer to this was stated by Friedrich List who, to paraphrase, concluded that the doctrine of Free Trade is true as long as you assume countries don't exist, but countries do exist. However, we still don't have a good conception, economically speaking, of what countries really are, so we fall back on arguments from national pride/solidarity which either you feel or you don't. What we really need is an economic theory of the country.
Absolutely. An economic argument cannot be refuted by appealing to the concept of the state unless you have an economic concept of the state. Or, to the matter the other way round, if economics is to be useful, it has to describe the world that actually exists, and the world that actually exists has states.
I'm pretty sure that the question was meant to say: "Do you need economic theory to consider the concept of Israel as real?", but got interpreted as "Do you need economic theory to include conceptualization of the state to use it for modelling Israel?"
I know it's tough to follow arguments, but try asking someone from the 'talented tenth' of your ethnicity to help you through. My comment was *pro* the concept of countries with specific interests.
FWIW and BTW, I do not recognise the legitimacy of the State of Israel and hope for its peaceful disestablishment.
I genuinely feel sorry for you. Your TFR is 1.56, your capital city is majority nig-nog, you can't even stop people just turning up on a boat and living wherever they want, and here you are writing the millionth iteration of "so, do you want open borders for Israel, huh huh?". Yes, we're parochial, small-minded, prone to pettiness and somewhat touchy. Our food sucks too. Now what's your excuse?
It doesn't carry over to this site. If you're a paying subscriber to Noah's Newsletter, you can cancel your paid subscription and I'd be happy to issue a pro-rated refund. If you're not, you can just sign-up to Aporia.
No problem. But I'm having trouble contacting Aporia with an article idea. Proton link doesn't work for me. Is there a regular email address I can use?
The terms "Left" and "Right" are problematic, and it would be better to abandon them altogether. Neither term has had much meaning since 1945, when both the traditional left and the traditional right fell into terminal decline and never really recovered.
That decline was partly due to political repression: McCarthyism against the Left and postwar épuration against the Right. But there was a bigger reason: the Center was doing a great job! For almost three decades we had a miracle of solid economic growth and solid population growth. And the fruits of that growth were more or less evenly distributed. Most working people could now afford a middle-class lifestyle. Families were being formed by people who, previously, would have remained single and on the margins of society.
So the Center had a sound grip on reality and was doing the right things. Unfortunately, that's no longer true. There is an ideological disconnect that spans the current political spectrum, which is now either Center-Right or Center-Left. I don't think we will get anywhere within that spectrum, at least not in the Anglosphere.
It would be better to accept that we are politically marginal and talk to anyone who is willing to give us a fair hearing. We in Canada have had Conservative governments, and they have been no better than Liberal governments on the issue of demographic replacement. In fact, they have been somewhat worse. It was a Conservative government that brought in global immigration in the early 1960s, and it was another Conservative government that hiked immigration levels in the 1980s. Today, "Conservatives" and "Liberals" are outgrowths of the same globalist consensus that has become dominant throughout the West.
i've mostly replaced left/right with globalist/nationalist, which i think is more relevant and covers more current ground fwiw...
Progressivism fits hand in glove with the global corporate state because both are supranational projects that consider borders and nations some combo of arbitrary, antiquated, unjust or discriminatory, and they are both totalizing in the sense that they have no end point or stopping place: for corporatists the goal is slapping a barcode onto every person place or thing on Earth; for Progressives, every human needs to learn the Good News about Structures of Oppression and be baptized in the new faith of identity-based maximum personal autonomy.
They both need to erase nations, cultures, traditions, norms etc, most especially the idea that a citizen with centuries of roots has more claim to a country than someone newly arrived from anywhere on the planet, and mass immigration, skilled or un-, helps them achieve all these aims.
Low skilled immigration isn’t really a problem for most leftists . Sure , it might harm the native workers , but the native workers are very well off compared to low skilled immigrants from third world countries. Unless the leftist is also a nationalist who thinks the well-being of the native population is much more important than the well-being of foreigners , there is no problem here . The non -nationalist leftist will choose for the very poor immigrants and against the relatively rich natives .
Well, and don't forget the self interest. The poor immigrants provide excellent low cost services to the people inhabiting our large cities. There is a French writer who wrote the Twilight of the Elites, Christophe Guilluy. He has the concept of the citadel. Cities are now populated by leftish thinking people that are quite well off. The normal working class have been chased away by poor immigrants that form a citadel around this inner city, providing the menial jobs for a price the native people would never work for. The natives moved away to rural and far away suburbs.
This model is incredibly advantageous for the leftish city dwellers. Nannies, barbers, nails, taxis, package delivery, cleaning, etc, etc.
And I think it is interesting to consider that this is a fractal problem. In the last century, the higher IQ children were extracted to the cities to compete with each other. This is a terrible waste because centrally you get maybe a few percentage better quality but it completely drains the rural areas of IQ. I am convinced many people would be so much better off belonging to the top in a rural area instead of a cog in Paris and the effects for the people around them would be enormous.
According to Steven Pinker, very few Harvard undergrads are admitted on merit (as in really high IQ) and very few in particular from middle America. Thus the brain drain from rural and heartland cities may not be nearly as great as advertised (or feared, in the case of Charles Murray). There may be more talent out there than assumed. The problem is the lack of a plan or a program around which they can organize electorally in order to overthrow the neoliberal governing elites. For one possibility at least see my book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
Btw, it is my theory that if we had a society in which anyone who worked hard and played by the rules (regardless of IQ) could reasonably look forward to a rich and fulfilling life, then most of the identity politics currently roiling our society would evaporate. Again, see my book for what that might look like.
Sorry to be tooting my horn.
For the part about how high-skill immigration is bad for low-income countries, this argument feels like when liberals try to use originalism against conservatives. Like, it doesn’t count and no one cares. At most, people will pretend to take it seriously swat it away on an unusually technical and minor distinction, like in the recent case against affirmative action.
But also, it doesn’t apply to many countries. For example, China has abundant potential high-skill immigrants. But, because its economic system sucks, China lacks adequate opportunities for those people, in both number and quality. Even for available opportunities in China, the job could be done just as well by someone of somewhat less skill, whereas the highest-skilled person could be fully and uniquely utilized only in, say, Silicon Valley (or wherever the leading edge cluster is). You can generalize from China to other countries that, although lacking a PRC, have limited/bad opportunities for high-skilled workers for other reasons having to do with culture or bureaucracy.
Very good to have you here Noah, as I have a paid sub to Aporia & occasionally write for it myself!
One of my favorite win-win examples of Eugenics and Statistics. A country with an average IQ of 100 and another with an average IQ of 90 could have an immigration policy that increases both of their national IQs. The lower IQ country sends a few people with IQs >100, and the higher IQ country sends many more people with IQs > 90.
1) brain drain might be good for the world since high iq people in groups drive advancement of civilization (ultimately globally)
2) however, brain drain allows developed countries to avoid their own TFR and eugenic problems which is unsustainable.
Or in other words, liberal urban society is an IQ shredder that demolishes genetic capital
What would be the effect of high IQ citizens of, say, the United States, emigrating to a low IQ country like Haiti? How might it happen? Corporations engaged in direct foreign investment, for instance, building factories, might bring large numbers of managers with their families on long-term assignments. A Peace Corp composed of high IQ unmarried individuals might end up marrying locals, and to the extent this happens the result would be positive in so far as future human capital is concerned. Think of them as a 21st century version of Christian missionaries, although of course no religious orientation would be assumed. I'm just thinking out loud here. See the political platform at the end of my book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNJTJ2R
The effect would presumably be positive for the current citizens of Haiti – particularly since Haiti has seen substantial brain drain, and didn't have a large smart fraction to begin with.
With regards to high skilled immigration , this also isn’t really a problem for leftists. The leftist can say : we are against selectively letting in highly skilled immigrants , everybody can come in , high skilled and low skilled . In that case the low skilled also benefit , since they’re free to move to wealthy countries , which they currently aren’t .
What I find most ironic about the radical left is that the look in horror at past immigration policies that had racial/ ethnic quotas because of their prejudicial nature. Yet they think the compassionate thing to do is to impose racial quotas on migrants once they arrive in the West, all in the name of equity. And those that oppose such quotas are the bigots.
Actually, the donor class (roughly speaking, the 10,000 wealthiest families in America) bankrolls both political parties. It also owns and/or controls all the major institutions in our society: banks, corporations, major media, elite universities, etc. We are talking about families with a hundred million dollars and up.
I have just one quibble with this really excellent analysis....but it's a big one.
"Those in the first group, by contrast, have at least partly altruistic motives – or they purport to have such motives."....Impossible to prove of course but 70 years of observing middle class lefties leaves me in no doubt that the number with truly "altruistic motives" is actually very small whereas the number who merely "purport to have such motives" is very, very large - albeit they are not being actually mendacious. On the contrary they genuinely believe their own pretty story and do so because a) it is so deliciously self-flattering and b) they have a low threshold of self-deception.
Possibly the clearest article I've read on the subject. It's the kind of article I'd send to my more progressive friends because it's both short and, as far as I can see, irrefutable.
I.e., in both cases, the greatest good for the smallest number. And, at the same time, the greatest bad for the greatest number.
The obvious counter-argument is that if this logic is true, we should also stop people moving from Liverpool to London or vice versa since, by definition, they are harming the working classes in either the place they leave or the place they travel to. But we all kind of know that would be false, even if we have a localist slant to our politics.
The answer to this was stated by Friedrich List who, to paraphrase, concluded that the doctrine of Free Trade is true as long as you assume countries don't exist, but countries do exist. However, we still don't have a good conception, economically speaking, of what countries really are, so we fall back on arguments from national pride/solidarity which either you feel or you don't. What we really need is an economic theory of the country.
Do you need an economic theory to conceptualise the state of Israel?
Absolutely. An economic argument cannot be refuted by appealing to the concept of the state unless you have an economic concept of the state. Or, to the matter the other way round, if economics is to be useful, it has to describe the world that actually exists, and the world that actually exists has states.
I'm pretty sure that the question was meant to say: "Do you need economic theory to consider the concept of Israel as real?", but got interpreted as "Do you need economic theory to include conceptualization of the state to use it for modelling Israel?"
I know it's tough to follow arguments, but try asking someone from the 'talented tenth' of your ethnicity to help you through. My comment was *pro* the concept of countries with specific interests.
FWIW and BTW, I do not recognise the legitimacy of the State of Israel and hope for its peaceful disestablishment.
The internet cringelord cries out in pain as he trolls you. Go have some babies.
I genuinely feel sorry for you. Your TFR is 1.56, your capital city is majority nig-nog, you can't even stop people just turning up on a boat and living wherever they want, and here you are writing the millionth iteration of "so, do you want open borders for Israel, huh huh?". Yes, we're parochial, small-minded, prone to pettiness and somewhat touchy. Our food sucks too. Now what's your excuse?
Query: I subscribe to your substack. Does that carry over to this site? Are you still posting to substack? What should I do?
It doesn't carry over to this site. If you're a paying subscriber to Noah's Newsletter, you can cancel your paid subscription and I'd be happy to issue a pro-rated refund. If you're not, you can just sign-up to Aporia.
No problem. But I'm having trouble contacting Aporia with an article idea. Proton link doesn't work for me. Is there a regular email address I can use?