The Ghost of Paley
Posts: 1703
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote | I am curious as to your solution and why you think we in the poster's graveyard need to know this. Jacques Chirac, Ariel Sharon, and other national leaders would surely benefit more from your opinions and be able to put them into practice.
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Yes. The solution. Where was I? Oh yes.
Now, as several posters have asserted, immigration can certainly benefit society. The question becomes: How can we maximize these gains while reducing cultural friction? The answer, of course, has been staring us in the face all along: by using the scientific method.
Society's elites assume that all immigrants are interchangable, and minus prejudice from the blue-eyed devil (from now on, BED), should assimilate fairly uniformly throughout the workforce and produce roughly equal outcomes. In fact, this assumption underwrites the laws mandating affirmative action, at least in the U.S. But is this reasonable?
On the face of it, this truism is highly questionable. First, cultural values differ. Some prize individuality, others emphasize group harmony. Some are intellectually inclined, others are more spiritual. Of course, these values exist on a continuum - all societies embrace the core human values to some extent - but small differences become huge when the groups are forced to compete.
And that's where statistics come in. Unless competing groups are precisely equal, their achievement will produce different averages and variances. Is this a problem? After all, aren't we judged as individuals? Yes, but the individuals given most weight are the famous ones, the "movers and shakers". Those are the individuals that define a group. Einstein. Newton. Shakespeare. Ramanujan. Lady Murasaki. And so on.
What does this mean? First, these individuals have one thing in common: their abilities lie on the extreme right tail of the talent curve. In addition, they existed in cultures that nurtured their particular talents. Shakespeare's reputation as a giant rests partly on the historical circumstances of his time; an era when the English language was just being standardized, when the ability to compose verse was highly prized, and a developing middle class that could provide an education and supplement an artist's income. He certainly deserves his lofty reputation, but at the time he was merely the brightest star in an already crowded firmament.
Perhaps the assumption of group equality can be salvaged by the evidence? A counterintuitive hypothesis need not be wrong; common sense is often a poor guide. Here is where we turn to history. And history delivers a cold verdict indeed: small group differences do not disappear when societies collide - they magnify. So much, in fact, that many are forced to avert their eyes from the glare.
In fact, a cursory inspection of modern immigration history quickly identifies the groups that blend most seamlessly into the Western fabric: Europeans, Northeast Asians, and Jews (No surprise, since these groups helped create the Western identity in the first place). Now, a lot of ink has been spilled trying to identify the precise cause of this; but for our purpose the reason is immaterial. I don't care why these groups are so beneficial to Western societies, I just know that they are, and as a pragmatist, I would like to use that fact.
Better yet, the record is clear on who to avoid, and the results dovetail nicely with common sense: those people who hate our guts, and want to destroy the culture we have so painstakingly crafted. And why not? Our culture is not theirs:
James Baldwin:
| Quote | "The most illiterate among [the Swiss villagers] is related, in a way that I am not, to Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Aeschylus, da Vinci, Rembrandt and Racine; the cathedral at Chartres says something to them which it cannot say to me, as indeed would New York's Empire State Building, should anyone here ever see it. Out of their hymns and dances come Beethoven and Bach. Go back a few centuries and they are in their full glory -- but I am in Africa, watching the conquerors arrive."
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There is much truth to this. If I shared his history, I too would see a conqueror's energy in a bust, a hiss of menace in a sonnet. Certainly I can empathise with such sentiments, but this provides little comfort as I watch Paris burn.
And Paris need not burn. Yes, Westerners have caused much evil and suffering. Perhaps we have so damaged the environment that it cannot be fixed. Perhaps severe adjustments must be made. But why should we stand by listlessly while people who consider us infidels, BEDs, and colonialists wreck the beauty that we have created? How does this solve anything? Wouldn't it be better to consolidate, rather than dissipate, our energy?
So here's the solution:
1) Restrict immigration to those nations who respect our culture.
2) Buy out those immigrants who don't, and send them back to their countries of origin (where they won't be held back by the BEDs who torment them so). Perhaps an average bribe of $5000/yr for every year spent in the host country (up to 10 years), plus all their liquified assets of course
3) Let freedom of commerce and association ring through the land. Abolish minimum wage, race laws, and any other useless, government-bloating, liberty-crushing machinations on the citizen. Let people pay what they want, live with whom they want, and say what they want.
What are the advantages of this model? I'll fill in the details later.
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Dey can't 'andle my riddim.
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) thoughts are that immigration of non-European types is somehow different to immigration of European types. 
) has also used variations of my plan in the past. In fact, recent events may have been inspired by this model. But let's see what Hyperion has to say. 
