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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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Twitter had a very interesting few days before Christmas, we even saw the return of the huwhite man Jared Taylor to Twitter, which is a fairly surprising thing. I try to not post about India but this is kinda important and has to do with the US so here we go.

In the h1b debate, the point about country caps for skilled migration in the US recently picked up a lot of steam. Trump appointed Sriram as Senior policy advisor for artificial intelligence and his tweets about the removal of h1b caps caused a lot of chaos. David Sacks and the entirety of the tech platoon was defending Sriram, the removal of country caps and ultimately sacks tweeted that Sriram will not control the vias issues since his department is AI.. Many also pointed out Srirams tweet where he openly advocates for active IQ Shredding. Spandrell who coined the term IQ shredders as an example makes a case against such migration as in the end both nations lose bio capital, sriram for instance believes America to be an idea over a people and is fine with all smart Indians leaving en masse which will drop the average iq permanently here. They won't have kids in the US either and the US will have to keep incentivising more people to join to keep up the rate of tech innovation.

India has the highest wait times for h1b visas due to having had IT sweatshops and plenty of fraudsters hustle the legal immigration route. You see most H1Bs coming from three states of 29 here and IT sweatshops which make the backbone of the Indian IT sector indulging in absolute fraud to the point of regular fines spanning more than a decade, fun fact, the founder of Infosys is Former English Prime Minister Rishi Sunaks Father in law. It is a difficult thing, India itself has had anti-migration sentiments within the country as the largest IT hub Bangalore has people routinely asking for fewer migrants as they are not Kannadigas, the local ethnic group.

The political class, however, was unanimously criticising it. Blake Masters, another Theil Capital person turned politician, even asked for the total removal of H1Bs and only keeping O1 visas. All factions of the right did this, including Andrew Torba, Zionists like Laura Loomer, dissidents like BAP, Captive Dreamer and ofc Groypers.

Full disclosure, I am an Indian guy who is in tech, I am still in my home country and cannot comment on this topic without being called a self-hating Indian. India has fat tails and a lot of Indians are not politically scheming migrants, at least not the competent ones. I can't lie about this on an anonymous forum here since I don't like lying but inevitably I also cannot say this publicly as I don't want decent people to get cornered. I am an Indian dude who very likely may migrate after all. It is far easier to simply generalise groups, Tutsis or Yorubas are simply seen as Africans. The Amerikaner is correct but if you are an upper-caste male here, you will never sniff political power, anyone who is smart will be made to live as a nerd and might as well be a nerd doing cooler stuff in a better society than live here and be treated like garbage.

Trump is unlikely to curb the h1b but the most likely outcome will still be more Telugus and other south Indian states having a small number of sweatshops gaming the migration in the US even harder like Gujarati and Punjabis in Canada and rest of the anglosphere.

There's a strong scientific reason to be against H1B entirely, even if it increases GDP:

  1. Humans only developed the ability to form social groups because it benefitted gene proliferation. Community, society, and civilization are intrinsically tied to what benefits human gene proliferation.
  2. H1B and other forms of immigration actively damage the reproductive success of Americans because (a) our national fertility is low, (b) rival nations have a comparatively enormous population and take in few immigrants, (c) they take the highest wage jobs, (d) they take up physical space in the territory and (e) they accrue political power.
  3. H1B violates the only reason we are able, as humans, to form countries and organize socially at all, making it a rare case of an objectively bad evolutionary decision.

A funny hypothetical illustrates the point. Let's say that if we import 200 million Indians, our economy would be the best in the world forever. If we do this, do Americans “win”? Well, not biologically. We would have won a socially constructed number-based game that has zero impact on our biological success. We have lost in the deepest sense, because we have betrayed the whole purpose of cognition. Rather than making America competitive, we would have forever lost the evolutionary competition which designed our very minds. Probably because evolution selects for intuitive prosocial genes like empathy (flip-side: out-group prejudice) and not just raw abstract pattern recognition. We would have lost the game of life, and gained a small footnote in the future Hindi history of the world. We would have even reneged on the first words God ever spoke to us — “be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth”.

Obviously, 200 million is excessive for the point of a thought experiment. But this just means that the damage occurs to a lesser degree. Indian Americans are 1.5% of America, the highest paid group in America, and the fastest-growing demographic. Let’s say that a generous .1% are geniuses who have aided American military might. This reduces American reproductive success by at least 1.4%, arguably more because of the higher socioeconomic position. The greatest risk is that they begin to use their high earnings to lobby for more Indians, which seems to be happening presently.

I find it hard to believe that this arrangement is even in the evolutionary interests of “elite human capital”. If you are Elon Musk, you have more genes in common with the average American than the average Indian. If Elon is crowned Eternal King of India and begins the genetic proliferation that befits a medieval royal — along with a haram of beautiful nubiles — it’s doubtful that he would ever reach the level of similarity that he already has with Americans generally, and Northern European Americans specifically. So what is even the biological point? It makes no sense from a scientific point of view. It is a form of biological self-harm.

It’s weird that no one actually brings up the science in these discussions, only the economic studies. But the economic studies are only valuable when subordinated to and weighed by biology. Okay, economists are saying that if we add the Indians then the CEO gets another ski home… but the biology is quite clear that this is ultimately not in anyone’s interest, even the CEOs, and goes against natural design (both evolution and God). If you guys really want the ski homes then we can invade the Himalayas.

Man, it's a good reason no Irish or German immigrants ever came. They'd totally make the mission of the original WASP Americans a complete failure in the game of life. They'd probably have dissolved the community too.

The science of hybrid vigor is actually reasonably well settled as well -- your individual genes would (all other things being equal) be better off hitched onto a mate somewhat further away from you.

Of course, "all other things being equal" is doing a lot of work here -- you would genuinely have to find an Indian or East Asian of the same IQ and temperament as your hypothetical replacement mate. Given your point (2) though, it seems like you wouldn't find that too implausible.

They'd totally make the mission of the original WASP Americans a complete failure in the game of life.

Without necessarily agreeing with the above post, yes, massive Irish, Italian, German etc immigration did irreparably change the character, culture and identity of the United States. Whether it was for better or worse is a question of opinion, but it did change.

Indeed. I don't at all dispute that it was a change, but it seems ridiculous to sit where the US is today and look back and see that as a failure.

Change is inevitable, static societies die. So too are societies that change too fast or in unwise ways.

the US as it was founded was killed, the Republic was killed, federalism was killed, and what was produced was Empire

no, it's not ridiculous to think this was "a failure"

Change is inevitable, static societies die. So too are societies that change too fast or in unwise ways.

trying to imply the US in <1850, pre mass german and irish immigration waves, was a "static society" is simply ridiculous

it's hard to think the US with its anglo stock and TFR >5 wouldn't have become a global juggernaut superpower without the mass immigration of Irish or Germans or the Ellis Islanders in 1890+, perhaps with a generation delay, but it's a counterfactual

no, it's not ridiculous to think this was "a failure"

If the current economic and cultural dominance of the US is a failure, then I cannot imagine what actual success might look like.

it's hard to think the US with its anglo stock and TFR >5 wouldn't have become a global juggernaut superpower without the mass immigration of Irish or Germans or the Ellis Islanders in 1890+, perhaps with a generation delay, but it's a counterfactual

A generation of delay would mean a generation too late to win WWII.

Germany would have formed a European empire if America didn’t halt the final progression of balance of power politics. Near-to-midterm utility would have probably been maximized but whose to tell the far term prognosis based on the butterfly effect.

Given how Germany did govern their (brief) empire, I suspect that isn't exactly a good thing.

WWI doesn't happen unless Britain thinks they have a US bailout. WWII doesn't happen without Americas WWI bailout...

Yeah, that's quite plausible. I regret getting into historical counterfactuals because the space of possibilities is too vast.

???

Britain doesn't think they have a US bailout in 1914. (The possibility doesn't come up until the Germans take up U-boat warfare.) All sides are expecting a war of maneuver similar to the Franco-Prussian war ended by a decisive battle within less than a year, which is a timescale where the US can't make a difference at all.

Regardless of who was influencing Britain in August 1914, we didn't start WW1 and couldn't have stopped it - based on the sequence of events in August 1914, the decision to fight is taken primarily by Russia and Germany, not Britain and France. Germany decides to go to war with Russia as a result of events following the Sarajevo assassination, and invades Russia's ally (France) first for tactical reasons. At the point where the British get to make a decision, it is a decision whether to join in the war or sit it out - German troops have already crossed the French border. You can claim that the French only go to war because they are expecting a British bailout (and had they had a choice, you would probably have been right), but France didn't get a choice in August 1914 either - they were invaded by Germany. Their choice had been taken when the Franco-Russian Alliance was signed in 1894, at a time when Britain was still (genuinely) neutral between the German-Austrian and Franco-Russian blocs.

If Britain doesn't join the Franco-Russian bloc, it isn't clear how this makes WW1 less likely. The basic logic that the decline of the Ottoman Empire was going to turn the Balkans into a zone of Great Power conflict was obvious since the early 19th century (the Crimean War was also fought over this issue) and the fact that this conflict would primarily be between Russia and Austria was already obvious by the time of the Crimean War in the 1850's (Austria doesn't join the Allies in the Crimean war because the Habsburgs' domestic position is still weak after the 1848 Hungarian Revolution). And the Franco-Russian and Austrian-German alliances, plus the Franco-German rivalry, mean that a Balkan war with Great Power involvement is expected to turn into a general European War, and all the Continental Great Powers made war plans on this basis. (The Schlieffen Plan for a German blitzkrieg against France while Russia is still mobilising is first drawn up in 1906, which is after the 1904 Entente Cordiale between Britain and France, but before the 1908 formal military alliance between Britain, France, and Russia.) If everyone expects a neutral Britain, Germany is more likely to win and therefor more likely to choose to invade France, not less. So the argument that anything Britain (or the US via their influence on Britain) could have done to prevent the war depends on the idea that we could have convinced Russia not to defend Serbia and de facto surrender the Balkans to Austria. (Britain did try to mediate between Russia, Austria, and Serbia, but Germany told Austria to reject this offer - the Central Powers were expecting to win and had very limited interest in a negotiated peace).

Amusingly, there is one American who definitely can be blamed for British involvement in WW1. Admiral Mahan wrote the seminal books on naval history which convinced the Kaiser to build a navy. Without a German navy, the British don't see Germany as hostile, and don't try to join an anti-German alliance.

I don't see a current world without US cultural and economic dominance given the population in the US, absent waves of Irish, German, or other Ellis Islanders, and the territory it conquered from the Atlantic to the Pacific (also before the waves of Irish, German, or other Ellis Islanders), and the context of their neighbors and large oceans on either side. You seem to think it's a necessary condition and I'm not sure why.

According to Americans at the time, success would likely look like a powerful and dominant nation of Americans which is full of Americans and their posterity under a particular social organization and a particular religion. The "America" as the Americans at the time thought of it was destroyed by the waves of mass European and especially Catholic immigration.

A generation of delay would mean a generation too late to win WWII.

you mean the generation which won WW1?

gosh, I wonder what would have been had the American generation which won ww1 not shown up and we didn't get the 1919 Treaty of Versailles

even if one views American involvement in WWII (or WWI) as a good thing, and I don't, I'm not sure what this short quip is supposed to show or support

even if one views American involvement in WWII (or WWI) as a good thing, and I don't, I'm not sure what this short quip is supposed to show or support

It's a fairly widespread view that the Germany and Japan of WWII were evil across a number of dimensions. Perhaps not universal, but almost so.

I am sympathetic to the view that perhaps the whole thing could have been avoided with a more statesmanlike resolution of WWI. To that extent that (perhaps) American involvement in the prosecution of WWI made a poor resolution more likely, I would be happy to say it was a bad thing.

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