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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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Thé US population is also far older than it was at the peak of the empire and can’t afford to be turning away talented youngsters to maintain its edge.

Obviously I don’t know how many of these youngsters are ‘talented’ vs ‘cheating’, and how many of them are spies, but brain drain is a tried and tested way of keeping empires afloat.

Were those empires successful in maintaining their empire with foreign brains?

It would seem the better plan would be

We are not about to send bring American Asian boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian American boys ought to be doing for themselves.

The Romans and the Ottomans certainly were. Hell, Egypt was run by Circassians for centuries and the elite of Tsarist Russia was disproportionately Volga German. An empire by definition consists of multiple peoples without a common ethnic heritage, so all this nationalist talk of "foreign brains" would be alien to them.

If you're using the latter ottoman and tsarist empires as your models, that's kinda telling. Neither was a particularly fantastic place to live, were intellectually and culturally stagnant, and were so politically unstable they suffered fairly frequent and serious revolutionary insurrections.

Yes because they were part of the empire.

I'm not sure importing Chinese students really makes them part of the empire.

If we're looking to the Roman example how well did it work out with Arminius?

Yes because they were part of the empire.

I'm not sure importing Chinese students really makes them part of the empire.

Chinese-Americans have been part of the empire since the 1850's, longer than Italians, Poles, or Jews.

If we're looking to the Roman example how well did it work out with Arminius?

The Romans system worked for over four centuries (taking the Social War as the starting point) far longer than any of us expect the American one to, individual cases of betrayal aside.

I don't think anyone is talking about excluding Chinese-Americans.

The topic was Chinese from China.

I don't expect us to have the determination to last over four centuries, we'll skip directly to the betrayal.

The high-IQ American boys you think are twiddling their thumbs because Chang took their college spot and job don't exist. Unemployment is low and the non-employed are mostly low human capital who don't feel like working.

What American boys? AFAIK American boys are mostly achieving except for those at the bottom- you’d need more American boys to match. Good luck convincing the girl next door to breed.