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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   27578 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

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Let's talk socialism and the NYC mayoral race. Apparently the All-in podcast people think it's a sweeping wave that will drown out Progress with a capital P. London, Vienna, Chicago, and of course the California cities have already had socialist mayors for a while. Why not New York?

Honestly despite being a "conservative" I am broadly quite sympathetic to socialist arguments. I do think free markets actually kind of suck, inasmuch as we can even have free markets. Personally I think free markets don't really exist when you take into account that power abhors a vacuum, but they are a fiction with extremely high utility to create material goods.

Anyway, socialism seems like a fair response to the complete ineptitude of our political class. It's weary writing and thinking about politics when even the best laid plans seem to inevitably just get ground down by the dumbest things. I can completely understand why young folks want to just socialize everything.

Not that I agree with them, but hey, sometimes I wish I were still naive enough to think socialism or any -ism could fix the ills of our society. I sadly am not that optimistic.

That being said, I don't think society is unfixable. I just think that political solutions are pointless. We need what has always been the core of strong societies - a culture that promotes and encourages personal virtue. Without that, you have nothing.

I read this success as a more general rejection of the ruling elite than a specific left or right wing thing. It's New York so of course the populist candidate is going to be a socialist, but is this really any different than the rise of right wing populists in Europe in effect?

"you fucked this up, are insanely corrupt and we want literally anything but that" has been the nexus of pretty much all politics since 2016. All that's changing is that the people who reflexively vote for or support the status quo are dying and not being replaced by anybody.

Of course the same criticism of the right wing populists applies to the left wing ones: they don't really have any realistic solutions and the system will not let them implement any if they do. New York's equivalent to Jeremy Corbyn will surely have that same problem.

Of course the same criticism of the right wing populists applies to the left wing ones: they don't really have any realistic solutions and the system will not let them implement any if they do. New York's equivalent to Jeremy Corbyn will surely have that same problem.

Depends on your diagnosis of the problem. If you believe, as I increasingly do, that most of our societal ills with corruption and collapse of state capacity revolve around the mass importation of high time preference demographics incapable at a genetic level of pursuing generational projects, deporting them is not only a solution, but the only solution. Because with that anchor tied to your feet, no state project, be it reinvigorating capitalism, monopoly busting or state run grocery stores can possibly succeed. If the labor market is flooded with lazy scammers who shameless loot the till, it's not going to matter if the grocery store is a coop, state run, unionized or anything.

If you believe, as I increasingly do, that most of our societal ills with corruption and collapse of state capacity revolve around the mass importation of high time preference demographics incapable at a genetic level of pursuing generational projects, deporting them is not only a solution, but the only solution.

What? No, that's not true. Granting the (very substantial) premise, the conclusion is obviously going to be "don't let these people run society", but that only requires disenfranchisement, not deportation (except in the edge case of a supermajority that can overthrow the disenfranchising government).

If you believe, as I increasingly do, that most of our societal ills with corruption and collapse of state capacity revolve around the mass importation of high time preference demographics incapable at a genetic level of pursuing generational projects, deporting them is not only a solution, but the only solution.

Unfortunately, at least in the US, that's not going to work, for 13/52 reasons.

Deportation won't work because 13/52? What do you mean by this?

As @ToaKraka notes, 13/52 refers to the extremely disproportionate percentage of homicides committed by black people (13% of the population, 52% of the homicides). The US (and the pre-US colonies) already engaged in mass importation of high time preference demographics (I'll reserve judgement on the second part); they've been around as long as most of the white people have, and so deporting them is not possible.

they've been around as long as most of the white people have, and so deporting them is not possible.

One quick conquest of Liberia, and you don’t have to let your dreams be dreams anymore.

You don’t even have to move every black person. For males, 2 or more felony convictions should surely be adequate justification to send them to our new prison colony. For females, you could craft some lifetime welfare income calculation. And for kids, well, better to not break up families, so they have to go as well.

Is this an idea that would take two decades to percolate out of the fever dreams of the right and into plausible reality? Sure, but that’s no reason to give up on it out of hand. Leftists sure don’t!

As the meme goes, despite making up only 13% of the population, blacks commit 52% of the crimes. But blacks can't be deported.

Not with that attitude...

The blacks are a sideshow in the great replacement, more spectators than anything else- the AADOS share of society is actually slowly shrinking and black immigration is barely enough to keep the percentage of black population from dropping.

The demographic story of the USA is white anglos being replaced with hispanics, and this is 1) not a done deal and way overstated in effect and 2) while hispanics are lower performing it's not clear that that's 100% genetic, and assimilation over time is far more likely.

It’s not going to work in the US because the ship has simply sailed. We’re in far too deep.

The most we can do is try to give the US a smooth controlled landing and encourage European countries to not go down the same path.

Haven't looked deeply into this but my impression is that immigration to the US filters more for competence than immigration to the European countries does, with the latter getting a ton of low quality refugees etc

Much like I urged to give the El Salvador solution at least the good ol' college try before cursing entire peoples down seven generations, I'd urge to at least try "assimilate or GTFO" (don't know if there are any success stories as stark as El Salvador, though). People respond to incentives.

What does "assimilate" even mean in this context?

"Adopt local cultural norms"? What else is it supposed to mean?

I'd urge to at least try "assimilate or GTFO" (don't know if there are any success stories as stark as El Salvador, though)

The best example in America are Germans. Germans went from being a fairly-unassimilated minority, with high non-english persistence and significant ethnic lobbying...to completely dissolved in the American "white" mainstream over the course of two generations. Of course, we all-but criminalized the teaching of German in schools and fought two wars against their coethnics with pretty stringent propaganda against the inherent evils of "Germanness," but it worked.

To do the El Salvador solution you need a Bukele tier Great Man of History. That's not a reasonable requirement. Take it from someone whose government is tailor made for such a kind of man. They're much harder to find than you'd think.

As it stands, the managerial rulers of the US are so far from having the spine required to tell foreigners to "integrate or fuck off" that they'll let them fly the flags of other countries in violent rebellion and still not consent to crush them. Asking them to do what you want is doomed.

Is it a reasonable requirement to declare that all of society's problems are caused by a group of genetic untermenschen? I feel like asking for another Bukele is at least on-par with it under current conditions, and the latter is quite a bit more humane.

Oh I think it can very well both be true that a whole class of people are undesirable and that there is no realistic way of getting rid of them.

Seems like the Indian upper classes' whole tragic condition.

All I can say is that I share your longing for competent people that have the courage to take it upon themselves to solve the mess of modern society. But prayer is all I can really provide here.

Oh I think it can very well both be true that a whole class of people are undesirable and that there is no realistic way of getting rid of them.

I mean, I would be content to start restricting suffrage, ending birthright citizenship, and generally "fortifying" out democracy from being co-opted by third world mobs.

Unfortunately, the more I study history, the more I see that all political solutions are temporary. There is only one solution that is permanent, and history is littered with the names of long extinct tribes. Mere curiosities with no survivors to complain, and by and large, the world is better off with that being so.

The last 50 years have been a failure of "assimilate or GTFO". 50 more years and "GTFO" won't be an option any longer. It may already be too late.

It hasn't "failed" so much as been undermined and attacked at every turn by our so-called elites and the rise of MAGA is in large part a reaction against this. If you aren't down with making America great you can get the fuck out.

At the risk of doing a "real X has never been tried", I think you were missing the "or GTFO" part.

For most of the last 50 years we haven't been doing "assimilate or GTFO". We did it before that and managed to assimilate large groups.

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