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I'm a doomer on the U.S., and I want to know what you guys think, in general, will be the trend for the next decade or further on. Here's my theory for how all this ends:
My friend is more of an optimist. Here's his theory on the first one:
Unfortunately, I didn't quiz him on all the rest of it. But now, somehow, it is making me wonder about the outlook of most of the Mottizens. I certainly see the doomer take on things pretty often.
I see a factoid sometimes that says conservatives are happier with their lives than liberals. Maybe that's a factor of rural living, maybe that's a factor of less thinking about serious issues, and less reading. I am pretty sure that conservatives on this site, on average, do not live in rural areas and, on average, think a lot more about serious issues, and read more. So maybe some bad, anecdotal science testing on The Motte is in order.
Are you a doomer, or a "bloomer"? What are some factors that lead you to your conclusion that the country is trending downwards or upwards? Please explain yourself, and please fight it out with everyone who thinks you're wrong.
I’m a soft doomer about the US but much less so than I am about (Western) Europe.
Mass immigration has seen fit to proffer the United States a gentle decline toward a high-inequality, mid-tier country with Some Third World Characteristics but probably with semi-functioning politics and many centers of high economic and industrial development. What is coming for Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Britain, and increasingly also Spain, Ireland and Italy is much, much worse than that.
And why much worse?
I'm not 2rafa, but I would argue similarly on immigration. The advantage that the US has with immigration is that all their illegal immigration is Hispanic. They're not all people you would want in your nation, but the US has already integrated a huge number of them. There aren't big push factors coming that will massively bump numbers up in future, and in legal immigration the US system works pretty well, largely creaming off the best from the rest of the world. The US has relatively limited welfare which means most illegals are in some sense productive, or at least not active drains outside of the criminal elements. The US is also massive and very decentralized. Some states and cities will become swamped and turn into third-world entities, but there will still be dozens of productive urban areas with low levels.
In Europe, illegal immigration is coming from Africa and the middle east. These immigrants are much lower quality. They are poorly integrated, many going into ethnic enclaves and reigniting old tribal conflicts with other groups of immigrants, to say nothing of the dangers of Muslim immigration. They are attracted by generous welfare which they are increasingly exploiting, adding nothing to the host nations. Numbers are large and likely only to grow larger as their home regions increasingly destabilize. I can't speak for legal immigration for continental Europe, but at least in the UK they've somehow ended up importing millions of terrible unproductive immigrants in addition to the illegal flows.
Structurally, each individual nation is also poorly positioned to weather these floods. Productivity is often focused in a single primate city, and once you lose a London, Paris, Brussels, Milan, etc. you've lost most of the nation's growth. Individual areas can do little to fight against the waves. And all this is to say nothing of the respective strengths of the economies
I see so many African Muslims in my area, is distressing. Somalis control large swaths of Minnesota, and Indians are stunningly prominent compared to ten years ago.
It's not just Hispanic.
They control an entire congressional district. None of the Somali Muslims I've seen have married whites, they're all paired up with their own ilk, and that especially applies to the younger generation.
This is an utterly ridiculous statement that can be debunked in 30 seconds of Googling. Ilham Omar's district is 17.1% Black, which will include some pre-65 "native" Blacks as well as Somalis. She was sent to Congress by white liberals. There's an important theme here, a lot of what the anti-immigrant Right habitually blames on immigrants is actually done by white liberals.
The last time a republican served on that district JFK was still alive, but not President. White liberals sent her to Congress, but African Muslims sent her to the general election.
I don't think your debunk is worth anything. It's too lazy to take seriously, and you've already been corrected once.
The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.
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This is the kingmaker scenario, right? Gwern talks about it a bit - if you have three friends, and one friend refuses point-blank to eat non-Halal food, then you will find yourself always looking for halal restaurants even though he’s only 25% of the group. In a very real sense that’s on the other three for not kicking him to the curb, but in a practical sense he’s the one controlling where you go.
There’s also just the straight issue of schelling points. The left in the UK has such kingmaker scenarios a lot with local Muslim populations. If they can’t all agree to ignore them at vaguely the same time, the white liberals who do will be steamrollered by the ones who don’t.
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