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Notes -
Matt Yglesias posted on X an argument in favor of immigration (having trouble finding it now). The argument was basically “you like lasagna right? Well if we didn’t allow Italians to immigrate no lasagna. And now Italians are pretty indistinguishable from other Americans so clearly that will be the case with others such as Somalians. Think of the future lasagna equivalent you’d get with no cost since the immigrants will assimilate.”
Leave aside the HBD argument. It seems to me that one Matt and those who make this argument miss is the massively different technology that exists today that didn’t exist in yesteryear. If you left Italy in the late 1800s, you couldn’t easily get back routinely to see family (whereas now it’s maybe a days travel). You couldn’t FaceTime them at a whim. You couldn’t text message them. The populations were truly cut off.
It is likely harder to assimilate in the modern world where immigrant populations are not cut off as opposed to the old world. So pointing to historic examples of assimilation do not hold for today because the factors have changed. Now maybe you still think there will be assimilation for different reasons. But you need to make that argument. Comparing like and unlike however cannot be your argument.
I don’t think this is some kind of groundbreaking point but why would presumably smart people like Yglesias make such a sloppy argument? Maybe they aren’t smart. Maybe they don’t encounter enough arguments to the contrary. Or maybe they are propagandists. I can’t help but think repeating a catechism has value to building political unity even (perhaps especially if) it’s fake.
Why does it always come back to food?
No, I don't believe that this is just an idiosyncrasy of Yglesias, or just a fun example that he picked for no real reason. This is a recurring pattern. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard throughout my life "we live in a world with a large diversity of cultures, for example, different people eat different types of food...". Food is the first thing you think of when you think of "culture"? Really? The "we need immigrants for their food" argument is not unique to Yglesias, this is a known talking point.
Just last night I was having a conversation with a woman who claimed that she had a low opinion of Italy because when she went there on vacation, she didn't like the food. It's utterly mind-boggling to me that someone would judge an entire country based on such superficial criteria, but, here we are.
(I mean, frankly I should already know why it always comes back to food: Nietzsche suggested in GoM that a people's philosophical outlook is an epiphenomenon of their dietary choices. Perhaps this is the grug-genius alliance in action, and I am the seething midwit who insists on being unnecessarily contrarian. I dunno man... it just strikes me as an obliviousness of the fact that people even have a psychological or spiritual existence that extends beyond their material means of sustenance.)
Oh! Now I understand why no one likes the English.
Harder to be obese when our food is so terrible
People love to rag on English food, but I don't really think that's fair. Any culture that comes up with a dish as great as fish and chips deserves respect.
Also pies (pork / game / steak & ale etc.), bangers and mash, bubble and squeak, toad in the hole, Shepherd's / Cottage Pie (not a pie despite the name), Lancashire hot-pot, sticky toffee pudding, plum/Christmas pudding, Victoria sponge cake, Eton Mess, chutneys, marmalades, roast pheasant, the Full English, the Sunday Roast...
English food had a dip because of the wars and the temporary loss of food culture, but more than that it's suffered terribly from central heating & reduced global exercise resulting in a drive for low-calorie food.
Fair, it's not just fish and chips. That is the one that comes to mind most readily for me (probably because I'm from the Midwest and we love fried fish there), but the Brits have given us other good food as well.
Not complaining, just appending! I want British food to be more generally known, I think there's a lot to offer. We just need to find a format that works.
A friend noted that English food would have been eaten much more communally in the old days, buffet / feast style - it was much easier to do portion control when you had a table full of pies and hams and cakes and things and you just took a little of each and the rest went back for the next day.
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