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Notes -
@Tanista “it doesn’t matter what immigrants think……various pro social things if they are forced to by the populace”
I feel like this is wrong. I guess you can somewhat force them to learn to say American values but it’s probably impossible for them to adopt American culture in the inner monologue.
Most here I think would accept an HBD argument that evolution doesn’t stop at the neck down. And things like ability to do algebra in your head have significant differences. But I also believe evolution doesn’t stop at your ability to be a human calculator in your head but have significant personality trait differences.
For example the Japanese seem to be very pro-social in a lot of ways. And they are largely smart so many would think they would be ideal immigrants. But the Japanese also seem to have a personality trait that is very conformists. When the leader says Japanese now do things “X” way the whole society seems to instantly become super “X”. It’s why they could be a closed society then within a generation open to the world and become a global power quickly. It’s in their long hour work culture. It’s why they could blow the biggest real estate bubble the world has ever seen. It’s why when they did deflation they did it very well after the big inflation bubble. It’s seems like when Japanese society decides to do a thing they do it extremely well.
Supposedly this has something to do with growing rice and rice growing versus European agriculture required a lot more conformity. Hence this personality trait is very strong in Asians. And why many Asian 20 something’s took to woke very quickly when it became the dominant societal power.
Americans are not this. We traditionally have a big contrarian and rebellious streak. Genetically I came across something called the Wanderlust gene and you can find it at high rates in Americans of European descent versus the population groups they came from in Europe. In the past going to America was a big trip. Crazy for true Heritage Americans and basically guaranteed to be a one way trip for the economic means of most of them. For the Ellis Island wave it was still a huge step. For modern immigrants it’s basically trivial and can be reversed with a 1k flight. There would still be some selection for this personality trait but far less.
If culture has a hereditary basis then cultural assimilation isn’t going to happen. I am assuming culture is a combination of innate personality + your art/constutition/great works etc.
The one conclusion I’ve had from this is that some of the early waves of Indians seem to have 100% assimilated and the filters we had on Indian immigration then were perfect. Nikki Haley’s kids are barely distinguishable from an old money Southern Boy. Indians are largely hated today as immigrants and I have no idea on them as the filters and ease to get in were relaxed.
Personality I believe has a genetic component. And if it’s genetic then assimilation isn’t just forcing people to learn your memes and words.
Since you mention Nikki Haley (who BTW has Sikh heritage), I assume by the filters "we" had you mean the US. Your comment just sparked a memory of Air India 182, which happened in the '80s and was perpetrated by Sikh militants who had immigrated to Canada from India. The Wikipedia article on Air India 182 comments that "by the 1980s, the area around Vancouver, British Columbia, had become the largest centre of Sikh population outside India." The large numbers may suggest Canada may have done little "filtering" at that time...?
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Do I believe that Japanese Americans and Somali Americans and Heritage American are going to become behaviorally identical or even broadly the same within America? No. Do I think a selective immigration system (it's more selective for some than others) can pick people who would be much closer to some tolerably American orientation? Yes.
In this particular case we're talking about a certain sort of ideological hostility towards the legacy population and culture and this is strongly encouraged by a certain faction within these countries. I can see a world where Somalis continue to underperform (as they do elsewhere) but someone like Ilhan Omar wouldn't dare go on TV and parrot the talking points she does cause the populace just wouldn't stand for it.
There are people who just hate the kaffir for sure, but a lot of people are essentially striving conformists who are taught that this is the appropriate stance to take towards America, that essentially all brown migrants should behave as if they have the same right to ambivalence about the national project as the Foundational Black Americans, as Tariq Nasheed calls them. Maybe certain people would be tribal in any context, but there is a world where even rational tribalistic impulses would suggest you shut the fuck up about the plan to dissolve the old status quo and beat your racial enemies and be more American than the Americans.
That is not some given. That is not a fact of life. It's a product of a national divorce between red and blue legacy Americans, with the children being told they can pick a side.
The degree to which stopping this makes people Americans in their hearts is debatable because I just don't know how to quantify that from your post (one could argue that many whites are not American in their desire for socialism and welfare). I think it would certainly be an improvement.
But why? What’s in it for me?
You are right red and blue tribe are not united enough to even try forced assimilation. I still think it would often fail due to personality differences.
Every time we do mass migration in the US we see massive outmigration of the native population from desirable locations. Many call this white flight. We now have zero urban environments in the US for middle class natives.
When the great migration occurred it eventually led to white flight thru out all of the rust belt cities. They left because the schools collapsed and their kids were being bullied in their communities. Crime rose. Which led to the birth of the suburbs and policy to keep land values expensive.
Recently LA and NYC have seen a new wave of white flight. Sure we can say this is due to blue tribe governance making housing and taxes unaffordable for the middle class. Regardless, immigration came to these cities and politically governance changed. I am personally a victim of the crime to white flight thing. It sucks. But not as much as staying and waking up to police marking bullets in the morning. Most of the people fleeing NY and Cali do not share my politics. They just left because the areas got worse and the financial mature sense to leave.
And you talk about the red tribe-blue tribe divorce. In reality with only the white vote we would have the power to do forced assimilation. I saw data that Trump would still win the election if only white females voted. But that’s not our electorate anymore. But I will emphasize I don’t believe forced assimilation would work due to genetic personality differences.
I understand why immigrants want to come here. I don’t hate them. It just makes my life worse.
So I will asks you what is in it for me?
You don't have to take migrants at all. I don't think there's anything immoral about being Japan. Maybe things would be a bit slower (though recent events in Canada and UK have proven problematic for the Max Immigration == Growth thesis so there're clearly diminishing returns) but that's a tradeoff a reasonable person can prefer. Practically, I don't think it's likely to happen but you can want that.
Even if you did close down the borders now though, something has to be done to digest the large numbers that have already been taken.
A lot of the pro-immigration people act like it is a moral thing so I respect that you don’t think it’s moral.
I guess I’m an urbanist. Which is sort of a blue tribe personality trait. Demographically and where I grew up I would be predicted to be very red tribe but my preferences are very blue tribe.-
I do think one of the strongest arguments against immigration is Americas inability to build middle class urban environments. Americas preference for building suburbs in my view is based on a strong preference not to live in diverse environments. I guess one could say blacks are special and prone to having unacceptable levels of violence and new immigrants are fine. That is kind of a justifiable view. But while we just had a huge immigration wave our biggest cities didn’t build more housing and make it work but instead had out migration of natives. So my opinion is if blue tribe wants me to accept mass migration then they need to show me they can run a multicultural city that doesn’t result in mass out migration of natives.
A lot of my anti-immigration views can boil down why doesn’t America have cities. Because I like living in cities.
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In theory, what's in it for you is that each immigrant that can support himself is producing at least as much as he takes, and therefore making you richer.
In practice, when a country gets dysfunctional enough (making it illegal to build new housing means that all productivity gains end up being stolen by landlords, lack of law and orders means the negative externalities of criminal immigrants can easily overwhelm the positive good created by law-abiding immigrants, the welfare state means that immigrants don't actually need to produce more than they take in order to support themselves, etc.) this doesn't hold.
Well, there are immigrants and then there are immigrants. Europe, which was almost completely white, and whose third-world immigration consists mostly of African and Middle Eastern Muslims, has seen its quality of life degrade significantly. America, which already had a ridiculously criminal ethnic underclass, and whose third-world immigration has consisted mostly of comparatively well-behaved Latinos, less so.
Never forget that white flight to the suburbs was the result of desegregation of the native black underclass, not Hispanic immigration from Latin America. If anything, Latinos help keep blacks in check, because we do not have an ounce of white guilt (see George Zimmerman).
I live in Miami, and I still remember how surreal it was when blacks attacked the Bayside Marketplace during the George Floyd riots. Some of my earliest memories of America are of shopping there with my father and sister.
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What am I missing here? Like, I disagree with a lot of your examples, but even if I accepted them at face value, what you’re saying doesn’t follow. If immigrants could assimilate at some point in the past, they can do it again. If they did it when American culture was less dominant and less accomplished, they can do it now.
Usually this expression goes the other way.
No argument here. Personality variance is crazy high even if you ignore societal effects.
Sure, I guess. What makes that genetic and not, well, social? I think society is usually the more mutable.
I think it’s also dumb to lump all Asians together. Look at this study on rice vs. wheat. It was conducted entirely between different regions of China!
Again: sure. Pioneer spirit, etc. etc. How do you know it’s not societal? How do you distinguish between selection on genes and on memes?
I can’t say I’m familiar with the literature, and what I could find was largely woo for globetrotters. Are you saying there’s a gene which provides this huge selection opportunity? And that it varied enough within ethnicities to dominate factors like poverty or religion?
But why not? You have all these examples of groups who supposedly had crazy-strong hereditary culture. They’ve all more or less assimilated. Doesn’t this suggest the exact opposite?
I’m sorry but what groups did I claim successfully assimilated into America? I see I claimed a few Indians became American. S Africans I’m claiming were Americans before they came to America - both culturally and genetically. And actually more American than post Ellis Island Americans. Their Englishmen who left England. Musks/Thiel are ethnically Anglos. They are both more Heritage American than my Ellis Island Wave Heritage.
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My working model is that this selection effect was in constant operation from the dispersal of the Proto-Indo-Europeans - that the more peaceable and agreeable people would stay put, while the restless and rebellious segment would press further west - all the way until the closing of the American frontier in the 19th century. And now we're all trapped in here with each other, and we don't know how to manage.
What’s the closest thing to the new west today? Texas?
I honestly rate S Africans as the most American and in many ways more American than the current native population as pure Anglos who also left. Thiel/Musks easily fit in. I don’t think I would want mass migration from Europe today as we’ve likely already selected out the quintessential American personalities from their population; whatever was left likely mostly died out in the World Wars.
It will be interesting if posts Berlin Wall coming down slavics ever show that characteristics. We have some big winners in the Google founders but they don’t seem to have that same personality as the two big S Africans Thiel/Musks.
I don't think Americans (in the immigration case) would tolerate the 19th/20th-century-style policy you'd need, which is this, so that would almost certainly be bad.
Musk fits into the American civil religion very well; he is the most financially successful African-American in history. One imagines opposition to the kind of power he has to be the fault of mere racism.
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They're Ashkenazim, like the Playrix
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I think this niche is filled nowadays not by any specific place, but by nomadic lifestyles in their various incarnations - perpetual tourism, van life, digital nomads, passport bros, etc. But by its very nature this can only be done by isolated individuals and never as a population-level movement. And so, I would surmise, the selection process that began 6,000 years ago has now come to an end.
All of those routes seem like opting-out. Haha. It leads to a cheaper lifestyle but limits you to basically making money online. I do think those routes have some of the same characteristics but their limitations are also why I proposed move to Texas as the new frontier which obviously has its own limitations but also can fulfill career ambition.
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