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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27465 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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The Creeping Barrage

Canada is currently undergoing a soft awakening to many of the difficulties that are projected in the next fifty years. I have seen a change in the way many talk about the political issues facing our country that even four or five years ago I would have thought impossible.

Inflation hit Canada hard, and the cost of living is reaching unbelievable proportions. Although many have a picture of Canada as this rough outdoorsman like nation, most of the population of Canada live in urban centers. Cities which are becoming almost impossible to live in. In Toronto, the largest city in Canada, the costs of a family of four is $4,515 not including rent. Even people making over $100,000 annually are living paycheck to paycheck.

https://wowa.ca/cost-of-living-canada

Rent and the housing shortage is a compounding problem. The average cost of a home in Canada is $656,625. This is a bubble that has actually been developing since the early 2000’s but got increasingly worse over the lockdown. All attempts by the government to do anything substantial about this has been like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound. There is now an understanding by anyone younger than 35 that we will essentially never be able to afford a home, and essentially be rent and debt slaves for the foreseeable future.

All in all, most Canadians have now become inexcusably aware that our country is in serious decline and will not have a greater living standard than our parents. While this isn’t a surprise to everyone (we have had people attempting to pull the brakes on many of the policies that caused this for many years) it seems that political opinions have changed dramatically over the course of what seems like overnight.

Trudeau and the liberal party have been in power for almost ten years, getting elected three times since 2015. His support began high and has steadily decreased until today. While his criticisms when he was first elected surrounded his unserious and dilettante demeanor, he has been plagued with a number of high-profile scandals that he somehow managed to evade, including the SNC Lavelin case, the blackface debacle and the RCMP investigation scandal following the 2020 Nova Scotia shootings.

Trudeau is now extremely unpopular. Recent polls indicate that over 72% of Canadians want him to step down, up 12% from just last month, and the liberal party is significantly trailing the conservative party for the first time in almost 15 years.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadas-trudeau-far-behind-polls-remains-liberals-best-chance-2023-10-11/

https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/growing-proportion-canadians-want-trudeau-step-down

One of the greatest issues that have cursed the liberal party is their policies regarding mass immigration. For those who don’t understand just how serious the problem is, we have brought in over 430,000 immigrants just in 2022 alone. If you compared the number of immigrants into the country on a per capita basis, it would be the equivalent of America taking in 20 million immigrants over the last two years. This doesn't even include the millions who are let into the country on student visas and then gain their permanent residency after they have graduated.

The opinions towards mass immigration have quickly turned, in a way that has left me equal parts shocked and ecstatic. One of the reasons housing prices are so unreasonable is simply because the demand for homes outweighs the supply we currently can sustain. Canadians are correct in assuming that immigration is a host of all sorts of problems that we are currently experiencing. All of our major social welfare systems are under heavy load, including our infrastructure, education, and health care system.

75% of Canadians are now against mass immigration.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/liberal-mismanagement-turns-canadians-against-immigration

This is not simply a quiet trend as it was before. Even two years ago you had to speak about these things quietly because accusations of prejudice and racism would be enthusiastically thrown out. They still are, but they simply don’t have the bite anymore. I have seen more real-life discussion about this in the last two months than I have in the last five years. Even on places like Reddit and twitter I’m seeing a lot of popular comments I never would have thought I would see on mainstream platforms, many of which are not simply against immigration for it's economic factor, but have taken a more racially charged approach than expected.

Here are some examples

Just a few months ago I would have been horrified to hear myself say what I'm about to say. But here we go. I am tired of being the only Canadian in my workplace. I am tired of insane traffic jams every morning because my city's population grows by 30% every year in new immigrants alone. I recently went through hell trying to find a place to rent because most of the places listed had already been snatched up. I want to get out of my line of work, but have no choice but to continue, because I can't even get an entry level retail job. I'm tired of struggling to find a family doctor, who has the time to actually make sure that my aging ass isn't sick before shit gets to stage 4. I am tired of people gaslighting me and saying that mass immigration will improve the economy, or that there are still more jobs than people when I can't get a fucking job. I am tired of being afraid to say any of this for fear of being called a racist. My life is getting harder every day, and that's not all because of immigration. But a lot of it is. I am tired of this anger, fear and helplessness that gets stronger every day.

Mass immigration is ruining this country. It drives down our wages and pushes up our rents and mortgages. We don't have the infrastructure, healthcare, or services to support mass immigration. It's also diluting Canada's social cohesion. It's turning us into isolated, atomized consumers who have little in common with their neighbours.*

But we are faced with a problem. The government has absolutely no plans to stop this. It has already been announced that Canada will take in another million immigrants in the next two years. In fact they are currently planning to have over 100 million people in Canada by the year 2100, a program they call the century initiative.

https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/about/who-we-are

Without immigration, Canadas economy would go though a historic collapse. 100% of our economic growth is dependent on immigrants, the housing bubble only keeps going because of this scarcity they bring, and they account for 75% of Canada's demographic growth. Now while obviously this collapse would be absolutely worth it, no politician in their right mind wants to be the one who is helming the ship as it goes down. They would be blamed for everything, and the moment a conservative or reactionary did the things necessary to remedy the situation the media conglomerates and leftist politicians would swarm in and poison everyone against him. He would be ousted from power, the government would be given back to some other flavor liberal, and the immigration would flow mightily on again, this time with growth numbers to boot. The conservative party which everyone is now sweet on is not going to stop it either.

That being said, I don’t see how the ruling class thinks they will be able to play this con for damn near 80 years when it is already becoming extremely unpopular and have legitimately no way to remedy the problems without drastically changing domestic policy. That's also not even mentioning things like the crime rate and wage stagnation. I have a nagging feeling in my head that this is all a slow-moving train to disaster in one way or another.

The point is I don’t see any option where Canada can remedy this democratically. We are in for a long time of political stress here in the great white north, and I don’t think anything is off the table at this point in time.

What I find most depressing about this problem is how irreversible it is. Unlike almost all other policy - monetary, taxation, spending, the criminal code, school curricula, you name it - this can't be undone. These immigrants are never, ever going away.

I don't understand how people who are in favor of mass-immigration can just so completely throw caution to the wind. Even with high confidence that mass immigration won't be a problem, if you're wrong, it's game over. The multiculturalism mind virus is unlike any other policy fad in history I can think of in how dangerous it is. Even fucking communism can, in principle, be reversed and healed from. The fact that a policy so potentially suicidal as mass immigration just sails through without meaningful resistance just blows my fucking mind.

I was lucky enough to get out of Canada and move to a decent sized American city, near a major metro, that is 97% native-born. But so many millions of Canadians are stuck and helplessly watching their country and communities decay into a sort of rootless cosmopolitan economic zone - an unimportant physical space that is meaningless but for its capacity to facilitate the existence and economic productivity of equally meaningless and mutually-unintelligible people-tokens like yourself.

I don't understand how people who are in favor of mass-immigration can just so completely throw caution to the wind. Even with high confidence that mass immigration won't be a problem, if you're wrong, it's game over.

Well, there's the Nathan Smith "How Would a Billion Immigrants Change the American Polity?" position — from people often given to repeating Milton Friedman's comment about mass immigration and the welfare state and, like him, arguing for picking the former over the latter — which holds that the pressures of mass immigration will force the system to adapt (in ways these sorts of people find personally favorable) to keep functioning. While Smith makes analogy to Rome, the better point of comparison is the UAE.

And, I think it was back on Twitter a few years ago, I remember Bryan Caplan making similar "the system will have to adapt" arguments, and someone pushed back, pointing to our politicians and asking what happens if they don't make the changes open borders libertarian types ask for. He gave the same response he's given some other times: mass immigration is ultimately a self-limiting problem. Immigrants tolerate the language barrier and cultural difference issues because they're outweighed by the economic benefits of living in a country like America or Canada. Thus, if the effects of this immigration become increasingly detrimental, the economy and quality of life will decline, reducing that incentive to keep coming. Once America is reduced to a level near Mexico, Latin American immigration will stop, and perhaps even reverse (and similarly with Canada versus the sources of its immigrants).

Sure, someone argued back, but then you've still wrecked the country, even if the process eventually stalls out. That, Caplan replied, is just another reason to support immigration — because if that does happen, well, English is enough of a lingua franca in academia that a famous economist like him can get a job teaching at pretty much any university anywhere on Earth. (And as for those who aren't famed econ professors like him? That's their problem.)

And I think it was Tyler Cowen who made the point that "3rd world countries" aren't uniformly terrible; that in the cities you can find pockets where the elites live in "1st world" conditions with the added bonus of cheap personal servants — you just have to be able to afford it. But, much in line with Smith's position, if you're one of those who isn't in job competition with immigrant labor, but instead positioned to benefit from it, then your economic gains will allow you to pay for the gated community, the private security, etc. to let you maintain your 1st world lifestyle even if most the rest of the country ends up immiserated, with the added benefit of affordable personal servants and cheap chalupas.

So, IME, a lot of "f— you, got mine" attitude, and confidence that no matter how bad it gets, the consequences will only fall on the little people beneath them.

Well, that and a lot of "bleeding heart" types who simply don't think about long-term or large scale consequences, and who, at their worst, deny that unintended and second-order consequences are even a thing.

What I find most depressing about this problem is how irreversible it is.

The problems with immigration in Canada (which is, unlike many other countries, doing a good job of selecting positive-value, long-term-assimilable immigrants) that the parent post referred to are all to do with growing the population while not building enough housing. Those problems are entirely reversible - slow the immigration while you catch up on housebuilding.

Yes, the problem of there being insufficient housing to house all these immigrants is a separate and solvable problem from the problem all these immigrants, I agree.

Only if you believe there's a finite supply of "racial purity" (when did it appear, by the way? The Neanderthals?) and brown immigrants permanently dilute it. Otherwise, it's just cultural change. That is no less reversible than communism.

Even if racial divergence may have ended, on net, around the Neanderthal age, the trend towards total racial homogenization was very slow up until recently. You probably could have had visually distinct races indefinitely if travel technology stopped with pre-Columbean tech. The future mongrelization of humanity is merely another aspect of the bug-man future we're all looking forward to. It's maximum entropy, maximum simplification, degradation to increasingly robust physical states.

Even if racial divergence may have ended, on net, around the Neanderthal age

What is your basis for this claim? That is do you have stats, human diversity measures, genetic maps, local histories to back it up?

An evolving system will always be diversifying (that is what the mutation does) and there's also surely a lot of racial mixing. Are the Sumerians a distinct racial, ethnic, cultural grouping now? Are the famous English local rivalries really between Picts, Angles, Saxons, Norman's, Vikings?

Please enlighten me.

Only if you believe there's a finite supply of "racial purity" (when did it appear, by the way? The Neanderthals?) and brown immigrants permanently dilute it. Otherwise, it's just cultural change. That is no less reversible than communism.

I do happen to think that races differ on average. But even if they didn't, cultural change is absolutely irreversible. For example, American culture irreversibly changed with the introduction of Irish, German, Italian, and Latin American immigrants. And even if cultural change could be reversed, real people have to live real lives over decades while enduring this change.

It is little consolation to those experiencing the soul-crushing pain of watching their communities deteriorate to be told, "It's okay, you only have to put up with this every single day for a few more decades, because then you'll die. Oh, you have descendants who will outlast you and you care about what your country and community is bequeathing them? Don't worry, the Multicultural New Economic Zone is all they'll ever know. They won't know what could have been. (We'll make sure of it.)"

What kind of world do you imagine where cultural change doesn't happen? Even if all migration was completely halted worldwide, the internet is constantly transmitting culture worldwide. The kind of world you seem to want to live in would require a literal return to the dark ages. And of course cultural mixing was still happening back then too. The reason we're speaking a language without gendered nouns is because Viking settlers "corrupted" English. The reason I used the word "do" in the first sentence of this post is because Celtic languages "corrupted" English.

Obviously some change is inevitable. That doesn't mean that we should favor any and all change that we have the power to mitigate. Unless you think immigration as it currently exists produces precisely zero additional cultural change compared to a world with no/little immigration, then we have the power (through curtailing immigration) to mitigate some of the inevitable cultural change.

I'm so perplexed by this line of argument that keeps popping up in immigration debates which is essentially "This thing [cultural change or immigration specifically] happened in the past, therefore it's a good thing, or therefore we can't/shouldn't do anything about it".

The reason we're speaking a language without gendered nouns is because Viking settlers "corrupted" English.

Do you think the communities that were ravaged by the Vikings - the men killed, the women taken as sex slaves, and the land occupied by essentially murderous rapist barbarians - would have had a thing or two to say about whether that "change" was desirable? And most important: If they could have stopped the Vikings, should they not have?

"This thing [cultural change or immigration specifically] happened in the past, therefore it's a good thing, or therefore we can't/shouldn't do anything about it".

You're misunderstanding my point. I'm saying whatever it is you like about "American culture" or "Anglo-Saxon culture" or whatever specific culture it is that you're trying to preserve, that culture only exists because of cultural mixing and change. "Your culture" came about as a result of the Angles and the Jutes and the Danes and the Celts all mixing together.

If you're saying that cultural mixing is always bad, then why do you want to preserve "your" culture? If you're being logically consistent then you should also conclude that your own culture is bad because it is a "corrupted" admixture of other cultures.

If they could have stopped the Vikings, should they not have?

If they could have stopped the Vikings from raping and pillaging, absolutely. But it's not clear why it would have been a good thing for them to stop the cultural admixture. If they had prevented the mixture from occurring, then the culture that you're trying to preserve wouldn't exist. So presumably you agree that this cultural mixing was good if you believe that your own culture existing is good.

If you're saying that cultural mixing is always bad, then why do you want to preserve "your" culture?

Because it's my culture. Just like I would care about a different family if I had been born in a different family. I wasn't, so I don't.

Yes, all cultures came into being by mixture/corruption from various forces throughout history. So what? If I was a member of those cultures pre-mixture/corruption, I'd probably have advocated resisting that change. I wasn't, so I'm not. I'm not, because I don't care. I don't care, because I'm not a member of those past cultures.

I don't understand what's so complicated about this. I feel like I'm explaining to a Martian why we humans care about our families more than we care about other families.

Because it's my culture. Just like I would care about a different family if I had been born in a different family. I wasn't, so I don't.

If you care about your family, then you probably don't want your kids to grow up to marry their siblings or cousins. You want them to marry members of different families. Loving your family necessarily implies that you want your grandchildren to have fewer of your genes than your children, and for your great-grand-children to have fewer of your genes than your grandchildren. The long term health of your bloodline depends on it being mixed with other bloodlines. Trying to keep your bloodline unchanged for generations is a profoundly bad idea. Also, it's probably impossible without significant coercion. People generally don't want to marry their family members unless they are forced to do so.

The same is true of your culture. It was produced through a process of mixture, and it will only continue to exist and re-produce itself through a process of mixture. Trying to arrest this process will not preserve your culture, it will cause it to wither and die. And it is impossible to do this without extreme levels of coercion; you would need to ensure that your culture remains completely closed off from the outside world, which is a nearly impossible task.

If I was a member of those cultures pre-mixture/corruption, I'd probably have advocated resisting that change.

If your ancestors had been effective at doing this, your culture wouldn't exist. The fact that you love your culture implies you are glad your ancestors didn't successfully prevent cultural mixing. Perhaps you should consider whether there is anything you can learn from your cultural ancestors.

More comments

Maybe a silly question, but given that Canada is a massive country concentrated in a few urban areas, why aren’t there more initiatives to build new cities and associated infrastructure, with migration plans explicitly focused on bringing migrants to the new cities rather than existing overcrowded urban areas?

Because people don't want to live there. We already have lots of affordable towns and small cities. But they're affordable because there is little demand for people to live there, and there is little demand for people to live there because there are no good jobs. Many of these places are actually populated mainly by old people and have shrinking populations.

The high demand areas aren't even overcrowded. There is nothing like Manhattan in Canada, let alone a denser city like Paris or Tokyo. Canadian cities usually have a small dense downtown core surrounded by miles and miles of low density neighbourhoods of single detached houses.

My wife's family is from a more rural part of Canada. We went back to visit not too long ago. They're building apartments everywhere out there, all for the immigrants. All sorts of pockets that used to be empty now have a bunch of big apartment buildings and a small number of shops that are popping up nearby to serve them. Most of the people I talked to were natives, friends of the family. Everyone is definitely too polite blue to say anything outright negative, but in nearly every single conversation I had, it came up at some point. I wasn't bringing it up. But there would almost always be a moment where they'd kinda hesitate, think about what they're saying, give a little breath almost as if, "I'm not sure I'm quite allowed to say this, but I'm going to word it this way, and maybe it'll be okay," followed by some form of, "There are a lot of immigrants now. Especially since COVID. The local culture is changing. It's not the way it used to be anymore." They're not saying the follow-up, "...and I think that's bad," but I repeatedly got the impression that they sure were thinking something like that.

This is not really a cynical take, it is what our officials out-and-out say: the purpose for immigration is cheap labour and keeping up housing prices.

Building new cities does not work towards those goals. Shoving 500k new people every year into the GTA does.

Which Canadian officials say that the purpose of immigration is keeping up housing prices?

It's usually framed using words like "resilience and strength" or "vibrant". The leading newspapers regularly feature columns from or interviewing people with incentives to encourage immigration with little critical analysis applied. Here's an example. Great emphasis is placed on the importance of housing prices continuing to rise in perpetuity.

I think you got over your skis here. The first link is just a factual report about prices rising and doesn't seem to mention immigration. The second is essentially a realtor's opinion (no surprise that realtors are in favor of continued scarcity). The third and fourth get closer but I still don't see any officials out and out saying that the purpose of immigration is to keep housing prices high.

I do agree that the third and fourth articles curiously assume that high housing costs are a good thing in a way that I haven't seen in American media though.

I would guess it's because that's not where they need workers. If you keep the country just the same as it is but a new city appears somewhere in it then that doesn't do much for the existing country except by raising overall GDP.

"Without immigration, Canadas economy would go though a historic collapse. 100% of our economic growth is dependent on immigrants, the housing bubble only keeps going because of this scarcity they bring, and they account for 75% of Canada's demographic growth"

How sure are you of your economic analysis? It seems like a bold claim to me.

Over the long run, economic growth is tends more to its flexible price/potential GDP groeth. Potential GDP is typically your Cobb-Douglas type Productivity/Capital/Labour mix. Canada's productivity growth has been anemic compared to the US and Germany. Funds for capital is pretty mobile between countries, allowing it go to its most productive uses. So labour growth drives GDP growth in Canada. According to Statcan's most recent demographic estimates, almost all of Canada's population growth is due to net migration. Natural increase is almost negligible. Cutring off migration without finding ways to increase productivity and increase capital would cause a pretty big shock to potential GDP, leading to stagflation.

Their take is certainly a doomer take, but it isn't indefensible.

I know the reasons, but it still blows my mind to hear of a housing shortage in Canada. A shortage of ice or spruces seems even more ex ante plausible.

That being said, I don’t see how the ruling class thinks they will be able to play this con for damn near 80 years when it is already becoming extremely unpopular and have legitimately no way to remedy the problems without drastically changing domestic policy. That's also not even mentioning things like the crime rate and wage stagnation. I have a nagging feeling in my head that this is all a slow-moving train to disaster in one way or another.

Elections generally aren't decided on particular issues. Widespread approval of the death penalty has been compatible with its permanent abolition in many countries. Those in favour of mass immigration just have to ensure that (a) opposing parties almost never get into power, (b) let the opposing parties play tough, while throwing everything against each step, so the parties are incentivised to do cosmetic measures, and (c) if they do get into power and introduce substantial measures, ensure that their laws/executive orders are not enforced or blocked by the judiciacy.

While this is true, unlike many republics, Canada's provinces have a huge degree of power that even many other federations don't usually have. When Canada merged the western provinces into the Federation in 1867 they gave many powers that didn't seem consequential at the time into the hands of the provinces, ones that they probably wished they hadn't done so in hindsight. Civil rights, for example, is in large part up to provincial discretion. Education in all forms as well. So in theory there is only so much the federal government could enforce, and it's not just a matter of keeping one opposing party in check, but many in different provinces.

Civil rights, for example, is in large part up to provincial discretion. Education in all forms as well.

Honestly, Sask.'s recent actions on this front. Have me conflicted about its use of the Notwithstanding Clause to brute force its own view of education/civil rights.

On the one hand the potential for abuse and tyranny seem obvious. On the other hand, I honestly don't trust the federal government or judiciary. If you told me Canadian elites watched TV for stuff that couldn't get passed in the US to try to pull I'd believe you.

conflicted about its use of the Notwithstanding Clause

They really shouldn't need to have used this (and I find it strange they went that route, since a lot of this is just "Conservatives driving the speed limit"- of course, the fact that it limits transitions of children of non-progressive parents is the thing trans advocates are angriest about for what should be obvious reasons), but I don't trust Ottawa not to try anything for a base that could really use a "fighting oppression" narrative right about now.

On the other hand, I honestly don't trust the federal government or judiciary.

Provinces don't have the power to override the federal Criminal Code, so all an unfriendly government would have to do is make it illegal for a parent to not sign the consent form, then enforce that law with the usual prejudice. Or just pull federal funding for programs in non-compliant provinces; SK is better off than Atlantic Canada but it's still a weaker province.

I've thought about physiocracy for a long time. Originally, it was invented by some French aristocrats who thought that the wealth of nations is derived solely from agriculture.

I would define the wealth of nations as derived from natural resources broadly - minerals, agricultural land, oil, coal, rivers, forests, solar energy. You have the extraction stage and then the production stage, which is manufacturing.

Canada is not an industrial country, not any more. Like my country, Australia, Canada relies on resource extraction to produce the bulk of its real wealth. Resource extraction doesn't really scale when you add more people (not past a certain point), modern mining and agriculture doesn't require many workers. In my model, mass immigration doesn't increase the wealth of extraction economies like ours, it just dilutes the wealth that is produced. It adds more mouths to feed.

Ultimately I think that real wealth relies on the production of physical goods, not services. What does it mean to have a financial sector that comprises X% of the economy? Yes, you need to have ways for savings and loans to be allocated - but savings and loans are just claims on real goods. Healthcare is about using physical goods like surgical equipment and drugs. If there is no production there's no creation of wealth of wealth, only consumption.

I admit that there are areas where my model breaks down - my Steam library can't really be considered physical, it barely touches the physical world excepting that CPUs and GPUs are needed to make use of it. Nevertheless, I believe that production must be at the heart of an economy - entertainment is not essential like food or concrete. A country on a path like China's may well need more labour, they have enormous amounts of industry. Countries like ours don't need more labour. It's not like going from 20 to 40 million will make much difference in wartime either, we either have nuclear weapons or we are irrelevant dogsbodies of great powers.

I admit that there are areas where my model breaks down - my Steam library can't really be considered physical, it barely touches the physical world excepting that CPUs and GPUs are needed to make use of it.

I think your model breaks down all over the place. Obviously raw materials are not irrelevant, but they represent a tiny fraction of the wealth of a modern developed economy.

Go dig up a shovelful of dirt in your backyard. That dirt contains most of the raw materials needed to build a CPU. But there are many, many orders of magnitude difference between the value of that dirt and the value of a CPU. Almost all that value comes from intangible things:

  1. The knowledge and time of skilled electrical engineers and chemists figuring out how to design and fabricate CPUs.

  2. The university system that educated them and provided the foundational knowledge they built upon.

  3. A legal system that enables companies to enter into and enforce contracts with one another in a reliable way

  4. Systems of IP protection that incentivize R&D expenditures in CPU development.

  5. Consistent law enforcement and property rights that allow companies to invest billions of dollars in semiconductor fabrication equipment without worrying a government or criminal organization will take it away from them.

  6. Financial institutions that will lend money to these companies if they don't have billions of dollars sitting around to build semiconductor fabs.

On and on. It's intangibles (almost) all the way down.

Healthcare is about using physical goods like surgical equipment and drugs.

Like CPUs, surgical equipment and drugs are mostly made out of cheap-as-fuck raw materials that are then synthesized into useful things. It's engineers, chemists, biologists, lawyers, etc. that make it possible for this stuff to exist. And of course much of healthcare is made up of other sorts of intangibles, like medical training. Surgical equipment isn't of much use without surgeons.

Yes, you need to have ways for savings and loans to be allocated - but savings and loans are just claims on real goods.

You act like this is trivial, but it's not. There exist countries in the world today where you can't trust banks to hold your savings and the average person can't get loans because the economy is too unstable and risky. These are the so-called "shithole" countries, and they're shitholes not because of a lack of natural resources but because of a lack of the kinds of intangible goods I've been talking about.

That dirt contains most of the raw materials needed to build a CPU.

I doubt it contains many rare earths!

I accept that manufacturing is necessary. I accept that R&D, which relates closely to manufacturing, is neccessary. I accept that finance is needed to fund the whole operation. You do need trained workers to operate machinery.

What I'm trying to strike at is the jobs that are furthest from primary production and manufacturing. Most jobs in modern economies are in the service sector, there are many, many jobs which could just be put on hold during the pandemic. All kinds of 'coordinators', 'inspectors' and 'consultants' that didn't seem to be needed at all. What is the point of them, then? No real wealth is being produced from people who make others fill out forms, check paperwork and refuse approvals for other people to go and create wealth.

Some of that is necessary. There does need to be some law, amongst other things. But there's a huge amount that isn't and it hugely pumps up GDP figures to the point where they become unhelpful, abstract measurements. The EU couldn't manage to send a million artillery shells to Ukraine, North Korea could. I'm told their GDP is less than a hundredth of the EU's, that it's a shithole country if ever there was one... What good are these intangibles in and of themselves?

I doubt it contains many rare earths!

They aren't very rare, just costly to separate. They make up a good amount of the impurities in other metals, for the matter. The difficulty in extracting them is accumulating them, because a lot of random dirt will have them in small amounts, so you need to pick them out of a lot of dirt. This isn't generally economical, but China has been subsidizing it. Other mines can "simply" spend the money to accumulate them when processing other ores and some are beginning to.

As of 2023, China leads the world in rare earths because they are the only country with good chemists and weak environmental laws. The US has plenty of rare earths - they just need to agree to some unimportant parts of the mountain west being despoiled in order to get at them.

I agree with your take in spirit, although I think you're a little too negative on how much the West produces. We still produce plenty of real wealth. And it shouldn't be underestimated just how expensive logistics is, deciding where to move resources and then actually moving them can take a lot of people to do.

But that said, I think burdensome regulations and taxation that's overly focused on redistributing the pie instead of making the pie bigger limit us a lot. It should be far easier than it is to build dense housing when you have such high prices. We need to and should be increasing housing supply much more than we are currently able to.

I doubt it contains many rare earths!

Most valuable things, including the examples you raised in your post (CPUs, GPUs, drugs, and surgical equipment) don't contain rare earth metals. Of course, rare earth metals are indeed important and I am not claiming otherwise. But you'll notice that the countries with large rare earth metal deposits aren't necessarily the richest countries on earth -- some of them are among the poorest. This seems to be in tension with your claim that the wealth of nations is derived from natural resources.

All kinds of 'coordinators', 'inspectors' and 'consultants' that didn't seem to be needed at all. What is the point of them, then? No real wealth is being produced from people who make others fill out forms, check paperwork and refuse approvals for other people to go and create wealth.

The jobs that are truly not needed are, by and large, jobs that exist as a result of useless government regulations. Either government jobs, or private sector "compliance" jobs. It's true that many of these specific types of "service sector" jobs are dead weight and serve no purpose. You have correctly observed that government regulations are often pointless or counterproductive.

It does not follow, however, that service sector jobs are generally useless or fail to create wealth. In fact, as I laid out above, the vast majority of the wealth of modern economies derives from service sector jobs. Just not the specific class of useless service sector jobs you have identified.

The EU couldn't manage to send a million artillery shells to Ukraine, North Korea could.

The simple reason is that NK has a bunch of artillery shells lying around, whereas the EU doesn't. This is a pretty extreme case of special pleading. If we're talking about literally anything other than artillery shells (cell phones, eggs, insulin, toilets, tractors, etc.) the EU has far more of it and far higher quality versions of it than NK. And if the EU wanted or needed to, it could surely close the artillery gap with NK as well. This has almost nothing to do with natural resources and everything to do with intangibles like human capital, rule of law, markets, etc.

Good, persuasive points. I feel like the number of people who are directly and clearly needed in the whole IP, R&D, law+order, STEM university, manufacturing, logistics and extraction stack are in the minority but that's only a feeling, I highly doubt I could find any statistic to prove it. And what's the point of even being here if we don't put fact before feeling?

I feel like the number of people who are directly and clearly needed in the whole IP, R&D, law+order, STEM university, manufacturing, logistics and extraction stack are in the minority but that's only a feeling, I highly doubt I could find any statistic to prove it.

Let's run with this premise for a moment and assume it's true. Let's assume that if we were smarter about how we run these sectors we could cut 90% of the people in them and still get the same benefits. What are the implications of that?

First of all, it would still be true that the service sectors are creating most of the wealth in the economy. It would just be fewer people creating the same amount of wealth. Which means these sectors would be creating even more wealth on net, because we are having to pay fewer people to get the same result.

And now we can potentially do even more R&D, IP, logistics, manufacturing, etc. with the resources that are no longer being wasted on useless employees. I would expect these sectors to use their efficiency gains to grow and contribute an even larger fraction of the economy's wealth going forward. Money spent on bullshit jobs can now be spent on non-bullshit job. People who worked bullshit jobs can now be retrained to work non-bullshit jobs.

So even if you are completely correct about this, it doesn't undermine the importance of the service sector. If anything, it shows that services could potentially be even more important to the economy than they already are.

I don't think that your model breaks down when it comes to your Steam library. Your Steam library is as physical as a truckload of lumber. It exists on real physical machines that exist at specific places in the real world. If those machines stopped working, your Steam library would vanish. It is just that unlike a truckload of lumber, your Steam library is really easy to copy.

It exists on real physical machines that exist at specific places in the real world.

Add up the cost of all the raw materials present in those physical machines and you'll get something on the order of $10. All the additional value and wealth represented by those machines and the programs they contain comes from intangible things.

There is nothing new about that. Even in the Bronze Age, it was true that a house made of wood was a lot more valuable than a bunch of logs lying by the side of the road.

One actually new-ish factor is how easy it is to copy a digital product. I say new-ish because the printing press already made it cheap to copy books hundreds of years ago.

So part of the "intangible" value in the Steam library is that there is copyright law to stop people from copying the Steam library willy-nilly. But I would argue that in a sense, the copyright law is actually itself quite tangible because cops and their guns are very tangible.

There is nothing new about that. Even in the Bronze Age, it was true that a house made of wood was a lot more valuable than a bunch of logs lying by the side of the road.

The only thing that's new is the magnitude of the effect. Raw materials represent an ever dwindling fraction of the value of the good.

But I would argue that in a sense, the contract law is actually itself quite tangible because cops and their guns are very tangible.

Sure, but once you start counting the cops as tangible now you're agreeing with my point and negating the premise of the original argument I was responding to: people and the activities they engage in are far more important than natural resources to the wealth of a nation.

You know, it's kind of interesting that, as you suggest, much of the everyday economic value we talk about exists in forms that would be hard to explain to a time traveler from merely 50-60 years ago.

Well, you could just say to the time traveler, "You know, just like a book that is an interesting novel will usually sell for more money than a book where every page is just a random arrangement of ink shapes..."

What does it mean to have a financial sector that comprises X% of the economy?

The financial sector makes the rest of the economy more efficient, capturing a percentage of the increased efficiency for itself. For example, if the rest of the economy produces value x, finance boosts it to 2x and captures half the increase (0.5x), then finance is 0.5x / 2x = 25% of the economy.

If one country has its financial sector boost and capture a portion of a different country's economy, you could even end up with a situation where the value captured by finance in the former country exceeds the value produced by the "real" economy in that country.

All of our major social welfare systems are under heavy load, including our infrastructure, education, and health care system.

I'd always assumed Australia and Canada had broadly similar skill-based immigration policies, so it's surprising for me to find out that the average Canadian immigrant makes less than a Canadian native when in Australia they typically have a wage premium.

It's highly dependent on what kind of immigrant you are and your background for sure. It's difficult for people with certifications to easily transfer to another province let alone from another country. There's a running joke here in Canada about the Indian engineer who now works as an uber eats driver. Canada is also the leading in the immigrants who leave as well. Over 20% of immigrants have left in the last twenty five years.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/immigrants-are-leaving-canada-at-faster-pace-study-shows-1.1991965

Canada is also the leading in the immigrants who leave as well. Over 20% of immigrants have left in the last twenty five years.

Combination of the USA being next door, the weather and some other stuff?

I think you are conflating two issues that are mostly unrelated. Housing costs are probably being driven up slightly by increased demand due to immigration, but the effect is tiny compared to the supply-side problems caused by excessive red tape that makes housing expensive and difficult to build. The population of Houston, Texas is about 20% foreign-born immigrants, yet housing is extremely affordable because there is no zoning, no rent controls, and few regulatory hoops to jump through if you want to build housing.

Nobody worries about immigrants buying up all the food, or all the cars, or all the cell phones. If demand goes up, the economy will just produce more of these things to meet demand. It doesn't make sense to worry about immigrants buying up all the housing either, unless there's a problem on the supply side that makes it impossible to meet demand. Fix the supply side problem if you want to fix the housing problem.

Texas is a special case in that it's, yes, growing extremely quickly, but also has a bare-bones welfare state and is not concerned about the standard of living of poor people. This is not Canada. There's not really a social welfare system to strain; it's up to private charities, some of which are funded by the state, but there's no sense that anyone is entitled to their services. In other first world countries poor immigrants use welfare resources that natives feel entitled to.

In other first world countries poor immigrants use welfare resources that natives feel entitled to.

This is a much stronger argument for cutting the welfare state than it is of restricting immigration, especially when you have the Texas success example right next to it.

In my experience, things like low housing costs and a robust economy are far more conducive to poor people's standard of living than a robust wellfare state. Houston, for example, has a homelessness rate of around 30 people per 100k residents. The country of Canada has an average homelessness rate of at least 90 per 100k residents, with cities often much higher than that; for example in Toronto the rate seems to be in excess of 322 per 100k.

So while I would agree that Canada is more "concerned" about poor people, it's not at all clear to me that Canada is actually providing a better standard of living for poor people.

So while I would agree that Canada is more "concerned" about poor people, it's not at all clear to me that Canada is actually providing a better standard of living for poor people.

I didn't say it was. Obviously being able to rent a spare bedroom for $600/mo(going rate in my large Texas city; there's cheaper out there) beats homelessness by a mile even if it's strictly worse than having your own apartment. Obviously being able to work for $11/hr(where unskilled labor bottoms out here) is a lot better than being unemployed because there are no jobs, but if there were they'd pay $15/hr, even if it's worse than having one of those hypothetical $15/hr jobs. I've lived deep below the poverty line in Texas(although I don't currently) and think I rather prefer it to the same income in Canada. But it's a pretty big difference that the mass migration to Texas has no ability to access welfare resources beyond what a private charity wants to give them, and (at least some portion of)immigrants demanding the state take care of them are, famously, shipped to New York. This is a relevant variable to the feeling of "immigrants are using up resources that should be going to the native poor".

This is a relevant variable to the feeling of "immigrants are using up resources that should be going to the native poor".

Sure, this is a valid argument, but it's an argument against welfare, not against immigration.

If Canada wants CoL to go down they should prioritize building a ton more housing. Seems like a very simple solution, but existing homeowners are a powerful bloc.

Not sure if Canada’s zoning problems are similar to the US but it legit takes years to get projects approved here. Certainly a big driver of lower housing supply.

Assuming that white Canadians are by and large believers of the climate change narrative, isn’t there any discussion of what to do with the massive endless expanses of northern Canada that will be transformed into pleasant liveable places by global warming?

Given that Canadians are a blue tribe suburb, they won’t question the narrative on climate change.

Get with the times. Global warming is out, it's just climate change now, which is implicitly always negative. Or even climate injustice, where the beneficiaries of global warming don't deserve it.

Large parts of the Western world have embraced the idea of home ownership as an investment vehicle (IIRC Japan is an interesting exception). In the last few decades this has worked as prices have increased, but it creates crossed incentives between current owners and people who want to buy a house. IMO my house's value to me (beyond the sentimental) is almost exclusively as a dwelling, and day-to-day it's price doesn't impact me.

I don't know that the idea was completely wrong, but there does seem to be a theoretical limit of residential property values in terms of wage-adjusted incomes before the average family can't afford to own anything ("and be happy"?).

But actually unwinding the model (reducing prices) will probably hurt a bunch of middle-class voters pretty badly, which seems like political suicide so I expect it to be put off as long as possible and maybe an attempt at gradual deflating.

Really, for most owner-occupiers it would be a wash: the value of your home goes down, but the price of your next home goes down too. The people it really hurts are the elderly who are ready to give up home ownership and reap a windfall profit, or their heirs.

The price of your house going down is a really big problem if you:

  1. still owe a large part of the mortgage and suddenly you are financially in negative. Especially if this happens around a time you need some financial breathing room (like switching to a bigger house to grow your family)
  2. took on debt that depend on your house price to finance your lifestyle. Shockingly common in many countries

People make 1) work with vehicles, and 2) is, well, not exactly a sympathetic example.

I don't understand what you mean with this: "People make 1) work with vehicles"

And yeah boomers living off housing wealth are not sympathetic but they are a massive solid one-issue voting bloc and it is almost impossible to form governments in the West without their approval.

People make it work that they lose money on their cars. Cars depreciate, they don't appreciate, you eventually have to buy a new one, and you won't turn a profit on it.

Cars cost 1-2 orders of magnitude less than real estate. They are fragile machinery produced en mass in gigantic heavily automated factories. They have lots of moving parts exposed to huge amounts of wear and tear. None of these things apply to houses. I don’t see a valid comparison here

Large parts of the Western world have embraced the idea of home ownership as an investment vehicle

The situation is totally fucked and is not going to improve until this stops, because this is the description of a ponzi scheme. You can't have house prices going up all the time and have the remain affordable to entrants in the long run. The math simply is not mathing.

Unfortunately the hole is dug really really deep and there's very little appetite to stop digging. The situation in Canada seems even worse than in the US - at least here the market deflated after 2008 so people who had the good sense to be born in the 80s or earlier could pick up some nice deals. In Canada the market has just kept going up.

Australia is only slightly behind Canada with this same issue. /r/ausfinance practically became a single issue subreddit about housing affordability before the mods had to enforce a 'personal finance only' rule set.

Yes, i agree. We currently build around 150,000 homes annually. However In order to keep up with immigration we would have to triple our current manufacturing efforts. It is also not a matter of resources but of manpower. There is a huge shortage of experienced blue collar workers and they simply can't keep up with the demand. The government has tried many ways to increase supply but none of them have seemed to work.

There is a huge shortage of experienced blue collar workers and they simply can't keep up with the demand.

I thought people said they couldn't find a job?

A large amount of the labor required to build a modern house requires extensive training and certification.

If there were an untapped supply of skilled tradesmen, the going rates for them wouldn't be as high as they are now.

In theory this is true, in practice you don’t have to be a plumber to dig the sewer line, you have to be willing to work and able to follow directions.

Realistically allowing plumbers to use much cheaper non-plumbers to do the grunt work can solve the issue, if anyone wanted to solve it.

I think a lot of this actually has to do with the certification more than it does the training. I've been told, for instance, installing a septic tank requires an insane amount of paperwork when it used to be you just needed some prefab and a shovel.

Something with which my parents are dealing with respect to their plans to build their retirement home on our place out in the Bush, exacerbated by the issues that permafrost — and the assorted inspections, regulations, effects on the water table, et cetera — adds to things.

but existing homeowners are a powerful bloc.

Build new cities, then. It is incredibly frustrating to me to hear any blame for all of this garbage placed on the people that currently live in the places people want to go. How are people unable to see that this is the exact same argument that allows for massive immigration in the first place?

Hey bro, just decrease your own quality of life so that some people who don't currently live near you can live near you and get some of that quality you are currently enjoying.

No.

If having people living near you constitutes a reduction in your quality of life, city living might not be for you.

Interesting that you have to absolutely misrepresent what I’m saying in order to try and argue with it.

First of all: I do live in a city, next to a shit load of condos, and other than dealing with the violent schizophrenics being dumped in my neighborhood all the time, I love it.

The condos are on the edges of my neighborhood, built in former industrial districts which were turned into condos and shopping. GOOD. More coffee shops for me.

It is incredibly frustrating to me to hear any blame for all of this garbage placed on the people that currently live in the places people want to go

To be fair, it's very easy to blame them when they hold that they have a right to monopolize both the commons and other people's property for the sake of their own preferences.

Are people allowed to have an interest in their own home?

I have an interest in my neighborhood being a place I like to live, my city being a place I like to live, and my country a place I like to live. I absolutely have a right to express my preferences in these matters via the state. Keeping me expressing them via elections instead of simply forcing things to look the way I want them to is very literally the foundational role of government.

I have an interest in my neighborhood being a place I like to live, my city being a place I like to live, and my country a place I like to live. I absolutely have a right to express my preferences in these matters via the state. Keeping me expressing them via elections instead of simply forcing things to look the way I want them to is very literally the foundational role of government.

This viewpoint would be significantly less obnoxious if fewer of the people expressing it also talked about freedom, self-reliance, the value of hard work and other libertarian-adjacent ideas. "You can't have my house, you should get your own, and if you try to build one I will send men with guns to demolish it" is still antisocial, but "You can't have my house, it's my property because I worked hard for it, go get your own just like I had to, and if you try to build one I will act on my God-given freedom to send men with guns to demolish it" is despicable.

I am an unapologetic nationalist at every level. Individuals, neigborhoods, towns, cities, states, and countries should all advocate for their own self interests. If a collection of people want their neighborhood to look the way it does, then that’s their right. Leave them (and me) alone.

If you support housing communism at every level, then you do you. But you will get the standard results of communism.

If you support housing communism at every level, then you do you. But you will get the standard results of communism.

Can you please explain to us clueless readers of your exchange with firmamenti how the hell people advocating for their interests, such as electing representatives to enact preferable zoning policy, constitutes the government owning the means of production?

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It's such an entitled mindset to demand that the locals re-arrange their city to make things convenient for someone who showed up two weeks ago on a dodgy student visa. Not everyone wants to live like they're in the Kowloon walled city.

Not everyone wants to live like they're in the Kowloon walled city.

Note that "zoning reform" is not necessarily synonymous with "upzoning and densification". For example, Vancouver's housing could be made cheaper by allowing single-family houses to be built in the empty "Green Zone" (1 2).

The idea that Vancouver-area residents should suffer the least affordable housing in Canada in order to preserve rural open space in a province that has millions of hectares of open space and some of the lowest population densities in the world would be comical if its results were not so tragic.

And if you do want to live in Kowloon walled city, then good for you: go build it somewhere else where you don’t have to destroy the lives of the people living there.

Fully support building whatever configuration of city you can come up with, as long as the current residents are okay with it. If that means finding a place with no residents, then go do that. And by the way, I hope you power it with nuclear power, make cars illegal, ban Christians and whatever else you dream of. Go wild. Just leave me alone.

That's easy to say when every attempt at doing so is frustrated with extreme prejudice.

Turns out you've also made it illegal to build my libertarian paradise in the middle of a nowhere that I fully paid for. And people who try to do it despite this get evicted and shot by government goons. As they did in Kowloon.

"You can't build it anywhere near me and near me is the entire universe" is an interesting notion of being left alone.

Well what if I want you to leave me alone? What about that? Where can I go exactly that doesn't make it illegal for a man to build what he wants on his own property?

I'll go to the edge of the world, Mars if I have to, I just want to be away from the sort of people who think my property is their business but theirs isn't mine.

So is it spite or something? Some person won’t let you build Kowloon walled city so now you need to punish them by ruining their home?

I’m 100% on your side if you want to build a giant condo block out on the outskirts, out in the middle of nowhere, or even in the middle of the city if the residents want you to.

All I’m saying is: the people who live in a city have a right to have say in what their city looks like, just like the residents of a country have a right to say who immigrates into their county. The government should work on behalf of the people who currently live in their city/state/country, not on behalf of people who want to move there.

If me and my neighbors don’t want you to build condos here, then leave us alone.

The government should work on behalf of the people who currently live in their city/state/country, not on behalf of people who want to move there.

The problem is of course, as soon as someone moves there, the government now should be representing their interests too no? If you and 30 neighbors don't want condos, then 50 people move in and decide condos would be just peachy, you are outvoted and the condos should be built. You don't get seniority for length of habitation. That seems to be the logical outcome of your position if it just based on the will of those who live there?

Yes exactly. If a bunch of people move into the neighborhood and then all collectively decide that they want to bulldoze the houses they own and build condos, that’s what they get to do.

And what a perfect analogy for immigration this is! And why limited, careful immigration policies are so important! An Irish Catholic with 3 kids and a mechanical engineering degree who wants to move to Texas and work at SpaceX to work on starship? Come on in, buddy!

A single 24 year old Muslim man from Somalia who thinks we should execute gay people, has no education whatsoever, and calls himself a refugee? No probably not, specifically because the first guy already shares the culture of the place he’s moving and won’t really change it, and the second guy doesn’t and will.

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Build new cities, then.

How? Are you just going to pick a random spot and build from scratch? History has not been kind to people who've tried to do this...

Irvine, California and The Villages seem to be doing pretty ok?

The Villages is near-100% dependent on fiscal transfers from working-age Americans.

Irvine, California is almost certainly a huge creator of surplus value.

Planned cities often work brilliantly.

That’s what everybody who settled this continent did. That’s what my ancestors did, and unless your family moved here in the last 150 years then that’s what your family did too. They moved out west and founded new cities because they were unwelcome and unable to make a living in the existing ones.

If they did stay in the eastern coastal cities they experienced absolute hatred by the people who lived there and they settled/formed new neighborhoods in undesirable parts of town either in industrial areas where they worked, or on the far exurbs.

Maybe your city is different. In my city, nobody is demanding new high density housing be built on currently barren undesirable land, they’re demanding that nice neighborhoods bulldoze houses and build condos.

It is not the exact same argument; you are missing a scale factor.

Imagine that a collection of nation-states has free movement within each state, and restrictions on movements between states. What works best? A world with 8 huge countries, each with a billion inhabitants, or a world with 800 small countries, each with 10 million inhabitants? Scale matters and there is something real to discuss. It is not the exact same argument at the different scales. There may well be a right size for a country, with strong borders and free movement inside.

Fairly big difference between 'maybe relax the restrictions on building new dwellings a bit' and 'to reduce the housing shortage, we're moving three more people in with every domicile since 'cause'. I'd say your vibe is more against the latter.

Some of us have children and growth is great for a nation.

Unless you were on the Mayflower there is a pretty good chance you were not the first person to live in your city.

My ancestors settled in the absolutely barren unwanted land in South Dakota. None of them showed up in Manhattan and demanded that somebody build them a house.

The myth of consensual housing

Purchaser: I consent!

Developer: I consent!

South Dakotan: I don't!

The question being discussed is, can people build housing on their own land? It seems a bit rich to cosplay the rugged frontiersman at the city council meeting to prevent people from exercising their god-given property rights.

What are you talking about?

I'm saying that our system of government allows people to vote on things. If the people who live in a town vote not to allow single family zoned lots to be turned into multifamily zoned lots, then they get to do that.

Similarly if the people who want to build giant condos want to build them, literally all they have to do is build them somewhere else that wants them.

This idea that a collective of people can decide what to do with the collective land that they own is pretty old.

I was responding to this:

Unless you were on the Mayflower there is a pretty good chance you were not the first person to live in your city.

I don't live in South Dakota, and never did. Eventually my ancestors moved away from there into various cities.

If you want to build condos, then I'm begging you: do it, but stop complaining because the place you want to build them doesn't want you to.

If you want to build condos, then I'm begging you: do it, but stop complaining because the place you want to build them doesn't want you to.

The problem is that people keep seething when even marginal changes are made to zoning, and people who want to build not even condos but somewhat smaller houses have to fight tooth and nail to exercise their property rights.

They don't want the condos in their neighborhood. Go build them somewhere else, and make the glorious condo utopia that the condo people imagine.

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Allowing individuals to built multi family on their private property is hardly demanding someone builds a house.

Happy for you that you have no desire to leave the land of your ancestors but many people do and we should have land use policies that allow for building.

One of the implications of the housing crisis is that many people who do want children are never going to be able to have them. It is extremely expensive to live even by yourself, let alone to support and provide for any children you may have.

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