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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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Without black people, the success of modern day America would not have been possible

Downthread there is a comment from @RandomRanger where he talks about how high income blacks are still just as criminal as low income whites, using this to argue that we shouldn't treat poor people of all races the same and that the negative effects of the black population today are so bad that putting them in the USA leads to social dysfunction as bad as that in modern day Russia.

It's quite heavily implied that blacks are a problem and their presence leads to a worse USA compared to a hypothetical counterfactual where they weren't there. I don't think this is quite right, I actually think an even stronger argument can be made for the exact opposite belief, namely that it is a direct consequence of having so many blacks that the USA is as advanced and developed as it is today and that a USA which never had them would be one where everyone (including whites) was much poorer today.

The argument itself is simple. Today the USA is much richer than other peer countries in Europe etc. because it has and has had for a long time significantly lower taxes and a much weaker redistributive welfare state compared to places like Sweden and the UK. This comparative lack of "democratic socialism" and a much lighter touch of the government on private enterprise has paid off in spades for the US which has gone from being only slightly more prosperous than the UK/France/Germany etc. to being significantly more so over the last few decades.

One perfectly valid question to ask is why did the USA not follow in the same footsteps as Europe when it came to implementing a very high tax and spend redistributive economy, which consequently lead to it becoming significantly richer per capita as the virtuous cycle paid off. My answer is simple: the US had too many black people for this sort of redistribution to be palatable to the ruling white classes. Hence the US escaped the economic havoc and destruction (compared to the counterfactual) such policies lead to in the long term and was able to grow and expand unshackled which eventually lead to everyone's living standards improving massively. Indeed as the tastes of the ruling class have changed and become more accepting of the sorts of behaviours displayed by low class black Americans so too have we heard louder and louder calls to redirect more and more money to the poor from those who might do something useful with it.

By now it's very well established empirically (just look at Europe) that when white people as a class get governmental power and there aren't too many lower class people around who have a very dissimilar modus vivendi that your average high status white would find disagreeable to fund they introduce "democratic socialism" and start taxing people/companies/transactions (discouraging innovation and hard work) and use the money to set up a welfare state (discouraging innovation and hard work). This predictably leads to less innovation and growth, which leads to large scale economic welfare loss for the population as a whole. The final result of this is that everyone ends up poorer and worse off, little different from the purported negative impact blacks have of the population as a whole.

Just like how blacks (as a class) have a direct negative impact on societal welfare through their elevated crime rate etc. wherever they are, whites (as a class) have a direct negative impact on societal welfare through their very high propensity to introduce "democratic socialism" wherever they are. Now of course there are lots of whites that don't think this way and are honest to goodness capitalists, but equally lots of blacks never steal or otherwise commit crimes. Just like the existance of such blacks doesn't mean blacks as a class don't cause large scale social damage through elevated crime incidences, the existance of such whites doesn't mean whites as a class don't cause large scale social damage through promoting bad economic policy.

Indeed because economic growth is contagious and spreads its boons all over the world, it's not just Americans who would be worse off if there were no blacks and consequently American whites had fallen to their instinctive impulses of taxing the productive to give to the unproductive. A lot of the high living standards around Europe and the rest of the world are due to techonologies that were developed and matured and brought to market due to substantial efffort from Americans safe in the knowledge that they would stand to personally benefit from its successes. Without this engine of growth and productivity in America it is well possible that the developed world in this alternate universe 2024 would still have living standards no higher than our world managed in the 1960s.

Many white nationalists are perfectly at home with noticing the bad consequences of black people as a class on the sum economic welfare of the USA. However they fail to notice the more pernicious but potentially even worse consequences of letting white people with their "lets minimise harm, even if it scuttles the economy" approach run rampant over the country like it would have done had there not been a large class of black people 100 years ago the whites were less happy to redistribute money towards.

Even if black presence lead to some opposition to welfare, it is anachronistic now to praise it since blacks have used their influence to promote more redistribution and have gotten a decent % of whites to go along with it, in addition to groups like Jews being supportive.

And then to add to those blacks and that share of whites have supported the party of mass migration and redistribution. We also had black nonwhites migrants who also support more redistribution and quotas.

The leftists who want mass migration for their goals are strategically smarter than a libertarian which believes it would benefit their political goals. Of course, the leftists are also wrong if they want certain societal metrics to improve. But in terms of more % of redistribution, then that is more likely to happen with more diversity. Maybe at best a small amount might lead to situations of limited welfare, but the coalition in favor of the specific diverse groups, did not only push for more goodies for their side, but also for changing the demographics as we have seen.

Plus, a right that tries to appeal to multiracial groups might become less anti welfare. And moreover, in a situation where such programs become entrenched and goverment is accustomed to high spending, who is to say that the eventual evolution of conservative establishment isn't to support more spending but with less racial criteria. Or at worst, to become the left as the Torries have done in Britain.

But in terms of more % of redistribution, then that is more likely to happen with more diversity.

They are not increasing diversity -- they are increasing demographic groups which promote redistribution, the effect that in current USA it increases diversity is purely coincidental. For countries which already have demographics which promotes redistribution, they don't want to change demographics.

I disagree. Biden outright promotes as a good thing to reduce white %. Racial ethnic animosity is part of it. It is also about the left winning politically.

It is true that the goal isn't diversity per se. It is about groups that are desirable vs undesirable group. If a place is say 100% black, there wouldn't be calls to make it more white, for example.

I'm sorry, I don't get the part on which we disagree, I do agree with this your comment.