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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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Why America's social policy is not helping the poor

There's a section of Youtube lately that is focusing on the faces of poverty in America. Not in a predatory way like 'get rich quick' influences, crypto scammers, and redpill adjacent-sphere individuals like Andrew Tate who are looking to exploit the desperate poor to make profit, but rather to shine a light on the mindset of poverty in America.

One of the most recent videos is by Andrew Callaghan interview and documentary about the Kia Boys, a group of young teenagers around New Haven notorious for stealing and lifting Kia's and Hyundais who had a vulnerability in their system allowing easy theft. It's a fascinating watch, but what's most interesting is how they want to spend the money they earn from carjacking. Not to support their families, not to pay for college or to get a GED, but rather to consume the latest fashion trends and to aspire to selfish hedonism.

Another youtuber is tackling American consumer debt and looks at how consumer choices end them in significant, and often insurmountable debt without extreme lifestyle and person changes. Caleb Hammer interviews people (in a fairly obnoxious and click-baity style) in significant loan and credit card debt, breaks down their finances, and tries to get them on a budget with a varying amount of success. The most common factor of the guests he has on his show is eating out- for most of his guests, almost 33% of most of their monthly income is eating out at various establishments and other spending that does not significantly increase their quality of life. Many of his guests would have significant personal income if they could have some self-control in their consumptive habits.

The problem America is currently facing is not entirely related to HBD, which is a low hanging fruit for discussing antisocial behavior. Rather, it is the culmination of various American policies which have created an underclass which sucks endless resources and only returns crime. It is plenty possible to gainfully employ low intelligence people into socially acceptable positions even as technology improves and our AI overlords come near. In fact, it would probably significantly increase the quality of life of many jobs having lower intelligence people working menial tasks to the best of their ability alongside more trained and capable individuals. The problem is that we have created a society in which there is not enough incentive or will to create the stability necessary to turn around these neighborhoods and communities.

This is the same problem America had in the occupation of Afganistan. A true occupation and social change would need significant more support and time than what the American politics around. It would probably need a full generation to be educated as well as an extreme prejudice to crackdown on Islamic extremism for Afganistan to actually significantly change, maybe 40-60 years.

Unfettered illegal immigration further strangles poverty-stricken America. The social resources are stretched thinner, to the point our politicians decided it's better to serve incoming illegals than their own constituents on the off-chance they're willing to work the menial jobs for well below livable wage for the area. Of course it helps the government are subsidizing migrants to the tune of $350 per day, or $127,750 per year per migrant which would launch them almost into the top 10% of earners in the United States.

So the question remains, what can be done? It's quite possible liberal policy is somewhat correct but doesn't go far enough. Instead of social security checks, benefits should be more tied between work programs and corporations. Imagine that individuals in section housing have to work at Amazon fulfilment centers. Perhaps the government and Amazon could strike up a deal that with enough workers, Amazon could lower the throughput per worker (to increase livability) in exchange for a tax subsidy to offset the cost of having to hire a non-optimum amount of workers. People in section housing could be bussed to the job, and also have regular police presence and social workers more intimately involved in their lives along with people helping them understand budgeting. It would require insane amounts of manpower, but it would also be the first step in actually beginning to address the problems of the slums.

Not to support their families, not to pay for college or to get a GED, but rather to consume the latest fashion trends and to aspire to selfish hedonism.

The age old technique of blaming social factors. Yet even if they wanted to support their families, seems like these Scholars would have done the crime anyways. The enemy is deliberately blocking out this reality.

It is plenty possible to gainfully employ low intelligence people into socially acceptable positions even as technology improves and our AI overlords come near.

Commies (which all of the enemy are) would disagree. See "manna" as a rat-adjacent example of the fully automated luxury space communism pov. But even if the low iq can be worked around, HBD includes a built-in criminality component that's the true elephant in the room.

The problem is that we have created a society in which there is not enough incentive or will to create the stability necessary to turn around these neighborhoods and communities.

Wealthy/high IQ Youths and Scholars end up in prison more then whitey does in dead end towns and abject poverty. HBD explains this far better than socioeconomic factors.

So the question remains, what can be done?

Concentration camps?

People in section housing could be bussed to the job, and also have regular police presence ... It would require insane amounts of manpower ...

I see we're in agreement on concentration camps. Work will make them free.

HBD explains this far better than socioeconomic factors.

HBD doesn't, in fact, explain why high IQ black people do worse than high/mid IQ white people. To my knowledge most HBD theory proposes that IQ is fully general, and higher average IQ should correlate with more pro-social, civilized behaviour in general - I've seen no theory for a separate "criminality gene" being fleshed out.

"Identifying with a criminal culture", on the other hand, does explain rather well why high-IQ black people are disproportionately likely to go to prison, for me at least. (I know that criminal culture exists. I know that if you act according to criminal culture, you're more likely to go to prison than if you acted according to prosocial culture, IQ being the same. I do not, however, know if there is a criminality gene orthogonal to IQ.) This is without going into the anti-black racism theory.

why high IQ black people do worse than high/mid IQ white people

Regression to mean: children of rich high IQ blacks regress to mean and thus end having lower IQs that children of rich high IQ whites. If you correlate this with individual's IQ instead of parents' IQ or SES, you get much smaller racial gap.

and higher average IQ should correlate with more pro-social,

Consider than men are more criminal than women even if they have equal or slightly higher IQs than women, Among dog breeds, Huskies are stupid but rarely kill people, Pitbulls are smarter but kill people on regular basis.

I've seen no theory for a separate "criminality gene" being fleshed out.

congratulations on anti-HBD people running successful campaign on obfuscation

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11126-013-9287-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10802-013-9791-3

"Identifying with a criminal culture",

It definitely exists and it's partly downstream of genetics.

orthogonal to IQ.

nobody suggesting it's orthogonal

Among dog breeds, Huskies are stupid but rarely kill people, Pitbulls are smarter but kill people on regular basis.

I’m pretty sure huskies are smarter than pit bulls.

Hhhhm i would like a good source on this

Your argument doesn’t really make sense. Young men in poor urban black communities in the US have higher rates of violent criminal behavior than any black population on earth other than maybe Haitians. West African nations, even many black Caribbean countries, have much lower violent crime rates than these communities in St Louis, New Orleans and Baltimore, despite the fact that they have higher birthrates than African Americans, meaning they have more young men as a proportion of the population. Saying “well it’s HBD, nothing we can do about it [except become wignat separatists, presumably]” just isn’t true.

It isn’t a denial of HBD to suggest that these communities have specific dysfunctions, likely enabled by legal and social changes that were predominantly enacted by non-black politicians, entertainers and businessmen, that are not the natural destiny of their inhabitants per se.

Your argument doesn’t really make sense.

Really? Do you object to that part that MAOA & DRD4 genes associated with climinality too?

specific dysfunctions, likely enabled by legal and social changes that were predominantly enacted by non-black politicians, entertainers and businessmen, that are not the natural destiny of their inhabitants per se.

I agree about this, but even if this this get fixed, we won't see B-W gap in USA disappear.

Why South Africa, Botswana and Nigeria officially report higher homicide rates (and by large margin) than less functional African countries? Low crime in African countries is suspect.

Homicide rates are relatively hard to obfuscate and I suspect that rates in cities like Accra and Windhoek are broadly accurate. Again, these rates are still much higher than in Western Europe, but well below rates in St Louis, New Orleans and Baltimore. Lagos reported 350 murders in 2022 in a city of 15 million (of whom practically all are African), that year St Louis reported 200 murders in a city of 300,000 (of whom only 150k are black). While it's likely more homicides slipped under the radar in Lagos than in St Louis, West African cities would have to miss the vast majority of homicides to come close to the US' most violent cities. Having spent a lot of time in Africa, even poorer people in big cities would report these kinds of deaths, even if they have little belief in the competence of the police to solve them.

I agree that the gap closing appears unlikely, but reducing homicide rates in these cities to West African levels would still be a big improvement.

You answered neither of 2 my questions!

that year St Louis reported 200 murders in a city of 300,000 (of whom only 150k are black).

looks like you're showing number of murders for greater St. Louis (which is 3 million) with figure of population of St. Louis city.

why Nigeria reports more 10x homicide rate than Ghana, which it shares border with? Is 0.3 homicide rate per 100k for Senegal in 2015 close to truth?

Nigeria has ongoing sectarian conflict with Islamist terrorists in the North and Northeast and between Fulani pastoralists and settled people that involve hundreds of murders on a very regular basis (all of which are recorded by the military). The US murder rate also spiked in 2001 for obvious reasons.

Do you believe the true homicide rate in West Africa is on the order of 50-90 per 100k as in these high crime American cities? What do you think the ballpark figure is?

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