In my view the immigrants are less the problem in the US than the coastal elites who favor them. In Europe I think it’s different. Immigration there is going to cause a lot more problems.
I don't think assimilation is the primary question, although it is a big one. I think the primary question is whether or not we are enforcing our own written rules and norms, and that is upstream of what immigrants are assimilating to.
Europe maybe a bit different, although the UK examples make me wonder, but in the US we have in many places seemingly given up on enforcing property laws on even our own citizens, for example. Even if we took immigration down to zero we would still have rampant theft and destruction of property, not to mention the violence in cities like Chicago. The underclass criminal culture has thus been not only tolerated but encouraged, not only through media but also government tolerance and active political encouragement, and we are seeing the results.
Now add immigrants back in, and ask "Into which local culture do they assimilate, the middle class who value hard work, education and respect for others' property, or the underclass who see work as a sucker's game and a life of crime as high status?" Then ask the same about their teenage boys.
I would say our primary problems are home grown, and immigration only makes it a bit worse.
I think it is worth noting that the seriously unenforced property laws are almost entirely on the west coast and a handful of other locations, mostly on the East Coast. While other locations are not without their problems, most of the US is trying to protect property.
Similarly, parts of Chicago have a very serious violent crime problem but most don't. David Brooks reported on murder data collected by neighborhood. Most Chicago neighborhoods had one or zero murders.
That’s true, the worst problems are confined to the cities by and large. That also seems to be where most immigrants show up, so I think the point holds that assimilation into bad native cultures is a big problem, one rooted in the bad native culture that is allowed to spread.
The worst problems aren't immigrants and I'm not convinced that immigrants are larger percentage of the population in cities. Just ask the people of Beardstown, IL.
Either way, you are implying causation based on a correlation. Give me some real evidence.
I feel like you didn't really read my original post where I specify that immigration problems are downstream of native culture problems. My contention is that unenforced basic laws lead to a local native culture of criminality which causes plenty of problems on its own, and the immigration issue comes in not because immigrants don't assimilate but because immigrants assimilate to the bad native culture instead of the better ones we would prefer. As a result, the percentage of immigrants in cities isn't the relevant metric, but the percentage of immigrants that adopt the bad cultural norms which are prevalent in cities.
I read that but maybe it didn't register how central it was to your comment(s). Regardless, I'm not convinced that immigrants are assimilating to bad culture more than not.
There is a complicating factor too. Immigrants are different in that many are slow to assimilate or don't.
"The results are similar to our other work on illegal immigration and crime in Texas. In 2018, the illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 782 per 100,000 illegal immigrants, 535 per 100,000 legal immigrants, and 1,422 per 100,000 native-born Americans. The illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 45 percent below that of native-born Americans in Texas. The general pattern of native-born Americans having the highest criminal conviction rates followed by illegal immigrants and then with legal immigrants having the lowest holds for all of other specific types of crimes such as violent crimes, property crimes, homicide, and sex crimes."
We’ve been over Cato’s fondness for the Texas data because it only captures people identified as illegal at time of arrest or intake at the jail. The police officers of a city like Austin certainly do not inquire about immigration status, and it forms no part of local crime reporting, for instance.
But that has not been interesting before, so presumably is no more so at present.
In 30 years or so, Texas will be majority Hispanic. Do you believe that there will be less crime at that point? Is that your conclusion from looking at Mexico, at El Salvador?
If there should be more crime at that point (and in the unlikely event data is collected about it) - will the explanation still be “adjusting to American norms”? And will 2nd, 3rd etc generation Hispanics still be carved out of those “norms”?
The impression that I get is that Latin Americans tend to be more well-behaved under US institutions than they often are back in their home countries, possibly because the US has much stronger state capacity relative to their home countries and also possibly because there is some selection going on for less violent Latin Americans (the violent ones presumably get deported, at least in many cases, if they are first-generation immigrants and have not yet acquired US citizenship?).
1 I see no reason to assume crime rates for any immigrants based on what country they are from.
2 Hispanics in the US currently commit violent crime in approximately equal proportion to their percent of the population. The children and grandchildren of current Hispanic immigrants might drive that number upwards or downwards but I see no reason to predict it will change significantly.
But it is natural enough to feel charitable toward your own, so to speak.
It is obviously foolish to worship the culture of the underclass as our elite does.
But to worship it while with the other hand seeking to replace it - is ... cynical at the very least. Something nearer to evil, I'd say, though it is so hard to describe what's at the bottom of it.
I agree there will always be an underclass, but that underclass doesn't need to also be highly criminal. Criminal behavior tends to make you poor, but being poor doesn't make you criminal. I think that worship as you put it does not make the distinction between poor and criminal, and in fact rather approves of the criminal as striking back against the man, despite that fact that criminal behavior vastly targets other poor members of the community and not the wealthy. Well, I say despite, but maybe in fact it is because of.
I am not sure on the replacement point. I am not sure there is much concern for changing the underclass as opposed to ensuring there is a lot of it for various reasons.
Our worst bad apples, on average, are black American descendants of slaves. Most immigrants to the US aren't black (or Muslim), and a lot of the ones who are black are elites.
I disagree. The unwritten rules are important, yes, but when the written rules can’t even be followed you a huge problem. Society can subsist when the basic rules of commutative justice are followed, but when even those are ignored it all falls apart.
What is the conjunctive sentence you have in mind here? I am saying two things are important, but one is more important, upstream of the other problem. Did you have something different in mind?
Both kinds of rules exist at the same time. One is not upstream of the other. The different kinds of rules exist because different personalities react differently to the different kinds of rules. It’s a dance, not a parade.
Of course both sets of rules exist at the same time; indeed that is implied by the statement that they are in the same stream as each other. The existence of written rules and unwritten rules has nothing to do with how personalities react to them I don't think, but rather that some rules are definable such that we are comfortable with more severe punishment but other rules are more vague and hard to pin down, and so lead to more disagreement.
If you want to argue that soft norms like “call the police and demand prosecutors do their job to prosecute criminals” are the issue, ok I will agree, as that is my point more or less. I am focusing on the written rules because those are much more clear and easy to enforce, as well as being extremely basic rules every society has a version of. That we can’t enforce “do not steal “ seems bigger than social norms that we don’t have written law for.
It's a big issue that prosecutors are wildly underpaid, prisons underbuilt (at least to perform their perhaps questionable missions), and that the government has a monopoly on it. We treat it as an unmoving fact of the universe that only the state can prosecute crimes, but there's a long history of private prosecution in the west, in the US, the pre-US colonies, and in England. See PRIVATE PROSECUTION: A REMEDY FOR DISTRICT
Agreed in general. The government allocates far too little of its resources towards criminal justice at all levels. The massive move away from state courts to private arbitration among businesses over the past decades is surely a symptom of how bad that is.
It seems to me to be the primary example of poor state priorities as opposed to state capacity. There is money and ability to enforce laws (not only do we have a strong history of it, but we also see some laws prosecuted vigorously while others languish), but money and action are directed elsewhere instead.
Re: "Liberalism’s sustainability problem is, then, as follows. Liberals cannot impose a fitness-enhancing vision of the good life without violating their commitment to pluralism and individual liberty, so they must tolerate ways of life that minimize fitness. [... .] Liberalism seems ill-prepared to deal with the long-term challenges it faces. These challenges include mass urbanization, mass immigration, and the adoption of values that lead to subreplacement fertility (which prevents biocultural continuity) and declining social trust (which hinders sociopolitical cooperation and weakens the competitiveness of liberal states in the international sphere). [... .] Religion and nationalism are powerful forces. They can lead to conflict within and between groups, but they also seem to promote fertility and adaptive cooperation better than liberal political societies do." — J. Anomaly & F. N. Faria, "Can Liberalism Last?", at pp, 537 & 543, un-gated here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-philosophy-and-policy/latest-is
The authors squarely tackle big questions. Let me make two partial empirical qualifications to their theses, and raise a hopeful note of an under-utilized political resource within liberalism.
1) The trend to sub-replacement birth-rates is not peculiar to liberal polities. For example, see China. The adverse birth-rate trend is a broader problem of modernity. The authors suggest that non-liberal societies have more options to restore birth-rates. I am skeptical, but time will tell.
2) There are examples of more-or-less liberal polities, which embrace international trade, but largely block immigration. For example, see Japan. Might a wise liberal polity recognize that international trade and immigration may be "substitutes" to a crucial extent?
Alternatively, might a wise, yet fairly open immigration policy deliberately exercise *selection* (admission) to limit any major concentration of a potentially rival culture, ethnicity, or religion?
3) There are some unduly neglected principles of political structure within liberalism: Subsidiarity, decentralization, and "exit" options. A polity that prioritizes these principles can achieve more trust, legitimacy, local knowledge in policy, and experimentation in ways of living. Is it too much to hope that a determined commitment to these principles might do much to meet the challenges of sub-replacement fertility and decline in social trust,?
What is odd about the Anomany-Fariia take on immigration is to ignore the economics! That voters may want less immigration than is economically optimal is no more a fundamental flaw than wanting fewer imports. They take the same moralizing stance as some immigration advocates who treat it exclusively as a matter of justice/humanity.
Also how well immigrants assimilate does not depend exclusively on the traits the (self selected) immigrants bring, but on how they are received. One hears that in Europe it was less understood that immigrants were expected to observe basic social norms from the beginning, that societies could become "multicultural." Of course it is a somewhat fine line between some accommodation to facilitate assimilation and cultural semi-isolation.
I think it's likely that immigrants will assimilate, but they won't be assimilating to norms you would prefer.
Immigrants at the low end for instance tend to assimilate to what might be called "black culture" in the US. Even lower class whites are assimilating to it. In Europe is seems like Muslims do become less religious, but this only makes them more thuggish.
On the high end Asians seem to assimilate to brahmin left norms.
Both of these are hostile to conservative middle class white society.
You say a lot of things that are racist and I disagree with but here you say something sounding racist even though I don't think it's really what you mean. You say "white society" where I think it would be less offensive and more accurate to say majority culture. There are lots of racial and religious minority people who have assimilated into the majority culture. Calling it white is problematic and I urge you to avoid that.
Black youth who beat up the Black kids who study call studying “too white” not “too majority”.
Until Black thugs change their insults, White is more accurate than majority, and opposition to anti-whiteness folk should be as celebrated as anti-racists.
I went back and reread his post. He uses the term "black culture" once. Some might find that offensive or racist. I don't. It identifies a stereotypical behavior. I find it much like your example of acting white. Neither is perfectly accurate but they work well. And maybe someone else could make a compelling argument that those terms shouldn't be used. IDK.
My complaint was specifically against "white society." While it overlaps with white culture, it isn't the same. ... I was going to try to explain further but I can't. And maybe my bias against him is so strong I see something not there. IDK. But I still think he'd be better off not calling it white society.
I don't know, but I am not sure how much we can stand the strain of people both culturally and perhaps mentally "closed" coming in droves for purely materialistic reasons.
To give another example, in some sense from the "other direction" though of course really not: I was a census enumerator in 2009. My job was to go late in the process to the houses that were known or thought to be inhabited dwellings, that had not sent in their census form, or completed it online [I *think* there was an online option then, though I have forgotten; interestingly, I didn't work the Census in 2019, and waited to get something in the mail or an online form to fill out but never did - not sure if was all done "statistically" this time, or if we were just missed; or if they *really* don't want (us) to know what the population is.]
Anyway, one day I had something called the "Davenport Ranch" area to do. This was a development of surpassing ugliness but fairly affluent, in or just west of Austin proper. I went to my addresses one by one. I had grown used to old or crazy people answering the door, a pile of mail 3-feet high on the console table glimpsed behind them, where presumably lay their census form.
A lot of times Fox News was blaring in the background; for some reason known to themselves that outlet was crusading on the theme of "don't participate in the Census, no one can make you, it was unconstitutional", etc. I can't know why a supposedly right-leaning entity would not wish for us to have no accurate data about population, but I can guess - that it would no more behoove them to know this information, than it would the Dems, given their commitments. And it made for a rousing and purely fake feeling of rebellion: useful.
So we got a lot of demented and susceptible people wishing to school us on their newfound knowledge on this subject. In that case, we of course tried to simply learn the number of people in the dwelling, and let it go.
This feeling got one Census enumerator in our area shot. My worst day was a laughing guy who set a pack of dogs on me, in Westlake Hills of all places.
And I was cute then.
Anyway, I rang the bell at one of those unfortunate 80s/90s Davenport Ranch houses. An older, heavily accented Pakistani lady answered. With sinking heart I heard Bill O'Reilly in the background. Sure enough, she delivered me a lecture about how the Census was illegal, and slammed the door on me as I tried the "if you could only just give me a number of people who live here, nothing more" business.
And this is not fair, perhaps. She was far from the first person, obviously, who had responded this way - though she was one of the few who could not be brought round to give me that simple number.
And yet, I remember some extra resentment on my part. I thought: I cannot imagine showing up in someone else's country (presumably due to chain migration), taking up residence there uninvited - and expecting to share in the political life of the country, or schooling people *about* their country. The chutzpah of it! Do I only feel this way because I am a conservative? Are people so fungible to the bien pensant that my view is singular?
I don't want "assimilation". I don't know that I've ever seen that. I want diversity, not homogeneity, in the world - in its full meaning.
Of course, I am sure. We are not up to the strain. Who would be? The newcomers are just producing sprawl slums on what was once agricultural land. And giving ammunition to the dam builders and road builders and other predators of the public purse.
I just finished listening to an old Freakonomics Radio podcast about the Pope speaking against capitalism and markets. Back then, it was my understanding, or I was coerced to believe, that he was against capitalism. In this podcast, Jeffrey Sachs and another academic both say the Pope likes markets, he is just pointing out where we need to improve. Somehow this is related to your point, if not exactly the same thing.
There is reality, where we all live. So rational interlocutors have a place for agreement.
Communism is fine...for the immediate family. Parents sacrifice for offspring.
In tribe or village, socialism is acceptable. Though he's not the best, the blacksmith is needed, so one gives him two fish for a one-fish knife. In anonymous big city, few repeat engagements. Value is communicated in market prices.
Remember the Pope starts from Christian doctrine, and circumscribed Medieval world. Not yet the big city of the Renaissance, much less Age of Exploration which births global free market.
-------------------------------------------
Man is a social animal, alone a timid forager but deadly in groups. Works together.
So the issue is proper jobs of government, and how much GDP we allow for that. Everything else is quibbling around the edges, until that is agreed.
Alas, no politicians will ever engage in those terms.
Liberalism requires Rule of Law, which requires enforcement. Punishment for those who break the law, like illegal alien immigrants or shoplifters of all kinds.
If Liberals oppose enforcing laws, they destroy a key virtue of “Liberalism”. Anti-liberalists who support law enforcement support the Rule of Law virtue, often claimed as part of Liberalism, more than Liberals who oppose enforcing laws they don’t like.
Well, condemning a lot of people to poverty, misery, and/or oppression (more than strictly "necessary") causes the left to be skeptical of immigration restrictions, at least the way that they look right now.
Sure, and I don't want the West to become unattractive for cognitive elites either. So, my own policy would be open borders for cognitive elites and accepting however many working-class immigrants we reasonably can on top of that.
We have too many cognitive elites in this country already. At least, they think they are. I would rather admit on the basis of gumption. Truthfully, I have a sneaky admiration for the illegals, at least the ones who manage to make it through some really difficult obstacles to get here.
Anomaly/Faria seem to be referring to American liberals more than Rauch who seemed to be referring to classical liberals. I'm not sure I interpret that correctly and I'm not sure it matters in regards to their intention but it probably doesn't impact the point I want to make.
Both seem to speak against a society being entirely liberal. In this I agree. But I don't want it entirely not liberal either. This is who we are as a country, divided between those who want more conservative, less liberal, and the reverse. I don't know what the right balance is but this mash up of two approaches is good. And I think it is good we struggle over finding the right balance.
I am reminded of 90% chimp, 10% bee. We need both. I've also heard something regarding it being good that most people follow the rules but we want a few rule-breakers of various sorts to show us how our existing rules could be better. Oddly, that seems more like 90% bee, 10% chimp to me but maybe that's part of the difficulty too.
"The challenge is to keep that segment of Muslim immigrants as small and insignificant as possible."
It is not a challenge. While I think the odds greatly favor the number of Muslim immigrants who hate western society remaining small, I don't think it will be the result of any intentional policies to make it happen.
I tried to follow the link, but it took me to "Page not found" at the Fake Nous site. I tried searching the site for the word "unsustainable", which occurs in the passage quoted at the beginning of this post, but nothing was found. Is the piece still up, and, if so, could the link be fixed?
Reading just the abstract and intro, it seems they are very much in favor of liberalism, just with concerns about fertility and social trust. Personally, I see the fertility issue being correlated but mostly or entirely not caused by liberalism except to the extent that liberalism has made us all wealthier.
Anyway, though, AI could eventually make many of us obsolete, even among the smart people. Should we then avoid having smart immigration as well?
Interestingly enough, AI could also potentially eventually produce such an extraordinarily massive productivity boom that will compensate for low-skilled immigrants being a net fiscal drain.
But what if the result of AI productivity is a human population that does not have the opportunity to work? Humans need to have a motiving purpose in order to have a meaningful life, and for most people, that involves productive work.
Wikipedia is fairly easy to edit. And there are a lot of topics that still need their own Wikipedia articles.
Just make sure to push for the repeal of Wikipedia's policy that automatically bans people who exhibit even the slightest attraction to minors from Wikipedia, even if they have never caused any trouble on Wikipedia.
Most people don’t care about Wikipedia. Or websites, books, or blogs. But they still need purpose. Work, even boring work, has a purpose, even if it’s only to make enough money to buy the beer. What happens when the beer is free?
In my view the immigrants are less the problem in the US than the coastal elites who favor them. In Europe I think it’s different. Immigration there is going to cause a lot more problems.
The problem with the coastal elites is their support of Black Lives Matter and race denialism.
I don't think assimilation is the primary question, although it is a big one. I think the primary question is whether or not we are enforcing our own written rules and norms, and that is upstream of what immigrants are assimilating to.
Europe maybe a bit different, although the UK examples make me wonder, but in the US we have in many places seemingly given up on enforcing property laws on even our own citizens, for example. Even if we took immigration down to zero we would still have rampant theft and destruction of property, not to mention the violence in cities like Chicago. The underclass criminal culture has thus been not only tolerated but encouraged, not only through media but also government tolerance and active political encouragement, and we are seeing the results.
Now add immigrants back in, and ask "Into which local culture do they assimilate, the middle class who value hard work, education and respect for others' property, or the underclass who see work as a sucker's game and a life of crime as high status?" Then ask the same about their teenage boys.
I would say our primary problems are home grown, and immigration only makes it a bit worse.
I think it is worth noting that the seriously unenforced property laws are almost entirely on the west coast and a handful of other locations, mostly on the East Coast. While other locations are not without their problems, most of the US is trying to protect property.
Similarly, parts of Chicago have a very serious violent crime problem but most don't. David Brooks reported on murder data collected by neighborhood. Most Chicago neighborhoods had one or zero murders.
That’s true, the worst problems are confined to the cities by and large. That also seems to be where most immigrants show up, so I think the point holds that assimilation into bad native cultures is a big problem, one rooted in the bad native culture that is allowed to spread.
The worst problems aren't immigrants and I'm not convinced that immigrants are larger percentage of the population in cities. Just ask the people of Beardstown, IL.
Either way, you are implying causation based on a correlation. Give me some real evidence.
I feel like you didn't really read my original post where I specify that immigration problems are downstream of native culture problems. My contention is that unenforced basic laws lead to a local native culture of criminality which causes plenty of problems on its own, and the immigration issue comes in not because immigrants don't assimilate but because immigrants assimilate to the bad native culture instead of the better ones we would prefer. As a result, the percentage of immigrants in cities isn't the relevant metric, but the percentage of immigrants that adopt the bad cultural norms which are prevalent in cities.
I read that but maybe it didn't register how central it was to your comment(s). Regardless, I'm not convinced that immigrants are assimilating to bad culture more than not.
There is a complicating factor too. Immigrants are different in that many are slow to assimilate or don't.
"The results are similar to our other work on illegal immigration and crime in Texas. In 2018, the illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 782 per 100,000 illegal immigrants, 535 per 100,000 legal immigrants, and 1,422 per 100,000 native-born Americans. The illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 45 percent below that of native-born Americans in Texas. The general pattern of native-born Americans having the highest criminal conviction rates followed by illegal immigrants and then with legal immigrants having the lowest holds for all of other specific types of crimes such as violent crimes, property crimes, homicide, and sex crimes."
https://www.cato.org/blog/new-research-illegal-immigration-crime-0
We’ve been over Cato’s fondness for the Texas data because it only captures people identified as illegal at time of arrest or intake at the jail. The police officers of a city like Austin certainly do not inquire about immigration status, and it forms no part of local crime reporting, for instance.
But that has not been interesting before, so presumably is no more so at present.
In 30 years or so, Texas will be majority Hispanic. Do you believe that there will be less crime at that point? Is that your conclusion from looking at Mexico, at El Salvador?
If there should be more crime at that point (and in the unlikely event data is collected about it) - will the explanation still be “adjusting to American norms”? And will 2nd, 3rd etc generation Hispanics still be carved out of those “norms”?
The impression that I get is that Latin Americans tend to be more well-behaved under US institutions than they often are back in their home countries, possibly because the US has much stronger state capacity relative to their home countries and also possibly because there is some selection going on for less violent Latin Americans (the violent ones presumably get deported, at least in many cases, if they are first-generation immigrants and have not yet acquired US citizenship?).
1 I see no reason to assume crime rates for any immigrants based on what country they are from.
2 Hispanics in the US currently commit violent crime in approximately equal proportion to their percent of the population. The children and grandchildren of current Hispanic immigrants might drive that number upwards or downwards but I see no reason to predict it will change significantly.
There will always be an underclass though.
But it is natural enough to feel charitable toward your own, so to speak.
It is obviously foolish to worship the culture of the underclass as our elite does.
But to worship it while with the other hand seeking to replace it - is ... cynical at the very least. Something nearer to evil, I'd say, though it is so hard to describe what's at the bottom of it.
I agree there will always be an underclass, but that underclass doesn't need to also be highly criminal. Criminal behavior tends to make you poor, but being poor doesn't make you criminal. I think that worship as you put it does not make the distinction between poor and criminal, and in fact rather approves of the criminal as striking back against the man, despite that fact that criminal behavior vastly targets other poor members of the community and not the wealthy. Well, I say despite, but maybe in fact it is because of.
I am not sure on the replacement point. I am not sure there is much concern for changing the underclass as opposed to ensuring there is a lot of it for various reasons.
Overstated, but the principle is the same. Law enforcement is also an economic issue.
Our worst bad apples, on average, are black American descendants of slaves. Most immigrants to the US aren't black (or Muslim), and a lot of the ones who are black are elites.
I disagree. The unwritten rules are important, yes, but when the written rules can’t even be followed you a huge problem. Society can subsist when the basic rules of commutative justice are followed, but when even those are ignored it all falls apart.
As Glenn Reynolds says, “embrace the power of “and””.
What is the conjunctive sentence you have in mind here? I am saying two things are important, but one is more important, upstream of the other problem. Did you have something different in mind?
Both kinds of rules exist at the same time. One is not upstream of the other. The different kinds of rules exist because different personalities react differently to the different kinds of rules. It’s a dance, not a parade.
Of course both sets of rules exist at the same time; indeed that is implied by the statement that they are in the same stream as each other. The existence of written rules and unwritten rules has nothing to do with how personalities react to them I don't think, but rather that some rules are definable such that we are comfortable with more severe punishment but other rules are more vague and hard to pin down, and so lead to more disagreement.
It seems to me you two are having a fight over what's the chicken and what's the egg.
If you want to argue that soft norms like “call the police and demand prosecutors do their job to prosecute criminals” are the issue, ok I will agree, as that is my point more or less. I am focusing on the written rules because those are much more clear and easy to enforce, as well as being extremely basic rules every society has a version of. That we can’t enforce “do not steal “ seems bigger than social norms that we don’t have written law for.
It's a big issue that prosecutors are wildly underpaid, prisons underbuilt (at least to perform their perhaps questionable missions), and that the government has a monopoly on it. We treat it as an unmoving fact of the universe that only the state can prosecute crimes, but there's a long history of private prosecution in the west, in the US, the pre-US colonies, and in England. See PRIVATE PROSECUTION: A REMEDY FOR DISTRICT
ATTORNEYS' UNWARRANTED INACTION from the Yale Law Journal: https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/14206/22_65YaleLJ209_December1955_.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y -- scroll to page 218 to get to the part about the history of the private prosecutor.
Like a lot of things controlled by state monopolies, service tends to degrade, and the enforcement of criminal law isn't an exception to the rule.
Agreed in general. The government allocates far too little of its resources towards criminal justice at all levels. The massive move away from state courts to private arbitration among businesses over the past decades is surely a symptom of how bad that is.
It seems to me to be the primary example of poor state priorities as opposed to state capacity. There is money and ability to enforce laws (not only do we have a strong history of it, but we also see some laws prosecuted vigorously while others languish), but money and action are directed elsewhere instead.
If liberalism is a dead end, are Muslims immigrants right to resist assimilation into it? That is the question.
Without oil money, would Islam have found itself at a dead end?
Will Muslims in Europe assimilate? Is that a serious question? If so, the answer is "Not a chance."
The elites could, potentially. The proles? Yeah, significantly less odds.
Re: "Liberalism’s sustainability problem is, then, as follows. Liberals cannot impose a fitness-enhancing vision of the good life without violating their commitment to pluralism and individual liberty, so they must tolerate ways of life that minimize fitness. [... .] Liberalism seems ill-prepared to deal with the long-term challenges it faces. These challenges include mass urbanization, mass immigration, and the adoption of values that lead to subreplacement fertility (which prevents biocultural continuity) and declining social trust (which hinders sociopolitical cooperation and weakens the competitiveness of liberal states in the international sphere). [... .] Religion and nationalism are powerful forces. They can lead to conflict within and between groups, but they also seem to promote fertility and adaptive cooperation better than liberal political societies do." — J. Anomaly & F. N. Faria, "Can Liberalism Last?", at pp, 537 & 543, un-gated here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-philosophy-and-policy/latest-is
The authors squarely tackle big questions. Let me make two partial empirical qualifications to their theses, and raise a hopeful note of an under-utilized political resource within liberalism.
1) The trend to sub-replacement birth-rates is not peculiar to liberal polities. For example, see China. The adverse birth-rate trend is a broader problem of modernity. The authors suggest that non-liberal societies have more options to restore birth-rates. I am skeptical, but time will tell.
2) There are examples of more-or-less liberal polities, which embrace international trade, but largely block immigration. For example, see Japan. Might a wise liberal polity recognize that international trade and immigration may be "substitutes" to a crucial extent?
Alternatively, might a wise, yet fairly open immigration policy deliberately exercise *selection* (admission) to limit any major concentration of a potentially rival culture, ethnicity, or religion?
3) There are some unduly neglected principles of political structure within liberalism: Subsidiarity, decentralization, and "exit" options. A polity that prioritizes these principles can achieve more trust, legitimacy, local knowledge in policy, and experimentation in ways of living. Is it too much to hope that a determined commitment to these principles might do much to meet the challenges of sub-replacement fertility and decline in social trust,?
Selecting our Muslim and African immigrants is certainly a great idea!
What is odd about the Anomany-Fariia take on immigration is to ignore the economics! That voters may want less immigration than is economically optimal is no more a fundamental flaw than wanting fewer imports. They take the same moralizing stance as some immigration advocates who treat it exclusively as a matter of justice/humanity.
Also how well immigrants assimilate does not depend exclusively on the traits the (self selected) immigrants bring, but on how they are received. One hears that in Europe it was less understood that immigrants were expected to observe basic social norms from the beginning, that societies could become "multicultural." Of course it is a somewhat fine line between some accommodation to facilitate assimilation and cultural semi-isolation.
How much low-skilled immigration do you think that we should have?
I think it's likely that immigrants will assimilate, but they won't be assimilating to norms you would prefer.
Immigrants at the low end for instance tend to assimilate to what might be called "black culture" in the US. Even lower class whites are assimilating to it. In Europe is seems like Muslims do become less religious, but this only makes them more thuggish.
On the high end Asians seem to assimilate to brahmin left norms.
Both of these are hostile to conservative middle class white society.
"Prefer" is too benign. Fit for discussion between people with mutual respect.
Not for savages seeking to destroy a civilized culture.
History is replete with empires and barbarians. Rome fell in 476 AD.
Constantinople held a millennium longer, saving the West from those same savages.
You say a lot of things that are racist and I disagree with but here you say something sounding racist even though I don't think it's really what you mean. You say "white society" where I think it would be less offensive and more accurate to say majority culture. There are lots of racial and religious minority people who have assimilated into the majority culture. Calling it white is problematic and I urge you to avoid that.
Black youth who beat up the Black kids who study call studying “too white” not “too majority”.
Until Black thugs change their insults, White is more accurate than majority, and opposition to anti-whiteness folk should be as celebrated as anti-racists.
I went back and reread his post. He uses the term "black culture" once. Some might find that offensive or racist. I don't. It identifies a stereotypical behavior. I find it much like your example of acting white. Neither is perfectly accurate but they work well. And maybe someone else could make a compelling argument that those terms shouldn't be used. IDK.
My complaint was specifically against "white society." While it overlaps with white culture, it isn't the same. ... I was going to try to explain further but I can't. And maybe my bias against him is so strong I see something not there. IDK. But I still think he'd be better off not calling it white society.
I don't know, but I am not sure how much we can stand the strain of people both culturally and perhaps mentally "closed" coming in droves for purely materialistic reasons.
To give another example, in some sense from the "other direction" though of course really not: I was a census enumerator in 2009. My job was to go late in the process to the houses that were known or thought to be inhabited dwellings, that had not sent in their census form, or completed it online [I *think* there was an online option then, though I have forgotten; interestingly, I didn't work the Census in 2019, and waited to get something in the mail or an online form to fill out but never did - not sure if was all done "statistically" this time, or if we were just missed; or if they *really* don't want (us) to know what the population is.]
Anyway, one day I had something called the "Davenport Ranch" area to do. This was a development of surpassing ugliness but fairly affluent, in or just west of Austin proper. I went to my addresses one by one. I had grown used to old or crazy people answering the door, a pile of mail 3-feet high on the console table glimpsed behind them, where presumably lay their census form.
A lot of times Fox News was blaring in the background; for some reason known to themselves that outlet was crusading on the theme of "don't participate in the Census, no one can make you, it was unconstitutional", etc. I can't know why a supposedly right-leaning entity would not wish for us to have no accurate data about population, but I can guess - that it would no more behoove them to know this information, than it would the Dems, given their commitments. And it made for a rousing and purely fake feeling of rebellion: useful.
So we got a lot of demented and susceptible people wishing to school us on their newfound knowledge on this subject. In that case, we of course tried to simply learn the number of people in the dwelling, and let it go.
This feeling got one Census enumerator in our area shot. My worst day was a laughing guy who set a pack of dogs on me, in Westlake Hills of all places.
And I was cute then.
Anyway, I rang the bell at one of those unfortunate 80s/90s Davenport Ranch houses. An older, heavily accented Pakistani lady answered. With sinking heart I heard Bill O'Reilly in the background. Sure enough, she delivered me a lecture about how the Census was illegal, and slammed the door on me as I tried the "if you could only just give me a number of people who live here, nothing more" business.
And this is not fair, perhaps. She was far from the first person, obviously, who had responded this way - though she was one of the few who could not be brought round to give me that simple number.
And yet, I remember some extra resentment on my part. I thought: I cannot imagine showing up in someone else's country (presumably due to chain migration), taking up residence there uninvited - and expecting to share in the political life of the country, or schooling people *about* their country. The chutzpah of it! Do I only feel this way because I am a conservative? Are people so fungible to the bien pensant that my view is singular?
I don't want "assimilation". I don't know that I've ever seen that. I want diversity, not homogeneity, in the world - in its full meaning.
Of course, I am sure. We are not up to the strain. Who would be? The newcomers are just producing sprawl slums on what was once agricultural land. And giving ammunition to the dam builders and road builders and other predators of the public purse.
Good observations.
That word, "keep..."
Western civilization is the best culture in the world, throughout all history.
But today, it seems we lack the self confidence that such a record deserves.
Worse, too many embrace self-hatred. Those never-satisfied, blindly dedicated pessimists.
Push the critics aside. Consider the shortcomings and improve!
I just finished listening to an old Freakonomics Radio podcast about the Pope speaking against capitalism and markets. Back then, it was my understanding, or I was coerced to believe, that he was against capitalism. In this podcast, Jeffrey Sachs and another academic both say the Pope likes markets, he is just pointing out where we need to improve. Somehow this is related to your point, if not exactly the same thing.
There is reality, where we all live. So rational interlocutors have a place for agreement.
Communism is fine...for the immediate family. Parents sacrifice for offspring.
In tribe or village, socialism is acceptable. Though he's not the best, the blacksmith is needed, so one gives him two fish for a one-fish knife. In anonymous big city, few repeat engagements. Value is communicated in market prices.
Remember the Pope starts from Christian doctrine, and circumscribed Medieval world. Not yet the big city of the Renaissance, much less Age of Exploration which births global free market.
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Man is a social animal, alone a timid forager but deadly in groups. Works together.
So the issue is proper jobs of government, and how much GDP we allow for that. Everything else is quibbling around the edges, until that is agreed.
Alas, no politicians will ever engage in those terms.
Liberalism requires Rule of Law, which requires enforcement. Punishment for those who break the law, like illegal alien immigrants or shoplifters of all kinds.
If Liberals oppose enforcing laws, they destroy a key virtue of “Liberalism”. Anti-liberalists who support law enforcement support the Rule of Law virtue, often claimed as part of Liberalism, more than Liberals who oppose enforcing laws they don’t like.
The argument is that laws only deserve to be followed if the laws themselves are worthy of respect.
The answer is that the laws are worthy of respect unless they can be shown to be unworthy. But we seem to have turned that idea on its head.
Well, condemning a lot of people to poverty, misery, and/or oppression (more than strictly "necessary") causes the left to be skeptical of immigration restrictions, at least the way that they look right now.
Yeah, but when you let too many people into the lifeboat, everyone drowns.
Sure, and I don't want the West to become unattractive for cognitive elites either. So, my own policy would be open borders for cognitive elites and accepting however many working-class immigrants we reasonably can on top of that.
We have too many cognitive elites in this country already. At least, they think they are. I would rather admit on the basis of gumption. Truthfully, I have a sneaky admiration for the illegals, at least the ones who manage to make it through some really difficult obstacles to get here.
Anomaly/Faria seem to be referring to American liberals more than Rauch who seemed to be referring to classical liberals. I'm not sure I interpret that correctly and I'm not sure it matters in regards to their intention but it probably doesn't impact the point I want to make.
Both seem to speak against a society being entirely liberal. In this I agree. But I don't want it entirely not liberal either. This is who we are as a country, divided between those who want more conservative, less liberal, and the reverse. I don't know what the right balance is but this mash up of two approaches is good. And I think it is good we struggle over finding the right balance.
I am reminded of 90% chimp, 10% bee. We need both. I've also heard something regarding it being good that most people follow the rules but we want a few rule-breakers of various sorts to show us how our existing rules could be better. Oddly, that seems more like 90% bee, 10% chimp to me but maybe that's part of the difficulty too.
"The challenge is to keep that segment of Muslim immigrants as small and insignificant as possible."
It is not a challenge. While I think the odds greatly favor the number of Muslim immigrants who hate western society remaining small, I don't think it will be the result of any intentional policies to make it happen.
I tried to follow the link, but it took me to "Page not found" at the Fake Nous site. I tried searching the site for the word "unsustainable", which occurs in the passage quoted at the beginning of this post, but nothing was found. Is the piece still up, and, if so, could the link be fixed?
The link is broken, going to a page not found.
Reading just the abstract and intro, it seems they are very much in favor of liberalism, just with concerns about fertility and social trust. Personally, I see the fertility issue being correlated but mostly or entirely not caused by liberalism except to the extent that liberalism has made us all wealthier.
But I like Latin Americans!
Anyway, though, AI could eventually make many of us obsolete, even among the smart people. Should we then avoid having smart immigration as well?
Interestingly enough, AI could also potentially eventually produce such an extraordinarily massive productivity boom that will compensate for low-skilled immigrants being a net fiscal drain.
But what if the result of AI productivity is a human population that does not have the opportunity to work? Humans need to have a motiving purpose in order to have a meaningful life, and for most people, that involves productive work.
They can make websites and write books, blogs, Wikipedia articles, et cetera. And invent the next shitcoins.
No, most people can’t. That’s the problem.
Wikipedia is fairly easy to edit. And there are a lot of topics that still need their own Wikipedia articles.
Just make sure to push for the repeal of Wikipedia's policy that automatically bans people who exhibit even the slightest attraction to minors from Wikipedia, even if they have never caused any trouble on Wikipedia.
Most people don’t care about Wikipedia. Or websites, books, or blogs. But they still need purpose. Work, even boring work, has a purpose, even if it’s only to make enough money to buy the beer. What happens when the beer is free?