Paradoxically, Culture Is Preserved By Impurity

I seldom speak Bangla around other Bangla speakers.

The reason for this is quite simple. I've been exposed to the Bengali language for more than a decade now. I know far more Bangla than people realize, and more importantly, when I choose to use a word, I know I'm using the right word and pronouncing it accurately enough that a reasonable person should be able to understand despite my accent. Despite this, however, every time I use a Bangla word with a Bengali speaker, they make a big production of saying, "Whaaaaat???"

At first, I thought it was my problem. Perhaps I used the wrong word, or pronounced the correct word very badly. As time went on, though, I realized that I was doing just fine. So, I tried a new approach: when people ask me, "Whaaaaat???" I now say nothing and simply wait. Invariably, without my even so much as hinting at what I had just said, my interlocutors suddenly, magically decide they know what I said.

How can I interpret this? One interpretation is that they're just being hard on me in an effort to get me to improve my Bangla. If so, their approach isn't working; rather than improving my Bangla, I'm simply discouraged from speaking. This brings me to a second interpretation: they don't really want me to speak Bangla.

Whatever the true interpretation might be, the fact of the matter is that Bangladesh is a small country, the greater Bengal region is not all that much bigger, and no one outside of Bengalis themselves speak Bangla. As the world's languages consolidate to only a handful, Bangla is becoming an increasingly irrelevant language on the international stage. When the language goes, so too will important Bengali cultural artifacts like poetry, music, and art; to say nothing of Bengali history and philosophy. Language is the doorway to culture. If that doorway remains tightly shut, outsiders will never be able to experience Bengali culture.

This closed-door approach to language might seem protective from an insider's perspective. Bangladeshis did, after all, fight a literal war to protect their language. I can understand how important the language is from a cultural perspective. Thus, I see why Bangla is a language worth saving from extinction.

The only question is: Is this the right way to save a language?

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English is, for all intents and purposes, the language of the world. Everyone knows English. Where business is to be conducted, it is conducted in English. Where politics is to be done, it is done in English. Peppering one's speech with English words and phrases is very much a status symbol or a power play in many cultures today. All the best music and movies are English-language music and films. How did English, of all languages, become the de facto language of the world?

While I'm sure the British Empire and the 20th Century rise of the United States as an economic power had a hand in this, it's not sufficient to explain the whole story. There must be a better explanation. Well, here's a theory...

Although English does have rules, everyone breaks those rules and nobody cares. For many, breaking the rules of the English language is expressive of their individual cultures. Every part of the English-speaking world has some unintelligible version of English, and for the most part, English speakers don't care. Nobody gets upset at a Southerner speaking like a Southerner. Nobody cares when a Newfie says Newfie things. Nobody bursts a vein upon hearing Caribbeans speak like Caribbeans. For the most part, we English speakers find such regionalisms charming or quaint.

Likewise, when immigrants speak English poorly, nobody really cares. It's true that some people get mad about the fact that some immigrants don't bother to learn English, but nobody gets mad when an immigrant makes a good, solid effort at speaking the language, no matter how poorly they speak it. I just saw an old European lady make conversation with the cashier in the grocery store yesterday. Was she Russian? Hungarian? I don't know. I couldn't hardly make out what she was saying. But, between the two of them, the cashier and the old lady made themselves understood and had a pleasant exchange. This is emblematic of all such exchanges I've ever encountered.

In short, English-speakers cut each other serious slack when it comes to speaking English. Only a real jerk corrects someone else's speech in the middle of talking to them. The rest of us just let things slide.

The impact of this is that it enables new English-speakers to learn the language in the context of safety. They can screw up, because no one bites their head off for screwing up. It's not like France, where people will stop talking to you if you botch your French. In the English-speaking world, people are allowed to make mistakes with the language. It's fine.

This encourages people to learn and practice English.

Does it come at a cost? Yes. The cost is that English isn't a very pure language. We get our vocabulary from virtually every other language on Earth, we add new slang terms to the dictionary every year, most of us have really noticeably bad grammar, and our best cultural output tends to be pop music and pop film, rather than, you know, LITERATURE.

In short, we give up the purity of our language, but what we get is pervasiveness. English is everywhere precisely because we don't invest a lot of energy gatekeeping people about what's allowed in the language. We overlook people's mistakes and we readily allow outside influence into our mother tongue.

Not so with Bangla.

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Interestingly enough, there are aspects of English-speaking culture that are incredibly closed. The two that come most readily to mind are: (1) British aristocracy and (2) American conservative, white, male-centric culture. Is it any surprise that these are the two cultural artifacts of the English-speaking world that are dying off the quickest and most completely in today's world?

Both of these micro-cultures are closed to outsiders. Both fiercely protect their special in-group language. Both have steep barriers to entry. And both are quickly becoming culturally irrelevant.

Now, whether you think this irrelevance is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of opinion, and quite beside the point. The real point is simply that it is no surprise that the most closed aspects of any culture are the ones that eventually disappear from the face of the Earth. If you want to preserve your culture, you have to open it up to outside influence. This definitely means that your culture will change noticeably; and maybe you don't want that. But what's worse -- a culture that changes over time, but lasts forever; or a culture that remains perfectly pristine, but disappears?

Those who wish for their culture to be preserved should take notice of the fact that only by accepting outside influence can a culture persist. Otherwise, it simply disappears. This is natural, isn't it? Those who want to shut outsiders out of the culture must accept that the culture will only appeal to an increasingly small number of people, all the way to oblivion. You may have wanted the outsiders to stay out, but if you don't let them in, there will be nothing left to  preserve.

Funnily enough, the Hutterites learned this lesson very well. Their numbers and gene pools shrunk so drastically that they were forced to recruit outsiders, famously offering them lucrative land deals in order to join the colonies. As far as I know, that practice is still going on. It has to, otherwise Hutterites, too, will disappear.

Cultures only survive if they indiscriminately accept outsiders.

Violence

Comic book author Alan Moore wrote a comprehensive critique of American culture's preoccupation with violence. The critique became a smash hit, sold record numbers of copies while in production, continues to sell millions in reprints, and was made into a box office hit film.

The critique is called Watchmen.

Most people my age and older have seen or read Watchmen, and many of those people have entirely misconstrued the message. Part of the reason for that is that Moore is an extremely intelligent man who presents moral issues as they are - complex and nuanced - rather than as we would like them to be - dichotomous, discrete choices between "good" and "evil."

In reality, it is pathological to American culture to simultaneously engage in dichotomous moral thinking and to conclude that the proper solution to any major policy issue is put the largest proton blaster into the hands of the side you're cheering for. Thus, the perceived solution to illegal immigration is to "shoot them." The perceived solution to mass shootings is more good guys with guns. The perceived solution to terrorism is a never-ending war and constant drone-bombings. And so on.

As my fellow libertarians are quick to point out, all laws are essentially violent threats against non-compliance. A gun control law is a threat to shoot anyone who attempts to own the wrong kind of gun. An anti-immigration law is a threat to shoot anyone who attempts to cross the border without "papers, please." If you ever doubt that laws are violent threats, then consider how many people are shot by police for "resisting arrest." A law against resistance is a threat to shoot anyone who tries to resist.

The reason I bring this up is because many people believe that the solution to our culture's violence-obsession problem is more laws. They fail to realize that the proposed solution is a reification of the problem itself. Everyone seems to think that if bastards will just do what I say then everything will be fine!!! This is violent thinking. It's authoritarian thinking, for sure, and that might be a problem, but I think the more serious fact is that this kind of thinking is inherently violent.

Thus, every policy dispute tends to turn violent, if not in actual fact, at least in overall emotional content. This is why Twitter is such a toxic medium; there are so many violent opinions that level-headed discourse is impossible. This is why politics has become so polarized in America; we're given a choice of competing violences and asked which we prefer. The option of non-violence is neither requested nor given. Nobody wants it, and nobody gets it. It's easy to blame the political system for this, but that blame is misplaced. Politicians can only succeed by making us offers that seem to appeal to us. Non-violence does not seem to appeal to Americans.

You could say that "not all Americans" feel this way, and you'd be right. After all, I'm an American, and I don't feel that way. But look around you. We are in the minority.

The violence inherent in the political system means that any policy change that attempts to reduce the number of mass killings will not solve our underlying violence problem, even if it does reduce mass shootings. You might be passionate about gun control, but I am passionate about violence reduction. I would like to see a concrete reduction in Americans' obsession with violence. But how?

*        *        *

It's clear that our violence problem is cultural. I don't merely mean to say that it's "culture-wide" (although it is that, too), but rather to say that our preference for violence is hard-baked into American culture. This might seem like an incredible claim to you, so I'll offer a few points to help make my case.

First, consider the entertainment media. Consider how we arrive at movie content ratings. As long as violence is not depicted with blood or presented in an anatomically correct way, it can make its way into any PG-rated movie, and even plenty of G-rated movies. By contrast, non-sexual depictions of female nipples are basically an automatic PG-13 rating. Even sexual content without nudity can get a film an R-rating. Whatever your opinion on the appropriateness of sexual content ratings, you can't deny that there is a bizarre disparity between how Americans rate movie violence and how we rate movie sex. If you've ever seen American films in foreign countries, you know that foreign countries rate these things differently. The point here is a simple question: is it really safe to say that violence is more appropriate for children than sex is?

N.B.: I'm not arguing that children should be exposed to more sex, I'm arguing that they should be exposed to less violence. But our entertainment media is keen on giving violence the lowest possible rating, while giving anything remotely sexual the highest possible rating. Sex might not be appropriate for children, but it is at least a non-violent expression of positive emotions.

Next, consider the phenomenon of road rage. I am unable to find reliable international statistic on road rage, but the statistics presented at The Zebra are sobering. Road rage violence isn't just an American problem, it's an American problem that is getting worse as time goes by. The Zebra's statistics show us an ever-increasing problem that younger generations are increasingly susceptible to. From my perspective as a late Gen-Xer, I can remember first hearing accounts of "road rage" in the 1990s. For a while, it was a much-discussed topic. Because I seldom read or hear discussions of road rage as a concept anymore, I was surprised to learn that road rage itself has been steadily increasing for 30 years. I shouldn't have been surprised, though. It stands to reason that a culture obsessed with violence would express more violence on the roads.

Now, it does surprise me that a nation whose majority religion is Christianity would become obsessed with violence. Say what you will about Jesus Christ, he is a peaceful figure in the history of religion. He turned the other cheek, he let the centurions take him, he was arguably quite radical in his pacifism. Perhaps other religious figures are more pacifist than Jesus, or perhaps not, but at any rate, anyone who considers himself a Christian should probably have a bias toward peace and non-violence. It is quite a surprise that a nation founded by Quakers and Puritans would become a nation dominated by displays of force.

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From within the culture is hard to see. Batman is awesome, I mean come on. He beats up bad guys. He's got all the best tech. He lurks in the shadows and then pounds criminals into oblivion. It's only when we see this image reflected back to us through conduits such as Watchmen that we begin to understand.

In the movie version of Watchmen, there's a scene in which Dr. Manhattan walks in slow motion through a Vietnamese battle field, zapping Viet Cong soldiers one by one. He points a finger and they are vaporized, torn apart in a way that does not look like flesh and blood. It looks more like paper, or smoke. One zap, and that's the end of them.

This scene is powerful for a variety of reasons, but the one relevant here is the contrast between the act of human killing and the utterly fantastic, unrealistic depiction of death itself. Those who are not copacetic to the underlying social critique of the story will tend to view this scene as a display of Dr. Manhattan's might. Look what he can do! He single-handedly won the Vietnam War! But the juxtaposition in this scene was a deliberate choice. The Vietnam War was, after all, the first televised war, the first time Americans had to confront the brutal reality of wartime violence face-to-face. There is actual video footage of actual Viet Cong soldiers being blown to bits. Americans old enough to have been alive at the time remember seeing the footage on the nightly news.

Moore's point is that we sanitize violence by making it seem like "comic-book violence." It's less real that way. The good guys in a war movie always die while sputtering a heart-felt message to their squadmates, "Tell Donna Mae I love her!" Not the bad guys. The bad guys just explode. No need to dwell on that, after all, they're bad guys!

This is the reason why police body-cam footage of violence causes such controversy among the "back-the-blue" crowd. They find it offensive to be reminded that police have gunned people down as they begged for their lives or shouted messages for their loved. They are vexed to know that "bad guys" don't die in real life the way they do in the movies. Or that sometimes the police are the bad guys. It is quite annoying to find that death cannot be so easily compartmentalized when you're staring it in the face.

Still, it's not enough to turn the tide. Twenty years of Columbine and 9/11 and drone bombs and beheading videos and body cam videos and all the rest of it. 20 years, and we've yet to recoil from all this violence. 20 years, and we're no closer to shutting down the torture chambers in Guantanamo Bay or the concentration camps at the border. 20 years of teaching preschoolers how to react to active shooter situations. If anything, things are worse now than they've ever been.

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I don't know what it will take to cure America's obsession with violence. What could be powerful enough to overturn our legacy of hunting down Native American scalps for money? Of torturing and killing African Americans for fun, long after having declared them "emancipated?" Of living in a state of perpetual war since the Pearl Harbor attacks? Of injecting deliberately Guatemalans with gonorrhea just to see what would happen? 

I don't think gun laws will change anything, although I concede that they may reduce the number of deaths, and that might help. I don't think more laws or changes to the education system will fix the underlying problem. 

Somehow, Americans need to unlearn violence on a cultural level. We need to become a nation of "lovers, not fighters." Imagine the American spirit of rugged individualism and independence combined with a commitment to peace and love. God, that sounds like hippy bullshit, but think about it. If we could somehow extract the best of American individualism and mix it with the best of peaceful humanism, we'd really have what the American system was supposed to produce.

Instead, we have this thing, this sad thing. We have a debt-driven war machine that cranks out drone bombings and road rage and mass shootings, and there is no end in sight. I don't know how it will ever be fixed, but if you've ever considered becoming a more peaceful person, I think now is the right time to start.

Loss Of Status As Anti-Immigrant Backlash

One of the reasons mercantilism was so difficult to defeat among the kings of the western world centuries ago was that it's really difficult to convince somebody that they are wealthy if they're not staring at a huge vault full of gold bars and coins.

You might, for example, own a mortgage. If you spend $1500 in rent every month, and then move into a home and take on a mortgage that costs $1500 per month, you won't feel any richer than you were before, but in fact you are. And the more you pay into your mortgage, the wealthier you'll be. A mortgage payment isn't really an expense in the same sense that your electricity bill is an expense, because as you pay into your mortgage, you retain a part of that payment in the form of equity, i.e. wealth.

In this way, your wealth grows even though your lifestyle hasn't noticeably changed. You won't consider yourself any wealthier than the next-door neighbor from your old apartment complex because you're both spending $1500 a month. Only after decades will you realize how much better off you became.

The Small-Mindedness Of Comparative Wealth

There's a comparison between that situation and the freedom of labor movement across national borders. Our lives improve every day as a result of worldwide economic development, but our incomes are rising much slower than they are in, say, Mumbai. We feel like we're losing something because our way of life seems more common, less exceptional. We look to politicians to do something about it, by managing trade and immigration restrictions, to keep our firms and our salaries "competitive," meaning higher than they are in other countries. It's an understandable desire.

But why do Indians have to suffer in poverty just to make us feel better about our lives? Why can't we simply be happy that we have all the iPhones and craft beer we can get our hands on, and Chinese people are getting more and more access to that lifestyle, too? Why must we define our prosperity in relative terms? In short, if everyone's lives are getting better, why is it particularly important that American lives are getting exceptionally so?

What is it about the poverty of foreign peoples that make us feel better about ourselves?

On Immigration

Tyler Cowen responds to Bryan Caplan on anti-immigrant "backlash" in the United Kingdom. (Caplan makes his main claim a little better in this older post, so start there.)

Caplan's claim is that social opposition to immigration is strongest in the areas where immigration happens least. He cites some specific examples, but I think the conclusion is fairly intuitive: A small community is going to react more harshly to a single unusual newcomer than they will to dozens of them. Consider American attitudes toward divorce: when it was rare, society treated divorcees harshly; as it grew more common, attitudes changed. The same has held true for Chinese restaurants, atheism, taco trucks, K-pop, and alternative sexual identities. The more unusual something is, the more push-back it will face. We see it all the time.

Cowen responds to this idea by saying that "changes often have different effects than levels." What he means is that a community that experiences a 10% increase in immigration will tend to experience more backlash than one that experiences a 1% increase, even if the latter results in more total immigrants (e.g., if it is a larger community). This is a thoughtful, albeit weak, point since, in the case of a small community, the first few immigrants to arrive would represent the largest percentage change in immigration. In other words, it's a story that is fully consistent with Caplan's.

Cowen makes two other points: (1) There is a selection bias in the type of person immigrating, i.e. Cowen believes that pleasant immigrants (intelligent, skilled, highly assimilated) end up in London, while unpleasant immigrants end up in Birmingham. (2) The current "backlash" is a symptom of post-1980s changes to UK immigration policy, so if those changes aren't fast enough to avoid what Caplan's talking about, then nothing will be.

Regarding that first point, it's worth noting that Cowen doesn't actually make this case, he simply asserts that it's true. Even if it is true, it requires more analysis. For example, the only immigrants to Iowa corn fields are people who intend to farm corn. That's a function of the corn field, not on the attributes of the immigrant. Moreover, immigration is low to corn fields, so this hardly weakens Caplan's claims at all.

Cowen's point about backlash is less obviously wrong, but I feel more strongly about it, and it's the one that inspired this post. The "backlash" thesis relies on the assumption that the distress over immigration is directly tied to the specific policies in question. That's a tough claim to prove, and it's likely true that the UK would have experienced a significant increase in immigration even had its policies remained unchanged. The Caplan thesis would predict that backlash against immigration would have been even stronger in that case, and I that may be true. Who knows? (Once again, Cowen doesn't really defeat the argument at all.)

Even if not, though, it's important to consider why, beyond the changing appearance of a neighborhood, people are voicing any backlash at all. Here is where mercantilism comes in.

Back To Mercantilism

What if all this isn't really backlash against immigrants, but rather against stagnant nominal wages dressed up as anti-immigrant backlash? What if the western world is experiencing a large and painful real wage deflation as it faces stiffer competition from non-western labor? The Chinese are already far better than the west at manufacturing. The tech world commonly outsources its coding work to low-priced programmers in India, Pakistan, and the Ukraine. Textiles haven't really been made in the west for a long time now, aside from luxury tailoring. And while agricultural output is still substantial in the United States (thanks largely to immigration, please note), the west could hardly be considered the breadbasket of the world's food supply. The one area of commerce in which the west seems to excel is the least economically meritable: bureaucracy (corporate and public).

In light of this trend, it's important for people to remember that their wages will continue to stagnate whether or not the immigrants come. Look at the tech world: we're being out-competed even over VPN! Should governments make immigration even more difficult than it already is, and the immigrants stop coming, then the backlash we see against immigration will convert itself into an anti-trade backlash as people come to believe that foreign products, rather than foreign people, are to blame for their woes.

Meanwhile, though, we are living better at similar income levels - all of us, western and non-western. We are better-educated than ever before. We have access to technology that has literally revolutionized our way of life for the better. We have better health care, more entertainment, greater access to things previously considered "luxury goods" (like Caribbean cruises, which can sometimes be had for hundreds of dollars, well within middle class reach), a cleaner environment (despite challenges), and pretty much more of everything.

But we don't feel it unless we're able to point to some other country and see, "There! Misery! I have it so much better than they do!" This is lunacy.

Nor is this mainly a macroeconomic problem. When Walmart arrives in town, people weep for the loss of their precious mom-and-pop shops despite the fact that Walmart brings prosperity with it. The fact that the owners of mom-and-pop shops often enjoy their lifestyles at the expense of the community, in the form of high prices, is lost on many people.

And, hey, it's understandable. If you've made a comfortable living for yourself by charging more for products and services than your competitors, simply because your community can't gain access to outside markets, you'll be highly resistant to those outside markets when they finally come knocking. Musicians rue the losses they've suffered at the hands of music broadcast systems. Data-crunchers gnash their teeth in the face of automated cloud-based services that render their Excel sheets obsolete.

The story is always the same: The steady march of economic progress raises wealth by lowering prices, and the price that gets lowered is often an income, often your income. It's pointless wringing our hands over it, but it's particularly ill-advised when our collective lot in life is getting better with every step. That's freedom, for you.

Freedom, however, is not something people are accustomed to anymore, and many of us would simply rather be better-off than Joe, rather than being better-off in relation to ourselves.

Various Brexit Stuff

Emily Skarbek:

Many of the people I have discussed this with in academic and policy circles want a freer, more open society. This led some to vote remain and others leave, based on divergent predictions about which course of action would lead to a more open society.

But in answer to Skarbek's point, Dan Sanchez has this to say:

Advocates of international unions and super-states claim that centralization promotes trade and peace: that customs unions break down trade barriers and international government prevents war. In reality, super-states encourage both protectionism and warfare. The bigger the trade bloc, the more it can cope with the economic isolation that comes with trade warfare. And the bigger the military bloc, the easier it is for bellicose countries toexternalize the costs of their belligerence by dragging the rest of the bloc into its fights. 

A small political unit cannot afford economic isolationism; it simply doesn’t have the domestic resources necessary. So for all of UKIP’s isolationist rhetoric, the practical result of UK independence from the European economic policy bloc would likely be freer trade and cross-border labor mobility (immigration). Political independence fosters economic interdependence. And economic interdependence increases the opportunity costs of war and the benefits of peace.

Now here's Russ Roberts:

Hard 2 fix something you don't control. Don't despair. UK (which includes 48% voting remain) will now create something new.

Now for a few thoughts of my own:

• I did not short-sell anything, but looking at the markets this morning, it's clear that I should have. It's not that I could have predicted that Brexit would happen, it's just that it was likely enough to have justified a gamble in this case. I'm certain a lot of people are making some good money in the marketplace today.
• Governments must compete, and more competition is a good thing; that's just basic economics. So to go from n = 1 (EU) to n = 2 (UK, EU) is a positive move, in my opinion. There are rumblings that Ireland and Scotland may opt out of the UK now, which would mean that, at least in the short run, there would be n = 4 (Ireland, Scotland, UK, EU), at least until the other two joined up with the EU.
• I'm pleased that secession is still possible in the modern world. It's nice to know that a referendum can be held and that people can occasionally vote for greater levels of local sovereignty rather than lower levels. It's a big "philosophical win" for libertarians.
• Still, I realize that nationalism and fear of immigration were driving forces in the vote, and so I'm not naive enough to suggest that Brexit is a clear win for liberty. Brexit enables a potential win, but it doesn't guarantee it. How the UK proceeds from here will determine what happens to freedom there.
• Many of my friends are scratching their heads as to why the UK would want to leave the EU. I think these friends ought to reconsider the benefits of sovereignty. Sure, it comes at a price, but it's not immediately obvious that the price isn't worth the gain.

Here's My Personal List Of People I Like And Don't Like

Bryan Caplan has a clever argument against people who oppose immigration on the basis of demographics (e.g. "I don't want too many brown Muslim people to come in and change my country."). His argument is, Okay, then we should allow an offsetting amount of the opposite demographic (in this case, white Christian people) so that the total demographic makeup is unchanged. After all, migration is as much a right for brown Muslims as it is for white Christians.

In response, famous blog commentator E. Harding (he is everywhere) writes:

Makes sense, but there really aren't that many White high IQ conservatives outside the U.S. willing to move here. And opening immigration from any category of men substantially leads to a slippery slope -your proposal is an unstable equilibrium. 

And I don't mind Christian Arab immigration from, say, Lebanon. Maybe also Iraq and Palestine. But by no means Syria.

The truly stunning thing about this comment is E. Harding's unstated supposition that readers happen to care who's on his "do import" and "don't import" list.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure if someone asked him, he'd elaborate on his reasons to great length. But, tellingly, he didn't find it necessary to outline his reasoning in his comment. 

Contra Jones, Henderson, Adamson, and Caplan On "High-IQ"

David Henderson is a fan of "Scott Adamson's" critique of Garrett Jones' new book, and he [Henderson] cites Bryan Caplan to buttress the case.

Here's The General Idea

Jones argues that high-IQ societies are more cooperative because high-IQ people, whoever they are, are smart enough to realize that cooperation produces better outcomes than noncooperation. In short, Jones suggests that people don't cooperate because they're nice, but rather because they're smart enough to cooperate - and if they're not smart enough, they don't cooperate (hence IQ).

"Adamson," et al. rejoin that if Jones were correct, then we'd see U.S. presidents "pillage the country," since they have at most eight years to extract as much personal gain as possible. The idea here is that, while it may be generally true that cooperation produces the best results, in certain specific cases, it's more rational to "pillage the country." High-IQ people would certainly understand this, and thus we would see them do this to a greater degree than low-IQ people do.

But Dispositional Analysis Can Only Take Us So Far

I haven't read Hive Mind and thus I only skimmed "Adamson's" review of it. I also hate to sound like a broken record, but here are my thoughts anyway:

All of these analyses are steeped in dispositional psychology - individuals behave a certain way because that's how those individuals behave. Caplan's analysis is a little better because he acknowledges the differences among for-profit, a not-for-profit, and public service environments, i.e. the situation matters.

But to take Situationism seriously, we have to let go of dispositional theories for a minute. We already know that merely telling a child that she is high-IQ produces behavior consistent with a high-IQ child (including improved intellectual achievement) even when the child isn't really high-IQ. The mechanism in this case was - you guessed it - situational factors. We also know that motivation matters more to every criterion in a person's life that matters when determining success than IQ does.

These and other results have been studied and replicated many times by many people. I don't see how the empirical data could be more conclusive. It's not the child, it's the situation. It's not the inherent, inert, genetic personal disposition that counts, it's the circumstantial, dynamic, environmental social situation.

Taken seriously, this means that it's not the "high-IQ" societies that are producing good institutions, it's the good institutions producing high-IQ societies.

This Has Important Implications

It means that removing emigrants from bad political situations will not just improve their wage rates, it will improve their actual economic productivity. Don't take that up with me, take it up with the economic evidence - here's some to chew on: increasing employment in a US state has been found to increase productivity by 0.5% for every 1% employment increase attributable to immigrants.

It means that scientists who believe the developing world can't develop because of their lower IQs have lost the plot: Change the situation in a country, and you change the people.

But it's so difficult to get people to seriously question the concept of IQ in this day and age that true, serious social psychology looks incompatible with economics, even though social psychology has it right on this one.

Epilogue

"Racialists" (think Steve Sailer) often criticize others for not being willing to consider race-based explanations for variations in outcome. When Charles Murray says IQ matters, the "racialists" take that idea and run with it. Then, when others criticize them for being racist, they ask why they shouldn't explore politically incorrect or potentially ideas if they happen to be true.

One criticism I have of the "rationalist community" (of which "Scott Adamson" considers himself a member) is that they, too, take the idea of IQ too seriously.

It's easy to understand why both groups would. The racialists are attracted to the idea that the fearsome outsiders will destroy good society because they are dispositionally inclined to do so. The "rationalist community" is attracted to the idea because that community fancies itself a collection of high-IQ individuals who must surely know how irrational their lessers can be.

Both groups are making the same mistake by refusing to consider the extensive, empirical, replicable, clinical countervailing evidence found in social psychology. There is a mountain of evidence out there attesting to the fact that situations matter. When will all these smart people be intellectually honest enough to take a look?

Spot The "Real" Americans

I won't draw this blog post out too far. The claim was recently made that Muslim immigrants to the United States are culturally incompatible with American Christian culture. That claim was put to the test over the weekend, when a small group of armed American Christians made a show of force (yes, they literally said that this is what they were doing) outside a Dallas-area mosque to protest the "Islamization [sic]" of America.

How would you guess that this largely immigrant population of Muslims responded to people carrying loaded weapons outside their holy place of worship?

Here's how (emphasis added):

[The mosque leaders] in turn urged their worshipers to steer clear of the group, which calls itself the Bureau of American Islamic Relations and had recycled some of the signs it took to a Richardson mosque last month, on a national day of protest against Islam. 

The worshipers largely took that advice, ignoring the protest until it broke up after a couple hours. The Muslims in the tiny audience declined to share their opinion — instead offering praise for freedom of speech and variations on “no comment.”

So an armed group of Christians showed up to spook the hell out of a group of Muslim American immigrants, and the Muslims responded by praising the protesters' freedom of speech.

Good for them!

"Open Your Home, Leave Mine Alone"

I don't have a lot of time to write this blog post, so forgive me if there end up being a hole or two.

On Facebook, a friend used a status update to initiate a conversation about the immigration of Syrian refugees. Naturally, I participated.

During the course of this conversation, a woman interjected and told me to "Open my arms and my home to them [the Syrian refugees], leave mine alone!"

Leave aside that I have no interest in her arms or her home. What could this woman think she means by this? It is a complete and utter contradiction. If I open my arms and my home to Syrian refugees, that implies that they have immigrated to the United States. That is what I want, but not what she wants. I'm okay with this - is she? No, of course not. The mere fact that I argue in favor of immigration is what she considers to be "failing to leave her [arms and home?] alone." So, can I open my home to immigrants, or can't I?

This is a frequent logical error made by immigration restrictionists. As per that recent Lew Rockwell article that's been making the rounds on social media, the restrictionists only ever consider the opinions of their fellow restrictionists, never the immigration advocates. So when they argue that immigration "is an assault on private property," what they really mean is that it is an assault on how they want to dictate the use of public property, despite the fact that many Americans feel otherwise. In short, they just want what they say to go, even though there is a broad range of opinion out there on immigration. Why would one opinion trump all the others? "Because it's the majority!" 

Okay, so then the majority can take away your ability to make a contract with another person? I hope you're prepared to live with the consequences of that policy.

A Passing Thought

In response to the news that various American governors will reportedly "not accept" Syrian refugees, whatever that means, my mind had a silly thought. "If the Pearl Harbor attack had happened a year ago, we'd never accept another Japanese immigrant ever again."

This is not a silly thought because it's not true - of course it's true. On the contrary, it is a silly thought because the American response to the Pearl Harbor attacks was to round up all the Americans of Japanese ancestry and throw them into prison camps that were for all anyone knows identical to Nazi internment caps, minus a gas chamber or two.

America is not a special place where freedom rings; it is a place just like any other, where governments overreact to perceived threats by locking down neighborhoods and putting up walls. And also by sometimes rounding up populations and throwing them in internment camps and punishing war refugees for acts committed by war criminals... Meanwhile, our own government continues to commit war crimes by bombing innocent civilians in faraway lands back to the Stone Age.

We live in strange times, strange and terrible times.

Err On The Side Of Morality

I don't remember the quote exactly, but at some point Ayn Rand wrote that there are "sundry libertarians" who accept Objectivism's conclusions but reject either Objectivism's metaphysics or its epistemology, I forget which.

I don't want to comment on that, specifically, but the quote came to mind when I started reading this post from Robert Murphy. Reaching for a "gotcha" against open borders advocate Alex Tabarrok, he remarks that if you don't think it's okay to use guns to prevent immigration, then you must also not think it's okay to use guns to defend yourself in any other context. The gist of Bob's point is that, on some level, we all accept the use of violence as a deterrent against being attacked, so when Tabarrok claimed that doing so is morally problematic with respect to migration, Bob moved in for the "kill."

The ensuing comments made it clear that Bob's view is a common one, and that view basically boils down to, hey, if you violate the Non-Aggression Principle against me, then I will make you pay! My problem with that is that it seems to violate the spirit of the NAP. The whole point of this principle is to highlight the fact that a peaceful society requires little more than clearly defined rights coupled with a society full of broadly well-intentioned individuals.

The NAP is not, as some people seem to believe, a justification for surrounding your property with mines and hungry alligators in a moat and daring someone to trespass. That kind of attitude might be consistent with the NAP, but it is fully bereft of the kind of thoughts a non-aggressive person should probably have.

In other words, it accepts the Non-Aggression Principle, but rejects its metaphysical underpinnings.

It sometimes seems that there are a great many of us who view issues this way. That whole Civil War thing is another classic example: it's clear that, despite the rhetoric, human slavery was a major component of the Civil War. If one were to defend the Confederacy for all those technical states-rights reasons, that person might have a consistent and logical argument in his or her favor. But still: SLAVERY. You know?

If you're escaping a major moral indictment on a philosophical technicality, then you might have the better argument, but you're still immoral. Our purpose as moral agents in a society is not to push the boundaries of moral reasoning in order to get ourselves off the hook, but rather to err on the side of morality.

Sub-Sonic Charmer

Because it is relevant to the ancient history of Stationary Waves, I am compelled to point out that Sonic Charmer AKA The Crimson Reach AKA etc., etc. appears to have stopped blogging. I haven't been following his blog closely for at least a couple of years, but I had noticed that he was adding new posts as recently as five weeks ago. If anyone is aware of the story here, please feel free to leave a comment.

In the meantime, the search function provides a trip down memory lane...

A Collectivist's Guide To Individuality

I.
I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about the importance and benefits of Individuality. As I've written before, it's true that human beings are social animals that like to associate in groups, but we also possess an existential need for self-actualization. That is, we all possess both a group impulse and an individual impulse.

It's tempting to think that these forces are somehow at odds, but they're not. If you're the kind of person for whom the group is extremely important, I'm writing today's post for you. I'd like to show you how small changes in how we look at groups can improve both the success of the in-group and the existential individuality inside of you.

II.

The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively-- because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a 'box' around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall?

-- Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book

III.
Maybe Frank knew it when he wrote that, or maybe he didn't, but he was expressing the philosophical concept of difference. In order to say anything about X, I have to know first and foremost that X is something meaningfully different than Y.

There is infinite variation among individuals within any group. How can it be that so many people who are so different belong to the same group? Clearly the most important aspect of any group is where you draw the boundary line between your group and everyone else. This could be an imaginary line, drawn on a map. Or, it could be something more tangible, like religious affiliation or language. It could be something entirely transient and artificial, like the intramural sports team you're on, or it could be something permanent and irreversible, like the color of your skin.

In any case, on the one side of the boundary lies everyone who doesn't belong, who you have decided to see as "different," and on the other side lies a mass of infinite individual variation that we happily ignore for the sake of having a sense of "belonging."

IV.
It's almost paradoxical: Once you belong to a group, you're free to be as colorfully individualistic as you wish to be, so long as you adhere to the confines of the boundary line that has been drawn. But if you're outside that same boundary, it doesn't matter how similar you are to the group that lies inside it. Subject to the one defining feature of the group, you're an outsider, and thus "different," even if you're actually the same.

So I might be nothing like the other white Utahns with whom I grew up - and indeed, I am not - but I belong to their in-group because of the accident of geography. Meanwhile, I might have everything in common with someone who grew up in, say, Bangladesh, but will have to overcome a series of ingrained group biases within her in order to demonstrate that we ought really belong to the same group.

Whether we're talking about immigration, racism, corporate sponsorship, nationality, or anything else - whenever anyone moves from an old group to a new group, it's not that person's individual character traits that change, but rather the application of the boundary line.

V.
This simple truth is enormously important. What it means is that anyone can be brought into the fold at any time - or cast into the outer darkness - at any time whatsoever. All it requires is that you draw the boundary in a different place. Is this easier said than done? Not at all - it is both easily said and easily done.

Here's a great example: Say you live in New York City. You could draw a boundary at the edge of the New York metropolitan area, as many do, and include only "New Yorkers" among those with whom you identify. Or, you could include even those quaint upstate New Yorkers in your group affiliation. Or you could include anyone in Connecticut, and Boston, etc., and call yourself a New Englander. Or you could call yourself an American, and include everyone across the country, and even in Hawaii, and Alaska, and Guam. Or you could just keep expanding your circle to include the entire human race. It's really up to you.

You might argue that the lines that define New York City or the United States are important demarcations of culture; and you might even be right. But what's critical is that you have chosen the culture to which you belong, out of a great many that potentially apply.

Would it be erroneous to say that a person feels more "culturally American" than "culturally New Yorker?" Would a person who said so be wrong? No, of course not. At any possible moment, we can migrate from in-group to in-group intellectually by simply choosing to self-identify with one group rather than another.

Nor does this mean that the group affiliation itself is meaningless. You might feel a great attachment to your culture, and you would be right to feel that way. My point isn't that group affiliation is bad or meaningless, but simply that it is a choice you make. You choose to draw your own boundary lines, and you do so for your own benefit.

VI.
But if your choice of in-group is made for your own benefit, it can come at a cost. In many cases it costs us nothing, but costs someone else a great deal. Excluding other people from your own national identity, for example, can result in great poverty and suffering for some of those you choose to exclude. Excluding other people from your own racial identity fans the flames of racism, the results of which have been tragic throughout human history. And there are many other, more minor costs such as social anxiety, social isolation, peer pressure, and so on.

Most of these costs are unequivocally bad. That is, unless you are a vindictive person, you don't actually want to make people suffer at the hands of your in-group. You don't want to foist anxiety or isolation on someone, at least not knowingly. You don't want to be a racist jerk. You don't want someone to starve on a boat.

What you really want is what's best for your in-group.

In light of what I've written above, the solution seems obvious: All we need to do is have some flexibility in where we draw the boundaries of our in-groups. Why exclude people needlessly, especially when there is no clear benefit to you or your in-group? The larger you draw your circle, the less you have to worry about how to punish people who don't fit inside of it.

To be sure, we still need some boundaries: Crime, for example, is an important boundary to set for any in-group. If you violate the group's laws and become a criminal, you ought to be punished as an outsider. Hence, we send murderers and thieves to jail and force them to "pay their debt to society" before they can join up with us again.

But if a person is a lot like you, except for an innocuous or entirely victimless criterion (skin color, religious affiliation, hobby, place of birth, etc.), then what do we hope to gain from excluding them from the group? No one gains from that.

So, why not choose otherwise?

Some Links

Robert Murphy wonders whether quantitative easing has ever worked.

John Taylor provides a handy reference guide to his recent empirical work investigating the American economy since the dawn of what they all call "The Great Recession." To answer Robert Murphy's question, above: "No."

David Friedman reports that his family's three-generation-long attempt to breed musical ability into an unmusical family has been successful. I say he's failed to rule out nurture, since mothers obviously play a role in a child's musical nurturing, but in either case, this should give the tone deaf some hope.

Lubos Motl covers the recent emigeration of US residents to locales with lower tax rates. That is, Americans are leaving America in search of lower tax rates. This should strike a blow to the argument that open borders is about a claque of elitists seeking to gain from cheap labor (ha ha, conspiracy theory).

Not really news, but public education sucks. Today's example is this story about how public schools fail to provide the basics of learning computer coding to kids. I'm not sure coding should be an important part of primary school, but if you disagree with me, then this story is for you. (HT: Kids Prefer Cheese)

There is now a saliva test for boys with mild depression, to measure the probability that they will develop major depression.

This headline is a major misnomer. The prank didn't "go wrong," the prank went just fine, it's just that the homeowner was batshit crazy and opened fire on a crowd of kids. That said, it is deeply disturbing that this man is charged with terrorism. Now anyone is a terrorist.

Elephants reassure and console each other.

Open Borders Critics: Mostly Just Annoyed

I.
More fodder from the "meh" files:

Why don’t you see that you can put forth a case for a policy change without going the extra mile of insisting that your preferred policy is *required* due to ‘rights’ and (therefore) that other people are *invalid* for disagreeing?

II.
OpenBorders.info is one of the most comprehensive single-issue websites I have ever seen in my life. The quality of that website is the main reason I chose to respond to one of their calls for guest- and occasional-bloggers. The depth of information there is truly astounding.

What sets OpenBorders.info apart from most other websites of its kind is that it is not merely an advocacy blog. Beyond the blog, it is essentially an immigration wiki, offering moral, practical, "second-order," and country-specific arguments for immigration. The arguments covered are not merely the arguments posed by the website's bloggers; as I said, the website functions as a sort of wiki for all known arguments in favor of immigration, categorized and annotated.

But wait, there's more. In addition to the four categories of arguments in favor of open immigration, OpenBorders.info also offers five categories of arguments against open immigration: harms, more harms, harms (theoretical bases), other practical objections, and theoretical objections.

If you've been keeping score, that means the website covers objections to open borders as thoroughly or more so than it covers arguments in favor. And as well it should: understanding people's objections is an important part of effective advocacy and intellectual rigor.

So claims to the effect that open borders advocates are "deceitful" or "dishonest" ("intellectually dishonest") or that open borders advocates refuse to address the criticisms of others are not just untenable, they are preposterous.

III.
Which brings me to the topic at hand. What bothers critics of open borders, such as AnonySonic or "Christopher Chang," is not the many overwhelmingly good arguments in favor of open immigration, but simply that they find a few such arguments irritating. As Chang writes:

Asserting that open borders are a moral imperative is much more specific, and among other things, condemns everyone (including myself) who honestly believes that letting countries voluntarily set border policies achieves better outcomes for practically everyone than forcing them all open immediately as evil.

The idea that it might be completely immoral to bar immigrants from improving their lives using a means that has proven benefits to you, and minimal costs, irritates the critics because they can't respond to it. Instead, they recede into the usual send-up of abstract philosophical reasoning around property rights and the state of nature, and whether this aggregates up to the state level, and whether it implies that if we open the borders we have to disband the army and lolz, lolwut, wtf, bahaha, etc...

One of the reasons open borders advocates make such a hobby horse out of the moral case is that it is completely irrefutable. There is no good argument against the moral case. And because restrictionists understand this, they become irritated and say, "It's not fair! It's not honest! It's not reasonable!"

But of course it is. If it's fair to let refugees die in a boat thanks to border restrictions, then it's perfectly fair to condemn those who defend such practices. I won't call them evil, but I will call them misguided to the point of having questionable morals.

If they find that irritating, I can live with that.

Housekeeping: I'm adding an "Immigration" label.

Steve Sailer Just Makes Stuff Up

Steve Sailer is in the habit of making stuff up out of thin air. I've mentioned this before - see here and here. But if you still think I'm wrong, consider some additional evidence.

Exhibit A - Writing on Bryan Caplan's reaction to the recent Swiss anti-immigration vote, he says:

And, you’ll notice, not only are the Swiss having second thoughts about Inviting the World, for centuries they have failed to shoulder any of the burden of Invading the World.

I say, this unacceptable Swiss majority vote just proves that it's time to put Victoria Nuland and the rest of the Kagans in charge of having the National Endowment of Democracy pay for a Color Revolution in Switzerland. There are probably some bored soccer hooligans in Switzerland who wouldn't mind a grant to camp out downtown for the Swiss Spring and battle the riot police in the name of Democracy.

And if that doesn’t work, well we tried to destroy nativism peacefully, but there are limits to our patience. So, let the drone strikes begin.

I'm not an idiot. I get that he's attempting to be "funny," but where does this stuff about drone strikes come from? Any clues? Has any immigration movement ever resorted to that kind of violence in order to get what they want?

But let's stick to the point. I'm not writing to argue with Sailer about immigration. I'm here to call him out on the fact that he likes to just make stuff up. It is, for lack of a more appropriate term, bullshit, and it's time we demanded more from people who proclaim themselves to be "journalists."

Exhibit B - Two days ago, he wrote:

The notion that maybe, after 116 years it's getting toward time for Puerto Rico to stand on its own two feet simply doesn't come up in 21st Century thinking.

Really, Steve Sailer? It doesn't come up at all? Like, it didn't come up here (Jan. 26, 2014), or here (Jan. 28, 2014), or here (Jan. 27, 2014), or here (Jan. 22, 2014), or... well, you get the picture.

Sailer cannot simply rest his arguments on facts and reasoning; that is really the only explanation for his pervasive tendency to just make shit up off the top of his head.

Open Borders: Deport All Troublemakers

My latest offering at Open Borders concludes as follows:

Many critics of immigration base their case against open borders on the differences between groups of human beings. I have attempted to show why this problem is not unique to immigrants, that we are in fact different from other natives, too. Eliminating differences in a community of peaceful people presents prejudicial, empirical, and practical problems that most would find unsettling. Those critics who point to “differences” as a justification for restricting immigration thus have a steep burden of proof assigned to them. Until they meet it, I remain unconvinced.

Read the whooooole thing. 

More On In-Fighting

Apropos of something I must be unaware of, Steve Horwitz recently linked to this old post at Bleeding Heart Libertarians. That link, in turn, discusses the essay found on page 34 of this pamphlet, available at Mises.org.

First, let me quote a few passages from the Rockwell essay. To avoid confusion, I want to begin by making clear that I object to all of the above links, and the following passages are things that I find highly problematic.

Paleo-Libertarianism
To wit, Rockwell writes:

Pornographic photography, "free"-thinking, chaotic painting, atonal music, deconstructionist literature, Bauhaus architechture, and modernist films have nothing in common with the libertarian political agenda - no matter how much individual libertarians may revel in them. In addition to their aesthetic and moral disabilities, these "art forms" are political liabilities outside Berkeley and Greenwich Village.

I wonder if Rockwell would defend this passage today, if pressed to do so. Are we really to believe that if I enjoy listening to one of Schoenberg's serial compositions, I'm against libertarianism? That's a tough pill to swallow. Could Rockwell himself swallow it? Never mind that, actually, I have a better question: Could Rockwell provide a cogent argument for why Schoenberg is a "political liability?"

Later (emphasis mine):

Too many libertarians also join liberals in using the charge of racism to bash non-conformists. It may be scientifically false to believe, for example, that Asians are more intelligent than whites, but can it really be immoral? From a libertarian perspective, the only immorality would be to seek State recognition of this belief, whether correct or incorrect.

This is truly remarkable, and would be laughable, were it not an idea that keeps popping up in the blogosphere. But on a related note, Rockwell further writes:

From a Christian viewpoint, it is certainly wrong to treat someone unjustly or uncharitably as a result of racial beliefs. It is also wrong to treat someone unjustly or uncharitably because he's bald, hairy, skinny, or fat. But can it be immoral to prefer the company of one to the other?

Good question. Is it immoral to prefer hanging out with bald people versus people who are not bald? Is it immoral to choose one's private associations based on superficial physical traits? I wonder what Rockwell would say, if I asked him.

(Of course, the clever criticism of the above passage is that it is not merely wrong to treat someone unjustly or uncharitably as a result of inherent racism. Indeed, it is universally so, regardless of whether one is a Christian or a member of some other religion. Every religion preaches racial equality, every last one of them.)

And finally:

Libertarianism is widely seen as anti-force. But force will always be necessary to defend against wrong-doers and to administer justice. Libertarianism opposes aggression against the innocent, not coercion in general.

Rockwell insists that coercion is necessary and appropriate, so long as the victim is not innocent. That's unsettling for many reasons, but to me the most compelling reason is the possibility that such a policy in practice could very easily get out of hand.

The above passages are, in my opinion, the most offensive in the Rockwell pamphlet.

Horwitzism
Having said all that, I must confess that I read Horwitz's post first, and was under the impression that Rockwell's essay would be far more offensive than it turned out to be.

Hearing an old, bearded, white man extol the virtues of conservative Christian, Anglo-Saxon culture is not exactly news. For one thing, you'll find similar expositions at iSteve, Anti-Gnostic, Chateau Heartiste, and so on. To be sure, there are a lot of praiseworthy aspects of Western culture, and there should be nothing wrong in plainly acknowledging them. But Rockwell doesn't seem to want to keep the good and toss the bad (and there is a lot of bad in every culture) when he writes that "Western civilization [is] eminently worthy of preservation and defense" (emphasis mine).

"Preservation and defense" begs the question how will we "preserve and defend" Western civilization, if not by practicing exclusion? Surely we all agree that the great works of Isaac Newton, Plato, Des Cartes, et al., ought to be preserved for as long as humans can learn from them, and defended against being destroyed. But even my friends born in Africa or Asia would agree with that. Thus, this is clearly not the kind of "preservation and defense" Rockwell has in mind.

I agree with Horwitz that far, at least. But Horwitz writes:

As Jacob [Levy] says, the attempt to court the right through appeals to the most unsavory sorts of arguments was a conscious part of the “paleolibertarian” strategy that Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard cooked up in the late 1980s. What’s happening right now is that the chickens of that effort are coming home to roost with large external costs on all of us as libertarians.

And later:

Even after the paleo strategy was abandoned, Ron was still there walking the line between “mainstream” libertarianism and the winking appeal to the hard right courted by the paleo strategy. Paul’s continued contact with the fringe groups of Truthers, racists, and the paranoid right are well documented. Even in 2008, he refused to return a campaign contribution of $500 from the white supremacist group Stormfront. You can still go to their site and see their love for Ron Paul in this campaign and you can find a picture of Ron with the owner of Stormfront’s website. Even if Ron had never intentionally courted them, isn’t it a huge problem that they think he is a good candidate? Doesn’t that say something really bad about the way Ron Paul is communicating his message?

Thus Horwitz insinuates that Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul might have deliberately courted neo-Nazis because they thought it would be good for the libertarian movement. That suggestion is more than wrong and offensive, it also defies logic. Why in the world would any libertarian think cozying up with neo-Nazis would benefit the movement. The mind reels.

Horwitz might counter: Indeed, that is the whole point - it was a terrible strategy. But first he must convince me that this was indeed the strategy, and despite the highly problematic passages I have quoted above, nothing about the Rockwell essay would lead me to believe that he intended to deliberately attract racists to increase the size of the liberty movement.

Sorting It Out
When I comment on such matters, the reader must understand that I wasn't "there" and I don't really know. Anything I say here should be understood to be speculation. However, it is speculation based on the available evidence. Those who were "there" are the only ones who can say for certain.

But us younger folks don't have the luxury of having been "there," and we'd still like to have a bit more liberty in our lives. What are we to think?

First of all, I think it's far more likely that Rockwell genuinely believes in social isolation. His website has published critiques of free immigration such as this essay by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. To discover that Lew Rockwell is a critic of cultural diversity is - once again - rather dog-bites-man. He writes in favor of "Western civilization," he denigrates the idea that Dizzy Gillespie's music compares to Bach, he finds no moral objection to believing that different races are differently intelligent, and he thinks it is perfectly fine to avoid hanging out with bald people. It is fairly safe to say that Rockwell's views coincide well with what Anti-Gnostic calls "the Dark Enlightenment."

I suppose the whole question - the one that Horwitz would like to force - is whether one can be both libertarian and ethnocentric. This is a question that likely lead to my unfortunate bromantic break-up with Sonic Charmer. It seems to be the question at the heart of the "open borders" debate. Can liberty-loving people be ethnocentric? Do those two ethics match up?

Coming at the question from the Enlightenment angle, as Horwitz does, replete as it is with tales of "all men are created equal," and women's suffrage, and civil rights, it is very difficult to conclude that ethnocentrism and libertarianism are compatible. Consider what libertarian godmother Ayn Rand wrote:

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

In the Objectivist tradition, racism is collectivism, and collectivism is both anti-liberty and anti-life. But this argument will obviously have no sway with those libertarians, such as Rockwell, who believe that Rand was the leader of a cult.

Conclusion
And this is the tragic end of the libertarian movement. At the end of the day, after decades of progress, the movement unravels in full view of the public, not because liberty was tried and failed, but because libertarians themselves cannot seem to agree whether or not they are racists.

Let me briefly acknowledge the obvious critique here: I understand that the Rockwells and Steve Sailers of the world don't actually believe that they're racists, but it's hard to conclude otherwise when they insist that there is nothing morally objectionable about preferring the company of whites. Isn't it?

Like Horwitz, I believe this leaves a pockmark on the face of the liberty movement that scares people away whenever liberty starts to get favorable press. The Tea Party rises, and quickly falls, precisely because charges of racism can stick to essays like the Rockwell piece I've discussed here.

But if you think I'm not giving Rockwell a fair shake, consider this passage from the same essay:

The only way to sever libertarianism's link with libertinism is with a cleansing debate. I want to start that debate, and on the proper grounds.

In effect, Lew Rockwell never called for a declaration that his way, and only his way, was the viable form of libertarianism - at least not in the offending article. Instead, he outlined a position he called "paleo-libertarianism," and called for a debate.

To my knowledge, this debate never happened. Horwitz's blog post does not seem to advance the debate very far, either, although I readily concede that the ideas laid out on BleedingHeartLibertarians.com certainly qualify as participating in a debate about what libertarianism consists of.

Rather than lob rhetorical molotov cocktails at each other, I think the old guard should participate in the very debate Rockwell hoped to initiate. And, I think the starting point should be not the Rockwell article or the Ron Paul newsletters, or even Horwitz's blog post.

Instead, I think the debate should start at the same place that so many of these folks came to self-identify as libertarians in the first place: Ayn Rand. Let them have the debate, and let them start by articulating the extent to which they agree with Rand's views on racism, quoted above. From that starting point, let them produce their rationale and convince each other that "true" libertarianism is either anarcho-capitalistic ethnic enclaves, or enlightened, libertine, "bleeding heart" societies.

Contradiction

Part One:

 COL LANDA
          Now according to these papers, all
          the Jewish families in this area have
          been accounted for - except, The Dreyfusis.
          Somewhere in the last year it would appear
          they have vanished.
          Which leads me to the conclusion that
          they've ether made good their escape,
          or someone is very successfully hiding
          them.

          (looking up from his papers, across the table at The FARMER)

          What have you heard about The Dreyfusis
          Monsieur LaPadite?

          PERRIER
          Only rumors -

          COL LANDA
          - I love rumors! Facts can be so
          misleading, where rumors, true or false
          are often reveling. So Monsieur LaPadite,
          what rumors have you heard regarding
          The Dreyfusis?

          (The Farmerlooks at Landa.)

          COL LANDA
          Speak freely Monsieur LaPadite, I want
          to hear what the rumors are, not who told
          them to you.
          The Farmer puffs thoughtfully on his pipe.

          PERRIER
          Again, this is just a rumor - but we
          heard the Dreyfusis had made there way
          into Spain.

          COL LANDA
          So the rumors you've heard have been of
          escape?

          PERRIER
          Yes.

          COL LANDA
          Were the LaPadites and the Dreyfusis
          friendly?

          (As the Farmer answers this question, the CAMERA LOWERS behind
          his chair, to the floor, past the floor, to a small area underneath the
          floorboards revealing;)

          FIVE HUMAN BEINGS
          (lying vertically underneath the farmers floorboards. These human
          beings are The DREYFUSIS, who have lived lying down underneath the
          dairy farmers house for the past year. But one couldn't call what The
          Dreyfusis have done for the last year living. This family has done the
          only thing they could, hidden from a occupying army that wishes to
          exterminate them.)

          PERRIER
          We were families in the same community,
          in the same bussiness. I wouldn't say
          we were friends, but members of the same
          community, we had common interest.

          (The S.S. Colonel takes in this answer, seems to except it, then moves
          to the next question.)

- From the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds

Part Two:

If you’re an anarchist, then it would be illogical for you to argue that the US government should sell off federal land in order to divest itself of property. Instead, the logical argument should be that the federal government should vacate the land it has taken possession of and not interfere with its original owners’ resettlement.

For, if you argue that the government should sell the land it holds, then you are implicitly admitting that the government is a) a legitimate entity and that b) it possesses property rights. If the government were an illegitimate entity, then whatever ownership claims it would make would subsequently be illegitimate as well. Thus, it would have to forfeit all claims to the proceeds of the sales, since those claims are derivative from the initial illegitimate ownership claim.

- Simon Grey, A Brief Thought Exercise

Although I cannot locate a citation for it, somewhere in the far reaches of YouTube, there exists footage of an interview with Frank Zappa in which he discusses his problems with the Libertarian Party, circa 1985 or so. Zappa makes the point that he agreed with the LP on a lot of issues, but on other issues, he found their thinking to be problematic.

In the interview, he cites eminent domain as one example. At the time, the LP platform included a point about returning land to Native Americans. However, the platform also included a point about eminent domain's being unconstitutional, or otherwise wrong. Zappa's point was: How will we return land to Native Americans without practicing eminent domain? Grey's concern is identical to Zappa's; true to the adage, great minds think alike.

Part Three:
You hypocrite, I wrote, how can you contradict yourself? But it's inevitable, I wrote.

It takes courage to discover a sense of conviction. It is a lifelong journey to develop a code of ethics that works for you. Along the way, you are bound to contradict yourself. 

This is the nature of morality. This is what it means to be human. We will never live up to all of our own expectations for ourselves. Our expectations will even change over time. The fact that someone once read and enjoyed Atlas Shrugged or The Communist Manifesto or any other controversial set of moral ideas should never, ever be used as a Scarlet Letter against anyone.

Of course, it's easy for me to dismiss contradiction when levied at me, while simultaneously crying foul when I detect it in the position of others. Easy it may be, but fair it is not. Although I am not an anarchist and I don't wish to defend their beliefs, in the context in which it was written, Grey's point can be thought of as an allusion to open-borders immigration. To wit, if citizenship is a relevant concept - indeed, if nation states are a relevant concept - then how can one simultaneously believe in citizenship and open borders?

Part Four:
Can a Christian Frenchman living through the Holocaust lie to Colonel Landa in order to save a family of innocent Jews from certain death? That is, can one whose values stand against "bearing false witness" nonetheless bear false witness if the cause is noble? Does the value of human life outweigh offer sufficient justification for failing to consistently practice what you preach?

More to the point, under what conditions might we "get away with" a philosophical inconsistency in the name of a just cause?

There are no right answers here. In the movie, Perrier ultimately betrays the Jewish family to protect his own. Human life outweighs his belief in honesty; the lives of his immediate family outweigh those of his neighbors. The Libertarian Party, circa mid-1980s, valued Native American property rights more highly than their stance against eminent domain. Simon Grey values communal homogeneity over strict adherence to free market capitalism.

As is the case with so many different aspects of life, the world is complex to the point that total consistency is probably impossible. In that regard, complaints that religions are self-contradictory are specious, too. Everyone is some level of hypocrite, because there are far too many complications in life to be fully accounted for by any ideology.

What matters is not that a contradiction exists, but that no contradiction remains unexplained. Consequentialist ethics easily account for a "noble lie." In the name of pragmatism, we might prefer some level of legal authority if it enables us to shrink the State's property holdings. Logic dictates that immigration restrictions are easier to eliminate than claims to citizenship.

That good decisions are sometimes contradictory is no strike against good decisions. The problem only arises when one deploys arguments of economic freedom against immigration; when one deploys religious arguments against saving lives; when one uses creed to justify creed-violation.

Ideally, a good-faith dialogue helps clarify the trade-offs. I do see the value of borders in the modern world, in light of practical considerations. I realize that open borders compromise border security - and I am comfortable with that trade-off. Freedom of migration and economic growth are both worth more to me than border security.

I also realize that in-group homogeneity loses out when pit against the arrival of a heterogeneous out-group. This is a good trade, in my opinion, because I do not value in-groups at all, and homogeneous ones - with their many Colonel Landas, large and small - have been all the more pernicious, in my experience.

My Theory On Income Convergence

Despite my having promised more interesting, less opinionated blog posts in the future, a recent post at Marginal Revolution has given me an opportunity to articulate a theory that has been working itself up in my head lately.

But first, some pictures. Let's start with the map posted at Marginal Revolution, originally found here.

Now, let's compare that to a graph of the percent change in population, by county for the one-year period from 2011 to 2012, which I located at this link:

There are some obvious points of overlap, but it's not a home-run. Things look even better when you look at where the population was increasing up to about 2007, found at USA Today (note that the period covered in the first graph is 2007-2012):

Now that we have a sense of what's been going on, I'll make two points very quickly.

First, if it isn't obvious to you that population growth results in economic growth, I would encourage you to give these maps some additional thought. When people have more children, the economy benefits because, simply stated, people are good for the economy. A tangentially related point to this is that immigration is good for the economy. That's a point for the open borders crowd.

Secondly, some have lamented that US median income has been stagnating for years, at least on a national level. Clearly, there is no question that the US has had a poor recovery since the-great-recession-or-whatever-we're-calling-it-these-days. It seems ages ago since it was fresh in our minds, but prior to the "great recession," the big economic issue was outsourcing. People were upset that they were losing their high-paying factory jobs to people in China, and that they were losing their high-paying programming jobs to people in India, and so on.

We see technology playing a larger and larger role in daily American life. You can place fast food orders at computers, or online. You will soon receive Amazon.com purchases delivered by drones. Labor is an important component of the economy, and I disagree with Cowen and others when they place such a high emphasis on the importance of artificial intelligence and imagine futures where intelligent robots walk beside us.

But when you add up all these trends, it seems to indicate that wages throughout the world are converging. What this means in the United States is that one no longer has to move to New York City in order to enjoy New York City salaries. From the NYC vantage point (or Fairfax, VA), this feels like "stagnation" because it is getting costlier and costlier to keep up with ever-inflating price levels. But, from the vantage point of Oklahoma City or Topeka it looks a lot more like increasing wages. That's because incomes in the Midwest are apparently increasing, and thus converging with comparable incomes in the old urban centers.

On an international level, the middle class in the developing world is and has been experiencing enormous wage growth. Life is not as "dire" in developing nations as the Baby Boomers once believed. In fact, life is actually quite pleasant. Every year, things in the "third world" look a little bit more like the "first world."

My theory here is that, just as "the Great Stagnation" feels like a stagnation in Baltimore, but feels more like a boom in Fargo, the "slow recovery" that we've experienced here in the United States feels more like "solid growth" in places like Mexico and India.

In conclusion, I would like to make the prediction that we should not expect to see a lot of wage growth in the United States for quite a long time. But this does not mean that life will get worse here; life will get better as world incomes grow and the entire world experiences hefty wealth increases. I would expect this to put deflationary price pressure on the United States, and the rest of "the west" more broadly. This will likely put central bankers in a bind, but I think they should not worry about it so much. A rapidly growing economy is a very good thing, of course, but a surge in global wealth and its resulting income convergence is also very good.

To fully reap the benefits of what's going on, we here in the United States should think about decreasing barriers to international trade, so that we can more fully enjoy decreasing prices, and also that we might do a better job of doing business internationally.