Author: VD

All wars are not created equal

The Mises Institute erroneously conflates the War on Drugs with a hypothetical War on Immigration:

One of the arguments people make against immigration is that immigrants from less-free countries will lead to the adoption of policies that encroach on liberty in the US. I doubt that the immigrants in the US want to recreate the dysfunctional institutions that encouraged them to leave their homelands in the first place, but I also think the consequences of the wars on drugs and terror are instructive. There’s no free lunch, and there’s also no free border fence, either financially or institutionally. I also doubt very much that we could deport even a fraction of the undocumented workers who are already in the US or do “secure our borders” to the nativists’ satisfaction without even more of the kinds of encroachments on liberty that we have endured as a result of the wars on drugs and terror.

I think the case for immigration is pretty solid on its own practical and philosophical merits. Even if immigrants bring with them the possibility of tyranny, I think stopping them would require that we embrace even greater tyranny.

I count no less than four errors in this post. Immigration and open borders is one of the few areas where I part company from the Misean approach. First, it is an observable fact that immigrants from less free countries lead to the imposition of policies that encroach on liberty. For two hundred years, immigrants have regularly favored bigger government and more government intervention in the economy.

Second, the cost of proper border control is far less expensive than the cost of providing free government services to tens of millions of immigrants. Third, as the success of Operation Wetback and the long period of restricted immigration proves, it is not necessary to institute a police state in order to methodically return immigrants to their homes in a civilized manner. Indeed, American society was far more free prior to the opening of its borders.

Fourth and finally, it is eminently stupid to assume that immigrants will be transformed to value American ideals, as the course of history demonstrates that immigrants instead tend to transform the nations to which they migrate, usually not for the better. Indeed, it is not an accident that the architect of the 1986 Immigration Act that led to the present problems was engineered by a fourth-generation Irish immigrant named Kennedy,

In support of free trade

If you can’t trust Obama’s top economic adviser, who can you trust?

The U.S. economy is not facing a double-dip recession, but weak job growth is “a call to arms” for policymakers to take steps to reinvigorate the private sector, a top White House adviser said on Friday.

“This is not a double dip,” Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee told Reuters Insider after the government report showed the economy created only 18,000 jobs in June. “This is a reflection and reiteration that the growth rate slowed at the beginning of this year. This should be a call to action,” he added. “We need to take bipartisan action to help the private sector stand up and start growing, hiring and investing,” Goolsbee said.

He cited steps from passing free trade agreements to securing a deal on long-term deficit reduction.

So, the USA is not presently in an economic contraction, it is not facing one, and free trade boosts economic growth and jobs. I’m curious to know how many free traders don’t find support from this corner to be just a little worrisome.

The inevitable drift left

On a scale of one to ten, how surprised are you that David Frum has had a sudden change of heart with regards to homogamy now that New York has legalized it? I’d say minus four. About the only thing less surprising will be Obama’s new position on the topic once he doesn’t have to run for office anymore.

I was a strong opponent of same-sex marriage. Fourteen years ago, Andrew Sullivan and I forcefully debated the issue at length online (at a time when online debate was a brand new thing). Yet I find myself strangely untroubled by New York state’s vote to authorize same-sex marriage — a vote that probably signals that most of “blue” states will follow within the next 10 years.

I don’t think I’m alone in my reaction either. Most conservatives have reacted with calm — if not outright approval — to New York’s dramatic decision.

Frum illustrates what today’s “conservative” opinion “leaders” do. They do their best to march in front of the mainstream media parade in an attempt to appear they’re leading it. What will be amusing is Frum’s desperate attempt to have another change of heart once he realizes that the buying off of a few Republican senators is not the political sea change that he is reading.

Since all politics ebb and flow over time, it can be amusing to watch how the pragmatists’ positions float along with them.

Preemptive surrender

The Senate Republicans wave the white flag:

There has to be another way, and there is. Republicans in the Senate are united in our concern about our nation’s fiscal future. Before we consider saddling our children with even more debt, we must enact significant spending cuts and enforceable caps on future spending. For the long term, to prevent both this Congress and its successors from hijacking the promise of American prosperity, we also need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, like the one we and all 47 Senate Republicans have introduced.

Translation: we must surrender before we are defeated. The morbidly amusing thing is that Senator DeMint is outright telling Americans that Republicans fully intend to “saddle our children with even more debt”, but the good news is that first they are going to promise to spend less money 10 years from now. Again. And as a bonus, they will pass an amendment that will no doubt be as respected by future Congresses as the 2nd Amendment presently is.

No Republican who votes to raise the debt ceiling, for any reason, merits a vote in November.

Mailvox: it’s raciss!

Huey Freeman staunchly defends the peaceful, law-abiding non-Asian minoritiesmajority in Milwaukee:

I wonder why he doesn’t post on the fact the crime rate is on the decline since 2006?

Vox is cherry picking by pointing out how whites are not the minority anymore than bringing up one single incident where a bunch of blacks jump some whites, while completely ignoring the fact that the crime rate went down. I don’t know what story vd is attempting to paint, but it seems to me hes is trying say that when whites are no longer in the majority, things like the above will become more and more common, while completely ignoring the fact that the official crime rate has gone down in the past couple years which undermines what he’s trying to say (again, assuming that is what he was attempting to convey). I’m sure if he expended his energy into proper research instead of wasting it using sophist rhetoric in poor attempts to hide his racism he would’ve done a simple google search for the official crime rate.

The reason I didn’t bother to respond to Huey’s inept defense of riotous, but law-abiding African youths is that, as anyone who bothered to read his link would have immediately recognized, the statistics do not disprove my contention that Vibrant America will increasingly bear more similarity to the nations that are providing the vibrancy than they do to historical Western America. But since he kept returning to the point, I will point out the errors of his statement.

Presumably due to his low IQ, Huey claimed that the Milwaukee crime rate had fallen from 2006. But this is only true if one looks at 2006 and 2009; the crime rate actually rose from 2006 to an all-time high in 2007, then abruptly fell 20% in two years. (Upon further research, 23% in three years.) Moreover, there is no discernible trend; the crime rate fell 25% from 1999 to 2004, then rose 44% from 2004 to 2007, then fell 23% again. Note, however, that while overall crime is generally down, assault – which is exactly the sort of crime involving “where a bunch of blacks jump some whites” – has risen 21% since 1999; it was up 67% as recently as 2007.

During that time, the African population has gone from 36.9% to 40% of the population. The European population has gone from 45.4% to 37%. And the Hispanic population has risen from 12% to 17%. Huey’s second error is that he failed to notice that the demographic figures from the article are from the 2010 census and are therefore newer and more accurate than the pre-census statistics he cites from 2009. In other words, he is wrong and whites are no longer the majority in Milwaukee.

However, it should be kept in mind that it is not necessarily pure demographics that matter with regards to crime, but also the demographics of the power structure. For example, South Africa had a fairly similar population mix during the white-ruled Apartheid years that it does now, but its violent crime rate has risen dramatically since the end of Apartheid in 1994.

It is true that total crime in Milwaukee has continued to drop, at least according to the official statistics. “Total violent crime was down 7.1 percent in 2010 from 2009, and decreased 23.1 percent since 2007.” The problem is that, as was reported in the article I linked, it appears that this decline may be attributable to the police refusing to take statements or report crimes. If a mass assault by dozens of African “youths” and multiple thefts show up in the headlines, but not in the police reports, then it is readily apparent that the crime rates not only have no discernible pattern related to racial demographics, but are entirely unreliable. The incredible decline in assault in only two years tends to support the anecdotal evidence suggesting the apparent improvement in crime rates is primarily the result of intentional police under-reporting.

The fact is that it doesn’t matter if you want to describe a hypothesis as vibrant, Correct, or raciss, it will nevertheless be supported or falsified by subsequent events. In this case, we can simply wait and see what happens as Milwaukee becomes increasingly vibrant. If Huey is correct, it will not become less law-abiding and more violent. If I am correct, it will, and Huey will forced to be concede that the “raciss” perspective is, in fact, the correct one. I am not the least bit bothered by insinuations or even direct accusations of racism because I recognize that the objective facts are simply what they are. My like or dislike for any individual, of any genetic type, does not determine Asian IQ ranges, African homicide rates or Arab predilections for rape. They are what they observably are.

The tragedy of the multicultural debacle is that while it is incorrect to prejudge any individual by his genetic makeup, it is absolutely correct to make macrosocietal judgments about groups of people on that basis. This is why one can empathize with the individual man who wishes to move to the suburbs to help his family escape the ghetto while simultaneously recognizing that the man’s rational action will likely bring about the eventual destruction of the very haven he seeks.

Sam Harris once told me that it is tribalism, not faith, that is the cause of conflict. But our tribalism is bred into our very DNA, and cannot be eradicated through any amount of Correct thinking and reality denial. There are only three possible solutions to the problem, each rife with its own terrible costs. The problem is that most people incline towards one solution or another without any understanding of what those costs entail.

The Amalgamation solution, favored by Arthur C. Clarke and other SF fans, will necessarily involve the eventual subsumption and elimination of every historical nationality and tradition and reduce humanity to its lowest common denominator. It is the world of Idiocracy. It is, I would argue, the least likely outcome and the worst for humanity as a whole, as it is the only one that would appear to risk humanity’s survival as a species. Another way to look at it, you see, is a low-IQ world with inherited nukes.

The Separation solution will necessarily involve a tremendous amount of disruption and bloodshed, as the elite of the less-favored groups will actively resist being sentenced to live among their own. But, as China, Japan and other relatively homogeneous countries have shown, this is ultimately the most stable, least violent solution.

And finally, the Elimination solution, which is the one that totalitarian governments usually resort to in the end. This is Stalin and Mao on a scale that is an order of magnitude higher. It may sound unthinkable, but history shows that it is the most probable one. There is no reason to think that the fascists of the EU will be any more merciful to the Africans and Arabs in their midst than the Turks were to the Armenians, the Poles were to the Germans, or the Zimbabweans were to the European Rhodesians.

The Correct view of different but mixed and vibrant is simply not a long-term option. Even the Czechs and Slovaks couldn’t make it work. So, in this case, that which is simply will not be tomorrow.

More joys of vibrancy

Milwaukee is proud to join Vibrant America:

After the 2000 U. S. Census, figures showed that for the first time, the city had become a majority-minority city. The 2010 Census shows that there has been a 44% growth in the Latino population, largely on the city’s south side. That’s the area that will see the most boundary shifts by the council and the area that’s sparked the most controversy.

Today the city is 40% black, 37% white, 17% Hispanic and 3.7% Asian.

Unsurprisingly, now that Africans make up the largest portion of the population, the traditional African behavioral patterns are now beginning to exert themselves.

20 to 25 friends from Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood had gathered at the park shortly before midnight to watch some fireworks set off by a neighbor. In interviews with 11 people who said they were attacked or witnessed the attack, a larger group of youths appeared in another section of the park around midnight and were joined by more young people running up the park’s stairs.

At some point the group of friends and the group of youths intersected; those interviewed said the attack appeared to be unprovoked.

“I saw people dancing and I figured they were just having a good time,” said Riverwest resident Jessica Bublitz, 28.

Minutes later Bublitz saw a male friend hit in the temple and fall down. Her fiancé told her to run to safety. James Zajackowski, 28, said things suddenly turned chaotic.

“Within 30 seconds to a minute, bottles were flying and people started getting punched. I was in shock. I thought, ‘Really? Is this really happening?’ I was on the ground, people were trying to get into my pockets, I could feel their hands but I held on to my cellphone and my wallet,” said Zajackowski, a census worker.

Emily Mowrer, 27, was not hurt but saw her friends beaten and punched and full beer bottles thrown at them. Her boyfriend was punched. She saw Perry lying with blood on her face, not moving. She called 911 on her cellphone.

“I saw some of my friends on the ground getting beat pretty severely. They got away with one of my friends’ bikes. Some people had their wallets stolen,” said Mowrer, who owns a house with her boyfriend in Riverwest. “It didn’t seem like it was a mugging – it seemed like an attack. Like they weren’t after anything – just violence.”

It’s really not that difficult to understand that whereas small minorities usually conform, more or less, to the behavioral patterns of the majority that outnumbers them, they cease to do so once they become the numerically dominant population. And to be fair, why on Earth should they? It’s now their territory by ancient right of conquest and modern right of self-determination. So, one can safely predict that it will not take long before the Milwaukee crime rate rises to the level of Detroit.

Fortunately, the police are there to protect the new minority, right? Well, perhaps not.

“Most of the 11 people who told the Journal Sentinel they were attacked or witnessed the attacks on their friends said that police did not take their complaints seriously. They each said police responded to the scene quickly and tended to the injured, but officers did not take statements from them and told them to leave the area.”

Atheists in Gamma Hell

I know, I know, it’s simply astonishing news that women hate atheists. Even atheist women don’t like them:

Jen has slammed Richard Dawkins for some comments here. I can confirm that those comments were actually from Richard Dawkins. I also have to say that I agree with Jen and disagree with Richard. Richard did make the valid point that there are much more serious abuses of women’s rights around the world, and the Islam is a particularly horrendous offender. Women have their genitals mutilated, are beaten by husbands without recourse to legal redress, are stoned to death for adultery, are denied basic privileges like the right to drive or travel unescorted. These are far more serious problems than most American women face.

However, the existence of greater crimes does not excuse lesser crimes, and no one has even tried to equate this incident to any of the horrors above. What these situations demand is an appropriate level of response: a man who beats a woman to death has clearly committed an immensely greater crime than a man who harrasses a woman in an elevator; let us fit the punishment to the crime. Islamic injustice demands a worldwide campaign of condemnation of the excesses and inhumanity of that religion.

The elevator incident demands…a personal rejection and a woman nicely suggesting to the atheist community that they avoid doing that. And that is what it got. That is all Rebecca Watson did. For those of you who are outraged at that, I ask: which part of her response fills you with fury? That a woman said no, or that a woman has asked men to be more sensitive?

I think reasonable men will be quite capable of both opposing Islamic fundamentalism with vigor and refraining from driving away their godless colleagues with petty harrassment, colleagues who may well be even more fervent and dedicated to our common cause of promoting equality all around the world.

Look, it’s hardly news that atheist guys are creepy gammas, for the most part. That’s why they are much less likely to get married or have children. Even the small number of atheist girls don’t like atheist guys; the ludicrous internecine kerfluffle was kicked off by a male atheist hitting on female atheist in an elevator. He actually invited her for coffee, which is the “lesser crime” to which the Fowl Atheist refers.

Dawkins, who as a scientific celebrity surmounted his natural gamma status some time ago, was naturally confused by all this extravagant feminized foolishness, and pointed out how stupid it all was. This caused more hissy fits to be directed his way; Dawkins, being the coward that he has shown himself to be on numerous occasions, was naturally quick to crumble.

Now, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to be hapless with women to be an atheist, one need only look to Athol Kay, that godless Stud of Studs, Mr. Five Thousand Nights and a Night his own bad self, to see otherwise, but it is quite clear that it helps tremendously. No wonder they’re so furious at God. He created all those lovely women with those beautiful breasts and they aren’t even allowed to even talk to them in elevators.

Keynesian macroeconomics do not work

The brilliant economists at Harvard finally figure out the obvious:

Breaking with current economic orthodoxy, Robert Barro, Paul M Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University, said large spending plans should be undertaken only if they can be justified financially on their own merits. Any other spending plans end up costing the country even more than the initial outlay as interest on the debt has to be paid and the deficit cleared.

“In the long run you have got to pay for it. The medium and long-run effect is definitely negative. You can’t just keep borrowing forever. Eventually taxes are going to be higher, and that has a negative effect,” he said.

“The lesson is you want government spending only if the programmes are really worth it in terms of the usual rate of return calculations. The usual kind of calculation, not some Keynesian thing. The fact that it really is worth it to have highways and education. Classic public finance, that’s not macroeconomics.”

Turning to the $600bn (£373bn) to $800bn US package, he added it was “mainly a waste of money”. Stimulus programmes, he said, offer little more than “rearranging the timing” of economic growth. “Possibly you could make an argument that it’s worth it. But it’s going to be a negative-sum thing overall, so you have to think it’s a big benefit for boosting the recovery.”

What a pity the USA and other nations will have to go through not one, but two Great Depressions over 80 years before the empirical evidence is deemed sufficient to support what Austrians like Mises and Hayek were saying in the 1930s.

The logic supporting Keynes’s General Theory was always wrong. Its application and subsequent quantification utilizing Samuelsonian metrics was therefore always bound to be wrong as well. Modern science demonstrated the importance of empirical evidence to confirm that the logic is relevant, but if the logic is demonstrably flawed from the start, there is no need to gather the empirical evidence in order to support that conclusion.

You don’t say

Instapundit notes that a common theme among the science fetishists has been disproven. Scientifically:

The more people know about science, the less they believe in global warming. “The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones.”

It would be very interesting to see a similar study done of those who are skeptical of TE(p)NSBMGDaGF. On the anecdotal level, we’ve already seen that it was the evolutionary true believers who didn’t know that sexual selection is a form of natural selection. And we already know that biologists tend to be innumerate.