[PLEASUREMAN]

The idea, of course, is that there is nothing worse than making a generalization about a group of people--even if the generalization is correct. This has become the single most stultifying tic of conventional society, and has developed like a form of mental illness that paralyzes the brain on numerous subjects.

A corollary is that there is no graver insult or offense than criticism of some aspect of an ethnicity or other identity group category: sex, sexual preference, sexual disorder, religion (non-Christian), nationality (non-European), etc. Hence the effeminate hiss word "hateful" if you indulge in sober criticism of anything touching on these qualities. The fact that grown men are happy to talk like menstruating women and pout over perceived slights to some extended group they or someone they have heard of might belong to is a sign of how greatly masculinity is disparaged by the shapers of child psyches.

There is certainly nothing manly about going off in a sulk because someone criticized much less insulted your ethnic group. It is the most grossly pussified behavior I can imagine in anyone without a vagina. I was reminded of this watching Gran Torino last night--what was entertaining was not really the scenes of forced comity among the older men who freely exchanged ethnic insults (only some of which were funny), but the self-respect of the characters who shrugged off Eastwood's crankiness rather than having a big emotional sob about it. What is missed most is the ability to go through a day or week without hearing some faggot angrily crying because someone upset him.

Similarly, the academic environment re: MacDonald, Jensen, Watson, et al is thoroughly feminized (which of course would be taken to be the gravest of insults from the she-male academics), and this extends naturally to the academic rejects who fill the commentary webzines like Slate and Salon. Always the focus is on portraying people, usually grown adults, as pathetic victims, and shrieking if unflattering differences are discovered in anyone. This inverted value system, as I'm sure has been observed a million times before, makes you a noteworthy person simply because someone made you feel bad. Revolting.

As seen in the Ben Stein clip, this phenomenon is bizarrely over the top with regard to Jews, who blurt "anti-Semite" for any or no reason, or perhaps the reason is that someone got the better of them or even suggested that Israel doesn't have a divine right to shit on the ragheads it lives in justified fear of. I can't help but think that such rock dumb use of the label will sooner or later render it meaningless, just as much as the arrogance of Jewish culture will result in a backlash even from the effeminate, zero confidence pluralistic society it has helped to shape (cue outrage over assigning a negative attribute to Jewish culture, my Jewish friends, etc.).

Of course nothing is certain, and perhaps like the Mayans we'll just progress in arrogance and decadence until nothing is left but ruins of a once great culture. It may be notable that this corruption reaches deep into our sexual identity--a subversion of masculinity and imbalanced worship of the feminine--a radical part of who we are and how we relate in our communities. From this all manner of ills.

[PRCalDude]

The effeminate whining you describe is a far cry from the stoicism that was originally characteristic of Northern European Western culture as it rose. As a matter of fact, the Protestant Christian religion has aspects of stoicism in it as well because it advocates making reactions and emotions subject to the ultimate realities described in the New Testament (ie, we're to pray for those who persecute us and rejoice in our persecution, amongst other things).

Will Durant said that cultures begin in stoicism and end in epicureanism. I think we're pretty clearly in an epicurean stage at this point. At least many of our elites, upper class, and upper middle class are. We here quite a bit of complaining and excess emotion from them about things which are much better borne with a stiff upper lip, especially considering the ease of late modern American life.

It's interesting that you mentioned Eastwood. Most of his characters are defined by a certain stoicism. In the movie "Gran Torino," for example, we heard relatively little complaining from him about his sealed fate from cancer. In fact, I don't remember him complaining at all. Sure, he complained a lot about "gooks" and stuff, but he ended up defending many of his neighbors from the gangsters thuggish blacks with the same stoicism with which he bore is cancer diagnosis. Who amongst our leaders and elites today can we point to that demonstrates similar characteristics? None, from my estimation. Everything from them is given to us with a ton of overreaction, whining, and needless emotion. I'm reminded, for example, of Dick Durbin's laughable speech about the need for illegal immigrant amnesty because one of his Mexican constituents was an illegal immigrant who couldn't get in-state tuition and thus couldn't afford school. The entire speech was an effeminate, absurd appeal to emotion which has no place in a serious society.

Grand displays of emotion are an aspect of Jewish culture that dates at least to the time of Jesus. I'm reminded of a piece of writing Sailer did comparing Jewish comedy (exemplified by "Seinfeld" and in degenerates like Larry David) to British comedy where Sailer showed how Jewish comedy was mostly about absurd reactions to mundane things and British comedy was about subdued reactions to absurd things. This is essentially how American elite culture is as a whole now. If you can stomach it, watch a news show targeting wealthy urban elites some time. "The Today Show" and "Anderson Cooper 360" come to mind. Count how many times absurd emotions are used to make cases for the things advocated (subliminally or not) in these shows.

I think you are right about Jewish culture (which can be extrapolated to be descriptive of American elite culture at this point) - it will burn itself out and create its own backlash. We saw this partly in Mayor Bloomberg's near loss in NYC lately. No matter how much the Jews wanted him, they barely had the votes. Given their stance on immigration, there's no way they'll have the votes in about 5 - 10 years. They'll be surrounded in NYC by a demographic they helped install at the expense of another demographic. They'll find that this new demographic is much less tidy about PC and racism than the older, more self-censoring one. The same will be true in Los Angeles. Though Mayor Villariagosa is a Mexican, the Mexicans are unhappy about how much time he spends associating with and dealing with LA's large Jewish demographic given that LA is almost entirely Mexican.

Jewish urban elites will find that the ethnicities they've helped bring in to replace the traditional majority will have minds of their own, divergent interests, and much less nuance about race-relations than that traditional majority. Pop some popcorn. The next 10 years are sure to be interesting given that we've no longer got stable economic growth to cement us all together in one big happy rainbow coalition.

[PLEASUREMAN]

A friend of mine was on Anderson Cooper once, the subject was adoption law and paternity, and while my friend was prepared to discuss the laws that have been passed and how to fix them, all Cooper wanted to know was how his particular case made him FEEL. Of course Cooper isn't any kind of journalist, just a television personality who does narratives, so this wasn't unexpected. Our news media is a complete joke, and I agree with Nassim Taleb that people are better off not paying attention to mainstream news reporting because it is constantly misleading (mostly unintentionally). That problem will soon be taken care of it seems, as news orgs have gone through over a decade of steady bleeding and the strategy now is pure infotainment with no hard news at all, or gradual disintegration behind a pay wall.

[rho]

I don't exactly know where KGB was going with his schtick, but a sliver of it resonated with me. Jews are represented way out of their numerical odds in a lot of influential positions, this much is true. I too don't think there's an AIPAC conspiracy to put saltpeter in the drinking supply. No sane person does. The question then asserts itself: where are these ideas coming from?

It's find for Macdonald to suggest that there's some kind of group evolutionary process at work here, but that's just putting a name to a phenomenon. How does that work? Why does it work? Can it be fixed, altered or changed in any way? Not having read the book I don't know if he answers those questions, but if he did he'd be the first.

My own theory rests on the twin assumptions that most people want to do good things, regardless of their ability to do so, and on the blood-is-thicker-than-water principle. There's some problem in the country. A shortage of non-leaky water pistols, say. Everybody agrees that something must be done. Now what? The gears of power churn away, ticking over the colossal machinery of the national media and Federal government, and out spurts some wad of legislation and a set of talking points. At no time was there a back-room meeting with all the -steins or -bergs or -witzs having a matza ball with Gentile infant blood dip determining policy that skews towards Israel. Most of them are just trying to do something about all those soaked Garanimal overalls due to shitty water pistols. But a lot of the people they know are also Jews, and more importantly all subscribe to the same wishy-washy soft liberalism of upper middle-class and higher society. It just kind of filters out like the Jews run everything from Israel, when it's just a lot of well-meaning schlubs, most of whom have a relative of some kind in Jerusalem.

Nothing dark or mysterious. It's just that Jews tend to be smart, or at least highly educated, either due to racial differences (maybe) or cultural differences (my personal bet). Jews spent a lot of history in the margins, and the developed a culture that values certain things more highly than others. Education is one of those values. WASPs are similar, but tempered with allegiances to sport teams and other such social/community organizations. (Think Boy Scouts and Rotary Club.)

Folks like Ben Stein are a poor example to use because Ben Stein is, at heart, an entertainer. Nobody's inviting him on talking-head TV shows because he's a notable expert in much of anything. It's because he blows up real good. All of the real action is happening in the Water Pistol Policy Studies interns' break room where social peers are developing ideas to present to their boss. "Hey, my aunt in Tel Aviv has a cousin who makes water pistols. I had one as a kid, it was pretty sweet. Maybe we should put in something to make importing water pistols easier." It seems like a good idea, somebody writes it down, and it appears magically in a 1800 page bill that nobody's read and everybody's afraid to vote against lest they have to endure snarky remarks from expat Canadians on SNL.

Coming at it from the other direction it does seem like the Jews are running everything for Israel's benefit. From the other direction, it's a big stack of little decisions. Maybe that's group evolutionary thinking, but again that doesn't adequately describe what's going on.

[PLEASUREMAN]

rho, 04 January 2010 - 06:08 PM:

It's find for Macdonald to suggest that there's some kind of group evolutionary process at work here, but that's just putting a name to a phenomenon. How does that work? Why does it work? Can it be fixed, altered or changed in any way? Not having read the book I don't know if he answers those questions, but if he did he'd be the first.

[...]

Nothing dark or mysterious. It's just that Jews tend to be smart, or at least highly educated, either due to racial differences (maybe) or cultural differences (my personal bet). Jews spent a lot of history in the margins, and the developed a culture that values certain things more highly than others. Education is one of those values. WASPs are similar, but tempered with allegiances to sport teams and other such social/community organizations. (Think Boy Scouts and Rotary Club.)

We'll get into a fuller discussion of Culture of Critique when I get around to writing something more at length, but we can start with the observation that Jewish culture has animated a number of intellectual and political movements which have promoted a form of radical individualism while at the same time increasing Jewish cohesion and identity. In short, Jews attack any and all forms of gentile cohesion while strengthening their own. Jewish culture resists assimilation and therefore gains an advantage in a fractured, pluralistic society.

There is really no example (restricting ourselves to the past century) of Jewish culture producing the opposite effect, that is abetting assimilation of Jews into the majority gentile culture. As MacDonald notes, even the secular Jewish radicals who provided the intellectual horsepower behind Russian communism preserved Jewish cultural practices and separateness in a variety of ways.

Similarly with regard to Israel, Jews promote diversity and multiculturalism in America and an ethno-theocracy in Israel and don't really see a great contradiction between these two stances (since both promote the welfare of Jews).

Jewish influence on conservatism is where this becomes most apparent; while you do in fact see Jews represented along the political spectrum, their influence at any point seems uncannily disruptive to majority interests, whether the disruption is caused by the promotion of unregulated capitalism or the promotion of a socialistic diversity state.

But perhaps the point will become clearer when you compare Jews to other ethnic/religious groups with strong group identities. Hardly anyone worth listening to complains when we say that blacks promote big government, a generous welfare state, and affirmative action because they benefit directly from these policies. However, the implication that Jews tend to also push ideologies and public policies that benefit Jews as a group typically results in the discussion-ending tactics that KGB has demonstrated in this thread. The notion is crazy, racist, paranoid, etc. Why? Given the level of Jewish cultural cohesion that exists, I still don't understand why the notion is crazy, racist, paranoid, etc. In fact it seems exactly what I would expect when presented with a minority group that sustains a very strong identity, the moreso if the group in question has had a history of troubled relations with the majority culture (as evidenced by the Inquisition, the Eastern European pogroms, legal restrictions under the tsars, the Stalinist purges, etc. etc.).

MacDonald looks at Jewish participation in communist movements (Poland, Russia, Germany), intellectual movements (Freudian psychoanalysis, Boasian anthropology), politics (the Frankfurt school, neoconservatism), policy (immigration, civil rights) and finds a common strategy which explains these diverse interactions with the gentile majority. I think his is an excellent starting point from which to examine Jews and their relationship with the West--I don't claim it is the last word or that he has written some final authoritative work on Jews or that Jews are solely to blame for all the troubles in the world. However, to proceed from this starting point we must abandon the self-discrediting foolishness that argues Jews can do no wrong, have no real culture, and do not constitute an identifiable outgroup, which are claims really at the root of KGB's statements. For if these claims are incorrect then his objections make no sense.

And consider this. Does the explicit Jewish argument, that anti-Semitism arises for no reason at all, make any sense? Central to MacDonald's thesis is that anti-Semitism arises due to competition for resources between Jews and other groups. Isn't this so obvious as to be self-evident? Or have we identified the one group in all human history that is incapable of seeking advantage for itself, that is uniquely blameless in all confrontations it has found itself in with other cultures? It hardly seems likely--it certainly isn't true of any other group I know of--yet this is what we are asked to swallow.

[rho]

I don't have a problem with the idea that Jewish culture is an identifiable thing. And I don't have a problem with the idea that Jews are looking after Jewish interests.

Where I run into trouble is some of the more esoteric theories about how Jews, in yanking the levers of political or media power, acquire a Jewish advantage. For example, how Jews are inculcating a multicultural society because that benefits them. Maybe I'm being dumb, but promoting multiculturalism while maintaining a cultural identity are not contradictory. That's kind of the point of multiculturalism, I'd think. And whether the Jews in the US support multiculturalism has no bearing on how Israel conducts its own affairs, unless it's the same group of Jews making the decisions. As far as I can tell, it's not.

The logic works on a broad scale, but when you get down to individuals, it's hard to find where they're consciously doing what the logic describes. Maybe they are and I just don't know enough Jews. Maybe it's unconscious. But if so, now we're talking about some kind of genetic race consciousness. Might as well say it's ordained by God.

None of this is to say that the conversation should not be had. If there is a massive Jewish conspiracy it's worth talking about; if there isn't, it's still worth talking about, if only so that Jews can hear the discussion. Maybe they do what they do and aren't aware of how it looks to other cultures. But yeah, the rapidity to which a Jew runs towards "ANTI-SEMITE!" is annoying and lame. They may be overplaying their hand on that, because I think a lot of folks are finding it wears a bit thin after all these years.

An interesting side note: if Jewish interests are best served by promoting multicultural and race politics, how does that jibe with the tendency for racial groups to form voting blocks? In any race war, Jews have a massive numbers disadvantage. It would seem to me that Jews would, if they were actually looking out for their interests, seek to preserve WASPy culture in the US rather than supporting come one, come all immigration policies. Because when the US is half full of wets, President Ricardo is not going to nominate Shiv Berkowitz to be Secretary of the Interior. It's going to be Julio Vasquez. In a race war as politics, Jews lose, and always have.

[PLEASUREMAN]

This is a more promising direction. MacDonald's thesis is that the Jewish "culture of critique" is intended to fragment the majority gentile culture and to attack concepts that would lead to greater majority cohesion, by opening gentile culture to criticism. For example, Freudian psychoanalysis' critique of bourgeois Christian morality, or Boasian anthropology's attack on group differences having an evolutionary basis. Note that the various critiques need not be consistent with one another, as long as they spring from the same drive, which in the case of Jews would be to safeguard their position within nations and cultures where they are vastly outnumbered.

This benefits Jews because they are a highly cohesive outgroup that has had to deal with high levels of animosity from the majority cultures it operates within. Jews, with much higher average IQs and strong ethnocentric habits, will likely encounter more success in a pluralistic society where they are not at an enormous numerical disadvantage from a large and cohesive majority.

(The extent to which these impulses constitute an "evolutionary strategy" could vary greatly--the impetus may only be in a naturally more aggressive competition for resources by Jews alongside a religious tradition that posits Jewish exceptionalism--these acting in concert would result in predictable frictions with other cultures that Jews interact with.)

Of course this is all treating Jewish culture and behavior as most other ethnic or strongly cohesive religious groups; obviously it is not a consciously directed conspiracy, any more than black illegitimacy and social breakdown are part of a black conspiracy, or illegal immigration is part of a Mexican conspiracy. Conspiracies are not needed to explain the simple reality that groups of people who share some degree of relatedness often behave in sympathy. Naturally this transcends ethnic bonds as well, but ethnic bonds are often the strongest for obvious reasons. And as you can see it does not require race consciousness--to some degree we all behave in accordance with certain group affiliation, without consciously designing to. Do you get out of bed and think, I must go out today and do Western culture things, or conservative things, or white man things? Group cohesion works at a far lower level than that.

None of which is to say that Jewish group behavior is ideally suited to Jewish interests--group strategies don't have to be ideal, and as with WASP behavior over the last century can in fact be highly self-damaging. Again, we are not talking about a plan that some cabal of Zionists is enacting like some truther fever dream. You raise a good point, which is that Jewish promotion of multiculturalism (which if you look at the development of Jewish political and intellectual thought is a very prominent ideology since at least the 19th century), particularly in America, may lead to adverse consequences for Jews down the road. However I am not convinced that Jews won't be able to make the best of it; as we see now, our current black president has many prominent Jewish advisors, and given their dominance in academia, media, and intellectual life I find it hard to believe that the hispanicization of America will lead to a downturn in Jewish influence. Quite the contrary, WASP self-confidence has never been lower, and one can look for Jews to continue to dominate this shrinking majority for some time to come.

And of course Jewish involvement in Russian communism did not ultimately end well for Jews; both in Russia and Poland they ran into problems due partly to a failure to assimilate, and through retention of a strong Jewish identity fostered resentment from Russians and Poles (the animosity sometimes being clearly mutual). Hence, eventually the Jewish Left in America grew away from communist radicalism (in which Jewish involvement had been truly remarkable) and toward post-communist neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Jews have also become more split over affirmative action as the disadvantage to them of ethnic quotas becomes more apparent.

Because America is the only country besides Israel with a significant Jewish presence, one should expect to see in America over the 20th century a marked Jewish influence. This is after all a high IQ demographic that has an outsized presence in politics, media, and academia, as already mentioned, and avidly promotes its own cultural identity. So when one notices a Jewish influence, cries of "anti-Semite!" and "racist" ought to sound quite ridiculous.

That said, I acknowledge that on the extreme left and extreme right there is genuine anti-Semitism, i.e. an irrationally vehement hatred of Jews even as individuals and which seeks to dehumanize them--an urge that I think arises both from a real competition for resources and from a natural tendency towards ethnocentric bias in all of us. We like it when groups we feel a close bond with succeed, and dislike it when those groups appear to be under attack or at risk of losing a battle for highly valued resources. Jews are a readily identifiable outgroup that has enjoyed great success in America, and it is not unfair to say that Jews have in turn promoted ideologies at odds with the preservation of the founding Northern European culture. Unfortunately, when we allow Jews (and multiculturalism-infatuated fools) to silence the discussion by shouting anti-Semite at the first hint of criticism, we ensure that the only complaints that will ever arise will be ill-informed bigotry--of which I can say there is utterly no trace in MacDonald's work, despite its reputation.

And of course we cut off what I think can be a very illuminating examination of how ethnic groups interact and conflict, and in particular how Western culture may be vulnerable to certain outgroup strategies.

[PRCalDude]

Bad sign:
http://online.wsj.co...MIDDLEFifthNews

There are increasingly few ways to remain in the middle class. I read somewhere that college enrollment is way down due to the recession, and male enrollment has been in decline for quite awhile. The reality is that even the college-educated are caught in a Malthusian trap for the time being (from the perspective of wages, at least) as Third World engineers, computer scientists, and researchers are utilized. It'll take at least a decade or two for our wages to equalize.


A libarts degree has never been worth anything except in certain cases.

[PLEASUREMAN]

PRCalDude, 02 February 2010 - 10:20 PM:

Bad sign:
http://online.wsj.co...MIDDLEFifthNews

There are increasingly few ways to remain in the middle class. I read somewhere that college enrollment is way down due to the recession, and male enrollment has been in decline for quite awhile. The reality is that even the college-educated are caught in a Malthusian trap for the time being (from the perspective of wages, at least) as Third World engineers, computer scientists, and researchers are utilized. It'll take at least a decade or two for our wages to equalize.


A libarts degree has never been worth anything except in certain cases.

I would really like to see what the difference in income is when you control for IQ (this might not be easy to do because of the small sample of high IQ people without a degree). But spread over a period of 45 years, even $450K isn't that impressive a difference. I think abandoning college for a lot of people will be a good thing for them and a good thing for society. A very bad thing for libarts academics, whom I would really like to see lose their "class prerogatives".

[Bibles 'n Guns]

Quote

There are increasingly few ways to remain in the middle class. I read somewhere that college enrollment is way down due to the recession, and male enrollment has been in decline for quite awhile. The reality is that even the college-educated are caught in a Malthusian trap for the time being (from the perspective of wages, at least) as Third World engineers, computer scientists, and researchers are utilized. It'll take at least a decade or two for our wages to equalize.

A huge problem is the mad rush to import cheap labor at nearly every level. Engineers and computer people from India, low skill laborers from Latin America, etc. This fuels the panic that gets the children of the upper working/lower middle class sent to college without any direction or motivation beyond their parents' pleas to get a degree, any degree. When I was working as an electrician the journeyman I worked under urged me not to make a career out of it because he thought we were only a few years away from importing tradesmen and selling journeyman's licenses at the flea markets.

I've found that liberal arts classes at college are a complete joke. They teach nothing that you can't learn yourself in a few days or weeks of reading. They've also been dumbed down for the sake of accommodating the glut of people who have no business being in college. Immature 18-23 year olds seeking an extension on childhood, affirmative action cases, and classes that teach nothing of value all come together to create an environment that feels like highschool without the adult supervision. If college enrollment declines I think most students, or at least the liberal arts majors, will ultimately benefit from freeing up four years of their lives to do something constructive.

[PRCalDude]

PLEASUREMAN, 02 February 2010 - 10:30 PM:

PRCalDude, 02 February 2010 - 10:20 PM:

Bad sign:
http://online.wsj.co...MIDDLEFifthNews

There are increasingly few ways to remain in the middle class. I read somewhere that college enrollment is way down due to the recession, and male enrollment has been in decline for quite awhile. The reality is that even the college-educated are caught in a Malthusian trap for the time being (from the perspective of wages, at least) as Third World engineers, computer scientists, and researchers are utilized. It'll take at least a decade or two for our wages to equalize.


A libarts degree has never been worth anything except in certain cases.

I would really like to see what the difference in income is when you control for IQ (this might not be easy to do because of the small sample of high IQ people without a degree). But spread over a period of 45 years, even $450K isn't that impressive a difference. I think abandoning college for a lot of people will be a good thing for them and a good thing for society. A very bad thing for libarts academics, whom I would really like to see lose their "class prerogatives".

If they broke it out by major, it would be easy to approximate. In my experience, technical majors automatically weeded out the stupid and lazy. Even the black electrical engineering majors I knew were smart (smarter than me, I thought).

Better to live in dollar-a-day poverty than have debt you can never repay.

[PRCalDude]

Bibles :

Quote

There are increasingly few ways to remain in the middle class. I read somewhere that college enrollment is way down due to the recession, and male enrollment has been in decline for quite awhile. The reality is that even the college-educated are caught in a Malthusian trap for the time being (from the perspective of wages, at least) as Third World engineers, computer scientists, and researchers are utilized. It'll take at least a decade or two for our wages to equalize.

A huge problem is the mad rush to import cheap labor at nearly every level. Engineers and computer people from India, low skill laborers from Latin America, etc. This fuels the panic that gets the children of the upper working/lower middle class sent to college without any direction or motivation beyond their parents' pleas to get a degree, any degree. When I was working as an electrician the journeyman I worked under urged me not to make a career out of it because he thought we were only a few years away from importing tradesmen and selling journeyman's licenses at the flea markets.

A good chunk of the Latin American journeymen do shit work. A good chunk of the Indian computer scientists and engineers do garbage work as well. From what I've seen, the best of the latter category come from Russia. The Russians are wicked smart. They build better radars than us for a fraction of the cost.

Quote

I've found that liberal arts classes at college are a complete joke. They teach nothing that you can't learn yourself in a few days or weeks of reading. They've also been dumbed down for the sake of accommodating the glut of people who have no business being in college. Immature 18-23 year olds seeking an extension on childhood, affirmative action cases, and classes that teach nothing of value all come together to create an environment that feels like highschool without the adult supervision. If college enrollment declines I think most students, or at least the liberal arts majors, will ultimately benefit from freeing up four years of their lives to do something constructive.

Libarts actually makes you stupider. Those degrees are a pre-req for black affirmative action jobs, though, which is why they'll remain around in the coming years of increasing government employment. You'd be amazed how many blacks have make-work jobs in the Federal government, overseeing projects well out of their league.

Let's put it this way: I hope we never plan on sending our aviators over hostile Chinese or Russian airspace.

We can't keep bitching about this without coming up with a plan. This is sort of why I read a lot of the 4GW blogs.

[PLEASUREMAN]

PRCalDude, 04 February 2010 - 11:46 PM:

A good chunk of the Latin American journeymen do shit work. A good chunk of the Indian computer scientists and engineers do garbage work as well.

ditto...there are good Mexican contractors but the flood of peasants plus the enormous number of second gen adult anchor babies (fat and really lazy) doing substandard work means you get pot luck...I have had the misfortune of hiring carpenters who couldn't build a doorframe let alone manage a real project, and even basic no-brainer chores like lawncare can't be trusted to the average Mexican anymore

and American corporations have already hired most of India's brain caste, so a lot of what you now see being hired are mediocrities who get sham degrees and then bluff their way into an H1B spot and then consistently underperform, but clueless managers can't tell the difference

[Bibles 'n Guns]

Quote

ditto...there are good Mexican contractors but the flood of peasants plus the enormous number of second gen adult anchor babies (fat and really lazy) doing substandard work means you get pot luck...I have had the misfortune of hiring carpenters who couldn't build a doorframe let alone manage a real project, and even basic no-brainer chores like lawncare can't be trusted to the average Mexican anymore

The general Mexican attitude is "Just throw some shit together". They put things together just sturdy enough to last until the project is finished, then it's someone else's problem. It's spreading over the whole country and across ethnic lines too; most White kids now are even worse than Mexicans(though this is because college has sucked up most of the good White kids and left the dregs for the trades to fight over) and the Blacks are hit or miss. This is no big deal on some projects and basically only amounts to additional cost in repairs, but for schools and large office buildings this nonchalant attitude towards work is a safety hazard and is going to get a lot of people killed. Of course it won't be until little Johnny flips the light switch and the whole school goes off like a roman candle that anyone notices the hidden costs of cheap labor.

[PLEASUREMAN]

Bibles :

They put things together just sturdy enough to last until the project is finished, then it's someone else's problem. It's spreading over the whole country and across ethnic lines too; most White kids now are even worse than Mexicans(though this is because college has sucked up most of the good White kids and left the dregs for the trades to fight over) and the Blacks are hit or miss.

This is a problem with an over-optimized society: it is considered "inefficient" for someone not to receive schooling commensurate with his cognitive ability, which, apart from the fact that many "white collar" jobs are very weakly productive, leads to a situation where jobs with fewer obvious cognitive demands are filled by subpar workers who are further degraded by the lack of high quality peers. In essence, it is the problem of black communities where housing projects concentrated the most abject portions of black society while affirmative action moved the only worthwhile peer influences out into the white suburbs. You don't just have a problem that these workers are lower quality--they will get even worse as there are no smart, disciplined colleagues to emulate.

Our financial system is the most glaring example of over-optimization, and over-optimization bears directly on the question "Wither the white middle class?" You see this in short term thinking where job categories are automated or moved offshore or become permatemp slots filled by a poorly trained headcount--it is deemed "too expensive" to maintain the positions with highly qualified and experienced employees. These decisions cumulatively place downward pressure on middle class wages just as does the desire for cheap labor, and also leads to the hidden cost of a minimally acceptable workforce.

There is no reason to believe that this process will, without intervention, lead to a Candidean ideal society, and every reason to suspect that it will cause long term degeneration and a stratification between the managerial and non-managerial classes. This problem is exacerbated further by our tendency to reward luck and to create winner-take-all reward systems, where human capital is squandered on a few fortunate recipients while indistinguishably talented colleagues are given nothing. (Two examples of this are stock traders and fiction authors.)

The key to making the system unsustainable is by ensuring a dilution of the workforce, which is being achieved (for contemptible, short-term motives) by immigration policy. This way talented workers have even less leverage over their wages, and are forced out of job categories that can no longer sustain a middle class lifestyle. They will ultimately compete for white collar jobs (salaries for which will also be depressed) where they will be socialized and misused by the managerial class. For managers the most desired traits in a worker are his expendibility and his obedience--this forms the "ethics" of his class.

That this case cannot be put to, or cannot be understood by, the American voter, is the tragedy of our age.

[PRCalDude]

The managerial class basically believes human capital is the same as other types of capital and is interchangeable regardless of race.

The next decade will show the folly of this line of thinking as the US goes the way of California financially.

[oni]

PLEASUREMAN, 05 February 2010 - 02:58 PM:

and American corporations have already hired most of India's brain cast, so a lot of what you now see being hired are mediocrities who get sham degrees and then bluff their way into an H1B spot and then consistently underperform, but clueless managers can't tell the difference

It's not just Indians, in Hong Kong everyone has multiple Masters degrees but they are all phony. A Masters in the US entails a couple years worth of work at a minimum, over there you can get one in a few months. You hear a lot about Chinese IQ but I've been very unimpressed by the quality of people I've seen in the work force. They also have cultural issues that generally make them unsuitable candidates if you want to get things done. India is the same way and when it comes down to a pure salary cost basis, they are dirt cheap. But you also have to account for the cost of refactoring all your work because they just don't get it, productivity lost from communicating with someone half way around the world, mind-boggling cultural issues like their total incapability of using initiative and creativity on problems. They will do exactly what you ask them but not one iota more, even if filling in a blank means the difference between failure for the project or success.

[PRCalDude]

oni, 05 February 2010 - 04:38 PM:

PLEASUREMAN, 05 February 2010 - 02:58 PM:

and American corporations have already hired most of India's brain cast, so a lot of what you now see being hired are mediocrities who get sham degrees and then bluff their way into an H1B spot and then consistently underperform, but clueless managers can't tell the difference

It's not just Indians, in Hong Kong everyone has multiple Masters degrees but they are all phony. A Masters in the US entails a couple years worth of work at a minimum, over there you can get one in a few months. You hear a lot about Chinese IQ but I've been very unimpressed by the quality of people I've seen in the work force. They also have cultural issues that generally make them unsuitable candidates if you want to get things done.

I'm beginning to wonder about the Asian IQ myself. We have a lot of Asians where I work, and - talk about Aspie - they're the worst. On top of that, nothing about them can be described as normal. They have strange mannerisms, unkempt clothes, and are loud and rude when they get together and engage in childish giggling and joking. It's like watching small children. Nothing they do appears particularly innovative or even worthwhile. More often than not, they're in the way. I'm now wondering how many of them have forged credentials, as most of them are fresh off the boat.

[PLEASUREMAN]

oni, 05 February 2010 - 06:38 PM:

PLEASUREMAN, 05 February 2010 - 02:58 PM:

and American corporations have already hired most of India's brain cast, so a lot of what you now see being hired are mediocrities who get sham degrees and then bluff their way into an H1B spot and then consistently underperform, but clueless managers can't tell the difference

It's not just Indians, in Hong Kong everyone has multiple Masters degrees but they are all phony. A Masters in the US entails a couple years worth of work at a minimum, over there you can get one in a few months. You hear a lot about Chinese IQ but I've been very unimpressed by the quality of people I've seen in the work force. They also have cultural issues that generally make them unsuitable candidates if you want to get things done. India is the same way and when it comes down to a pure salary cost basis, they are dirt cheap. But you also have to account for the cost of refactoring all your work because they just don't get it, productivity lost from communicating with someone half way around the world, mind-boggling cultural issues like their total incapability of using initiative and creativity on problems. They will do exactly what you ask them but not one iota more, even if filling in a blank means the difference between failure for the project or success.

People don't realize how true that is...especially the zero initiative part...you think gen y or whatever is lazy and unmotivated, they have nothing on these guys, who act like disoriented hive insects cut off from their queen...it would be funny if it didn't make working with them so counterproductive

Years ago I worked at a company that was running Netware, the admin was this Chinese guy who literally sat on ass all day watching ching chong VCDs...I ended up figuring out how to automate a bunch of his job because he was holding up projects I was working on...when I left I recommended they can his ass (everyone in his area knew he was useless) but to the best of my knowledge they kept him on...the manager of his IT group was this horribly acne-scarred Jap who was building a miniature version of Asia--everyone he hired was from there--and mostly they were inept...the one white guy he allowed to be transferred into his group was notable for having no experience and no knowledge how to do his job, and therefore was guaranteed to do whatever he was told...those Japs are crafty ones

[Bibles 'n Guns]

Quote

this horribly acne-scarred Jap who was building a miniature version of Asia--everyone he hired was from there--and mostly they were inept...the one white guy he allowed to be transferred into his group was notable for having no experience and no knowledge how to do his job, and therefore was guaranteed to do whatever he was told...those Japs are crafty ones

When my grandmother was ill the Indian doctors only ever referred her to other Indian doctors. You had to specifically ask for a White doctor or you would never see one. My mother asked one of the Indian doctor's White secretaries why they did this, and the idea was so foreign to what she'd been taught about diversity her whole life that she was unable to wrap her mind around the full meaning of the question, despite seeing it in action every single day.