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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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But there are massive economic reasons to go there, so they will deal with the diversity even if they don't like it.

Exactly. Here's a great blog article on the subject: https://arctotherium.substack.com/p/fleeing-opportunity

Diversity has killed growth because talented people are leaving the most productive areas. Throughout most of history, the opposite was true, with young dreamers coming to Rome, Paris, London, or New York to make their fortune. They still do, of course, but in much smaller numbers.

How bad is it? California has lost millions of citizens to domestic migration despite having by far the best climate and great economic opportunities. Imagine how bad things would be if they didn't have beaches, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley.

It's not all bad news though. Cities are IQ shedders, so in the long run, it's probably better if our best people leave the cities. Bad for economic growth, but good for demographics.

Diversity has killed growth because talented people are leaving the most productive areas.

Racial diversity is not even close to the primary reason why most people flee California. The extremely high cost of living, the massive homeless problem, the crumbling infrastructure, the punishing taxation, the piss-poor governance — all of these are far more salient than the number of Mexicans. (And California has a far lower black percentage than nearly any of the states — Texas, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina — to which Californians are mostly fleeing.)

Again, people are not moving to the black areas of those states.

Most blacks in Texas live in the same major cities everyone else does, and these are the ones people are moving to.

You’re aware that black people can move around outside “their neighborhoods”, right? The neighborhood where I live isn’t heavily black in terms of the people who occupy houses here, but there are plenty of black people when I go to the grocery store, or to various public places. If a school district practices busing or has magnet schools, my children can have black students in their classes, even if we don’t live in a “black area”. Thus, the black percentage of the population is still relevant even if you feel like you can just move to “a white area”.

Yes, of course. People living in majority black neighborhoods move out a lot. It's a good idea for them to do so.

But majority black areas still exist, even if they bleed residents every year. Also, new majority black areas are constantly created as other groups leave.

I’m not even talking about “moving out”. I’m saying that black people, like anyone else, can do all sorts of things outside the neighborhoods where they live. Even ones who don’t move out of their neighborhoods can still cause problems and discomfort for people living in other neighborhoods.

The extremely high cost of living

Cost of living increases are directly related to more migrants and illegal immigrants providing competition for many of the individual costs that go into living (food, energy, housing).

the massive homeless problem

Directly related to the above as well. If the cost of living and competition/pressure on wages wasn't artificially pumped up by immigration, the homeless situation wouldn't be so bad.

the crumbling infrastructure,

i.e. infrastructure that can't support the inflated number of people it is expected to support - once again you can blame migration.

the punishing taxation,

And a lot of that is due to illegal immigration as well.

the piss-poor governance

Directly enabled by immigration. There's no viable right wing path to victory, so there's nothing that cleans out dead weight on the left side of politics. When you don't even have to try to win elections, the selection pressures for leadership consist entirely of pleasing donors and party insiders - as opposed to solving the problems your citizens are facing.

You're right when you say that racial diversity isn't the cause - but you're not really giving a complete picture, either. The costs of massive immigration, which is one of the manifestations of the drive for racial diversity, are all directly related to the list of reasons you gave for people fleeing. You're looking at people fleeing from a burning house and saying "They're not running from the fire, they're running from the heat and the smoke! Look, they're even taking shelter in a building with a fireplace, so it clearly isn't the fire that's making them run."

Texas has very similar demographics and high immigration inflows, with at the very least fewer of these problems than California does. Poor governance is the main reason.