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PaperclipPerfector  26d ago (text post)   34813 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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I have a proposition for you: We hand all political power in the US over to the blacks. As a white guy, you'll probably be forced to live in a designated area an hour outside a major city, where you'll be forced to take a bus in every day to do manual labor for ten bucks an hour. You will be barred from most public accommodations, and will have to get official permission before traveling anywhere outside your home; even going to work will require you to present proof that you actually have a job. Your own political power is nonexistent, and the government doesn't even pretend that you have anything resembling civil rights. The tradeoff is that the United States sees unprecedented GDP growth. Do you take this bargain?

Add some context to this hypothetical scenario:

1/There is whole huge continent out there, that is 99.9% white with whites in power, with numerous countries, and most of them are infernal hellholes of starvation, plague and war with absolutely nothing resembling any "civil" or "human" rights.

2/ You do not know it, and if someone told you, you would refuse to believe him. You believe that all wealth of the country was created by white laborers working for ten bucks a hour, and if the black bloodsuckers exploiting you went away, you will be fabulously rich and live like people in Hollywood movies.

Oh so it's Dubai? Sounds like a good deal if it's not your own homeland.

I like my own nation-state better in principle but being a wealthy guest worker can be a lot better than nationalistic misery. It depends how much wealthier you become.

I'd say at the point where you compare no electricity and rampant robbery and murder to any sort of modern life, the latter wins.

In this thought experiment, how do you square 'unprecedented GDP growth' with 'ten bucks per hour'? Cost disease still exists even if all the high-paying jobs are taken by the negro overlords (although if we're trying to be realistic, at least make them Chinese or something).

As a white guy, you'll probably be forced to live in a designated area an hour outside a major city

You mean like a suburb? You make it sounds as if commuting an hour by bus is some god-awful fate rather than a normal commute in countries with public transport.

even going to work will require you to present proof that you actually have a job

Pretty easy.

You will be barred from most public accommodations, and will have to get official permission before traveling anywhere outside your home

These are the only two that genuinely sound bad.

Your own political power is nonexistent, and the government doesn't even pretend that you have anything resembling civil rights

For most individuals in democracies, they have no political power. Depending on what you mean by civil rights, that could also be said to be true.

as if commuting an hour by bus is some god-awful fate rather than a normal commute in countries with public transport

I had a former coworker who worked in our Korean office. Such a cutie with a great personality. But she worked very long days and explained it takes over an hour to get from the office to her home. Poor woman had no free time. Still single in her mid thirties.

Not to be a eugenicist, but something valuable was squandered. I think somehow her great contributions to project management could be realized along with having enough time to live a life outside of work. More housing closer to work. Faster public transportation, at least if housing must be far away and many workers don't drive a personal car to work. Some combination of these things are desperately needed in Korea.

The common complaint by new urbanists types is that Americans live in single family homes and drive cars to work. But I go to other countries and my coworkers do neither of those things and are so much worse off than me.

You make it sounds as if commuting an hour by bus is some god-awful fate rather than a normal commute in countries with public transport.

It's both.

In this thought experiment, how do you square 'unprecedented GDP growth' with 'ten bucks per hour'?

In this thought experiment, the growth is unprecedented compared to other white countries. Compared to rich blacks who live in big houses, drive big cars and sit in comfy offices doing nothing, your life of menial labor is rather miserable, always had been and always will be.

Okay so the average GDP per capita in the EU is $40,000 today. In exchange for being ruled over by a small group of Africans who earn more than us and limit our movement and freedoms, the UK can quadruple its GDP per capita to say, $160,000? (the real life gap between SA and Nigeria) Honestly it sounds like a pretty good deal. British people get to live amongst ourselves, and with our newfound wealth we can just build strong communities in the limited parts of the country we're allowed to live in.

Although I'll be honest, this is a tricky hypothetical because it requires me to change too much to really make it analogous. Like, do Europeans in this hypothetical world commit tons of crime and corruption while the Africans are smarter, more law-abiding, more organised and better able to run things? Are the real life IQ differences flipped or are you just making one group smarter or dumber?

If you want better (but even more provocative and inflammatory) analogy, here is it.

Imagine the world looks as it is, except there is one large country looking like something from far future (Star Trek future, not Mad Max future).

In this land, ordinary menial laborer has big house affordable elsewhere only to millionaires, flying car and personal holodeck entertainment. Even basic health care can treat nearly all illnesses and diseases, including old age. The land is orderly, crime and violence is something unheard of.

What country is it?

It is Israel. Great Messianic Kingdom of Israel from Nile to Euphrates. It is Jewish land, but Gentiles can live there if they know their place.

As Gentile laborer, you live in Gentile community, travel to work and back in your flying car on specially designated Gentile flight tracks, and have to obey and defer to your Jewish bosses. While you have mansion and flying car, every Jew has Versailles sized estate and personal starship. And this is how it always will be. You and your children will be always laborers, will never rise up above their station. This is how G-d wills it.

Will you sign up for this deal?

Alternatively, if the Messiah decides to add country where you live to the Kingdom and bring the Messianic Order there too, will you fight, protest or welcome your G-d ordained overlords?

To maintain the analogy, you can leave any time and start something new elsewhere with your savings. I imagine there would be a constant trickle of people trying that, but if it keeps failing... whites accepting that theyre not on the Cosmic Task anymore is going to be a big change either way, who knows how it ends. That doesnt really depend on living there though, just the existence of that state.

Aside from the difficulty of squaring 'menial labour' with flying cars and personal holodecks (do I wear a mech suit while stacking shelves or something?), I'd sign up for that in a heartbeat.

Using this for an analogy is like saying "imagine if it's just like the alien reptiles ruling America now, except they're ruling the world instead". The question is secondarily an analogy about South Africa, and primarily a way to preach to the unbelievers about how the alien reptiles are taking over America. You should not be violating "Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be" by sneaking your inflammatory claim in as "oh, this is the real world part of an analogy about something else".

The hypothetical scenario is "imagine you live in country organized on racial principle, where master race is in charge, and you are not the "master race", the hypothetical question is: "how big hike in living standards would you accept in exchange for perpetual subservience (for you and all of your descendants)?"

Im' pretty sure that that link you gave for Great Messianic Kingdom wasn't made up just for your analogy. You don't just get away with sneaking things like that through just because you're making an analogy about something else.

Isn't this just the deal I already have to accept in the US, except I don't even get a flying car? I'm working at one of those estates tomorrow.

That still sounds like a pretty sweet deal. What am I missing?

The evidence seems to be accumulating that the reversed hypothetical doesn't work, i.e.

We hand all political power in the [country] over to the blacks

and

the [country] sees unprecedented GDP growth

cannot occur together in the world as it actually exists. Politically awkward questions then arise about how this should impact policy in black-majority and indeed black-minority countries.

Yeah to add on: this actually happened in South Africa. They indeed did not experience unprecedented GPD growth. Their formerly functioning power generation and train networks are degrading. Regular power outages and lack of transportation are the new norms.

Americans blacks will not do that. They’d probably make it impossible for not-connected whites to get government jobs, but not in a way that’s clearly distinguishable from corruption.

We hand all political power in the US over to the blacks. As a white guy, you'll probably be forced to...

I know that black Americans are more racist have a stronger in-group bias than whites, but do you really think that's the most likely outcome given those premises?

Not OP, but no.

If anything, I'd argue that black Americans having the highest in-group bias disguises the fact that Americans as a whole, black Americans included, really aren't that racist.

Supermajority black places in America tend to suck either because they're super rural literal plantation country equivalents to the crappy left-behind parts of Appalachia (The black belt in Alabama is like this.), or because they had/have sufficiently severe crime problems that all middle class people including the black middle class fled the place.

If anything, judging by hiring patterns alleged and observed I'd be fascinated to see where various immigrant groups rank in terms of in-group bias. Alas, the famous graph had small sample sizes for even black and Hispanic Americans and the Asian-American sample was so small as to be useless.

If anything, I'd argue that black Americans having the highest in-group bias disguises the fact that Americans as a whole, black Americans included, really aren't that racist.

They tend to be very good at absorbing black migrants from a different ethnicity in a way that other groups might struggle with (including those blacks in their own countries*). But it's just taken for granted that those people are the in-group, even by people criticizing the AA in-group bias.

A legacy of the focus on race I suppose.

* Or outside of them, sometimes.

Funny thought: replace "blacks" with "AI" and you have one of those take-off scenarios.

If the alternative under my own stewardship is essentially complete societal collapse, I'd give it some thought. I know black South Africans/expats who preferred conditions under Apartheid. This stuff all presupposes that the natural state of human society is affluent middle-tier Western Democracy, not that it takes serious work and effort to establish and maintain such a thing.

Same, although i have to admit that there likely is a fair bit of selection bias going on seeing as I'm only meeting the people who emigrate.

No, of course not. Nowhere did I say that apartheid was good. Nowhere did I say that blacks benefited from apartheid. What I said about apartheid was this:

Apartheid is morally reprehensible, and at the same time it was the only way to keep South Africa from falling apart.

Now, 30 years after the end of apartheid, South Africa is falling apart. There is extreme corruption, extreme discrimination against whites, and murder and torture whites without prosecution.

I don’t think “they had no choice” is a fair assessment of the situation. Even assuming you take ‘retreat to the Western Cape’ off the table, there were other options.

For example, in Namibia and Botswana, in Zambia too to an extent whites kept a lot of land and even political influence. Even today it’s likely most of the good arable farmland in all three of those countries is operated by white farmers. But the white populations were far smaller there.

The goal should have been something like modern-day Indonesia, China or the Philippines, where Chinese minorities control the vast majority of the economy and are very disproportionately wealthy and powerful, but in which native resentment is managed and they still have some ownership of the political system. 85% of the richest people in Thailand, 90% in the Philippines, somewhere in the region of 80-90% in Malaysia are Chinese. In Indonesia, the Chinese are 2-3% of the population but have more than 70% of private wealth in the country.

There are rare, every-few-decades incidents of sporadic violence against the Chinese minorities, but rarely anything like a medieval pogrom or even something on the level of the LA riots more than once or twice a century (excluding the highly volatile postwar period which saw the social order upended entirely, there was mainly 1969 in Malaysia and 1998 in Indonesia, which were both localized).

Only one African nation actually considered trying this plan in earnest - Rhodesia. But its proponents were overthrown in the democratic vote by fearful whites under Ian Smith who began the process that led to the civil war, and by the end of that enough resentment had built up that it was impossible.

GDP graphs of mentioned african countries. Botswana sure has a good thing going, not much else to see. If whites in Namibia or Zambia are noticable better off for their approach, this would have to come out of increased inequality rather than higher productivity.

I think this is a good argument.

But, to state the obvious, the level of violence in South Africa society is on the order of 10-100x that of Thai, Filipino, or Malay society. The risk of pogroms and anarcho-tyranny is simply much higher in South Africa.

And market dominant minorities haven't worked as well in Africa. Consider, for example, the fate of the Indians in Uganda.

And market dominant minorities haven't worked as well in Africa. Consider, for example, the fate of the Indians in Uganda.

The Lebanese and Indians were disproportionately, visibly powerful in business as I was growing up in the 00s . The Lebanese had Islam and Arabophilia going for them I suppose. The Indians seemed fine without it.

I wonder how it's going with the Chinese now...

Consider, for example, the fate of the Indians in Uganda.

Perhaps. There were also the Arabs of Zanzibar, as per Addio Africa. But consider also the Lebanese in Nigeria, who have been remarkably powerful for decades now and still haven’t been pogromed. Consider also that whites are still happily market dominant minorities in much of Southern Africa, including (to an extent that might - but shouldn’t - surprise you) in Zimbabwe, many of which have seen no substantial or organized anti-white violence in decades. A white man would have become democratically elected president of Zambia a few years ago were it not for the law on needing (as I recall) both parents born in the country to be eligible.

Like all peoples Africans can be whipped up into violent ethnic hostility, but I don’t think their ethnic resentment is particularly strong. I have always felt that both Indians and Chinese are educated into more soft-resentment for Europeans than Africans, who in my experience mostly don’t think about white people at all. Even in South Africa, there is more racial hostility between Zulu and Xhosa, between native Bantus and immigrants from Central Africa, and between black and Indian South Africans than there is between black and white South Africans.

A fact I find fascinating is that until (IIRC) 2021, every member of a Zimbabwean Olympic swim team was white.

Better to rule in hell or serve in not hell.

Still think there was some better compromise between apartheid and current state.

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