Saturday, December 4, 2010

Ugly Betty Has Much To Answer For


Recently, the Orange County Register ran a story on a local charity. Eighteen year old Erika Sanchez was quoted as saying:

Nothing is going to hold Erika Sanchez back.

The 18-year-old wants more than the path taken by many of her peers.

"I look at my cousins and my close friends from when I was younger and they're living a life where they're basically going to be at the same place," said Sanchez, who grew up in Santa Ana. "Their husbands are still going to be working the same job and they're going to be home with their kids and that's just always going to be their life.

"It's just always been hard for me to accept that I have to stay in the same place my whole life.

The confidence and skills that Sanchez gained through Santa Ana-based KidWorks have helped her find her own way.


Obviously, all the time and money spent by KidWorks on Sanchez has paid off, she is prepared for a life of excitement and glamor and celebrity.


The article further notes:

KidWorks' Possible Dream is to provide a science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics program (STEAM Dream) within its after-school program curriculum. The nonprofit's after-school program serves 300 children in kindergarten through 12th grade. The STEAM Dream would help them learn science and math through creative activities.

When she was between second and third grade, Sanchez's mother started taking her to KidWorks to better her English. As she got older, she was introduced to the arts and writing. She learned a lot about herself.

"I remember taking art classes and falling in love with art and being like 'I may be passionate about this.'" Sanchez said. "I was involved with the newsletter program that we had and discovered that I really enjoy writing."

More than three months into her first year at Biola University, Sanchez is still a presence at KidWorks, despite no longer being a student there.


It is my estimation that about $2,000 to $3,000 per year was spent on Sanchez over ten years, amounting to about $20,000 to $30,000, if one includes "direct to student" expenditures such as staff to tutor English, writing skills, computer and software purchases for student use, overhead for rent, utilities etc in the rented space. Now, what did that money accomplish?

Not much. Perhaps a few Nikki Blonsky (from "Hairspray" and "Ugly Betty") dreams:



But there are only so many roles by openly gay writer-director-producer John Waters for very fat girls dancing. For all the money spent, it looks as if KidWorks has not produced a young woman even interested in a career in Math or Science. Instead, dreams of fame and vague desires about "passion for writing."

Self esteem is fine, based on accomplishment. I could care less if a researcher discovering a cure for cancer is fat or thin, has a fabulously glamorous lifestyle, or simply goes home to spouse and family every night (which would very likely be the case). Someone who has accomplished something difficult, worthwhile, and beneficial to society, well that person deserves every bit of their self-esteem.

Self esteem based on "you go girl" idiocy and platitudes about "nothing can hold her back" is self-defeating and a waste of resources. One would think that science and math are not learned by "creative activities" but rather the drudgery that accomplishes, say, achievement in the martial arts, or boxing, or football, or math and science for White and Asian (particularly Asian) kids. It means lots of studying, memorization, of working problems, of working to understand concepts and being able to apply them. All of which are about as fun as two-a-days in July and early August, or bag work in the gym. America understands and embraces hard work and discipline for athletic, musical, and even scientific achievement (as long as those doing so in science are Asian or White). Yet we reject out of PC/Multicultural platitudes the same hard-won knowledge, when it comes to Latino and Latina students. And yes, Black students.

A great deal, in fact most educational resources, are in effect wasted on girls like Sanchez. She is not evil or bad, simply a poor use of scarce dollars for investment in Math and Science achievement. At best, she is a failed Liberal Arts major in Chicano Studies or something, demanding more investment by society to further the dream of fame and stardom.

Unlikely given her height, weight, and appearance. At 18, she should be in the peak of her beauty, not resembling a sixty five year old matron. Her build and obesity are very common among Latina girls from Mexico. Short and stout comprise most Mexican girls. Height is limited by genes, but the lack of exercise from young girlhood and obesity inducing diet is cultural. Like most from Amerindian backgrounds, the highly processed foods and high carbohydrate content of the modern American diet, designed to feed robust men doing extremely hard physical labor (farming, mining, lumber, etc. BEFORE mechanization) have not served people like this well. Or, put more simply, the diet of Scottish and Norwegian fisherman hauling traps all day in the frigid North Sea, or their descendants cutting timber by hand, or mining by hand, is not conducive to those whose ancestors lived off limited calories in tropical or semi-tropical environments.

Nevertheless, the young woman's general obesity is very, very common among Mexican and Mexican ancestry teen girls. Any drive past a Mexican majority High School as kids are let out will confirm this in five minutes. If one wonders why so many Mexican young men fall into gangs and criminality despite the obvious drawbacks (you can get killed with one wrong step) you need look no further. A life of law-abiding nose to the grindstone gets you … Erika Sanchez. Who knows nothing can hold her back, and does not yearn for a life of being in the same place, married to the same man, taking care of the same kids. A life of criminality can offer the possibility, should one rise high, of a girl much more attractive.

Not all marketplaces trade in money, exactly. Even if they can be boiled down to the equivalent.

Are there talented young men and women even in the Barrio who deserve attention and help to succeed in Math and Science?

Yes. There are. There just are not that many of them. Inside Santa Ana Unified, there are likely no more than about 35-40 students each year who have any hope of a career in math and science, including stuff like a career in basic chemistry, or mechanical engineering, and the like. Santa Ana Unified has 58,000 students K-12. Or put it another way, about 4,461 students in High School, roughly, dividing by 13. It is 95% Latino (Mexican) and about 1.1% White. About 60% don't speak English, essentially "English learners." That runs about 0.008% of the District's Seniors being able each year to do anything in Math and Science.

That is a poor use of resources. Shooting a shotgun full of money, in effect, at Mexican kids in barrio schools in the hope of hitting a few that will add value is something that would never be tolerated in a for-profit endeavor. There are indeed kids who are worth investing in. Far better is identifying them, coaching them, training them, and investing in them alone. This is essentially what Jaime Escalante did (identifying through his network of Junior High teachers who could be fed into his Calculus Prep classes and who was not worth the time and effort).

And importantly, this is what every successful High School and College Coach does. They must and do of course, teach skills. Teamwork. Discipline. But none of that matters if the young men they coach do not have the solid athletic ability demanded on the football field or basketball court or baseball diamond. Everyone understands this. No one tolerates a "shotgun approach" of firing money at kids to make them all track or baseball or football or basketball stars. If you are not tall, no matter how talented you are, you will not be playing Basketball at the College or NBA Level. This is reality. And no one has the fantasy that simply throwing a lot of resources at ordinary kids with no height and athletic ability will produce NBA and NFL and MLB winners.

America would do a lot better by using the proven methods of coaches to create and train science and math winners.

29 comments:

namae nanka said...

http://www.academia.org/title-ix-conquers-science/

http://bit.ly/fXTIqo

The idiocy of spending to get more females in STEM when you can get more from untapped men who never attend colleges or flounder into other streams, and trying to make the fields female-friendly, thus driving away even more men is like betting on the slower horse again and again, while breaking the leg of your faster horse and still expecting to win race against others who have a saner mind.

little dynamo said...

"Self esteem based on "you go girl" idiocy and platitudes about "nothing can hold her back" is self-defeating and a waste of resources."


a dis-service not only to the nation, but to this girl, who v likely never will know her true abilities and personal resources, never having had to struggle for them

she's fast-tracked for a scholarship to a good college, leaving the white boy whose i.q. is seventy points higher to shitcan high school and sell pot for a living, thence to an orange jumpsuit

erika, meanwhile, will quickly and eagerly be hired into the public sector, to administer bureaucracies that serve her matriarchy

all hail our next Wise Latina Justice!

ray

Anonymous said...

I once read these schools referred to by the generic name "Ghettoville Magnet Comprehensive Career Academy for the Arts, Sciences, Mathematics, and Music". Yeah right, as long as it feels good.

Nine-of-Diamonds said...

I'm not sure how you can come to the conclusion that spending money on the likes of Erika is a "waste" of resources. These Gramscian perversions of charity/nonprofit institutions have paid off handsomely for several decades now - racial balkanization, degraded scholarship (hyphenated studies degrees, underqualified NAM's in the dwindling hard science courses), and declining social mobility ought to be seen as the objectives of many in the US. Not pitfalls to be avoided. All of the above are necessary preconditions for the creation of a one party state like Mexico's PRI. White elites + a few token NAM's on the one hand (Vincente Fox & his friends), and semi-literate peasantry on the other. Patricians and Peons are useful to the elites; not so the troublesome Jacksonians who still exist between our two Left coasts. Until such time as the Jacksonians can be demographically cleansed, this nation's Erikas will have an important role to play. Non-discrimination suits, sex discrimination claims, pro-Hispanic/pro-female contracting, racial sinecures (Michelle O's $400K "diversity coordinating") - none of these wealth transfers from [white] companies and taxpayers to the government and its preferred citizens would be possible without legions of underqualified "Erikas". Arguably a more serious threat to the white middle's long term prospects than your typical black or latino violent criminal.

Nine-of-Diamonds said...

Not at all off topic:

http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2007/06/i-found-this-on-floor-of-public-school.html

Keep in mind that the author of this blog is from Minnesota, which has a comparatively small population of non-English speaking children (unlike California). If this is the best many English speaking students can do, consider the average capabilities of immigrant Californian children - some of whom are from Central American societies so isolated that they don't even speak Spanish.

Nine-of-Diamonds said...

UPDATE: Excuse the multiple posts; this is actually a plagiarized essay. One of the commenters found the original source. And yet the writer still failed to produce a legible report, despite having the plagiarized material right in front of him/her.

If the student responsible is female or a NAM, expect him/her to get promoted beyond personal ability once (s)he's in the work force. And after the inevitable foul-ups, do you think she will accept her limitations? Or will it be time for a discrimination/sexual harrassment lawsuit? The transaction costs of diversity would make a fascinating study if anyone actually had the courage to look into it.

Justin said...

Whiskey, you are missing the point of these programs. They are not designed to produce scientists out of Mexicans. They are designed to provide jobs for over-educated liberal elites. In that, the programs are succeeding spectacularly.

Nine-of-Diamonds said...

"They are designed to provide jobs for over-educated liberal elites."

To be a little more precise, these programs are designed to "leaven" lily-white SWPL-dom with an appropriate number of Cute Brown People, perhaps in the IQ range of 95-110.

Smart enough to be bright, articluate, and clean, but not smart enough to muscle out the true white SWPL powers-that-be in the elite that you mentioned.

Although Erikas would make decent students at 2nd tier state schools and decent middle managers/skilled blue collar workers, you usually find them promoted to the Ivies ahead of whites.

After graduation, Erikas often get "kicked upstairs" at big corporations doing Diversity Coordination Work (TM), while Whites and Asians keep the ship running. If things get too dicey for them, they can always "cash out" with a discrimination suit, or out of court settlement.

DJ said...

It's a double whammy. Garbage like this means the SWPL trash get to utterly devalue the currency of academic achievement while establishing themselves as the people who control the printing presses.

What I mean is that the whole thing about hailing kind of average ethnic persons as a super geniuses whose true talents the squaresville education system can't judge fairly also provides a nice out for the SWPLs when their Poppet turns out to be notso hotso, after all.

Hey, don't we need to move away from narrow definitions of talent and recognise that Fat Erika may be sort of meh, but she's excitingly ethnic and Poppet might not be able to write a shopping list but she's got a lot of, errr,.... emotional intelligence, yeah that's it. Plus she's very creative, but just not in the sense of actually producing anything.

It works backwards too. If book learning is just geeksville, then just because Joe Whitetrash regularly gets 100% doesn't mean he's necessary worth wasting an education on. He probably lacks the necessary empathy to succeed in nuclear physics.

Shishir said...

Oops sorry for the blank comment..

Great post Whiskey, however I would like to dwell a little on the Ugly Betty phenomenon which has much more to answer for than what you put forward.Ugly Betty is as disturbing a female wish fulfillment fantasy as the Twilight enterprise .

A thoroughly unattractive broad with no discernible skills except her being nice and hardworking is rewarded with hunky boyfriends in each season!Mind you ,its success is not restricted to America.As you may know it is actually the remake of an Argentinian soap which inspired Hindi, Arabic and myriad of other languages of a similarly themed productions.

Of course a lot of attractive women watch it as well.Now why would they identify with an ugly woman you ask.The answer may lie in many supermodel/actress interviews about how they felt they were always unattractive in high school/college and were never asked out for dates etc.
I can only comment as below

A)They are telling the truth
In that case they probably grew into their looks as they aged into their twenties,its been known to happen but still rare.But when it comes to their claim of not having dates ,most of them were not genuinely unattractive.Perhaps more likely men were intimidated by their beauty and had to spend Saturday nights alone(we all know this happens,again somewhat rare)

B) They are lying
More likely scenario.Beauty is overwhelmingly dependent on genetics and hence women's status in dating is not "earned" like mens is in say athletics,academics,PUA skills or business.Therefore they tend to
overcompensate by highlighting "efforts" where an ugly duckling became a beautiful swan.Voila!This does two things:One it earns sympathy for the beautiful woman rather than scorn(mostly from other women) and two,she gives other women the impression that they too can become beautiful like her if they just believed enough!

Female capability for delusions being endless, they happily swallow that drivel!Hence the success of Ugly Betty!

Haywire Dude said...

There are bags of girls like this in "magnet" schools and community colleges. I even saw a black guy coast through pre-med without any attendance in class at all.

The only thing a thinking man can conclude from seeing these proofs of a corrupt system is that bailing out is an option. A system administered by herds of slack-jawed lickspittles is something easy to ignore.

Would you rather face a government of highly intelligent and efficient control freaks? Or what we have now: a bunch of narcissistic morons?

I'd rather have Erika eating her boogers down at the social service center rather than supermen watching my every move.

Nullpointer said...

Your bias shows through when you're glorifying the robust Scottish and Norweigian fisherman hauling traps all day. The diet they ate was horrible for them as it was horrible for the Indians that they spread it to. Eskimos that adopted biscuits and crackers into their diet quickly developed diabetes, even though they still continued to fish and do back breaking labor into the late 1950s. Imported Indian works in Africa that worked on sugar plantations still got fat and diabetic even though we can't comprehend how back breaking the labor of cutting cane manually is today. It has nothing to do with an energy dense diet. Go read good calories bad calories, before you make specious claims like that. It's clear you wanted to imply that hard working whites were just fine on a bad diet, while them lazy indians were used to be lazy all the time and then got fat on the white man's diet. That's just plain wrong. Please educate yourself about pre-European empires on in America before you make such assertions. The Anasazi working class had massive irrigation systems setup to support their chaco canyon society. The Mayans as well (do of a different variety). To make an analogy to game-- you're inner game is hampering your success. As long as you allow your writing be tendentious and allow uneducated prejudices to warp your reasoning and poison your prose it will be difficult to win over the hearts and minds of the people to drive real change.

Every article about how illegal immigrants are ruining our country comes from a place weakness. Illegal immigrants are not ruining the country. The failure to enforce laws (on a grand scale in banking, real estate, and corporate regulations) are ruining our country. We can't compete with China, because we allow multi-national corporations to ship American jobs to where they can be done in slave labor conditions.

However, that brings me to a much more salient point. A free market implies massive systemic risk that could wipe out every human on the planet. Things are bad in other countries. So bad that even if you got rid of every single welfare program in the US, we'd still have illegal immigration. We have it so good that the "spread" between everyone else and us allows for plenty of arbitrage by eager immigrants who are willing to do the same jobs for less. Until we find a Nash equilibrium for world trade the problems will continue. We're going to have to find a mixed market solution otherwise we'll end up collapsing from our own environmental destruction. What do you think happens when China can't grow anymore food, because they've turned all their arable land into a toxic dump? When the ogalalla aquifer water table under the great plains drops to low? When oil starts running out? When all the carbonic acid in our oceans starts collapsing the remaining fisheries?

Why is Chile, a country that two decades was under a brutal dictatorship, now considered less corrupt than the US? Why do they have a cleaner food supply (to be fair they consume gargantuan amounts of bread and sweets leading to an obesity and cavity epidemic among younger students)?

The ship is sinking and you're focused on punishing the stowaways instead of handing them a buck and saying help bail out water.

Nine-of-Diamonds said...

"The failure to enforce laws (on a grand scale in banking, real estate, and corporate regulations) are ruining our country."

Are these problems wholly severable from the issue of illegal immigration? Why or why not? Does their existence make it inappropriate to complain about other problems, like massive population replacement from impoverished demographic groups? If so, why?

"So bad that even if you got rid of every single welfare program in the US, we'd still have illegal immigration."

Because illegal immigration can't be eliminated we should criticize people who point out its effects.

And I'm actually glad that the usual Sinophilic boilerplate is being recited once again; Whiskey and another internet commenter (In Mala Fide?) have made some good posts in the past about China's massive demographic/bureaucratic/environmental issues. Current anxieties about why we're Not Competing With China are not too different from all the past overhyped claims about the next big thing - recall the old 1980's joke about how postwar Japan and Germany had "won the war", all because of their temporary advantages in post WWII economic restructuring.

Gx1080 said...

@Shishir

Dunno, I watched the original version of Ugly Betty years ago and the guys that she actually "snared" were:

a)An utter omega, that I suspect was half.gay.
b)A beta corporate guy (she married this one).

So yeah. It was more about the ugly chicks war against the hot models. A natural best-seller with any woman with an insecurity complex (read: all of them).

DR said...

A very un-PC thing to recognize is that almost all effort to get women into high technology or science is worthless. A simple illustration, female IQ standard deviation is about 87% that of males. Let's take an example of an activity that only 1 out of a 5000 people are capable of learning (e.g. advanced mathematics, research science, bleeding edge software development, complex quantitative financial modeling, etc.).

The standard deviation required is 3.54 of the male population sigma, but 4.07 of the female population sigma. So while 1 out of 5000 males are capable, only one out of 42,300 females are capable. Hence males will outnumber females in these fields by more than 8:1.

So if you're going to spend a dollar on female science/math recruiting, you'd have to expect it to be 8 times more likely on the margin to result in a scientist than spending it on general science recruiting.

In reality if we want to stimulate super-high achievement (and this is where it gets really un-PC), it would be a lot more productive to try to cultivate and encourage female beauty on the high end rather than female intelligence. My guess is that no one in Santa Ana unified's graduating class is going to become a world-class scientist. However I bet there's at least a significant proportion that with focused diet, exercise and cosmetics could very attractive.

Ultimately this additional female attractiveness would do more to stimulate high end achievement through intense male achievement.

madmax said...

A free market implies massive systemic risk that could wipe out every human on the planet. Things are bad in other countries. So bad that even if you got rid of every single welfare program in the US, we'd still have illegal immigration. We have it so good that the "spread" between everyone else and us allows for plenty of arbitrage by eager immigrants who are willing to do the same jobs for less. Until we find a Nash equilibrium for world trade the problems will continue.

This is pure garbage. Please, read Von Mises or Rothbard or Hayek. More supply for labor from immigrants lowers nominal wage costs. This increases productivity. This increases wealth generation. Wage rates will tend to go down in marginal terms but their BUYING POWER increases.

The "systemic risk" argument is so much anti-capitalist pablum that you get from LEFTISTS. To get it at a supposedly conservative site is, sadly, par for the course.

When oil starts running out?

Peak oil nonsense. Under laissez-faire (and even just freer economies), when one resource starts to become depleted there would be replacements for that resource. Read about the history of whale oil and all the dire predictions made just at the time it was being replaced by petroleum. If we had a free market, a truly free market, we would probably be riding around in flying DeLorians by now.

NullPointer's bilge is pure crap.

Nine-of-Diamonds said...

@DR: Sources, please? I would like them for future reference.

To add to the point about misallocation of resources, even the most careerist, leftist pantsuits will spend quite a lot of downtime on maternity leave or taking care of children. In recent years they have been demanding more and more paid leave with no regard for the impact on overhead costs. Then there are the pantsuits who get bored with their careers and leech off male providers once they hit their late 20's - mid 30's; most male contemporaries, obviously, do not have that option.


For these reasons, IIRC it requires about two female doctors to equal a single male doctor's lifetime man-hours on the job. No reason why you won't find roughly similar figures in other professions.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

More supply for labor from immigrants lowers nominal wage costs.

Are you including all those costs that people who employ immigrant labor are currently socializing--welfare, EASL programs, courtroom interpreters, infrastructure loads, inter-tribal conflict, criminality, bastardy, etc.?

This increases productivity.

No way to tell. I may be perfectly content to let my super-abundant 85 IQ labor force continue picking cotton by hand.

Anonymous said...

Thumbs up to this post.

DR said...

@Nine-of-Diamonds

"Among the top 2% AFQT scores, there were almost twice as many males as females. These differences could provide a partial basis for sex differences in intellectual eminence. "

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.subjectpool.com%2Fed_papers%2F2007%2FDeary2007Intelligence451-456_Brother_sister_sex_differences.pdf&rct=j&q=%22Brother%E2%80%93sister%20differences%20in%20the%20g%20factor%20in%20intelligence%3A%20Analysis%20of%20full%2C%20opposite-sex%20siblings%20from%20the%20NLSY1979&ei=83X-TJTeOoPGlQfl7_SyCA&usg=AFQjCNEDjpM3ZgC04AIwtCLWZBJ5Am9Kiw&sig2=EYYx-_xrOrRNT94xvXvp4A


Some basic statistics and math yields my results. First the top 2% is 66% male and 33% female (double as many boys as girls). So what's the 2.66th percentile for boys is the 1.33th percentile for girls (which gives a weighted average of this test score being the 2nd percentile for the total population).

IQ is distributed normally, so the Z-score for the 1.33th percentile is 2.21. The Z-score for the 2.66th percentile is 1.933. Since the male-female mean difference is zero or negligible this implies the female standard deviation of IQ is 87.2% of the male value. (The ratio of the two Z-scores).

madmax said...

Are you including all those costs that people who employ immigrant labor are currently socializing--welfare, EASL programs, courtroom interpreters, infrastructure loads, inter-tribal conflict, criminality, bastardy, etc.?

We are talking about immigration in the context of laissez-faire or a truly "free-market". Under such circumstances there would be no welfare state, no public education, no regulatory state including no pro-diversity laws. There would also be no victimless crime laws so there would not be the drug and gang phenomenon which now exists. No welfare state also means that out-of-marriage kids are not going to be supported by the redistributed wealth.

Now I know that that is not the world we live in which is why I agree with Milton Friedman who argued that you can have a welfare-state or open immigration but not both. But here is the thing about you Conservatives, Neo or Paleo or Bio, none of you want to end the welfare-state / regulatory state on principle. If you would argue against the welfare state the way you argue against immigration, we would be living in a state approaching laissez-faire. You don't do this because, at root, none of you care about liberty. Hell, the more I read of you, the more I see you Paleo/Bio/Roissy Cons can't even spell the word.

No way to tell. I may be perfectly content to let my super-abundant 85 IQ labor force continue picking cotton by hand.

Idiotic statement. Read Mises, Menger, Hakek and especially Reisman on how immigration works in a free society (especially its affect on wage rate). Until then you come across as some idiot racist PaleoCon. There are alot of you it seems.

Philip said...

Non-discrimination suits, sex discrimination claims, pro-Hispanic/pro-female contracting, racial sinecures (Michelle O's $400K "diversity coordinating") - none of these wealth transfers from [white] companies and taxpayers to the government and its preferred citizens would be possible without legions of underqualified "Erikas". Arguably a more serious threat to the white middle's long term prospects than your typical black or latino violent criminal. - Nine-of-Diamonds

Too perfectly stated!

Anonymous said...

...Until then you come across as some idiot racist PaleoCon. There are alot of you it seems.

Oooohhh, a liberal 'tough guy'.

How scary! ;)

Philip said...

And I'm actually glad that the usual Sinophilic boilerplate is being recited once again; Whiskey and another internet commenter (In Mala Fide?) have made some good posts in the past about China's massive demographic/bureaucratic/environmental issues. Current anxieties about why we're Not Competing With China are not too different from all the past overhyped claims about the next big thing - recall the old 1980's joke about how postwar Japan and Germany had "won the war", all because of their temporary advantages in post WWII economic restructuring.

Another excellent call from Nine-of-Diamonds.

Consider this, my friend(s) -

Asians Plunder their Forests and Endanger their Future

SUMMARY As the economic crisis swept across Asia in 1997, gutting purchasing power in many countries, one potential silver lining seemed possible: a drop in demand for rhino and tiger parts, tortoises, wild orchids, fragrant woods, and other increasingly rare products of the region’s forests. Though threatened with extinction,
these and many other plants and animals, esteemed as medicinal marvels or status symbols, have fueled a vigorous trade buoyed by rising regional prosperity and market globalization. Today, contrary to expectation, the commerce in wild species and their products has increased substantially.
The economic collapse that has been felt most keenly in Southeast Asia, combined with the continued relative prosperity of China and strong American and European economies, stimulates the flow of resources out of Southeast Asia and into East Asia and the West. Now, unexpectedly, it is increasing personal hardship that may pose the greatest threat to already endangered species and habitats, as cash-needy citizens turn to their forests for the income that their regular jobs and crops no longer provide. One result is the destruction of the very biological resources on which their future development depends.

Philip said...

...Under such circumstances there would be no welfare state, no public education, no regulatory state including no pro-diversity laws. There would also be no victimless crime laws so there would not be the drug and gang phenomenon which now exists. No welfare state also means that out-of-marriage kids are not going to be supported by the redistributed wealth.

Welcome to Brazil!

Now I know that that is not the world we live in which is why I agree with Milton Friedman who argued that you can have a welfare-state or open immigration but not both. ...

Here is an even better question: Why does it have to be an either/or proposition, when both the 'Welfare State' as we know it post-1960's America AND open-borders immigration has been very deliterious for the interests of the common, average Americans? (And please, spare the 'purchasing power' argument - there is only so many flat-screen tv's a laid-off auto worker could need - or even want).

SO enough of these false dichotomies for the average American people: Say NO to the 'welfare state' (redistributive income to poor and/or non-Whites) and the 'warfare state' (unprecedented mass migration from largely the same demographic of folks/Third Worlders).

Cause seriously, a (metaphorical) choice between 'Pepsi and Coke' is ultimately no choice at all - especially for Our ultimate survival as a People and a Nation.

Philip said...

And I'm actually glad that the usual Sinophilic boilerplate is being recited once again; Whiskey and another internet commenter (In Mala Fide?) have made some good posts in the past about China's massive demographic/bureaucratic/environmental issues. Current anxieties about why we're Not Competing With China are not too different from all the past overhyped claims about the next big thing - recall the old 1980's joke about how postwar Japan and Germany had "won the war", all because of their temporary advantages in post WWII economic restructuring.

Another prescient observation by Nine-of-Diamonds and Whiskey.

China (and much of Asia) are absolutely horrible in this regard -

Asians Plunder their Forests and Endanger their Future

SUMMARY As the economic crisis swept across Asia in 1997, gutting purchasing power in many countries, one potential silver lining seemed possible: a drop in demand for rhino and tiger parts, tortoises, wild orchids, fragrant woods, and other increasingly rare products of the region’s forests. Though threatened with extinction,
these and many other plants and animals, esteemed as medicinal marvels or status symbols, have fueled a vigorous trade buoyed by rising regional prosperity and market globalization. Today, contrary to expectation, the commerce in wild species and their products has increased substantially.
The economic collapse that has been felt most keenly in Southeast Asia, combined with the continued relative prosperity of China and strong American and European economies, stimulates the flow of resources out of Southeast Asia and into East Asia and the West. Now, unexpectedly, it is increasing personal hardship that may pose the greatest threat to already endangered species and habitats, as cash-needy citizens turn to their forests for the income that their regular jobs and crops no longer provide. One result is the destruction of the very biological resources on which their future development depends.

*** ******** said...

shows like this remind me of the drained of life look i see on the face of lifelong female academics talking about their dogs like they're children and wondering how they were thus led astray, that career would satisfy/sate them.....ah....the pained look upon their countenances.

they look back, and they marvel at even the beta guys they blew off and wish...with that faint glimmer in their eye of days gone by and the ship sailed without them.

Fred said...

1) You are a genetic determinist when it comes to height, but not weight? That's inconsistent and inaccurate. Twin studies show as much genetic impact on body weight/composition as on IQ.

2) Most women aren't at the "peak of their beauty" at 18. That's true even of some famous actresses. Compare Elizabeth Hurley in Aria in 1987, for example, with her in her mid-thirties in the Austin Powers movie.

Went My Own Way, Came Back said...

@Shishir, "A thoroughly unattractive broad with no discernible skills except her being nice and hardworking is rewarded with hunky boyfriends in each season!"

There is this notion of "societal contract" that I've read of on MRA or MGTOW sites wherein they believe that "society" told them that if they got a job and worked hard to keep that job, they would be guaranteed a highly desirable wife.