Changing demographics and libertarianism

I'm not sure if I would call libertarianism a white American phenomenon. It seems to me that the Anglosphere is simply ahead in libertarian theory since the basics of libertarianism is small or non-existent in most of the developing world. Most developing nations are former colonies and never really went to the classical liberalism stage. They've been dominated by imperialistic mercantilism, and even now most of them have their institutions littered with rent seekers. 

Tell you what, let's raise a sample size of the world's races in a communist society. The first one to develop a full anarcho-capitalist framework should get us an idea of which race is more inclined to liberty.

I'm very skeptical that race has anything to do with it though. It seems that institutions are a larger force. In which case libertarianism is not a 'white American' phenomenon, but a common law society phenomenon. 

 

I'm willing to grant that libertarianism seems more prevalent in suburban white male populations...

@Groucho

I had thought when the case for libertarianism was made, the majority of people would come around because it was true. This sort of thinking stems from believing differences among individuals is a result of choices and are therefore people are the same on a fundamental level. It's easy to see how this utopian picture of the voting public can lead to frustration while maintaining an indifference to the composition of said voting public.

@Michelangelo

I'm not saying libertarianism is a racial impulse but I'm not ruling it out either. Rather, my point is IQ is a factor in being able to even understand the case against the state and social cohesion is a prerequisite for political action.

Jewish (mean IQ = 113), East Asian (106), White (100), Hispanic (90), South Asian (87), African American (85), and sub-Saharan African (70)

When whites are gone, so too is that link with American classical liberalism. In the future social conflict will more and more become the focus of political concern, more remote will the issues of sound money become.

>Most developing nations are former colonies and never really went to the classical liberalism stage.

This "colonization" destroyed Africa myth is plain garbage. The African nations which were most heavily colonized are today the most modern. South Africa, Ivory Coast...If you just account for IQ, it's easy to see why some former colonies failed and others prospered. Hong Kong was obviously a success. Australia certainly became a developed country but it was rife with tall-poppy syndrome, not a likely candidate for a libertarian movement.

 

I'm surprised the IQ of South Asians is that low. Seems like they always excel in the classroom and tend to graduate near the top of their class.

Neglect of Common Cause. Whites generally have a higher IQ than the others, while libertarianism is dominated by whites, throughout history whites have generally been more free as well. Whites are also generally better off financially so they are less likely to worry about welfare. (Most believe that in a libertarian society there would be no form of welfare.) So you can see that whites, generally being more free, as well as more financially secure, making them more likely to be libertarian.

Culture and family relations have greater predictive power as to whether a person will become libertarian or not.

Walden:

@Groucho

I had thought when the case for libertarianism was made, the majority of people would come around because it was true. This sort of thinking stems from believing differences among individuals is a result of choices and are therefore people are the same on a fundamental level. It's easy to see how this utopian picture of the voting public can lead to frustration while maintaining an indifference to the composition of said voting public.

I'm not familiar with that utopian picture of the voting public. Vast blocks of them "vote the line" and do not bother to scrutinize their what they're told by politicians and the media.

At an individual level, however, they can't deny the fundamental fairness of libertarian principles. When people have their beliefs honestly challenged at a basic level,  they experience "cognitive dissonance". From here, one of two general reactions will ensue:
1. They incorporate their realization into their thinking and begin to change (perhaps slowly) their previous beliefs which are no longer tenable.
2. They dismiss the libertarian arguments by falling back on any number of logical fallacies, accusations of racism, mental illness, etc. (see any good debate on Israel or Global Warming for countless examples).

As for the IQ/Race dogma, I see little reason to expect tribal cultures to measure up to a technological society's common tools for assessment of intelligence. Even in America the cultural paradigm for blacks and, to a lesser extent, hispanic minorities is one of underachievement and self-destruction, which is ever nurtured by government meddling. I don't see anything that shows intelligence is not hugely affected by environmental factors, as opposed to simply having "smart genes".

I see little reason to expect tribal cultures to measure up to a technological society's common tools for assessment of intelligence.

Agreed.

The numbers Walden put up seemed to use White people (100) as a metric.  The assumptions built into that....

What the fuck is going on in this thread?

Even in America the cultural paradigm for blacks and, to a lesser extent, hispanic minorities is one of underachievement and self-destruction, which is ever nurtured by government meddling.

There are definitely corporate manipulators as well...lots of celebrities have come out (I'm thinking Chapelle) and spoken about how the people wo handle them manipulte their behavior and image.  It is not just the government and it is not limited to minorities.  Look at the manipulation of the upper classes.

How many cell phones or cars or houses can one have? Or buy a year?  White people are manipulated into thinking the same shit that blacks and hispanics are which is, "Buy material goods!"  White people simply have a measure of success that requires more money because they are the decendents of the people who created/centralized it all...

I'm going to go ahead and point out that it is white people who have doomed white people's future.  Trying to figure out population control methods has backfired.  White people's populations are declining because white people are the only ones who bought into the global warming/overpopulation garbage.

 

Article OP refers to assumes libertarians have to defend and live in the US.

Sure, immigration is gonna cause all these problems. Well, it's not necessarily reversible. Get ready for the inevitable crash of reality.

We'd better hope we have a libertarian haven going before the fit hits the shan.

We can't gather enough political capital to end the welfare state in the US: true.

But we don't have to remain in the US.

@Serpentis

So white's relatively higher future time-orientation and sucess has nothing to do with cognitive function? You're merely reorganizing the chain of causality and cutting IQ out.

@Groucho

I seem to have been rather vague on this point. From The Closing of the American Mind:

Openness to different human beings has the underlying presumption that we are all basically the same. It's merely a matter of the data that's being input that differentiates us.

Where I was mistaken (and you seem to be too) is believing that because I saw the light, so would (or could) everyone else. I don't think it is as simple as people simply not having access to the truth because of the lying media and politicians. Liars prey on the stupid.

@Aristophanes

Those numbers are mean IQ.

>cultural paradigm...underachievement and self-destruction

What of the Latino or African countries where their lives are basically the same? You will owe that to trashy pop culture too?

Secondly, IQ is does not measure such things, it measures cognitive ability. You could certainly be underachieving, self-destructive and quite smart. It doesn't hurt your chances of being successful though.

>white people who have doomed white people's future.

A vexing problem, I agree. Realize humanity is struggle. Your error is framing the idea in such mythological terms as if this fate is our cross to bear.

Secondly, it wasn't an error of all whites. Most whites are just trying to live their life and aren't bothered with politics and all that noise. How is it their fault? We're blessed with the leisure to look at these ideas to see the errors and above all, the majority of whites fall on the center line of that bell curve.

If there is such a thing as "whites," it's been a failure of the whites on the right of that IQ curve who should have led them properly. Do you believe in the division of labor? If Joe plumber installs a leaky sink, do you blame whites? Hardly. This brings us back to the insanity of the egalitarian, multicultural project, where just anyone can vote and anyone can come to this country.

@Anenome

Where to? The U.S. was once that place. As I said, I don't think the costs of uprooting are worth it in terms of resources, nor is the lost of that sense of heritage going to do anything for sustained health of a people.

I contend the libertarian ideal can only grow in an organic fashion, not manufactured in some fanciful underwater city as a certain author of fiction might say.

Your error is framing the idea in such mythological terms as if this fate is our cross to bear.

Why is that so?

To pose it in such terms- that it is karmic, just deserts, cosmic justice for the white race (how I interpret such a statement), is as I said, wrong from the division of labor point of view and I presume you are young like me- we didn't cause this mess.

It is the same old "white guilt," that tendency to blame all of the ills of the world on whites.

Why is it an ill?  It is the ultimate white guilt to extinguish themselves.  500 years whites might not actually be much of anything.

It is the same old "white guilt," that tendency to blame all of the ills of the world on whites.

Who is doing this?

I also fail to see how it is "wrong from the division of labor point of view."

Are you familiar with the genealogy of guilt?

I personally see the mistakes of the past in terms of overall struggle, not the events of some sort of apocalyptic tragedy. If the only two options are heaven and hell, of course things will appear quite grim.

I figured you were about to go all religious with it.

It seems to me that the Anglosphere is simply ahead in libertarian theory since the basics of libertarianism is small or non-existent in most of the developing world.

Yes, it is. Same as it is ahead of most of the world in technology so it is ahead in libertarian theory. That is not surprising. You would expect political thought to be the most advances in places which are advanced in other respects as well.

I would add, however, that there is no reason to believe the number of pepole acquianted with or supportive of libertarianism is any measure of freedom-mindedness of a given society (or a segment of society). Potentially you could have a society where almost everyone had turned into a philosophical libertarian, but who would be timid and compliant and where therefore the control the government had over their lives would not be threatened in the least. While on the other hand you could have a society where nobody had ever heard of Rothbard, but which had to go only on the most unsophisticated and underdeveloped notions of freedom, but which was rebellious and combative and which therefore crashed down and curtailed their governments all the time.

Where I was mistaken (and you seem to be too) is believing that because I saw the light, so would (or could) everyone else. 

"IQ is does not measure such things, it measures cognitive ability."

you think the OWS people are supportive of central banking?  Or, rather, that they would be if they knew that cental banks create all of that money for their welfare programs?

In my experience, the social democrats only object to the central bank insofar as it's "private" and serves the banking interests. Take Kucinich as an example. He wants to abolish the Fed and hand its power to Congress. As with all things, they have the naive belief that State power can somehow be wielded by disinterested technocrats working in the common interest. They've been saying this for over a century...I don't see them changing their tune. We might be able to ally with them against the Fed, but if we ever got rid of the Fed, we had better hope to God that we (and not the social democrats) get to determine the next step.

I think the best basis for cooperation with the social democrats is foreign policy.

@ Marko

Wouldn't you expect to see S. Korea and Japan experiencing strong libertarian impulses?

@Groucho

>If you don't recognize at least a dozen instances of propagandized stories on the evening news your're not paying attention.

But isn't the only thing that separates you from the masses is that you've heard the gospel of Ron Paul? It's just that you've heard the *right* propoganda and they have not?  You are implicity making a claim of homogenity between people, that they are tabula rasa to be filled with the right ideas. It is quite like the egalitarian notion that there can be equal outcomes from equal inputs which any libertarian would agere is stupid when applied to other spheres of life. 

Ron Paul's message sounds good because it makes sense and fits into a comprehensive system. When the right person hears the message, it clicks because they can process reaching implications. Some messages sound good because it makes them feel special or something. So answer this: why is it some of us aren't fooled?

You seem to be the one trying to maintain two different beliefs. On the one hand cocksure of your own ability to see through lies and on the other, the belief that the people are stupid *as a result of* propoganda, rather than the propoganda a reflection of the state of the people. Your belief that their stupidity is the result of mere data is a variation of the utopian view of humanity that I pointed to which is that humans are all interchangeable vessels of information.

There has been analysis on the reading level of presidential speeches and it has steadily decreased. Why is that? I suspect it is because originally only white men voted. As the net widened, the tricksters no longer had to appeal to their intellects. The stage magician's tricks became more and more flagrant. There was less emphasis on the philsophical, more and more on the hopey, changey and sexy saxophone playing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTkUeb6zQFA. The stage magician is limited with what he can get away with by the composition of its audience.

"We found that, compared to liberals and conservatives, libertarians show...a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional intellectual style..."

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1665934

Hearing Ron Paul speak was what made us cerebral, or are the cerebral more able to decipher the truth? If it were a matter of propoganda you would not expect to find any correlation between ideology and biological tendencies because "their tricks can fool almost everyone, and some nobody can figure out."

What if the libertarian impulse has always existed as a heritable tendency? The growth of a new identifiable group called 'libertarians' is actually a result of the conservative party moving away from its roots while the constituent itself remained static.

It isn't as if Ron Paul is the first incarnation of these ideas. He's saying things that have been around a long time and had a comfortable place in the old right. Consider also that the state until relatively recently had been keeping a safe distance from the people and the parties were not so completely polarized in outlook, making a more radical platform less urgent.

Libertarians became irrelevant because there is more of them than us. The parties moved away from the principles of limited government because they no longer had to listen. They simply invented new groups who could vote: government dependents, minorities, special interests, etc.

Wouldn't you expect to see S. Korea and Japan experiencing strong libertarian impulses?

There is so much wrong with thinking that IQ has anything to (well, first those IQ numbers I'm guessing are bunk) with libertarianism.  Or "seeing the problems."  There is no tradition in America....maybe that is why there is more of a mindset for it.  The Asians have a "respect your elders" mantra that is deeply engrained in their culture.  America has none of that.  We have a "knowledge encyclopedia" of our past and none of it means that much to us.  Have you ever read Tocqueville?  Democracy in America?  It's pretty good.  And he was white.

This is the problem with supremecy groups.  They are always looking for genetic and mental differences that set them apart.  Truly libertarian...

What about Jews?  Do you attribute Rothbard and Mises and Friedman to the same line of IQ reasoning argument that you'd put Marx and Rothschild in?  Why wasn't Rothbard successful in the investing market?

why is it some of us aren't fooled?

We are all fooled in one way or another, vdare.

On the one hand cocksure of your own ability to see through lies and on the other, the belief that the people are stupid *as a result of* propoganda, rather than the propoganda a reflection of the state of the people.

If you read Bernays or Lippmann it is pretty obvious that people are virtually tabula rasa.  Any belief can be programmed into people with the right methods.

There has been analysis on the reading level of presidential speeches and it has steadily decreased. Why is that? I suspect it is because originally only white men voted.

This is very shallow way of thinking.  The decline in language has to do with more than your whiteness, bro.  You sound like a fucking nut.

As the net widened, the tricksters no longer had to appeal to their intellects. The stage magician's tricks became more and more flagrant. There was less emphasis on the philsophical, more and more on the hopey, changey and sexy saxophone playing

hahahaha, is "magician" your word for "a manipulating white man."  All of what you said still holds and from your point of view it would make sense.  White people are the smartest intellectually and philosophically, right?  And they know this and use their intellects and philosophy to control the dumber people.  And now that white people, ahem, I'm sorry, the "magician" has dumbed down others, he has dumbed down himself.

Here's a story..

Are you going to get all SPLC on my ass for not staying PC?

>There is so much wrong with thinking that IQ has anything to (well, first those IQ numbers I'm guessing are bunk) with libertarianism.

He said libertarianism was associated with technological advancement. Those are technologically advanced countries, are they not?

>We are all fooled in one way or another, vdare.

Getting to the bottom of things does not have anything to do with intelligence? That is my point.

>If you read Bernays or Lippmann it is pretty obvious that people are virtually tabula rasa.  Any belief can be programmed into people with the right methods.

Markerters are keenly in tune with demographics. This only reinforces my point. Nobody is knocking on my door trying to sell me makeup or rap music. I guess I haven't been "programmed" yet?

>You sound like a fucking nut.

You on the other hand are very 'with it,' that you've almost managed to exchange ~5 posts of dispassionate discussion without slinging any obscenities or sharing with us a host of conspiracy theories. I'm quite impressed.

>"magician" your word for "a manipulating white man."

I was contiuing with his metaphor. While we're on the topic of reading comprehension, I'm not particularly imperssed by yours.

>White people are the smartest intellectually and philosophically, right?

Where did I say that? Are you unable to infer that I'd be more than able to come to terms with differentiation among individuals given I've been talking about IQ distributions?

As I already said, whites have a lower mean IQ than Asians and Jews. But where you draw the line is pointing out that whites might, on average, be superior to other races. Spare me your white guilt. I'm primarily concerned with the truth, not patting myself on the back.

I do not think in black and white terms as you do, so please do not project your own ignorant outlook into what I am saying.

What I'm saying isn't particularly controversial outside the PC hysteria zone. There are already many smart people, many libertarian, who've already tackled this issue like Charles Murray. Here is Hans Hoppe sitting on a panel with Richard Lynn discussing race:

http://vimeo.com/12598475

 

No, I am not PC.

Markerters are keenly in tune with demographics. This only reinforces my point. Nobody is knocking on my door trying to sell me makeup or rap music. I guess I haven't been "programmed" yet?

You were programmed when you were a toddler.

I've already stated that you are programmed to your demographic.  It makes no sense to market to people outside of things that will be effective.  The point i was making is that people can be made to believe anything.  You are programmed to what the marketers want within your demographic. 

RE: Tabula rasa: In a vaccuum you could be made to like rap music and dress like a woman.  If you were born and raised with the intention of propagandizing certain ideas in you, it could be done.  Most people aren't in that situation, though.  Lippmann and Bernays simply say that the cultural norms provide the slate for programming.  It has to do with income, race, suffrage, culture, etc.  But anything can be programmed into anyone.

Who'd think that money extraction would necessitate propaganda that could convince Hispanics and Blacks to follow the same patterns of consumption that whites have followed.

Are you familiar with Plato's Cave?

And again, Tocqueville talks about these things...it didn't have to do with race to him...

Look at the Blacks that were freed and sent to Liberia.  What was the first thing they did?  Enslave the native blacks.  After all of the oppression they saw...they went back and imitated the structure of money and power that the whites had for themselves...

I was contiuing with his metaphor. While we're on the topic of reading comprehension, I'm not particularly imperssed by yours.

You are the one who brought Nietzsche into it...I thought he was framing the metaphor around your intiation.

You on the other hand are very 'with it,' that you've almost managed to exchange ~5 posts of dispassionate discussion without slinging any obscenities or sharing with us a host of conspiracy theories. I'm quite impressed.

Like you theory of how colored people have fucked up your country?  And how colored people's lower IQs have brought down the linguistic prowess of the other white men that have run the country?

Where did I say that? Are you unable to infer that I'd be more than able to come to terms with differentiation among individuals given I've been talking about IQ distributions?

Right.  You already said so much that indicates this statement's truth...and even with it as a given you still implicitly say that you will continue your prejudice until "another one" proves itself to you...

I'm also curious what a Hispanic or African would need to say to you for you to think that they have an "enlightened" worldview?

Spare me your white guilt

ha, yeah.  I'm white...

Jesus was white too wasn't he?

I'm primarily concerned with the truth, not patting myself on the back.

This I don't buy.  You are actively looking for reasons to blame colored people (even through eugenic arguments) for the ills of society.  White people are just incidentally there not causing problems themselves, but giving the colored people opportunity to cause poroblems through their freedom to do lower minded activities.

It has nothing to do with corporate advertising.  Nothing at all.  Not the ages of people involved.  All of those youthful white kids that listen to ghetto rap like it because they relate so much to it not because corporations and ad-men tell them that it is popular and those same ad-men help to create that popular image.  It is the IQ variation of the races...

I do not think in black and white terms as you do, so please do not project your own ignorant outlook into what I am saying.

I'm sure you don't.  You've said nothing that indicates that you are a white supremecist.

What I'm saying isn't particularly controversial outside the PC hysteria zone. There are already many smart people, many libertarian, who've already tackled this issue

And Thomas Sowell! 

Why go through the extra effort of programming when you could appeal to innate desires?

Research by Baron-Cohen who shows from birth, boys and girls have differerent preferences in toys. Boys skew toward abstract objects, girls toward faces (dolls, fluffy objects). http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=KQ2xrnyH2wQ#t=1283s

It has nothing to do with corporate advertising.  Nothing at all.  It is the IQ variation of the races...

You didn't answer the question I asked a while ago. What of the Latino or African countries where their lives basically fit the same patterns? You will owe that to trashy pop culture in America too? 

You say you're not PC, but what you are saying is lifted straight ouf of the politically correct sociology textbook.

how colored people's lower IQs have brought down the linguistic prowess of the other white men that have run the country

Completely misunderstood what I wrote.

Politicians lowered their standards in order to appeal to a different group because they could. They would much rather answer to constiuents who are easier to manipulate and who lack the foresight to oppose massive deficit spending.

As such, it disenfranchised mostly white men who made up the old right which has been splitting into the libertarian party. When the immigration act of 1965 was passed, the U.S. was 85% white. As the parties massively accelerated toward big government, the librtarian party broke off, particularly with the left which became the party of welfare.

Oh, I have Sowell's Ethnic America right here on my shelf. Does this boost my PC street cred?!

Why go through the extra effort of programming when you could appeal to innate desires?

Why must they choose between the two?

You didn't answer the question I asked a while ago. What of the Latino or African countries where their lives basically fit the same patterns? You will owe that to trashy pop culture in America too?

I'm doing other things, what exactly was it?

You say you're not PC, but what you are saying is lifted straight ouf of the politically correct sociology textbook.

haha

Completely misunderstood what I wrote.

No, it wasn't.

Politicians lowered their standards in order to appeal to a different group because they could. They would much rather answer to constiuents who are easier to manipulate and who lack the foresight to oppose massive deficit spending.

Thiank about what you wrote there.

(1) "Politicians lowered their standards in order to appeal to a different group because they could."

(1a) There is not much of a reason given for this sentiment.  If there was a reason you could have simply stated it.  But, instead they did it because they could.

(2) "They would much rather answer to constiuents who are easier to manipulate and who lack the foresight to oppose massive deficit spending."

(2a) Because of (1a), (2) still doesn't necessarily follow.  And given (2), it would seem that they did it on puropose, no?  So what is the problem?  The white people in charge wanted to manipulate the people who didn't have IQs high enough to figure out the syntax of English.  "White people, in dumbing down others, have dumbed down themselves..."  How is that a misinterpretation of what you said?

Further, what temporal interim do you have in mind, the last 50 years?  I'm trying to picture your sentiment from evidence of the last two centuries or so.  Black's and Women's sufferage came a significant amount of time before deficits blew up into the realm that they are today.

Oh, I have Sowell's Ethnic America right here on my shelf. Does this boost my PC street cred?!

You being so worried about PC is kind of funny.  You don't know wat race I am.  You also must not have seen my perspective of the Arab/Israel thing.  Which, if you did, would assuage your PC disposition towards myself. 

I was referring to Sowell's Race and Culture.  And it never hurts to find white apoligists for the racialism you are pushing.

Have you read Rousseau's first discourse?  Or the second one?  They talk about this in them.

Your name is "Walden," are you familiar with Henry David Thoureau?  He was pretty well read in Indian philosophy.  What make you of their IQs?

Again, you should flip tropugh Tocqueville's Democracy in America.  Liberty, democracy, and equality are all discussed critically.  And it makes more sense than the idiotic "white people are a metric for IQ, 'oh, no the numbers are the mean' nonsense. 

Seriously, those numbers cannot be means without a metric.  100 is that metric.  Your earlier judgements were using white people's average IQ as the mean (the metric) to judge everyone else.  You can deny this all you want, but it is a basic tenet of statistics that metrics are required.  Or else you are comparing nothing.  Where do you provide an objective metric for measuring IQ?

@Walden

This "colonization" destroyed Africa myth is plain garbage. The African nations which were most heavily colonized are today the most modern. South Africa, Ivory Coast...If you just account for IQ, it's easy to see why some former colonies failed and others prospered. Hong Kong was obviously a success. Australia certainly became a developed country but it was rife with tall-poppy syndrome, not a likely candidate for a libertarian movement.
 

Allow me to rephrase. There is a difference between colonial nations in so far as their institutions go. There are those founded with the explicit purpose of redistributing their wealth to the colonizing nation and the domestic elites.

Take for example the case of Mexico, whose main purpose was the enrichment of Spain. Upon independence the institutions were not changed. In fact the only real difference was that the Criollo (American-born Spaniards) now got the full share of the loot, as opposed to sharing it with their European counterparts. With exception, a good deal of Mexican head of states have been noticably more European looking than the population as a whole. It is true that Mexico is a rich nation, but it suffers a severe imbalance in the share of wealth between the common person, and those under the patronship of the state. 

Then there is the case of nations colonized for the purpose of settlement by the colonizing people, and whose institutions were not created for the purpose of redistributing wealth to the colonizing nation, but for allowing the new colonials to create wealth for themselves. The United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc. etc. fit here. 

I live in the southwest and can easily see the major difference in wealth between our end of the border and the Mexican end. The border states have significant hispanic populations, yet are very different in material wealth from their southern counterparts. Why is it that a hispanic on one end of the border is better capable of saving, building up capital, and ultimately having higher productivity than their counterpart on the other end? 

 Is it a genetic disposition that makes one smarter, or more libertarian inclined? I would argue not. It seems to be institutions that make these changes. 

And so my initial proposal that we have an experiment where we throw in children of different races together and see who develops a libertarian framework first. I suspect it'll show that race has little relevance in one's political leanings versus the institutions they grow up in.