I used to love Horatio Alger stories. It took me a long time to realize that their lessons are less applicable in a world of credentials, byzantine bureaucracy, and equity-informed hiring. The stories are still good guides to life, of course... but the old idea of hard work & initiative yielding success, and sloth & laziness yielding failure, has been badly blurred. Sloth and poor decisions can earn a person tens of thousands of dollars in transfer payments. Academic conformity can win opportunities to luxurious, lifetime sinecures, where no valuable work need be performed.
I agree with the point of this post, but I think we need to introduce a little more Alger into OUR society. Opportunity, fairness (meaning you earn what you produce), and flexibility. That will require those who do not produce to suffer the wages of failure, of course, which is intolerable to many modern people.
I get that someone from 3rd world moving to US or Europe can increase wealth more than if they stayed home and poor, but what about the why? The 1st world wealth is built on infrastructure, historical wealth open trade etc, which all contribute to wealth... But all of those things stem ultimately from certain cultural norms such as equality under the law, personal responsibility, understanding conflict of interest....
Single immigrants who integrate are great. Large groups of immigrants who transplant their whole culture and way of life to the west will simply result in those parts of the world where they form a majority to immiserate.
Removing the fence would be disastrous. What is needed is installing a gate in the fence and allowing through only those willing to play by our rules
I also don't think that western wealth was created thanks to cultural norms.
Countries and people get the opportunity to become wealthy when the country enforces strong property rights. The Chicago Boys (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys) success in developing Chiles economy was due to enforcing free trade, privatizing companies and reducing regulation. They didn't change the culture.
This is probably what was meant by:
"the global poor are perfectly able to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps… if the world’s governments will only let them." => deregulate, and protect private property
Great. So let us set up a zone in Northern Mexico or North Africa and let them move there. Let’s give it a half century or so, and learn how it works, making revisions over time.
I used to love Horatio Alger stories. It took me a long time to realize that their lessons are less applicable in a world of credentials, byzantine bureaucracy, and equity-informed hiring. The stories are still good guides to life, of course... but the old idea of hard work & initiative yielding success, and sloth & laziness yielding failure, has been badly blurred. Sloth and poor decisions can earn a person tens of thousands of dollars in transfer payments. Academic conformity can win opportunities to luxurious, lifetime sinecures, where no valuable work need be performed.
I agree with the point of this post, but I think we need to introduce a little more Alger into OUR society. Opportunity, fairness (meaning you earn what you produce), and flexibility. That will require those who do not produce to suffer the wages of failure, of course, which is intolerable to many modern people.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/job-search-part-2
I get that someone from 3rd world moving to US or Europe can increase wealth more than if they stayed home and poor, but what about the why? The 1st world wealth is built on infrastructure, historical wealth open trade etc, which all contribute to wealth... But all of those things stem ultimately from certain cultural norms such as equality under the law, personal responsibility, understanding conflict of interest....
Single immigrants who integrate are great. Large groups of immigrants who transplant their whole culture and way of life to the west will simply result in those parts of the world where they form a majority to immiserate.
Removing the fence would be disastrous. What is needed is installing a gate in the fence and allowing through only those willing to play by our rules
I don't think the article was about immigration.
I also don't think that western wealth was created thanks to cultural norms.
Countries and people get the opportunity to become wealthy when the country enforces strong property rights. The Chicago Boys (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys) success in developing Chiles economy was due to enforcing free trade, privatizing companies and reducing regulation. They didn't change the culture.
This is probably what was meant by:
"the global poor are perfectly able to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps… if the world’s governments will only let them." => deregulate, and protect private property
Great. So let us set up a zone in Northern Mexico or North Africa and let them move there. Let’s give it a half century or so, and learn how it works, making revisions over time.