De-blonding women and "blue-eyed greed"

The Daily Mail reports many blonde-haired women are opting for a darker hair colour to increase their chances of being taken seriously in the workplace.

Mind you, this could just be because they're trying to save money on expensive hair coloring.

Meanwhile, Steve Sailer says Brazilian President Luiz Inacio da Silva has missed the mark with his claim that "white people with blue eyes" (ie, WASP types) are responsible for the credit crisis. Apparently Wall Street financiers are a lot more multi-cultural these days than Mr Luiz da Silva gives them credit for.

In fact, many of them are probably less white than he is.

Lack of realism from the Greens

Recently I came across this post on NZ Green Party policy, which comes some way towards explaining why the party isn't opposed to relatively high immigration levels.

Apparently the Ministry of Environment has estimated the human carrying capacity of New Zealand to be around 5.5 million, that's the point after which the environment will be unable to sustainably accommodate increased population growth. Subsequently, the Green Party believes it's OK to continue to expand the population (currently at just over 4 million) to just under the 5.5 million mark.

One problem with this reasoning is that it doesn't take into account how the country is supposed to provide a high standard of living for this larger population.

At present New Zealand relies heavily on primary exports such as meat, timber, aluminium, wine and diary products, which require large amounts of land, water and electricity to produce.

However, if the population continues to expand, more arable land, water and electricity will be needed to cater for the larger population and less resources will be available for producing these income generating exports.

Also with traditionally strong industrial economies like Germany and Japan unable to compete in manufacturing with China, and with the service sector now struggling to compete with India, it may be wishful thinking to assume NZ can compensate for a shrinking resource base by developing alternative industries.

A safer, more sustainable approach would be to limit immigration and cash in on the rising demand for food and industrial materials generated by Asian industrialisation. The Green's may believe in protecting local manufacturing in principle but they certainly aren't realistic producerists.

Mind you, I probably shouldn't overstate the influence of carrying capacity arguments in Green thinking in general.

They certainly don't explain the pro-immigration policy of the Australian Green Party, which continues to ignore calls for immigration restrictionism even though Australia is already approaching the upper estimate for its carrying capacity (estimated at 17-23 million).

So it's likely that old-fashioned socialism still plays a powerful part in Green ideology.

Classical composers not so PC

At the Political Compass website I came across this interesting chart on the political views of some of the leading classical composers.

Given the overwhelmingly left-liberal orientation of nearly all popular musicians it's refreshing to see some diversity of political opinion among the old-school.

Socialist dysgenics

Lately I've been reading through a 1990s travel book on one of the West's most backward countries, Albania, a place some argue is so backward, it shouldn't really been seen as part of the West but as a poor Asiatic country like Afghanistan.

In The Accursed Mountains (written in 1996) the politically incorrect travel writer Robert Carver pulls no punches about Albania's shortcomings:

"I realised within a few days of arriving in Albania that nothing would ever be done to clean up and rebuilt the country, because that was and would always be "someone else's" job."

"...Albania was a professional client state. It had been bankrupt since its inception in 1913 and had just gone on borrowing money and scrounging goods and aid ever since. None of this was ever paid back; instead, new states of a different political hue were sought. Albanians would wave any flag you like as long as they were paid for it..."

Carver says that life in the isolated mountain villages was particularly severe, with the infant mortality rates at "sub-Saharan" levels, and agriculture almost totally unmechanised, despite generous donations of modern farm machinery by the EU. About the only growth industries in the 1990s were growing dope and smuggling guns into Kosovo.

How to account for this backwardness?

While Albania was probably held back to some degree in the 19th Century by the Ottoman Empire, and since 1945 by communism, this can't really account for the extreme level of poverty and lawlessness that's occurred since the end of communism.

A deeper reason may the dysgenic effect of killing off many of the country's professionals and intellectuals during the communist era.

Like Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxha was determined to destroy his country's bourgeios class so as to remove any potential obstacles to establishing an industrialised socialist state.

But in doing so he killed off most of those who were capable of administrating a modern economy and maintaining law and order. Hence once the communists lost power, the industrial economy collapsed with them, and law and order become the preserve of private gangs and ethnic clans.

In affluent western countries egalitarian liberals like to warn us about the potential dangers of believing in genetic differences in human ability, while forgetting the dysgenic disasters that have taken place in the name of radical egalitarianism.

Das Kapital: The Musical!

Yes folks, a Chinese stage producer has decided to use the recent resurgence of interest in things economic to stage a musical on the writings of the world's most famous lefty economist.

I wonder what's next, a TV mini-series on the life and times of Henry George, an ironic art exhibition about John Maynard Keynes and the Bloomsbury set, or how about Jethro Tull coming out of retirement and doing a tongue-in-cheque concept album on the co-operative movement.

And speaking of Jethro Tull.

An example of "ethnomasocism"

In Saturday's Press under the title "Racial bigots damage Christchurch's reputation" the following letter was published about a small white nationalist turnout in the town square. In between the author's description of events, I've included my interpretation from my own (albeit very brief) observations and reports from others.

"Saturday was the United Nations Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, held to spread the message of peace and tolerance.

I found it hard to tolerate that the white pride constituent of Christchurch hijacked what is supposed to be a harmonious event for their own sick means: a white pride day.

(There is such a thing as racial discrimination towards whites. Many western countries have affirmative action laws that discriminate against whites, and schools and universities regularly prescribe textbooks with a clear anti-white bias. There is even an anti-white academic discipline called whiteness studies).

A clan of white supremacists descended on Cathedral Square, clad in barely disguised neo-Nazi outfits: steel-capped boots, army boots, army uniforms, white pride T-shirts, shaven heads, swastika tattoos.

(A small group of perhaps 20 white nationalists, wearing army boots and white-cross, white pride t-shirts, stood in an unoccupied corner of the square for about 30 minutes. I don't know if any had Nazi tattoos.

They carried New Zealand flags and signs: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." They were extremely intimidating.

(Their appearance was slightly intimidating, but they were pretty much sticking to themselves and weren't engaging with the general public.)

The presence of these people and what they stand for filled me with disgust and embarrassment: they made me feel sick to the stomach. I felt ashamed to be white.

Hundreds of tourists from all over the world came to the square on Saturday and were meet by this sight. They were scared and intimidated I found myself apologising profusely to them in an effort to salvage their impression of Christchurch.

Is this the image we want to present to visitors? An un-welcoming place for hatred for non-whites?"

(It was a cool, wet morning and there were relatively few tourists or shoppers in the Square at the time, nor did they threaten or shout down any members of the public. They were not doing anything that could be construed as "hatred" to other races. Also you would have had to get up very close to them to see if they Nazi tattoos or not).

For a description of ethnomasocism check this link from Mild Colonial Boy.

Protectionism isn't Marxism

As popular support for the British National Party continues to grow, the mainstream centre right has stepped up its attack on the party's protectionist economic policies, arguing that it's hypocritical for a socially right-wing party to be supporting "Marxist" economics.

This shows how confused many mainstream centre-right pundits are about the connection between political ideologies and economic policies.

Protectionism is an economic strategy, not a moral principle, and over the last two centuries it's been used by both the right and left according to the economic needs of the time.

Despite what many contemporary mainstream conservatives claim, free trade is not an ideological cornerstone of conservative thinking. Many traditional conservatives such as Patrick Buchanan support protectionism because they are opposed to the modern welfare state, and would rather protect local industries from foreign competition than compensate workers through welfare.

Similarly, many of free trade's most active supporters have been progressive left-liberal governments, who have used the disruptions caused by free trade to expand the power of the welfare state and promote left-liberal social policies. Lange and Keating for example, had no problem reconciling their anti-Western cultural Marxism with staunch support for neo-liberal free trade policies.

Similarly, many people on the nationalist right don't necessarily support protectionism. Ethno-nationalists who support free trade argue that protecting low-wage industries will encourage more third world immigration as manufacturers seek to establish sweat shops at home rather than abroad.

Arguably the BNP does need spend more time thinking about the workability of its economic policies, and whether too much protectionism will alienate potential middle-class voters.

However, voters are unlikely to be put off from voting for the BNP just because it questions existing free trade dogma.

Trade policy is a difficult and complex area which needs to be addressed pragmatically, not ideologically.

Not so unique aspect of kiwi culture

One thing you frequently here about in NZ, is the phrase "number 8 wire" which refers to the historical tendency of isolated New Zealand farmers and inventors to be resourceful and make do with whatever materials are at hand.

In this week's Press newspaper for example, a local product developer points out the commercial limitations of the "number 8 wire" approach, as illustrated by the business failure of the late John Britten, who was unable to develop a sustainable business from his highly innovative Britten motorbike design.

However, what's rarely mentioned in such discussions is that this 'number eight' phenomena is arguably just as common in Britain, where the majority of New Zealanders originally came from, as it is here.

You don't have to spend much time in the UK to here the likes of Prince Charles or the Dyson vacuum cleaner guy bemoaning the country's failure to convert its backyard ingenuity into reliable mass-produced products.

While German and Japanese engineers methodically go about building a better Corolla or Golf, their British counterparts seem more intent of winning the next series of Junk Yard Wars.
Unable to compete in the mass market, the British trickle out bit and pieces of niche products from composite hand made sport cars, to boutique stereo speakers and authentically "distressed" reproduction furniture.

Lack of investment is more likely to account for British manufaturing underachievement than isolation, but the end result is the same as in NZ.

Nor is the situation much different in Australia, where manufacturers eke out a living producing a few locally-tailored products that can tempt consumers away from the tsunami of Asian, American and European imports.

This kind of ignorance of the trials and tribulations of other western countries seems to be a legacy of the Lange/Keating era of the mid 1980s, when it became fashionable to attack traditional cultural links with the West and make exaggerated claims about local uniqueness.

Economic management in the second/third world

Political pundits in Western countries like New Zealand and the UK may be divided over whether raising the minimum wage is a good idea or not, but few of them would advocate the kind of drastic changes introduced in Honduras over the last few years.

Hopefully this isn't a taste for what California can expect when it becomes part of Aztlan.

ACC blowout

One of the things I've always disliked about New Zealand is the unjust state-funded accident compensation system, which was apparently adopted in dubious circumstances in the 1970s.

Since the country already has a relatively generously funded health and welfare system, it's puzzling why it actually needs a public provider of accident insurance like the Accident Compensation Corporation.

If somebody has an accident at work, they are already covered by the public health and welfare system, and shouldn't really expect additional public help in the form of income compensation through a parallel ACC system.

Most workplaces are a lot safer than they used to be, and if workers in dangerous jobs do require insurance, then this could just as easily be provided by competing private insurers, rather than a government monopoly provider.

Probably the most unjust part of the ACC system though, is that it also extends to accidents outside of work, with employees expected to make contributions towards a public fund to cover everything from skiing accidents to allergic reactions to bee stings.

Not surprisingly, with little incentive for people to use their common sense in avoiding accidents, non-work related claims have soared, with accidents in the home the most rapidly rising area of claims.

Strangely, even though the system greatly benefits people who engage in injury-prone activities like skiing, contact sports and ambitious DIY projects, it most ardent supporters are left-liberals - exactly the kind of people who are least likely to be engaged in dangerous hands-on activities.

Recently things have come to a head with the incoming National government finding out there has been a massive surge in ACC costs over the last decade, with physiotherapists being among the main beneficaries.

Hopefully this will initiate a serious overhaul of the system, with a view to either scraping it completely, or at least restricting it to work-place accidents.

Some thoughts on Muslim assimilation

It's assumed by most western liberals that it's only fundamentalist Muslims who lash out at western culture or get angry about criticism of Islam, and that mainstream Muslims are fine with cartoons of Allah or women in short skirts.

Both right and left liberals believe that Muslims can be successfully assimilated into western culture and that this is the best way of protecting western society from Muslim militancy.

The two sides only differ in approach.

Left liberals pursue a softly-softly diplomatic strategy which seeks to appease older Muslims through a pro-Muslim foreign policy while slowing enticing young Muslims into western liberal ways through the power of consumerism and liberal education. They believe that if right liberal "hot-heads" like Dutchman Geert Wilders can be shut up then eventually the fundamentalist Muslims will mellow out and turn into semi-western moderates who'll respect women and homosexuals and support western values like freedom of speech.

Conversely, right liberals want a more overt approach which forces Muslims to swear allegiance to western values, and puts pressure on nationalistic Islamic regimes such as Iran and Libya to desist from anti-western policies.

However, there doesn't seem to be much evidence to support the idea that "moderate" Muslims are a lot more tolerant of western values than fundamentalists, so moderating fundamentalist Muslims probably won't turn them pro-western liberals

For a long time in the West we've had fundamentalist Christian minorities, like the Brethren and Mormons that are clearly more tolerant of mainstream western values than many so-called moderate Muslims.

If western religious fundamentalists acted the same way Muslim fundamentalists did, we'd see Mennonites burning cars in Washington and Exclusive Brethren burning effigies of liberal leaders in Canberra and Wellington.

Furthermore, as Samuel Huntington pointed out, the Iranian Muslims seen on television burning effigies of Salmon Rushdie or US presidents aren't necessarily backward, fundamentalist Muslims - many are educated, moderate Muslims who don't wish to live alongside western liberalism, but want to replace it with a modern, internationalist Islam.

While modern, "moderate" Islam may be less extreme than the Islamic fundamentalism of radical traditionalists like the Taleban, it's still strongly anti-Western. Islamic moderates may be more progressive and egalitarian than fundamentalists in Afghanistan and Sudan, but they still support religious interference in politics, commerce, law and scientific research and have little respect for western notions of free speech (if they did they wouldn't be so touchy about a few cartoons in a Danish newspaper).

The most worrying aspect of modern Islam though, isn't so much it's cultural incompatibility with western values as its aggressive internationalism.

Echoing the dangerous "grow or die'" ideology of radical-liberal communism, modern Islam seeks to spread itself around the globe, undermine long established cultures and knock over rival ideologies.

If moderate Muslims were particularists, with little interest in spreading Islamic views to non-Islamic countries, than you wouldn't see so many Muslims around the globe protesting about 'anti-Islamic' events in far-off countries like Israel and Denmark. Since the native Danes for example, aren't Muslims, they have no obligation to respect Allah in there own country. Only if Danes travel to Muslim countries and insult Allah do Muslims have a right to complain.

Modern liberalism is also an aggressive, internationalist ideology and there's a danger that further liberal attempts to integrate Muslims into western society will only make Muslims more globalist and therefore more determined to undermine their host nations and network with Muslims in other countries to oppose western interests.

As a globalist ideology Islam also has the potential to be much more dangerous than communism, since communism was a secular ideology that fell out of favour when it was unable to provide inspiring real-world examples of its over-hyped potential.

Rather than ambitiously attempting to assimilate Muslims in a liberal manner, some European New Right thinkers believe Muslim immigrants should actually be supported in their efforts to remain culturally distinct. In their view, Muslims should be encouraged to built their own mosques, live in distinct areas if they chose to, set up there own schools and follow their own customs where practical.

That way the host populace doesn't need to seriously compromise it's own culture to appease the Muslims, and the Muslims immigrants are taught to appreciate the thinking behind particularist polices such as immigration restrictionism.

Since liberalism also preaches equality and materialism, and reduces traditional religion to a mere lifestyle accessory, semi-westernised immigrants who are unable to compete economically are likely to blame their hosts for their NAM (non-economically assimilated minority) status and seek solace in a globalist ideology/religion. Conversely, immigrants who are able to remain culturally distinct will be less inclined to directly compare themselves with their hosts in narrowly material terms and so will have less reason to want to undermine the host culture.

Instead of seeing a war between liberalism and Islam, the European New Right sees a war between particularism and globalism in which modern Islam and post-war western liberalism are both threats that need to be contained by strengthening sovereign states and opposing globalist NGOs.

There are however a couple of areas where it is difficult to argue with the assertive assimilation approach of right liberals like Wilders. These are language and freedom of speech.

Without freedom of speech particularists will not be able to get there message across, and there will be no way to contain either Islam or liberalism's excesses.

If Muslims living in western countries find such free speech offensive then too bad.

Similarly, all immigrants, Muslim or otherwise, should have to learn to speak the language of their host nation. It simply isn't possible for a modern nation to function if a significant percentage of the population is unable to speech the dominant language.

People who can't speak English in English-Speaking countries for example, can't understand the law and culture of the country in which they live, and can only work in a limited range of jobs within there own ethnic clique. This makes them a liability to both themselves and their host country.

National praised for economic pragmatism

The Wall Street Journal has given low-key John Key the thumbs up for his handling of the economy in the recession, and from what I've seen so far I think their assessment is pretty reasonable.

National's decision to trim non-essential spending and refrain from introducing an ambitious stimulus package makes sense in a recession which has largely been caused by over-liberal lending to consumers rather than speculation in the sharemarket (which in N.Z has been in the doldrums for decades).

As I mentioned in a previous post, ambitious Keynesian-style stimulus programmes only really work in industrialising economies where there are sunrise industries which can substantially benefit from increased government spending and where the government has surplus funds which it can afford to invest.

After nine years of growth in government bureaucracy it's refreshing to see National introducing cut-backs in non-essential staff and considering changes to the notoriously bloated ACC system.

Similarly, it's welcome to see restrictions on housing development being eased as these have been a significant factor in the lack of affordable housing for young couples wanting to start a family.

Reducing taxes for higher income earners, probably won't do any harm either, for as Steve Sailer points out, it makes sense to tax them less when they are doing poorly, and if needs be, tax them more when they are doing well.

What does worry me though is whether National will resort to its 1990's policy of using wealth-based immigration to artificially kick-start the economy rather than taking the more sustainable route of growing the economy through increased productivity and investment.

One of the reasons why National was out of office for so long was because the rising cost of housing, in large part due to National's support for East Asian immigration, was discouraging family formation and therefore providing a high number of Labour-voting unmarried females.

At this stage though, National's likely policy on immigration is difficult to predict.

National has said very little on immigration, since self-styled "conservative" Bill English criticised the banking sector (yes the banking sector) for suggesting a year or so ago that immigration was fueling inflation and perhaps should be reduced.

The Maori party's immigration stance is even more difficult to determine. Prior to the election, it seemed to vacillate between a general limited immigration position, similar to New Zealand First's, and a pro-Asian/ Polynesian policy aimed at encouraging the "browning" of New Zealand.

At no stage, as far as I know, has it clarified where it stands on immigration, and nor does it have to, given the media's conspicuous lack of interest in taking it to task over its ambiguity on such an important issue.

Another of my rants about PC science

When it comes to writing popular science about human behaviour, it's amazing the dodgy arguments you can get away if you write from a politically correct perspective.

Take for example, David Berreby's 2005 book Us and Them: Understanding your tribal mind.

Starting with the reasonable assumption that people have a psychological disposition to want to belong to groups, which Berreby describes as "human kinds," he then makes a huge leap of logic and claims real-world, long-standing groups can easily be replaced by newly invented groups, as long as they satisfy our tribalistic urge to bond with others that we perceive to be similar to ourselves.

Thus identification on racial, religious or national lines could just as easily be replaced with other possible sources of identification such as left-handedness or temperament.

While many sources of identification do change over time, some sources of identification, such as being a Muslim or a Jew appear to be much more durable than others, yet Berreby fails to explain why such sources of identification are so persistent, and he continually attacks the idea that traditional forms of identification, such as race, religion or gender, are any more significant than potential sources of identification like left-handedness.

Nor does Berreby suggest any logical reason why adopting other sources of identification would be more rational than those we currently have - would a society of left-handers for example be more prosperous and cohesive, or less corrupt than a society composed of say, Irish Catholics or ethnic Japanese?

Are far as races are concerned, Berreby adamantly states that they don't exist as a significant biological concept and they only account for a few minor characteristics such as hair type or skin colour.

The logic behind this claim is that there are few, if any, genes unique to particular races.
However, race realist scientists already concede this and focus there investigations on the frequency of particular genes within races, and given how new this gene science is, wouldn't it be unwise to make categorical statements about whether races do or don't exist, based on preliminary findings from studying the human genome?

Berreby also pulls out the tiresome "fuzzy boundaries" argument to refute the validity of different races.

This argument is based on the idea that because there are people on the margins of continents who have no clear racial identity, race can't be a valid biological category.

But if you follow the logic of the fuzzy boundaries argument, then any human condition that exists along a continuum, such as depression or being overweight, can't be biologically valid either. Only in the politically sensitive area of race or gender relations could an intellectual get away with making the claim that because something is difficult to define at the margins, it therefore can't exist.

Berreby's ignorance of scientific research into racial issues appears to be highlighted by his claim that race realists like Philip Rushton argue that a smaller brain equals less intelligence, and that Blacks are less intelligent than White and East Asians because they have a smaller average skull size.

"...The evidence for a connection between brain size and intelligence is not there. Women's heads are generally smaller than men's, but women do not score lower on intelligence tests."

Now I'm certainly no scientific expert in intelligence research, but I think the claim is that a smaller brain relative to body size tends to correlate with less intelligence.

Hence the common sense observation that women, although smaller, have about the same intelligence as men, and nerds with relatively big heads and weedy bodies tend to be smarter than smaller-headed muscular jocks.

For a leading science journalist to misinterpret or deliberately misrepresent this argument is a sad indictment on the current state of academic discourse.

Politics and free speech

Jim Kalb has an interesting article at Turnabout on political correctness and its opponents.

Mr Kalb points out that right-liberals support politically incorrect free speech more than left liberals because they are less concerned with results than with principles.

Since left liberals believe that liberal principles such as non-discrimination need to be translated into less discrimination in terms of real world outcomes, they are willing to override traditional reasons for defending free speech, such as a concern for establishing the truth or countering corruption, through legislation like hate speech laws.

For example, in the left-liberal view, if free speech makes a particular group, such as women or muslims, feel alienated or insulted, then it is acceptable to restrict freedom of speech.

In contrast, right-liberals are generally opposed to introducing laws to enforce people to conform to liberal principles, as they believe in equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome.

Hence, while right-liberals believe people should respect liberal principles of equality, they don't believe they should be restricted from saying things which violate such principles.

Subsequently, the defence of free speech has been a lot stronger in the United States than in many European and Commonwealth countries, where elites have a greater concern with equality in practice rather in theory.

Among the various liberal groups in the U.S, libertarians have been the strongest supporters of free speech and are well represented on the Internet, which has a disproportionately high percentage of libertarians.

However, those groups which stand to lose the most from the censorship of free speech, are not libertarians but particularists like traditional conservatives and ethno-nationalists, who wish to directly challenge liberalism over key liberal concepts like the malleability of human nature.

So although particularists and libertarians don't have a lot of common in terms of political ideology (with most, but not all libertarians shying away from the topic of equality) particularists seem to be somewhat dependent on libertarian support in getting their message across to the public.

Kalb says that the popular and intellectual appeal of libertarianism is growing, and its growth appears to be influenced by the growth of new technologies such as online business, which appeals to the laissez-faire/individualist ethos of libertarians.

If libertarianism does continue to grow, it will be interesting to see if particularism does also, and whether the two forces will move closer together, as in some form of paleo-libertarianism, or drift further apart.

Canada's anchor babies

Canadian doctor's have recently noticed an increase in expectant mothers from foreign countries having babies in Canada to secure citizenship for them.

According to the article, most are relatively well-off mothers from developing countries.

Under Canadian law, anyone born on Canadian soil automatically becomes a Canadian citizen and is entitled to state funded social services such as Medicare.

So far the number of anchor babies being born in Canada hasn't reached the levels seen in the U.S, but the problem is likely to increase if the government fails to tackle the issue soon.

On a more positive note, the government of Australia says it intends to reduce skilled immigration in response to the global economic slowdown.

The size of the expected cut should be annouced in the next few weeks.

Is free trade going too far?

Listening to the radio this week, I heard the New Zealand Army is now joining the armed forces of other western countries like the U.S and Britain in having uniforms made in China.

While uniforms might not be considered a strategically sensitive type of military hardware, more significant components like aircraft parts are also being manufactured in the people's republic.

Neo-liberal economists claim this is a good thing, since free trade supposedly discourages countries from going to war with one another.

However, the problem with this argument is that we now have an historically unprecedented situation where just one country, China, is doing almost all the manufacturing.

The West's ability to wage war may be declining, but China's ability to wage war is rapidly increasing.

With economic nationalism making a comeback, we might want to consider whether contracting out armaments production to a powerful non-western country that might attack us is a sensible idea.