The welfare state — confronting globalization, with its comprehensive mobilization of production factors and information streams — finds itself on the defensive. This problem is now enormously exacerbated by mass immigration, so the question is whether the welfare state still has any chance of survival. Expanding the welfare state while opening the borders to immigration certainly cannot be sustained.
Well, no, the money has to come from somewhere, generally from the society that is being replaced by the welfare state, which is itself an indication of unsustainability. One does eventually run out of Other People's Money.
The question arises: What is the effect of immigration of people from collapsed states or states incapable of development? Are they importing that collapse to this society? Are they destroying here the cultural and institutional prerequisites of industrialization which they never had and could not create in their homelands?
I would ask that question another way: what would motivate any immigrant population capable of sustaining itself on somebody else's surplus to change itself from taker to maker? Why? Some theoretical appreciation that yes, they'll send you a monthly check for doing nothing but that it might, in the long term, be a bad idea to take it? Trust me, they'll take the check.
An important, if not the decisive element of cultural capitalism, is trust. As empirical comparisons of various countries show, there is a close correlation between the amount of trust and economic efficiency. The level of trust is the measure of both civilizational level and performance capacity. In the year 2000, to the question of whether most people can be trusted, 67% of Danes and 66% of Swedes answered “yes” but only 3% of Brazilians.
This is not altogether naivete. Francis Fukuyama wrote an entire book on Trust: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order. On its simplest level it consists of the conviction that a commitment made will be honored and a debt incurred will be paid. When that is only true within the tribe, first trade and then social cohesion tend to break down.
When conflicts arise, attempts are made first to resolve them within the pertinent tribal structure, through their own mediators, but also perhaps with the help of enforcement-capable allies. Once this process is underway (and the beginnings of it can be observed in numerous European cities) it can gain strength with ease and develop its own dynamic. Then (along old or new borderlines) more and more tribal groups may form, with their own tax system (protection payments) and their own decision apparatus. These groups will then come into competition with the traditional constitutional state and its policing forces. Ultimately nothing will remain of this “state’ except as one tribe among other tribes. For those citizens who belong to no particular tribe, and had relied upon the constitutional state, this will be fatal.
It is no accident that the formation of any white "tribe" within the United States is so forcefully resisted where the tribal nature of such movements as La Raza and BLM are encouraged. This is not innocence or any sense of social justice but a deliberate and malign inclination toward genocide that is now being openly advocated among the wilder tongues of the Left. I would encourage everyone to read the disturbing Eight Stages of Genocide by Gregory Stanton of the U.S. State Department and reflect on how far we've already traveled that tragic road.
Is it really possible for a society to destroy itself by such processes of ideological confusion? I think so. Cultures and ideologies are powerful forces. People blow themselves up for Allah. Why shouldn’t they destroy a social order which they neither like nor understand? The welfare state is seen by most people as natural, just like the constitutional state. They will only begin to understand that neither of them is this, but rest upon very fragile bases, when they have disappeared, that is, when the multi-tribal structure has displaced them. Perhaps the demise of Europe is a lesson for other industrialized civilizations (like China) and perhaps the last “Europeans” will seek refuge abroad.
Ah, but at some point you run out of refuges. Not for nothing did Reagan invoke the phrase "last, best hope".
As I said, a marvelous and disturbing essay, well worth the time taken to read, and reflect.
Moslems are particularly poor traders or producers because the trust problem is especially pronounced. Among Moslems Arabs and Arabized peoples are even worse. Takiya works between nations, within nations between regions, then between clans then within families. The great Chinese Businesses of the last century and before were strictly clan operations or after 1949, Army concerns.
Societies with Buddhist roots are more flexible and are able to copy a system or whole set of ethics if it works. That applies to Southeast Asia. Japan had a significant crypto Christian segment that stayed underground after the Slaughters of the 16oos and later. The business class in Japan arose mostly from Hiroshima which was the center of the Christian population. Korea had the same thing but more so. Once they got rid of the Authoritarian establishment in the 80s Korea blossomed economically and the beginnings of it came out of the Christian population. The same happened in Vietnam. The Christians became the business class as the government loosened up the communist chains. The Buddhists in these countries took stock and adjusted. They became successful merchants who could deal on trust.
Moslems are particularly poor traders or producers because the trust problem is especially pronounced. Among Moslems Arabs and Arabized peoples are even worse. Takiya works between nations, within nations between regions, then between clans then within families. The great Chinese Businesses of the last century and before were strictly clan operations or after 1949, Army concerns.
Societies with Buddhist roots are more flexible and are able to copy a system or whole set of ethics if it works. That applies to Southeast Asia. Japan had a significant crypto Christian segment that stayed underground after the Slaughters of the 16oos and later. The business class in Japan arose mostly from Hiroshima which was the center of the Christian population. Korea had the same thing but more so. Once they got rid of the Authoritarian establishment in the 80s Korea blossomed economically and the beginnings of it came out of the Christian population. The same happened in Vietnam. The Christians became the business class as the government loosened up the communist chains. The Buddhists in these countries took stock and adjusted. They became successful merchants who could deal on trust.