A Pure Aryan Racist Who Turned in His White Sheet in Exchange for a Bibliography
I received a highly critical email from an anonymous man. He told me that my article on the possible reversal of the social decline in Detroit is nonsense. Why? Because Detroit is a city where blacks live.
Dear Dr North,your article on Detroit is laughable. You fail to mention that the population went from majority white to 90% black, coinciding with its terminal decline. Liberalism has afflicted other large US cities as well, but they did not go bankrupt or turn into third world landscapes.
In response I wrote this article. Then I sent it to him.
I shall feature this letter in my article tomorrow on race-baiting right-wing crazies.Please defend yourself. That will make the article even better. You are a choice source.
He responded:
I wouldn't class myself as a "right-winger" like you called me. My difference with you is that I understand Austrian economics alone cannot explain the totality of human experience. You need other things too, and chief amongst these is biology. I will return to this later, but for now let me explain to you why you are so hopelessly wrong on Detroit.Fact 1: There is a massive average intelligence difference between Whites and Blacks, between one and two standard deviations. Blacks are simply less intelligent and this IQ gap has a large genetic component, i.e. cannot be ameliorated no matter what environmental interventions you undertake (Rushton & Jensen, 2005). The interested reader can find ten pages of references to peer-reviewed academic publications at the end of Rushton and Jensen's article as an introduction to this very large research area.
Fact 2: Differences in average intelligence predictably lead to differences in economic outcomes between populations. Indeed the effect of intelligence is so strong that it is of at least equal importance to economic freedom in determining an economy's degree of prosperity. In their cross-country analysis Whetzel & McDaniel (2006) find a .60 correlation between per-capita GDP and a nation's average IQ, which means that 36% of the variance in GDP can be accounted for by differences in IQ. If you use a curvilinear model, IQ explains 43% of the variance. Intelligence plus economic freedom together explain 64% of the variance. If you add oil production and democratic institutions to the model you get another 8% of variance, for a maximum of 72%. When you consider that a large part of the remaining variance is noise arising from imperfections in measuring these variables, you realize that IQ and economic freedom in combination basically tell most of the story. Thing is, these two variables are also largely correlated with one another, so that the more intelligent a population is, the more likely it is to adopt free institutions (which makes sense if you think about it -- it takes some insight to be able to work through the unintended long-term consequences of a specific state intervention and refrain from implementing it).
Detroit is simply the canary in the coal mine for what awaits the rest of the country as whites are increasingly displaced by low-IQ third-world populations. The percentage of the white population in Detroit went from approximately 70% in the 1960s to less than 10% today. Faced with increasing racial tensions, riots and black-on white criminality, whites simply fled. The interested reader can visit www.colorofcrime.com to get an idea of racial differences in propensity to criminality, as revealed by official federal statistics (FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics). As a representative statistic, while blacks committed 10,000 gang rapes against whites between 2001-2003, there was not a single reported case of white on black gang rape in that same time period. As long as whites still have the option to flee, you can bet they will Dr North, no matter how hard you or the mainstream media try to persuade them that race doesn't matter. Detroit is actually just one of multiple case studies of what happens when whites leave and blacks are left on their own. Zimbabwe (formerly called Rhodesia under white rule) went within thirty years from first-world nation to a third-world failed state where small children are reduced to drinking waters from puddles. Literally drinking waters from puddles. South Africa is in a similar painful transition, witnessing massive increases in poverty and unemployment, constant power outages, unbelievable corruption and nepotism, as well as unbearable levels of criminality.
Ten thousand years ago, when everyone was just hunting and foraging, racial differences did not matter that much. In a modern complex division of labor economy you need high intelligence and a host of other psychological attributes that are highly correlated to intelligence, such as foresight, mathematical ability, the ability to defer gratification and accumulate capital and a meritocracy. Black populations on average unfortunately do not possess these attributes to the necessary degree and never will, which is why your predictions for the future of Detroit are wrong. No Great Default and no amount of tax cuts will ever turn things around for Detroit. How I wish it really were different and race could be safely ignored; that's just not the case though.
Before closing, I need to point out that your tunnel vision on Detroit is simply one symptom of a deeper pathology I mentioned in the first paragraph, namely your refusal to look beyond Austrian principles in your explanation of any phenomenon.
References:
-Rushton, J.P. & Jensen, A.R. (2005). Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability. Psychology, public policy and law, 11, 235-294.
-Whetzel, DL. & McDaniel, M.A. (2006). Prediction of national wealth. Intelligence, 34, 449-458
So, he is a literate racist crazy. He says he is not a right-winger. I feel better. The Left gets him!
Here is what he believes.
First, there are two kinds of humans: smart ones -- his tribe -- and less intelligent ones. The less intelligent ones are doomed to failure.
Second, ethical reform cannot reverse crime and social degradation. Social degradation is genetic.
Third, the recovery of liberty probably cannot reverse this: it's 50-50. "Differences in average intelligence predictably lead to differences in economic outcomes between populations. Indeed the effect of intelligence is so strong that it is of at least equal importance to economic freedom in determining an economy's degree of prosperity."
Fourth, ideas do not have consequences. Only genetics does. "Thing is, these two variables are also largely correlated with one another, so that the more intelligent a population is, the more likely it is to adopt free institutions." Yet if we look at the best universities, where the intellectual elite go, we find that Keynesianism is dominant. Socialists and Communists have greater representation here than in any other institution.
In fact, all such improvements in the economy will only make the disparity greater. The richer that society gets, the more there will be inequality -- not just economic inequality, but separation of the low-IQ tribe from all productivity. The free market probably cannot reverse this. It does not increase the wealth of nations, if the nations have lots of blacks in it. Adam Smith was wrong. Mises was wrong, too.
Fifth, I am pathological for holding to Mises' view -- a "tunnel vision on Detroit is simply one symptom of a deeper pathology I mentioned in the first paragraph, namely your refusal to look beyond Austrian principles in your explanation of any phenomenon."
He might have mentioned that I am also a Christian who believes that regeneration is positive for individuals and society. When it comes to my pathology, I am even deeper than he thinks.
Here we have a pure Aryan racist, with a bibliography rather than a white sheet.
When I told him I would publish this if I could run his name and email address, he quickly ran for cover.
Listen Gary I have a day job at a public institution and with the unemployment rate being what it is I can't afford being sacked. The name is a nickname, but accounts can easily be hacked anyway, and I have my share of dirty laundry that I'd rather not air. At the advice of my girlfriend I will pass.
He is a government bureaucrat. He let his girlfriend make the decision for him. She opted for safety. That government paycheck matters! But marriage is optional. (This view is widely shared in Detroit.)
When you are in my line of work, you deal with crazies. They send emails.
The best thing I can say for them is that they are marginalized in life. They have no influence. But they are annoying.