“Let us reply to ambition that it is she herself that gives us a taste for solitude.” – Montaigne
VERY LATE INTRO: bjkeefe suggested I explain the Putnam study. Robert Putnam is best known for writing “Bowling Alone”, about the decline in “social capital”, especially as manifested in civic organizations. More recently he has found that ethnic diversity in communities is correlated with lower trust and pro-social attitudes/behaviors both between and within ethnic groups.
Most people were dismayed by the results of Robert Putnam’s study on diversity. Putnam himself was to such an extent that he delayed releasing anything for some time until he could find a way to soften the blow and has criticized reports on the study because the reporters couldn’t find a way to spin the story that he himself was unable to. You’d have to be a rather unpleasant person to give a high-five when hearing this news. Perhaps you give a cheer because you don’t like diversity and think this proves we can chuck it. There are such people, although considering we’ve already got diversity and it seems unlikely to go away or even stay relatively constant this shouldn’t be much of a consolation to you (unless what makes you unhappy isn’t diversity per se but people who like diversity being happy). One response would be Alan Crowe’s (not in this specific example but in general), that a social reductio ad absurdum can also be viewed as a proof of necessity. We’ll have to put up with that loss of trust due to diversity. What I want to focus on is another variety of unpleasant person: those who cheer a reduction in trust.
So why might someone do so? Are they a misanthrope? Are they a curmudgeonly H. L. Mencken type figure who enjoys espousing (or “performing” as Hopefully Anonymous would put it) cynicism? Well, perhaps you should start re-examining your assumptions. Maybe you should start disliking trust. Maybe you should be an unpleasant person. Or perhaps trust actually has negative effects and it is Robert Putnam trying to stop us from Bowling Alone who is the real public menace. We can be free to cheer his study while remaining perfectly admirable (although you can do so and be knave if you want to).
I can’t take credit for this idea, because I got it from this post by UNC Government and Economics professor Karl Smith. That gives this odd thought more credibility than it would have merely coming from an anonymous blogger competing for the Aspergers Cup. Plus, I dare you to look at that happy guy’s picture without being in the mood to look for the bright side of everything. Now, he hasn’t actually published a paper on it (which means I’m breaking my promise to dismiss such things) and he doesn’t actually say you should start badmouthing trust, but this is an anonymous blog where we are free to irresponsibly run wild with ideas.
Karl’s idea for how the decrease in social capital resulting from diversity increases creativity and economic growth is that in a homogeneous community people will seek to gain status by producing local social goods that they all can agree on, whereas in a diverse community there are fewer goals agreed upon and if you want to gain status you have to produce something that is nigh-universally valued. Mathematics is said to be the universal language, but the word that begins with an “m” I’m thinking of here is “money”.
Urban areas are money producing areas and they also tend to be diverse. They draw people in who want to make a lot of money and exclude (at least in nice neighborhoods) those who can’t compete with big money-makers when it comes to paying rent. I thought I recalled seeing a post at Marginal Revolution saying cities have more women than men because the latter are the lucky few skilled workers who can obtain high-paying jobs and the former are competing with each other to obtain those high-earners as spouses (and you don’t need to go through an interview to try, but it helps to live nearby). If anyone can find the link I’d be grateful. At any rate, this brings me to one of Steve Sailer’s most important ideas: ease of family formation. Families are the smallest of Burke’s “little platoons” of society, family reunification is one of the major sources for (legal) immigration in the United States today and Sailer invokes the rising costs for families as the reason many are moving away from California, which is where he lives. Families can also drag people down, which is why Tyler Cowen says “The welfare state is the Randian’s secret dream“. James Watson credits his discovery of DNA to his lack of a family early in life. A more extreme example than that commonly found in America but may have been the norm throughout human history can be found in this from Theodore Dalrymple.
Keeping in mind Sailer’s idea that an ethnic/racial group can be thought of as a large-extended family (whose bonds of trust enable both jewelers and the mafia to get by) , breaking down homogeneity reduces the influence of informal institutions like families that rely on personal relationships in favor of impersonal institutions like markets/businesses (a huzzah resounds from the libertarians) and governments (now the boos), which also tend to scale better. People have a choice in whether they should invest in their ties in the neighborhood or in aspects of human capital that are valued everywhere. Keeping hip to the local slang is an example of the former, and unfortunately while hitting the books can help get you into college or a good job, it’s likely to cost you some friends in the short run. A transitory neighborhood where nobody knows anybody for long takes away that first option.
A major concern of many immigration-restrictionists today is that immigrants are not assimilating because they are forming geographically dense communities overwhelmingly of one language (as opposed to the many European ones of the past), reducing the necessity of adapting to their host country. One way of flipping this concern around would be to say that the problem is that there is not enough diversity! That is not “multiculturalism” but “biculturalism”. Canada is proud of the good job it has done at achieving the former, so I will link to my favorite (foreign-born) Canadian on the difference. A piece of counter-evidence toward these ideas is that “In Los Angeles, home to more Mexicans than any other city in the U.S., there is not one ethnic Mexican hospital, college, cemetery, or broad-based charity”, which is a bit surprising considering that there should be enough of a critical mass to start investing in local social goods. Sailer does give a good example from his days in Uptown Chicago of genuine multiculturalism impeding the creation of local social goods here though. The heartless economist in me (I’m not actually an economist, but if I was that’s the kind I’d be) says good! Like the unskilled laborer displaced by automation, there are better things he could have been doing than repairing the park, like maximizing the probability that Hopefully Anonymous will live forever (why that should be your goal I’ll leave to him to explain). His very (immortal) life may depend on social anomie and isolation.
Note: The contents of this blog post do not necessarily reflect the opinion of its author, in part because I haven’t really decided. It was mostly an exercise in taking some interesting ideas from others and running with them. For those wondering why I didn’t reference Fukuyama on trust, it’s because I haven’t read his books.
September 18, 2007 at 6:20 am
It may be that some organization on the scale of communities might be inherent to human psychology. So, you don’t get increased global scale striving, you just get a different organization of local striving – instead of the proximity communities you see in nationally homogeneous neighborhoods maybe you get clans, gangs, clubs, small cults, et cetera.
September 18, 2007 at 6:44 am
Great post, and thanks for bringing attention to Karl’s ideas.
September 18, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Your ideas seem reasonable. But I’d say, personally, that I’d rather be poorer and living in a society with high trust. We had high trust during WWII and in the Fifty’s and that’s wealthy enough for me.
We all have our own objective function to maximize. I suppose we should conduct a poll to see what most people would prefer.
September 18, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Robert, have you read about this from Steven Landsburg? Here is his the conclusion rephrased for this topic: “How much diversity/trust should we have? Just as much as we collectively want to have”. Personally, I deny that it means anything to say that we collectively “want” anything (I don’t believe in interpersonal comparisons of utility functions, plus there’s Arrow’s impossibility theorem) and even if it did I wouldn’t care what the collective wanted. The only exception is unanimous agreement.
September 19, 2007 at 9:01 am
No, I’ve not read Landsburg. I’ll look him up. As for Arrow, I think probably his work need not apply to immigration. I think his work applies to choices which cannot be averaged; but there is a continuum to immigration in terms of numbers and numbers of types admitted. We could take the median, etc. of what citizens preferred and the result would seem to be fair and reasonable.
Here’s a detailed suggestion: (long)
Let citizens determine immigration policy by answering questions at the time of each ten-year census.
Each citizen (I suppose only citizens should be asked, citizenship is not a question I believe, in the current census; but the answer could be kept private.) is asked three questions:
(1) From what country would you prefer to have immigrants?
(2) By what percent would you prefer that the US population change in the next 50 years? (-5%, +1%, +6%, +17%, +28%, +39%, +50%, +60%, +72%)*
(3) Would you prefer that immigrants from your preferred country be selected by admission reason of:
o skills
o family unification of current citizens
o family unification of the just-admitted immigrant
o fear of persecution
o other (specify).
The answers to these three questions would be transformed mathematically as below into immigration policy which would reflect these preferences.
The number of immigrants for a particular country would be proportional to the number of citizens who selected the particular country.
The number of immigrants for each country who are admitted on the basis of a particular admission reason would be proportional to the percent of all citizens who selected that particular admission reason.
For example if 10% of US citizens preferred Mexico; and if 50% of US citizens preferred skills, 25% preferred family unification of current citizens, and 25% preferred family unification of just-admitted immigrants; then 5% of immigrants would be admitted from Mexico because of skills, 2.5% would be admitted from Mexico because of family unification with current citizens, and 2.5% would be admitted because of family unification of the just-admitted immigrant.
The percentage of each different skill to be admitted would be determined by the current administration.
The desired total percent would be the median of all answers to question (2); so half of current US citizens would want more, and half would want less.
The Census Bureau would use the resulting distribution of each type (country, admission reason) of immigrant, together with the predicted fertility of each type, to determine the total number of immigrants who could be admitted while meeting the desired total percent change in US population over the subsequent 50 years, assuming that the survey results would remain the same over the 50 years.
Should insufficient numbers who have a particular reason to fill a country’s quota be available to immigrate, candidates may be picked on the most popular other reason for that country, and so on though other reasons for that country. Should there still be insufficient numbers of immigrants available for that country by the end of ten years; the remaining quota would be added to the overall quota determined by the next census for the next ten years.
For example if 1% of citizens favored immigration from Switzerland and if this translated to a quota of 100,000 over ten years, then if only 10,000 immigrated from Switzerland over the course of the ten years, then the total quota determined by the census ten years later for all countries would be increased by 90,000.
Various interest groups could engage in activism in advance of the census to encourage citizens to give answers which would favor countries and oppressed peoples of the activist’s choice. For example, the religious or humanistic might prefer a country where people are suffering greatly and as a reason they might advocate that citizens answer in favor of that country and for the reason of persecution.
The quota of a country with many persecuted individuals could, by law, be increased, but at the expense of that country’s quota in future years.
—————————————————
*These percentages are determined by the list of expressions: (LL, LL+D/2, LL+D, LL+2D, LL+3D, LL+4D, UL, UL+D, UL+2D) where LL is the percent change projected by the Department of the Census assuming zero immigration and the current fertility of citizens, UL is the Census projection assuming current levels of immigration and current fertility of citizens and immigrants, and D=(UL-LL)/5.
The assumption here is that it is fruitless to offer an option of growth which is below that projected for zero immigration and current fertility.
For example, for the example question above, if LL= -5% and UL=50% then the options would be (-5, 1, 6, 17, 28, 39, 50, 61, 72). If LL were 0, then the options would be (0, 5, 10, 20, 40, 50, 60, 70). If LL were +5% then the options would be (5, 9, 14, 23, 32, 41, 50, 59, 68).
September 19, 2007 at 9:21 am
Diversity certainly isn’t working out for Belgium. The country might split along ethnic lines just like Czechoslovakia did a few years ago.
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSHO84483920070918
September 19, 2007 at 9:28 am
Potential maps of the new borders for a split up Belgium
http://home.online.no/~vlaenen/flemish_questions/quste27.html
September 19, 2007 at 10:24 am
Looc, you indirectly get at the manufactured elements of diversity and homogeneity. Because Belgium percieves these populations as diverse from each other, whereas in the United States I think they’d be seen as homogeneous with each other relative to other diverse elements.
September 19, 2007 at 11:14 am
Now attack courage, honor, hope and love.
September 21, 2007 at 6:46 am
TGGP, Update your blog!
And my special request is to write about which elected presidential candidate (likely to win) will best maximize your and my persistence odds.
I think the reasonable selection field is:
Hillary Clinton, Rudy Guiliani, Michael Bloomberg, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain, and Ron Paul.
October 11, 2007 at 3:13 pm
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November 29, 2007 at 12:04 am
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April 4, 2009 at 3:47 am
Thanks for adding the update. It made it much easier for me to get into the rest of your post.
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September 29, 2016 at 3:55 am
Have you seen this? It talks about how the “superdiversity” in my home borough contributes to cohesion, contra Putnam: https://www.ft.com/content/71d04768-63af-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2
September 29, 2016 at 6:45 am
No, I hadn’t, and I’d be interested in what Putnam would say about it. That does sound a bit more like genuine multiculturalism vs biculturalism, perhaps less so if one thinks Bengalis, Indians & Pakistanis should be lumped together into one “South Asian” category.