rayiner

My Bangladeshi parents were in London in 2023 and they were shocked by the number of immigrants. My mom was very upset because it blew up the idea that the immigrants would act and talk exactly like British people who just happened to be less sensitive to the sun. They’re retaining their differences, they’re participating in politics in ethnic blocs, they’re raising their kids with their own culture and values. It’s the opposite of what her generation had hoped for—London becoming more like Dhaka instead of Dhaka becoming more like London.

A member of my wife's family is Swedish American. Her Swedish identity is superficial, a historical curiosity. Swedish Americans aren't glued together in any meaningful way by a common identity, they don't seek each other out to live near each other. Nor can you influence them by appealing to their Swedish heritage. By contrast, I have on multiple occasions gotten comped meals from hotel workers based on being Bangladeshi. Bangladeshis in the US and Canada feel real affinity for each other--they live in Bangladeshi neighborhoods, marry within their communities, etc. And you can influence them by appealing to their shared identity.

Irish identity is largely superficial today, but for a century it wasn't. They lived in Irish enclaves, they did favors for each other based on shared identity, and they organized politically based on ethnic background, not ideology or issues. And that had real social and political consequences for the country for a long time.

Indeed, Americans underestimate how different Irish and Swedish Americans really are from Anglo Americans even today. Americans descended from different European countries remain quite different in fundamental attitudes (e.g. social trust, views towards saving, etc). And they still vote quite differently as a result. It's also obvious just going around America. As a foreigner, it's blatantly obvious which parts of the country was settled by Italians, Scandinavians, Germans, different kinds of British, etc.

Similarly, dismissing the concerns as "short sighted" is just ignorant of history. Plato was thinking about the challenges of reconciling immigration with democracy 2,000 years ago. Alexander Hamilton presaged the destabilizing effects of immigration on democracy at the inception of the U.S. https://www.iwp.edu/articles/2016/12/21/hamiltons-actual-vie...

You can't save it by cutting education or defense spending. By 2036 the combined social security and medicare shortfall is projected to reach $2.7 trillion. If defense spending stays at around 3.1% of GDP--it has been decreasing as a share of GDP since the 1990s--then the shortfall in medicare and social security will be about $1 trillion more than the entire defense budget.

"Humanity" isn't a preschool classroom where we all hold hands and do one thing at a time like the teacher says. It's fine for some people to be working towards the future while others are trying to fix things in the present.

"Muslim Students of the Imam Khomeini Line,[1] was an Iranian student group that occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979. The students were supporters of the Islamic Revolution who occupied the embassy to show their support for Ayatollah Khomeini and their outrage that the ex-Shah of Iran was admitted to the United States for cancer treatment, instead of being returned to Iran for trial and execution. The occupation triggered the Iran hostage crisis where 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days."

Students can certainly be Islamists, as both are generally aligned on left-wing and communitarian economics. E.g. in Bangladesh in 2024: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/jamaat-student-wing-wi...

"The student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami won a landslide in Dhaka University’s student body election, marking the first time the Islamist group has taken control of the influential union since Bangladesh’s independence in 1971."

I’m also reminded of Ashraf Ghani, the last President of Afghanistan, who was a professor and wrote a book “Fixing Failed States.” He ended up fleeing the country like a coward as it collapsed.

It’s notable that students played a major role in the 1979 Iranian revolution that ended up putting the Ayatollah in power. In fact to my knowledge, student-led revolutions have never produced a long term positive outcome. Any examples?

To be clear, I think most marketing is dumb. But avoiding the word artificial isn’t completely random.

The clock-driven day is one of humanity's greatest inventions. You can't build a spacefaring society on "following the rhythms of nature."