PS
Thx. Mr. Hail for your detailed look at this Hoover-panel!

Oh Adam - - -thx. a lot too for The WEIRDEST People in the World!
This is an outstandingly insighful book in that it explains how the skillset .a.n.d. the mindset of the Northern European folks came about - - -and what makes it special. It sits right there on the top of the anthropology shelf with Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment and: Harpending/Cochran Ten Thousand Year Explosion....
Here's an excellent five hundred words review of the 10 000 Year Explosion, which takes into account what Steve Sailer has pointed out againand & again: Cochran/Harpending are set to go against-  - -Jared Diamond's super-popular thesis, that evolution made us - all equal - - - and that it is nothing but  the luck to be born where you were born, that makes you more skillful (in the modern sense) and or brighter et vice versa... The 10,000 Year Explosion – A Book Review - Orion's Cold Fire (orionscoldfire.com)

At times Helen Andrews puts her articles she publishes in Mags. up on her site for free - so maybe that'll happen here too. - - - She wrote great ones about South Africa, Austalia and the scandal of the Canadian Indians, "killed and tortured" by catholic boarding schools. She is thorough well learned and tough. A gem.
Ahh - if anybody has any idea what this new Compact Magazine is about - - my ears are open.

PS: Good morning,

The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

(epub):
https://tinyurl.com/2p8sj7w6

(pdf):
https://tinyurl.com/2p9348sb

Sorry Dieter, I could not figure out how to bypass compactmag's paywall. (I'm thinking about subscribing for a month so I can share the article.)

Happy Thursday!

☮

PS

You are right, Mr. Alarmist; the pro-NonWestern-immigrationists never seem to mention that immigrants are (clearly shown to be) net resource-consumers, net tax-consumers. The Regime-overseen system is basically a large transfer system of wealth and energy and resources, primarily away from White America to Migrants and 1970s-to-2020s Migrant-descendants.

Although some benefit from the cheap labor of first-generation Migrants, in certain circumstances, the society as a whole net loses, even on dollars-and-cents economic terms alone (as measured by taxes, tax burdens). The further social-economic distortions they cause should be a big deal that any economist who remembers his "Bastiat."

PS

I agree with Mr. Kief that Niall Ferguson is "one bright historian / public intellectual" and whose views, or how he chooses to express them, are interesting.

Niall Ferguson is originally a public intellectual, or elite historian. A few year sago he had a well-funded and acclaimed biography on Kissinger, during the preparation of which he had some small army of fully-funded multilingual researchers and translators working for him, resources not available to the lowly biographer of old who worked diligently but basically alone in the archives or tracking down evidence or interviews.

I don't know when Niall Ferguson began his magazine columns in "Newsweek." It must have been the early 2010s. He soon became a political actor in his own right, as a kind of within-elite critic. He began appearing on some of the political talk shows, though he disdains the talking-head role and has no interest in the "Fox News"-style cookie-cutter segments. He will also never be part of formal party-politics. Still, he is a political actor. It probably applies more in the 2020s than ever.

PS

Let me sketch out a little more on why we "should" care what these men (or types like them) are saying --- or at the least be aware of it:

Take H. R. McMaster.

H. R. McMaster is a kind-of quintessential National Security Elite, coming in from the so-called "practitioner" side (as opposed to the "theorist" side, like some of the big names in Neoconservatism a few years ago). To see how much he escalated an uncritical, unreflective, even tone-deaf pro-Immigrationism, is a little bit amazing.

McMaster, as far as I know, is a steady-handed person, not a nut on mostly any other thing. He would probably pass the Peak Stupidity litmus test on most categories of Stupidity as categorized in the topic-keys here. When he came in as national security advisor in spring 2017, no one said "Oh, no, here's a real wacko." If you search the Sailer-commentariat archives for early 2017 when H. R. McMaster's name came up, most people say things like he was a good choice, though there are always the arch-pessimists who see cabals plotting behind ever wall.

As usual with National Security types, H. R. McMaster seems to have that old "all problems are a nail, when you've so long held a hammer" myopia. But that's normal for military-bureaucracy types down through the ages, across all or nearly all regime types. It's his revealing attitude on Immigration(ism), and/or the specific way he chose to express it, that is really interesting to me. The questions this raises are interesting. What is the purpose of "national security?" is one.

PS

Thanks, Mr. Moderator.

--

"I don't know any of these people and see no reason to change that now."

If these were just four bozos "yakking it up" around a park bench, I'd agree. But we should be under no illusions about these men, and men like them, and their crucial role in upholding this system. In other words, my view is we should care what they say, and how they say it because they reflect Elite opinion...if no other reason.

PS

The only reason population decline is a problem is that the massive Ponzi scheme known as redistributive government relies on such “growth,” based on their vast simplifying assumptions, to keep the Ponzi cash flowing.

Their vast simplifying assumptions unfortunately never pan out, because importing people from s***hole nations with s*** productivity and human capital means most of the new “workforce” are net useless mouths to feed.

We can’t go on as a nation of nail salons, gardeners, and hairweavers, selling our used junk to others, while importing stuff we really need.

PS: "Population decline can be looked upon as a problem - esp. for those used to look upon the world as a dynamic/growing system - as all progressivists did."

I would add that Big Biz also sees anything that's not continuous growth as a problem. The numbers must go up each quarter - they need more toilet-paper customers for Wal-Mart, etc. It's not enough that they are constantly making money, but the stockholders want to see the profit rise consistently.

You may say (not necessarily YOU, Dieter), "Hey, Mod, I thought you were a Libertarian. What's that - you're against profits?" Nah, but that's the problem that is the Ponzi Scheme of a stock market due to FED and Government (but I repeat myself) interference for a century in the markets. Stocks used to pay dividends. If the company makes money, yet get some as an owner of a small piece of it. Now, those stock price curves must rise, or people don't feel so rich, or middle-classy, anymore.

Back to your comment, sorry. I like hearing your reports and commentary about Switzerland and (I assume today) Bavaria. Sound cool, maybe too cool for me, thermally...

About Niall Ferguson, I noted that he is the one of the 4 of the panel who did not add any virtue-signaling on immigration, per Mr. Hail, even though he's married to a foreigner - that many of us have probably heard about/from, Hirsi Ali,

PS
PS
Population decline can be looked upon as a problem - esp. for those used to look upon the world as a dynamic/growing system - as all progressivists did.
So -seen from that - dominating! - sociological - and under certain widespread assumptions even: socio-biological (!) angle, you do have a thing here. Mind you mod. - if you don't share this assumption, you row upstream.

Are there exceptions? - Well: Micro-exceptions like Switzerland, large exceptions like parts of historical Germany and all other protestant countries - - - for details, see: Joseph Hernich - The Weirdest People in the World. You could also look at the history of the (famous) Walser tribe in the Alps - - - they looked very close - - over centuries! - .n.o.t. to overpopulate their tiny Alpine valleys - and they did a lot to solve the problem of settlements elsewhere - peacefully, via negotiations, if a population surplus appeared. Unfortunately, this whole phenomenon lacks a historical standard-work for description. I know a man who grew up in such a valley and is working with others on the historical documentation of these things: A Mr. Siegen, in Ried/Lötschental (one of the most beautiful places I know).
Ok - and then, there is Japan to support your point Mod. - - And now: Denmark, Italy, Hungary - - but on a more muddled scale - - -all of them.


PS Mod. - - Niall Ferguson is one bright historian / public intellectual who is interesting at the Hoover panel.He bridges the gap between left and right on the immigration case - - -as do Jordan B. Peterson and Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff, Quillette MAG, new: Compact Mag - they ran the - positive! - Steve Sailer portrait, written by the tip-top Helen Andrews - - - (could somebody find this portrait without the hindrance of a paywall for us book-clubbers?)