Tyler Cowen put up some HBD bait today which led to the invocation of Steve Sailer’s name (which is a norm at MR but also happened today over at Slate).
The post poses a question that Cowen received from a reader about the high unemployment rate of South Africa. The reader provided a list of a few factors that he felt were important in explaining the high unemployment rate. When reading such a piece, a knowledgeable but even disinterested observer would realize what would happen next.
Everyone, regardless of their opinion on the matter, would read to see if racial group differences in IQ are one of the explanations. The firestorm will rage in the comments section afterwards with the OP’s opinion having no bearing on the tone and timbre of the comments section. So even mentioning the topic automatically precludes the outcome.
But the point I’d make if I were the first commenter on that thread (and not the 131st) would be that in a long list of possible variables contributing to South Africa’s high unemployment rate, the IQ gap should surely be entertained. The reader posits that maybe high crime rates are to blame for economic woes. That is a characteristic of the society that could theoretically be handled which would lead to a better economy. The reader whiffs past the possibility by saying that the “education system is broken”. But when he says that the crime rate is high he doesn’t say that some structural factor is broken. He says that a sociological characteristic is true at the moment and causes the problem.
This poses a research question – perhaps it has been addressed by someone like Garett Jones. Call it the barbell effect (honestly, as I’m writing this I vaguely recall something like this out in the literature, so maybe I’m channeling that or maybe this is original, let me know). Structural inequality in income and unemployment exists when the entire population is not distributed evenly on the cognitive spectrum. When you have two different curves, structural problems exist. When individuals lie on one single curve, those particular structural problems don’t exist, though other structural problems arise i.e. unions, allocation of resources, etc.
Now, Charles Murray suggests that this is currently taking place even in white America. Cognitive sorting. But if it exists as a shock to the system as it would when two large groups are at different points in their intellectual evolution, then it would exist from the get-go in a racially stratified environment.
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The topic of human bio-diversity gets people very upset.
ol cheap chalupas is a masterful troll. but so am i. we are two dancing trolls making sweet sweet love under the silver moonlight.
You definitely didn’t invent the phrase or concept of the bar bell effect. This is an unusual application of the idea though and maybe unique. I also don’t really understand why you think what you’re talking about is a bar bell effect.
I’ve encountered the idea mainly in investment strategy. That is that some investors want a part of their portfolio to not only be pretty safe but super safe (and low return), but another portion to be not only be a little risky but high reward, but quite risky/high reward. The idea is that if the risky turns into high reward so much the better, but if it goes bust, there’s capital to recover. Bar bell means mostly concentrated kinda equally on two sorta opposing extremes.
As for what you’re getting at rather than terminology, I think that part of the differentials in how blacks behave in America compared to whites or Asians on average is not just that they are lower average IQ, but that because of that and also a group culture that wants to remain differentiated from assimilated white culture, blacks tend to occupy certain societal and market niches more than they would do in say almost all black cultures. I’d guess that in ssAfrica in countries where there are very few whites or E. or S. Asians, there’s somewhat more effort on the part of blacks to do well in school. There will still be the genetic and in Africa environmental impediments to doing so, but less the cultural ones, maybe. That is the taboo against “acting white” by studying hard (and thus validating within your own culture whites care a lot about) but inevitably usually not measuring up to white or American Asian success in education won’t be a factor or way less of one.
This is another way of saying that not only individuals but also sub cultures within a country tend to focus, emphasize and push for their members what they as a group are relatively good at, compared to culturally and genetically different groups.
I’ll play devil’s advocate here. A progressive would say that SA is dysfunctional due to the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. How would you respond to this? (also as a progressive I will not entertain any IQ talk until after you have refuted my claims about colonialism, etc.)
A progressive would say that SA is dysfunctional due to the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. How would you respond to this?
Search for comparable nations. Ethiopia and Liberia never suffered under colonialism to the degree that the legacy of colonialism took root. How are they doing in comparison to SA? GDP/cap (PPP) puts SA at the top on the continent and Liberia and Ethiopa near the bottom. If anything it is not the dysfunction of colonialism which is depressing SA it is the positive legacy of colonialism which is boosting SA. The inheritance of institutions and commerce as well as the remaining white/mixed population which is responsible for whatever success that SA is eking out for itself.
If that doesn’t satisfy, then check out black performance anywhere else in the world. If the US is too tainted by history, check out black performance in Canada which opened their borders to black immigration back in the 70s after tut-tutting about how racist the US was and how pure Trudeau-led Canada was with respect to providing a free and fair environment untainted by racism and discrimination.
I’ve played this game many times. It goes like this – a liberal completely rejects genetics as the basis for explaining any differences seen in the social realm. I ask them to list every conceivable environmental factor, the sum of which must explain ALL the difference. The laundry list is trotted out and I slowly start linking to studies which show the effect attributable to each factor. As one factor is shown to be less powerful that shifts the burden of explaining ALL variance onto the remaining factors. As I progressed down the list the burden on the remaining factors increased. As I neared the end of the list, the effect size for the few remaining factors got to be very large, so large that the liberals themselves didn’t believe it. This left them three options – a mystery variable that they couldn’t identify, the previously listed variables interacting in such a way as to grossly magnify the effect size and genetics. They went with the first two. Lesson for me – don’t waste my time anymore playing such games for people won’t accept what they don’t want to accept.
Good answer.
Reading through the thread it seems the regulars are arguing for IQ differences primarily driven by environmental factors. The old nature vs nurture routine. Lot of weight given to pre-natal nutrition. Which just makes me think of the African population in the developed world.
Our own TGGP raises an excellent point that technically the HBD commenters might be barking up the wrong tree:
The Standard Model envisions Africa in black and white, e.g. SA [blacks are] dysfunctional due to the legacy of [white] colonialism and [white-imposed] apartheid. The rest of Sub-Saharan Africa, lacking large numbers of white interlopers, is, well, black.
It can be more useful to ask, “what tribes (clans, ethnic groups) are involved in the issue we are discussing?” For SA, major players could be considered to be Zulu speakers (Zulus), Xhosa speakers, Afrikaaners, English speakers from Europe, and English speakers from the Indian subcontinent.
For Nigeria (e.g.), it would be the Fulani, Yoruba, and Ibo. Kenya — Kikuyu and Luo.
Inter-tribal competition is a major factor throughout the world and thus throughout Africa. To our naive Western eyes, black looks black, thus conflicts of black-and-white SA has little in common with those in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. This fits in beautifully with the cultural Marxist narrative of (vile) white oppressors and (noble) non-white oppressed.
Fish commenting on the wetness of the water they swim in.
SA is in an extreme case, in terms of the competitive advantages of certain of the tribes (historical, cultural, genetic), and in terms of melanin making them visually distinct. The dynamics that govern the situation (and lead to high unemployment) are unlikely to be unique to SA. As TGGP remarked upthread, the focus on the special evilness of the white tribes doesn’t make for a particularly potent explanation for that country’s current woes.
But such focus will always have a place in our hearts as a celebration of the scientific rigor of our Marxist beliefs, and as a talking point in the intra-white-tribe SWPL status competition that so preoccupy us.
Aaronovitch–
Not me. I think IQ differences are primarily driven by genetic differences, and their environmental feedbacks, at least in relatively rich environmental situations such as contemporary America.
An example of an environmental feedback is this. People tend to like working on getting better at what they’re naturally good at. Natural athletes tend to like to play sports for fun as well as for gain, and also like to work out so as to be better at their favorite sports. Genetically smart people tend to like to exercise their brains and like to read a lot on the net and books etc., and to solve puzzles of various sorts. These mental workouts are environmental effects. Among children, parental influences and such parental substitute influences as head start, can be substantial in encouraging mental working out among those not naturally so inclined, but those influences diminish as the child becomes a teen.
As well parents are a cultural/environmental influence. But they too were shaped importantly by their genes, which they passed down to their children together with in roulette wheel fashion, those of some of their ancestors. So that cultural influence of parents is another gene to environment feedback.
All the HBDers completely missed the point of the article. It was not asking “why is the SA economy all messed up?”, but asking “why is SA unemployment so high?” SA apparently does have high unemployment versus other sub-Saharan countries, which is not to say that those other countries have great economies, but that there is a specific problem in SA that similar nations do not share. In this case, you can’t just trot out “IQ!” as an answer.
Now, in my opinion, I could not care less about unemployment in SA, because I am convinced that ultimately, because of low mean IQ, SA will join Zimbabwe and the rest of its African brothers in decrepitude, but that’s another topic.
“SA apparently does have high unemployment versus other sub-Saharan countries, which is not to say that those other countries have great economies, but that there is a specific problem in SA that similar nations do not share. In this case, you can’t just trot out “IQ!” as an answer.”
I’d have to guess that those countries have regressed back to african means, but that obviously isn’t right since their populations are still shooting up. Then afterwards my guess would have to be that these other states are outright lying about unemployment(since it is on their heads if the people rise up), but SA has every reason to tell the truth to facilitate greater resource transfers from whites(get the YT).
Update on the following:
http://www.fin24.com/Business/SA-worlds-biggest-welfare-state-20100221
Mystery SOLVED.
Apartheid South Africa was memorably described as “Capitalism for the English and Jews, fascism for the blacks, and socialism for the Boers.”