Quotulatiousness

December 3, 2018

US immigration – two views

Filed under: History, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest Libertarian Enterprise, John Walker presents two fascinating charts illustrating the levels of immigration to the United States since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Depending on which one you see, your interpretation will likely differ substantially. The first, the way the statistics are usually presented, show the current rate of immigration to be a very significant — even unprecedented — economic and political concern:

Immigration shown in raw numbers.

The less common way of illustrating the immigration numbers is showing it proportional to the whole population, which would not work anywhere near as well to support certain narratives:

Immigration to the US shown in proportion to the population.

This is a very different picture. There are clearly two different epochs. In the first, between 1820 and 1930, the U.S. was “filling up the empty country” by admitting large numbers of immigrants. Then, due to immigration restrictions in the Immigration Act of 1924 and the subsequent economic depression and war, immigration remained at low levels until 1946 when, in the immediate postwar period, it jumped. In this view, the impact of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was not the discontinuous change some present it as (at least in terms of absolute numbers; it may have changed the composition of the immigrant population, which is not captured in these statistics).

Instead, the trend established after 1946 continued to rise continuously until 1989–1991 when it went all whacko. These numbers, as a fraction of the population, haven’t been seen 1923 or since. If you take out those crazy years, the overall trend of immigration as a fraction of the existing population continues to rise almost linearly since 1946.

November 30, 2018

“Infrastructure” is a Canadian word meaning “jobs for the boys”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.

November 28, 2018

AirBnB virtue signals its … anti-semitic street cred?

Filed under: Business, Law, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the National Post, Barbara Kay discusses the odd business choices of AirBnB in cutting off rentals to only certain locations that just happen to be in Israel:

Planning a group holiday in Kashmir? Airbnb is there to serve you. Likewise in Tibet, northern Cyprus and Georgia’s separatist republic of Abkhazia, all occupied or disputed territories. Airbnb’s political neutrality in these hot spots therefore quite rightly casts suspicion, to put it mildly, on its recent decision to delist some 200 Jewish homes in West Bank communities.

Airbnb stated, “We know that people will disagree with this decision and appreciate their perspective. This is a controversial issue.” No kidding. An Israeli class-action lawsuit has been filed against Airbnb, seeking US$4,000 in damages for every affected host.

Indignation has been running high outside of Israel as well, in statements both spontaneous — disgusted blog, Twitter and Facebook posts — and considered. The Beverly Hills city council, for example, passed a unanimous condemnatory resolution, calling Airbnb out for anti-Semitism and stating, in part: “The City of Beverly Hills hereby calls upon Airbnb to correct this act of disrespect to the land of Israel and restore its original services immediately.”

Setting aside the anti-Semitic optics, is it legal for Airbnb to do this?

The U.S. Constitution, as well as various state laws and acts of Congress, prohibits both American individuals and corporations from participating in boycotts against other nations. A corporate boycott against a foreign government does not fall under the “free speech” rubric,” but is considered a “tool of statecraft” reserved for the federal government in such situations as war. The office of Rob Portman of Ohio (R), an author of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act in the Senate, told The Jerusalem Post last Tuesday that it wants to hear from Airbnb. The Illinois state legislature — which passed the nation’s first local anti-BDS law in 2015 — will reportedly meet in mid-December, when it anticipates debating whether Airbnb violated its statute.

Establishing illegality pivots on whether the move is deemed as “politically” inspired. It certainly seems to be. As noted by Kohelet Forum legal expert Eugene Kontorovich in a recent Wall Street Journal oped, “An American Jew with a rental property in the West Bank is barred from listing it for rent on the website. But an American Arab is welcome to list his home a few hundred metres away, even though the Palestinian law forbidding real-estate deals with Jews carries a maximum penalty of death. That openly racist policy doesn’t trigger Airbnb’s delisting policy.”

QotD: “Never interfere with the enemy when he is making a mistake”

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

That’s a line that the Rod Steiger character uses in the the 1970 film Waterloo. And it’s a line I have been repeating to myself again and again over the last few months.

My enemies in the Establishment, whether it be the media, communists, social justice warriors or the last-ditch Remainers have been obligingly making error after error. I could point out their mistakes and laugh but there is that danger – however remote – that they might listen and learn. You see, I don’t want them to learn. What I want them to do is to keep the gas pedal pressed down hard as they can as they drive the juggernaut of bad ideas over the cliff and into oblivion. In such circumstances it is best to keep ones counsel.

Patrick Crozier, “Never interfere with the enemy when he is making a mistake”, Samizdata, 2017-01-22.

November 25, 2018

“They said Trudeau was going to be a uniter, but what an accomplishment”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Calgary this week, just as the city council officially buried its Olympic bid (but somehow decided to try to keep the subsidies from other levels of government for that event). His visit was the target of protests from both organized labour and Albertans angry about the federal government’s part in keeping Alberta oil from getting to market:

The prime minister flew into Calgary on Thursday to meet with Mayor Nenshi, chat with the Chamber of Commerce, and have photos taken at the site of new social housing being built partly on Ottawa’s dime. The PM left no word on what he thought of the whole “let’s buy Calgary an Olympics without going to the trouble of having one” concept. There were unexpected distractions at every turn in Calgary, the main one being a fierce protest outside his temporary headquarters at the downtown Hyatt.

The Herald’s agreed-upon estimate of the size of the anti-Trudeau protest was two thousand people. I am not sure I trust their math, but at any rate the crowd was large enough to snarl traffic and intimidate the police. I say “crowd,” but perhaps the word should be “crowds,” because the protest was actually twofold.

The striking Canadian Union of Postal Workers was there to discourage Trudeau from passing the back-to-work legislation his cabinet is cooking up. And there was also a coinciding protest over the landlocking of Alberta’s oil, which has widened the spread between world oil prices and local spot prices to surreal, unimagined heights. The sluggishness of pipeline construction has left Alberta hydrocarbons all but worthless. And now the world price is tottering from medium-high levels, ending a sunshiny global oil season from which the province got no advantage.

The posties’ chants of “Negotiate!” alternated with the militant oilpatch’s cries of “Build that pipe!” In a way the spectacle was touching. Here, in the streets of Calgary, you had one of the most internationalist and red-dyed corners of Canadian organized labour literally joining forces with its mostly non-union, mostly right-wing working-class brethren. They said Trudeau was going to be a uniter, but what an accomplishment.

This solidarity will, of course, be fleeting. CUPW, having played the Grinch successfully, will either cut a deal or take its medicine when the back-to-work law passes. But Calgary’s resentment of Trudeau will not be so quick to evaporate — nor, perhaps, will the images of our young prime minister facing a display of active mass public hostility for the first time.

November 23, 2018

QotD: Inactivist bumper stickers

Filed under: Humour, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

I’ve received several hundred suggestions for inactivist bumper-sticker slogans and, as befits the situation, I’ve been slow to read them. Still, I like some of them quite a bit:

    Visualize me ignoring you.
    How about “let’s not.”
    Don’t honk if you can’t be bothered.
    Don’t Act, NOW!
    If not now, whenever.
    Leave well enough alone
    Slacking: It’s not just for kids.
    YOU Save the Whales!
    Practice Random Acts of Self-Restraint.
    Ask Not.
    Future Site of Political Statement.

And so on.

But there’s a problem. Many readers segued too easily from celebrating inactivism to championing outright sloth. For example, “Practice Random Acts of Self-Restraint” is a fine inactive motto. But “They can have my channel changer when they pry it out of my cold, dead hand,” while very funny is off point. “Don’t Mess With Stasis,” doesn’t quite rhyme but it’s got the right idea. “Think globally, act loafally,” meanwhile, has the wrong idea — except insofar as it mocks people with stupid bumper stickers.

The funny thing is that inactivists are actually very active people. I would bet that — this is a broad generalization-the folks who find inactivism politically appealing probably work harder and are more successful then people who find conventional activism attractive. Inactivists didn’t boycott the Million Mom March simply because they had better things to do. They stayed home because they believe the Million Mom March was a vast, peripatetic parade of propaganda. Inactivists don’t fail to mobilize solely because we’d rather watch a rerun of Matlock than chant for vegetable rights and peace at city hall. We actually don’t believe in vegetable rights. We want our carrots to remain as chattel.

I agree that sloth is funny. And I suppose that’s why so many people want Homer Simpson to become the inactivist spokesperson. I laugh whenever I hear Homer Simpson speak admiringly of Teamsters: “Oh, I always wanted to be a Teamster. So lazy and surly… mind if I relax next to you?” And his campaign slogan when he ran for garbage commissioner was pretty good. “Can’t someone else do it?” The best line from that episode was when he told Springfield voters “Animals are crapping in our houses and we’re picking it up! Did we lose a war?” But still, Homer’s wrong when he tells his kids “You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is: Never try.”

Jonah Goldberg, “Let History Come To You”, National Review, 2002-07-24.

November 22, 2018

The apparently unexpected backlash over cancelling a French-language university in Ontario

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I suspect a lot of the uproar is actually just target-of-opportunity stuff to justify criticism of Ontario premier Doug Ford. Chris Selley points out that until the announcement, there wasn’t actually a lot of support for the new university among French-speaking Ontarians:

You would never know it since Thursday, when the Ontario government cancelled plans to open a new French-language university in Toronto, but those plans were not universally beloved. A lot of people hated the location. In an op-ed in Le Droit, University of Ottawa political scientist François Charbonneau complained it was being built to serve future francophone immigrants, not proper Franco-Ontarians in a community where they’ve been established for generations.

He called it “a historic mistake that perfectly illustrates what it means to be a minority: to have no power over one’s own destiny and to be dependent on ideological rantings with no democratic legitimacy.”

Higher-education consultant Alex Usher was among many who dismissed enrollment projections for the university as “fantasy.” Writing on the Higher Education Strategies blog, Usher called a recent survey of francophone Ontario high school students the “worst piece of social science I have ever seen.” It found lots of interest in attending the new university, but didn’t bother asking about their interest in existing bilingual alternatives like Laurentian University and the U of O.

To language hawks, bilingualism is the enemy: French always loses out in a budget crunch, and it does nothing to advance the right to live one’s life solely in French. Trouble is, very few students at French-language Ontario high schools are remotely interested in living their lives solely in French.

These are all things Premier Doug Ford and his ministers might have mentioned if they hoped to leave an impression other than that Ontario francophones just aren’t worth the money. They might wisely have chosen not to axe the French Language Commissioner in the same fiscal update, transferring its complaint-resolution powers to the ombudsman but orphaning its advocacy mandate. Finance minister Vic Fedeli hasn’t even said how much of its $1.2 million budget he hopes to recoup.

But they did what they did, all at once, and they said it was all about saving money. I suspect the whirlwind they reaped came as a surprise.

Good heavens, though, what wind.

November 21, 2018

Statistics Canada’s instrumentalist philosophy

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the Financial Post, Bruce Pardy discusses the motivation behind Statistics Canada’s recently revealed demand for the private financial records of half a million Canadians:

Recently it was revealed that Statistics Canada sought to obtain the private banking information of half a million Canadians without their knowledge or consent. Jennifer Robson, professor of political management at Carleton University, in an interview with the CBC, justified the data sweep on the grounds that governments need this information to make good policy. But don’t be concerned, she said, it is not for ideological purposes, since Statistics Canada is ideologically neutral. That made me laugh. The very idea of policy based on data reflects an instrumentalist belief that governments should solve social problems by political means. That requires an ideological confidence in the administrative state, to which the agency is a handmaiden.

Ideology is not a dirty word. An ideology is merely a worldview, a lens through which to perceive society. Political parties, by definition, each have one (and sometimes extra ones for special occasions). But it is another thing for a public agency to act independently in furtherance of its own ideology while pretending to be neutral.

Statistics Canada’s deep dive into banking records — presently on hold while federal privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien investigates its legality — appears not to have been directed by government officials but was undertaken on its own initiative. The agency’s decision is consistent with a conviction that the more personal data available to government, the better off we will be; that governments are benevolent; that private financial matters call for public policy management; and that a bigger government is a better government. A commitment to social policy, wrote Milton Friedman “involves the acceptance of the socialist view that political mechanisms, not market mechanisms, are the appropriate way to determine the allocation of scare resources to alternative uses.”

November 20, 2018

Remy: The Legend of Stan Lee

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

ReasonTV
Published on 19 Nov 2018

Remy recalls a time when experts were claiming “Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry,” and how Stan Lee took a stand.

Written and Performed by Remy
Video Produced by Meredith and Austin Bragg
Music tracks and background vocals by Ben Karlstrom

November 19, 2018

QotD: How nationalism distorts opinion and judgement

Filed under: Europe, History, Politics, Quotations, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

For those who feel deeply about contemporary politics, certain topics have become so infected by considerations of prestige that a genuinely rational approach to them is almost impossible. Out of the hundreds of examples that one might choose, take this question: Which of the three great allies, the U.S.S.R., Britain and the USA, has contributed most to the defeat of Germany? In theory, it should be possible to give a reasoned and perhaps even a conclusive answer to this question. In practice, however, the necessary calculations cannot be made, because anyone likely to bother his head about such a question would inevitably see it in terms of competitive prestige. He would therefore start by deciding in favour of Russia, Britain or America as the case might be, and only after this would begin searching for arguments that seemed to support his case. And there are whole strings of kindred questions to which you can only get an honest answer from someone who is indifferent to the whole subject involved, and whose opinion on it is probably worthless in any case. Hence, partly, the remarkable failure in our time of political and military prediction. It is curious to reflect that out of all the ‘experts’ of all the schools, there was not a single one who was able to foresee so likely an event as the Russo-German Pact of 1939. And when news of the Pact broke, the most wildly divergent explanations were of it were given, and predictions were made which were falsified almost immediately, being based in nearly every case not on a study of probabilities but on a desire to make the U.S.S.R. seem good or bad, strong or weak. Political or military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties. And aesthetic judgements, especially literary judgements, are often corrupted in the same way as political ones. It would be difficult for an Indian Nationalist to enjoy reading Kipling or for a Conservative to see merit in Mayakovsky, and there is always a temptation to claim that any book whose tendency one disagrees with must be a bad book from a literary point of view. People of strongly nationalistic outlook often perform this sleight of hand without being conscious of dishonesty.

George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism”, Polemic, 1945-05.

November 18, 2018

QotD: “Sexist” toys

Filed under: Health, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

As a female journalist who writes mostly about traditionally “male areas” such as economics and business, I should perhaps be expected to endorse a “blank slate” theory of male and female gender roles, where the preference for certain kinds of activities is driven by sexist socialization and discrimination, not innate ability. The problem is that this doesn’t necessarily match up with the evidence. Human children show gender-driven preferences for toys, as can be attested by those faultlessly progressive parents who have seen their boys turn their hands into a gun while their daughters make a doll out of an ear of corn. These preferences show up even in children too young to have gotten much socialization; they turn up even in rhesus monkeys, as males show a marked preference for wheeled toys over soft plush animals. I certainly believe that human society has a lot of sexist hangovers from its past. I draw the line at believing that this hangover is influencing rhesus monkey infants.

Megan McArdle, “Some Blue-Collar Workers Probably Shouldn’t Do Pink Jobs”, Bloomberg View, 2017-01-06.

November 17, 2018

QotD: Positive and negative nationalism

Filed under: History, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

…nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply enemies of the U.S.S.R. without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit. When one grasps the implications of this, the nature of what I mean by nationalism becomes a good deal clearer. A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist — that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating — but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. He sees history, especially contemporary history, as the endless rise and decline of great power units, and every event that happens seems to him a demonstration that his own side is on the upgrade and some hated rival is on the downgrade. But finally, it is important not to confuse nationalism with mere worship of success. The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him. Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also — since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself — unshakeably certain of being in the right.

George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism”, Polemic, 1945-05.

November 16, 2018

The political wrangles ahead over the federal carbon tax

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Andrew Coyne — for once not beating the drum for electoral reform — discusses the challenge facing the federal government in the wake of provincial resistance to their carbon tax plans:

But the real test, of course, is yet to come. The provinces cannot stop the tax on their own. The court challenges are likely to fail. Provinces that refuse to implement carbon pricing will simply find the federal “backstop” tax imposed in its place. It is the election that will decide the issue, not duelling governments. Or so Conservatives hope.

Certainly there are abundant grounds to doubt the political wisdom of the Liberal plan. A tax, or anything that resembles it, would be a hard enough sell on its own. But a tax in aid of a vast international plan to save the earth from a scourge that remains imperceptible to most voters, to which Canada has contributed little and against which Canada can have little impact, while countries whose actions would be decisive remain inert? Good luck.

What seems clear is that voters’ support for carbon pricing is shallow and tentative. The Conservative strategist who chortled to the National Post that the Liberals are asking Canadians “to vote with their hearts, not their wallets” — an impossibility, he meant — was correctly cynical. Just because people want to save the planet doesn’t mean they want to pay for it.

The best way to read the public’s mood is in the positions of the political parties, who are in their various ways each trying to assure them that it won’t cost them a dime. The Liberal version of this is to promise to rebate the extra cost of the federal tax to consumers — indeed, they pledge, 70 per cent of households will make a profit on the exchange.

The Conservatives have been less forthcoming, but it would appear their plan is to hide the cost, substituting regulations, whose effects are largely invisible to consumers, for the all-too-visible tax at the pump. Here, too, I suspect they may have a better (i.e. more cynical) read on popular opinion. The public often prefer to have the costs of government hidden from them, even if they know they are paying them — even if they know they are paying more this way, as indeed they are in this case. Do what you want to us, they seem to say, just don’t rub our faces in it.

So I would be skeptical about polls showing majority support for the federal plan: 54 per cent, according to Angus Reid, while Abacus finds 75 per cent would either support or at least accept it (versus 24 per cent opposed). These were taken shortly after the announcement of the federal rebates. Yet it is far from evident the rebates will still register with people a year from now. Indeed, the Conservatives barely paused to acknowledge them as inadequate before going on to pretend they had never been mentioned.

November 15, 2018

QotD: The French language in Quebec

Filed under: Cancon, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

To follow Quebec politics, to read a French-language Quebec newspaper, is to regularly come across trumped-up or bewildering linguistic angst. A new study or census will show French is in pretty good shape, and the language hawks will immediately start slicing and dicing the data to paint the most dire possible picture. The Habs will appoint a captain who doesn’t speak French. A newspaper columnist will hear a friendly “bonjour-hi” one too many times shopping in downtown Montreal and blow his stack. While First World parents around the world strive to have their children learn as many languages as possible, you still encounter the odd Quebec voice wondering if francophone children learning English represents an existential threat to their society.

Chris Selley, “Oh no… It really looks like Justin Trudeau truly, deeply believes all those silly Liberal myths”, National Post, 2017-01-19.

November 14, 2018

The un-foretold rise of nationalism

Filed under: Europe, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Justin Raimondo is clearly not an instinctive globalist:

“Patriotism is the opposite of nationalism” bleated the poodle Macron at the Armistice celebration as he yipped and yapped and wagged his tail before the German conqueror of Europe. Meanwhile the Front Nationale outpolled the “mainstream” “centrist” parties in municipal elections for the first time and nationalist Italy is telling the European Union to stay out of its financial affairs.

Despite the best efforts of the Davos crowd, the wave of nationalism that is rising over Europe has global resonance. Nationalism is what’s driving the peace process and reunification effort on the Korean peninsula. Nationalism is what’s defying the pretensions of Spain’s chauvinist government and energizing the Catalonian rebels. Nationalism brought down the Soviet Union: it threatens the EU.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. The idea was that, in the wake of the Soviet collapse, the West would gradually and inevitably merge into what the theoreticians of European unity, citing Hegel, dubbed the “universal homogenous state.” And History – capitalize that H! – would quietly and unobtrusively come to an end. “Liberal democracy,” they claimed, was the “final” form of human organization: no ideological challenger was on the horizon nor was one likely to arise in this age of skepticism, secularism, and agnosticism. (I think it was one of Hegel’s European followers, the French professor Alexandre Kojeve, who hypothesized that post-historical music would be like “the buzzing of bees,” a prophecy that certainly sounds accurate to me.)

What happened instead is that all the old crap was simply regurgitated by the same ruling classes who had lorded it over the rest of us since time immemorial. Rather than mellowing out into a kumbaya-esque “end of history”-ish Eloi-land, the US and its allies redoubled their efforts to dominate the world, moving NATO steadily eastward, launching a decades-long invasion of the Middle East, and openly declaring their self-appointed role as enforcer of something called the “liberal international order” – a concept which no countries outside of Western Europe accept, and which the American people certainly never voted for.

Trump is challenging all that, which is why the Establishment hates him: he threatens the intricate web of alliances, cronyist networks, tripwires, and gravy-trains that are so essential for the economic and political survival of our transnational elites. The supra-national architecture of the “New World Order,” which once threatened to harden into a global super-state, is now under siege and being shaken to its foundations by the forces of disaggregation. Trump is the effect, not the cause.

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