February 5, 2009

What comes after the Diversity Depression?

A reader makes an optimistic suggestion:

An idea:

Roughly put, one could say that the country went thru a huge crime crisis when we decided to overhaul the old oppressive criminal system, with its loitering laws, paucity of protections for the indigent, and broad latitude for the police to bust heads and search n seize those whom they pleased, in the name of Racial Justice. Certainly the old order had caused untold injustices and oppressions, and so we determined we were better than that. But the old order also incorporated a deep truth, that blacks and or the poor were much more criminal than whites and or the middle class, and that you really can often tell a bad guy by looking at him. And so the old system worked, as defined by containing crime.

But when we dismantled to old order, and questioned all its premises, and made Miranda rights and experimented with the mindless optimism of giving convicted murderers weekend furloughs, etc etc, we experienced a huge flowering of crime. We eventually crawled part way back, while retaining our moral disdain for the old system, and retaining a demureness about admitting out loud that blacks are more criminal per capita. But we quietly instituted race neutral tough on crime policies that were partly as effective as the old race conscious police tactics, and got over our embarrassment about the resulting prison population disparities. Not all the way back mind you, not even half way, but better than the worst of it, movies no longer predict a Manhattan solely fit for a penal colony.

So now we’ve gone thru a similar overhaul of the old system of credit and capital access, and are now feeling the hangover of a default spree as bad as the crime spree. We had the Civil Rights Crime Wave, now we have the Diversity Depression. Could that mean the solution will be to retain our horror at the old ‘redlining’ while growing resistant to ACORN over time, and shedding our maiden blushes at race neutral lending resulting in the familiar old patterns of home ownership that are the reverse of the familiar again patterns of prison population, though never mentioning their relative credit worthiness out loud?

Or is there a dynamic that will keep there from being a “tough on Lending” Giuliani of the financial world? And will it take us 2 decades like with the civil rights crime wave? And if tomorrow’s finances compare to yesterday’s like today’s crime compares to the 1950’s…are we all just screwed anyway?

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nothing will upset Acorn's apple cart more than instituting "prudent man" standards back into lending. Simply requiring homeowners to come up with 20% down in order to qualify for loan that can be bundled and sold in the secondary market will piss all over their parade.

Anonymous said...

Could that mean the solution will be to retain our horror at the old ‘redlining’ while growing resistant to ACORN over time

If we were scrupulous (God forbid) about adhering to the law, we would still require the banks that are buying up distressed banks to adhere to CRA. Instead as you mentioned elsewhere they've been given a "waiver." This means that the law still exists, but it's not going to be applied when it would be too inconvenient to the political class. After everything returns to normal (ASS-U-ME it will) CRA will be reapplied.

If we were more scrupulous we'd require banks to adhere to the law or else do the honest thing and scrap it. Immigration laws, CRA, taxes - the new globalist elite never lets a law get in the way of its immediate needs. It used to be that taxes were for suckers - now laws are.

No, sane lending policies are a long way off, yet. So is sane talk about race.

Anonymous said...

Calling this a diversity depression is a case of man-with-a-hammer syndrome. Subprime was a symptom, not the cause, of this depression. The real culprit is excessive credit/debt. See itulip.com for a more in-depth examination. itulip.com is to economics what Steve Sailor is to human biodiversity.

Anonymous said...

One other parallel between the revolution in criminal justice and Affirmative Action in home lending: nobody ever voted for either. The justice revolution was ordered by the Supreme Court, and the pressures on banks were applied by bureaucrats under laws that 99 percent of the American people had never even heard about, much less voted for.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said

The real culprit is excessive credit/debt.

Sigh.

Ditz: What killed the patient, doctor?

Doc: His irresponsibility. He engaged in various sexual practices without using sufficient protection.

Ditz: False! It was AIDS that killed him. You don't know nothin'!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous: The real culprit is excessive credit/debt.

For the umpteenth time, the real cause of this crisis is the lack of young people with IQs at or above 100:

IQ and the Wealth of Nations
en.wikipedia.org

List of countries and territories by fertility rate
en.wikipedia.org

The Baby Gap: Explaining Red and Blue
isteve.com

And take a gander at this PDF document from the Census Bureau:

PDF DOCUMENT: The 2009 Statistical Abstract - Population Section

According to Table 8 of that PDF document, in 2007, the USA Caucasian population peaked at 16.109 million in the 45-49 age group [the height of the Baby Boom], and plunged down to a mere 11.175 million in the 0-4 age group.

For those of you who aren't good with math, that's a

1 - [11.175 / 16.109] = 31%

collapse in the population, just within the span of the first half of our lives.

There are literally millions upon millions of aging Caucasian boomers who have no successors in whom they can invest their life savings - i.e. there is literally no one to whom their money can be lent [much less anyone to give the "money" any long-term value - all of those Baby-Boomer IRAs are simply worthless without young, intelligent, productive, industrious people to give the investments any value].

Reader: ...are we all just screwed anyway?

The USA is certainly screwed:

Of U.S. Children Under 5, Nearly Half Are Minorities
washingtonpost.com

Whites will be minority group by 2042, Census predicts
mcclatchydc.com

Our only hope [barring some widely-adopted breakthrough in genetic engineering] is to

A) Start making lots of babies, and

B) Start planning for secession.

Anonymous said...

"Our only hope [barring some widely-adopted breakthrough in genetic engineering] is to

A) Start making lots of babies, and

B) Start planning for secession."

A is not going to happen--a collective action problem exists whereby each individual actor profits by reproducing less, and only if everyone acted against his own interest would the whole society benefit (assuming the subjective added cost of a second or third kid is greater than the utility derived from that kid, which for most Europeans and Asians it is).

Thus, I am essentially resigned to a pessimistic outlook. Things will change, for sure, when the European peoples have seen their standards of living decline and realize that for 80 years everything the establishment told them was a lie. That change will entail a great upheaval and great suffering for all involved. The ONLY possible way to avoid this great suffering is for HBD realism to become widely known before demography passes a tipping point. The tipping point may have already been passed. Regardless, that is the only possible solution. Fortunately, this newfangled internet thingy may have arrived just in time.

Mencius Moldbug said...

Q: What would Vince Lombardi say?
A: He'd say: try to actually win.

There is no need for these types of intricate policy proposals. We (speaking in the democratic tense, of course) can fix all the problems in the United States with one simple bill. Best of all, the legislation is purely symbolic, harms no one and appropriates only a trivial sum.

My proposal is to rename all the streets in the US that, today, are named for Martin Luther King. Instead, I feel that these streets should be named for Robert E. Lee - who was just a better person. (I used to favor Count Metternich, but the message is not quite as clear.)

Here is how my proposal works: anyone who has the power to change King to Lee, also has the power to fix all the other problems Steve is complaining about.

Briefly, if you can pass this bill, you have beaten the Progressives by definition. Feeling the Mandate of Heaven slip from their hands, they will utter a great cry and dissolve into black goo, like Sauron or M. Valdemar. The primary task of the new regime will be cleaning up the awful, sticky remains of the old - a process quite similar, I expect, to the denazification of Germany.

And if you can't pass this bill, you have not yet won. If you are a long way from passing this bill, you are a long way from winning. If you are a very long way - etc.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous: A is not going to happen--a collective action problem exists whereby each individual actor profits by reproducing less, and only if everyone acted against his own interest would the whole society benefit (assuming the subjective added cost of a second or third kid is greater than the utility derived from that kid, which for most Europeans and Asians it is).

You're speaking nihilist gibberish.

And nihilism is the reason that people aren't making babies anymore.

My comments were intended for people who aren't nihilists, but for those of you who are nihilists, the formula would look like:

A) Ditch the nihilism.

B) Start making lots of babies.

C) Plan for secession.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully your reader is right. I am sensing that people will be slower to clue into the mortgage issues because no one will talk about race issues publicly and other people's financials are usually their own business. Whereas, crime is by definition done to others directly and therefore pretty obvious. perhaps ... enforcing the 20% lending standard will save us all...

Anonymous said...

Anon --

Women don't want kids, mostly, it's as simple as that. And it's worldwide. IRAN, a nation not exactly filled with feminists, has a 1.7 TFR, and Algeria, Tunisia, have about the same. Pretty much anyplace that is mostly urban, has improved status/earnings for women (and as you can see, that can even exist with burquas), improved female literacy, and access to contraception will experience huge population declines.

It might not be Italy/Spain's 1.1 rate, but it will be substantial. Women prefer to chase the few Alpha men if they can, in urban anonymity, rather than having kids.

Simple as that. Don't blame Boomers, it's the same for everyone everywhere, EXCEPT non-native type Immigrants to the West. Note: Muslims in the UK have large birthrates, over 2.5 TFR, while Muslims in above urbanized, wealthier nations have below 2.1 (replacement) TFR.

Anonymous said...

"overhaul the old oppressive criminal system"
One overlooked example of this was diversifying our police. Result? In Chicago last week, a 14yr. old boy showed up in a makeshift uniform and worked a car patrol for 5 hrs! His female partner never suspected anything.

Then again, maybe this was a ruse by police to embarrass the chief who was hired (horrors) from outside the ranks.

Anonymous said...

testing99: Women don't want kids, mostly, it's as simple as that.

Nihilist chicks don't want kids.

But there are girls who aren't nihilists.

Granted, after four years of college and anywhere from two to six [or even ten] years of graduate school, they're so inculcated in nihilism that they are more or less hopeless - NEVERTHELESS, either seek out chicks who aren't nihilists or else find a standard-issue postmodern chick with a reasonably pleasant personality [granted, not a large pool to choose from there] and roll the dice and see whether you can mold her into something better than what she would have been otherwise.

PS: T99, if you want to meet chicks who are [much] less likely to be nihilists, then GO TO CHURCH.

Anonymous said...

Lucius, will you have my babies?

-Indra M