Politics and immigration

And if you went 20 years before that, you get back to similar rates as as what the Danes have. This was like a country of ethnic Brits in the 85s, 90s percentiles-... if you get further back. So that's a different country in a generation. It's okay to notice that. It's also okay to think, "Do you know what? I don't agree with that." "I wish it wasn't that way." I mean, if The last time I was in China was '19, 2019. I was in Shanghai. Um, it was all Chinese. If I, when I go back here this October, suddenly find that there's only 30% Chinese and then there's 70% other people, I'd be a little weird. I'd probably be like, "Uh, what happened?" And I would not take offense if the Chinese in that instant would go like, "Ah, we don't like that." So this idea that countries of Europe don't have a right to, A, notice what's happening and, B, oppose what's happening, I find just to be, uh, wrong, right? Like there's just-- I think there's a moral argument for self-determination, and we invoke that argument all the time in other regions around the world that like, oh, the people who live in that region, they have a right to self-determination, um for their country. And I think it's completely fair for, say, the Danes or the Swedes or the Norwegians to go like, "Well, we've been kingdoms here for a thousand years with a certain ethnic mix-up." It's a-- I mean, I'm a big fan of immigration. I'm an immigrant to the US.

Um, cherry-picked immigration where countries compete to attract the smartest, most talented people around the world is really good.

`4:28:30`

Merit-based is key here because there's actually virtually no illegal immigration in most of Europe. Southern Europe has some illegal immigration, but most of Europe does not have a big problem with illegal immigration. And the problem is with mass immigration of other kinds, and that you end up with demographics that are just totally different from what they were even a few short decades ago. And I think the countries of Europe would benefit from immigration. In fact, one of the interesting things about the Danes is they carry meticulous statistics on immigration. I'm not entirely sure why they're so detailed. Maybe it's all the way back to Mogens Glistrup and his discussion in the '90s, but they do. And what's clear from those statistics is that when the Danes have folks from the UK, France, the US show up, on average, those immigrants are really beneficial to the Danish state. They contribute far more than what they ask of the state. So the Danes should accept immigrants who do that, who contribute far more than they take. Then you look at other forms of immigrant groups. There was just a tally that came out last week from a Danish politician that had asked the, I think finance ministry to do this tally with the latest numbers. What does it cost the Danish state to have positive immigration? This case as I mentioned.

I think for the, On that list whatever, France, UK, US, they were all clustered around the same thing, about $25,000 net benefit to the Danish state every year. It's like, wow, that's very positive. That's average again, right? And then at the other end of the spectrum on the most costly immigrants was Somalis. They ended up costing the Danish state on average $28,000 a year. I think it's fair for the Danes to go like, "We'd prefer to get more French, Brits, and Americans and not so many Somalis."

`4:30:47`

That's a very taboo topic in a lot of circles.

`4:30:56`

I'm sure, but I also think-- I mean, I wanna take the steel man argument here. I do think that it, this can turn ugly, right? Is it possible for some of these things to just veer into overt racism that isn't founded in anything else but a hatred of other people? Yeah, that could happen. But that risk does not negate the need to have a discussion about the makeup of your country and what your immigration policy should be like. And I-- what I also find so funny is, especially in Europe, it's so kind of myopic that this discussion about whether Europeans should have a right to self- determination about what their countries look like, that standard seems to only apply there. No one is trying to tell the Japanese, "Hey, you, you're too Japanese." Like whatever, it's 98%, I think, in Tokyo that's, um--... Ethnic Japanese, right? Like, is anyone trying to tell the Japanese that their Tokyo would be a much better country if, if they were down to London levels of ethnic Japanese, that it was, whatever, 37%? I don't think so. So there's this weird almost self-loathing, in my opinion, I mean uh, Gad calls it suicidal empathy--... that permeates this stuff to a degree that I still haven't fully unpacked. Like, where is this coming from? Why is it that way? But regardless, I just noticed, hey, London looks different. I preferred the old London, as I would say I preferred the neighborhood that I grew up in in Copenhagen, how it looked in the '80s.