Immigration Replaces Low Envy with High Envy

Devlin is of course a comically ignorant demi-intellectual, and his thoughts are a day late and a dollar short. Welcome to 2016. Will you be joining us in 2021 at any point, or are you permanently arrested in grade 7? Nevertheless, even a blind squirrel can find one nut.

I have been consistently unsatisfied with any model of the motive behind immigration. Cheap workers? Please. The stupid physically hurts.

Democracy is an envy engine. Jealousy is what makes it go. However, Europeans have anti-envy adaptations. All proper Europeans despise weakness,* and this spite trumps envy. Anyone using invidious rhetoric does inspire a desire to pile on, as with any race, but it inspires a stronger urge to beat up the weakling for being weak enough to feel envy. Haha, oops! 

It's epistemologically sound: anyone turning green is demonstrating without a doubt that they don't think they can do better, and thus likely can't fight back. Not only are they easy pickings, they've declared a commitment to defection, so bullying them is both fun and virtuous.

*(Anglos most, I think. More than even Saxons. Certain Scandis are dissenters.)

Under democracy, we can't have that, now can we?

Although it's plainly clear that American WASPs and their assimilates want to replace all lower-class Occidentals with non-Occidentals, it was not previously clear to me why they would want to do that. It will only lower the tax base, harming their grifting prospects. (If anyone threatens to make Georgetown significantly non-white, you'll see their real beliefs right quick.) However, it will increase their hold on power. Fascism does not sit steadily on the anti-envy genetic foundation, constantly threatening to tip into something less batshit insane.

East Asians, although highly invidious, are so conformist that when placed in a competitive Occidental environment, they will compete to the very best of their ability. Kind of dropped the ball on that one, Regressive Inquisition. Orientals are now honorary Occidentals.

Every other non-Euro is quite good at doing the crab-bucket thing. America is all about pulling the ladder up after you. The more egalitarian you're supposed to be, the more fanatically any sub-rosa marker of status is defended. 

It's much easier to trap the lower orders if those at the bottom of the ladder drag each other off the rungs. As Devlin notes, envy is largely local. "The reason should be obvious: invidious comparisons depend upon proximity." Envy is strongly linked to the narcissism of small differences. This of course is rational. The biological point of envy is to sabotage your rivals, not to pick unwinnable fights with men who are as gods to you. 

The more envious the lower classes, the less of a threat they are to the higher orders. E.g. any lowborn aristocrat will be dragged down by his "peers" without the Inquisition having to (appear to) do anything. Properly envious brown folk spend so much time fighting each other they have no energy to spend noticing Fascism is driving them straight to a no-parachute base jump. Much better: they won't check out of society no matter what you do.

P.S. Devlin also noticed that you can't appease envy, because any form of charity only cements the giver's higher status. The envy sufferer demands proof they were in fact superior all along. Reminders that they need help are the opposite of that. Affirmative action, quotas, protected classes etc. are all precision engineered to cement the low self-esteem of the envious.