It markets itself as a gateway from North America to the Pacific and a world city. Yet residents and business alike are becoming increasingly fed up with the costs of living and working here. The city greets you with endless construction from the UBC campus all the way to the easternmost suburbs of the Metro area. Despite this, young people and professionals alike find it difficult to become homeowners and have families. Recently, a post reporting on the hiring difficulties this places even on the lucrative tech industry was shared widely online. Despite being an immigration hub, Vancouver seems to be losing those parts of the population which give it a future. Young people aged 20-30 are leaving the city and heading to provinces like Alberta.

Who is replacing them? Apart from the boomers who have a tidy nest egg in the form of a downtown condo, wealthy immigrants have been a growing presence in the city, especially from China. Now you might think that these people will contribute far more economically to the city. You would be wrong. After 15 years, the incomes reported by the wealthiest class of immigrants is lower than every other group, including refugees. This suggests that many come for the citizenship and then leave, and even many of those who stay will live here but keep their businesses in the homeland. In other words, Vancouver has been sacrificing the liveability – and the possibilities for creating families – of those who contribute the most to its existence and growth. There is little to show for it. With broader economic trends which will likely exacerbate this crisis, the city is building its future on increasingly shaky foundations.

Vancouver isn’t the only place where living and housing costs are forcing demographic shifts. Economist and author Tyler Cowen recently wrote a Time article about how Texas is benefiting from a similar phenomenon. The central phenomenon is differences in costs of living:

“The lower house prices, along with a generally low cost of living–helped along by cheap labor, cheap produce and cheap gas (currently about $3 a gallon)–really matter when it comes to quality of life. For instance, the federal government calculated the Texas poverty rate as 18.4% for 2010 and that of California as about 16%. That may sound bad for Texas, but once adjustments are made for the different costs of living across the two states, as the federal government does in its Supplemental Poverty Measure, Texas’ poverty rate drops to 16.5% and California’s spikes to a dismal 22.4%. Not surprisingly, it is the lower-income residents who are most likely to leave California. On the flip side, Texas has a higher per capita income than California, adjusted for cost of living, and nearly catches up with New York by the same measure. Once you factor in state and local taxes, Texas pulls ahead of New York–by a wide margin.”

Now as Cowen points out, the Texas model is based on a minimalist model of governance, a model which Vancouverites generally reject. We might complain about Translink or zoning laws, but most people are glad to have a decent transit system and ways to protect the fertile land the city sits on. But if that’s the case, then a trade-off exists. If Vancouver needs to tax its citizens more to provide such services, then it needs a population which is willing to accept this model of government while bringing in competence, skills, and a demographic future. In other words, we need to attract skilled professionals who want to have families, and will invest their economic and social capital in the city. But as we’ve seen, this isn’t happening.

So where are young people and the middle to upper-middle income earners going? Some are moving further out into Vancouver’s expanding suburbs, and further into the Fraser Valley’s smaller (and more conservative) communities. Others are headed to the prairies. There is a certain stereotype that the Alberta economy is for people in the trades, but that’s not the case at all anymore. Calgary has plenty of white collar jobs and a fairly good university. For those not willing to brave the hardy lifestyles of the natural resource camps in the province’s north, the southern part offers a better environment and a place where one can balance a career with a family. Demographics journalist Steve Sailer has launched the criticism that the clash between Texas’ Anglo-white population and the Hispanic population should inspire a bearish attitude toward Texas’ future. But Alberta does not have a similar population crisis in the wings. Of course Alberta isn’t the only other province. In fact, young people looking to make their incomes go further are better off pretty much anywhere else in the country. I personally know people who have gone as far as Nova Scotia and Newfoundland – not exactly popular migration hubs. And that’s before we even add the US into the mix. A young graduate going into tech has just a short shuttle bus ride south to Seattle, after all.

From the mountains to the sea.

If the young are leaving, this tells us several things about Vancouver’s demographic future. First, it will need to be wealthy enough to afford the high costs of living. Given this wealth, we can also predict certain things about its ability to replace itself. Wealth, especially wealth plus high population density, correlates with low fertility rates. As Singapore has discovered, no amount of pro-family policies seem to be able to reverse this phenomenon. This is true for locals as well as for immigrants from East Asia and Europe, although not for African and South Asian immigrants. Since the bulk of Vancouver’s population is European and East Asian, this means that Vancouver’s population will become even more migrant-based than it already is.

On the one hand, Vancouver prides itself about being a hub for multiculturalism. Yet the literature detailing the effects of “hyperdiversity” on social trust and cultural cohesion is expanding. Douglas Todd, a Vancouver Sun columnist who has written about the impact of multiculturalism on the city, calls it “hunkering down“:

“…when the Vancouver Foundation recently conducted a massive survey of Metro Vancouver residents, researchers discovered most people in this West Coast city feel unusually high levels of loneliness and lack of friends.”

He quotes Harvard’s Robert Putnam, of Bowling Alone fame:

“Diversity, at least in the short run, seems to bring out the turtle in all of us. … The more ethnically diverse the people we live around, the less we trust them.” Putnam adds an additional disturbing discovery — that “in-group trust, too, is lower in more diverse settings.” In other words, people also become more distrustful even of members of their own ethnic group. “Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours, regardless of the colour of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, vote less … have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television,” Putnam writes in his report E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the 21st century.”

In a city where constant migration is needed to replace the population, the short run never ends.

When social trust is low and families have few roots, what motivates people to invest in the community? This goes beyond economic investment. Social investment is just as important. Vancouver prides itself on being a friendly and polite city, but many newcomers complain that this friendliness is a shield against developing deeper relationships. Healthy social networks impact everything from physical health to controlling crime. As these deteriorate further, Vancouverites can expect conflicts like the urban-suburban divide on increased public transit funding to become more common. Furthermore, it bears consideration that Vancouver has been economically healthy for many years now. But when economic downturns increase political polarization and inter-group tension, having countless points of friction leads to increased conflict, and this can have drastic effects. We have seen the path which the European countries have taken with their disastrous policies regarding mass migration and integration. Vancouverites who blanch at the idea of parties like Golden Dawn and the Communists making inroads in Greece would do well to reflect on how these policies created the perfect environment for extreme polarization. Vancouver is very far indeed from the abyss which our friends across the Atlantic are walking along, and we should learn the necessary lessons to remain so. Our city has inherited a particularly Anglo balance which tolerates difference precisely because it reinforces mutual respect and boundaries. This is what distinguishes our city, and those who wish to see it continue must guard against unsound governance.

Of course, it’s bad manners to present a problem without at least suggesting some solutions. So let’s examine what needs to change in Vancouver in order to secure its demographic future and maintain a culture which encourages social investment. First, we must examine the root cause: Vancouver’s high costs of living, which discourage family formation for professionals and drive off the next generation. If rent and utilities take up more than 30% of income, they are not considered affordable. For renters in Vancouver, nearly 45% of households fall into this category.

Sound governance is necessary to secure Vancouver’s future.

A lot of ink has been spilled on how to solve Vancouver’s housing problem, and we’re not going to come to a definitive conclusion here. Vancouver will have to continue building housing if prices are going to get lower. This is especially tricky for a city which has ocean to the West, a border to the South, and mountains to the North. The only way to expand is east – but this will encroach on valuable fertile land which could also be utilized to further secure the region’s food security. Once it’s built on, it’s gone. To echo what someone else said about California, God wanted Vancouver to be expensive. All this leaves increased-density housing as the main solution for both the city of Vancouver itself and the growing suburbs and small towns which surround it. However, it’s also necessary to confront the huge numbers of buildings which stand empty, owned by foreign investors who use them for perhaps a season a year. The costs of absentees are becoming increasingly apparent, as Coal Harbour – with up to a quarter of its condos sitting empty or absentee-owned – begins to fight with increased vandalism and other broken window effects. While it is not in the interests of the city to begin a reputation for property expropriation, a steep increase in taxes for absentee owners may help free up these properties for residents who bring a longer-term benefit to the city. City planners must ensure that local families and long-term migrants are the focus of development, rather than short-term wealthy investors.

Canada has also been reforming its immigration and citizenship laws in order to make them more selective and increase the value of its citizenship. This is a positive step, but it has yet to address the elephant in the room of birthright citizenship and the passport tourism it incentivizes. Where migration is concerned, Vancouver depends on federal laws, but also exercises its own influence in where it chooses to market itself. As we’ve seen above, Vancouver’s interest is in migrants who will stay and invest over the long-term, and who will integrate in order to minimize the impacts of hyperdiversity studied by Putnam. Looking within Canada is of course the preferable option. The best thing Vancouver can do here is try and overcome its reputation for an impossible cost of living. As more and more Europeans consider emigration, it would be worth it for Vancouver to step up marketing in Britain and the continent as well. As English is widely spoken in many EU countries, the linguistic barriers to integration are much less of a problem. Cultural similarities among Western countries work in the city’s favour as well. British, Irish, Germans, Dutch, Ukrainians, and many other Europeans were among the first to make the city a multicultural one, all under an Anglo-Canadian umbrella. The ever-growing expat communities of Europeans will no doubt find Vancouver’s strategic economic location attractive, especially if they do business in the US or Asia. The same goes for our American neighbours, particularly if Vancouver can become a stronger presence in the West Coast’s expanding tech industry. With Vancouver’s established Asian communities, China and its neighbours will continue to find the city an attractive destination. As discussed earlier, Vancouver must increase the incentives to reside permanently and invest. It must stop marketing itself to moonlighting economic tourists and focus on skilled professionals.

The challenges facing Vancouver are complex and facing them requires moving its governors toward a long-term, low time-preference framework. Vancouver is a unique city both in Canada and on the West Coast. Its natural beauty and particular culture are prized by residents and praised by visitors. Its location gives it unique economic opportunities, provided it does not shut out those who can take advantage of them. It is in the interests of the city to develop in a way which achieves all these things. No developed country has been able to entirely overcome the fertility losses which accompany increased wealth and urbanization, but we must be honest about the impacts of these effects and try to minimize their negative aspects. Vancouver has a history of migration, but we must also be careful not to make the mistakes of other countries and cities. A Vancouver which sacrifices social trust and cultural cohesion will be a city which undermines the willingness to invest in ones’ community – precisely that which makes a city worth living in. Nevertheless we can confront these challenges honestly and respond to them prudently. Vancouver may yet be able to move from an uncertain foundation to a solid one, capable of confronting the global political and economic shifts which lie ahead.

The post Vancouver: A Demographic Destiny appeared first on Social Matter.

Are you a conservative or rightist of some kind? Have you heard about neoreaction? Have you heard good things about it? Have you heard bad things? Have you heard that neoreaction is just a bunch of Silicon Valley nerds with obscene power fantasies? Have you heard neoreaction is really just bunch of wimpy Yankees theorizing from an Ivory Tower (skyscraper?) in New York City? Have you heard neoreaction is just a poorly articulated justification for racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and bigotry? Have you heard neoreaction is just a lazy, long-winded excuse not to engage in right-wing political activism? Have you heard, perhaps, that neoreaction is nothing more than another Jewish conspiracy to subvert the interests of white European Westerners and everything they know, love and stand for?

What you have heard, my friend, may not be entirely accurate. There has been ample, pained, and published work trying to answer the question “what is neoreaction?,” and the answer seems elusive yet. It is, however, less difficult to enumerate a list of things neoreaction is not. For example, neoreaction is not a motor vehicle. Neoreaction is not a form of government. Neoreaction is not libertarianism. Neoreaction is not [just] monarchism. Neoreaction is not a website. Neoreaction is not a Jewish conspiracy. Neoreaction is, for that matter, not a conspiracy of Silicon Valley nerds, highfalutin’ Yankees, pompous urbanites, incorrigible bigots or lazy conservatives. It is true that some Silicon Valley nerds, highfalutin’ Yankees, pompous urbanites, incorrigible bigots, and lazy conservatives all find a home in neoreaction — as do some Jews. Yet no single group dominates the neoreactionary bubble of thought, so much so that neoreactionaries delineate three separate zones of neoreactionary thought and affiliation, termed the Trichotomy of theonomy, ethnonationalism and techno-commercialism. In other words: faith, blood, and property. God, family, and guns. Everybody’s got a favorite, but nobody maintains less than all three.

Neoreaction was more-or-less founded by the prolific writer and programmer Mencius Moldbug sometime around 2007. This basic point seems to be agreed-upon by nearly everyone. Moldbug could easily qualify as a Jew (a half-Jew), a Silicon Valley nerd, and a pompous urbanite. Moldbug may have been the catalyst for this new intellectual phenomenon, yet before, during and after Moldbug’s de facto hiatus in 2013, neoreaction has flowered into far more than him alone. Dozens of neoreactionary articles are written every day. Neoreactionaries are meeting offline. Neoreactionaries are forming occult networks. If you don’t see neoreaction doing anything, that’s just because you haven’t looked — or, because neoreaction doesn’t want you to see what it’s doing. Moldbug hasn’t been scheming for years behind-the-scenes, directing neoreaction from a synagogue. He’s been busy with far less sinister things. So who exactly has been steering the NRx-Mobile, hidden behind tinted windows?

1. Neoreaction is demographically less Jewish than a Hamas birthday party.

How could anyone imagine that a group adopting a mascot as supremely non-kosher as a crab was Judaic in any shape or form?

Shellfish: not kosher.

There are three Jews who are or have been involved in neoreaction. Two are half-Jewish. The third is quarter-Jewish. This makes them gentile enough to be Nazi field marshals. The three are the aforementioned Mr. Moldbug, Mr. Boetel from Radish Magazine, and the Anti-Democracy Activist. Mr. Moldbug is not religious, and hasn’t contributed a word to neoreaction since 2013. Mr. Boetel posts sporadically (the last time was in November), and makes a blogging out of masterfully mocking and deconstructing liberal-progressive narratives on history and current affairs. The Anti-Democracy Activist is a convert to Catholicism. Instead of the flag of Israel, he flies the flag of Rhodesia. If this here is a sinister Jewish conspiracy, it strikes me as a rather lackluster one. My Jew-dar just isn’t detecting anything. In any case, I must recommend reading all three men. And so what about the rest of the neoreactionaries?

The columnists for this very neoreactionary website include one Minnesotan Catholic, one Catholic Slav, a grizzly American Southerner and three Anglo-Saxon gentiles. Zero Jews. Guest writers have included Russians, Scandinavians, and more Anglo-Saxons of various kinds. No Jews to my knowledge. The aggregator for neoreaction, Reaction Times, is curated by a reactionary Protestant from Canada. Listed in the aggregator are 30+ sites maintained by gentiles of European descent, and three maintained by the aforementioned souls of the most tangential Jewish background. Aside from Mr. Moldbug, the most influential neoreactionaries are largely English, American and otherwise natively Anglophone. Russians, Slovenians, and Bulgarians make a mark too. Ditto American Southerners. The latest newcomers have been Croatian and Turkish. Hangers-on from Spain, Brazil, Scotland, the rest of the Anglosphere, South Africa, the Netherlands, Ireland, India, Panama, Scandinavia and elsewhere round out the neoreactionary sphere. I am still not aware of any neoreactionaries from Israel, nor any with surnames suffixed with ‘-berg,’ ‘-stein,’ or ‘-witz.’ Indeed, yours truly receives more traffic from Taiwan, Romania, and the United Arab Emirates than from Israel. Judaeoreaction? Why not Sinoreaction or Islamoreaction?

Current and active neoreactionaries are overwhelmingly European gentiles. The largest currents seem to be Anglo-Saxon, Roman Catholic, American Orthodox and Slavic. The most grossly over-represented ethnic group among neoreactionaries is not Jews, but South Slavs. The most cursory demographic investigation will reveal not just that neoreactionaries are not Jews, but that neoreactionaries aren’t necessarily Silicon Valley nerds, highfalutin’ Yankees, pompous urbanites, incorrigible bigots or lazy conservatives either. Some married with kids and others unattached students. Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, neo-pagan and atheist. Former libertarians, former progressives, former Tea Partiers, former paleoconservatives, former fascists, former apoliticals, and former Marxists. Born and raised everywhere from Alaska to Australia. I think we even have a woman or two. The diversity of neoreaction, in fact, highlights precisely how non-Jewish it is. Jews, far from running the show the way they do for neoconservatives, communists, or progressives (but I repeat myself), are conspicuously missing. If neoreaction is a Jewish conspiracy, it is the first one without any Jews.

2. Moldbug alone is not the sole arbiter of neoreactionary thought.

Mr. Enoch from The Right Stuff objects to Moldbug’s dismissal of white nationalism and psychologist Kevin Macdonald’s theory of innate Jewish behavior. Many neoreactionaries find Moldbug’s original position lacking, myself included. Many more accept Macdonald’s theory. Many are explicit ethnonationalists. Is Moldbug’s Jewish ancestry preventing him from reaching some unsavory conclusions? Perhaps, perhaps not. It doesn’t matter. Moldbug is not the sole arbiter of neoreactionary thought. His long deconstruction of the progressive worldview was an indisputable godsend to us Children of Modernity. His neocameralism — disputable. His poetry… eh. Key tenets of neoreaction, including the Trichotomy and the concept of Gnon, were not brainchildren of Moldbug’s. Neoreaction tangles with Evolian metaphysics, the tripartite caste society, entryism, geopolitics, holiness spirals, practical reaction, Western religion, “gene-culture co-evolution” and more, cheerfully and without Moldbug. Disagreements with Moldbug do not entail disagreements with neoreaction as a whole. Neoreaction is more than just Moldbug — which is why it’s called neoreaction and not Moldbuggianism.

Moldbug’s focus on Puritan/Protestant leftism to the exclusion of negative Jewish influence on Western civilization rightly irks some. Let it be repeated and emphasized that both Moldbug and neoreaction at large focus not on Puritanism, Protestantism or Christianity per se as the sicknesses of civilization, but rather the steady process of leftist degradation that used them as a vector over the centuries. No, Puritans wouldn’t approve of Iggy Azalea. This does not invalidate neoreactionary theories about leftism, holiness spirals, and Puritanism. It seems that now a more rightly neoreactionary position would be that both Jews and Puritans share significant blame for the decline of the West. An autopsy for Western civilization might read: “Immune system critically weakened by virulent holiness spiral and concomitant leftism. Fatal stroke from foreign pathogen.” There are surely many other groups and individuals who helped cause this untimely death in some way or another, but these two religious minorities seem to be the primary culprits.

Is Macdonald’s theory of Jewish behavior correct? If not, it wouldn’t be for lack of evidence. I don’t find the theory shocking, strange or unique at all. Macdonald does a thorough job of documenting what a hostile minority looks like. Regular minorities turn into hostile minorities after majorities try to forcibly convert, enslave, eradicate or otherwise injure them. Alternately, regular majorities turn into hostile majorities after minorities try to scam, deceive, impose on, thieve from or otherwise injure them. Minorities become hostile to survive. Majorities would argue that the minorities deserved it, being the dirty parasites and predators that they are. The minorities view the majorities the same way. Who “started it” is always impossible to figure out, and instead of turning to endlessly complicated conspiracy theories, it is much easier just to remember a simple heuristic: diversity plus proximity equals conflict.

3. Neoreaction answers the Jewish Question, once and for all.

Neoreaction, contrary to vitriolic accusations leveled against it, has not stayed suspiciously silent on the Jewish Question. Nick B. Steves wrote a three-part series on the issue. He concluded:

The Jews qua Jews are so uniquely destabilizing that no Jew could ever be trusted with any amount of power. They should be banned from our organization (presuming we had one) and probably forcibly relocated to a homeland of their own.

Do you smell latkes? I don’t. Jim has done a lot of his own commentary on Jews and cultural Marxism, Jews and anti-Semitism, Jews and Puritans, and Jewish misbehavior. Nick Land has staked his position. 28Sherman displayed a keen awareness of all things Jewish and political just yesterday. Neoreactionaries, steeped as they are in politically incorrect, anti-Semitic, old history books, are far more than acquainted with questions of Jews and Judaism. The perceived silence of neoreactionaries on this topic is not borne of conspiracy or cowardice, but conclusion.

The most perfunctory appraisal of the situation reveals that the Jews were and are a religiously and genetically distinct minority among Christian Europeans. Diversity plus proximity equals conflict. Each and every nefarious action attributed to Jews throughout history in the West can be traced to the ubiquitous and ever-present hostility that exists between different ethno-religious groups (or thedes or phyles). This hostility is a law of the Universe, a dictate of Gnon’s. Evil Jewish Bolshevism, depraved Jewish pornography, destructive Jewish capitalism, chauvinistic Jewish Zionism — all can be easily and sensibly interpreted as various manifestations of natural conflict between hostile groups i.e. Jews and Christian Europeans, Jews and Muslims, etc. There is little reason to zero in on the Jews and obsess about them as uniquely heinous among all the world’s peoples. The only thing unique about them is their continued survival despite the scale and length of their run-ins with foreign gentile civilizations, but this differentiates them by degree, not type — Jews are not at all the only hostile minority on the planet, and not at all the only one that’s survived to 2015. Various expressions of anti-Semitism throughout history, such as the Holocaust or the Russian pogroms, can also be sensibly interpreted using this paradigm of ethnic conflict. The manifestations of ethnic conflict may be complex, but the underlying causes are always the same: diversity and proximity. It is not difficult to figure out and most neoreactionaries have done so, and thus shut up about it.

Law of Gnon: This is what the out-group looks like to the in-group. Always.

The answer to the Jewish question, as Mr. Steves concluded, is quite simple: segregation and separation. This solution is not unique to the Jews, but is the standard tried-and-true, traditional method of solving the problem of the violence at the nexus of diversity and proximity. Note that unlike progressives, neoreactionaries do not believe one can abolish the laws of nature and turn diversity into a strength, least of all using the State. Diversity engenders animosity and eventually violence, and is thus a weakness. The only solution to diversity is unity. Separate and segregate. This axiom is true when considering Jews and Europeans, and it is true when considering any other two distinct groups.

This is how liberals see conservatives. Law of Gnon strikes again. Always.

-

Satisfied with the question of the Jews, neoreactionaries notice that the rot in Western civilization frequently attributed solely to the Jews had in fact existed long before subversive Jews did (see: Jim). Neoreactionaries notice that there exists an entire science of civilization with its own laws and principles. They notice that the architecture of contemporary civilization is slowly disintegrating. They notice saboteurs and invaders. Ahead they notice a barren grave with their names on it, and they notice grotesque monstrosities rising from Hades and beckoning to them with meticulously tailored malformed claws: “Check your privilege.” Neoreactionaries notice all this and judge it terribly unworthy. It is just a matter of opinion whether the next step is letting the edifice of civilization collapse, building a new civilization in the ruins, or attempting to stay the badly quivering columns.

Or maybe what’s needed is Zombie Hitler and another round with those damn shadowy Hebrews. But if so, close your Internet browser — you won’t find them here in neoreaction.

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