Crush41,
I'm very much in agreement with your emphasis on human capital, I just have to add an unfortunately pessimistic note on this front, at least as far as the USA-- I've worked in a number of Western and East Asian countries, and the United States right now probably has the MOST dysgenic and anti-intellectual, anti-merit policies of almost any industrialized nation.
The shame is that the USA has been blessed with so many quality people, and we're squandering it with our foolish PC policies-- for the first time that I can remember, a substantial fraction of my Ivy League-trained friends are now working in Europe, mostly on the Continent, with many of them having permanently emigrated. The reasons for this as far as I've been able to piece them together:
1.
Affirmative action. This is the "perfect storm" anti-merit policy which is utterly and absolutely wrecking the US merit class. It's also about as entrenched as any policy we have.
Many of my old Ivy-League buddies in Europe now are graduates of places like Princeton and Yale-- who nonetheless were forced to confront the daunting awfulness of what the affirmative action regime has become. They have the grave penalty of being born white men, which means that they and, especially, their kids face what amounts to state-sanctioned discrimination against them at all levels, from schools to job applications. And unlike the claims that many try to make, affirmative action really is very damaging especially in technical fields that have bottlenecks.
Many technical, science and engineering fields are already being decimated by outsourcing, and when the remaining positions are filled at first pass by "preferred minorities," this puts a terrible economic squeeze on middle-class and newly arrived professional-class whites who don't yet have much in the way of family connections. IOW, AA royally screws those most meritorious whites-- the ones who make it based on the sweat of their brows and their own abilities, rather than connections-- that we need to retain most.
Not even a sustained push could get rid of affirmative action-- it's too deeply and subtly entrenched in the institutional practices of the public and private sectors.
Richard Nixon started this with the Philadelphia Plan in 1969 against overwhelming opposition from both parties, and he really worked it in to a truly pernicious extent. The anti-affirmative initiatives in places like California and Washington have become nothing more than sick jokes-- those referenda never had anything in the way of enforcement measures and in any case, all of this requires a willing legislature and statehouse, which neither of these states has. So affirmative action is paradoxically much stronger here than ever before, enforced through ever more elaborate and subtle schemes to the extent that the very idea of merit itself is being questioned-- the SAT and other standardized tests have become among the most despised institutions here.
This problem has now gone nationwide. I've had to deal with this myself as a contractor, and you cannot believe the number and severity of hurdles you have to overcome to get contracts if you're cursed to be a white person-- and if you're unfortunate enough to be one of those hated white "strivers" making it on our own, rather than using family connections that, frankly, most of us don't have in any case. (Even more infuriating, affirmative action defenders always justify their policy by claiming all kinds of "white privilege" through these very family connections that most hard-working whites do not have!
) So after surviving the gauntlet of affirmative action throughout high school, college, graduate school *and* my entry-level jobs, I have to deal with its most aggressive form trying to get contracts. Anybody who thinks this affects government contracts only is laughably naive-- any contract even remotely connected to "government funds" or institutions is liable to the affirmative action requirements and effectively enforced by dozens of agencies in the public and private sectors (including Chambers of Commerce), and the burden is only becoming ever more onerous. In direct contrast, whenever I've worked in Europe-- on the Continent, at least (Britain is stupidly following the US example)-- I've found the contract negotiations there to be refreshingly free of this sort of nonsense.
The upshot of this policy, in combination with economic drains such as increased cost of living as well as horrible traffic and crime, isn't hard to predict-- capable Americans go somewhere else. Most of my Ivy League friends also had some training in a foreign language which they put to use. While most are still here in the US, a somewhat shocking number (to me) are now expats and naturalizing themselves in Europe or East Asia, with many others inclining in that direction.
The two smartest guys that I know are now in northern Italy, half a dozen others learned German and are scattered in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, others even in France and Spain. A few others, mostly with ethnic ties, have also left for East Asia-- one in South Korea, one now in Hong Kong, one in Taiwan, one in Vietnam interestingly enough (big manufacturing expansion) and a couple others in mainland China. (Most are Asian-American but one of the guys in China is not.
) One guy even moved to Costa Rica, for a variety of reasons. All of these countries have rejected affirmative action, have a much more merit-friendly culture and policies and which, also, have sharply curbed immigration from Arab/Turkish countries (especially Germany/Austria and France, recently). Which leads to
2.
Immigration policies. Continental European countries have much less hesitation in enacting the sorts of merit-attracting immigration policies that you talk about, probably in part because they've eschewed the "rentier economy" model that we have in the US, as a debtor nation, and have a stronger sense of themselves as ethnic entities unsullied by the stupidity that comes with a self-perception as a "globalist marketplace" or a modern imperialist state, as we have in the US. Smaller Central European nations such as Austria and Switzerland have long had such tough restrictive, meritocratic immigration laws.
The most unbelievably smart people I've met IMHO have been in Switzerland, with Austria at a similar level-- what immigration they do have is, chiefly, from German-speaking intellectuals in Eastern Europe, who in turn identify with the classical period of German accomplishment, musicians and scientists such as Bach, Beethoven, Kepler, Wohler and Gauss. IOW, this ethnic identification is at the heart of those countries' immigration policies. It should also be noted that Austria (along with Cyprus and, curiously, France) is at the forefront of blocking Turkish accession to the EU, requiring a referendum that is an insurmountable obstacle to Turkey joining up.
Recently, the bigger Euro countries have been following the lead of Austria and Switzerland. Germany in the past two years has basically been imitating Austria, with a strict immigration system that essentially forbids Turkish entry except for accomplished intellectuals, and which does the same for other countries-- basically, German immigration has been restricted predominantly to educated people from Europe, South America, North America, smaller numbers from India and East Asia, and also to entrepreneurs in general. Criminal immigrants or those with terrorist ties are deported.
Italy's been more gradually moving in a similar direction-- they did have a recent amnesty there (although even it was predominantly directed toward legalizing the millions of Romanians/Greeks/Croats long resident in Italy), but Italy is moving in a similar "filter" direction. Spain is following the Italian model although more gradual still.
France and the Netherlands I find to be the most interesting examples, since they're former imperial nations with more-or-less universalist self-images that have nonetheless been toughening up their immigration policies.
France now has one of Europe's most restrictive immigration policies after the Sarkozy law (which was itself-- no doubt-- a partial result of the pressure applied from the nationalist French parties) was ratified. North Africans and Arabs are largely kept out except for a small number of accomplished elites. Generally, only educated and skilled professionals from anywhere can come there, but there's a further twist in that the French law has broad provisions to allow for deportation for not only crimes but even slight sympathizing with terrorist groups.
The Dutch have also enacted such a restrictive law though not quite as tough as the French one-- the Moroccans are clearly the target, with Dutch arms thrown open to educated Eastern Europeans and Americans.
Denmark has tough laws, and Belgium is moving that direction. Only Great Britain and Sweden seem to be imitating the US "suicide model" on the immigration front.
IOW much of Continental Europe has already adopted precisely the sort of selective immigration approach that you advocate, which they have no trouble doing with their stronger ethnic cohesion and history. The US, with our obsession at being a global multicultural power, can never do this-- unfortunately, the UK, Canada and Australia have all followed the US lead.
3.
Miscellaneous factors. US policies on marriage and divorce are profoundly dysgenic. We all know about the low fertility issues in European countries, but in fact these are common throughout the Western world.
The difference is that Europe provides generous subsidies to professional couples that have and raise children and have no qualms about doing so. We don't do this in the USA, and our "higher fertility" is illusory-- white and professional birth rates in the USA are remarkably low, in fact USA TFR is by far the highest in the lowest-intelligence, non-professional groups. IOW, Europe has a kinda-sorta mild eugenic fertility policy, while that in the USA is profoundly dysgenic.
US divorce laws are also a part of this. Marriage is in part a financial risk in case things don't work out (which they inevitably do in a fraction of couples). In countries where the financial policies associated with divorce give due recognition to the training and economic contributions of a productive partner-- respecting not only advanced degrees and wealth but demonstrated capacity to contribute to the economy of a society-- divorce is less costly for a professional class, and more people are willing to take the risks of marriage and children in the first place.
East Asia and Continental Europe have this sort of economic formula. The USA, Canada and, especially, Britain are notoriously harsh on contributing spouses, however, quite often taking over half the accumulated assets of a productive spouse away to give to the other partner (and attorneys). Prior education and demonstrated economic productivity are largely disregarded, thereby introducing a much greater economic risk and penalty to productive professionals considering marriage.
The ugly Paul McCartney divorce is a cardinal example, but the United Kingdom is notorious for this, as are the USA, Canada and Australia. This has a profoundly dysgenic effect and, again, it discourages childbearing among the professional class.
The one perhaps less dysgenic aspect of the USA compared to Europe in the past has been abundant land and fewer people-- less crowding means cheaper land in general, which is associated with greater ease in having and supporting children even for the educated classes.
But as we hit 300,000,000 people and our cities become increasingly crowded, polluted, crime-ridden, gang-infested and choked with traffic, this advantage has utterly disappeared. Robert Putnam has pointed out that this problem in US cities and suburbs is compounded by lack of ethnic solidarity which atomizes a society and further discourages childbearing in other ways. Anybody who's been trapped in the hell of Los Angeles traffic knows how intolerably crowded the US has become-- there's no longer cheap land here and thus we have another dysgenic factor in the USA.
IOW Crush41, it's Europe that-- admittedly in fits and starts but very much overall-- is embracing this more eugenic immigration and domestic policy, while the USA continually moves in an increasingly dysgenic direction in terms of affirmative action, immigration and other policies. As a result we're losing an increasing number of our own frustrated intellectual, technical and professional class to other countries. Frustratingly, the UK, rather than embracing the more eugenic Continental model, has instead bought into the damaging Atlanticist idiocy of the US-Canadian multicultural model, and thus is taking the same suicidal path.
I've considered the prospect of an emigration myself (my expat friends gave me a treasure trove of language-learning and paperwork-filling resources among other things for German-speaking countries and Italy), though I haven't settled on it. I desperately wish there were some way to reverse course in the USA, but the problem is that our culture has become profoundly dysgenic and anti-intellectual.
Moreover, as the US becomes more multiculti and as US whites become an overall minority-- they already are among early school students, and in absolute terms in California, Texas, Florida, New Mexico and soon Illinois, Michigan and Arizona-- then any prospect of ethnic cohesion, let alone eugenic policy, collapses.
I'm sorry, but the truth is, I see only dysgenic and anti-intellectual policies for the US in the future, and efforts to change that are a lost cause-- the cultural, economic and demographic weight against meritocracy is far too powerful to fight anymore. One of my good friends once tried to make minor and eminently reasonable changes to the affirmative action policy at a university where he was working, and the viciousness with which he and his family were attacked-- and the resulting retrenchment of AA policies-- shows how deeply rooted these policies and their proponents are. My reform-minded friends in the government or private sector have fared little better, and what I find most disheartening is the tremendous malice directed against those who try to make even modest moves in the direction of meritocracy.
Such meritocratic practices are possible in some European countries, but not in the US.
IOW, it's probably a better investment of resources and revenues to try to encourage and refine such policies in the context of some European countries with better ethnic cohesion. I used to see promise in the future of the US, but I've now become embittered by the reality here.
The media, public and private sectors, government, schools in the USA-- all have now internalized the anti-meritocracy concept, and bean-counting dominates over even mild measures of merit. The very concept of meritocracy is moribund in the USA and becoming even weaker by the day. I no longer possess any confidence in this place.
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