Sounds like hell on earth. I would not want my country to become like that.
"But after ten days in India, I confidently declare that the children of randomly-selected Indians would do well here."
Why?
"they’d adopt almost everything good about modern U.S. culture"
Why?
"while retaining the strong family values that Americans have been foolishly forgetting."
Why?
Most low IQ immigrants tend to become more like Americans when they immigrate. Divorce and crime rates increase for instance in the second generation.
"I live in one of top centers of Indian migration in the United States"
Me Too.
That Indian immigration pushed the area from Republican to Democrat. It caused COVID to be a living hell for me, and Indians strongly supported COVID insanity.
My school district just implemented collective bargaining thanks to its flipping blue, Indians are already make us more socialist just like back home.
My experience with Northern Virginia Indians is largely on corrupt government contracting projects and their vice grip on Northern Virginia's hospital system (where they are utterly useless as your doctor). I've never met a more nepotistic group of people in my life. They are tailor made for Northern Virginia gov contracting scams.
It's their very assimilation that makes them worse. What are they assimilating too? Indian professional women are probably the most "woke" people who exist on the planet.
We're getting the best India has to offer, and I'm still not sold. God help us if we got the worst.
Anyway, I think the strongest opponents of Open Borders with India would be other Indians. They want to get away from India, not have it follow them.
I'm reminded of the Disney movie "Million Dollar Arm" which was based on the true story of a baseball scout going to India in search of major league baseball pitching talent. The idea was that in a country with a billion people and a cultural affinity for throwing a cricket ball, certainly there would be a few men capable of being professional baseball pitchers!
The idea did not and has not proved proved out. Elite talent is not about sheer numbers. It is about skill and cultural genius. For baseball talent, Cuba and the Dominican Republic has it. India does not. Even in a country where throwing and hitting a ball is popular, that ball game is not baseball and this makes a huge difference.
"India’s central problem is absurd regulation and state ownership. Absurd how? To start: The Indian government strictly protects legal employees, so 90%+ of Indians work “informally.” Our bus driver to Agra was required to take a rest stop every two hours — in a country packed with tuk-tuk drivers zooming around like maniacs. The government caps the maximum size of farms — and bars foreigners (including Non-Resident Indians!) from owning farms at all. A great way to strangle the food supply and impoverish farmers at the same time. The Indian government also crushes construction"
This IS Indian culture. Since they have no respect for individual liberty and no civic-mindedness, they produce governments like this.
What is the IQ profile of India and its subgroups (races, ethnicities, castes, etc.)? As I recall, the country's mean IQ is somewhere around 80, 5 points lower than that of American blacks, on average. Any thoughts on THAT aspect of the country or did you somehow manage to miss that in your travels and sharp-eyed immersion in Indian culture...?
The thing that you are mentioning here about the kids and subsisies for them already exist. The problem here is not that people are poor, the problem is that ones you're out of poverty you're taken advantage of, you get in the tax bracket and you're the most taxed person since you're now in middle class. But if you stay poor, you get many subsidies, free ration (or at much lower price than normal), lower gas prices, no tax, free education if you send the children to goverment schools (or low fees) etc. and there are many more. So, even though what you've seen is true, there are many facets behind it also which are evident to you once you live here day to day for years on end and can see what the differences are.
Some fun facts about language in India are that English is the second most commonly spoken language in India and that most Indians don't speak Hindi, the most common language in India.
>life in India has drastically improved since 1991
To put some numbers to it, in 1991, India had a life expectancy of just under 60 and by 2023, it rose to almost 72.
GDP per capita also increased more than fourfold from $529 to $2,240 (in 2010 dollars).
The percentage of the population living in extreme poverty dropped from 49% to 13%, by 2021.
Looking at the comments, one would be forgiven to think that the racists need a mildest of excuses to come out of their closets.
I am also appalled by the idiocy of logic shown here. You don't go to India to find a baseball superstar, a game that no one plays there and 99% of people there haven't even heard of. But you will find many a world class athathletes who play cricket and field hockey. You will also find many of the chess chachampions. Idiocy is of such writers is astounding!
Visit India, or at least learn a bit more about it before judging it harshly and putting it down. It is still coming out of over 1100 years of Islamic and British invasions, and then some 65 odd years of ultra-left ideology driven socialism. Show me a country that could have survived such a prolonged onslaught, genocides and looting. In the last couple of decades alone, it has left many of the so called "first world" economies behind. It will thrive despite such racism, and despite meddling by US, Canada, UK and the perperennial enemies on its borders.
A few Indians asked me if I was also critical of American independence from Britain. Which I definitely am. Mather Byles asked the right rhetorical question: "Which is better — to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?" With rare exceptions, “independence” means a bloodbath, followed by the oppression of local elites.
Compared to the constant and massive famines suffered by India under British rule, the amount of people who died during the partition was pretty small. It's like saying Irish Independence was a bad thing because of The Troubles. The US has never had a major famine (there was a minor one in 1815 due to climate disruption from a volcano), something that would probably not be true if we'd remained under British rule. "Anti-colonial fanatics" became that way because they constantly watched their country getting starved and impoverished by rulers who gave the same Malthusian explanations for the suffering that you rightly dismiss.
Bryan does not take his faith in biology/hereditarianism far enough. Yes, Sovietism has ruined India, but there's a reason totalitarian ideologies find it easy to take root in oriental societies, whereas they've consistently failed to take off in northwestern Europe. The reason is that people in these societies are biologically hardwired to be susceptible to these ideologies. You bring them over in large enough numbers, and they're bound to shift the political culture of their new countries. Also Indians are pretty lazy. They have to grind incredibly hard because they live on the edge of sustenance, but if you pay close enough attention, you'll notice that they do everything in a sloppy, haphazard manner, that most lack the perseverance necessary to put up with the rigours of something that requires long term commitment. They're the equivalent of the lazy student who pulls an all nighter before test day, except the all nighter happens to be their entire life. He may look really hard working if you were to drop in on him without knowing the context or anything about him, but he's actually a slouch, and will forever be one.
Minor nitpick: The 90%+ informal labor includes agriculture (see Table 2 in the source). The share of informal labor should be much lower in non-agricultural sectors. Another reason for encouraging migration to the cities.
I have a strong rebuttal to your point. What is so good about Indians as immigrants? Given the physical limits on the number of immigrants you can receive, why take in Indians to fulfil the blue-collar and lower class jobs?
Isn't it better to take in Chinese from China instead? Broadly speaking, they will tend to be superior to Indians from India. Sure, the Indian cultural beliefs are not ***that*** offensive, but isn't it better to not have them?
For good paying white collar jobs, simply take in any immigrants who will pay enough to make it worth your while. But for these lower positions, America can easily afford to take its pick of the litter. Why pick Indians, lolz.
It's strange to blame India's lingering overregulation on the USSR. It's cringe when Russians do it (the USSR having been gone more than 3 decades) to say nothing of a country that wasn't even within its sphere of influence.
Anyhow, burdensome regulations are omnipresent throughout the Third World, but are mitigated by the optionality of following many of them due to low state capacity. India's true problem is the average IQ of 80, which would be somewhere in the 90s under First World conditions. How to close that gap between reality and potential should be India's foremost priority. It's difficult to accomplish much with such a workforce.
India's south is indeed by and large richer, cleaner, and more developed than the north in an inversion of the usual global pattern. I suspect this has very deep roots, from the surprisingly high density of Roman coinage in SW India to Indian mathematics actually being pretty much just Kerala mathematics.
Sounds like hell on earth. I would not want my country to become like that.
"But after ten days in India, I confidently declare that the children of randomly-selected Indians would do well here."
Why?
"they’d adopt almost everything good about modern U.S. culture"
Why?
"while retaining the strong family values that Americans have been foolishly forgetting."
Why?
Most low IQ immigrants tend to become more like Americans when they immigrate. Divorce and crime rates increase for instance in the second generation.
"I live in one of top centers of Indian migration in the United States"
Me Too.
That Indian immigration pushed the area from Republican to Democrat. It caused COVID to be a living hell for me, and Indians strongly supported COVID insanity.
My school district just implemented collective bargaining thanks to its flipping blue, Indians are already make us more socialist just like back home.
My experience with Northern Virginia Indians is largely on corrupt government contracting projects and their vice grip on Northern Virginia's hospital system (where they are utterly useless as your doctor). I've never met a more nepotistic group of people in my life. They are tailor made for Northern Virginia gov contracting scams.
It's their very assimilation that makes them worse. What are they assimilating too? Indian professional women are probably the most "woke" people who exist on the planet.
We're getting the best India has to offer, and I'm still not sold. God help us if we got the worst.
Anyway, I think the strongest opponents of Open Borders with India would be other Indians. They want to get away from India, not have it follow them.
I'm reminded of the Disney movie "Million Dollar Arm" which was based on the true story of a baseball scout going to India in search of major league baseball pitching talent. The idea was that in a country with a billion people and a cultural affinity for throwing a cricket ball, certainly there would be a few men capable of being professional baseball pitchers!
The idea did not and has not proved proved out. Elite talent is not about sheer numbers. It is about skill and cultural genius. For baseball talent, Cuba and the Dominican Republic has it. India does not. Even in a country where throwing and hitting a ball is popular, that ball game is not baseball and this makes a huge difference.
"India’s central problem is absurd regulation and state ownership. Absurd how? To start: The Indian government strictly protects legal employees, so 90%+ of Indians work “informally.” Our bus driver to Agra was required to take a rest stop every two hours — in a country packed with tuk-tuk drivers zooming around like maniacs. The government caps the maximum size of farms — and bars foreigners (including Non-Resident Indians!) from owning farms at all. A great way to strangle the food supply and impoverish farmers at the same time. The Indian government also crushes construction"
This IS Indian culture. Since they have no respect for individual liberty and no civic-mindedness, they produce governments like this.
Really? So why the Americans keep voting for their government? They have no respect for individual liberty and civic mindedness as well?
Why do Indians keep voting for Modi if this is true?
Modi leans into tribal conflict and is hardly a pro-liberty figure. Maybe I don't understand your question.
What is the IQ profile of India and its subgroups (races, ethnicities, castes, etc.)? As I recall, the country's mean IQ is somewhere around 80, 5 points lower than that of American blacks, on average. Any thoughts on THAT aspect of the country or did you somehow manage to miss that in your travels and sharp-eyed immersion in Indian culture...?
The thing that you are mentioning here about the kids and subsisies for them already exist. The problem here is not that people are poor, the problem is that ones you're out of poverty you're taken advantage of, you get in the tax bracket and you're the most taxed person since you're now in middle class. But if you stay poor, you get many subsidies, free ration (or at much lower price than normal), lower gas prices, no tax, free education if you send the children to goverment schools (or low fees) etc. and there are many more. So, even though what you've seen is true, there are many facets behind it also which are evident to you once you live here day to day for years on end and can see what the differences are.
Where's "here"? I know you know, but the rest of us can't be sure if you don't say.
>English is widely spoken
Some fun facts about language in India are that English is the second most commonly spoken language in India and that most Indians don't speak Hindi, the most common language in India.
>life in India has drastically improved since 1991
To put some numbers to it, in 1991, India had a life expectancy of just under 60 and by 2023, it rose to almost 72.
GDP per capita also increased more than fourfold from $529 to $2,240 (in 2010 dollars).
The percentage of the population living in extreme poverty dropped from 49% to 13%, by 2021.
Everyone in this comment section is already ready to discard India and Indians as hopeless. I for one share Bryan's optimism
Such optimism has not borne fruits for almost a century at this point
It's currently bearing fruit
Excellent essay. Coincidentally spent the same week in India, in some of the same places, and I found the extreme libertarian reality of everything being up for negotiation to be a major issue: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/life-in-india-is-a-series-of-bilateral
honest, not attempting to prove some gotcha by asking, question: did the Muslims you spoke to or met seem as free with their speech as other groups?
Looking at the comments, one would be forgiven to think that the racists need a mildest of excuses to come out of their closets.
I am also appalled by the idiocy of logic shown here. You don't go to India to find a baseball superstar, a game that no one plays there and 99% of people there haven't even heard of. But you will find many a world class athathletes who play cricket and field hockey. You will also find many of the chess chachampions. Idiocy is of such writers is astounding!
Visit India, or at least learn a bit more about it before judging it harshly and putting it down. It is still coming out of over 1100 years of Islamic and British invasions, and then some 65 odd years of ultra-left ideology driven socialism. Show me a country that could have survived such a prolonged onslaught, genocides and looting. In the last couple of decades alone, it has left many of the so called "first world" economies behind. It will thrive despite such racism, and despite meddling by US, Canada, UK and the perperennial enemies on its borders.
Mentally ill individual here. Let's all laugh at him, lolz
(for his third paragraph, at least)
A few Indians asked me if I was also critical of American independence from Britain. Which I definitely am. Mather Byles asked the right rhetorical question: "Which is better — to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?" With rare exceptions, “independence” means a bloodbath, followed by the oppression of local elites.
Compared to the constant and massive famines suffered by India under British rule, the amount of people who died during the partition was pretty small. It's like saying Irish Independence was a bad thing because of The Troubles. The US has never had a major famine (there was a minor one in 1815 due to climate disruption from a volcano), something that would probably not be true if we'd remained under British rule. "Anti-colonial fanatics" became that way because they constantly watched their country getting starved and impoverished by rulers who gave the same Malthusian explanations for the suffering that you rightly dismiss.
Bryan does not take his faith in biology/hereditarianism far enough. Yes, Sovietism has ruined India, but there's a reason totalitarian ideologies find it easy to take root in oriental societies, whereas they've consistently failed to take off in northwestern Europe. The reason is that people in these societies are biologically hardwired to be susceptible to these ideologies. You bring them over in large enough numbers, and they're bound to shift the political culture of their new countries. Also Indians are pretty lazy. They have to grind incredibly hard because they live on the edge of sustenance, but if you pay close enough attention, you'll notice that they do everything in a sloppy, haphazard manner, that most lack the perseverance necessary to put up with the rigours of something that requires long term commitment. They're the equivalent of the lazy student who pulls an all nighter before test day, except the all nighter happens to be their entire life. He may look really hard working if you were to drop in on him without knowing the context or anything about him, but he's actually a slouch, and will forever be one.
Minor nitpick: The 90%+ informal labor includes agriculture (see Table 2 in the source). The share of informal labor should be much lower in non-agricultural sectors. Another reason for encouraging migration to the cities.
Part of the reason why agricultural workers might stay in that sector rather than moving to cities is the lack of jobs in the formal sector.
Visit India before India visits you--if Caplan gets his way.
https://jclester.substack.com/p/open-borders-today-stupid-or-sinister?utm_source=publication-search
I have a strong rebuttal to your point. What is so good about Indians as immigrants? Given the physical limits on the number of immigrants you can receive, why take in Indians to fulfil the blue-collar and lower class jobs?
Isn't it better to take in Chinese from China instead? Broadly speaking, they will tend to be superior to Indians from India. Sure, the Indian cultural beliefs are not ***that*** offensive, but isn't it better to not have them?
For good paying white collar jobs, simply take in any immigrants who will pay enough to make it worth your while. But for these lower positions, America can easily afford to take its pick of the litter. Why pick Indians, lolz.
Great take on India, the potential is immense. I cannot wait for India to become richer ❤️
I enjoyed this travel report.
It's strange to blame India's lingering overregulation on the USSR. It's cringe when Russians do it (the USSR having been gone more than 3 decades) to say nothing of a country that wasn't even within its sphere of influence.
Anyhow, burdensome regulations are omnipresent throughout the Third World, but are mitigated by the optionality of following many of them due to low state capacity. India's true problem is the average IQ of 80, which would be somewhere in the 90s under First World conditions. How to close that gap between reality and potential should be India's foremost priority. It's difficult to accomplish much with such a workforce.
India's south is indeed by and large richer, cleaner, and more developed than the north in an inversion of the usual global pattern. I suspect this has very deep roots, from the surprisingly high density of Roman coinage in SW India to Indian mathematics actually being pretty much just Kerala mathematics.