by Scott Jameson
RaceRealist and I have been ruminating on a lot of stuff lately. Here’s a fun one: what economic system works best relative to what we know about human health? In my mind there are two approaches: the libertarian approach, and quasi-fascism.
In the libertarian approach, there’s no regulation of sugar placed in our food. That’s already the case. But here’s an improvement: you don’t have to pay for anyone’s gastric bypass after they overeat that sugar.
In the fascist approach, there is regulation of sugar, because a fascist state does not allow people to poison each other for profit. You still have to pay for others’ medical expenses, but those expenses will be lower.
Here’s an advantage to the libertarian approach. In that society, the people who stuff their faces and refuse to get off the couch- who are dumber and lazier on average, probably- will have a higher mortality rate on average. Eugenics need not cost a dime.
But you run into a snag, sand in the gears of your hands-off system, when Big Food kicks out a whole bunch of crappy dietary advice, at which point a minority of reasonably intelligent people will be led astray, perhaps to the grave. How could a libertarian society stop that from taking place? Would it even bother? Could the system broadly work in spite of this snag?
A libertarian society doesn’t pay for idiots to have children. That’s good, but half of your population (women) are unlikely to ever support it. Women don’t do libertarianism; observe Rand Paul’s demographic Achilles Heel on page 25. When women asked men what to do about so-and-so’s eighth unpaid for child, we’d have to look them in the eyes and give a deadpan “let’s hope private charity can handle it.” There was a time, before FDR, when women would’ve accepted that answer. They were still in the kitchen back then, and I don’t know how to put them back there.
A fascist society has more hands-on eugenics, possibly genome editing or embryo selection. Also good. Expensive, but obviously worth it.
We welcome your input on these issues.
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As an aside, White men are well-known as the most conservative, small government, nationalist group out there in our current political atmosphere. I always hear people spewing the schmaltziest nonsense about the values of the Founding Fathers. They were, relative to our political compass, nationalist libertarians. Accordingly, modern nationalists and libertarians do best with the exact same demographics that used to vote on candidates back then: property-owning White men. The sole reason that Ron and Rand Paul couldn’t get elected is that they are too similar to the Founding Fathers. Any other candidate who blathers on about the Founding values is simply a liar, and their obvious lies show a disrespect of your intelligence.
If you’re a libertarian, but not an ethno-nationalistic and patriarchal thinker, then you simply haven’t gotten the memo: women and minorities do not want to create the same world that you do, nor will they ever. Evolution gave us women who want social safety nets and other races which are better off if they parasitize off of your tax dollars. All of the most libertarian societies that ever existed (early US, ancient Athens, Roman Republic) were entirely run by White men, and adding women to the electorate gave us the welfare state. Aristophanes was right.
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We’re also ruminating on the difference between IQ and expertise. I know of no mentally complicated task of which one can be a master without being intelligent. Take the IQs of chess grandmasters and you will find no morons.
Contrast that with purely physical activities. I bet you there are some really stupid people out there who are great at dancing for example. A prodigiously capable cerebellum may not predict an equally capable frontal lobe.
Discounting tasks which exclusively require things like simple physical coordination, muscle memory, etc, I ought to think that IQ is the biggest component of expertise.
NotPoliticallyCorrect 
“Discounting tasks which exclusively require things like simple physical coordination, muscle memory, etc, I ought to think that IQ is the biggest component of expertise.”
While certain tasks would likely vary in IQ requirements, I think there is some confusion on what RR means by disambiguating IQ and the role of expertise.
Expertise, basically, is the potential for someone to absorb information through practice and this is stored thorough cortical columns. IQ, just to generalize, would be problem solving.
In the context of cognitive task, I see decent reasoning to disambiguate the two especially given the association between the two in what they imply given the complexity of mental skills.
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So you’re defining “expertise” as the ability to master physical tasks that don’t necessarily relate to IQ?
If that’s your definition then it isn’t IQ, I guess.
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To Scott,
Well actually I meant to “store” information, absorb may’ve been a poor choice of words.
But yes, you are on the right track on where I’m getting at. The task would be cognitive, just not really IQ focused.
Examples would basically be memorization on how to build something, steps to do a certain task, or memorizing rules for example. Just basically storing/ organizing information rather than just using the info like with IQ.
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Phil is correct. Scott, check out Skoyles’ paper, specifically on his references in regards to expertise and intelligence.
Skoyles cites articles that music and intelligence aren’t related, as well as articles that violins players, if I recall correctly, had more cortical columns which, in and of itself, lend to more information being stored in the columns. In regards to cortical columns, Skoyles cites Jerison on this.
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Yeah, I get it now. Just physical tasks, and those aren’t related to g.
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The problem i have with the libertarian approach is it’s meritocracy. The core reasons white property owning men (and men in general) support libertarianism in my opinion is because they believe they will succeed in a meritocractic system (and they often do). This used to its main appeal to me, but now we are seeing that much of what makes us successful is inherited genetically or culturally (born into rich family in great countries), so is a meritocracy even possible? If most of how we turn out is out of our control, the freedom of libertarianism doesn’t really give you any freedom.
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Children of smart parents are smarter on average, but there are exceptions. Meritocracy has an answer for those times.
Besides, I don’t think the genetically gifted have any obligation to shell out a bunch of money to people who can’t keep up.
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I’m really torn here. I know that a lot is out of our control. But that doesn’t mean we should eat whatever garbage we want. I do believe that healthy food should be easily accessible to those of lower SES. Further, nutritional education should be started way earlier to attempt to mitigate the effect of nutritional ignorance that so plagues our society.
Scott, I see where you’re coming from but things are way more nuanced than that.
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Healthcare really gives me cognitive dissonance. On one hand I want everyone to have the beat health possible. Over 80 percent of foods on store shelves have unneeded, added sugar. That’s not needed. I don’t need to tell you about the effects of sugar on human metabolism and obesity.
I’m positive that, to reverse to obesity epidemic that we need to change our environment. Our novel environments and paleolithic genomes are mismatched. So to fight obesity and diseases of civilization, we need to change our environment to one that’s more ancestral to us. This also, of course, includes getting I’d of advertisements as they make children want garbage food with no nutritional value at all.
In regards to expertise, I’m ruminating on another article on that and will have it up before PumpkinPerson responds to me. Skoyles proposed it to explain the obstetric dilemma, why do we have large brains/heads when it gives so many problems in regards to child birth? He cited studies that microcephalics had IQs in the normal range while having brains the size of erectus. This also implies that some erectus could have had intelligence near or on our level. I’d be interested to know if there are any studies on the amount of neurons that people with brains that sell have.
I will go more in depth on this later.
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