Earlier, I did a blog (above) on Thomas Friedman's NYT piece on immigration, and what Biden should do [It’s Time for Biden to Out-Trump Trump on Immigration, May 16, 2023].
Friedman, who I called the world ambassador for Bad Ideas, also has this idea in his column—which is about mass immigration over the Mexican border, and Amnesty for those illegals already here:
If we are going to thrive in the 21st century and compete effectively with China, we need to double down on our single greatest competitive advantage: our ability to attract the most high-aspiring migrants and the most high-I.Q. risk takers, who start new businesses.
Best I can tell, God distributed brains equally around the planet.
Well, no he bloody didn't. There's a whole literature on this, from Nathaniel Weyl and Stefan Possony's The Geography Of Intellect (1963) to Lynn and Vanhanen's IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002) to The Global Bell Curve: Race, IQ and Inequality Worldwide by Richard Lynn in 2008, followed by The Intelligence of Nations by Richard Lynn and David Becker in 2019 that says that it is no more true that ”God distributed brains equally around the planet” than it is to say that everyone in the world is exactly the same color.
Friedman thinks, in the sentence before the ”God distributed brains” line that
If we are going to thrive in the 21st century and compete effectively with China, we need to double down on our single greatest competitive advantage: our ability to attract the most high-aspiring migrants and the most high-I.Q. risk takers, who start new businesses.
In 2010, Steve Sailer blogged Tom Friedman Repeats Phrase ”High I.Q. Risk-Takers” 8 Times about an NYT column called Start-Ups, Not Bailouts, April 3, 2010.
“When you get this happy coincidence of high-I.Q. risk-takers in government and a society that is biased toward high-I.Q. risk-takers, you get these above-average returns as a country,” argued [Microsoft's Craig] Mundie. “What is common to Singapore, Israel and America? They were all built by high-I.Q. risk-takers and all thrived...
They also have high-I.Q. populations. Friedman is hoping that immigration will bring more people like Elon Musk to America, but if so, they won't be coming illegally from Mexico—Mexico has a national average IQ of 87, and the border-crossers are on the low end of Mexican society—bright, college educated Mexicans stay home and found companies where they are.
