There aren't many service jobs for people with 100 IQs and lower that earn a good wage. Only manufacturing jobs can do that.
Joe says:
Hey Luke, good to see you back live streaming. It’s always informative, entertaining and validating, at least for me. I’m also pleased that your time away from livestreaming was salutary. With respect to a position you have taken on your most recent live stream—one which I agree with wholeheartedly— being the net benefit of manufacturing jobs relative to service sector jobs for many Americans, particularly those with average IQ. Or below average. Again, yes on that. I’ve tried to make this point to folks I’ve been chatting with, and I think it’s not too difficult to overcome the defeatism that people have regarding the ease with which we can restore America’s manufacturing base or improve dramatically. Sure it will take time, and it won’t be a straight line. That does not mean that it’s not worth doing. It is in my mind absolutely necessary for myriad reasons However, and this is a big however, I’m concerned whether our labor force, now and in the future—especially at what you might call our average or below average IQ levels—can really compete with a Chinese labor force which, pretty clearly, has higher IQ, generally, and from other personality, stand points, seems better suited to line manufacturing jobs. It’s certainly the case that all else being equal, higher IQ means higher productivity, no matter the task. It’s that productivity gap, due to the average IQ gap that I’m concerned about and relative salaries. For those of us who are celebrating the goal of returning manufacturing to the states, we need to wrestle with these questions. And develop a strategy—I would call it a modified “comparative advantage“ strategy—that will allow us to grow our manufacturing base in the face of what seems to me to be China’s relative advantage in terms of its human capital available for manufacturing.However, what’s not clear, again, is whether the American labor, force, in particular the mid- to lower IQ range, labor force, can perform at what would be even a minimal level necessary to produce large volume high-quality products. I suggest you take a look at the documentary "Factory." It’s a real eye-opener. Sure, we may be able to sell products at inflated prices, relative to world costs, here in America, for some period of time, but over the long haul, Competitive manufacturing is going to depend in large part on having a substantial pool of high performing human capital elements.
Second, tariffs, selectively applied, are probably a good thing to try and level the playing field as much as possible, at least for a period of time. Tariffs on China are strategic and valuable. Again, we run into the productivity and human capital wall at some point. As the US Army found out the hard way repeatedly, there’s literally nothing that someone with an average IQ of less than 85 can do to contribute to the productivity of our armed services, which are engaged in just about everything everywhere, and unfortunately, engaging folks with low IQs tends to drag down performance of any organization. I think we’ve been running for the past 60+ years a series of policy experiments as to how to deal with this group in particular. The elevation of equity as part of the whole “woke“ madness in the last few years is nearly the latest and wildest and craziest and most extreme manifestation of our efforts.
Having dug deeply for many years into the literature around IQ, heritability, lineage, the stickiness of culture, and all sorts of other things related to these topics, I’ve come to the conclusion that we simply have to be very strict about enforcing rules of civil behavior, and propriety, and overt time hope that our chronic violent criminal nearly uneducable low IQ under class steadily sheds it’s worst elements, and advances within group selection of its better elements. I don’t think there’s any alternative than to judge people by their actions. And to imprison for extended periods, incorrigible violent criminals. Clearly people hate the fact that doing this results in arrest demographics and incarceration demographics that are painful to see. But I don’t see any alternatives. Do you?
