Germany's PISA score rises 41 points if you exclude immigrant kids. Switzerland: +30. The UAE's score drops 45 points without immigrants. Singapore, Macao, the UAE, and Qatar recruit immigrants smarter than their native populations; Europe, the opposite

10 reasons why leftists inevitably capture democratic institutions: 1. Humans want status. 2. Politics is primarily about self-interested attempts to redistribute status. 3. Status is roughly zero-sum and power-law distributed. A minority of people has most of the status. A majority is low-status. 4. The low-status majority wants status in exchange for votes. Leftists elites give economic (money) and social (DEI) status in exchange for power. 5. Leftists have more motivation to control institutions because their status depends on it. Meanwhile, the rightist business owner wants to be left alone. 6. A feedback loop forms. What’s left-coded is promoted; what’s right-coded is discouraged. Leftists are further encouraged to join or stay, and rightists are further discouraged from joining or staying (think proto-religious land acknowledgements, diversity training, etc.). 7. Rightists in institutions get increasingly outcompeted. 8. Ways to correct the leftist capture of institutions become personally costly (intimidation, job loss, cancellation, arrest, etc.). 9. Ways to get ahead in life involve reinforcing the leftist capture of institutions (publicly agreeing with DEI, promoting blank-slate-compatible explanations for persistent differences in outcomes, etc.). 10. In the end, everyone lies all the time because they know what’s best for them. This is where we are.

An extreme commitment to the truth makes relationships acutely dysfunctional but systems chronically functional (think Elon Musk). An extreme commitment to kindness makes relationships acutely functional but systems chronically dysfunctional (think Sweden, UK)