Streetwise Professor

It is very telling that the FT chose an iconic photograph of the Hatfields to illustrate its latest act of cultural condescension.  In doing so, it is repeating a stereotyping meme for the exact reason that the meme developed in the late-19th century.

The Hatfield-McCoy feud achieved national prominence, and became the archetypal mountain feud of the 19th century.  The story resonates to this day: in 2012 Kevin Costner starred in a History Channel miniseries on the feud, and there are well over 100 books about the feud on Amazon.

Why did this episode in the West Virginia-Kentucky backwoods attract such attention? The intense coverage was largely a product of the growing urbanization of America, and the conscious and unconscious desire to distance a modernizing country from its rugged pioneer past. East Coast newspapers covered the feud for years, and portrayed the protagonists as backwards reprobates. The Hatfields and McCoys were foils for an urbanizing nation: see how different we are from those hillbillies!

This is why there are so many photographs of the Hatfields in particular, and why they were posed with guns–this is the image that coastal elite wanted to see, and how they wanted to portray the kind of people whom had once been viewed as ideal Americans–think Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, who were viewed and portrayed as rugged pioneering mountain men blazing new frontiers for freedom. But in the late-19th century press they were transformed into ominous, dangerous throwbacks.

Which is exactly the message conveyed in the FT oped, and which is exactly why that image was chosen.  So the FT doesn’t even score points for originality. They are just recycling a century-plus old slur, to serve a similar purpose.

Lost in the lurid coverage was the fact that a driving force behind the conflict–and in particular its persistence–was a battle for control over timber rights in West Virginia. The Hatfields in particular were trying to resist the inroads of large timber and coal companies, and the McCoys were to a large extent their somewhat witting, somewhat unwitting accomplices.

Another meme that resonated around the same time was the battle between moonshiners and “revenuers,” which also received considerable media attention. The message was pretty much the same: backwards backwoodsmen resisting order and progress. Untamed anarchy vs. social control exercised by progressive forces embodied in government. (This was a meme in the Whiskey Rebellion too.)  Wild borderers vs. civilization.

Again, there is little new under the sun. Political battles and the tactics employed therein may appear to be different, but they are often merely echoes or mutations of conflicts that have been raging for centuries. The FT’s use of a long-ago image that gained prominence because it conveyed a political and sociological message to frame a story about a modern political controversy intended to convey a very similar political and sociological message demonstrates that perfectly.

I seldom read the FT anymore–with a few exceptions, it is unreadable. I never read the FT opinion pieces any more–they are unreadable, without exception.  But the photo on this FT tweet brought me up short, and compelled me to click through to the article: my relatives! Really: my mother’s grandmother’s family were Hatfields, and cousins of the famous/notorious West Virginia feud family in the picture.

The article is an attempt–kind of–to explain to superior Brits those “barking mad” Americans and their “distinctly American attitudes towards guns and family.”  Note the sneering title: America has a gun “fixation.”

The article (by the FT’s chief editorial writer, Robert Armstrong) is largely correct in its history: American attitudes towards guns are deeply rooted in history.  Irritatingly, Armstrong’s attitude is condescending and dismissive: he clearly considers this to be a barbarous atavism.

Armstrong’s take is also quite superficial, and misses something that I have pointed out in a previous post: namely, that among many Americans, the right to bear arms is the most tangible badge of individual liberty and autonomy.  Slaves are disarmed: free men answerable only to God can arm themselves. For those who value individual freedom above all, guns have an importance that post-modern people like Armstrong who do not value personal liberty so highly, and whose values are more collectivist, not only cannot really grasp, but recoil from in horror.

A couple of remarks.  The first is that while Armstrong bewails “America’s destructive gun culture,” which he claims causes the “grisly status quo,” he utterly fails to acknowledge that the toll of gun violence today is actually quite low in the precincts where “gun culture” is most deeply rooted. Indeed, the vast bulk of gun deaths in the US occurs miles away–geographically and culturally–from the hollers of the Tug River Valley where Devil Anse once roamed, and other locales where “gun culture” is the norm. This objective fact poses insuperable logical obstacles for Armstrong and his lot, because it flies in the face of his assertion that there is a link between the gun culture in Jacksonian America and the “grisly” toll of gun deaths in the US: Mingo County ain’t Fuller Park or Englewood.  If it’s a culture issue, it’s thug culture, not gun culture.

This is a major reason–arguably the primary reason–why the gun debate in the US is so intractable: “I’m not the one shooting anybody. Why should I give up my guns because of someone else’s criminality or insanity?” And this is at root a deeply philosophical divide that pits people like Armstrong against those he believes to be atavists.  It is a divide between a belief in individual responsibility and accountability vs. a collectivist mindset.

This relates to the second point. I find it deeply ironic that post-Trump the Armstrongs of the world have warned of the impending descent of authoritarianism on America all the while decrying the resurgence of the benighted Jacksonians that still inhabit the less refined corners of America–whom they also largely blame for Trump’s victory. Well, hate to break it to you, Bob, but these people are the most ardent anti-authoritarians in the US. This anti-authoritarianism goes hand-in-hand with the emphasis on the primacy of personal liberty which drives the “gun culture.”

This goes back a long way in history. My branch of the Hatfields were Whiskey Rebels in Washington County, PA, and decamped from there for points west after the U.S. Army crushed the rebellion in 1791. The Whiskey Rebellion was an archetypal battle between the anti-authoritarian and elite elements in American society that echoes in today’s struggle over guns.

What animates the resistance (and yes, this is a real resistance, not the faux virtue signalling Hillary Meets Hollywood “Resistance”) that rallies around the gun issue is an instinctive anti-authoritarianism.  It is a resistance to the the “soft despotism” that de Toqueville presciently perceived at the height of the Jacksonian Era:

Thus, After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.

Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.

By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience. I do not deny, however, that a constitution of this kind appears to me to be infinitely preferable to one which, after having concentrated all the powers of government, should vest them in the hands of an irresponsible person or body of persons. Of all the forms that democratic despotism could assume, the latter would assuredly be the worst.

When the sovereign is elective, or narrowly watched by a legislature which is really elective and independent, the oppression that he exercises over individuals is sometimes greater, but it is always less degrading; because every man, when he is oppressed and disarmed, may still imagine that, while he yields obedience, it is to himself he yields it, and that it is to one of his own inclinations that all the rest give way. In like manner, I can understand that when the sovereign represents the nation and is dependent upon the people, the rights and the power of which every citizen is deprived serve not only the head of the state, but the state itself; and that private persons derive some return from the sacrifice of their independence which they have made to the public.

It’s the better thans who presume that the country will be a better place if they lead and the great unwashed defer to their superior wisdom and virtue vs. those who don’t want to be led by anybody and who think that the presumed leaders are self-impressed asses, and often malign ones at that.

This is why Parkland has been even more polarizing than other mass shootings in the US–it is a stark example of elite failure at every level.  Armstrong notes this at the outset of his piece:

“None of the events in Parkland have taught me to trust others to protect my family. And certainly none of the events in Parkland have built my trust in government.” That is David French, of the National Review, who is in my view the smartest of the American gun rights advocates. French sees America’s last mass shooting — in Parkland, Florida — as born of incompetence and cowardice. The FBI was tipped off and did nothing. Local law enforcement knew the shooter was dangerous and did nothing. The armed officer at the school waited outside, listening to gunshots, as the rampage went on.

So for French, the massacre shows why gun rights are important, not why they should be curtailed. The government cannot be counted on to protect your family. It is up to you.

Armstrong fails utterly to confront the fact of “incompetence and cowardice.” It is undeniable that it occurred. The question is: was it was a fluke or systemic? That matters–but rather than meeting this crucial issue head on, he merely dismisses it in a conclusory fashion by saying he “rejects French’s view.” A rejection based on neither argument nor evidence, and therefore worth nothing.

What it comes down to is that the gun issue is only the most highly charged manifestation of the deeper conflict that de Toqueville identified the year before the Alamo between the supporters of soft despotism (which is often not that soft) and those who “wish to remain free.”  So yes, this is a conflict with deep historical roots.  But that does not mean that the conflict is anything like Armstrong describes it, between primitive atavists and enlightened moderns. Unless, however, you believe that individual liberty is an atavism unfit for modern times.

And if you are one of those people, you should realize–though you probably don’t–that it is precisely that attitude which galvanizes the intense opposition against you on guns.

I’m back.  Unfortunately, the SWP database became corrupted somehow. Probably not intentionally malicious, but who knows? Regardless, it is what it is.

Alas, it looks like everything post-10 January, 2018 is gone from the database, although it is on the Wayback Machine. I’ll try to restore the content from there via copy & paste when time permits.  Fortunately, the 12 years(!) of material that preceded the Lost Posts was recovered and recovered.

Apologies, and thanks for checking back in.

Overall, I have found the Trump administration’s economic policies to be favorable.  The tax bill was pretty good, even though it was worse than the administration’s original proposal.  The chipping away at the encrustation of regulation has been highly beneficial.

But there was always a sword of Damocles hanging by a thread over our heads: protectionism. Heretofore, that sword has remained dangling, but last week the hair broke (perhaps by Trump’s hair-trigger temper) when he announced plans to impose substantial tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.

This is egregiously bad policy, even on its own terms. Like all tariffs, these will impose far greater costs on consumers than they will generate benefits for producers.  Since steel and aluminum are intermediate goods, the first consumers are manufacturers that use the metals.  The cost will be borne in the form of lower output from these firms, lower employment and wages in the consuming industries, and higher prices for the final goods.

These tariffs are a failure on their own terms, and demonstrate Trump’s economic ignorance. Trump wants to bolster American manufacturing: these tariffs will harm US manufacturing overall, even though they benefit relatively small subsectors thereof.   This is because US manufacturing is a big consumer of these materials.  As an example, Trump touts the American energy revolution and promotes American energy exports.  Well, the energy business is a huge consumer of steel in particular, in everything from pipelines to rigs to drill pipe to storage tanks to oil refineries to LNG liquefaction plants.  By helping one shrunken sector of the US economy, Trump is imposing substantial harm on a growing one–and one that he touts, no less.

A common retort to criticisms like mine is that the trade playing field is unfair, and that countries like China in particular advantage domestic producers at the expense of foreigners.  Well, they do that in many sectors, but even though that is inefficient, it redounds to the benefit of other sectors in the US economy: for example, subsidizing aluminum benefits US auto manufacturers, who increasingly utilize aluminum (in part to achieve compliance with self-inflicted regulatory harms, namely CAFE standards).

What is little understood is that a tax on imports is a tax on trade: it reduces both imports and exports.  Similarly, subsidizing exports increases trade–including exports by the country importing the subsidized good.

This is true over the long run: in the short run capital flows adjust as well as trade flows.  For example, Chinese subsidies can lead to an increased US trade deficit (Chinese trade surplus), which means that the Chinese accumulate US dollar claims–pieces of paper (or, more accurately, electronic book entries).  Then one of two things happens.  Either the dollar claims prove worthless, or the Chinese spend the dollars on US goods.  So we either get goods in exchange for worthless pieces of paper (or electronic records), or we export goods later.

If retaliatory measures like Trump’s tariffs could result in some bargain or accommodation that levels the playing field, then perhaps the benefit would exceed the cost (although ironically much of the overall benefit will redound to those who tip the playing field, because they bear the brunt of the cost of doing so). The track record on this is hardly encouraging, however. I predict that the likelihood is that Trump’s actions will not materially reduce imbalances in the trade playing field, and that as a result they will be highly detrimental to the US economy–including the sectors which Trump claims to champion.

When Trump was a candidate, I was highly critical of his views on trade, e.g.:

Perhaps to give him more intellectual credit than he deserves, Trump is a died-in-the-wool mercantilist who believes trade is a zero sum game, and who favors protectionism and beggar-thy-neighbor currency policies. He talks like it is the late-80s, and Japan is still an economic juggernaut that will overwhelm the US, completely overlooking the fact that Japan’s crypto-mercantilist policies gifted it a 25 year long lost decade, and that neo-mercantilist China is on the brink of the same fate. If it is lucky.

and:

What is bizarre is that the sin of “giving our industrial markets to the Japanese” was somewhat dated by 1999, but Trump pounds on that theme today, when it is well past its sell date. Decades past. Just yesterday, in  Greenville, SC, he said something to the effect that “the Japanese are up here [holding his hand over his head] and we are down here [holding his hand by his knee].” Fact: Japanese per capita GDP is $36K, and US per capital GDP is exactly 50 percent higher, at $54K. But facts don’t matter. The image of Japanese domination (now accompanied by the image of Chinese domination) resonates intensely among Jacksonians.

I was hoping that he would not act on these impulses, or that he would be constrained from doing so. No such luck. Impulsive ignorance has won out.

Talleyrand famously said of the Bourbons: “They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” That thought came to mind in reading more about Putin’s speech.  He has obviously not forgotten a single slight, perceived or real, from the west, ever.  But he obviously learned nothing from the demise of the USSR, which was economically ruined attempting to compete in military power with a far more economically vibrant and productive rival–the west generally, and the US in particular. If anything, the economic gap has widened since the Cold War.  Indeed, this is especially the case in most military production: the hollowing out of the Russian military-industrial complex is manifest, and the loss of skilled labor in particular has been severe.  The USSR was unable to compete in an arms race, and Russia is in an even worse position to do so.

Yet Putin is announcing a new arms race.

Perhaps this is why Putin’s speech focused on nuclear weapons.  It is the one area in which Russia is competitive, and may actually have some advantages.

But the enemy (and Putin definitely perceives the US to be an enemy) gets a vote too, and Putin cannot unilaterally limit the locus of competition to nuclear weapons.  The US is likely to respond to a more truculent Russia with some new nuclear weapons (e.g., air-launched cruise missiles), but also by expanding conventional forces, and by innovating in technologies that Russia cannot hope to compete in.

This is a sobering thought though–or if you look at it a little differently, one that might get you to hit the bourbon. If nukes are the only tool in Russia’s kit, the likelihood of use becomes higher.

The FT ran a long profile of Igor Sechin today.

Nothing in the piece should be news to those who have followed my coverage of his escapades over the years. (I still miss the mullet!)

There are some interesting numbers in the piece that do speak volumes.  Such as Rosneft’s market cap–$65 billion. (ExxonMobil–$324b. Shell–$266b.) The number of employees–almost 300,000. (ExxonMobil–73,500.  Shell–92,000.)  The fact that Rosneft paid $55b for TNK BP–and still has a market cap of only $65b.

Rosneft is a Frankenstein’s monster that has been stitched together over the years from stolen body parts.  Igor is therefore a fitting name for its CEO.

The old caricature of the Soviet Union–which like most caricatures merely exaggerated a fundamental reality–was that it was “Upper Volta with missiles.”  In his State of the State address today, Vladimir Putin gave ample proof that the caricature applies to contemporary (I won’t say “modern”) Russia as well.

The most memorable part of Putin’s speech was a growling, defiant boast–complete with animation–that Russia had introduced new nuclear missiles that could not be defeated by missile defenses.  He also brandished new cruise missiles (which seem to breach the INF treaty, despite previous Russian claims to the contrary) and a submersible drone carrying a massive nuclear warhead.

The rest of his speech was boilerplate about promising to halve Russia’s impoverished population (an implicit acknowledgement that it had grown in his most recent term), and raising expenditures on infrastructure and health care (which has also suffered greatly in recent years).  Lost in the rhetoric was the Russia has stagnated economically under his rule.  The country is a caught in a double trap: the middle income trap and the resource economy trap.  Further, Putin has no real prospect of escaping either, let alone both.

The speech reveals, I think, that Putin understands all this.  Frankly, he realizes that the only reason Russia matters now is its nuclear arsenal, and the widespread belief that it is willing to use it.  He further realizes that this reality will only grow in the remainder of his political life, as Russia falls further and further behind economically.  So he brandishes his missiles, and mouths platitudes about economic development.  Upper Volta with missiles–and nuclear sub drones!–indeed.

As such, the speech gives a clear foreshadowing of what is in store for post-re-election. International pugnacity combined with domestic political and economic Potemkin villages. The Putin Hamster Wheel keeps spinning.

It’s pretty clear that the major agricultural trading firms, notably the ABCDs–ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Dreyfus–are going through a rough patch of tight margins and low profits.  One common response in any industry facing these conditions is consolidation, and in fact there is a major potential combination in play: ADM approached Bunge about an acquisition..

I am unsatisfied with most of the explanations given.  A widely cited “reason” is that grain and oilseed prices are low due to bumper crops.  Yes, bumper crops and the resulting low prices can be a negative for producers, but it does not explain hard times in the midstream.  Ag traders do not have a natural flat price exposure. They are both buyers and sellers, and care about margin.

Indeed, ceteris paribus, abundant supplies should be a boon to traders.  More supply means they are handling more volume, which is by itself tends to increase revenue, and more volume means that handling capacity is being utilized more fully, which should contribute to firmer margins, which increases revenues even further.

Greg Meyer and Neil Hume have a long piece in the FT about the potential ADM-Bunge deal. Unfortunately, they advance some implausible reasons for the current conditions in the industry. For example, they say: “At the same time, a series of bumper harvests has weakened agricultural traders’ bargaining power with customers in the food industry.” Again, that’s a flat price story, not a spread/margin story.  And again, all else equal, bumper harvests should lead to greater capacity utilization in storage, logistics, transportation, and processing, which would actually serve to increase traders’ bargaining power because they own assets used to make those transformations.

Here’s how I’d narrow down where to look for more convincing explanations. All else equal, compressed margins arise when capacity utilization is low. In a time of relatively high world supply, lower capacity utilization would be attributable to increases in capacity that have outstripped gains in throughput caused by larger crops.  So where is that increased capacity?

There are some hints of better explanations along these lines in the FT article.  One thing it notes is that farmer-owned storage capacity has increased.  This reduces returns on storage assets.  In particular, when farmers have little on-farm storage they must sell their crops soon after harvest, or pay grain merchants to store it.  If they sell their crops, the merchant can exploit the optionality of choosing when to sell: if they store at a local elevator, they pay for the privilege. Either way, the middleman earns money from storage, either in trading profits (from exploiting the timing option inherent in storage) or in storage fees. If farmers can store on-farm, they don’t have to sell right after harvest, and they can exploit the timing options, and don’t have to pay for storage.  Either way, the increased on-farm storage capacity reduces the demand for, and utilization of, merchant-owned storage. This would adversely impact traders’ margins.

The article also mentions “rivals add[ing] to their crop-handling networks.” This would suggest that competitive entry/expansion by other firms (who?) is contributing to the compressed margins.  This would in turn suggest that ABCD margins in earlier years were abnormally high (which attracts entry), or that the costs of these unnamed “rivals” have gone down, allowing them to add capacity profitably even though margins are thinner.

Or maybe it’s that the margins are still healthy where the capacity expansions are taking place. Along those lines, I suspect that there is a geographic component to this. ADM in particular has its biggest asset footprint in North America. Bunge has a big footprint here too, although it also considerable assets in Brazil.  The growth of South America (relative to North America) as a major soybean and corn exporting region, and Russia as a major wheat exporting region, reduce the derived demand for North American handling capacity (although logistical constraints on Russian exports means that Russian export increases won’t match its production increases, and there are bottlenecks in South America too).

This would suggest that the circumstances of the well-known traders that have more of a North American (or western European) asset base are not representative of the profitability of grain trading overall. If that’s the case, consolidation-induced capacity “rationalization” (and that’s a major reason to merge in a stagnant industry) would occur disproportionately in the US, Canada, and western Europe.  This would also suggest that owners of storage and handling facilities in South America and Russia are doing quite well at the same time that owners of such assets in traditional exporting regions are not doing well.

So I am not satisfied with the conventional explanations for the big ag traders’ malaise during a time of plenty. I conjecture that the traditional players have been most impacted by changes in the spatial pattern of production that has reduced the derived demand to use their assets, which are more heavily concentrated in legacy production regions facing increased competition from increased output in newer regions.

Ironically, I’m too capacity constrained to do more than conjecture. But it’s a natural for my Université de Genève students looking for a thesis topic or course paper topic. Hint, hint. Nudge, nudge.

One of the most remarkable events–non-events, actually–of 2017 was the virtual total lack of any official Russian recognition of the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution.  The dilemma is particularly acute for Vladimir Putin, a proud Chekist–and, of course, the Cheka was the creation of the Revolution, and arguably essential to its survival.

But the Revolution’s legacy–including its anti-religious, anti-nationalist ideology, as well as tens millions of dead and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union–clashes with Putin’s current ideology of autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality 2.0.  Hence the low-key (bordering on no-key) recognition of the events of October, 1917.

Last week Putin attempted to square this circle with a truly Orwellian formulation: Communism was Christianity. No–really:

“Maybe I’ll say something that someone might dislike, but that’s the way I see it,” Putin said in an interview for the documentary Valaam, an excerpt of which was broadcast on Russia 1. “First of all, faith has always accompanied us, becoming stronger every time our country, our people, have been through hard times.

“There were those years of militant atheism when priests were eradicated, churches destroyed, but at the same time a new religion was being created. Communist ideology is very similar to Christianity, in fact: freedom, equality, brotherhood, justice – everything is laid out in the Holy Scripture, it’s all there. And the code of the builder of communism? This is sublimation, it’s just such a primitive excerpt from the Bible, nothing new was invented.”

Look, Lenin was put in a mausoleum. How is this different from the relics of saints for Orthodox Christians and just for Christians? When they say that there’s no such tradition in Christianity, well, how come, go to Athos and take a look, there are relics of the saints there, and we have holy relics here,” Putin concluded.

Somebody should look in said mausoleum to see if Lenin is spinning at about 1000 RPM at the the assertion that his creation and ideology were mere sublimations of primitive Christianity.  Ditto Marx’s grave in London.

Make no doubt that Putin is going all in on Orthodoxy: just note his recent frigid dip to celebrate the Epiphany.

Moreover, Putin is being very selective in his commemorations of Russian history. For instance, largely reviled by the Orthodox, Peter the Great is virtually absent. And now we see that he reinterprets the most epochal–and apocalyptic–event in Russian history, a Revolution that was driven by a hatred and rejection of orthodox, nationalist autocracy, as some sort of historical continuity.

This is all quite amazing. Evidently Putin does not believe that he can attack communism, Bolshevism, and Leninism outright, because they resonate with too many people–particular among his political base. But he is acutely aware of the tension between his current crypto-tsarist ideology and the militantly anti-tsarist ideology that dominated Russia for 75 years.  So in a very Soviet way he completely rewrites history to assert that black is really white.

When Putin says “that’s the way I see it” what he really means is: that’s the way Russians are supposed to see it–get with the program. Who are you going to believe, Putin or your lying eyes?

Not long after finishing my immigration post, I came across this article that cracked me up:

Dutch vegan who applied for a Swiss passport has had her application rejected because the locals found her too annoying

Nancy Holten, 42, moved to Switzerland from the Netherlands when she was eight years old and now has children who are Swiss nationals.

However, when she tried to get a Swiss passport for herself, residents of Gipf-Oberfrick in the canton of Aargau rejected her application.

I guess they can’t kick her out, but they can deprive her of citizenship.  (And “Oberfrick”–heh.)

This is an amusing illustration of a broader Swiss principle: who gets to be Swiss depends on their contribution to Switzerland, and their ability to integrate with those already there.  A more serious illustration comes from a recent change in Swiss citizenship law:

On 20 June 2016, the Swiss Parliament voted on the new Swiss Citizenship Act, which will come into force together with the relevant Ordinance on 1 January 2018. The main aim of the new law is to limit the issuance of Swiss citizenship to well-integrated foreign nationals only. Furthermore, the Citizenship Act also aims to harmonise the residence requirements and implement into a law the authorities’ practice. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Under current law, the basic requirements to obtain Swiss citizenship can be summarised as follows: a. The applicant must have resided a minimum of 12 years in Switzerland (of which at least three years within the five years prior to the application) and a certain amount of time (usually between two to five years) in a specific canton and in a specific commune prior to being able to apply. Shorter periods apply to certain categories of applicants aged between 10 and 20 years for whom the years spent in Switzerland between their 10th and 20th birthdays count double in the calculation of the 12- year period required at the federal level. b. The applicant must prove that he/she is well integrated in Switzerland. As per the current practice of the Swiss authorities, the following requirements usually need to be fulfilled: the applicant must have a clean criminal record, prove that he/she fulfils all financial obligations, in particular with respect to tax payment, has a good reputation, has a good knowledge of a Swiss national language (i.e. French, German or Italian), has a basic knowledge of Swiss geography and history, and knows how the Swiss political system functions. c. Additional requirements may need to be met according to the respective cantonal and/or communal laws.

. . . .

Only applicants holding a C-type permit (permanent residence permit) may apply for Swiss citizenship (currently, holders of B-type residence permits may also apply). The applicant must have resided a total of 10 years in Switzerland (not 12 years as today). The ordinance to the SCA now details the concept of ‘good integration’. According to the ordinance, an applicant is deemed as being well integrated if he/she:

• has good oral and written language skills in one of the national languages;

• respects the public order and security;

• respects the Swiss federal constitution;

• participates in the economic life or undergoes education, i.e. the applicant is employed or attends a school/university;

• ensures that his/her family members are integrated;

• is not a threat to the internal and external security of Switzerland;

• is familiar with Swiss living conditions.

Applicants with a criminal record or who are dependent on Swiss social welfare will most likely be rejected.

Indeed, regarding the last point, the new law precludes citizenship for those who have been on public assistance in any time in the past three years.

Fortunately, it appears that yodeling is not a requirement!

Note that none of these criteria are based on nation of origin.  There will no doubt be a relationship between the likelihood of meeting these criteria, and whether one emigrates from a s***hole, but the law does not discriminate or create quotas on the basis of national origin (which is likely by itself to be a very crude proxy for ability to contribute, and which is part of US law primarily as the result of ethnic politics).

Certain aspects of the Swiss naturalization system are not practical for the US.  In particular, the role of cantonal and communal authorities in authorizing citizenship (as the Annoying Dutch Vegan found out to her chagrin) is a non-starter here.  This conflicts with the US Constitution, and is at odds with the much greater mobility of Americans vs. Swiss.  But the principle of conditioning citizenship on integration, fluency in a national language, non-dependence on public assistance, lack of a criminal record, etc., is certainly possible in the US, and makes sense.  It is certainly a more rational and sober policy than one that revolves around nauseating pap about “dreamers” and the like: whenever a debate centers on agitprop and euphemisms you know it is fundamentally dishonest and manipulative.

You can’t paint the Swiss as mouth-breathing populist, nationalist wackos: if anything, they are a little too control-freakish for me (and most Americans, I’d wager).  Indeed, the Swiss have been very successful at balancing a deep integration in the world economy and international institutions with a pride in their own national traditions and mores, and a desire to preserve them.  They have avoided many of the problems that somewhat similar nations (notably Sweden and the Netherlands) have experienced with their immigration policies. (There’s nothing like Malmo or Gothenburg or Rotterdam in Switzerland.)  The Swiss have struck a reasonable balance between openness to foreigners and national pride, and are not consumed by the neurotic complexes and self-loathing that have paralyzed many Swedes, Dutch, Germans, etc. (and the governments of these nations).

Switzerland therefore represents a plausible example/role model for a reasoned immigration debate in the US. Yet it is almost never mentioned here.

And it’s not just immigration.  The Swiss health care system has much to recommend it–far more than the dysfunctional system that prevails in the US.  The Swiss model would be a great starting place for a transformation of US healthcare.  I’d prefer an even more market-based system, but politics is the art of the practical, and I realize that my ideal is not gonna happen. But the Swiss model meets many of the goals of the left in a much more efficient way than our current system, and certainly dominates monstrosities like the UK or Canadian systems.

It would be impossible–and indeed, highly objectionable–to try to make the US like Switzerland. For myriad reasons. But there are some things we can take from Switzerland, or should at least consider seriously. Not that I’m holding my breath.