Eugenics by moving truck

El Gato Malo just returned to Puerto Rico after four months in the US and has shared observations about how retrograde PR feels.  He has a new piece out this evening, Anatomy of a Dependency Culture, in which he both provides data of which I was unaware as well as makes an argument with which I am familiar in the UK but have not hear made here in the US very much.

EGM first outlines all the depressing and coercive restrictions blindly and unthinkingly imposed on the island.  Then

it has been, frankly, insane and it shows few signs of stopping or even gaining calibration.

but many, many people here rooted for it. they welcomed it. they not only invited this vampire in, but laid out a welcome mat and took iron supplements to be sure their blood tasted good.

 

many have asked: is this some defect in the boriqua culture, some problem specific to local attitudes rooted in history or tradition? it is latin or catholic or native culture?

i think that is the wrong question.

the right question is “how can you render a people so not only submissive to but outright fawning over authority?”

the answer is “adverse selection.”

generations of misrule, anti-freemarket law and legalism, crony capitalism, graft, over-centralization, hideous bureaucratization, failing infrastructure, and dependency culture have stymied puerto rico. this is a TERRIBLE place to run a business unless you are one of the fortunate families granted a set of functional monopolies in perpetuity by law 75.

this has led to massive flight from puerto rico.

population has dropped by about 25% since 1999. the island is now one of those places like ireland where there are more boriqua NOT on puerto rico than on it.

BTW, boriqua is apparently the term used for themselves by Puerto Ricans.

But wow!  A 25% population drop in two decades from out-migration is stunning.

EGM goes on to flood the argument with additional data to demonstrate the natural consequences.  He makes further points:

this coincides with another issue: there has been an unending brain drain.

this winds up amounting to “eugenics by moving truck.”

there need be nothing wrong with any group at start. siphon off the most motivated 2-3% every year for 20 years, and you’re selecting for negative traits.

what remains after this endless exodus is a dependency culture.

An interesting piece.   

It echoes research in Britain over the past few years which has found the same dynamic geographically in reverse.  For 200-300 years, the best and brightest have been leaving Scotland and the northern counties of England for economic opportunity in southeast England.  As with EGM documents in Puerto Rico, there is now a measurable demographic difference between the southeast population and the Scottish and northern England populations in terms of health and IQ and age and income, etc.