Why Is Productivity In US Construction Going Down?

Posted on May 17, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Productivity in house construction should by now have leapt up considerably due to improvements in modular design.

I know there are a lot of retrograde republicans here who sniff at “double-wides” and the like, but as someone who has actually worked on stick-built homes I can say that there’s a lot that could be gained from going modular like the Japanese and Europeans have been for the last couple decades.

As for the losses in productivity, what the hell would one expect when you’re hiring illiterate Mexicans who don’t even know English measurements? the loss of efficiency could only be made up for by drastically lower wages, which are a proven fact in the construction industry.

I know that your typical UMC baby-boomer looks down on anyone who would buy anything but a house crafted by a master Norwegian carpenter (one of my first bosses, BTW), but the fact of the matter is that the rest of us would rather just have a well-designed, energy-efficient house with a yard and reliable plumbing and wiring at a decent price.

That kind of house can be manufactured regionally in a factory and then tuned up on site without the need for an overcompensated contractor with a gang of illegal laborers to do the grunt work and frequently f*** up the measurements leading to massive future expenses.

* Since this increase in construction margins is due to high immigration and union breaking, I’d assume the construction industry will continue to support high immigration levels and anti-union policies.

Remember, business interests tend to donate very generously to our politicians. When our politicians retire, they often get cushy executive jobs with the companies that donated to their campaigns. So I doubt any political leaders are going to want to upset the status quo. If immigration was restricted and construction profit margins declined, the political donations and cushy post-political exec jobs would dry up quickly.

* Let’s say you’re a Congressman/Senator/Governor/President.

You have 2 options.

1. Pursue strict immigration policies that hurt construction industry profit margins. Get no political contributions or post-political exec job.
2. Pursue loose immigration policies that help construction industry profit margins. Get substantial political constructions a well-paid post-political exec job.

Which would you choose?

This isn’t a complicated decision.

Let’s even say you get defeated in a election by an anti-immigration candidate. So what? You can retire from politics and become some type of exec or industry lobbyist. Just look at Congressman Eric Cantor, who was defeated by Brat. He’s now some sort of Wall Street exec (despite having no executive experience).

There is no deterrent.

Politicians have to have fear put into them. They need to understand that if they vote against the public interest, they will be punished. By punished, I don’t mean defeated. As I pointed out above (with Cantor), being defeated is not necessarily a negative outcome for them.
By punished, I mean that our politicians need to understand that there could severe harm to them if they vote the wrong way. Severe harm could include jail time. It could also include more severe punishments for particularly egregious offenders.

Bill Clinton deregulated Wall Street (Glass-Steagal repeal in 1999). Then he (and his wife) went on to make tens of millions in “speaking fees” (kickbacks) from Wall Street firms.

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Advice For Trump

Posted on May 16, 2017 by Luke Ford

A Jew emails me: Trump faces formidable foes. His biggest enemies are the Democrats who do not accept the legitimacy of the election, which is comprised of many of the fringe groups, but plenty of mainstream ones, that make up the Democrat base. He also has a hostile press which would like nothing more than to bring Trump down. This would redeem the press which has in many ways been rendered irrelevant by Trump. But Trump also has his flank exposed because many Republicans, including never Trumpers, traditional interests in the Republican party, supporters of foreign intervention, members of the intelligence community are not only not supporting him but actively working to harm them.

It is a truism to say that Trump’s wounds were self inflicted, but the reality is that what is wounding him isn’t Trump’s gaffes. Nor is it the conflicting stories where Trump often appears to undercut his defenders after they take a stand on his behalf that are harming him. Instead Trump’s problems date back to when he first secured the Republican nomination. After having thoroughly insulted his rivals within the party and alienated many traditional Republican constituencies, while expanding his personal popularity into the white working class and middle class voters, he needed to locate mid and high level managers who would be loyal to him and run the administrative agencies and cabinet positions assuming he won. Perhaps, Trump thought that he wouldn’t win, or that if he won, the functionaries in those positions would shift their loyalty to him instead of running a guerrilla campaign. But in any event he misjudged things. I don’t think he even thought to identify career bureaucrats who he might tap to hold interim positions.

The question now is what can Trump do? The first thing to realize about Trump is that he strongly wants people to like him. In his business career, his show business career and when running for the Presidency, he has been able to find that approbation. When Trump speaks, or when one reads transcripts of interviews, it is clear that Trump can be very charming. Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, calls him a master persuader. I am not sure that is true now, because his message when it goes out is severely filtered by the main stream media. Trump is a flatterer (and like most flatterers, is also susceptible to flattery) and is so far removed from the stereotype of the uptight wasp that he is, that he lards his sentences with over the top words of praise and love. Unfortunately, Trump, although convinced he can win over anyone on a one to one basis, is finding that reporters are friendly to him in interviews and appear to be won over, yet continue to write negative stories. This is incredibly frustrating to him because it is so foreign to his experience.

The keys to Trump’s success going forward are to implement changes that so far he has been unable to do. (1) He must find loyal and competent persons to fill unfilled government positions and replace either political appointees or career bureaucrats hostile to Trump.(2) He must engage in message discipline. This requires a coordinated effort, before speaking, among the press secretary and White House Press office, along with any surrogates Trump may have speak on his behalf, along with any appointed officials, and Trump.

Trump needs his press secretary to gain greater access to Trump’s meetings and policy sessions. Trump needs politically savvy aides with relationships with elected officials. As an example he needs someone who knows the legislators as well as Steve Miller knew Jeff Sessions. Trump is willing to use a charm offensive on legislators, but he needs greater intelligence on them. What made LBJ the master of the Senate (and later when he became President) was his astounding knowledge about what motivated the legislators to whom he applied the Johnson “treatment.” He would mix praise, appeal to patriotism, party or local political interests, he would cajole, threaten, charm, manipulate them because of his longstanding relationship with them. Trump may have this ability when he was dealing with local elected officials to get a project approved, but he needs more of it to get to the congressmen and senators. What Trump should have done, was have a trusted aide go to each of the committee chair and ranking minority member for each committee and subcommittee in the house and senate and ask them and their staffers to explain what the committee does, and how it can operate more efficiently, and get more of its legislation through with the understanding that Trump would help them and that he might call on them for assistance as well.

Trump wanted to be bipartisan but the Democrats have forced him into being one of the most partisan Presidents ever. The key to bipartisan support can only come if Trump understands their needs and wants and can supply some of them. You cannot assume you can find common ground. First you have to see if finding common ground is possible and good legislative relationships creates the foundation for that. Perhaps this outreach would be unsuccessful, but the aides would at least know where the problems lie and how the system works.

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Jewish Brain Surgeon Arrested For Sex Crimes

Posted on May 16, 2017 by Luke Ford

News:

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — A Santa Cruz nurse and neurosurgeon were arrested by the Watsonville Police Department on suspicion of sexually abusing children, including a victim who is less than 10 years old.

James Kohut, 57, was a longtime neurosurgeon in Santa Cruz at Sutter Maternity and Surgery Center, as well as Dominican Hospital.

He was arrested Sunday on suspicion of oral copulation with a minor, and forcing lewd acts on a minor. Kohut was arrested at his house on 4th Avenue in Santa Cruz, and was booked into jail without chance of bail.

…Kohut’s career has a few black eyes. He was disciplined and sanctioned in 2006 by the state medical board for “quality care issues,” according to state records.

One of those “issues” was that Kohut was caught downloading and viewing pornography while at work, according to the state board. He was employed as a neurosurgeon at University Medical Center at the time.

“(Kohut) viewed adult pornographic web sites and downloaded pornography during work hours on UMC computers during the the period of 2002 through Feb. 2003,” the state board wrote.

A second cause for discipline was a botched brain surgery Kohut performed in 2002, according to the board. An x-ray showed that a 36-year-old man had an aneurysm on the left side of his head, and Kohut erroneously attempted to surgically remove the aneurysm on the right side.

Kohut left Palo Alto Medical Foundation last year to take a job with Sparks Health System in Arkansas. An open house meet-and-greet with Kohut at Sparks Orthopedic and Spine Unit was scheduled for June 9.

A press release was issued by Sparks Health System spokeswoman Alicia Agent on May 10 — just four days before he was arrested in Santa Cruz — announcing Kohut’s arrival.

“We are very excited to welcome Dr. Kohut and his wife Karen to Sparks. As many of you know, he will provide a much needed service to this area. As a neurosurgeon, Dr. Kohut provides treatment for patients suffering from neck, back, arm or sciatic nerve pain,” Agent wrote.

“I had the pleasure of interviewing our new neurosurgeon a couple weeks ago and he left me with some great advice: ‘Always take the dreams of children seriously, because sometimes they come true,'” Agent wrote.

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Estimating IQ with a Brain Scan

Posted on May 15, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* I’m having a hard time penetrating the science jargon, but let me take a guess at what it means. Synaptic networks comprising the human brain make up a fractal pattern. The more space filling that pattern, the smarter you are. In other words, tissue density of the brain is important to IQ just as brain size is important.

Think of your brain as a suitcase you’ve packed for trip. If the shirts are carefully rolled and the pants neatly folded, you’re going to get more things into your suitcase. It’s also going to be easier to find things, which is why highly intelligent people show lower levels of cortical activity to perform any given task.

* Exactly. They use density of connections rather than tissue density but the idea is as you wrote. There have been other MRI studies on Alzheimer’s detection where they literally use the fractal dimension as the estimate of brain health. As people lose the connections the dimension decreases.

In this study, the estimate of 40% IQ variance “explained” by the brain scans is a lower bound. They used a simple model where every additional connection per node in the network gives the same gain in IQ. More realistic models would be used if IQ modeling were the goal. Even with basic methods of using what they had measured, not only did they hit 40%, but their predictions went beyond the total IQ test score to capture some information from the subtests, such as performance on vocabulary vs matrix questions (the visual logic puzzles).

* I’m in the field, and studies like that, involving scans of multiple cohorts of humans and monkeys, behavioral and genetic tests, diffusion tractography etc. are an enormous undertaking. You have to include folks who made substantial contribution to the study as authors, and there is a lot of them in a multi-center study like this. I should say that the senior authors are some of the top-notch people in neuroscience from top imaging centers in the world, and will not be easily shouted down by the SJW crowd.

* Steve, as a longtime reader, I really enjoyed this post which I think cuts to the core of much of your writing: equality is nonsense because people are different.

I wanted to point out why this seems paradoxical to most people. They are accustomed to egalitarian systems where facts are recognized on the basis of consensus, or “most people” thinking they are true.

Once we step outside of the brain-damaged world of egalitarian thinking, it becomes clear that facts are only recognized by those at the top of the IQ spectrum, and only those who are sincere and honest look for those facts.

While I detest democracy in all forms — even a group of people choosing what is for lunch — it would be interesting to imagine future voting booths with brain scans that only allowed entrance for those with high IQ, sincerity and honesty…

* By the way, since brain imaging also provides the full geometry of the skull, science is now in a position to characterize what information is and is not available through phrenology. And to establish how much is predictable from external physical appearance. As Steve likes to say, the glass is partly empty and partly full. The delusional official absolutism of the past 70 years is that it’s discredited pseudoscience, but imaging studies are starting to challenge that.

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Blacks more likely than whites to attribute black problems to genetics

Posted on May 15, 2017 by Luke Ford

From Audacious Epigone:

In his April Diary, the Derb brought up posts from the Inductivist (still relatively active here) and the Occidentalist concerning changes over time in the self-reported perceptions of why “on the average blacks have worse jobs, income, and housing than whites do”.

The response “less in-born ability to learn” has steadily declined from the 1970s through to the present, even as psychometric evidence and increasingly now genetic evidence for that explanation has accumulated over the same period of time.

Part of the change must be attributable to political correctness–“less in-born ability” makes normies squirm more than a value-neutral explanation like “genetic differences” would–but exactly how much is conjecture.

Reminiscing on my fellow GSS data miners, I took a look at the variable I don’t recall having analyzed much in the past…

One of Thomas Sowell’s major insights in Black Rednecks and White Liberals–that on many things black opinions and behaviors are closer to those of white conservatives than of white liberals–is relevant here.

On the other end of the spectrum, Jews–all Jews, not just liberal Jews–are even more prone to blank slate thinking than white liberals are.

Comments:

* First, Asians and Hispanics are not as heavily assimilated to the modern American way of being a two-faced pansy when it comes to racial issues. Second, there appears to be a correlation between cultural elitism and being full of BS.

On Steve’s three C benchmark (competence, creativity, and charisma), the highest scoring groups (Jews and whites) are big cucks on racial issues. High black ratings on creativity and charisma allow them to be well-represented among celebrities. Corporate/cultural elites seem to say “why not highly promote black figureheads as reparations on behalf of blacks since people find them entertaining anyway”. But most blacks still remain at a pretty low level, power-wise, so they aren’t as PC.

Asians are highly competent but lack either the temperament or perhaps verbal skills to climb to elite status in many sectors of America. Then again, as we see with college admissions, white/Jewish elites may find Asians to be both a status threat as well as still not fully American enough to be worthy of the sympathy extended to blacks and Indians. So there could be some merit to the idea that just as white elites seem to lift certain groups up, they may also be pushing others down. Culturally, whites/Jews/blacks eligible for elite status are expected to be as interested in liberal agitation as they are in anything else. Asians are more resistant to that, preferring instead to be stolid laborers focused on career and family rather than being distracted by getting too worked up over social/political issues. There’s also the fact that competent Asians to some degree can disdain Left-wing paternalism, while mediocre NAMs embrace excuses and hand-outs.

Hispanics score the worst collective three C score, though overall they are less toxic to society than sociopathic blacks. Nobody really believes they enrich anything, even with gregarious blacks people can fool themselves into hoping that blacks “get over” awful ghetto culture so we can have the best of both worlds: entertaining blacks, and a vast reduction in crime, disorder, and welfare use.

A greater Asian population has it’s drawbacks, and the black population as yet hasn’t really declined. Though we’ve seen some gentrified areas (which just caused blacks to move to another city anyway, not really hurting their overall numbers), and Hispanic gangbangers pushing blacks out of some areas out West, it’s hard to really foresee a time when blacks lose enough turf to diminish their numbers and thus their effects. Which is a shame because they do so much damage.

Perhaps, as whites lose status among the Dems due to Gen X/Millennial non-whites displacing white Boomers, we’re really then going to see war break out between the Dems. As much talks as there is about the Dems uniting via hatred of whites, the irony is that it is precisely the homogeneity of the current and recent past Dem leadership (Silent and Boomer whites and blacks) that’s allowed them to have any semblance of camaraderie and consensus. Black and white Dems born before ’65 mostly agree on most issues. The much greater cultural and ethnic diversity seen among X-ers and Millennials, raised on MTV, video games, and YouTube as opposed to the sweeping group oriented generational social movements and straightforward culture of older generations, is going to bear some bitter fruit for liberals. They’re going to find out that the hedonistic and multi-cultural approach they’ve favored for 50 years produces quarreling and sometimes petty/cynical factions. Such as demanding that True Dems don’t oppose abortion.

* Per Steve Sailer, the Sixties last from about 1964-1975, and were a period of political/social unrest considerable drug use, promiscuity, crime (for the first time in documented Western history, hundreds of serial killers were know to be operating at the same time), and relative affluence for many. These aren’t contrived or corporate things. Neither was the Roaring Twenties. Society periodically goes through different phases. Every cultural decade is unique and memorable in some respects. I don’t see much point in denying it, even if some feel these things being over-rated or exploited.

For example:
– the Fifties, 1946-1963 (peace, prosperity, progress)
– the Sixties, as noted above
-the Seventies, 1976-1981 (Bicentennial, the Carter admin disaster, cynicism)
– the Eighties, 1982-1991 (Just Say No, AIDS, Soviets crumble)
– the Nineties, 1992-2001 (End of History, grunge/gangsta rap, greater push for neo-liberalism and PC/mutli-culturalism)

COMMENTS AT STEVE SAILER:

* Spend anytime around blacks, Asians and Hispanics and you quickly learn they are less romantic about the human condition than the honky. Blacks are quite blunt about it as are Asians. Hispanics seem to know you’re not supposed to notice, but they can’t figure out why so they notice anyway.

* I own a lot of autobiographies by rich and famous people. The only one that attributes the lion’s share of credit to his genes is Wilt Chamberlain’s.

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