Immigration and the Fall of France

Statist statisticians and demagogic demographers raise the alarm about the aging and declining population of France. What women will average the necessary 2.1 children to renew the population? Who will pay for future pensions? Who will constitute the workforce that will ensure continued economic growth? And said statists to advocate immigration as the solution: a source of new people to "keep the Nation growing". Another case of intellectual fraud based on macroeconomic aggregates.

Immigration is a signal. It shows what are the marginal incentives in the destination country. When Governments encourage production and discourage parasitism, immigrants will be mainly producers -- the parasites amongst them will migrate somewhere else, or after suffering from their own failure as parasites, will seize an opportunity to grow as producers. When Governments encourage parasitism and discourage production, immigrants will be mainly parasites -- the productive amongst them will migrate somewhere else, or after being sufficiently oppressed will learn the tricks and become parasites. Migrants are adaptable to change -- that's why they migrated; and that's why they will soon adapt to whatever that society to which they migrated has to offer to them. In a country that promotes wealth creation, why waste your life as a no good tramp when you can live comfortably even with a simple job? In a country that promotes wealth destruction, why spend hours at a dead end job when you can earn more as an institutional parasite and earn some extra money on the black market?

If France has bad immigration, that breeds parasitism, violence, unemployment, etc., it's because France in general fosters parasitism, violence and unemployment. The solutions are not to be found in limiting or selecting immigration. They are to be found in modifying what France fosters. A country that fosters such evil, even without immigration, is on the path to collapse anyway. Immigration is not its main problem -- it is only the messenger that reveals the deeper problem. And oppressive measures against migrants will only increase the parasitism and violence that are this deeper problem of which immigration is only a revelator. Immigration per se is never the problem -- the problem will always be incentives toward production or parasitism, i.e. individual property vs political power.

When a country goes bad, this means its statist institutions are destroying the networks that constitute civil society. If women don't want to bear children, it means they think society is not providing a good context for child rearing. Short of raping women into bearing children nonetheless, nothing can make them have children until society improves. Certainly, you can import foreign women to bear children, because they don't care about the evil of said society, because they come from worse countries where an even worse evil reigns, because they either reject the society anyway or embrace its evil as an improvement. But this will only make it worse for the people previously in that society, by disintegrating the society further and spreading more evil. The solution cannot be immigration. The solution needs be removing the oppression that makes people unhappy.

Similarly, if the pension system is such that workers do not each save enough to pay for their own retirement, then the pension system is but a pyramid scheme, and an increase in the number of subscribers can only increase the destruction, and not revert it. The system goes slowly but surely towards its ultimate collapse. The same goes for a public health system, for a public job insurance system, or any kind of compulsory system based on "collective solidarity", i.e. on compulsion and irresponsibility, where people do not individually pay for themselves and cannot voluntary choose with whom to share or not share what risks. The solution cannot be immigration. The solution needs be removing the compulsion and irresponsibility that makes the system destructive rather than creative. Immigration in a creative system makes for more creation. Immigration in a destructive system makes for more destruction. Immigration will not turn a destructive system into a creative one, nor will it turn a creative system into a destructive one. It will just reveal the nature of the system, at its margin.

Will immigration and breeding of muslim central asian populations save Russia from its dwindling population? No, it will only come to replace the failed Russian population with an invasion by barbarians from even worse failed societies. To save Russia, you'll have to free it from the grip of its KGB rulers. Something Putin cannot do, because he is the problem to begin with.

Will immigration from muslim North Africa and black Africa save France from its dwindling population? No, it will only come to replace the failed French population with an invasion by barbarians from even worse failed societies. To save France, you'll have to free it from the grip of its communist Establishment. Something the State cannot do, because it is the problem to begin with.

And so we live in interesting times, because established States will not stop their destructive behavior until they are overthrown by their subjects; and this overthrow itself won't happen until these people are scared by the collapse into complete barbarianism of at least one major nation. And Zimbabwe is not a major nation, neither is Venezuela or Bolivia. Even Russia's collapse will be seen only as a relapse into its "natural" state of slavish authoritarianism. As if the "natural" state of man had ever, anywhere, been anything but abject poverty! Wealth, not poverty, is what requires an explanation. No, it will take the collapse of a G7 country before other countries might (or then again might not) do something about it. And, guess what, France is the one country where the mold has completely eaten the foundations of civilization.

If you think of the State as representing the interests of the Nation, immigration as a solution of course seems absurd: it might positively affect short term statistics but by making the trouble bigger in the long run. Neither the interests of the people in place, nor any aggregate measure based on these interests is to improve through such policies. But if you understand the State as a parasitic institution feeding off the Nation, then it makes perfect sense. State tries to keep expanding its tax base; it is used to draining its victims more than they can sustain, and since it isn't willing to sacrifice its own consumption, it has to find both new victims (to expand its tax base) and new allies in parasitism (to maintain its oppression). Of course, this itself isn't a sustainable strategy; the existing producers will get drained out, and the old parasites will have to share their booty with new parasites, soon cancelling any benefits from the expanded tax base. However, since it is based on the lack of respect for property rights, the State doesn't care for any sustenance beyond the reign of its current members. "Après moi le déluge" is a typical statist point of view ("after me the Deluge", i.e. no matter how dreadful the consequences as long as they unfold after my death). And thus any short-term expedient to preserve State parasitism is valid for the current generation of State parasites, those who make decisions.

France will fall, that is certain, as far as I can tell. It is too late to save it, though you may save yourself by running away. However it is not enough to run away, for if you don't help prepare their reaction now, other countries will fall in turn. Now is the time to do something to preserve civilization: teach its principles where they can still be taught.