Multiculturalism and pandering to the wrong ideas.

Multiculturalism may well cause crime and problems with racism and nationalism – but I certainly don’t see that as failure. Indeed, I’ve long accepted that there are plenty of bad people out there with horrible backward views and opinions – to me success is not measured in how well we placate these people, but by how little we pander to them politically.

Multiculturalism does not diminish a state – it may do this to the concept of ‘nation’ – and I support it for that very reason. To found a state on the principles that all people share a common identity is ridiculous – the state should not pander to such things and should be independent of identity politics, catering to those who need its services. It should not accept one culture as the “legitimate” culture of the state in the way that Nationalism attempts to.

I accept that some parts of the UK are overcrowded. The vast majority are not, and the problem there is one of economic policy, centralising everything around a small number of areas, rather than a problem with population itself.  The problem being however, that some publications prefer herding minorities into poverty-stricken ghettoes then whinging about them – a lot.

As  the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), says in their summary:

“Parts of the UK have become so dependent on public spending that it can crowd out private enterprise in these regions and countries. It is partly a chicken and egg situation – public spending in these regions is high because they are doing less well economically, but on the other hand a high public spending share can make a revival of the private sector difficult to achieve. And the latest data suggests that this problem is getting worse.”

The presence of immigrants in this country has the chance to deeply enrich us, but for the reason that many on the left state, that being their multicultural fallacy.

“Immigrants improve our economy. Immigrants are of a different culture. This means multiculturalism has contributed to improving our economy.” Nonsense. The market is blind. Immigrants contribute to the economy because they bring extra manpower and skills. If, hypothetically, all the immigrants in Britain at presently had arrived already being culturally and racially British there would not have been a difference in economic performance. The expansion of two factors of production, Enterprise and Labour, is due to immigration, but it’s not due to the fact immigrants have different cultures.

What we should be doing however, for those like myself who would encourage immigration is push for economic reform so that we can help the most deprived areas that have been pushed over the edge by high public spending and fear of immigration. If an Indian businessman moves here,  is only beneficial for us: he is not taking anyone’s job, on the contrary he is providing employment for British workers, he is pumping money into the economy, he’s being taxed, and he’s not using public services. Now, that is totally different to a boatload of poor Africans who have no money, no qualifications and need somewhere to be housed, something to be fed with, somewhere for their children to be educated and a doctor to look after them, but the reason that the impact of that immigration affect the poor are the terrible economic policies carried out by this government.

Although I’m not a huge fan of her more generally, Ayn Rand has a great essay on the relationship between racism and collectivism, I guess she wasn’t that much of a total moo as I thought.