The Game Theory Of Immigration

Imagine a situation – let’s call it 1970s Sweden – where 99% of the population are Swedish. In such a homogenous society, there is a high level of genetic relatedness. Even people who are not direct family will have a common ancestor a few dozen generations back. Any two Swedes from the same city have an excellent chance of having common family, even if through marriage.

In such an environment, the nation is like an extended family. Any two randomly-chosen Swedes will be some kind of cousin, even if distant. Going back 25 generations – some 500-600 years – means a person will have tens of millions of ancestors. In a country of ten million such as Sweden, that means multiple common ancestors.

Imagine an altruistic action that cost a Swedish person, but which benefitted their society. Putting a shopping trolley away, picking up rubbish, volunteering for community work, donating to charity, choking down rage when someone offends them.

Lets say this person’s pro-social action cost them 100 units of misery, but provided two units of joy to 100 people in their community. If 99 out of 100 members of their community are related to them in some way, that means that 198 units of joy were created for that person’s kin. If everyone in the community contributed in such a manner, then even with a few freeriders it would be possible to have a very high standard of living.

Now imagine a situation – let’s call it 2020s America – where some 50% of the population are of one nation, related by flesh and blood, and where some 50% of the population are from other nations. In such a heterogenous society, flesh and blood relations are not the norm. It’s more common for people to live in neighbourhoods with others who don’t share recent common ancestors.

In an environment like this, society is not like an extended family. Half of the people one meets will be complete strangers – friendly? hostile? no-one has any idea. Any two randomly-chosen Americans have a 50% chance of being part of the same nation, and a 50% chance of being as distant as any two randomly-chosen Earthlings.

Lets say, as in Sweden, that a person’s pro-social action cost them 100 units of misery, but provided two units of joy to 100 people in their community. Because only 50% of the community are kin, that means 100 units of joy were created for the American’s kin from that action. It’s an even equation, and we would expect, therefore, the average American to be somewhat indifferent about such pro-social actions. And they are. This is the main reason why American infrastructure is less well maintained than Swedish.

Now imagine an immigrant whose kin makes up 1% of the local population. It doesn’t matter which country they live in, just as long as their kin are only 1% of the population, and the other 99% are mere strangers.

This person’s pro-social action also costs them 100 units of misery and provides two units of joy to 100 people in the community, just like it does for everyone else. But there’s a difference for the immigrant. Only 1% of the community belong to the immigrant’s kin. So the pro-social action – which costs 100 units of misery just as for anyone else – only provides two units of joy to the immigrant’s kin.

Why not, then, restrict pro-social actions solely to one’s nearest kin?

This is the question that many immigrants end up asking themselves – and the more diverse a society becomes, the more others ask it as well. The inevitable end result is a low trust, dog-eat-dog society.

Imagine now, an action that cost only ten units of misery but produced two units of joy to 100 people in the community. This wouldn’t be a major volunteer effort: it would be more like putting one’s shopping trolley away or putting one’s litter in the bin. Those basic civil behaviours that many Westerners consider normal if they’ve never been to the Third World.

The Swede and the American would both do it without thinking. The payoff for both is obvious. But the logic for the immigrant is different. Ten units of misery might not be much, but 99% of the benefit from making the effort will go to strangers. Only two units of joy will be received by the immigrant’s kin. So it’s still not worth taking the action.

One can see, therefore, that even minor acts of civil respect are no longer performed once the surrounding population is sufficiently different.

These potential actions constitute a basic Prisoner’s Dilemma. Do I cooperate or defect? Co-operating here means to spend time or energy on upkeeping or improving society. Defecting is spending time and energy on one’s closest kin or oneself only.

We can see from basic evolutionary psychology and game theory that people are much more likely to cooperate if doing so would benefit their kin. They know that their kin are much more likely to cooperate in return. This is the basis of altruism. But there’s a flipside: if not enough of one’s kin would benefit from an action being taken, one doesn’t take it.

It’s not as simple as this, of course. People in reality don’t make such hard distinctions between kin and non-kin as in this thought experiment. But however you figure it, there are thresholds of diversity that, once passed, dissuade people from taking various pro-social actions. If the energy from a pro-social action does not help one’s kin but instead just dissipates into the wider world, then why bother? Many people reason this way, and it’s entirely natural.

It’s often asked by social commentators why people don’t contribute anymore. The answer is blackpilling: society has become so diverse that it no longer makes sense to. In diverse societies, people tend to “hunker down”, as described by Robert Putnam in his lecture E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century. Putnam summarises the findings of social psychology research into diversity with “The more ethnically diverse the people we live around, the less we trust them.”

In more specific terms, consider the above logic in terms of support for taxation.

A Swede in 1970 might pay 100,000 Swedish krona in taxes, and not complain, reasoning that his kin will get 99,000 krona in value from it. Even if he assumes that there are no economies of scale from government spending, and that taxation has a redistributionary purpose only, enough of his kin benefit from the redistribution that he can easily reason society is made better thereby.

An American in 2025, by contrast, might pay the equivalent of 100,000 Swedish krona in taxes, and complain heavily, reasoning that his kin will only get 50,000 krona in value. “I can spend my own money better than the Government can,” is a common refrain in America, for this reason. The tax money one pays mostly goes to someone else’s kin. Any economies of scale earned mostly go to someone else.

An immigrant to either society in 2025 might reason that his 100,000 krona only pays back 2,000 krona in value to his kin. Might as well not even bother working if this is the case. Especially if the tax money that pays your welfare is paid by non-kin. Why would anyone feel guilty about being on welfare, if it’s non-kin who have to pay for it?

All this explains why the more diverse a country is, the less taxes people pay. Countries like Sweden, where taxes mostly go to help the kin of the taxpayer, vote for higher taxes than countries like America. Immigrants, for their part, vote for low taxes if a net tax payer and for high taxes if a net tax receiver.

All this also explains the voting patterns of the various American demographics. Highly white, high-trust states like in New England vote for high taxes, just like highly white, high-trust Sweden. White people in multicultural areas like Los Angeles, Houston and Atlanta vote for right-wing parties and for low taxes. Blacks and Hispanics vote for high taxes and more welfare; Asians and Indians vote for low taxes and less welfare. These patterns are to be expected given the game theory of immigration.

As a final thought experiment, flip misery and joy around and think about crimes.

A Swede will be highly disinclined to commit a crime against a random member of his community, because they are probably related. Although many crimes, in practice, are committed against kin, this is almost entirely a function of the proximity effect. In terms of inclination to commit a crime, the vast majority of people are more inclined to attack non-kin, which is the main reason Swedes commit so few crimes.

An American who lives in a community that is 50% kin can be predicted to be only moderately disinclined to crime. Indeed, crime rates are much higher in America than in Sweden. Revealingly, white Americans in 95% white American communities commit crime at a similar rate to white Europeans in 95% white European communities. It’s a different story in the urban jungles of the big cities. There it’s possible to find whites much more violence-prone than the average Swede.

An immigrant who lives in a community that is only 1% kin has very little reason to care about crime. If 99% of people are non-kin, then crime and its consequences are someone else’s problem. Thus you might as well do crime if you feel like it. This is principally the main reason why certain immigrant groups commit such tremendous rates of violent and sexual crimes against the locals. As can be seen in the table above, Kuwaitis commit an incredible amount of violent crimes in Denmark, yet Kuwait itself is not particularly dangerous.

In summary, investigating the game theory of immigration makes it clear that as a society becomes more diverse, ever-more marginal pro-social actions get taken less often, and that society deteriorates. A study in The Quarterly Journal of Economics found that “Trustworthiness declines when partners are of different races or nationalities”. In other words, diversity destroys trust. Because the solidarity inspired by trust is the bedrock of society, it’s no exaggeration to say that diversity destroys society itself.

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The First Acceptance Of Alternative Centrism

The First Acceptance of alternative centrism is the acceptance that the Establishment Right is correct when they speak of the importance of order.

Both forms of the right tend to take a more historical perspective than the left. As such, the right generally understands better than the left that the initial state of the human being is one of chaos. Early man had to contend not with rival kingdoms but with the predations of Nature, in particular the elements and wild animals.

This chaos was deadly. Nature seemed to will the death and dissolution of the bodies of early men. The first order, then, was imposed in a simple effort to survive.

At some point, an intelligent warrior among the early men would have figured out something profound: he was more likely to win battles if he had other men by his side. Through charm and threat, this intelligent early warrior would have marshalled other males in his tribe to form a war band, much like the ones seen today in places like the Amazon Basin or Papua New Guinea. The first war band whose leader commanded two dozen or so males would have quickly dominated the males of other tribes. The organisational structure of this war band would have spread, like a technology. Sooner or later various tribes would have united into a clan.

Thus began a process by which social order continued to increase – with temporary and localised setbacks – until it developed into the political world of today.

Perhaps the greatest imposition of order in human history was the establishment of law. The first full-scale lawgiving enterprise was that of Hammurabi of Babylonia, who gave us the Code of Hammurabi. The Code of Hammurabi was responsible for the order of Babylonian society – order sufficient to develop into a great empire.

Law and order are in many cases synonymous; one tends to follow the other. The Establishment Right represents the powers that imposed the initial order that created civilisation. In this sense it manifests as the warrior-king or the kshatriya class. In a modern context, the Establishment Right represents The Man, the Big Daddy who imposes order upon society.

A state of Nature is similar to a state of chaos in many respects – the most obvious being the absence of human civilisation. The Establishment Right exhorts us to accept order on the basis that, without it, there is nothing. And they’re right in the sense that, without order, humankind falls prey to the elements and to wild animals again.

Characteristic of the Establishment Right mindset is that order is to be imposed whether people like it or not. It’s too important to worry about whether others agree. The government has the right to run over people who resist the order. The Establishment Right values hierarchy, and therefore does not value consensus. This is why they also value law enforcement. The sort of person who has a “Back the Blue” bumper sticker is very likely a supporter of the Establishment Right.

This is why it’s usually members of the Establishment Right who have the least sympathy for people arrested for victimless crimes. Because order is its own good, people are obliged to obey unjust laws. This corresponds closely to the ‘Law and Order Morality’ that Lawrence Kohlberg considered to be the fourth stage in his six-stage model of moral development. This is also why it’s the Establishment Right who most strongly supports conscription.

This is also why the Establishment Right supports inheritance rights the hardest. The most orderly way to advance through the generations is for each man to inherit his father’s position. Any other sons can go into the military or the clergy. This was basically the feudal model of medieval Europe, a time that many in the Establishment Right look back upon fondly.

Related to all this, the Establishment Right likes to support any aspect of the status quo that maintains order, even if there are obvious flaws with that aspect, and even if that aspect causes immense harm to many. For example, the Establishment Right is the biggest supporter of Christianity in the West. They are also the strongest proponents of the divine right of kings.

The imperative to uphold order is why the armies of the world shoot deserters. If people are allowed to desert, order is lost, and when order is lost so is the battle. Part of the First Acceptance is accepting that the Establishment Right is correct when it says we need to shoot deserters. In fact, many unpleasant things have to be done to maintain social order.

Aristotle wrote in Politics that the purpose of politics was happiness, and that this was mostly achieved by justice. Justice, in turn, is mostly achieved by a well-ordered polis. This (like Aristotle in general) is an argument that the Establishment Right agrees with. Order is understood to be the basis of justice, and therefore of happiness. The alternative centrist is happy to accept that, without order, nothing political is possible.

The basis of the First Acceptance, then, is accepting that the imposition of order makes everything else in society possible. All the wealth and culture that exists is dependent entirely on the initial imposition of order by the first warrior-kings, and the maintenance of that order. Should that order ever be fully lost, so too would society be lost. Order is the great defensive line ensuring human survival against Nature.

To a major extent, order is imposed by fear. There’s a very strong correlation between suffering intense feelings of helplessness and trauma in childhood and growing up to become a control freak. By the same token, its often fear that creates the will to impose order. This is why populations that become afraid often react by putting the Establishment Right back in power.

The dark side of this fear-based will to impose order is, as mentioned above, control freakery. There is an element of the Establishment Right that will go into hysteria if anything changes at all, no matter how minor, believing this to be the first step on the slippery slope to chaos. This element has aspects of childishness and autism to it. The displeasure it causes is the basis of the First Rejection.

There are many historical examples of fear leading to too much order, causing unhappiness: the Inquisition, the War on Drugs, the Satanic Panic and burqas are just some. When this happens, it leads naturally to the First Rejection of Alternative Centrism.

This chapter is from The Alternative Centrist Manifesto, the book that offers the answers to the political problems of the West.

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The Basic Logic Of Alternative Centrism

The basic logic of alternative centrism is that all other political positions have failed, but that they were tried for logical reasons, and that if those reasons are understood a composite political philosophy can be created that preserves the good aspects of all the previous positions, while avoiding the bad aspects.

The first part of alternative centrism is alternative. This means alternative to The Establishment: in this context the globalist political establishment that has ruled the world since 1945. According to this view, the mainstream left and right parties are just wings of one Establishment that co-operates with itself while creating the illusion of competing.

The reason why the Establishment is opposed is simply because it has failed. The standard of living inherited by the younger generations today is far, far lower than that enjoyed by the Boomers. As such, the younger generations feel no need to be grateful for the status quo. To the contrary – they seek to dismantle it. Sometimes this means to reduce the Establishment to zero; sometimes this means to reverse what the Establishment has done to the people. In either case it means seeking an alternative to how things are usually done.

The second part of alternative centrism is centrism. This means centrist in comparison to the left and the right.

This centrism is – and this must be understood – an alternative centrism, not an establishment centrism. In other words, it’s not an insipid compromise between two weak and irrational positions. The alternative centrist is happy to have left-wing attitudes more extreme than the leftists, or right-wing attitudes more extreme than the rightists. The most important thing is not whether an attitude is consistent with a position on a wing, but whether it is consistent with reason and with the logic of the situation at hand.

A person is an alternative centrist, then, if they can answer Yes to two questions: Do you think the political establishment has failed and needs to be replaced? Do you think the alternative left and alternative right are both dangerous extremists?

The existing political establishment is understood to be comprised of the winners of World War Two, i.e. mostly capitalists and communists. This means that the political establishment is understood to consist of right-wing elements and left-wing elements in roughly equal measure. A person cannot be an alternative centrist if their struggle is against one of rightism or leftism exclusively, or even predominately. It has to be appreciated that both sides contain evil. Alternative centrism embodies Solzhenitsyn when he wrote “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.”

The alternative centrist understanding of history is elaborated upon in other chapters. Here, it’s enough to say that the alternative centrist considers modern political history to have tried five political positions, all of which have failed: establishment right, establishment left, establishment centre, alternative right and alternative left. However, these positions have not been tried and failed because they were completely false, or because their proponents were stupid and evil.

Alternative centrism holds that each of the previous five positions has an internal logic suited for specific circumstances. The error lies in assuming that this logic applies to all circumstances.

The basic logic of alternative centrism is that one can apply the logic of any of the previous five positions, in whole or in part, in combination or individually, if the specific circumstances permit. Therefore, the alternative centrist seeks to understand the motivations, intentions and aspirations of those who promulgate the previous five positions. Knowing this, they can fluidly switch mindset to whatever is appropriate at the time.

Much of the rest of the first part of this book, then, examines the other five political positions from an alternative centrist point of view. This means from a point of view that sees both the strengths and the weaknesses of all five positions, and the psychology of the supporters of each of those positions.

The second part of this book examines the various policy areas that are influenced by political position, and the alternative centrist view on each of these. In principle, the details of every policy area vary depending on the underlying political position taken. As such, this second part of the book covers a wide range of topics.

The third part of the book deals with the realpolitik of alternative centrism, in particular who constitutes the ingroup and who the outgroup, and how to deal with both. This part explains that alternative centrism is necessarily a revolutionary libertarian nationalist movement, by virtue of its being anti-establishment, the establishment being a status-quo-supporting authoritarian globalist movement.

The ultimate aim of this book is to elucidate a political philosophy fit for the 21st Century and beyond. The belief is that alternative centrism can not only meet the political desires of the vast majority of the population, but also provide a methodology for managing society without the volatility of the previous five positions.

The approach detailed above ought to lead to order, freedom, peace, truth and justice and avoid stagnation, chaos, degeneracy, cruelty and stupidity more effectively than any of the five previous positions could ever hope to do.

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VJMP Predicts 2025!

Another calendar year ends; it’s time for VJM Publishing to predict the next one. Our predictions for last year went reasonably well – maybe we can do better?

It’s easy to predict that the world, especially the Western World, keeps going down the toilet. This is hardly a prediction and more of an extrapolation of trends that we’re all familiar with. Thus, this article will make some more specific predictions.

Most specifically, these predictions suggest that the biggest changes in 2025 will be inside people’s minds more than outside in the world.

VJMP predicts a massive increase in the use of alternatives to alcohol in 2025. This has already been hinted at with the ‘California Sober‘ phenomenon. At least some major Hollywood or other celebrities will come out and say they have given up alcohol for cannabis. Alcohol will come to be seen as trashy by many, especially young people.

Alternatives to pharmaceuticals will generally become popular, following from increasing awareness of the side-effects of antidepressants and antipsychotics. Many will realise that, against received wisdom, cannabis is actually good for most mental illnesses, especially when taken in the form of CBD (cannabidiol) oil.

We can also predict a massive decrease in support for Establishment parties in the West. So much so that the Establishment takes measures to crack down on free speech. Specifically, we predict that some major European countries (probably Britain) will ban X and other free-speech platforms, rather than continue to face criticisms.

Related to this, we predict mass demonstrations against the Establishment in 2025. At least one of these demonstrations will spiral out of control and lead to government crackdowns. Rioting will paralyse some major cities in America and Europe for days.

In general, politics will return to the streets. The tendency since the Howard Dean primary campaign of 2004 has been for ever more online politics. But, in recent years, online spaces have been censored so hard that only approved messages get through. This will mean that people return to meatspace. Politics will go back to town halls, rallies and info stalls on major shopping streets.

Perhaps our grimmest prediction is that suicides will hit record highs in 2025. This will be a function of a low value placed on life, economic malaise and general existential angst. The night is darkest before the dawn, and the Sun isn’t rising just yet. This record suicide rate will particularly afflict the under-35s, who will be driven even further into despair by housing unaffordability.

Some more specific predictions can be made.

We can predict at least one major assassination. Assassinations were a feature of the end of the Roman Empire, with the degenerate nature of Roman society causing a lack of appreciation for the value of life. There’s also such a lack of appreciation in the Clown World of 2025. We have already seen the lionisation of Luigi Mangione after his shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. An assassination of a major industrialist, on the Musk/Zuckerberg/Gates/Brin/Page level, is more possible in 2025 than at any time after the Gilded Age.

Related to this loss in appreciation for the value of life, we predict America to go to war against Iran in some form. This will not be because Trump wants it, but because America gets drawn in by the realities of power. America might get tricked into it by Israel. It might be that Israel bombs themselves and blames Iran for it.

We predict Trump to take office without incident, but for the fireworks to begin after this. There will be a return of Black Lives Matter and other leftist authoritarian movements. They will play a major role in the rioting predicted above, and may also be involved in the assassination. In either case, the masses will start noticing the globalist hands pulling the Antifa strings.

In the tech world, we predict the demise of Google Search, replaced by relatively uncensored AI alternatives such as Grok. FaceBook will also die, for similar reasons. Censorship – and having a reputation for censorship – will kill several billion-dollar platforms as genuine free-speech alternatives become popular. A free-speech alternative to Amazon, carrying thousands of books that Amazon refuses to sell, may arise.

AI will become powerful enough that 15-year olds can make movies good enough to earn millions (hat tip: JR Mooneyham). People that young will also make some influential video clips and music.

In New Zealand, we predict that the Sixth National Government will collapse due to a falling out between New Zealand First and ACT along nationalist-globalist lines. Winston Peters will realise that 2025 is his last chance to take a stand against globalist encroachment, and will force a snap election. Despite this skullduggery, New Zealand First will get voted out. A new populist nationalist movement will take this space in Parliament.

In Europe, we predict the ongoing rise of left-wing nationalism along the Sahra Wagenknecht model. This will rise not at the expense of right-wing nationalists, who will continue to support parties like the AfD, but of left-wing globalists like the SPD and the Greens. These left-wing globalist parties will suffer from a strong shift towards anti-immigration sentiments.

In Asia, we predict a minor military incident to be blown out of proportion by Western media in an effort to manufacture consent for a war against China. This warmongering will be a feature of Western media propaganda for the whole of 2025, as European powers look to take down Russia and the Anglo colonies look to take down China.

On top of all this, we predict general weirdness to increase. Highly surreal occurrences will make billions of people question their grip on reality. Undiagnosed schizophrenia will hit levels unprecedented in modern history.

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
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