A Reader In Pennsylvania Says Importing More Smart People Is A Losing Proposition
05/28/2013
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Re: John Derbyshire's article John Derbyshire Asks: Do We Need More Smart Foreigners?

From: A Reader In Pennsylvania [Email him]

 John Derbyshire  article is correct that "there may, for instance, be biological downsides to smartness..." A key downside is that smart populations tend to have sub-replacement birth rates. 

One reason for this is that smart people tend to devote some of their most biologically fertile years to educational and career advancement. The smartest of the smart who go for degrees like M.D.s and Ph.D.s don't finish their education and establish their careers until about 30, when fertility starts declining for men and women.

Another reason is because smart people tend to think more logically, as opposed to emotionally. Think about it: there’s nothing logical about having a child. Yes, kids can bring great joy, but they also bring great pain and frustration. Children are messy, it costs a lot of money to raise them, and parents often make great sacrifices to meet their child’s needs. Most people who have kids do so primarily for emotional reasons, such as to have someone to love, someone to carry the family name, etc.

So, if the powers that be think that importing smart immigrants will stabilize or grow our population (which is one of the reasons we import so many not-so-smart people, too), they may be mistaken. If your population is too smart for its own good, you'll eventually be outbred by less smart populations. Watch Mike Judge's Idiocracy to get a rough idea of what's going on here.

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