Tinder, but for Kidneys

selective rationalism.

My commentary on 8 articles I read today:

1. Why China got rich and India didn’t, by David Oks

2. “Rationalist” Dating Strategy by Ilya Somin

3. Kidney Donation by Nicholas Decker

4. The New Face Of Systemic Racism by David Dennison

5. The South China shock and the world’s biggest rustbelt by Scott Sumner

6. Halal-slop by Sectionalism

7. Caplan-Jones Immigration Rematch, by Bryan Caplan

8. Remembering ‘Man Enough’ by David Dennison

1. Why China got rich and India didn’t, by David Oks

When comparing India to China, David ignores IQ, which he hides under the mantle of “culture.”

He cites three reasons why China overtook India in literacy and health by the 1980s:

1. China liberated women from traditionalism, allowing them to own property and enter the workforce

2. China enforced a mass literacy campaign

3. China broke up hereditary monopolies on property, allowing peasants to take control of land

In India, these reforms were attempted, but failed. David says that the reason why China succeeded, but India did not, is because the Chinese were communists, while the Indians had a divided party system, split between reformers and traditionalists. David is ignoring the possibility that Chinese authoritarianism wasn’t the result of random historical processes, but actually because the Chinese were more intelligent, and realized the necessity of such a brutal regime.

It’s also possible that the Indians failed because they do not care about modernizing their country. Indians may be more apathetic about poverty, or see it as a spiritual benefit. This is due to caste-based beliefs, which are weaker or non-existent in China.

David claims that, because both China and India were poor in the 1950s, cultural differences cannot explain the divergence of China from India. I disagree. The Chinese, prior to the Japanese invasion, had established secular (and even Christian) leadership. By 1920, they were already *intellectually* light years ahead of the Indians.

David’s analysis falsely equivocates between China and India in the year 1930, when they were already radically divergent countries. When China was invaded by Japan, Japan was a world-class power, and China managed to survive. In fact, China was divided and not at its full strength, and still able to resist. India, on the other hand, has never proven itself in war against a first-rate power. Without nuclear weapons, India could probably be defeated by a first-rate military like Japan, Ukraine, or Russia, despite having 10x or even 30x the population.

It is ridiculous to claim that China and India in 1950 were equivalent. This is like claiming that Germany and Brazil in 1946 were equivalent, just because they happened to have a similar level of poverty and GDP. China had just fought a devastating war, and its GDP was artificially suppressed. Comparing Chinese and Indian poverty in 1950 isn’t fair, because war always depresses GDP far below its “steady state.”

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2. “Rationalist” Dating Strategy by Ilya Somin

The most salient information in this post is “know what you want.” This is a trite truism, but I’d make it more impactful by translating it as follows: “know your religion.” The failure of modern relationships can be explained EXCLUSIVELY by the decline of religion. Not only does religiousness correlate with marital success, but also, I can speak from experience.

I am religiously left-wing. I see the right-wing as a crusade against “the deep state.” As a Platonist, I believe it is my duty to protect the deep state from enemies foreign and domestic, whether they be Asian strivers, Russian scammers, Israeli lobbyists, or white nationalist insurrectionists. If you look at the right-wing, it is led by Vivek Ramaswamy, Candace Owens, Miriam Adelson, and Nick Fuentes. Obviously I would like to reform the right-wing by putting someone like Rubio in charge, but I think it is necessary to stand outside the right-wing in order to sufficiently challenge it.

However, my religious convictions are quite obscure. When I have tried to date right-wing women who fawn over Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, or Curtis Yarvin, women who believe in the singularity, women who are atheists and materialists, I end up hating myself. This is true even if those women are wonderful in a number of other ways; beautiful, smart, energetic, and so on. It just doesn’t work.

Politics are important to me. These are the kinds of women I meet: women who are “plugged in” to my niche political subculture. But if they hold views opposite to mine, then this breeds misery, resentment, and contempt. Eventually, the relationship explodes. This explosion is extremely emotionally exhausting for both parties, which makes me never want to date anyone ever again.

If you read what I write with the eyes of a psychologist, the first thing you should do is to scan for personality traits. What I’ve written sounds highly neurotic. Imagine an Orthodox Jew who can’t date anyone except fellow Orthodox Jews, and you can imagine how I feel. The software is different, but the personality traits are similar. If I had a more formalized subculture around my idiosyncratic religion, I’d have a much easier time dating, because I’d find women who align with my values.

Rationalists approach all problems as a matter of ignorance. If only we had more information! The truth is that everyone already knows the right thing to do -- but the right thing is hard. Emotions stand in the way, like anger, fear, cowardice, annoyance, frustration, confusion, or resentment. You cannot dispel emotions by laying out a rational case. That’s not how emotions work. This is why religion works: it uses symbolism and ritual to address emotions. Rationalists have an un-empirical model of human psychology, because they always provide logistical solutions to emotional problems, without realizing how irrational people can be.

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3. Kidney Donation by Nicholas Decker

Nicholas discusses kidney donation. He makes the case that if we could buy and sell kidneys, we could save $50 billion a year in dialysis. I support this. Of course, there is a risk that a black market for kidneys would develop, where people are killed and their kidneys are stolen. There’s also a “risk” that poor people would sell their kidneys, although it’s difficult to argue that these poor people would not benefit from having more money.

Since ethical norms are not changing, how can we increase kidney donations? I propose Tinder for kidneys.

On Kidney-Tinder, you put in basic information about yourself: your gender, sexuality, marital status, number of children, religion, political affiliation, ethnicity, languages you speak, education level, and income. You then have the ability to “filter” for any of these qualities that you prefer.

You swipe left or right on profiles, filtered to match your blood type. When you click on these profiles, you will then be able to watch a video produced by them. For example:

“Hi, I’m John. I’m a straight white man and a Trump-supporting Christian. I speak English and prior to kidney disease, I got a high school diploma and worked as a welder making $80k a year. This is my wife Sally and our two kids, Chip and Dale.” John can then go on to explain the pain of kidney disease and beg for a donation.

Alternatively: “Hi, I’m Zazz. I’m a transgender Puerto Rican atheist. I speak Spanish and English. I have a PhD in Union Studies and prior to kidney disease, I worked as an assistant professor of Union Rights. I am in a polyamorous relationship with Jayquan and Jose.” Zazz can then cry on camera and beg for a kidney.

This sounds very Machiavellian, but I am positive that it would increase the rate of donation. People don’t want to donate to someone random -- they want to donate to members of “their tribe.” I’d guess that young white Republican Christian women would make the top of the list, and old black gay men would be at the bottom. You can blame this on racism. For this reason, I expect kidney-Tinder will never come.

4. The New Face Of Systemic Racism by David Dennison

David argues that the killing of Henry Nowak proves that the United Kingdom is systematically racist against white people. Even if this is true, I am not concerned.

Racism is universal. There is no such thing as a post-racial society. We can set a threshold of tolerance for racism, but we can never eliminate it. The death of George Floyd and the death of Henry Nowak are both similar in that they are irrelevant events being pumped up as the death of God himself.

For the families, death is a tragedy and heart-wrenching event, and I do not wish it on anyone. But we can’t have a “national conversation” for every murder. We have to accept that there are a tolerable number of racist murders.

We should have 1 racist murder per 100,000 people. For 200 million whites, that means we end up with 2,000 racist murders of white people. Thankfully, we’re far below that level -- closer to 533 per year. Similarly, we should have 400 racist murders of black people -- again, we’re far below that number. Rejoice! Zero racist murders is not a realistic proposal, because the amount of death and destruction required to deport 40 million blacks would not be worth it.

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5. The South China shock and the world’s biggest rustbelt by Scott Sumner

I had no clue how many Chinese people were subject to mass unemployment in the 1990s. This undermines the western narrative that we could collapse China by tariffing it.

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5. Halal-slop by Sectionalism

Reading this helped me clarify why I prefer white nationalists to Thielites. White nationalists have a legitimate sadness about them. They aspire to an America which is whole, organic, authentic, and genuine. They are not money-grubbing or cynical. They believe in self-sacrifice.

Thielites, on the other hand, hate liberals because they don’t let them put Palestinians in gas chambers.

If you put white nationalists in power, they probably would end up building gas chambers too, and Thielites are probably more “pragmatic” and would cause less destruction. But aesthetically, when you talk to a white nationalist, you are often speaking to someone with sadness in his eyes, who yearns for a more romantic age. When you speak to a Thielite, you’re talking to someone who wants a harem of Chinese robots to suck his dick while he flies around in a spaceship dropping tungsten rods on the enemies of Israel. Very different vibe.

White nationalists are trolls, while Thielites are orcs. The trolls are an elephantine race, forced into war by their masters. Orcs are totally perverse and lustful. I can imagine taming a troll and giving him a hug. But the orcs must be opposed.

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6. Caplan-Jones Immigration Rematch, by Bryan Caplan

I find Bryan’s arguments compelling. One area I want to highlight, where I am not sure if Bryan would disagree or agree, is over the issue of skilled immigration.¹

Let’s say that a Chinese worker coming to America gains a 50% boost to their income, and as a result, high-wage American workers lose 10% of their income. This seems to be harder to justify on the grounds of “raising net wealth,” since the gains to the Chinese workers are much smaller. It’s not obvious to me that a well-fed Chinese worker with access to good healthcare is really seeing a huge welfare benefit, in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy. There do seem to be diminishing returns to increased wealth.

If one values the white race, this trade seems massively detrimental, because it redistributes a large absolute amount of wealth from whites to non-white people. At the level of political power, brining in African immigrants wouldn’t suddenly mean that we have a Nigerian president or more Nigerian CEOs, but Chinese and Indian immigrants absolutely do operate in that way. If we are worried about culture (which is a polite way of saying “race”), then Asian immigration is much more threatening than African immigration. Yet very rarely do you hear conservatives make this argument. They focus on “illegal immigration.”

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7. Remembering ‘Man Enough’ by David Dennison

David makes fun of liberals and their bizarre and insecure attempts to win over men in the 2024 election. I don’t think this will happen again in 2028. First of all, we have Graham Platner, who I continue to believe will win in November. Second of all, Kamala Harris was a result of 2020, not 2024. She was picked by Biden to help balance out his racist history. She then ended up as the candidate in 2024, not due to a primary process, but due to a last-minute switch out. We will have a primary in 2028, and that primary is not going to select someone with the incompetence and demographic profile of Kamala Harris. I believe the 2028 primary will be between figures like:

1. Newsom (not going to win)

2. Fetterman (not going to win)

3. Shapiro (not going to win)

4. Platner

5. Ossoff

There will be some token minorities like Warnock and Booker, some token women like Harris, Whitmer, and AOC, but I sincerely believe we will have a white male nominee in 2028, and he is going to destroy JD Vance. Rubio would be a stronger candidate for sure, and that would be a competitive race.

1. [Let’s assume that, if we bring every Nigerian janitor to America, their income will increase by a factor of 10x, but average janitorial wages will drop by 50%. For example: we bring 1 million Nigerians, they gain $10k each, but American janitors lose $10k each, making the net impact $0 globally. Of course, this net $0 isn’t actually net $0, because gaining $10k means a lot more to a Nigerian than losing $10k means to an American -- we should be thinking in terms of percentages, not absolute values. A Nigerian increasing their wealth by 10x is a huge welfare gain, while an American losing 50% of their wealth is not nearly as massive.

If you are a white nationalist, you can say that you prefer white skinned people to benefit, even at the massive expensive of dark skinned people. That’s an axiomatic argument, which should be made explicitly.

I’d argue further that even if that preference were legitimate, we have to consider that the fall in janitorial wages would then be “passed on” in cost-cutting to the general public, in the same way that automation makes products cheaper.

All of this said, let’s now consider the example of high-skilled immigration, from Asia to America.]