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David Roman's avatar

You write about "the state’s dismal record in persuading people to have more children." Not sure if you mean Singapore or all states. In any case, I looked at the academic literature and that seems to be wrong: it's actually easy to boost natality if you pay parents to have more children, make family formation affordable and you implement conservative sex and gender policies (no need for Islamization either). More here in case you wonder https://david9bf.substack.com/p/how-to-boost-fertility If the question is, then why didn't that work for Singapore, the answer is that Singapore (6 million residents) is as big as the Spanish island of Minorca (around 100k) so it's real hard to persuade people to make bigger families there. In Hungary, the TFR is up 16% since Orban is PM.

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D'ward's avatar

Yet higher intellect doesn't, generally, by itself provide access to power. Only that some of reasonable intellect can have a higher probability, other qualities permitting. Also, what sectors of society are we reviewing (eg politics, tech, science).

'Cognitive elites' aren't separate from their backgrounds, whether of ethnic group or in outward adherence to intellectually and ethically dominant cultural trends.

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