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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What do you see as being the benefits of diversity and multiculturalism? Studies have repeatedly shown that as diversity increases, perceived life satisfaction, social trust/cohesion, and spending on public goods all decrease. So it's not obvious that diversity is conducive to human happiness or even that it furthers other liberal goals. America's increasing diversity doesn't seem to have made it a happier or more tolerant place. Ditto for Europe. And, of course, there are lots of places where different cultures/ethnicities/religions live side-by-side that have horrible histories of tribal conflict (Yugoslavia, Lebanon, etc.).

So, why is the discussion of this issue among educated people so one-sided? At the very least, it seems that diversity involves complex trade-offs and might be a good policy at some time and a bad policy at others.

[/quote]

I think its really interesting that you would use Europe as an example here since it seems to me to be directly contrary to your point. The U.S. has had a long history of mulitculturalism and inclusion, and as a result, its immigrant communities are substantially more integrated into the county than they are in Europe. Europe, while generally being more progressive, has substantially more marginalized and segregated immigrant communities, and that fact has a direct and tangible impact on the current political situation there. There's a reason the Brussels terrorist attack was in Brussels, not the U.S. I also think nation-states with tribal conflicts aren't great comparisons, since those conflicts are an overlapping effect of longstanding historical strife with terrible state-building and artificial borders. Its true that arbitrarily shoving different ethnic and cultural groups into the same state often turns out poorly, but I think that says almost nothing about whether multiculturalism is a useful value.

More broadly, relying on studies showing that diversity can result in decreased perceived life satisfaction and decreased social trust and cohesion seems kind of like question-begging. The idea of multiculturalism isn't "let's throw a bunch of divergent groups together against their will," it is "when you have a multicultural community, let's teach tolerance and empathy, so that we don't have anger and lack of social trust. Multiculturalism is an attempt to alleviate the negative side effects of different groups coming together. In that sense, its highly pragmatic. Its true that if the U.S.'s demographics looked like Scandanavia, it might be much easier to run an effective society. But it doesn't, and nobody other than neo-nazis are suggesting mass segregation, so the question is whether we fully embrace our multicultural society and learn to live together or we don't.

I'd also note that folks who are less pro-diversity tend to ignore very real sociological and economic research as well. To give one example, virtually every single influx of immigrants into the U.S. has been met with distrust and fear yet has ultimately improved the economy and the standard of living, and research amply supports this point. These seem to me to be more lasting benefits than the "harm" caused by integration. I'm sure that a lot of Americans reported decreased "life satisfaction" and a decrease in "social trust/cohesion" when the Irish and Italians and Germans and Jews came over too, and you'd be hard pressed to make a non-idiotic argument that the country has been worse off in the long run because of those influxes.

I don't think the pro-diversity position is "Let's push more diversity wherever possible because it has no downsides," its "we live in a diverse world and diverse country, let's make the best of it."[/quote]

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