10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less (2020) and Hive Mind: How Your Nation's IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own (2015).
Jones applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left, and reported the following:
From page 99:Follow Garett Jones on Twitter.Cultural conflict is risky enough, but when different cultural worldviews match up roughly with different ethnicities, the risk is even greater. We’ve already seen that cultural differences tend to persist for generations across different ethnic groups in the United States, Canada, and Europe, so the risk of cultural conflict is certainly there.Page 99 of The Culture Transplant falls toward the end of the chapter, so it’s making references to studies discussed at length over the previous twenty or so pages. Page 99 does an excellent job capturing the way I use evidence throughout this book: I use simple, clear language to sum up scholarly research in a way that would make an expert in the field nod along in agreement. And that isn’t just my opinion, it’s the view of a leading expert in the field of cross-country income differences, Professor Areendam Chanda of LSU. In his generous blurb, he said The Culture Transplant was
And as in the Dr. Seuss story of the Sneetches—where some birds have stars on their bellies and discriminate against those without—small ethnic differences can easily be both self-reinforcing and a focal point for the cultural outrage of others. So, both real and imagined cultural differences can make ethnic conflict more dangerous, more costly, more deadly than other cultural conflicts. It’s a multiplier effect, with risks of downsides all around. The more we dive into the scholarly research on ethnic diversity, the harder it becomes to say that ethnic diversity is usually a strength.
But at least publicly, elites in Western Europe and North America have gone all-in on the theory that our ethnic diversity is our strength—even though the research suggests it’s a double-edged sword in the workplace, a nudge toward lower trust in the local neighborhood, and a multiplier of social conflict for the nation.
Yes, there are plans and proposals and training programs and social media memes designed to reduce the costs of ethnic diversity, but at this point those treatments are the ivermectin of social science—possibly good, possibly bad, possibly pointless. And if things don’t go well, there’s no FDA-certified rescue treatment for the costs of ethnic diversity.A unique and authoritative treatment of the deep persistence of cultural attributes that permeates across generations, and through migration, shapes institutions and contemporary outcomes…. Jones's treatment of the literature is a master class in distilling rigorous research and presenting it in a breezy fashion that is hard to put down once you get started.But far more than most pages, page 99 editorializes, pointing out the jarring conflict between what we find in academic research on ethnic diversity versus the confident pronouncements of politicians, CEOs, and pundits. Part of what I needed to do with The Culture Transplant was to let readers know about the yawning gap between scholarly findings and mainstream media discussions of the long-term effects of migration on national economies. Page 99 of The Culture Transplant turns a spotlight on one important example of that gap, the potential costs of ethnic diversity.
That potential cost of ethnic diversity stands in sharp contrast with a clear potential benefit of skill diversity, a finding that also shows up in the chapter’s review of business research: teams that bring together diverse skills to a new task have a good shot at creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Different forms of diversity bring different benefits, different challenges. That’s a reminder that bringing candor to discussions about different forms of diversity is the first step to building the best possible world for all.
The Page 99 Test: 10% Less Democracy.
--Marshal Zeringue
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