The Culture Transplant

When I hear of culture, I reach for my IQ

I’ve written a review of Garett Jones’s new book The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left. You can read it here on Ideas Sleep Furiously. Matthew Archer has kindly recorded himself reading the article out loud. Paid supporters can listen to the article in a beautifully crisp English accent - the way Anglo Reaction should be enjoyed.

To cut to the chase of my review, Jones argues that culture inherited from our ancestors causes prosperity. But I find his indicator of cultural quality, State, Agricultural and Technological (SAT) history strongly correlates with national IQ. When you control for national IQ the SAT no longer predicts GDP… I guess the SAT really is a good measure of intelligence! It’s not apparent any aspect of culture matters other than ‘studiousness’.

I’ve enjoyed some other reviews of Jones’s book. Bryan Caplan reviews Jones’s book for Reason. He focuses on the immigration debate and I think convincingly argues that diversity in and of itself is generally not a great cost. There’s good reason for agreeing with the latter point. After all, in the west “rivers of blood” have not yet arrived as predicted. Not the first nor the last time I’ve agreed with Bryan Caplan. Only after my review came out did I see Caplan’s Substack post on the book. There he also wonders how important culture is relative to IQ.

Helen Andrews has a very entertaining review of the book with a very hot take: “I cannot discount the possibility that he is engaged in a sophisticated satire.”

Of course, a better use of your time than reading reviews is to buy the book here. I greatly enjoyed reading it and I suspect you will too.