Individualism as a Risk Factor

The United States attracts a great many people. In 2017 a million and a half people immigrated to the US, most of them from India, China, Mexico, Cuba and the Philippines, in that order. In spite of outdated infrastructure, a failing educational system that ranks 17th in the world, a costly and ineffective medical system, a legal system that is an impenetrable maze and numerous other problems and shortcomings, the US is still seen as attractive—not in general, but for one specific purpose: for a chance to make some money. To a large extent, by now the rest of the world’s countries have carved up their endowments of wealth, leaving little loose change for anyone to easily grab. But in the US its very failures provide opportunities for foreign-born opportunists.

There are close to 44 million first-generation immigrants currently in the US, but taking into account all immigration over its entire history since the beginning of European colonization 98% of its population consists of immigrants and their descendants, and except for some number of notable exceptions (the slave trade; the Irish fleeing famine; the Jews fleeing the Holocaust) they were all opportunists who came for the opportunities.

Although many of them clung to their own tribes for a generation or two, forming ethnic enclaves, again, except for some number of notable exceptions (the Jews, the Armenians, etc.) after a few generations most of them became entirely “Americanized”, intermixed through intermarriage and ethnically denatured. Clearly, the opportunities they came for were individual opportunities, not opportunities for their ethnic groups as a whole, and those still living in ethnic enclaves generation after generation are the least successful. This process has resulted in a country that is extremely well stocked with opportunistic individualists.

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