A reader sent a link to this paper:

James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. As a consequence, Boston stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections. We present a model of using redistributive politics to shape the electorate, and how that this model yields a number of predictions opposite from the more standard frameworks of political competition, yet consistent with empirical evidence.

Props to the authors – that took balls. They identified the effect, coined a name for it, characterized it, and got it published. I know some people who are on the fast track to becoming pariahs in academia.

Basically the paper shows how some political leaders actually institute policies designed to make their jurisdictions worse off for the people who don’t vote for them, so those people will leave and their political power in their jurisdiction will increase. When the people who do vote for them are crappy people, this has the counterintuitive effect of making all the good people leave, all the crappy people stay, and as a result their political jurisdiction is made worse off, even as this secures their own personal hold on power.

It is a matter of time before the academics come to realize that liberals instituting policies geared toward promoting the immigration of poor third worlders into first world countries is a “Curley Effect,” destined to screw up the US and Europe, but help bad leaders keep their hold on power.

If it comes to be labeled that, it will be seen as cravenly executed by selfish politicians who would rather be Emperors in hell than princes in Heaven. It would be potent medicine, triggering ancient out-grouping circuitry in the brains of the indigenous populations whose interests they are seeking to hurt.

These politicians are trying to screw up their own countries for their own political benefit – and there is even a name for the phenomenon in academia. They are liberals and Cuckservatives cravenly seeking to keep their hold on power through the Curley Effect. Not to be confused with it’s opposite, the Trump Effect, which is designed to “Make America Great Again.”

Once third world immigration is officially labeled a Curley Effect and our populations are briefed on all the implications, our work will become much easier. Hopefully we won’t have to wait until K-selection kicks in to make that happen.