An interesting synchronicity occurred today involving Steve Sailer’s mention of “Stock and Flow”, John Derbyshire’s claim that “If Americans minded what was happening, they didn’t mind enough to stop it.” regarding the US’s majority dispossession, and my having spent the last week acquainting myself with system dynamics software so I could, based on my early work on limits to growth, try some pedagogy to deal with the innumerate.

Herein I discuss a bit how Mr. Derbyshire’s statements make it obvious that, whatever his book-learning about mathematics, he is functionally innumerate hence the worst form of pedant.

The innumerate I am specifically interested in addressing by using system dynamics software packages with nice graphical user presentations are people who don’t seem to understand the difference between a function and its integral.  Historically, the main problem I’ve had to deal with in this regard is the insistence on confusing “income” with “wealth” in tax policy.  This confusion is right up there, in terms of political economy, with the confusion that separated the physics of Aristotle from that of Newton.  You can imagine Newton’s frustration if he went back in time to discuss physics with some of Aristotle’s more innumerate students.  Well, that’s about how I feel discussing tax policy with most people dabbling with political economy.

Nowadays we have new innumerates abounding not just in political economy but in immigration policy, as Sailer describes in the aforementioned article

Thus, a typical poll will more or less start off by asking what should be done about the   “12 million” illegal immigrants in the United States. (Objection!  No-one knows the real number.)

Clearly, having that many illegal immigrants in the country represents a difficult problem. There is, however, one universal answer about what to do about a difficult problem:

Don’t make it worse.

There’s a standard distinction between a “stock” and a “flow.” If, say, your firm’s balance sheet at this point in time (the stock) is in the red, the first priority is to get your next income statement (the flow) in the black.

Similarly, if you have too many illegal immigrants right now, the last thing you want is more next year.

But that common sense approach has almost never informed poll design.

So, what does John Derbyshire the Innumerate do with this distinction during his most recent “flow” of NRO excrement?

And so white-Anglo America slips into minority status. Probably we never wanted it to happen. Probably, if asked around 1970 whether it ought to happen, most of us would have said no. The topic never rose to the status of a major political issue among the mass of Americans, though. The coming presidential election will be the first in my lifetime to have immigration as a major theme.

If Americans minded what was happening, they didn’t mind enough to stop it. To be sure, their indifference was aided and abetted by the late 20th-century browbeating campaigns by cultural elites on behalf of “diversity,” “political correctness,” and racial guilt; but Americans didn’t seem to mind those much, either — not enough to rebel against them in any significant way.

Sure, Johnny.  We understand why you can’t draw the sole numerate conclusion from the completely obvious fact that the majority didn’t want to be dispossessed.

Perhaps meditating on this “stock and flow” diagram will help you reflect on your functional innumeracy: