The Nuisance Segment

There is a theory called The Smart Fraction Theory. The very short version of it is that every human society has a distribution of IQ’s ranging from retarded to genius. Some populations have a high number of people, relative to human populations as a whole, with above average and better IQ’s. At the other end, some societies have a relatively low number of above average and better IQ’s. The former groups have rocketed ahead while the latter groups have lagged behind.

There’s a lot more to it, a lot more, but that’s a useful shorthand. The point being is the smart fraction exerts upward pressure on society. The larger and more capable that fraction, the better able they are to drag the whole of society upward. If the fraction is too small, you get Zimbabwe or Detroit. The smart fraction, unable to lift the whole of society, sets themselves up as a ruling elite, plundering what they can from society. It is why all the money in the world will not change the character of these societies.

There’s another fraction, one that is at the heart of what ails the West. That’s the nuisance segment. For example, I was at my favorite lunch place the other day. It is a fancy SWPL grocery store with a cafe of sorts. The cafe is mostly a big buffet, but buffets are working class so they splash the word “cafe” all over the place and stock the bar with weird stuff from foreign lands. The most popular food is the typical American stuff, but the sushi and Indian food makes everyone feel better.

Anyway, there’s not a ton of room for people to navigate the serving areas. Inevitably, there will be a few mothers with baby carriages mucking up the works. A few vibrant people will be there with grocery carriages jamming up the walkways. As a result the store has had to rearrange the place a few times to try and get ahead of the nuisance segment. They have been mostly successful, but the cost of these idiots is inevitably spread to the rest of us.

On every product in your house, you will find a warning label. On the shampoo bottle I have in my hand, there are two paragraphs explaining what not to do with it. No one expects the stupid to read these labels, of course. Someone dumb enough to drink shampoo or shove the bottle up their arse is not going to read the warning label. It is just to inoculate the company from the inevitable. The direct cost of litigation is 2% in America. The cost in warning labels is equal that or more. The stupid cost us at least 5% of GDP a year in direct costs.

That’s not the end of it. The regulatory bureaucracy which is the direct result of the nuisance fraction is enormous. So far Obama has added 12,000 pages of regulations to the quarter million or so already on the books. The exact number and nature of Federal crimes has now reached the point where it cannot be counted.  We are perilously close to the point where it is just assumed that everything is a violation of the law. In such a land, there are no laws. The people inevitably respond accordingly.

Reading first millennium history, one thing that jumps out is the high cost of being foolish. This was especially true of the elites. King Peada was murdered by his wife because he foolishly thought his connection with Oswiu, through his marriage to his daughter Alchflaed, would protect him. History of this period is full of examples where small mistakes in judgment resulted in death, often gruesome death. The nitwits pushing a cart through the buffet line never would have made it to adulthood in that era.

2 thoughts on “The Nuisance Segment

  1. So you’ve seen the movie Idiocracy, right Walt?
    IMHO, Walt’s premise, full of memes and shortcuts I readily understand, is probably worthy of expansion, simplification, (and in cooperation with Zman?)- publication, probably in a minimum of 7-8 (up to 16) stories for children’s level comprehension.
    (Though not necessarily for “children”.)
    The problem is,”the heroes” should NOT be denied the aura of “Sheesh, what a DICK!” unlike (ie)MASH, The Cat in the Hat, or The Merchant of Venice.

  2. When I started venturing out on my own, driving, shopping, living away from my parents, I was shocked by the amount of boorish, idiotic behaviour from people in an otherwise civilised society. I thought I was surrounded by morons but I came to realise that about 20% of people were causing 80% of the problems. I don’t have any evidence to back up my claim but I discovered that the people getting caught drink-driving were the same people who throw fast-food trash out of their moving vehicle. They are the same people who own savage dogs, blast their music at 2am on a Tuesday morning, get neck tattoos, watch garbage television, get in financial trouble with store charge cards and claim to be able to see your aura.

    With such an enormous population in the United States where people with low I.Qs and disgraceful work-ethics can easily survive and multiply, there are going to be some real doozies. Think about something with very low-odds say, 1 in a million. In the US, there are more than 300 examples walking around.

    One can bang their head up against the wall over all the dipshits ruining their day. I personally like to profit from them. They often want to be parted from their money. They cost us millions of dollars in terms of security guards at bars, insurance premiums and government financed meth-rehab programs. Sure, they give a lot back in lottery tickets but they deserve to pay much, much more.

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