The Underclass, a quick brief.

Occasionally, you will hear reactionaries describe what needs to be done with the underclass. Various reactionaries may call them by different names - the underclass, the underman, the untersmensch, and more flexibly, the Dalit caste of Moldbuggian terminology.

But exactly who are the underclass?

Jim defines the underclass thusly in the comments of this article:

Underclass people engage in hunting and gathering behavior, as if the city was a jungle, which is inappropriate in a world of property rights, agriculture, trade, and industry. Underclass people do not work, and predate on civilized people. If you don’t have visible means of support, probably underclass. At fault in a traffic accident and cannot or will not pay, underclass. Drunk or stoned while behind on your rent, underclass. Inappropriate intoxication such as fighting drunk in public, or drunk or stoned when at fault in a traffic accidents, underclass. Petty theft, underclass, shakedowns, underclass. A woman who has children by more than one man without reasonable excuse such as widowhood, underclass. Vandalism, underclass. Streetwalking underclass, though tonier forms of prostitution, for example operating out of a bar or brothel, would not necessarily be underclass. People who profile as underclass (underclass mother, black, fatherless, and suchlike) would be assumed underclass and would have to demonstrate non underclass character by getting a job and staying out of trouble. Conversely, people who profile as middle class, (white, two middle class parents) would be assumed middle class, unless they they show underclass behavior, such as fighting drunk in public, homeless, stealing, etc, show underclass behavior by getting into trouble. Born in the ghetto, have to earn your way out. Born in the suburbs, have to screw up to get sent to the ghetto.

Basically any wrongful behavior that adversely affects property values or disrupts business, underclass, send them out of the nice suburbs. This would remove about eighty or ninety percent of blacks, mestizos, and bastards from the nice suburbs.

For a more specific example, Moldbug theorises about the Dalit caste in his Castes of the United States:

In the Dalit caste, status among men is defined by power, wealth and sexual success, among women by attractiveness and popularity. The favored occupation of Dalit men is crime, preferably of the organized variety. However, Dalit criminals are not generally psychopathic; they perceive crime as guerrilla warfare against an unjust society. Dalit women may support themselves by crime, welfare (which they consider a right), or payments from men. Both male and female Dalits may occasionally support themselves by conventional employment, but this is usually in jobs that other castes (except Helots) would consider demeaning, and Dalits share this association. The Dalit caste is not monolithic; it is divided into a number of ethnic subcastes, such as African-American, Mexican, etc. A few white Dalits exist, notably in the Appalachians. There is little or no solidarity between the various Dalit ethnicities.

So it can be seen that markers of a member of the underclass are anti-social and anti-civilisational behaviour. Poverty may be found in the underclass, but is not a reliable indicator due to the Moldbuggian Helot class also being poor but possessed of will and integrity to not engage in anti-civilisational behaviour.

Are the underclass born or bred? While it is argued that certain groups may indeed have an innate predisposition towards anti-civilisational behaviour, Dalryample's Life at the Bottom makes it clear that anyone regardless of genetics or socio-economic status can end up as a member of the underclass if they're determined to fritter their lives away; everyone from the children of immigrant Indian taxi drivers to the local Englishmen ended up at some time in his office and hospital beds. While it is not impossible for one to drag oneself out from the ghetto, the forces stacked against such an individual - ironically, some of the strongest being from those who purportedly seek to aid the underclass - are Herculean.

Historically, the underclass was kept in check by various ends, and hence the current explosion in not just the size, but the viciousness of the underclass is attributable to the removal of such checks. Modern socialist welfare, made possible only by massive technological surplus and large government, has been the primary mover in the path to degeneracy. Where organic social support networks centered about kin, religion and ethnicity were replaced with massive, easily abused and defrauded government programs, the constant discomfort at the bottom which promoted a eugenic motion for the underclass turned dysgenic as the underclass began to view welfare as a "right".

Cappy Cap writes in Enjoy the Decline:

The majority of government money wasn't going to enrich them, it was to shield them from the full extent of their mistakes.

And that, my friends, is the exact situation in which socialist welfare is conducted. Dalryample notes that welfare in the UK was given on a "most needy" basis, which meant that members of the underclass who actually strove to extricate themselves from their situation received no help at all, and those who constantly behaved in the most disgusting, anti-civilisational ways got all of the goodies.

When you subsidise a behaviour, you get more of it. Not surprising. Remember that this is not the first time welfare has contributed to societal breakdown - Roman society started off with welfare in the form of wheat flour, which then escalated to ready-baked bread, pork, salt, and olive oil, to the point where people revolted in the streets to demand constant handouts when Rome was under siege.

Where social shaming and pressure once existed in order to keep those inclined to be wayward in line, today, the only shame is in shaming others. Dalryample notes that not only is underclass behaviour not discouraged by and amongst the non-underclass, but even encouraged. Being underclass is seen as desirable and trendy - so long as the upper and middle classes can afford to put on this underclass-ness like a beloved outfit, parade it around like a peacock, and then retreat to their safely walled enclaves away from the realities of the underclass when the sun sets. Historically, the peasantry have looked to the nobility for their social cues, and this merely exacerbates the situation when they see their destructive life choices being modelled and reaffirmed by those whom should be their betters.

Of course, there are more localised factors that can contribute to the problem of the underclass, and these will vary from location to location, but the overall correlation of the increase in the problem of the underclass with locations where rampant welfare and social degeneracy have taken root is quite plain for all to see.

So, what is to be done with the underman? No one is much in favour of the Moldbuggian solution A - it's too permanent, doesn't give people a chance to up their game, drains the productivity of those not in the underclass via fear, and morally repugnant to boot.

Instead, it would appear that segregation, as well as deportation in the case of Diverse Immigrants(TM), appear to be the favoured treatment:

Jim:

Segregation worked fine. Very little coercion was required. People don’t really like to mix. Integration raises their blood pressure, makes them depressed and angry, increases death from crime and death from stress related diseases. Look at the school cafetaria. Life would be a lot easier and less stressful if you put a little sign over the black section of the school cafeteria saying “Black Section” so that no one would get confused. Similarly, people pay lots of money to stay clear of people of their own race, but different class. Black people in racially mixed suburbs are more hostile, antisocial, and alienated than in overwhelmingly black suburbs, and white people in racially mixed suburbs are more hostile, antisocial, and alienated than in overwhelmingly white suburbs.

And Matt Forney notes that, oddly enough, the elite SWPL avowed anti-racists have happily chosen to segregate themselves from the diverse masses which they so valiantly fight for:

That’s the sad, sick reality: the civil rights movement wasn’t about ending racism, it was about ending overt racism. “Whites Only” drinking fountains, poll taxes and lynchings? How déclasse. Those ignorant Southerners should do what the enlightened New Yorkers do: loudly proclaim how tolerant they are while having the police pounce on any black person who wanders into their 99.9% white zip codes. Vote for a black president and snottily denounce those evil right-wing racist homophobes while supporting a mayor who implements Bull Connor-esque measures to keep those people from sullying their streets.

Stopping the bloody food aid would be another good idea, what with the undermining of people's ability to produce their own food. But you see, the underclass sucks up to whomever will give them freebies, even if it means disaster in the end:

Vox Day:

Well, there is also mass slaughter. You see, that's the outcome that the equalitarian philosophy always leads to. If Nigeria had been left alone, the population would have stayed at around 50 million. But it has oil, so Europeans, Americans, and Chinese developed an interest in it and began propping it up with oil money, advanced medicine, and food imports.

Nigeria will probably hit peak population somewhere between 200 and 250 million before 150 million to 200 million die. This will be a human tragedy writ much larger than if they had simply been left to their own devices and, one hopes, to gradually develop towards sustainable civilization.

And if the USA population demographic ever reaches that projected by 2050, it will rapidly go the way of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. However, that is unlikely, because the great collapse should start before 2033.

Unfortunately, there seems no way out of the current underclass conundrum without widespread death as the plug is pulled via sheer numbers and infrastructural/civilisational breakdown.

And that's a sobering thought.