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| Image Credit: pxhere/Public Domain |
The goal of allowing ever more people in, while egalitarian, actually diminishes the experience for everyone.
Earlier this week, a “spontaneous strike erupted” among employees at the world’s most-visited museum, the Louvre. In protest over overwhelming crowds and chronic understaffing, employees refused to take their posts on Monday, forcing the iconic Paris museum to shut its doors. But the crowds and unmoving lines weren’t always this way, and to understand how bad they’ve gotten, one must understand how nice a visit to the Louvre used to be.
I first visited Paris 25 years ago. The Louvre was simply extraordinary, and even from the outside it is breathtaking. But on the inside, my personal favorite is the Marie de’ Medici cycle, a series of 24 giant paintings by Peter Paul Rubens chronicling the life of Marie de’ Medici, the widow of French King Henry IV. There is also Winged Victory, Venus de Milo, and paintings by everyone from Rembrandt to Jacques-Louis David to Raphael.
But, as everyone knows, the most famous and the most sought-after artwork in the Louvre is Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. I remember walking into the room that held her. There were a lot of people, but it wasn’t crowded per se. You could easily walk around, and eventually you could get fairly close and try and examine her famous smile.
Since that first visit, I’ve been back to Paris many times, including a few visits to the Louvre itself. About a month ago I went once again, this time with my sister and brother-in-law. The first thing I have to say is that the throng of people in the museum was extraordinary. The line just to get through security was more than two hours!
Once inside, as the Mona Lisa was on the top of my sister’s must-see list, we headed there. The museum was as crowded as I’ve ever seen it, but you could mostly navigate around. But when we arrived at the room with da Vinci’s masterpiece, it was like something I’d never seen. It was simply insane. You were shuttled through ropes towards the masterpiece and then out on either side before actually getting within 10 feet of her. What’s worse, almost every single person was holding up their phones to take a picture or a selfie, so it was virtually impossible to get even a good glimpse of the presumed Italian beauty.
The experience was simply sad. The building I had experienced a quarter century before was the same. The works were largely the same. But the museum experience was … not. No, now there were so many people in the museum that the thing one remembers is not standing there pondering what was behind that enigmatic smile, but rather feeling like a steer in the middle of a cattle drive being prodded along with no focus on anything other than not getting trampled.
I’m no expert, but I don’t think that’s the goal of any museum. The goal of allowing ever more people in, while egalitarian, actually diminishes the experience for everyone.
So too with the West. By any measure, Western nations have built the most free, prosperous and advanced civilization in human history. Everything from cars to flight to nuclear power to advanced agriculture to television to computers to MRI machines and more, western culture has been almost exclusively behind the advances civilization has made over the last 500 years. The result has been the creation of nations that are largely more free, prosperous and functional than any in the world. Which is of course, why people want to come here. --->READ MORE HERE
Pro-mass-migration voices depict mass migration as an unqualified good for everyone involved, minimizing or refusing to even acknowledge negative side effects or costs. In reality, middle- and working-class Americans end up involuntarily saddled with the fiscal burdens and other harmful impacts while the benefits are mostly concentrated in the hands of big business and lobbyists. But, paradoxically, the new arrivals can also be negatively affected by unchecked mass migration. A recent case in point: illegal aliens from China.
In a recent article – on Ecuador’s suspension of visa-free travel for Chinese citizens due to high rates of illegal migration – the Japan-based media outlet Nikkei Asia makes some interesting observations. Nikkei argued that the many Chinese heading for the U.S. were increasingly discouraged at the prospects of finding even menial work. Nikkei quotes Li, a New-York-based translator, who points out that “[i]t’s very difficult to find jobs for Chinese migrants who don’t speak English well,” an admission that many migrants are not English-proficient. Instead, “[t]hey have to stay in Chinese communities and only work for Chinese, but…even the restaurant jobs are hard to get these days because there are so many people.” So many Chinese have arrived that they are now increasing competition for jobs.
In addition, “Li said some Chinese migrants he knows have already gone back to China. When his friends ask him about [coming to the U.S.], he tells them not to come, citing the harsh job market.” That’s because “[i]n China, at least, they can stay in their own apartment, whereas in the U.S. they can end up ‘in somebody’s garage,’ referring to ‘family hotels’ where some migrants end up.”
While the Chinese illegal influx has skyrocketed under Biden, exceeding 150,000 CBP encounters between February 2021 and May 2024, and May monthly encounters topped April’s by 14 percent, many Chinese who arrive find America is not the mountain of gold they hoped. The revelations in the Nikkei piece illustrate a law of diminishing returns for migrants in the context of historically high, unchecked mass migration. So many migrants are arriving that they crowd out other migrants for even the lowest paid jobs. However, this is not an isolated case. --->READ MORE HERE
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