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A world of free movement would be $78T richer

• repolfx 8y ago
  This article seems symptomatic of a general decline in the quality of The Economist. I used to be a subscriber but there was a noticeable sharp drop some time ago, I think when Micklethwaite stepped down as editor, and things seem to have got worse since. Shoddy thinking, bizarre arguments and extremist conclusions seem more common than they used to be. Firstly, the core thesis of the argument is that merely by moving to a richer country, people become automatically more productive: > Workers become far more productive when they move from a poor country to a rich one. Suddenly, they can join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable legal system. Those who used to scrape a living from the soil with a wooden hoe start driving tractors. Those who once made mud bricks by hand start working with cranes and mechanical diggers This can only be described as some sort of fantasy. People who have spent their lives making mud bricks by hand don't suddenly become qualified crane operators by mere virtue of migrating to a developed country. They need the same training any native born person would, but they also need to learn the local language and customs too. Indeed, a common effect of mass immigration is that mechanical diggers and cranes are less used, because why buy expensive automated machinery when labour is nearly free? A clear counterpoint is the state of Germany. Over 1 million migrants from Africa and the ME let in with no border controls worth talking about. Did they all immediately become high earning crane operators. No. Aydan Özoğuz, commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, told the Financial Times that only a quarter to a third of the newcomers would enter the labour market over the next five years, and “for many others we will need up to 10”. The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) found only 45 per cent of Syrian refugees in Germany have a school-leaving certificate and 23 per cent a college degree. Statistics from the Federal Labour Agency show the employment rate among refugees stands at just 17 per cent. The Economist also seems to struggle with the basics of why some countries do better than others. They do sort of comprehend the shape of the problem: > On the contrary, the reason why migration is so attractive is that some countries are well-run and others, abysmally so. > It is very hard to transfer Canadian institutions to Cambodia, but quite straightforward for a Cambodian family to fly to Canada. Hmmm. So. Some countries are run abysmally, and others are well run. Why is that? The Economist acts like good governance is a feature of geography, something the Canadians dig out of the ground. But it's not, government is people, so presumably the people in those countries aren't very good at building wealthy societies. For example their cultures frequently turn a blind eye to graft, dictatorship is common, installing relatives in government posts is expected, work gets done slowly or not at all, votes are seen as things useful to sell for a bit more income and so on. So what happens if all those people simply move to another country? Does their culture change overnight? And if not, what makes The Economist so sure that the bad administration and poverty those people were trying to escape won't just follow them to the west? This problem is not theoretical or simply scaremongering. The sad tale of Lutfur Rahman is a warning sign of what can go wrong when large numbers of people settle in the west from parts of the world where western values are not well established - they don't simply change overnight and instead western political systems start to look like third world countries too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutfur_Rahman_(politician)#Corruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutfur_Rahman_(politician)#Cor...
  • trextrex 8y ago
    Have you ever considered that what you consider "western values" are in fact values that emerge in a society that lives in conditions where there is political stability and economic opportunity? That people's "culture" is affected by the environment around them as a general pattern?
    • ipsocannibal 8y ago
      I've considered this and deemed it to be false. A great counter example is Imperial China around 1300-1400AD. They were fantastically wealthy and politically stable yet "western values" did not develop.
      • tomp 8y ago
        “Western values” didn’t develop in the West until the second half of the 20th century, so I’m not sure that’s a good argument.
        • ipsocannibal 8y ago
          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment
    • repolfx 8y ago
      Yes, I have considered that. It doesn't appear to be true. If it was, cases like Rahman's would not have happened. After moving from Bangladesh as a young person, and becoming surrounded by political stability and economic opportunity, he would have adopted western values and become an ordinary politician. So would the people in Tower Hamlets, which has a very large Bangladeshi immigrant population. In fact what happened was this: • He engaged in massive election fraud, including buying votes, organising large numbers of faked votes, bribery, buying support of local Bangladeshi TV channels, intimidating witnesses and doubling council funding to local Bengali charities in return for their political support. • He did this so successfully that he won a local election that was found (years later) so riven with corruption that it was declared by a judge to be entirely void and would have to be re-run from scratch. • He also gained votes by telling Muslim voters that his political opponent was racist and that voting for him was an "Islamic duty". • He was kicked out of the Labour party for having links with an extremist group. • He benefited from a group of "enforcers", people attached to youth organisations funded by his council, who would visit and intimidate any Bangladeshi who spoke out against the mayor. This included threatening to burn down the houses of witnesses during the corruption trial. • He has also been accused of extensive mortgage fraud and tax evasion. Corruption, bribery, intimidation of voters, stuffing ballot boxes, buying political support, exploiting religion and race to gain support - these are all the sorts of behaviours strongly associated with third world countries like Bangladesh, but they showed up in the UK in the modern era too, even with people who moved as children. If values were created by the environment, then this wouldn't happen (unless you consider the cultural effects of immigrants who pool together in the same areas to be able to overwhelm the cultural effects of the new host country).
• patrickg_zill 8y ago
  Utterly ridiculous rubbish. The reason why Mexican immigrants make more money as mentioned in the article in the US would be erased under open borders. It would be a race to the bottom, globally.
  • funwithjustin 8y ago
    This is... literally the opposite of reality. Did you forget a /s?
    • patrickg_zill 8y ago
      A global race to the bottom is what the Economist, and its owners the Rothschilds, want. An atomized replaceable-cog society made up on indistinguishable consumer units.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • pembrook 8y ago
        I'm amazed that the name "Rothschild" still has the power to stir up conspiracy theories in 2018. Rothschild holds only a small minority stake in The Economist. I think it's less that this article wants to create a race to the bottom, and more that you fear the idea of the 1st world life you lucked into by birth being disrupted by a large influx of poor people who weren't so lucky in the birth lottery. Jeez these new Nike's I have on are super comfortable.
        • patrickg_zill 8y ago
          Did the Rothschilds go bankrupt, and lose all their money, or something? They (the family collectively, or the family trust, however you wish to address their finances) were billionaires by the 1850s, at the latest. "On July 18, 1815, a courier working for Rothschild informed the English government that Napoleon appeared to be suffering defeat at Waterloo... Rothschild began selling all of his bonds, encouraging rumors that Napoleon had won and that English government paper would soon be worthless. Due to Rothschild's reputation as an influential and respected investor, the panicked English public followed his lead. The mass selling resulted in a total collapse of the English stock exchange. "It was then that Rothschild's agents began snatching up bonds and stock at record-low prices. Two days later, when Wellington's envoy confirmed that Napoleon Bonaparte had indeed suffered a crushing defeat, Nathan Rothschild was effectively in control of the English stock exchange. As of 2015, the English government was still paying back money owed to the Rothschild family from this Napoleonic maneuver." https://www.investopedia.com/updates/history-rothschild-family/ https://www.investopedia.com/updates/history-rothschild-fami... I don't believe in your (and the Economist's) false dilemma that my 1st world has to suck and I have to work for slave wages in order for people in the 3rd world to have better lives.
• ephor 8y ago
  >"A world of free movement would be $78 trillion richer" ...A world where everyone's mother is a prostitute would be considerably more economically active. Its a shame the economy is seen as a end rather than a means.
  • narrator 8y ago
    A world where we printed $78 trillion dollars and gave it out to whomever would also be $78 trillion dollars richer.
    • dwaltrip 8y ago
      That isn't how it works. Inflation is a thing.
      • rory096 8y ago
        No idea why this is getting downvoted, as you're entirely correct (obviously). OP is talking about real economic growth as massive amounts of wealth are created. A change in the money supply would create nominal growth, but no change in the underlying quantity of wealth. For those confused as to the difference between the two, reread pg's essay on How to Make Wealth. http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
      • narrator 8y ago
        Yeah, but the writer of the article doesn't get that either.
  • ipsocannibal 8y ago
    ^^^^^^ I would also like to ask to whom would the majority of that increase in wealth go? I would argue it wouldn't be to the people doing the moving. It would be to the people driving them to move.
    • davnicwil 8y ago
      Supposing this is true, does it matter, if the overall size of the pie increases? Isn't everyone better off? Would you rather the poor stay poor so that the rich don't get richer?
• ealexhudson 8y ago
  $78T, or, half of one Jeff Bezos. Let's not pretend the majority of that wealth wouldn't accumulate in a small number of pockets.
  • APORWEVNAOEN 8y ago
    off by 1000x
  • charlesdm 8y ago
    A trillion is not a billion $78 trillion = $78,000 billion (or many, many, many times Jeff Bezos)
    • jerkstate 8y ago
      approximately 561 Bezii
    • saagarjha 8y ago
      > A trillion is not a billion There is a way to get these mixed up: a mis-conflation of the short and long number scales, where a "billion" on the long scale is 10^12 (which, of course, on the short scale is called a "trillion"). If you're curious about this, I suggest you read Wikipedia's article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
  • TomK32 8y ago
    I think your math is off by a few magnitudes.
    • mynameishere 8y ago
      Well, that still makes his math better than that of the Economist.
• dooglius 8y ago
  Without paywall: http://archive.is/CXzWM http://archive.is/CXzWM
  • zerr 8y ago
    Or just press ESC several times after the article is displayed and before the paywall popup.
    • neonate 8y ago
      Cool trick! Are there any other websites it works on?
      • scrollaway 8y ago
        Hitting ESC during pageload stops in-progress asset loading and (sometimes) javascript execution. That's why it works.
      • zerr 8y ago
        From my experience, this works on many paywalled websites.
• mozumder 8y ago
  The immediate goal of everyone in this country should be to open the borders and open trade. There is no excuse. Borders serve no useful purpose in a globalized economy. Can you imagine how terrible it would be if the states had hard borders between them? People act like having open borders mean invading marauders of foreigners, but did everyone from Ohio invade Maryland because of the open borders the states have? In reality, most people would stay where their family and relatives are. "My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, sometime in the future with energy that's as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere." - Hillary Clinton Let's start by making annexing the states of Canada and Mexico into the US, and work other countries from there. Do it.
  • sjdbwixb 8y ago
    I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be happy to ban Californians from moving into their state
  • ipsocannibal 8y ago
    You know we tried this during the Mexican-American war. It turns out the Mexicans are still pretty sore about this. If borders were a purely economic construct I might agree with you. However, they aren't, not even primarily. Remove modern notions of economics, look into deep history, and borders still exist. As for Mrs. Clinton, she dreamed she could be President twice. We all know how that worked out for her and unfortunately us.
  • sintaxi 8y ago
    We would have to go to a more libertarian free-market model to make open borders work which seems like the opposite direction people want to go - especially those advocating for open borders.
  • sergiotapia 8y ago
    lol
  • oldcynic 8y ago
    I think Canada and Mexico might take issue with this plan.
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
  One thing open borders would completely destroy would be the social safety net of many countries. Let’s say there is completely open borders between Sweden and the United States. Sweden has high taxes and an significant social safety net. The United States has low taxes and a non-existent safety net. Over time, people who pay a lot of taxes migrate from Sweden to the United States. People from the United States who are unable to work for whatever reason, migrate to Sweden. This would also affect government. You either end up with a large underclass that doesn’t have voting rights (see Qatar for example) or else they have voting rights and the laws of the receiving country change to reflect the culture of the immigrants.
  • sudhirj 8y ago
    Taxes would likely change from income taxes to consumption and property taxes, so it’s unlikely that governments will go bankrupt. More attractive areas of the world will cost more to live in, but it would eventually turn into one large country with pockets of exclusive communities.
    • deleted 8y ago
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  • krapp 8y ago
    >People from the United States who are unable to work for whatever reason, migrate to Sweden. I think you're overestimating the number of Americans who would have the means to do so, despite not having an income.
    • burfog 8y ago
      Hawaii buys 1-way tickets for homeless people. Picture that on a grand scale, with the United States buying 1-way tickets.
    • imtringued 8y ago
      They would get the "means" in their destination country through welfare. That's the entire point.
• Dwolb 8y ago
  This an interesting article because it reframes current immigration discussions from humanitarian issues to economic ones. I'd like to see more modelling on wage depression to see why this wouldn't have a widespread negative impact. Additionally this seems like a weird point: >Unskilled migrants care for babies or the elderly, thus freeing the native-born to do more lucrative work. If lucrative work were available, wouldn't native-borns already be doing it?
  • mozumder 8y ago
    How can they if they have to work full time to take care of their babies? Part of the problem with today's economy is that it's basically impossible for a middle-class woman to have a child and work. There needs to be a large population of unskilled laborers to do these kinds of low-level jobs that a person with a college degree won't do. This is why data shows areas with a large population of lower-class have a higher fertility rate.
    • godzillabrennus 8y ago
      That’s why they aren’t having kids and the population is declining.
    • chrchang523 8y ago
      Your model strongly predicts that fertility of preexisting natives would be higher in areas with more unskilled immigrants. The opposite is true, and the effect is not small. It is safe to reject your model. Moreover, if you do not adjust your beliefs in response to contrary evidence, it is appropriate to presume that you are arguing in bad faith rather than trying to figure out the truth, and dismiss everything else you say on this subject. (This principle is equally applicable to someone arguing the other side of this particular issue in similar bad faith, of course; reversed stupidity is not intelligence.)
      • JamisonM 8y ago
        Your model strongly predicts that fertility of preexisting natives would be higher in areas with more unskilled immigrants. The opposite is true, and the effect is not small. It seems like you have a lot of confounding variables to work through to make this case with such confidence, if you have research that makes this case I would like to see links to it.
• venomsnake 8y ago
  Forfeiting it is still worth it if it keeps the status quo. Or even better tighten borders.
• xbwalton 8y ago
  The economist spouting salon-leftist nonsense again. Today it isn't "workers of all nations unite", it is "1% of all nations unite in order to ensure free flow of capital and members of the industrial reserve army". I'm not a marxist, I'm pro capitalism/monetarism within culturally defined borders.
• deleted 8y ago
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• P5Wl 8y ago
  A world of free movement will not have a single welfare state. Even after decades, and generations, immigrants from certain regions have absolutely abysmal rates of employment in more developed countries they have settled in. How would an even larger scale of immigration flip the trend we can already witness, a complete 180 degrees? Many seem completely content on living on benefits alone, or fully unable to find employment with the skill set they have gathered, even when they have born in the country where the natives fare much better. The way I see it, the money that is being spent on these people could be spent with a far better interest elsewhere. 78 trillion, truly, is a fantasy pulled from a behind.
  • hello_1234 8y ago
    I don't know where you got your information from. It's half true. No, immigrants do not have abysmal rates of employment. The unemployment rate for foreign-born persons in the United States was 4.1 percent in 2017 compared to 4.4 percent for native-born persons (Dept of Labor, Labor Force Characteristics of Foreign-born Workers Summary). Immigrants do use more entitlement than native-borns, but that's because immigrants tend to have more children. Given how low the fertility rate for native-borns is, the entitlement that immigrants use to bring up their children probably pays itself off once the children grow up and contribute to the economy.
    • badestrand 8y ago
      > No, immigrants do not have abysmal rates of employment I think it depends on the specific form of migration to that country. For example the USA or Switzerland have very high skilled people coming to their country. In Germany too, but there was and is also a large influx of very uneducated migrants. Currently 55% of all welfare recipients in Germany are people with a migration background which shows that the opportunities/capabilities are not equal. I do think though that welfare can still work with free movement, it is just that there would need to be a similar level in all/many countries.
      • int_19h 8y ago
        Most immigration into USA is through the family track rather than the skilled worker track.
• hevi_jos 8y ago
  I used to be subscribe to the Economist until it became clear that is has transformed itself into the propaganda machine of the financial elite. It is owned by the Roschilds and every single day looks more despaired and afraid of the current economic situation. They want to shoehorn their rich owners solutions to the crisis so they remain unscathed in their wealth, while the rest of the population loses most of it. One of the most craziest thing those rich guys are doing is financing with hundreds of millions of euros the immigration of Africans into Europe, like the 60 million euro Soros gave to a "humanitarian society" that does most of the travel form Africa to Europe. There are more things in life than money, like culture, and people are starting to strongly react to the ipositions of those rich elites, Brexit and Trump are consecuences, but they are just the start. There is a huge debt in the world that will be never paid, and the capital destruction that is coming is not going to be pretty.
• vivekd 8y ago
  One could argue that this was tried on a micro scale with the EU. While there is an argument to be made that it did bring some economic growth but nothing near as close to the growth advertised by the economist.
  • mistermann 8y ago
    I've seen some video on YouTube that would suggest it also brought some negative unintended consequences with it. Some people believe that sort of thing should be included in an economic analysis, somewhat similarly to how some people advocate that environmental costs should be included in energy cost analysis.
  • jpatokal 8y ago
    How would you feel about all states in the US instituting their own immigration controls? Would there be a negative effect on the US economy if moving from New Jersey to New York required lengthy visa applications and waits for green cards?
    • zeth___ 8y ago
      Fewer than you'd think. New York and California would be places you could actually live in.
• geodel 8y ago
  It might be. But I am pretty sure that 90% of that will accrue richest 1% people or to those who work for them in important positions.
• trythisthought 8y ago
  after visiting 52 countries i came to the same conclusion, it is not like we are not implicitly sharing the space and all our physical objects with everyone else by proxy of the same space encapsulating them and their presence on one planet, nobody is taking their own personal lawnmower off the planet just yet... we are so indoctrinated that we fail to see that at the physical level everything is shared and everything is recycled if you look at the lifetime of any object. however in a system which has gateways at every speedbump the potential for a few actors to make big profits is so high that they resist anything else...
  • ipsocannibal 8y ago
    I don't know if I follow. Are you saying you've travelled to 52 different countries and found that they all exist on the same planet populated by a species devoid of interplanetary travel and that they have set up a system of artificial geographical barriers to control the distribution resources and movement of individuals of the species?
    • albertgoeswoof 8y ago
      I think they are trying to say we’re all basically the same across all countries, and all of these lines, boundaries and definitions are arbitrarily drawn by others in order to profit off our evolutionary tendency to work together as groups.
      • ipsocannibal 8y ago
        This seems to indicate that the borders themselves are an intensional form of profiteering. I see this more as the incremental and accidental process that takes advantage of the peculiarities of geography.
• Proven 8y ago
  Globalist garbage.
• diego_moita 8y ago
  ... but only about 1 million people would own these $78T. All the rest would share the costs of it.
• temp-dude-87844 8y ago
  Open borders will, at first, cause downward pressure on wages, as the labor pool of workers able and willing to perform work for a lower price grows. The magnitude would be more pronounced than with what we've been currently able to observe with controlled borders, because the article proposes a scenario where welfare and public assistance would readily apply to newcomers too. In fact, there would be a growth in the lucrative industry of coyotes who offer transportation and relocation assistance, because their line of work would now be legitimate. Increased demand for housing will cause costs to spike, which means that those most willing and able to pay larger amounts will live where they wish, and everyone else will be relegated to far outskirts, including nonimmigrants whose incomes fall further behind cost of living. In this scheme, generous profits will be made by landowners of high-demand locations, and shareholders of corporations who can take advantage of the influx of labor and the expanded customer base. It's not too different from our world's current direction, except within a particular state, the absolute numbers of the wage class and the underclass would be much larger.
  • cheez 8y ago
    Correct, the ones getting richer won't be the plebs.
    • Matticus_Rex 8y ago
      That's inconsistent with the data, considering economic immigrants nearly always end up better off. Did you mean that the native plebs wouldn't be getting richer? That's at least arguable, but carries some interesting connotations.
  • intopieces 8y ago
    >Because the article proposes a scenario where welfare and public assistance would readily apply to newcomers too. FTA: “If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access to welfare benefits? Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants, thus avoiding big, sudden surges.”
• alanz1223 8y ago
  ahh yes, open the borders and import every type of third worlder into western countries for the sake of profiting over cheap labor... Let us forget about the clash in cultures, and how unrestricted immigration leaves the native population in a worse off state by rising housing prices, demographic replacement and stagnant wages. I have experienced first hand the effects of such policies here in California. This article is the equivalent of selling your lung to afford a kidney. Also as a side note, Why is it that more developed nations have to find solutions for failed states by re-homing the population which voted for those same policies instead of leaving them to fight and improve the conditions in their own countries. Absolute globalist non sense.
  • albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    > Why is it that more developed nations have to find solutions for failed states by re-homing the population which voted for those same policies instead of leaving them to fight and improve the conditions in their own countries. Because developed nations have a vested interest in keeping international peace where possible as it is good for trade and national security. You’re also assuming every country is a fair democracy, and that they can resolve issues without international support. Remember that every developed country (including your own) has only been able to develop by leveraging cheaper labour and goods from 3rd world countries over the past 300 years, we are all very closely linked, whether you like it or not.
• southerndrift 8y ago
  $78T for 8G humans are roughly $10,000 per person. If this is per month then its an interesting idea. But if this is per year then there is no incentive for the Western citizens to open their borders. Average income is about $30,000 per year right now. If the job market is flooded with workers then there is no way that people will keep on earning that much. Additionally, the housing market will explode and people who rent their homes will have to move. I wouldn't be surprised if opening all borders would lead to even bigger gains. After all, China's source of income is their huge pool of workers. But I don't think that $78T profits are a good argument to convince the West to open its borders.
  • woah 8y ago
    The housing market would be fine if people were allowed to build housing on their own land without an extremely expensive and onerous zoning process driven by those with a vested interest in expensive housing.
• simonsarris 8y ago
  At least they use "Potentially" in the subtitle, sheesh. "If we had open borders we'd be $X trillion richer" is silly. It makes the huge assumption that institutions would stay the same, or inexplicably trend better everywhere, instead of worse. There is no thesis for why this is so, it is hand-waved here. > Suddenly, they can join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable legal system. This should prompt some navel gazing about: * Why some countries succeed in building institutions and what is different about them. * Why some countries used to have good institutions and now have dysfunctional ones. (Like say, Argentina, Lebanon, etc) They might even learn something about why free movement isn't common. > A Nigerian in the United States cannot be enslaved by the Islamists of Boko Haram. The author has almost figured it out. > If lots of people migrated from war-torn Syria, gangster-plagued Guatemala or chaotic Congo, would they bring mayhem with them? It is an understandable fear (and one that anti-immigrant politicians play on), but there is little besides conjecture and anecdotal evidence to support it. Okay, he hasn't quite. The planet is awash with dysfunctional institutions clawing away at function and semi-functional ones. Just going off of his Boko Haram example, the South Thailand Islamic insurgency is 13 years and counting of fighting from Muslim separatists. The Myanmar Islamic insurgency has been going on for 70 years and counting. The Somali civil war has been ongoing for my whole life, the Nigerian insurgencies over the years are numerous and ongoing, boko is just a continuation. I'm sure you know the story of other countries, weary reader. So why isn't the thesis "A world of free movement would spawn a new era of separatists"? Crazy, yes, but at least we have some precedent for it as a nonsense headline. No discussion of why nations differ in institutional quality is one thing, but no explanation of why the good-institution countries wouldn't degrade is another. As Taleb says, Economists don't seem to understand things that move. ~~~ A little tangential, but one of the things I think is under-discussed, is what happens to the places where people mass migrate from. Recently there has been massive brain drain from Southern & Eastern Europe to West: Half of Romania's doctors left between 2009 and 2015: http://www.politico.eu/article/doctors-nurses-migration-health-care-crisis-workers-follow-the-money-european-commission-data/ http://www.politico.eu/article/doctors-nurses-migration-heal... In Venezuela, 40% of recent medical school graduates have left. Medicine shortage + lack of physicians = countrywide health crisis: https://panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2017/12/12/venezuela-health-crisis-medical-graduates/ https://panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2017/12/12/venezuela-he... Other countries, like Lebanon after its civil war, are similar. Syria might end up similarly, I don't know. It is hard to fault people moving en masse for a better life, but it further solidifies that the places they leave behind will continue to be governed by the looney bin for the decades to come. I wish there was a more thinking about solutions to this problem, and less glee at the capital class counting chips over the obverse.
• deleted 8y ago
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• adamrezich 8y ago
  As this sort of thinking becomes more and more popular, I wonder how close to some kind of singularity we truly are. If the people of the world are really so eager to transform the planet into a single global monoculture, then some sort of technology-driven unification of all human consciousness can't be too far off. Me, I personally like a world of true diversity, where people of different physical regions are allowed to have unique local cultures. Complete and total globalization of everything on the planet (and perhaps beyond) might be inevitable, but I don't trust the people who are trying to make it happen right now to have any common peoples' best interests in mind, because I'm not naive to human nature (plus I've read up on them).
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • hawkice 8y ago
    > Me, I personally like a world of true diversity, where people of different physical regions are allowed to have unique local cultures. I think free movement is likely to amplify culture, not mute it. Right now I have to go through tons of hoops to live in Taiwan. The culture is precisely my aesthetic. I've spent untold hours studying the language. There are lots of Taiwanese-culturally-minded Americans and Dutch and South Africans who don't feel at home in their birth culture. Making it a big hassle for them to live in a culture that reflects their values just smears out culturally-Taiwanese across those countries.
    • adamrezich 8y ago
      Surely the hoops you have to go through to live in Taiwan despite not being a native prevent the country from being overrun by people who are culturally incompatible with the local populace? It sucks you have to go through hoops and can't just fly there and move in tomorrow I guess, but in a world where you could do that, so could I, and I can't speak any Chinese or Taiwanese, I don't know anything about their culture, and my only connection to the country is an aunt who married into the family. What if a bunch of people like myself moved there suddenly for some random reason, and the local culture was essentially eradicated as we altered it to suit our desires? with global open borders, this sort of thing would happen constantly, all over the place, and with the advent of the Internet, most of culture would merge into even more of a ubiquitous monoculture than the world already is.
• remarkEon 8y ago
  >If the worry is that immigrants will outvote the locals and impose an uncongenial government on them, one solution would be not to let immigrants vote—for five years, ten years or even a lifetime. This is actually an interesting idea worth thinking about more. If the concern for those on the right is that more immigrants to the US would cause a permanent electoral Blue Wall by flipping Texas in a couple election cycles, and those on the left see economic migration through a humanitarian lens, then re-thinking what Citizenship means and the rules for participating in a democracy could be on the table as part of a compromise. I imagine a sizable percentage predicate their reason on wanting to come to the United States on earning money, not voting in elections (though I could be wrong, but I don't think I am and I doubt this question gets asked to newcomers). The natural reaction to such a proposal would be that we'd be creating tiers of citizens (Native Born vs Full Citizens vs residents or something along those lines). I don't have a problem with that, per se, but I can see how a lot of people would.
  • jameslk 8y ago
    No taxation without representation is a huge part of the culture of the US. I'm guessing suggesting open immigration without voting rights will have a large amount of detractors for this reason. Unless the immigrants aren't taxed, which is kind of the current situation anyway for illegal immigrants.
    • hueving 8y ago
      But that's already the case for immigrants who don't naturalize.
    • gasull 8y ago
      Many illegal immigrants do pay taxes. They can't get almost any job without an ITIN and paying taxes. Their employer needs an SSN or ITIN for the paperwork: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Taxpayer_Identification_Number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Taxpayer_Identifica...
    • int_19h 8y ago
      First of all, the system as described in the article is already effectively in place: once you get your green card, you have to wait 5 years (3 if it's through marriage) before you can naturalize. In that time - or more, if you don't apply immediately - you pay taxes etc, but you cannot vote. It's even more amusing with non-citizens who aren't green card holders, because not only they still pay all the taxes, but they're denied most of the benefits those taxes fund (so e.g. you still pay social security on your wages, but you don't get to actually claim any payments when a citizen could). So I don't think there's any insurmountable political obstacle here. But even beyond that, "taxation without representation", as originally used, didn't actually mean voting rights per se. The complaint, rather, was the lack of anyone specifically representing the interests of the colonies, because they were basically arbitrarily assigned to districts in Britain proper for the purposes of parliamentary election. So not only colonials didn't vote, but their MP would typically never even set foot on the territory he supposedly represented... which is why it was pointed out that it's not really representation. However, representation was not equated to vote - keep in mind that the original franchise wasn't even universal among white males. However, those that couldn't vote were still deemed to be represented, on the basis that they lived in the same district as the voters. Even today this principle still applies: while only citizens vote, the number of congressional seats, electors etc is calculated on the basis of the entire state population as of the last census, which doesn't distinguish citizens and non-citizens. So areas with large non-naturalized immigrant populations effectively award more voting powers to their resident citizens to "represent" the rest of the district. And this practice was explicitly blessed as valid by the Supreme Court in Evenwel v. Abbott.
• zyngaro 8y ago
  Richer? But will it be happier?
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• sbg987 8y ago
  This world would be a very shitty one to live in, unless you were very rich.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• graycat 8y ago
  Okay, take the people the OP is talking about, with spouse and children. Then look at their qualifications for work in the US. Look at their skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic, knowledge of English, US civics, etc. Some of the immigrants need training in bathing, using a toilet, and other basic hygiene. And there tend to be serious medical, including communicable disease, problems -- TB, measles, polio, GI parasites, etc. And look at job skills -- computer usage, basics of electricity in factories and on job sites, skills with important work place tools, etc. The US has long had immigration criteria that ruled out such people. Okay, now take a US citizen that on qualifications is a good match for such an immigrant and see what their job and career prospects are. As we know very, very well, they are unemployable or nearly so. Well, so will be the immigrant. The ability of the immigrant to get a job, have a career, and support themselves and their family is from poor to zero. So, why do such immigrants want to come to the US? And how can they hope to make it? First, the usual way has been the immigrants were young men who left their families, friends, villages behind and did common labor, e.g., picking fruit. They lived several to a room sleeping on a mat on the floor. They were here only the warmer parts of the year, not through the winters. They got paid in US cash with no deductions for taxes or US Social Security. Then at least for the winter, they went home and took their US cash with them. Due to currency value differences, their US cash would go really far back in their home village. Of course, that whole situation is wildly illegal, on taxes and more. A US citizen here for 12 months a year can't do that and support a family or even themselves. Second, if the immigrant brings their family, with children, then the family and especially the children are one heck of a huge expense for the US education and welfare systems, paid for by US workers paying taxes. More broadly the OP does poor accounting: Sure, there are a lot of people in the world who are, in US terms, not very productive. Some of these people are current US citizens, and the US is struggling to get those people trained, into jobs, and productive. The US has many dozens of job training programs. Those candidate immigrants are on average less well qualified than the millions of current US citizens struggling to be productive in the US economy. Where do the OP authors get the funny stuff they've been smoking to conclude that immigrants much less well qualified than millions of US citizens who are already struggling to get good jobs in the US will do better than those already struggling US citizens? Or, if those immigrants are such a valuable, neglected resource, then, sure, take some US tools, supplies, know-how, etc. to some foreign countries and give the people there jobs. Chrysler tried that in Mexico and has decided that it was a mistake and are returning to Detroit. Uh, apparently to make people as productive as in the US takes more than just some people and training for a job; also required are huge investments in infrastructure from water and sewer, roads and bridges, suppliers and supplies, communications, regulations, laws, law enforcement, public health, medical care, citizenship, ..., the whole thing. The OP is being simplistic, straining over gnats and forgetting elephants. IMHO, too many powerful people in US business see the immigrants as a new version of slave labor. In 1861, the US had a lot of slave labor and people who liked that situation; we fought a bloody war over that issue, killed IIRC 600,000+ US soldiers and maybe a comparable number of other US citizens. Net, slavery was a big mistake. Bringing back slavery will be a bigger mistake. The forces in favor of slavery have been strong for thousands of years and did not end in 1865 or so. If the authors of the OP want to take some funds, rush to some country with lots of really poor people that are unproductive, set up some businesses, give those people jobs, training, etc., so be it. People have been trying that off and on around the world for a long time. We've long had international organizations for such development. Successes have not been anything like the claims of tens of trillions of dollars claimed in the OP. So, the OP looks like really bad, simple economic and business arithmetic, so bad the OP does not look like economics. So, what really is the OP? Hmm .... For a candidate answer, consider the advice "Always look for the hidden agenda.".
• sbg987 8y ago
  This would be a very shitty world to live in unless you were very rich. It's efficient because it reduces the bargining power of labour to nothing, and those that gain are the owners of capital. With no bargining power, benefits will disappear and everyone will be non permanent except those in very secure positions or in very specialist jobs. People will no longer have a home - a place to belong, they'll either break up families with parents working on other countries, or children will endure an existence of jumping from place to place eroding the chance for normal development. Society will be broken and the ability to self organise to build political movements will evaporate. This will not be a nice world to live in for 99.9pc of the population.
• sbg987 8y ago
  This is really just propaganda.
• dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  This article was kind of a roller coaster for me, I was like "no screw that, that'll screw all sorts of things up" then it had all these fairly reasonable proposals for minimizing the impacts and I was ok with it. >This, they fear, would make life worse, and perhaps threaten the political system that made their country worth moving to in the first place. The latter part of that sentence is of key importance. Ask the people of Denver what they think of migrants from CA, ask Mainers what they think of the Massholes and the way those groups have affected their society (comically, most Mainers would rather have more poor Somalis than MA migrants). It's really easy to say "well it wasn't that bad" as an outsider 50yr or 100yr after the fact but for the people who have to live through it these changes really suck. >for five years, ten years or even a lifetime. This may seem harsh, but it is far kinder than not letting them in. I support this so, so, so, much. So many cultural problems caused by migration would be solved if when moving somewhere your vote counted as 1/X and increased to 1/1 over some period of time. This should apply to citizens too. If I move to the next town over my vote should count at 1/X in town elections but still count as what it previously did in state/federal elections As an aside, I thought this was going to be a piece about the cost to the economy of transportation and physical distance but I was disappointed.
• crispinb 8y ago
  Borders are, & have always been, fundamentally open, because it's a plain physical (biological) reality that H. sapiens is a resourceful, migratory species. Erection of walls and legions of petty border-guarding popinjays is no more than a can-kicking exercise, a waste of time & resources analogous to those squandered pretending that climate change requires little response. You either face physical reality, or exert tremendous material effort on crass denial. Story-based entities (cultures, businesses, nations) are necessary but in the end, they are only temporary tactical fictions. They supervene on physical reality and when they attempt to deny it, will be swept away.
• badrabbit 8y ago
  Hate to say it but if you suddenly open borders you will have a huge immigration crisis. Half the planet would literally move to western europe and north america. Maybe open border can work for trade and business related immigration with sponsors on either side.
  • lord_ring_11 8y ago
    I doubt it even works for trade. Full free trade has caused money flow to 3rd world countries at the cost of natives. China has policy of trading off ip for privilege of cheap manufacturing. So its growing in tech at the cost of west. What west gets in return in temporary cheap goods and must of 2$ crap toys which break.
• jopsen 8y ago
  Closed borders is a form of discrimination. But if we open them and want to maintain our standard of living we'll have to make them second class citizens. As the article argues, this is better than excluding them from our labour market. But discrimination like designating people as 2nd class citizens is probably more repundant to people's sense of ethics than closed borders. And perhaps these moral tabu's are not without importance. I'm not sure, but "closed borders" do seem worse than a 2nd class of citizens.
  • jopsen 8y ago
    Okay, maybe this was ill phrased :) My point is that the article argues that a "2nd class of citizen" is better than closed borders. In many ways those arguments make sense. However, that doesn't make any of this feel better.
• retox 8y ago
  Globalists only think in terms of profit and not of culture, tradition and the mental well-being of the average person. There are plenty of studies which show that homogeneous societies are happier, more trusting and more engaged in the political system as well as their fellow man. Reducing people down to a line in a calculation of your bottom line is dehumanising. http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...
• troubador55 8y ago
  Free movement will drive down wages and labor costs. Labor will lose value while capital will increase in value. Combine this dynamic with our current world in which the gulf between a small elite class and everyone else is widening with the middle class in between deteriorating, and you have a recipe for disaster. The modern welfare state that exists in Europe and to a (much) lesser extent in the US would crumble from the stress of millions of new individuals flooding the economy at the low end and being stuck there because of economic dynamics beyond anyone's control. Rather than importing the impoverished from poor nations to rich nations, we should be working together as a community of nations to establish law and order where there is lawlessness. Once law, order and in particular property rights are followed and enforced, wealth can and will grow as it has in places like China and Vietnam. Encouraging freedom of movement will result in poor regions becoming even more destitute. As one of my wealthy friends from Pakistan lamented to me once when considering whether she should move to Canada or stay in Pakistan, "if people like myself flee Pakistan, who will stay to build it into a strong and prosperous nation?" Overall, free movement would be a terrible idea for most people. This article does a really poor job of considering the issue.
• steamer25 8y ago
  Prior to reading the article, I'm struck by the thought of a possible analogy: An internet with no firewalls and free, unauthenticated root access would be $78T richer.
  • steamer25 8y ago
    FWIW, I read the article and found lots of hand-waving. Strong counter-examples came quickly to mind for most of it's claims. It's saying pretty much the same thing as, "Think of how productive the world would be if there were no more crimes or wars! What if we stopped having police or armies!" Yup--that sure would be nice but I'm not going to hold my breath.
• lord_ring_11 8y ago
  I am ok with selective immigration. But open borders is truly crazy idea at this point. If we open borders like suggested next thing we know will be - developed countries becoming like garbage dumps we see in other countries. There is a reason why some countires fall into downward spirals. If u get its people en mass without filters, you get that mentality too. Why dont we experiment in smaller scale with liberal companies like facebook/google/microsoft opening its employment where anyone from anywhere can come and say i want to be employed here and goog/fb/msft have to take them in? Lets even throw in a restriction that person should be cs degree holder from anywhere in the world. Lets see how it goes.
  • hueving 8y ago
    You can have open borders or a good social safety net. Pick one.
    • int_19h 8y ago
      You can have both, if social safety net does not automatically apply to every resident.
    • tom_mellior 8y ago
      Explain please? Immigrants pay into safety nets just like anyone else who pays into them.
      • krferriter 8y ago
        If 10 million poor people with no employable skillsets move into Europe, they would be withdrawing vastly more from the tax pool than they would be putting into it. People who do not contribute to production would just move wherever the local government will give residents the most resources.
        • tom_mellior 8y ago
          > If If, yes. All this is conditioned on your racism that tells you that all foreigners are uneducated (and uneducatable)/lazy/freeloaders. In addition, all of the tax money paid out would immediately be spent by these alleged freeloaders on meeting their needs for food etc., so it would flow back to producers of useful stuff and a lot of it come back as taxes.
• incompatible 8y ago
  I'm not entirely sold on the idea of cramming the vast majority of the world's population into the subset of countries that are relatively wealthy and well-run. In practice, the cramming continues within those countries into the most favoured cities. If we are thinking of pie-in-the-sky ideas like open borders, then why also try to think of a way to spread good government and wealth across all parts of the world? I.e., spread the best practices so they become universal. Some ideas in the past, like Europe colonising and controlling much of the world, are obviously out of fashion today. Yet ironically many people have voted with their feet (or would like to, if given the opportunity) and moved to Europe.
  • steamer25 8y ago
    Yes, I've often thought we can't all live in North America* but we could all live like Americans if the freedom loving peoples of the world were given a chance to import the better parts of our culture. E.g., what if the Mexicans who thought that becoming an American would be better than remaining Mexican all moved to northern Mexico, seceded and tried to live like they were the 51st state. They could adopting the U.S. Constitution, etc. and make friendly overtures. Even if the U.S. didn't annex them they could probably pull favorable trade status and military alliances while retaining local self-government. *This is a little melodramatic but it gives one a good sense of the scale of the problem with trying to bring everyone to western countries: https://youtu.be/KCcFNL7EmwY https://youtu.be/KCcFNL7EmwY
    • incompatible 8y ago
      I think that would lead to a nasty civil war in Mexico; it would be unlikely to leave many people better off.
  • gremlinsinc 8y ago
    I like the idea of open borders, guaranteed basic income (only for citizens), getting rid of income taxes, making all citizens pay a national sales tax instead (gbi would offset some of this), having a national id (with id you save 10-15% on sales tax without you pay a lot more, say 4-5% for citizens, 15-20% for migrants/travelers from abroad). -- This would make immigrants legal or not pay 3x the taxes, and I think a lot more people would be fine with that. Sales tax would be more of a consumption/outbound tax -- all outbound expenses would be taxed if you buy or pay anyone it's taxed on payers side. So example a company pays wages they pay a sales tax on the wage, they buy office supplies, pay dividend to shareholders, pay ceo a bonus or golden parachute, buy land, etc... People would be taxed for paying rent, buying food, buying houses, buying land, etc.. on the purchase/exchange of money. GBI would paid out to all citizens and sales tax could be adjusted yearly to balance the budget if there's a surplus/deficit from previous year. Welfare/IRS can be dismantled completely and everything automated via technology. Saving billions. We'd need a lot less accountants, and tax workers. Tax software for consumers wouldn't be needed, etc.. It'd shore up a glut of industry we don't need.
• yellowapple 8y ago
  "Workers become far more productive when they move from a poor country to a rich one. Suddenly, they can join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable legal system. Those who used to scrape a living from the soil with a wooden hoe start driving tractors. Those who once made mud bricks by hand start working with cranes and mechanical diggers. Those who cut hair find richer clients who tip better." Like hell they do. In the first two scenarios, the hypothetical worker is almost certainly not qualified to be operating any sort of heavy machinery. In the third, stylists/barbers tend to require certification. I'm sure this paragraph wasn't meant to be taken literally, but it does nonetheless betray a gross underestimation of the costs of actually training someone to be an effective and safe worker in a new, more technologically-driven environment.
• mythrwy 8y ago
  This article (and the comments) seem to focus on migration from poorer to more developed areas. But what if people could migrate from the developed world to resource rich regions (like Africa and South America) and have the chance to unlock the potential of those regions? All that potential wealth which is currently held back by corrupt governments and non-progressive cultural habits could be unlocked. Wait, that happened before and was called colonialism and wasn't good for the natives. But neither is uncontrolled inflow of third worlders into industrialized nations. Is growing global wealth more important than effects on local populations?
  • lord_ring_11 8y ago
    Well i hear sometimes that india was better off under imperial rule than now. There was better rule of law. I guess india should have waited another 50-100 years for independence.
• neilwilson 8y ago
  One area's net immigration is another area's brain drain. Look around your own country and ask if the movement to the richer areas has helped the areas the people come from, or the all the people that were there in the first place or even really those that did the moving. We keep recreating the slums of 1840s Manchester with every cycle and still we never learn. Never take open borders arguments from anybody with a lock on their front door. Free movement is essentially the privatisation of borders for the benefit of the rich. You can have a border if you can afford to purchase enough land, put a fence up and hire the heavies to keep the riffraff out. Everybody else gets to fight it out in the mud pool.
  • simplecomplex 8y ago
    Equating someone moving to the town you live in (wherever they come from) and breaking into your home is disingenuous and childish.
    • neilwilson 8y ago
      That's not what I'm say is it, and you present no actual argument against the analogy. Just an emotional reaction - a tell for cognitive dissonance. The difference between open borders and visa control is simply this. Do you believe that somebody should be able to walk into your house, sit down on the front sofa and demand Pringles, which you have to then provide. Or do you believe that somebody should knock on your door first and ask if they can come in, you then invite them into the front room and offer them Pringles. For the majority of poorer people whose outlook ties them to an area, not a profession, a country is seen as a sort of house share. And open borders fans are that annoying house mate who keeps bringing in new people without asking, and expecting everybody else to put up with them sleeping on the sofa.
      • csomar 8y ago
        I agree with you but evolution predicts globalization. Instead of moving backward, we have to figure out how to move forward. The world will be a place where money is what guarantees safety. State welfare will be no more. No place is safe if it is free. Access to infrastructure will be open but cost money regardless of your citizenship. If you think the future will be like that, you should stop paying taxes (as in contributing to the old model), move to a tax free jurisdiction and start saving funds (as in make sure you can live in a gated society). The old model is collapsing (governments, countries, borders, citizenship) albeit slowly. Governments are getting more indebted and less efficient. Corps are making record gains. International trade is still thriving despite all. And the Internet is still here. Move to the new model my friend :)
• wavefunction 8y ago
  Of course that $78T will be mostly monopolized by the usual suspects but more is better no matter the circumstances!
• thedailymail 8y ago
  The world might be $78 trillion richer, but if current wealth distribution patterns hold up most of that will end up further enriching the rich.
• rsj_hn 8y ago
  These are the same geniuses that were cheerleading financial deregulation before the crash. Before that, they were cheering liberalization of international capital flows before the asian crash. After, they were cheering austerity. The economist is like an anti-oracle.
• dandare 8y ago
  78T of how much? Is it 50% of worlds GDP or 0.005%? I hate titles like this.
• rdlecler1 8y ago
  This is a idealistic thought experiment, but Europe is still reeling from the the Syrian refugee crisis and that is just one small country. Throwing open boarders when there’s differential welfare systems would be chaos. The world wouldn’t be $78T richer, it would be $78T poorer because it would lead to widespread civil war. Even if the author was right about the economic impacts she is discounting people’s tolerance for change, especially is a country’s conservative faction. For developed nations it would effectively be asking for forfiteture. The author uses Greece as an example, but Greece has nowhere the poverty of much of the developing world (and that’s a big number). What incentive is there for the average middle class American to partake in such a grand experiment? Look at what happened when you introduced scarcity to an educated and industrious population after WW1. Mass genocide. And let’s not forget housing inflation in developed countries. Immigrants are not going to head to Reno, they’re going to go to cities like NY, SF, LA, London—cities that they’ve heard about and where there are already large immigrant communities. Good luck adding another million people to NY over a three year period.
  • teaspoons 8y ago
    "The world wouldn’t be $78T richer, it would be $78T poorer because it would lead to widespread civil war" Nope, 90% of people would stay where they are. Most people don't like migrating: to uproot yourself and your family from the land, culture and language you love is a big deal and people only do it when the have no other choice.
    • rdlecler1 8y ago
      Okay and what about the migration of the other 700m people with most frequent destinations being US and Europe from the bottom quartile of countries by GDP? Mexico has 125m people and the US has around 12m illegal aliens. Let’s generously assume that only half are from Mexico, that’s 5% of the population that was willing to take the risk to live in the US illegally. Now create an open boarder? You’d have 10% of Mexico moving to the US tomorrow. It’s human nature to want a better life and it’s also human nature to want to protect the life one already has.
• Antifragile1 8y ago
  Libtards and their Soros.
• gremlinsinc 8y ago
  What if instead of open borders, there were no borders. What if the entire world (democratic regions at least) sign some sort of pact, each city-state gets 1 vote. Each state is taxed x amount to preserve an international military force that's goal is to thwart axis-type powers that might arise, but needs a 60%+ vote from city states. Maybe an ai of some sort could decide the size/scope of region that equates to fair city-states. -- Travel between cities/states would be open as long as you don't mean harm to the area. Cities/states could set their own solutions to problems like healthcare, drugs, basic income, jobs, etc... I think large governments like USA/Canada/EU/China create represive regimes, smaller self-governed entities could run things better locally, and still have open communications/trade/etc with nearby states/cities. It would also be less-prone to corruption as you'd need to pay thousands more politicians (ones in each locality) instead of just in D.C. Personally, I'd love to start a blockchain/identity project to create a universal basic income with fool-proof/sybil-attack proof identity system, making fiat currencies un-needed and creating one-world blockchain-based currency, that helps alleviate pain caused by automation. I think a monetary system like this could take away some of the power and corruption from government.