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What EU should immediately do is to start building charter cities. Either on sparsely populated areas within EU or by making long term rental agreements outside

What EU should immediately do is to start building charter cities. Either on sparsely populated areas within EU or by making long term rental agreements outside EU. Or likely both. The rules of charter cities would be roughly as follows: - Anyone (literally anyone) would be welcome to move to charter city if they just want so. - EU guarantees funding for basic infrastructure like education, legal system, security, health care and tax authorities. - Everyone moving in is allowed and expected to work in the society. - All refugees coming to EU are directed to these charter cities. - Charter city citizenship does not mean access to EU. I am not saying that this would be a problem-free solution. I am saying that it is extremely important that we start to solve the problems that arise here. Because they are the problems we need to solve to take pressure away from the refugees to flood Europe. They are the problems we need to solve when suddenly there is an environmental catastrophe and there are suddenly a lot of people looking for a new place to live. They are the problems we need to solve to make the coungries still living under bad governments to improve their governance. And no, most people in the world would absolutely not move immediately to these cities. Most people actually want to live in their homes. Edit, small changes in looks.

delfinom 7y ago
>- EU guarantees funding for basic infrastructure like education, legal system, security, health care and tax authorities. So tell me, how does the EU magically drum up money for all of this?
- point78 7y ago
  Make the immigrants/refugees actually work when they get here. Something like up to 80% are on welfare and public housing etc. You don't work or go to school, you go back.
  - lawlessone 7y ago
    pretty much all of them want to work too. Many countries don't allow that though.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Asylum seekers are deliberately prevented from working in the UK, it's illegal for them to do so. They are paid £37.75 a week to live on. This is not a lot.
    - simonsarris 7y ago
      > They are paid £37.75 a week to live on. This is not a lot. Shifting discussion from the cost of refugees to talking about only the food cost, or whatever it is that £37.75 a week amounts to, seems like a deliberate dodge. I'd be pretty insulted if I was from the UK. Obviously that's not a lot of money because obviously its not the whole picture. What they are paid, or that they are paid at all, is never ever a relevant £ figure in these discussions unless its introduced to make it sound artificially small. When discussing cost, nothing but the total £ cost per refugee matters.
      - pjc50 7y ago
        Admittedly that excludes housing benefit, but again, when they are forbidden from working, where and how are they supposed to live? The stipend is for food and all other living expenses - clothes, heating etc.
- beefield 7y ago
  Primary source would be taxes from the charter city citizens. I do not believe that the people moving in would be completely helpless. Then the possible remainning part of the funding, well, at the moment quite a few European countries are borrowing money with negative interest rates. So I assume they can borrow quite a pile of money before the interedt rates become unbearable. And to be clear, this is in my mind one of the most important if not the most important thing EU should be investing money for its own sake. And EU does not need to give the money to charter cities, mo ey can be loaned as well.
  - ohduran 7y ago
    Are you aware that the whole Brexit campaign revolved around the fact that giving money away to people abroad clashes with voters?
    - beefield 7y ago
      Loaning and investing is differwnt from giving. In my original post I tried to be clear that there are problems in this model. Unfortunately it looks to me like we need to solve them whether we like or not, so might be better to start solving them. Brexit did show that it is important how you sell things. And I am not a salesman...
    - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
      This x1000. The EU started to crack during the Greece financial crisis, way before the refugee crisis, since the Northern EU states didn't want to give any more money to the economically failing Southern EU states. If European taxpayers don't want their taxes going to other EU countries then that should tell you something about their desire to aid people outside the EU. Charity starts at home.
      - beefield 7y ago
        So, when the 3 million plus Syrians are starting to walk into EU from Turkey, are these people not willing to aid others going to volunteer to stand in the front line and tell them that they are not welcome? How are you going to solve that? 3 million people is quite a damn lot even if you have a couple of machine guns to try to help you in your negotiations.
aivisol 7y ago
> All refugees coming to EU are directed to these charter cities. This seems to be problematic IMHO. Who would want to go there instead of already build, well run city. Would you?
- ahbyb 7y ago
  They are free to stay in their own countries then.
- sahinabi 7y ago
  It sounds like a refugee camp with much, much better PR.
bognition 7y ago
So projects as cities then?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Maybe they can put them in Warsaw and Łódź, and have them be "self-governed" by Einwandererräte. You know, for old times' sake.
adwww 7y ago
Charter does sound a much better name than slums or shanty towns.
- andrepd 7y ago
  Shanty town + Silicon Valley VC-speak = charter City
unclesams-uncle 7y ago
This sounds like a refugee camp but with extra steps.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  It's a refugee camp with better infrastructure and opportunity. That makes it quite different from what we normally think "refugee camp" means.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Frankly, it sounds like Gaza. Walled off, restricted rights, told they can "just leave" to places that aren't safe or welcoming, etc. Sure, there are permanent buildings, water/electricity sometimes, etc., theoretically some self-determination, but it's still a crowded, dismal refugee camp with little hope of improvement for its residents.
ohduran 7y ago
Sure! Mind if I ask you how are you going to fund this? > EU guarantees funding for basic infrastructure like education, legal system, security, health cate and tax authorities. That doesn't even happen for actual EU citizens, why on earth would an EU taxpayer allow for this? > allowed and expected to work in the society or what? are you throwing them back? > Charter city citizenship does not mean access to EU. I could use an expert to figure out the difference between this plan and living in any city in Hungary, for example.
- beefield 7y ago
  > That doesn't even happen for actual EU citizens, why on earth would an EU taxpayer allow for this? I am no expert in all of the EU countries, can you give example of an EU country where basic education, basic health care, relatively functioning judicial and police system are not guaranteed by governments? And why would the taxpayer want to guarantee (different than actual payment) this? Maybe because the other option is literally millions of people crashing one day in to EU uninvited?
theflyinghorse 7y ago
> Charter city citizenship does not mean access to EU. How do you stop them? We're talking about extremely motivated people here. > Everyone moving in is allowed and expected to work in the society. How do you make them? What do you do if they refuse? > EU guarantees funding for basic infrastructure like education, legal system, security, health care and tax authorities. Like another poster said - who pays for it, and what funding gets cut in Europe to pay for it? Education budgets or maybe R&D?
- beefield 7y ago
  > How do you stop them? We're talking about extremely motivated people here. Fences. Walls. Snakes and Alligators. Guns. I think there are lots of ways to keep people in one side of the border. In addition to these (to be sure that my sarcasm gets passed, not just in addition, but much more importantly) Clear incentives. In the charter city you can work and study and live officially a good life. You go past the snake pit, you are not able to do any of that but are immediately brought back to charter city when caught.
nlitened 7y ago
So, concentration camps?..
- beefield 7y ago
  I think there is a not so small difference between a camp designed to keep you in and make your life miserable or even kilm you and a city that is trying to offer you a decent way of life and which you are completely free to leave whenever you want back to your home country or wherever your passport lets you go.
dsign 7y ago
This is actually a really good idea. And there are tons of space for this: Sahara, Gobi, Siberia, Northern Canada, the central part of Australia, Antarctica, quite a few places in South America, etc. etc. Economic prosperity is about institutions and their "source code". For a world afflicted with so many problems, it's just insane that we have got no way to try out blank-slate constitutions.
- poilcn 7y ago
  People who live in these countries and specifically the places to decide whether they need these "neighbors" on their upkeep. If you want to help them, why won't you take them in your own house, not send to some god forgotten place far away from you and force others to pay for your vanity?
malandrew 7y ago
What happens once charter cities have a large enough population to influence elections and change direction of the country in objection of the citizens of that country? What I don’t understand is why we don’t treat these mass exodus of people from one country to another country like we do datacenter failovers and failbacks. Give people refuge, let them carry on productively with their life and the condition is that they failback once the situation has stabilized in the country they fled from. To allow a select few to stay, you can create a merit based program based on contribution to adopted society and assimilation to provide an incentive to become part of the adopted host country and be allowed to stay instead of failed back. Without failbacks, we absorb good people willing to work for a better life and deprive that country of those people long term. That never allows those countries to get better because most of the good people leave and never go back. Failbacks would be the healthiest form of nation building since it would be done by citizens of the country in need of being built up. Furthermore, refugees should not change the country that graciously hosted them in a way that many of the citizens of that country dislike. That’s being a bad houseguest.
- beefield 7y ago
  > What happens once charter cities have a large enough population to influence elections and change direction of the country in objection of the citizens of that country? Of course, citizenship in a charter city would not give citizenship/voting rights in the host country.
nec4b 7y ago
It's incredible bad idea to bring people in the EU and house them in ghettoes surrounded with barbed wire to prevent them from leaving.
- beefield 7y ago
  I fully agree. If you thought that was what I was proposing you may want to reread my post.
  - nec4b 7y ago
    I believe you that you have best intentions in mind, but what you propose would lead sooner than later to what I wrote. There are examples in the present as well as in the history why it would be a bad idea.
chewz 7y ago
Don't be naive. These cities would be turning into ghettos rotten with corruption and ruled by organized gangs in no time.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  See also: Gastarbeiter and Turkish-German integration issues. "By 2010 there were about 4 million people of Turkish descent in Germany. The generation born in Germany attended German schools, but some had a poor command of either German or Turkish, and thus had either low-skilled jobs or were unemployed. Most are Muslims and are presently reluctant to become German citizens." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter
thefz 7y ago
So basically a long worded definition of ghetto. It hasn't worked in the past.

delfinom 7y ago

>- EU guarantees funding for basic infrastructure like education, legal system, security, health care and tax authorities. So tell me, how does the EU magically drum up money for all of this?

point78 7y ago
Make the immigrants/refugees actually work when they get here. Something like up to 80% are on welfare and public housing etc. You don't work or go to school, you go back.
- lawlessone 7y ago
  pretty much all of them want to work too. Many countries don't allow that though.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Asylum seekers are deliberately prevented from working in the UK, it's illegal for them to do so. They are paid £37.75 a week to live on. This is not a lot.
  - simonsarris 7y ago
    > They are paid £37.75 a week to live on. This is not a lot. Shifting discussion from the cost of refugees to talking about only the food cost, or whatever it is that £37.75 a week amounts to, seems like a deliberate dodge. I'd be pretty insulted if I was from the UK. Obviously that's not a lot of money because obviously its not the whole picture. What they are paid, or that they are paid at all, is never ever a relevant £ figure in these discussions unless its introduced to make it sound artificially small. When discussing cost, nothing but the total £ cost per refugee matters.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      Admittedly that excludes housing benefit, but again, when they are forbidden from working, where and how are they supposed to live? The stipend is for food and all other living expenses - clothes, heating etc.
beefield 7y ago
Primary source would be taxes from the charter city citizens. I do not believe that the people moving in would be completely helpless. Then the possible remainning part of the funding, well, at the moment quite a few European countries are borrowing money with negative interest rates. So I assume they can borrow quite a pile of money before the interedt rates become unbearable. And to be clear, this is in my mind one of the most important if not the most important thing EU should be investing money for its own sake. And EU does not need to give the money to charter cities, mo ey can be loaned as well.
- ohduran 7y ago
  Are you aware that the whole Brexit campaign revolved around the fact that giving money away to people abroad clashes with voters?
  - beefield 7y ago
    Loaning and investing is differwnt from giving. In my original post I tried to be clear that there are problems in this model. Unfortunately it looks to me like we need to solve them whether we like or not, so might be better to start solving them. Brexit did show that it is important how you sell things. And I am not a salesman...
  - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    This x1000. The EU started to crack during the Greece financial crisis, way before the refugee crisis, since the Northern EU states didn't want to give any more money to the economically failing Southern EU states. If European taxpayers don't want their taxes going to other EU countries then that should tell you something about their desire to aid people outside the EU. Charity starts at home.
    - beefield 7y ago
      So, when the 3 million plus Syrians are starting to walk into EU from Turkey, are these people not willing to aid others going to volunteer to stand in the front line and tell them that they are not welcome? How are you going to solve that? 3 million people is quite a damn lot even if you have a couple of machine guns to try to help you in your negotiations.

aivisol 7y ago

> All refugees coming to EU are directed to these charter cities. This seems to be problematic IMHO. Who would want to go there instead of already build, well run city. Would you?

ahbyb 7y ago
They are free to stay in their own countries then.
sahinabi 7y ago
It sounds like a refugee camp with much, much better PR.

bognition 7y ago

So projects as cities then?

ceejayoz 7y ago
Maybe they can put them in Warsaw and Łódź, and have them be "self-governed" by Einwandererräte. You know, for old times' sake.

adwww 7y ago

Charter does sound a much better name than slums or shanty towns.

andrepd 7y ago
Shanty town + Silicon Valley VC-speak = charter City

unclesams-uncle 7y ago

This sounds like a refugee camp but with extra steps.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
It's a refugee camp with better infrastructure and opportunity. That makes it quite different from what we normally think "refugee camp" means.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Frankly, it sounds like Gaza. Walled off, restricted rights, told they can "just leave" to places that aren't safe or welcoming, etc. Sure, there are permanent buildings, water/electricity sometimes, etc., theoretically some self-determination, but it's still a crowded, dismal refugee camp with little hope of improvement for its residents.

ohduran 7y ago

Sure! Mind if I ask you how are you going to fund this? > EU guarantees funding for basic infrastructure like education, legal system, security, health cate and tax authorities. That doesn't even happen for actual EU citizens, why on earth would an EU taxpayer allow for this? > allowed and expected to work in the society or what? are you throwing them back? > Charter city citizenship does not mean access to EU. I could use an expert to figure out the difference between this plan and living in any city in Hungary, for example.

beefield 7y ago
> That doesn't even happen for actual EU citizens, why on earth would an EU taxpayer allow for this? I am no expert in all of the EU countries, can you give example of an EU country where basic education, basic health care, relatively functioning judicial and police system are not guaranteed by governments? And why would the taxpayer want to guarantee (different than actual payment) this? Maybe because the other option is literally millions of people crashing one day in to EU uninvited?

theflyinghorse 7y ago

> Charter city citizenship does not mean access to EU. How do you stop them? We're talking about extremely motivated people here. > Everyone moving in is allowed and expected to work in the society. How do you make them? What do you do if they refuse? > EU guarantees funding for basic infrastructure like education, legal system, security, health care and tax authorities. Like another poster said - who pays for it, and what funding gets cut in Europe to pay for it? Education budgets or maybe R&D?

beefield 7y ago
> How do you stop them? We're talking about extremely motivated people here. Fences. Walls. Snakes and Alligators. Guns. I think there are lots of ways to keep people in one side of the border. In addition to these (to be sure that my sarcasm gets passed, not just in addition, but much more importantly) Clear incentives. In the charter city you can work and study and live officially a good life. You go past the snake pit, you are not able to do any of that but are immediately brought back to charter city when caught.

nlitened 7y ago

So, concentration camps?..

beefield 7y ago
I think there is a not so small difference between a camp designed to keep you in and make your life miserable or even kilm you and a city that is trying to offer you a decent way of life and which you are completely free to leave whenever you want back to your home country or wherever your passport lets you go.

dsign 7y ago

This is actually a really good idea. And there are tons of space for this: Sahara, Gobi, Siberia, Northern Canada, the central part of Australia, Antarctica, quite a few places in South America, etc. etc. Economic prosperity is about institutions and their "source code". For a world afflicted with so many problems, it's just insane that we have got no way to try out blank-slate constitutions.

poilcn 7y ago
People who live in these countries and specifically the places to decide whether they need these "neighbors" on their upkeep. If you want to help them, why won't you take them in your own house, not send to some god forgotten place far away from you and force others to pay for your vanity?

malandrew 7y ago

What happens once charter cities have a large enough population to influence elections and change direction of the country in objection of the citizens of that country? What I don’t understand is why we don’t treat these mass exodus of people from one country to another country like we do datacenter failovers and failbacks. Give people refuge, let them carry on productively with their life and the condition is that they failback once the situation has stabilized in the country they fled from. To allow a select few to stay, you can create a merit based program based on contribution to adopted society and assimilation to provide an incentive to become part of the adopted host country and be allowed to stay instead of failed back. Without failbacks, we absorb good people willing to work for a better life and deprive that country of those people long term. That never allows those countries to get better because most of the good people leave and never go back. Failbacks would be the healthiest form of nation building since it would be done by citizens of the country in need of being built up. Furthermore, refugees should not change the country that graciously hosted them in a way that many of the citizens of that country dislike. That’s being a bad houseguest.

beefield 7y ago
> What happens once charter cities have a large enough population to influence elections and change direction of the country in objection of the citizens of that country? Of course, citizenship in a charter city would not give citizenship/voting rights in the host country.

nec4b 7y ago

It's incredible bad idea to bring people in the EU and house them in ghettoes surrounded with barbed wire to prevent them from leaving.

beefield 7y ago
I fully agree. If you thought that was what I was proposing you may want to reread my post.
- nec4b 7y ago
  I believe you that you have best intentions in mind, but what you propose would lead sooner than later to what I wrote. There are examples in the present as well as in the history why it would be a bad idea.

chewz 7y ago

Don't be naive. These cities would be turning into ghettos rotten with corruption and ruled by organized gangs in no time.

blaser-waffle 7y ago
See also: Gastarbeiter and Turkish-German integration issues. "By 2010 there were about 4 million people of Turkish descent in Germany. The generation born in Germany attended German schools, but some had a poor command of either German or Turkish, and thus had either low-skilled jobs or were unemployed. Most are Muslims and are presently reluctant to become German citizens." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter

thefz 7y ago

So basically a long worded definition of ghetto. It hasn't worked in the past.