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Why do you think things wouldn't end up just as bad here if we suddenly had hundreds of millions of extremely poor people living here?

• grandalf 16y ago
  Because the US has lots of established, well-functioning institutions... everything from small businesses to major firms, local clubs, government bureaus, etc. These institutions create many "ladders" for people to climb to improve their situation. We also have a mature highway system, lots of consumer credit infrastructure, thousands of community colleges and low end universities, etc. It wouldn't be all that sudden, since with each wave of immigrants, services and structures would emerge to make it easier for subsequent waves.
  • patrickgzill 16y ago
    Who do you think runs all those well-functioning institutions you expect to take up the slack? People who are literate and clued in to the prevailing culture. You need only to know that "adding more programmers to a project makes it later" to understand that adding more people to the USA is not going to magically make things better for everyone.
    • grandalf 15y ago
      I don't think your analogy holds... nor do I think of the institutions as being "run" by anyone. They are emergent properties of the overall system... including resources, etc. For example, in a geopolitical view, the US is stable b/c it has lots of ocean shipping ports and good north/south waterways, plus abundant natural resources. Not because everyone happens to speak the same language -- though such easy transit encourages people to want to learn a common language. So since we have lots of institutions that are functioning well and durable, they provide incentives to newcomers to interact with them in mutually beneficial ways. Contrast this with mexico which has been destabilized by US drug policy which enriches the criminal gangs who produce drugs and profit from high black market prices. In that setting, the main "institutions" are criminal gangs and corrupt cops. There's not much incentive to undertake legal agriculture, so few try. There is not much incentive to build structures that would be toppled by the gangs and corruption. So without getting too long winded, I'm arguing that institutions are an emergent property of geopolitical factors, and that the US has many strong institutions that would benefit from improved economies of scale if more people participated.... even if those people started out at the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum.
      • patrickgzill 15y ago
        I can only ask you to keep an eye on this subject in the future and see if your hypothesis (hypotheses?) hold up to empirical review.