Most of these types of articles take a "consumer" model of civilization: humans exist to consume, and the primary question is what they're going to consume and

Most of these types of articles take a "consumer" model of civilization: humans exist to consume, and the primary question is what they're going to consume and where they're going to do it. Labor exists as a phenomenon that enables future consumption, and QoL is measured by GDP per capita. "Countries" are an irrelevant social construct that inhibit free trade between interested, cooperative parties. This is a very limiting, privileged point of view of humanity. In reality Civilization is a mysterious art that requires cult-like adhesion to certain practices in order to "work". These economics-heavy libertarian open borders guys have absolutely no idea what to do when the power goes out for more than a week, or if they're personally wronged by a neighbor and the government won't get involved. It's a childish, first-world view of Man and Man's culture to assume that the only thing needed for Prosperity and Peace is economic competition administered and monitored by first-world-style democratic governments.