13 ms·

What do you propose we do? Do you have any ideas in mind? Keep in mind that if the richest countries opened their borders for everyone in the world, at least h

by badpun 3y ago

What do you propose we do? Do you have any ideas in mind? Keep in mind that if the richest countries opened their borders for everyone in the world, at least hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people from the world's poor countries would immediately immigrate there, causing the rich countries to collapse, which would be no good for anyone.

whoknowsidont 3y ago
>causing the rich countries to collapse In what way?
- refulgentis 3y ago
  The same way the countries they are from collapsed. Environments have a carrying capacity.
  - wwtrv 3y ago
    If we're being fair it's not like they were ever in a much better state. The explosion in population was an outcome of improved life conditions (mainly access to food and healthcare).
- mattashii 3y ago
  Security, food availability, housing, job market, social security, etc. You can't just increase the population of a country and assume everything will continue to work: many parts of the economy have momentum and need time to adapt, and a sudden change may break down existing balances.
  - whoknowsidont 3y ago
    >many parts of the economy have momentum and need time to adapt, and a sudden change may break down existing balances. I don't think there's any formal understanding of such mechanics (or concerns)? Seems like personal conjecture. We're basically past post-scarcity by every conceivable measure, current allocation structures can quickly be adjusted -- we even saw this happen with COVID. We saw it in the U.S. with 9/11.
    - mattashii 3y ago
      > I don't think there's any formal understanding of such mechanics (or concerns)? A woman can birth a normal baby in 9 months, but no matter how many women you assign to this you won't be able to reduct that time to 1 day. Same with education (teaching capacity is limited), building buildings (incl. factories), etc. A given number of medical specialists can only treat so many patients and train so many new specialists. A population's growth whilst keeping the current quality of life is thus limited by several factors, including construction (for new housing, facilities for new jobs), education, and healthcare. > current allocation structures can quickly be adjusted -- we even saw this happen with COVID And the impact of these sudden adjustments to the allocation schedules are still felt across the world. Chip scarcity due to bulk order changes/cancellations took a long time to ebb (assuming it has subsided by now, I haven't checked recently), health services are still not back to the levels they were before COVID, shipping prices across the atlantic doubled, etc. And that is with only a temporary change in local supply/demand. I'd expect permanent changes in supply/demand to have much more severe and long-lasting effect. Note that post-scarcity is only applicable assuming the current population of the country. Adding 700 million population across EU/CA/USA (the equivalent of ~50% of the population of Africa) will eclipse the local food production capacities, re-introducing food scarcity. Note that production existing somewhere on earth doesn't mean everyone on earth has access to that, not in the least due logistics. As an example: Ukrainian grain is having trouble with getting to Africa in the high volumes from before Feb. '22.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  The UK, for example, has seemingly-permanent crisis-level problems with housing, healthcare, and transport as it is. The country seems incapable of building infrastructure. Migration is a big political issue not just because of bigotry, but because population is growing and infrastructure capacity isn't close to keeping up. Also because it can be seen as being used by government as a tool to drive wages down.
  - whoknowsidont 3y ago
    Aren't all of those political problems caused by lack of civic engagement and general understanding of the population putting politicians into power? It's not a real problem so much as an artificial one.
    - bluescrn 3y ago
      We have a two-party system, and neither have real plans to solve these problems, beyond maybe raising taxes/reprioritising spending a bit to slow the decline of the NHS. The increasingly ridiculous cost of housing is at the core of the UKs problems, but nobody in power even wants to solve that, as so many wealthy people, politicians included, are making so much money out of property. And solving the transport problem is deeply 'uncool' for environmental reasons. Roads are obviously seen as bad, but even attempts to build railways will be heavily protested. Meanwhile they won't even decriminalise electric scooters.
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  If you import the world's people, you import the world's problems.
- badpun 3y ago
  No society can quickly absorb more foreigners than they already have citizens without becoming something else entirely in the process.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    Could Argentina not be a counterexample? Most Argentinians today trace their ancestry to late 19th century and early 20th century immigration when the country was booming. But the country still preserves a national mythology based on all kinds of 18th- and early 19th-century figures and events that most Argentinians bear no actual descent from.
    - qwytw 3y ago
      > Most Argentinians Same applies to the US if we're being fair. However both places were still quite sparsely populated in the late 1800s and the demand for low-skilled labour was significantly higher than now (the situation now is very different).
ben_w 3y ago
> if the richest countries opened their borders for everyone in the world, at least hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people from the world's poor countries would immediately immigrate there Why do you believe this would happen, given that internal migration between rich and poor parts of counties without internal travel restrictions is nowhere near that significant? It's not like NYC collapsed from all the people leaving Detroit.
- constantcrying 3y ago
  Being a welfare recipient in Germany earns you vastly more monsy than working hard in Nigeria. Almost every single Nigerian has a direct economic interest to get to Germany.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I moved to Germany from the UK before Brexit happened. Doing so roughly doubled my pay. Why do you think so few other British people did what I did, despite this economic incentive? Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache. Kuma a cewar abokin aikina na Najeriya, yaren de-facto a Najeriya Ingilishi ne, ba Hausa/Igbo/Yoruba ba.
    - constantcrying 3y ago
      You can not compare migration of (presumably) high skilled workers with unskilled workers. >Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache. So what? Where I live you can get by just fine if you speak turkish or arabic.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        > You can not compare migration of (presumably) high skilled workers with unskilled workers. Why not? Is there a "benefits trap" here in Germany, like in the UK, where working makes you worse off? > So what? Where I live you can get by just fine if you speak turkish or arabic. Have you tried living without the local language? As an outsider, first few times at the supermarket checkout was mortifying, just because there's three different common ways people ask if you want a receipt. The government bureaucracy? Getting my Anmeldebestätigung sorted was intimidating (in the UK, the equivalent is posted through your letterbox and you fill it out and post it). Mandatory health etc. insurance? I misunderstood, picked an irrelevant kind of insurance instead of what I needed, only found out when I got a job and HR told me and sorted it for me.
automatic6131 3y ago
And cause the poorest countries - already very dysfunctional - to have basically zero hope to develop. Making it a self reinforcing cycle.
LightHugger 3y ago
This is an unrealistic expectation, honestly. If there were any risk of collapse at all from immigration, we have never even gotten anywhere near approaching it. A gradual loosening of border barriers down to nothing would get rid of any "sudden shock" effect. If anything, america has exclusively benefited from immigration historically, providing a constant supply of talent (immigrants to a richer country tend to be the best, and not just because of border constraints), labor and population.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  America is the number one example in world history of how immigration collapses and destroys a society. Those who lived there before Columbus. Mass immigration is a weapon of war throughout all history and on all continents. When immigrant numbers are large enough, war ensues as they will try to drive out the natives.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > Those who lived there before Columbus. That's tricky because North America for instance was already half empty by the point Europeans started settling because to old world diseases killing up to 80-90% of the population in many areas. Without that gaining a foothold would've been much more difficult. It's not obvious the Spanish would've been able to subjugate all of the native civilizations they encountered that 'easily' either. Chances are Mexico etc. would've looked much closer to India or Indonesia for instance.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      There were very well documented campaigns of extermination and forced relocation of the natives, conducted by the immigrants. No matter what was the situation before the arrival of the immigrants. That's just an undeniable fact. Since I'm not a true hacker, I won't pretend that the people living in America today have any blame for that. But it doesn't mean that we have to let that be repeated. Mass migration with the goal to colonize and replace natives is an act of war, and it is being conducted in many places around the world right now, fueled by an ideology of hatred.
gsatic 3y ago
Lets look at Apple. It is so profitable it has managed to accumulate 200 billion in cash, that it doesnt know what do with. It could reduce prices, but why do that when you can increase the size of your cash mountain. Thats value system dominates the thinking of the luxury class across the entire developed world. How do you change that value system? And how do you measure that its changing. Because it has to change or nothing is sustainable.

by badpun 3y ago

whoknowsidont 3y ago

>causing the rich countries to collapse In what way?

refulgentis 3y ago
The same way the countries they are from collapsed. Environments have a carrying capacity.
- wwtrv 3y ago
  If we're being fair it's not like they were ever in a much better state. The explosion in population was an outcome of improved life conditions (mainly access to food and healthcare).
mattashii 3y ago
Security, food availability, housing, job market, social security, etc. You can't just increase the population of a country and assume everything will continue to work: many parts of the economy have momentum and need time to adapt, and a sudden change may break down existing balances.
- whoknowsidont 3y ago
  >many parts of the economy have momentum and need time to adapt, and a sudden change may break down existing balances. I don't think there's any formal understanding of such mechanics (or concerns)? Seems like personal conjecture. We're basically past post-scarcity by every conceivable measure, current allocation structures can quickly be adjusted -- we even saw this happen with COVID. We saw it in the U.S. with 9/11.
  - mattashii 3y ago
    > I don't think there's any formal understanding of such mechanics (or concerns)? A woman can birth a normal baby in 9 months, but no matter how many women you assign to this you won't be able to reduct that time to 1 day. Same with education (teaching capacity is limited), building buildings (incl. factories), etc. A given number of medical specialists can only treat so many patients and train so many new specialists. A population's growth whilst keeping the current quality of life is thus limited by several factors, including construction (for new housing, facilities for new jobs), education, and healthcare. > current allocation structures can quickly be adjusted -- we even saw this happen with COVID And the impact of these sudden adjustments to the allocation schedules are still felt across the world. Chip scarcity due to bulk order changes/cancellations took a long time to ebb (assuming it has subsided by now, I haven't checked recently), health services are still not back to the levels they were before COVID, shipping prices across the atlantic doubled, etc. And that is with only a temporary change in local supply/demand. I'd expect permanent changes in supply/demand to have much more severe and long-lasting effect. Note that post-scarcity is only applicable assuming the current population of the country. Adding 700 million population across EU/CA/USA (the equivalent of ~50% of the population of Africa) will eclipse the local food production capacities, re-introducing food scarcity. Note that production existing somewhere on earth doesn't mean everyone on earth has access to that, not in the least due logistics. As an example: Ukrainian grain is having trouble with getting to Africa in the high volumes from before Feb. '22.
bluescrn 3y ago
The UK, for example, has seemingly-permanent crisis-level problems with housing, healthcare, and transport as it is. The country seems incapable of building infrastructure. Migration is a big political issue not just because of bigotry, but because population is growing and infrastructure capacity isn't close to keeping up. Also because it can be seen as being used by government as a tool to drive wages down.
- whoknowsidont 3y ago
  Aren't all of those political problems caused by lack of civic engagement and general understanding of the population putting politicians into power? It's not a real problem so much as an artificial one.
  - bluescrn 3y ago
    We have a two-party system, and neither have real plans to solve these problems, beyond maybe raising taxes/reprioritising spending a bit to slow the decline of the NHS. The increasingly ridiculous cost of housing is at the core of the UKs problems, but nobody in power even wants to solve that, as so many wealthy people, politicians included, are making so much money out of property. And solving the transport problem is deeply 'uncool' for environmental reasons. Roads are obviously seen as bad, but even attempts to build railways will be heavily protested. Meanwhile they won't even decriminalise electric scooters.
arrowsmith 3y ago
If you import the world's people, you import the world's problems.
badpun 3y ago
No society can quickly absorb more foreigners than they already have citizens without becoming something else entirely in the process.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  Could Argentina not be a counterexample? Most Argentinians today trace their ancestry to late 19th century and early 20th century immigration when the country was booming. But the country still preserves a national mythology based on all kinds of 18th- and early 19th-century figures and events that most Argentinians bear no actual descent from.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > Most Argentinians Same applies to the US if we're being fair. However both places were still quite sparsely populated in the late 1800s and the demand for low-skilled labour was significantly higher than now (the situation now is very different).

ben_w 3y ago

> if the richest countries opened their borders for everyone in the world, at least hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people from the world's poor countries would immediately immigrate there Why do you believe this would happen, given that internal migration between rich and poor parts of counties without internal travel restrictions is nowhere near that significant? It's not like NYC collapsed from all the people leaving Detroit.

constantcrying 3y ago
Being a welfare recipient in Germany earns you vastly more monsy than working hard in Nigeria. Almost every single Nigerian has a direct economic interest to get to Germany.
- ben_w 3y ago
  I moved to Germany from the UK before Brexit happened. Doing so roughly doubled my pay. Why do you think so few other British people did what I did, despite this economic incentive? Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache. Kuma a cewar abokin aikina na Najeriya, yaren de-facto a Najeriya Ingilishi ne, ba Hausa/Igbo/Yoruba ba.
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    You can not compare migration of (presumably) high skilled workers with unskilled workers. >Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache. So what? Where I live you can get by just fine if you speak turkish or arabic.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > You can not compare migration of (presumably) high skilled workers with unskilled workers. Why not? Is there a "benefits trap" here in Germany, like in the UK, where working makes you worse off? > So what? Where I live you can get by just fine if you speak turkish or arabic. Have you tried living without the local language? As an outsider, first few times at the supermarket checkout was mortifying, just because there's three different common ways people ask if you want a receipt. The government bureaucracy? Getting my Anmeldebestätigung sorted was intimidating (in the UK, the equivalent is posted through your letterbox and you fill it out and post it). Mandatory health etc. insurance? I misunderstood, picked an irrelevant kind of insurance instead of what I needed, only found out when I got a job and HR told me and sorted it for me.

automatic6131 3y ago

And cause the poorest countries - already very dysfunctional - to have basically zero hope to develop. Making it a self reinforcing cycle.

LightHugger 3y ago

This is an unrealistic expectation, honestly. If there were any risk of collapse at all from immigration, we have never even gotten anywhere near approaching it. A gradual loosening of border barriers down to nothing would get rid of any "sudden shock" effect. If anything, america has exclusively benefited from immigration historically, providing a constant supply of talent (immigrants to a richer country tend to be the best, and not just because of border constraints), labor and population.

carlosjobim 3y ago
America is the number one example in world history of how immigration collapses and destroys a society. Those who lived there before Columbus. Mass immigration is a weapon of war throughout all history and on all continents. When immigrant numbers are large enough, war ensues as they will try to drive out the natives.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > Those who lived there before Columbus. That's tricky because North America for instance was already half empty by the point Europeans started settling because to old world diseases killing up to 80-90% of the population in many areas. Without that gaining a foothold would've been much more difficult. It's not obvious the Spanish would've been able to subjugate all of the native civilizations they encountered that 'easily' either. Chances are Mexico etc. would've looked much closer to India or Indonesia for instance.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    There were very well documented campaigns of extermination and forced relocation of the natives, conducted by the immigrants. No matter what was the situation before the arrival of the immigrants. That's just an undeniable fact. Since I'm not a true hacker, I won't pretend that the people living in America today have any blame for that. But it doesn't mean that we have to let that be repeated. Mass migration with the goal to colonize and replace natives is an act of war, and it is being conducted in many places around the world right now, fueled by an ideology of hatred.

gsatic 3y ago

Lets look at Apple. It is so profitable it has managed to accumulate 200 billion in cash, that it doesnt know what do with. It could reduce prices, but why do that when you can increase the size of your cash mountain. Thats value system dominates the thinking of the luxury class across the entire developed world. How do you change that value system? And how do you measure that its changing. Because it has to change or nothing is sustainable.