I wonder if there’s possibly any way of imposing symmetry on the whole open borders thing, in a way that would matter.
If you decide to split the difference and make some areas open borders and other areas closed borders to that closed-borders people can live by themselves while open borders people benefit or suffer from the consequences of their decisions, then open borders people will come back six months later and demand the closed borders areas be opened immediately as a moral demand.
If you decide to make open borders contingent on paying off closed borderers with money, the open borders crowd will decry this as immoral and unfair to the global poor.
If you make anyone who comes in via open borders the financial responsibility of open border-supporters, they will decry this as immoral and unfair, because they are individuals and the people they are bringing in are individuals, and culture has nothing to do with their behavior and this is all the fault of those dity closed borderers.
However, it isn’t actually possible to solve global poverty with open borders. To meet the carrying capacity, the nations themselves must be made significantly more productive, and that means greater infrastructure and fewer children in order to concentrate parental investment.
This is not really what I meant.
I meant more like “can we impose open borders on the countries that are going to be net sources of immigrants”.
We can, but why would anyone want to go there? There’s a reason those places are net sources of immigrants.
Something something gentrification
Americans should gentrify Syria.
[Skipping the jokes about gentrification.]
Sorry, the forces of good don’t owe any compromises to the forces of evil.
I’m not even saying that good shouldn’t compromise with evil. By all means, make a temporary compromise whenever that will get you half a loaf instead of no loaf at all. But don’t stop fighting for the whole loaf.
But this type of demand is quite different, saying that it’s somehow “unfair” of the open-borders side to demand the full implementation of their ideal, and they ought instead to be satisfied in principle with some halfway bargain with injustice.
And that seems always to be the case with the partisans of “compromise”. What they propose is to have the side negotiating from a position of strength needlessly cede ground, cloaking it in the name of a demand for “fairness”. (Moreover, while open borders is a tremendously unpopular position, it is the standard tactic of immigration alarmists to act as if it is in fact dominant.)
I think you and the others have perhaps confused borders with scarcity, and modeled humanity as purely economic in behavior, and culture as nothing more than a combination of aesthetics and economics.
Open borders isn’t actually the Good Guys. Having some limits on immigration isn’t actually The Forces of Evil. After all, if wanting to have a good, safe place to live that actually bothers to provide one with some support makes one evil, then economic migrants would themselves be evil.
Culture isn’t actually individual, nor are the engines that power economies. The dominance of some nations rather than others is tied up in history, but far from determined solely by war and exploitation.
Polygamy is actually bad. First (and second) cousin marriage are actually bad and have remained high in some ethnic communities, and in some countries. FGM happens even in first world nations when it’s allowed to enter, and it’s actually bad. Gays aren’t bad, but foreign ideologies, once dominant in a country, determine that country’s laws and will kill them, which is bad.
What’s necessary to deal with global poverty is to improve these foreign countries so that they are no longer net sources of immigrants. If you don’t, then no level of immigration will actually bring about the desired end in global poverty.
Their cultures will need to change, because only what is produced can be consumed, and cultures matter in determining production and consumption. Ambitious, high-IQ individuals will be necessary for this, and policies focusing on national development, education, and long-term investment.
Taking the immigrants is little more than a band-aid, and its effect would be erased by population growth.
There’s also one more matter. Open borders will, almost certainly, lead to a World Government. Then there will be nowhere to run. (The irony is not lost on me.)
Edit: To be honest you probably don’t actually want to argue this with me (which is why you didn’t), but out of all this I actually find the last point the most concerning.
