For an economist I would have expected david McMullen to at least hint at a model of to how Australia would address the obvious & inevitable pressure for financial assistance to immigrants. He must be sober enough to realise that once restrictions are lifted the onslaught woul be simply massive.
If the massive foreign aid to those countries which create so many refugees then opening a country's borders will help create even more refugees. Blind Fredie can see that. It is only when many educated Australians wake up that many refugees are agenda driven & not political then perhaps we might make some progress in solving that problem. Solving it not only for Australia but all countries if their experts too start opening their eyes.

Byork
“You really shouldn't laugh at people or call them 'fools' when you actually believe that a welfare state and big government spending somehow alter the private ownership of the means of production.”

Where do you think government gets the money from?

How can you believe taxation and government spending do *not* somehow alter TPOOTMOP?

I accept your definitions of capitalism and socialism. However they only show that it was glib of you to accuse capitalism of regarding people as the problem, when you had not eliminated the possibility that popular anxiety about open borders is based on fears of scarcity, which are based on the public not the private ownership of the means of production, as I have shown.

All the commenters are virtually confirming, in different words, what I am saying – that the perceived problem is that (government-controlled) supplies such as public transport, roads, hospitals, water, social security and minimum wages would be unable to cope if immigration levels were increased.

But no-one selling water, or housing, or services, regards it as a problem if *more people* want what they are selling.

In other words, the idea that people are the problem is an artefact of bureaucratic rule. Capitalism, using prices, can rationalize the scarcity, assigning resources to their most urgent uses *as judged by the people themselves*. Socialism can’t, because without profit and loss it only has rules and regulations to go by – planned chaos. It’s socialism, not capitalism that regards people as the problem.

“Socialism is more likely to provide unprecedented opportunities for people…”

It is only on-topic here to discuss socialism so far as it relates to open borders. The question whether socialism is possible must logically precede any question whether it’s desirable. The economic calculation argument proves that it’s impossible. It appears you may not understand why. For starters see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3869 . I will prove it in another thread if you ask me to do so.

Pelican
The subjects of abusive regimes should not be made to starve because of sanctions imposed by comfortable westerners.

One thing that can and should be advocated, as a practical measure, is the trebling of the refugee intake. There was a lot of talk about how Australia should set an example to the world on greenhouse emissions, so why not set an example on refugee intake? This could be part of an international push to secure agreement from the other seven or eight advanced industrial nations that have humanitarian programs to do likewise.

Many people are aware that the number of people of concern to the UNHCR numbers in the millions but the urgent element of this figure are the approx. 300,000 in camps who are classified by UNHCR as needing urgent resettlement. (My figures are a few years old - but it wouldn't be too different today). Most of the 40 million of concern to the UNHCR are not deemed in need of resettlement.

So, if Australia were to treble its intake, that would mean 40,000 a year. For the USA, it would mean 240,000 a year. The rest would mean that the most urgent cases, in the UNHCR determination, would be resettled each year.

Now, I am not disagreeing with David McMullen but trying to think in terms of immediate practical demands that can be made along the way, while raising the issue of open borders. The demand for a trebling of intake is practical and it would be instructive indeed to note who opposes it and who supports it. (My bet would be that the Greens, for instance, would be split over it, in light of their basic opposition to significant population growth).

Those like David McMullen - and Chris Berg from the IPA - who have raised the question of open borders in Australia may at least feel satisfied that in the decades to come, young people will be wondering why and how did so many billions of dollars, and so much human energy, go into maintaining borders that in so many other ways had effectively come down anyway? And at such a tragic human cost.

David McMullen and many of the rest of you seem woefully ignorant of the material basis of our survival and prosperity. The author has given us a recipe for making Australia as poor, populous, and environmentally degraded as the countries that people are risking their lives to escape. There is plenty of evidence that we aren't coping well, even with the existing population.

While Australia looks big and empty on the map, most of it is desert, and there are very few areas of really good soil, because unlike Europe and North America, soils haven't been extensively renewed by glaciation and vulcanism. We also have far less reliable rainfall. See these maps from Dr. Chris Watson at the CSIRO

http://www.australianpoet.com/boundless.html

We currently export around 2/3 of what we grow and much less in a bad year. See

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10405

There are quite likely to be problems with maintaining our current levels of production, once we are experiencing peak oil, possible climate change problems, peak phosphate, etc. Food importing countries have been buying up farmland around the world, including in Australia, because they have doubts about the ability of the world market to supply them in the future.

Our newspapers are constantly reporting conflict over water, and there are permanent water restrictions in almost all our cities, with people encouraged to spy on their neighbours. Water can be desalinated for coastal cities, but it costs 4-6 times as much as dam water.

Our own government's Measuring Australia's Progress reports have shown every environmental indicator getting worse, apart from urban air quality. Australia ranks near the bottom of the developed world when it comes to environmental management

http://epi.yale.edu/

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/environment.aspx#context

The cornucopian growthists, very few, if any of them, scientists or engineers who understand the actual problems, base their ideas on a very small, atypical slice of human history. Yes, we got lucky with the Green Revolution, but numerous past societies have collapsed, with overpopulation and mismanagement of the environment playing starring roles. Those people were just as intelligent and ingenious as we are. How lucky do you feel?

While open borders are out of the question for any society that doesn't want to self-destruct, it probably would be possible to accommodate a larger population, at least for now.

Just reserve private cars and detached houses with gardens for the elite. The proles can be herded into tiny, high rise shoeboxes, with no heating or air conditioning, so that they can hear all about their neighbours' arguments, sex lives, screaming children, if they have them, and taste in music (or the lack thereof) through thin walls and open windows. You can accommodate even more people if you restrict them to a joyless, limited vegan diet, and one shower and change of clothes a week. Parks and open space can be turned over to housing for more and more people, and you will happily preside over a mass extinction, since people are more important than wildlife. You will need a system of internal passports to ensure that the proles stay where you put them. At this point your problems will involve preventing people from leaving Australia, not keeping them out. This will be compounded by a very low birth rate. Tiny flats are not conducive to child rearing, and people who are forced into them won't have enough children to replace themselves, as has happened in Japan, South Korea, and a number of European countries.

You will also need an extensive network of secret police and neighbourhood monitors to prevent revolt and ensure that people don't spend too long in the shower or otherwise violate the rules. Guards with military weapons will also be needed to protect those gated communities where you people doubtless expect to live with your nannies and gardeners. There may still be a shell of democracy, but its substance will be long gone.

Hi Divergence,

I don't know if you intended it as such but your second and third paragraphs in your last post describe Soviet and eastern European life almost perfectly, perhaps much of China as well.

Sorry, I had a couple of red wines too many when I wrote my smart-@rse piece above. Of course, every country has the right to control who enters, and to try to set population policy, and of course Australia is approaching its population limits given its present economic and infrastructural configuration. I'm blowed if I can understand why governments aren't pumping funds into higher education in order to obviate the need to keep bringing skilled people from overseas and depleting their countries of talent.

Around the world, seven billion is about right, but it will be a very complex matter of equity, distribution, development of productive forces and education policy, to get it all anywhere near right, over the next century, and to move towards more just and open societies and to reduce the likelihood of refugee situations.

As has been pointed out, governments should be playing a far more active role in supporting democracy and opposing corruption in other countries, and in strengthening people's participation in running their own countries, and thereby minimising the threat of civil wars, social breakdown, repression and the creation of refugee populations.

Joe Lane