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The Forum > Article Comments > Free people movement is the way to global prosperity > Comments

Free people movement is the way to global prosperity : Comments

By Mirko Bagaric, published 16/7/2007

Discrimination on the basis of race is the lynchpin for the whole of western migration policy.

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You've got to be kidding. It would be like a plague of locusts moving from one place of prosperity to another. Feeding on the local resources, overloading the local environment and when the boom is finished, moving on to the next greener pasture.

This is the silliest idea I have heard in a long time.
Posted by alzo, Monday, 16 July 2007 9:57:56 AM
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Well Mirko, you have excelled yourself this time. Some of your articles have been good, but this one is the most extraordinary load of bunkum!

Your arguments aren’t worth the effort of countering, other than to say that racist attitudes have got stuff-all to do with it, and if you really want to see a hardening of racist / ethnic / religious / cultural divisions, then you’ll certainly get it with hugely increased influxes of third-world peoples into the first world.

You couldn’t possibly get a significant rise in average the quality of life of the world’s poor without significantly lowering the QOL of the reasonably well-off. This would most definitely lead directly to all manner of conflicts in first-world countries and a hardening of attitudes against the poor masses.
Posted by Ludwig, Monday, 16 July 2007 11:59:35 AM
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Mirko as usual misses the point of poverty, I have commented several times before to no avail, producing offsprings when the parents know full well that they cannot support them nor can their country because they have produced too many children over decades resulting in their lands being raped of the capacity to produce the required grains, meat etc to feed the masses.
In all kindness to the people of the third world and the beautiful children born to die in their arms, birth control is the answer and until the Western World move in that direction with their Overseas Aid poverty will never be eliminated. We continue to send food to make the people of the third world healthier so they have more children, we send them medicines to help to eliminate diseases then they are healthier so have more children ad nau'seam. Get the message Mirko?
Posted by LizzieE, Monday, 16 July 2007 2:02:00 PM
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Actually, the best thing that could happen for the world's poor in the long run is the US and Europe abolishing all their trade tarrifs and agricultural subsidies.

It's pampered European and US farmers you should be castigating, not us.
Posted by grn, Monday, 16 July 2007 3:52:51 PM
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Only dangerous lunatics advocate the free movement of people. Different cultures should be separated, and the constant fiddling with the natural order of things stopped.
Posted by Leigh, Monday, 16 July 2007 3:57:23 PM
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Leigh

You're masterly. Another scintillating comment: "Only dangerous lunatics advocate the free movement of people. Different cultures should be separated, and the constant fiddling with the natural order of things stopped."

I love the delicate way you use words - "dangerous lunatics". And I love your use of magic words - "natural order of things" - that obviate the need for painful thought.

Whatever did the Anglos think they were doing in 1788 when they came to New South Wales and interfered with the "natural order of things"?

Now what's to be done, Leigh? Perhaps you could advocate a moratorium when all the white Australians could go "home". (What will we do with those who have intermarried, but?)

After that we'll turn to the Americas and send all the blacks, Latinos, Anglos, Europeans - all those huddled masses - back to where they came from, leaving the land to the people of the First Nations.

Only kidding Leigh - I'm not one of your dangerous lunatics. Pull that rug up tight, go back to sleep and when you wake up it, we'll have them all sorted into their different coloured boxes. It was all a bad dream.
Posted by FrankGol, Monday, 16 July 2007 6:05:33 PM
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Wouldn't it be great if we could just be citizens of planet Earth? Whether or not that is the answer to poverty in some countries is very debatable.

Thought provoking article Mirko, but most people are not so much racist as xenophobic.

Over the last hundred years or so we've become so used to passports, visas and border controls that many think that this has always been so. It is a rather recent phenomenon, developed considerably since WWI. People could always move relatively freely. But now the bureaucracy surrounding identity makes us believe we're safe. And provides lots of jobs.

Interesting though how many are quite OK with the free trade of goods, but are not so keen on the free movement of people. Except of course when there are jobs we cannot fill ourselves, either because we don't want to do them or because it is too expensive to train somebody.
Posted by yvonne, Monday, 16 July 2007 8:49:01 PM
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“(Rather than) sending resources to impoverished nations, we should – free up the flow of people so that they can travel to where the goods are located.”
“People flow” – just another commodity?
It’s something of an insensitive attitude: Perhaps the people would prefer, if at all possible, to remain within the society of their birthplace. Why would they want to totally uproot their social connections and head off to some foreign soil, there to start off from scratch in a society completely alien to them? What forces prevail to generate sufficient impetus?
Famine, malnutrition, disease, social deterioration, and war, each and all of them are urgent enough reasons. Population pressure initiates or acerbates all. Assistance in minimizing this pressure, which is due to double by about 2050 in the less developed world, would address the causes giving rise to the horrific symptoms.
In 1994 international agreement was reached at a conference in Cairo to do just this.
And what is Australia’s record in this area? The year before, the Keating Government froze the $130 million Australia formerly spent on family planning programs. Two years after it, the Howard Government banned aid workers from providing many contraceptives or from giving women advice on unsafe abortions. It introduced such strict reporting requirements on family planning aid most agencies gave up providing it.
About 75 million unintended pregnancies a year occur in the developing world. Each year 19 million abortions are carried out under unsanitary conditions resulting in 68,000 deaths.
Mirko, instead of commodifying desperate people, please add your voice to those who plea for assistance to women wishing to lessen the burden of unwanted fertility. That excess fertility which underpins the problem about which you have written a thoroughly illinformed blog.
Posted by colinsett, Monday, 16 July 2007 11:11:59 PM
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Why ascribe to racism what can be put down to simple greed and fear?

On the one hand, the only long-term solution to poverty is to seek equality amongst peoples and between individuals. And there can be no better way to even out differences between societies than to allow people to move between them. Bagaric gives the impression, though, that he actually wants the masses from the poor countries to relocate to the rich ones. Other posters have rightly pointed out that this would be disastrous.

The greatest flow of resources from rich countries to poor ones results neither from foreign investment nor aid, but from workers from poor countries who to come to rich ones and use their Western incomes to pay debts and, eventually, reinvest back home.

Without these remittances, the economies of highly-indebted developing countries would never be able to meet even a fraction of their interest commitments.

But still, the flow of resources tends mostly to be in the other direction, in the form of those interest payments and in cheap commodities, the real cost of which is never paid.

Points about voluntary fertility made above should be well-taken, but do remember that the primary indicators of a society's fertility are (next to the wildcard of intimate involvement of conservative Christians in its politics) its wealth and the level of education amongst its women. Rain doesn't follow the plough, but condoms follow schools and jobs.
Posted by xoddam, Tuesday, 17 July 2007 10:05:44 AM
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Mirko Bagaric is willing to be extremely generous with our collective property, built up to a large extent by people who were willing to make sacrifices to protect the environment and to bring about decent health care, education, infrastructure, labour standards, and general living standards for the whole of the nation. This cannot be done on a world scale because there is no world government and irresponsible behaviour elsewhere cannot be discouraged. It is not unfair that the people of the nations that made the right choices and their children should enjoy the benefits (when sharing them very widely with the rest of the world would see them diluted). An open borders world would simply see everyone's standards levelled down. Economists are by no means in agreement that mass migration is a net benefit to the host country even in narrowly economic terms. See, for example, George Borjas of the Harvard Economics Dept.:

http://borjas.typepad.com/the_borjas_blog/

and the report of Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation in the US on how low skilled mass migration increases poverty and welfare use:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Immigration/bg1936.cfm

Most of the people calling for open borders come from a demographic whose own jobs are safe and well paid, so that their own neighbourhoods are unaffected and they can afford to opt out of public health care and education. They may even be able to benefit from cheap labour in the form of nannies, gardeners, and inexpensive restaurants.

Mirko Bagaric would have more credibility if he extended his argument to private property. After all, it would make homeless people much better off if they could be quartered in the houses of people like him.
Posted by Divergence, Wednesday, 18 July 2007 12:50:29 PM
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xoddam

Just a quick point in response to your: "Why ascribe to racism what can be put down to simple greed and fear?"

Racism is an ideology that allows greed and fear to grow and to mask the real intentions of those who benefit for poverty and inequality.
Posted by FrankGol, Wednesday, 18 July 2007 1:18:08 PM
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