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.

“(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.

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.

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.

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.