Restating the Mission of A Borderless World
February 14th 2010 19:45
With the Olympics upon us, the issues of patriotism and borders are thrown out into the open. Not exactly a great time to be someone trying to point out the downsides of these concepts. Still, it seemed fitting to clearly and briefly state again what this blog should be addressing.
If you, the reader, could take away one point I am trying to make, it is that making policy based on artificial national borders is counterproductive and, in many cases, immoral. Too often politicians frame immigration policy as a matter of improving the national welfare, without factoring in the great benefit that immigrants receive from migrating to a wealthy country like the United States. The same paradigm occurs with trade policy. Even though the benefits of specializing and trading remain true whether it occurs at the household, national, or global level, people are trained to think only at the first two levels. Ignoring people outside of the borders of ones own country brings tremendous, unnecessary pain and suffering on those people. The main mission of this blog is to point out that pain and suffering.
A third, and less explored to this point here, idea is that of Charter Cities. A relatively new concept in its current form, this is seen by some as a method to overcoming the barriers to free immigration and trade. It involves setting up uninhabited cities and creating a charter of rules for them. People and investors could then decide to move to a city, assuming they liked the charter. This would create competition among cities to create the best system of rules, which I believe would involve more liberal trade policy (i.e. Hong Kong) and, by definition, more immigration.
Follow me on Twitter: @AGoldenDoor
If you, the reader, could take away one point I am trying to make, it is that making policy based on artificial national borders is counterproductive and, in many cases, immoral. Too often politicians frame immigration policy as a matter of improving the national welfare, without factoring in the great benefit that immigrants receive from migrating to a wealthy country like the United States. The same paradigm occurs with trade policy. Even though the benefits of specializing and trading remain true whether it occurs at the household, national, or global level, people are trained to think only at the first two levels. Ignoring people outside of the borders of ones own country brings tremendous, unnecessary pain and suffering on those people. The main mission of this blog is to point out that pain and suffering.
A third, and less explored to this point here, idea is that of Charter Cities. A relatively new concept in its current form, this is seen by some as a method to overcoming the barriers to free immigration and trade. It involves setting up uninhabited cities and creating a charter of rules for them. People and investors could then decide to move to a city, assuming they liked the charter. This would create competition among cities to create the best system of rules, which I believe would involve more liberal trade policy (i.e. Hong Kong) and, by definition, more immigration.
Follow me on Twitter: @AGoldenDoor
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