The border is the climate.
Also the lack of social services
Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
11–20 of 270 posts
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#12> Svalbard’s geopolitics provide an imperfect but alternative vision of how places can be governed, whom they can accommodate, and how communities can form. Hardly. It's a rugged community of 2300 people. That's not a model for alternative government. > "This is not a cradle to grave society,” one of Askholt’s colleagues told me.
> this is not a cradle to grave society
Specifically: if you are pregnant approaching 7-8 months, if you become seriously ill, or if you are old enough to need care, you are flown off to the mainland. You're literally not allowed to be born or die there.
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#13>The Dream of Open Borders Is Real—in the High Arctic For whom is open borders a dream?
There's a not insignificant number of professional economists who publicly support open borders. Example: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2017-02-28/wor...
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#14>The Dream of Open Borders Is Real—in the High Arctic For whom is open borders a dream?
For me. I'd love to see open borders, where everyone has the freedom to move to where they can achieve their goals and dreams, rather than being restricted to the country where they happened to be born. How many Einsteins have been born in Africa, but denied the chance to make the contribution to humanity that they could have? (And before the cynics note that open borders are incompatible with welfare states, that's…
And before the cynics note that open borders are incompatible with welfare states, that's not necessarily true
Ok, why is that not true?
And I'd argue that any Einsteins born in Africa are going to find moving to another country and near impossible task regardless of how open the borders are.
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#15Antarctica too: if you can get there, you can step onto the ice.
There's a pattern here: the only places with open borders are places where you wouldn't really want to live anyway, while the places with the strictest border controls are often those that are quite desirable.
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#16> Svalbard’s geopolitics provide an imperfect but alternative vision of how places can be governed, whom they can accommodate, and how communities can form. Hardly. It's a rugged community of 2300 people. That's not a model for alternative government. > "This is not a cradle to grave society,” one of Askholt’s colleagues told me.
Not only that but it provides no social services, so there’s no government cost or burden to immigration. Similar to how the US was in its early history but contrast to how the US and Europe is now.
It is a myth that immigration creates a burden on the US government.
I'm so sick of "two side"ism taking over every conversation.
There is an opinion on this based in the weighing of all relevant facts, and there is an opinion about this based on the creative selection of only some facts. Decide for yourself, but what I've seen is that the full body of facts is much more supportive of the idea that immigrants are a net positive to the US than it is the opposite.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/are-immigr...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/4-myths-ab...
https://psmag.com/news/research-shows-immigrants-are-not-a-d...
https://www.vox.com/2019/2/6/18213888/trump-undocumented-imm...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_imm...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-30/immigr...
https://immigrationforum.org/article/immigrants-as-economic-...
https://medium.com/s/story/the-bad-economics-used-to-target-...
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#17>The Dream of Open Borders Is Real—in the High Arctic For whom is open borders a dream?
For the capitalists of course, need more consumers and workers, lets chase infinite growth!
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#18>The Dream of Open Borders Is Real—in the High Arctic For whom is open borders a dream?
For me: I grew up in Europe in times where the wall came down in Germany, a shared currency was established (Euro) and all European borders within Europe where suddenly passable without passport, visa checks, money exchange, someone judging you, etc.. Of course this caused other problems to solve, but the general feeling of freedom and being able to go some other country and even being able to live and work there was very liberating for me and motivated me to travel a lot (easy and relatively cheap in Europe by railroad). I don't want to argue whether or not this is possible for the whole world and what it would take, but it surely is a dream for me to live in a (global) society that makes this possible.
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me. I'd love to see open borders, where everyone has the freedom to move to where they can achieve their goals and dreams, rather than being restricted to the country where they happened to be born. How many Einsteins have been born in Africa, but denied the chance to make the contribution to humanity that they could have? (And before the cynics note that open borders are incompatible with welfare states, that's…
And before the cynics note that open borders are incompatible with welfare states, that's not necessarily true Ok, why is that not true? And I'd argue that any Einsteins born in Africa are going to find moving to another country and near impossible task regardless of how open the borders are.
OP said not necessarily true
Take universal basic income, if combined with open borders, you are attracting people who would like to also get (say) $1000/m, who will now use that welfare to induce demand on people who may like to trade this freshly minted coin for some service they can render, so the economy grows through immigration instead of debt.
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#20The border is the climate.
Currently partly cloudy and 48°F/9°C. Though, yeah, I imagine most days aren't like that.