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Antarctica 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.
>the places with the strictest border controls are often those that are quite desirable cheeky counterexample: North Korea
Antarctica 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.
>the places with the strictest border controls are often those that are quite desirable cheeky counterexample: North Korea
>The Dream of Open Borders Is Real—in the High Arctic For whom is open borders a dream?
It's a dream. There is something about our luck of being born in a good and wealthy place; then close it off, hence punishing people because they happen to be born in shitty place.
>The Dream of Open Borders Is Real—in the High Arctic For whom is open borders a dream?
I think people here would be a lot more in favor of them, if we were treated the same going to other countries as people in the developing world are treated coming here.
Despite this, U.S. residents can travel or move anywhere they want within the 50 states, with no prior approval and relatively inconsequential paperwork that largely amounts to notifying local authorities after the fact.
Given this, I think it's surprising, and somewhat illuminating, the degree to which population, cultural, and economic differences persist across generations. The states with the highest (MD) and lowest (WV) median household incomes are directly adjacent to one another, but WV has not been emptied by mass migration into MD. Plenty of Oregon residents complain about income taxes, but don't move next door to Washington, which does not have an income tax. Etc.
I know it's not the same as international borders, but it's also more significant than a single national government with purely administrative regions. Thinking about this has led me to question some of the fears about open international borders.
>The Dream of Open Borders Is Real—in the High Arctic For whom is open borders a dream?
And with the EU shortly after came the complete freedom of movement inside the EU. While the EU is made out of many often quite different countries, any EU citizen has the freedom of movement. That not only means I am allowed to travel to any of those countries but I have the same rights as any other citizen of that country. I could tomorrow decided to move do Edinburgh, I could do so without having to apply for anything. Just go there and look for a job. Even if any German citizen usually has little restrictions on international travel - which is great on its own - having the full rights to move is a great achievement.
The example of Edinburgh also shows how disastrous the looming Brexit is. All economic reasons aside, the pure fact that there is a new border raised in Europe is so heartbreaking and of severe consequences for all involved people. And this is the reason, the EU won't accept any treaty which does not grant the fundamental rights, like the freedom of movement.
>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…
> 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.
I wouldn't characterize it like this. Longyearbyen has schools, churches, a post office, a local elected government. Kids play hockey near the streets over summer. Adults open museums, galleries and cafes for tourists. They've incredibly high speed broadband, amazing plumbing infrastructure too. It's an emotionally tough place to live over winter for some people, with the darkness, but it's not some Arctic campsite where only the rugged and tough can survive. And if you get ill you can easily go to the local hospital, with the possibility of a transfer to Tromso if it's bad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it has a cost. Everything has a cost. Maybe you meant the net benefit of immigration is greater than the initial cost burden in the long term? I agree with that. Or do you really believe that tripling the amount of software engineers in the Bay Area wouldn’t have any negative consequences? That’s the fallacy of an open border. At the very least we moderate and control immigration to mitigate short term cost…
It's not relevant to talk about the cost of something without also talking about over what period of time, and the myth that immigrants are a net negative to the US is completely ungrounded. Further, the notion that something must not have any negative consequences to be a net positive is an insane one, and not how any rational thinker applies themselves to a problem. There is no fallacy of an open border, and the sh…
The reason immigrants are of benefit is because of the very borders you seek to remove. We apply a high barrier to entry which means we get more wheat and less chaff.
Even if it was true that both legal and illegal immigrants are of advantage to "the economy," that argument acts as if the economy is the end-all-be-all of the nation-state. If allowing in cheaper immigrant labor allows for someone to get cheaper services at the expense of our lower runs of society through higher competition and lower wages, that's not a trade-off I'm willing to make.
>The Dream of Open Borders Is Real—in the High Arctic For whom is open borders a dream?
It's a dream. There is something about our luck of being born in a good and wealthy place; then close it off, hence punishing people because they happen to be born in shitty place.