Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

thenation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 270 posts

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#191

Post by kmlx »

rconti wrote: post #94
nostrademons wrote: post #15

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.

Argentina strikes me as a strong combination of "desirable" and "open". Virtually anyone can become a citizen, and it's a prosperous enough country, currency decline notwithstanding.

“it's a prosperous enough country” define prosperous please. from my knowledge argentina is a financial basket case since a century ago.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#192

Post by pixl97 »

allemagne wrote: post #164
wait-a-minute wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this argument is that going from most of south America to any part of central America would be a large economic jump. And we know that people who come into the USA illegally tend to go towards major hubs with more economic activity and opportunity. The amount of economic migration would increase for sure. And in a situation where we already turn around over 100,000 a month for attempting to cross ill…

Where there's economic activity and opportunity that immigrants are drawn to, like you said, then that means there's an unmet demand for labor in the host country. A business that could expand, but isn't able to because it can't find workers. Immigrants then spend the money they've earned which further stimulates the local economy and increases tax revenue for governments. This basic reasoning is why economists are p…

>then that means there's an unmet demand for labor in the host country

Where did you come up with that idea? Maybe you meant there is unmet demand for labor at a lower cost, or lower than minimum cost (under the table, etc). This can come at the expense of people earning moderate wages who are not going to be happy about this. A race to the bottom does have issues.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#193

Post by kmlx »

sm4rk0 wrote: post #178
drdrey wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate about the effect of climate change on the Syrian civil war? I am genuinely curious

https://theconversation.com/is-syria-really-a-climate-war-we...

that article mentions that drought was one of the many reasons of the Syrian civil war, not a “significant factor”.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#194

Post by HillaryBriss »

coldtea wrote: post #149
HillaryBriss wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or compare Los Angeles to Beverly Hills. These two cities share a border. Median incomes are way, way higher in Beverly Hills. And LA's poor millions are free to crowd right into to Beverly Hills and just start grabbing up some of that wealth. But it barely happens at all. The two populations are not merging nearly as much as the shared border would predict.

> And LA's poor millions are free to crowd right into to Beverly Hills and just start grabbing up some of that wealth. Yeah, not really free. They can't pay rent in Beverly Hills, they can't afford to shop at Beverly Hills shops, they can't even be walking around looking poor without harassment (especially if also black/latino), they don't have access to closed communities, and so on...

> they can't even be walking around looking poor without harassment (especially if also black/latino)

I don't quite know where you're getting that. I mean, it's not like the city has enacted some kind of Jim Crow regime. Beverly Hills residents were among Barack Obama's most generous donors. You think they would stand for that kind of evil in their own city?

Beverly Hills is represented by Democrats at the state and national levels. It sits in the middle of one of California's bluest counties. Are you saying LA County is tolerating that kind of blatant discrimination in one of its cities? This isn't Louisiana or Alabama for goodness sake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Hills%2C_California#20...

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#195

Post by kmlx »

noetic_techy wrote: post #162

Slightly off topic. I've often wondered why so much effort is put into "sea-steading" when you can simply get enough money to buy island territories away from countries that may not want them and setup something akin to a prototype country. Sure the islands of the far north may pose some technological challenges, but probably less so then setting up something floating on the ocean.

if you’ve got a big enough army to command the sky’s the limit. if you don’t then don’t expect your new country to survive for long.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#196

Post by snowwrestler »

rootusrootus wrote: post #156
sixstringtheory wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having driven all over both MD and WV, both in cities and country. they are _very_ different. I also think that Belgium and Australia are very different in many ways, but they're also on opposite sides of the earth, whereas, as was pointed out, MD and WV share a border. I've also been all over NY and VA and would say they are more similar compared to the WV vs MD comparison. I'm not sure where you saw that NY is the…

I recently visited WV and I found it an interesting contradiction. A lot of the major infrastructure I saw was in perfectly fine condition, even quite good in many places. But in a lot of the little towns the poverty was palpable. Houses in such an amazing state of disrepair with patches cobbled on top of patches. Then you drive into the hills around the town and sooooo beautiful, big houses on big plots of land, etc…

West Virginia benefited for a long time from being represented by Robert Byrd, a powerful and savvy U.S. senator who was adept at directing federal dollars into his state to pay for nice infrastructure and federal jobs (the FBI, among other agencies, has a major center in WV).

At the same time, much of WV's private economy was centered around extraction and manufacturing, both of which have declined over the decades.

There's a big highway under construction into the center of WV, currently called "Corridor H", that is intended to link up with 66, a major artery in and out of the DC metro area.

I think it's unlikely that high speed rail gets built in that corridor any time soon, simply because high speed rail in general seems unlikely in the U.S. right now.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#197

Post by TheCoelacanth »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #106
sdfjkl wrote: post #87

Nonsense. The airport has no need of additional procedures because it is gatewayed by Norway (it's not an international airport). If you arrive there by boat, things look well different: > Visiting yachts must obtain a cruising permit before arrival and make arrangements for special insurance to cover the possible cost of a search and rescue operation. Also compulsory is having a gun to protect the crew from possible…

Your quote really doesn't relate to TFA at all. "Open borders" is about immigration, whereas you're discussing insurance and self-protection requirements. Incidentally, a gun is virtually essential if you're going anywhere on Svalbard outside of built-up areas, whether you arrive by boat or not.

It doesn't restrict immigration based on nationality. It does restrict it based on a lot of other things, so it's not really open borders.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#198

Post by kmlx »

jacquesm wrote: post #171
brokenkebab wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're mixing up travel without a hassle which everybody likes to exist, with open borders which is a way more complex idea. EU is not an open-border place, I, for example, has to obtain visa to enter it.

It is you who are mixing up inner and outer. The EU is an open border place (or at least, the Schengen area is) for those who reside there. For some other countries' nationals to enter a visum is required. The EU was never about 'open borders' at the boundaries, in fact there are a lot of requirements on the boundary states and they get compensation for that.

don’t all countries in the EU have a 3 month stay period after which you have to register as a resident? i’m a european that has lived in multiple EU countries and the hassle of moving between them is more or less the same as moving across the globe.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#199

Post by pixl97 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #59
toinetoine wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so the economy grows through immigration instead of debt. Without debt how would the state pay the monthly income for the increasing number of people coming to collect it?

They spend what they get - few people surviving on $12k/year are saving much. So do the people who sell them stuff, as do their providers, and so on and so forth. At every step, some taxes make their way into the state's coffers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplier_(economics)

Eh, this doesn't really work well with too much immigration running in to land and water use issues, along with uncontrolled need for infrastructure expansion.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#200

Post by olalonde »

coldtea wrote: post #149
HillaryBriss wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or compare Los Angeles to Beverly Hills. These two cities share a border. Median incomes are way, way higher in Beverly Hills. And LA's poor millions are free to crowd right into to Beverly Hills and just start grabbing up some of that wealth. But it barely happens at all. The two populations are not merging nearly as much as the shared border would predict.

> And LA's poor millions are free to crowd right into to Beverly Hills and just start grabbing up some of that wealth. Yeah, not really free. They can't pay rent in Beverly Hills, they can't afford to shop at Beverly Hills shops, they can't even be walking around looking poor without harassment (especially if also black/latino), they don't have access to closed communities, and so on...

I feel like you're both supporting the parent's point: fears about open international borders are overblown because things like cost of living, culture or private property naturally limit massive migration.
Post reply on HN