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Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

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Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#301

Post by mikem170 »

colonCapitalDee wrote: post #268
mikem170 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the parent you replied to, but the modern passport as we know it goes back only about 100 years. > Migration was generally speaking, unhindered and each emigrant could decide on the time of his departure, his arrival or his return, to suit his own convenience. But World War I brought harsh restrictions on freedom of movement. [0] > The concept of a worldwide passport standard is relatively new, created in the aft…

I'm not convinced. Passports might be a modern invention (and really that isn't surprising, a global identification system requires sophisticated bureaucracy and cheap, accessible transportation), but that doesn't mean that people used to be able to move freely across borders. Modern technology makes immigration accessible to the masses in a way that simply wasn't the case in the pre-modern world. A few things you wo…

I agree that modern transport and communication has significantly changed peoples abilities to migrate.

Wouldn't this mean that eventually the world will be more integrated in every dimension, regardless of the desires of those controlling borders, that lower barriers to communication and transportation will continue to make the world a smaller place? Will it be possible to stop this as the decades and centuries go by?

There's already millions of people crossing borders every year, like the southern U.S. border, refugees from Africa and the Middle East into Europe, migrants leaving Russia and Ukraine, migrants between countries in Africa, Asia, and South America, etc. One might expect those numbers to increase over time, as it gets easier to travel.

Perhaps it is inevitable that the world will continue to integrate.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#302

Post by [deleted] »

notch898a wrote: post #294
bumby wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was referring to something different. Property taxes are the way local municipalities raise funds. Tax liens are just the same property tax. I’m suggesting there can be other funding mechanisms, from VAT to income or even automation taxes that raise that money without the same tradeoffs.

Sure, you could charge people directly for services. Want school? Pay for school tuition. Want roads? Pay the toll. Want fire service? Pay for fire subscription. etc. I'd be happy to live in such community but others want men with guns to come toss them out of their house if they don't have the money for the extra services. To me that sounds worse but to each their own.

[deleted]

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#303

Post by l3mure »

remarkEon wrote: post #34
cyclecount wrote: post #6

This line of thinking comes up often on HN but it ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. A border exists often for workers only, but is mostly a legal fiction that corporations can easily navigate. The most common example for the Americans reading this is NAFTA, which m…

> Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. I have never heard this explanation. Where is it coming from? It sounds not only wrong but inverted to me. Governments enforce borders to effectively secure their territory and people, and thus its own power. Is the idea that, without the “legal fiction” of borders, we’d have some kind of global autoworkers Union or…

The modern border system has deep roots in colonial policing as a means of labor discipline, targeting anti-colonial revolutionaries (a group which naturally overlaps with labor agitators), and racial delineation.

[1]

> Dispersed as it was, the village abroad was a curiously intimate place, where people knew each other, or of each other, or at least where one another came from. It has its own networks of information that paralleled the new colonial posts and telegraph. Rumour flew vast distances. It was into these byways that the story of Nguyen Tat Thanh [Ho Chi Minh] became interwoven, as he made his way through, and as the French attempted to trace his movements. The new regime in Indochina emerged out of a blizzard of papers for personal identification and restrictions on exit and entry.

[2]

> Migrants everywhere lived under the constant fear of sudden displacement or banishment. This practice of medieval rulers was condemned in England by the Magna Carta of 1215, if never wholly discontinued. It was routine in the repertoire of colonial states. It was visited on Asian kings - the last Mughal emperor in 1858 and the deposed rulers of Burma in 1885, Vietnam in 1888 and 1907 and Korea in 1910 - as well as coolies. People of long residence could be suddenly expelled to some distant 'home', a point of imagined origin to which they might have few ties. This was a visceral exercise in power to cow and to shame: the life histories of the banished were recorded, their faces photographed, and the scars and other marks on their bodies mapped to guard against their return. In the Straights Settlements alone in 1914, 416 people were banished for life, and another 801 'vagrants' detained in prison, the great majority to be repatriated. Ministers denied in parliament that they used banishment to expel trade unionists from the colony.

[3]

> In no small part, modern empires were created in an effort to realize what the British Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill, in 1908 called 'a harmonious disposition of the world among its peoples'. At the cold heart of liberal visions of free trade and progress was a ruthless global and racial division of labour. Europeans monitored movement obsessively, enumerating and marshaling people towards their mines, plantations and households. Colonial regimes' ability to control subjects beyond their own borders, often in the name of exercising 'protection' over them, became a yardstick of their authority and a challenge to their prestige. Who were all these people, and to whom did they belong? Who was what they said they were, and who was not, and how could it be proven?

[1] - Underground Asia, pp. 56

[2] - Ibid, pp. 61

[3] - Ibid, pp. 62-63

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#304

Post by pyuser583 »

nradov wrote: post #70
pyuser583 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s tricky. American unions avoid coordinating with their American counterparts because of corruption. Unions have a very specific set of rules to play by, and these rules are different for each country.

Huh? There is certainly corruption in some labor unions but that doesn't prevent them from coordinating with their counterparts in other unions. Even the most corrupt unions frequently back each other up in order to maximize negotiating power versus management.

I’m really sorry. I wanted to say American unions avoid coordinating with their Mexican counterparts.

I was listening to an interviewer with a labor organizer on the US Mexican border who worked with new arrivals. He said the workers were used to unions from back in Mexico, but he had to spend lots of time educating folks about how things work in America.

Mexican unions have a level of corruption unheard of in even the most corrupt US unions.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#305

Post by ikiris »

gretch wrote: post #218
ikiris wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... so why do you live there? You choose it same as everyone else that's there now. Sounds like they compete well enough for you?

People often live here _despite_ the government, not because of it. Great weather. 4 hours away from skiing. 1 hour away from the beach. These things aren't attributable to the quality of the govt (except I will say that govt does do a decent job of preserving natural ecosystems)

So what you're saying is... they're competing as much as they need to?

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#306

Post by bumby »

notch898a wrote: post #209
rootusrootus wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That includes arrest records, not just convictions. About 3% of the population has served any time in prison, and about 8% of the population have been convicted of a felony. https://news.uga.edu/total-us-population-with-felony-convict...

Are you familiar with the US immigration system? That is exactly what they consider in criminal history. What they examine includes arrests, not just convictions, so it's precisely the stat we want. See form I-485 for PR: 24. Have you EVER been arrested, cited, charged, or detained for any reason by any law enforcement officer (including but not limited to any U.S. immigration official or any official of the U.S. arm…

Illegal crossing is generally a civil offense (I.e., misdemeanor). Generally, deportation is not an offense that prohibits you from entering again legally.

What programs like Operation Streamline do is take advantage of the fact that immigrants dont understand the legal system and, under the guise of a speedier procedure, effectively coerce immigrants to acquiesce to a criminal conviction. This actually does prevent them from coming legally at a later date once deported.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#307

Post by gretch »

ikiris wrote: post #305
gretch wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often live here _despite_ the government, not because of it. Great weather. 4 hours away from skiing. 1 hour away from the beach. These things aren't attributable to the quality of the govt (except I will say that govt does do a decent job of preserving natural ecosystems)

So what you're saying is... they're competing as much as they need to?

This is the dumbest and most unproductive interpretation of what I said. But sure, it’s true I suppose.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#308

Post by rootusrootus »

FpUser wrote: post #212
rootusrootus wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last 70 years alone we've added over 5 billion people. In the 1800s there were vast swaths of temperate, fertile land that were basically unclaimed. Moving around was no big deal at that scale. Now we have people everywhere (that doesn't suck; and even some places that do). We have social programs and expensive infrastructure. The world is very different now than even 100 years ago.

What is the end result? Something like you are to reside in this town an we'll let you out twice a year for vacation and XMas? Want to move to other city - there is a waiting list 10 years long.

Controlled migration for the foreseeable future.

Maybe if the entire world reaches a broadly similar level of human development, including comparable levels of infrastructure and social support, migration can be opened up quite a bit.

But right now it would simply mean that developed nations would see a flood of people immigrating just to get those great services, and it would crush their system. So we need controls to keep the change manageable and ensure that the tax base scales appropriately to maintain the expected levels of service.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#309

Post by fnordpiglet »

rajin444 wrote: post #250
fnordpiglet wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that’s a false dichotomy. You are implying by that false dichotomy that one is greater than the other. Until very recently in human history one would be the same as the other. That is what I am saying. Being born in a location has nothing to do with being better or worse. It’s just a random occurrence. What makes a person better than another is how they live their life, not the circumstances of their birth. While…

I guess it’s safe to assume you think genetics has no impact on life outcomes and/or there aren’t significant genetic differences between geographically (by ancestor) populations? > What makes a person better than another is how they live their life, not the circumstances of their birth. Their genetics dictate how they live their life. Environment can have an affect, but genes dictate how you react to your environmen…

No, I don’t believe in racial superiority. I also don’t believe genetics plays a great role in overall outcomes in life, otherwise known as eugenics. I think that in a population genetic attributes are fairly regular with small specific variances that aren’t enough to make one fitter in any dimension. On an individual level genetics can contribute towards specific traits, including to some degree intelligence and anxiety of mental illness. However the magic of the plasticity of the human brain is that it can, with effort, overcome virtually any impediment. I’d also point out that the more homogeneous the genetic population the worse overall outcomes tend to be. “Hybrid vigor” is a real thing and only comes from broad mixing of the genetic pools. So, yes, I think science is total against the idea of racial superiority not just out of its repugnant but just false and furthermore given the homogeneity issue impossible.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#310

Post by rayiner »

lolinder wrote: post #162
nhchris wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments don't come from the geography, but the people. Living in a small country myself, a place such as China, India, Indonesia, or Nigeria could send (and they would gladly come) enough people to outvote us on any issue 3x over, without even noticing they're missing anyone. We would simply cease to exist first as a sovereign people, and soon after as a distinct people at all, without any territory to call our o…

This is a perspective that's really hard for someone in the US to understand. When people here make the exact same arguments that you're making, it sounds xenophobic and dangerous. It's the stuff of Trumpism and MAGA. However, in the context of a true nation state, the exact same words can mean something very different. When we in the United States try to claim that immigration would hurt our sovereignty as a people,…

> This is a perspective that's really hard for someone in the US to understand. When people here make the exact same arguments that you're making, it sounds xenophobic and dangerous. It's the stuff of Trumpism and MAGA.

It’s hard for a minority of Americans, who happen to control the media and institutions, to understand. That minority is freaking out because Trump voters in Idaho have a similar understanding of nation and nationality to ordinary people in Bangladesh or India or China.

You’re correct that it’s important for Americans not to project their sensibilities onto others. But it’s also important for cosmopolitan urban Americans not to project their sensibilities onto other Americans. A significant chunk of America is populated by the immigrant groups that developed the region in the first place. The Midwest is very much still a product of the German, Dutch, and Scandinavian settlers who immigrated there 200 years ago. My wife’s family were among the first white settlers in Oregon. Maybe the native Americans have a legitimate beef against them, but the Oregon that exists today is the product of her people and it’s entirely legitimate for them to think of their society as theirs in the same way as my family in Bangladesh thinks of our country as theirs.

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