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

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

#61

Post by dheera »

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.

Svalbard is an amazing, humbling place in terms of nature. The fact that once you leave town, for hundreds of kilometers in any direction there are zero humans, zero cellular reception, just nothing but you, the ice, and maybe the bears. I went there one winter and spent a week without sunlight. It was the first time in my life I went a few days without seeing the sun. A few photos:

https://www.facebook.com/dheera/media_set?set=a.101010917929...

True, I wouldn't want to live there long term -- the limitations of a small town and no road access to other towns could get depressing after a while. But it was definitely an experience being there for a week.

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

#63

Post by mieseratte »

diminoten wrote: post #58
mieseratte wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but pretending like there's a cost to be considered for letting immigrants in is hilariously selective in its application of fiscal responsibility, when we spend so much money trying to keep immigrants out. 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 ille…

That isn't true, because of how many undocumented immigrants come in and these numbers remain positive. Nobody is filtering out the undocumented, and yet here we are, still net gaining from their existence in the US. Further, no one is asking you to make that tradeoff, it is not at the expense of lower runs of our society, because immigrants are the lower runs of our society, at least they are right now, due to how w…

> That isn't true, because of how many undocumented immigrants come in and these numbers remain positive.

The articles you cite are specific to legal immigrants.

> Finally, why are native people better or more deserving than the immigrants to a better life?

The nation-state exists in service of its citizens, not the wider world.

> despite the clear indications that the non-natives are of a net benefit to you over the natives

I come from a family of legal immigrants. Not the long-winded "trace my family to the Mayflower" way, but in the "my family speaks another language" way. I have no argument against legal immigration that selects for what our society most needs. Open borders are a free for all that throws our lower rungs to fend for themselves.

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

#64

Post by DVassallo »

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.

Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, and Netherlands are some of the most prosperous countries in the world, and they have an open border with 28 other countries — some of which can be easily classified as very poor and undesirable places.

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

#65

Post by mason55 »

toinetoine wrote: post #25
jazzyjackson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

MMT would suggest that the government prints money and then adjusts taxes to control inflation.

So you have a bunch of new people move, they start collecting UBI, the government prints money to fund the new liabilities, the newly-immigrated spend their UBI, incomes/revenues go up for businesses, the overall size of the pie grows, and if inflation starts to get out of control you raise taxes such that everyone is still better off than before.

Unfortunately this wouldn't work because of politics. You need a relatively reactive monetary & tax policy which just is not realistic.

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

#66

Post by DVassallo »

DVassallo wrote: post #64
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.

Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, and Netherlands are some of the most prosperous countries in the world, and they have an open border with 28 other countries — some of which can be easily classified as very poor and undesirable places.

For example, Bulgaria's GDP per capita is $9,272 and Luxembourg's is $114,340. Yet, there's full freedom of movement between the two countries.

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

#67

Post by mikeash »

cojxd wrote: post #4

>The Dream of Open Borders Is Real—in the High Arctic For whom is open borders a dream?

Me. I hate how the planet is arbitrarily sliced up. I hate the bureaucratic nonsense involved in going to various parts of it. I hate how my wife is forced to choose between citizenship in her country of birth and citizenship in her country of residence. I hate how our children have to get government approval just to visit their grandparents. And I hate how my welcome home to my own country after a brutally long plane ride is a long line, an agent who treats me like a suspected criminal, and the threat of upending my life.

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

#68

Post by zebrahead »

jlangenauer wrote: post #7
cojxd wrote: post #4

>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…

> the country where they happened to be born.

They didn't just 'happen' to be born there - they, and the country, are the result of their ancestor's actions and struggles, and they are bound by more than mere coincidence.

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

#69

Post by triceratops »

rayiner wrote: post #44
snowwrestler wrote: post #35

I think the degree to which open borders are a reality within the U.S. is under-appreciated. As a reminder, U.S. states are sovereign entities with their own criminal laws, tax regimes, educational systems, property and contract rights, civil rights, economic growth, industries, natural resources, etc. In some cases their laws are pre-empted by U.S. federal law, but there remains quite a bit of diversity. Despite thi…

You dramatically overestimate how much of an economic difference there is between MD and WV: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vwpy8_glsgc/Vi5llZ9ZILI/AAAAAAAAI... . Adjusting for purchasing power, the difference in median income is just 10%. It’s like the difference between Belgium and Australia. On the flip side, there is actually quite a difference between states like New York (second poorest in the US) and Virginia. And…

> New York (second poorest in the US)

On what basis? It ranks 15th for median household income.

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

#70

Post by anticensor »

EGreg wrote: post #52

In Russia you can take a tour boat to St Petersburg from Finland and they let you in for 3 days no problem. True of many countries that accept cruises. I think cruise ship may be a good way to get into a country without trying to get a visa.

Not in USA. They request a transit visa (although it is cheaper, it is procedurally very similar to single-entry tourist visa).
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