[jonemo]

I've been thinking about the idea of free migration for a while. Not in the context of eliminating poverty, but as the perfect implementation of democracy: Vote with your feet, go to wherever you like it best.

If all immigration and emigration restrictions were dropped everywhere, and anyone could freely move from any country to any country, and you were full citizen of whatever country you are living in at any given point, what would happen? Would democracy as political system prevail or would people simply move in and out of non-democratic countries depending on how their respective rules work for them? Would there be inhabitable regions on earth that are abandoned because everyone moved away? Would there be countries that attract all the "desirable" citizen while other countries collapse because they were left with "undesirable" citizens? Is there even such a thing as a generally "desirable" citizen or are people only desirable to some countries but not others? If one (but only one) of those open-border countries were to start implementing new immigration restrictions (that should be possible, after all you can leave if you don't like it), would this result in a net outflow of people and the ultimate collapse of this country? Or would the country strive and be home to some kind of elite group of people? Would the world move back to a state where every country has immigration restrictions, or would we find a different equilibrium?

I know next to nothing about immigration policy, but thinking of this as a game is quite interesting. I wonder if there are simulations where you can model scenarios like this?

[danenania]

I think that in the long run, true open borders would be a death-knell for the nation-state. The two central purposes for nations, as opposed to local and regional governments, are regulating immigration and responding to (or mounting) military threats. After societies have intermixed to a certain point, you'll see the death of nationalism and sufficient cultural and religious diversity in the electorates of wealthy countries that declaring war on any other country will become very difficult as you'll always have 20% of your populace sharing a religion or cultural kinship or some other line of sympathy.

Add to this the strain of large demographic shifts on representative democracies and you have the recipe for a break up into a decentralized network of regional and local governments that run things according to their particular demographic make-ups. The correlation we have come to expect between geographical proximity and consistent culture and politics would begin to disappear.

[sardonicbryan]

The thing that is really going to collapse our current national system is crypto currency. Once governments can't collect taxes easily, could easily see us going to a Neal Stephenson Diamond Age style post national, lifestyle group based system.

[VLM]

"20% of your populace sharing a religion or cultural kinship"

Germany/Poland/Russia

[VLM]

The problem with modeling it is likely to be defining all aspects of the problem. The most immediate result of "I can just move" is likely to be some environmental problems. And its not like you'll be able to enforce environmental laws if you can, as you say, just move.

"Is there even such a thing as a generally "desirable" citizen" I've done some minimal research and worldwide immigration policies have more or less congealed on certain desirable characteristics, which boil down to money, job, credentialed education, family connections, and fame. Age and health and clean record vary somewhat from country to country. There are variations in the level of the category, like some 3rd world countries sell citizenship for only $50K or so, but the 1st world wants $500K or more. But the organization is remarkable. It would be like if a space alien civilization coincidentally organized their books with the same Dewey Decimal system numbers we use.

[jonemo]

I agree with most of your second paragraph. The baseline requirements for immigration are the same almost everywhere. A side effect of that is that there are people today who practically live without immigration restrictions. If you are born into the right nationality, and have the right combination of wealth and/or education, you can move pretty much anywhere you want. I'm soon going to finish grad school and recently ranked all countries in the world on how much I'd like to live/work there. There wasn't a single one where I'd consider going but couldn't.

Looping back to your first argument on environmental problems: Those people who could do the most severe environmental damage are probably in that group who can move freely already. And my impression is that they are already doing a fair bit of environmental damage. A trivial example would be the people who travel to the Alps every winter to do winter sports while merrily destroying the ecosystem there.

[VLM]

Good points and examples but my fear with the 1st argument was more along the lines of home based businesses. "Oh, you say I can't run a home based cyanide process metal plating business in my basement, and dump the waste in the (drinking water) river? Well I'm a job creator and I'll just move to someplace I can!" That kind of thing could cause, oh, about a billion times more damage than an occasional short drive to the alps.

From my old chemistry days, there's a dude active in the 40s to 70s named Max Gergel who pioneered advanced organic chemistry in that era, unfortunately safety and environmental concerns were kind of dark ages, just pour stuff out in the backyard type. Google for "Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide" and there's pdfs floating around. Its kinda popular, sorta, in comparison analogy to the BOFH legend. Unfortunately in contrast to the BOFH its all true stories if anything somewhat censored down. I'm pretty sure the old factory site is/was a superfund site although I don't remember.

There's another classic chemist book about "questionable" behavior called the green flame of boron or something like that, basically the manufacturing side of John D Clark's "Ignition" book (which I still own a copy of). That's another enviro hair raiser.

I think the TLDR for pretty much any pre-70s era chemical plant (and, maybe to the current date) is you really don't want to live downwind or downriver if at all possible.

One interesting CS/IT/tech lesson is these guys didn't think they were doing anything wrong which is part of the strange otherworldly appeal of reading their books. Its fun to contemplate what contemporary "data hygiene" practices will be looked back on with horror in perhaps as little as a generation. Sharing executable files? DRM? Tracking? Social networking? Who knows, but evidence from other fields is that things we don't blink about doing now might make our kids recoil in horror decades later.