[kazagistar]

> So accustomed are we to this game of geographical roulette that we have been blinded to the fact that it’s morally indefensible to divide the people on Earth into rich and poor, advantaged and disadvantaged, victims and survivors according to a criterion that is largely arbitrary and completely out of their control.

This is a weak argument. We do this for wealth in general: the mechanism is called inheritance. Of course, the author does not want to make this argument directly, because doing so would actually make the counterarguments more obvious, so the focus is instead based on emotion.

The second problem with the "free migration solves everything" hypothesis is that the wealth and health of a nation exist as a direct consequence of the existence of the barriers, both political and cultural, rather then some arbitrary geographic accident. Moving people from poor to rich nations does not do anything to help make the poor nations less poor; it only risks the problems coming over with the people.

[icebraining]

Moving people from poor to rich nations does not do anything to help make the poor nations less poor

Yes, they do. There are hundreds of billions of dollars every year being sent as remittances from those workers to their families in those poor countries.

[MichaelGG]

Yeah, did the article really address this at all? I think everyone agrees that most countries suck and it'd be great if every human could enjoy benefits like e.g. Canada. But it's not like "good" countries are magical. If you moved most of Africa and Latin America to North America, it seems unlikely all the services would just scale. After all, if that was the case, we could "just" make other countries better.

Also, personal anecdote, but out of the people I've met in Guatemala and expats in the US, essentially all of them recognize the US or Canada is way better and would prefer to live up North. The exceptions are the more better off, higher educated folks. And even then, it just takes a few reminders of the constant violence and insecurity to remind them and make them change their minds. <Generalization disclaimer>

[jbapple]

> We do this for wealth in general: the mechanism is called inheritance. Of course, the author does not want to make this argument directly, because doing so would actually make the counterarguments more obvious, so the focus is instead based on emotion.

Can you elaborate on what counterarguments you're thinking of that become "more obvious"?

[jacquesm]

> Moving people from poor to rich nations does not do anything to help make the poor nations less poor; it only risks the problems coming over with the people.

It all depends on the rates, the degree of integration and the mentality of both the hosts and the immigrants. Some countries get this right, others fail miserably.

[josu]

>The second problem with the "free migration solves everything" hypothesis is that the wealth and health of a nation exist as a direct consequence of the existence of the barriers, both political and cultural, rather then some arbitrary geographic accident.

There is a very nice example in Spain, there are two autonomous regions next to each other (there isn't any kind of border): Cantabria and the Basque Country[1], the former has a GDP per capita of 20,855 euros while the latter one 29,683euros. The same language is spoken in both [2], and the cultural diferences are minimal.

The reason while wealth of nation exists nobody knows, and nobody may ever know.

[1] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Comunidades_y_ciudades_au... [2] While some government jobs may require being able to speak Basque, 2/3 of the Basque Country don't speak Basque, and there isn't any kind of discrimination.

[hibikir]

In that case, it's not very difficult: Bilbao is a better port than Santander by a significant margin, drastically better communications to Madrid and France, both road and rail, and more natural resources. Santander doesn't have much of a competitive advantage, and as such, does worse. Having a nationalist party in one, while not in the other, also makes a big difference in national investment too. You don't have to pay a lot of attention to see that infrastructure investment goes to different places depending on the government in charge. Cantabria is electorally unimportant, and no big politicians came from there, so good luck getting any investment.

It's also important to know that advantages and disadvantages carry over with time, so a place might be doing much better than another because of semi-arbitrary decisions over the years. Like why does Madrid do better than Toledo? Once the capital moves to Madrid, investment moves towards Madrid, and the one real reason they keep doing better it's this original investment, that brings people, which brings more investment.

Sometimes the differences aren't so arbitrary, but are down to bad bets. In the 1800s, Chicago bet on the power of Rail, St. Louis on the river. The river became less important, while rail became more important, so Chicago got way bigger.