Big big fan of Open Borders, and excited to hear its back in print. I read it a while back and I am currently re-reading it in prep for an interview with Derek Sivers. It's one of the books we plan to explore in my podcast recording with him. I am building a digital media publication where I explore what it means to be an immigrant (The Newcomers)
I would love to host you on the pod to talk about:
1. The book and why it's a must read in these times
2. How to drive a better immigrant conversation across the world especially in the United States and Canada ( I live in Canada)
3. Lessons from the Gulf monarchies on their approach to immigration.
If you’re thinking of adding chapters, it would be great to have one on economic geography. Understanding that most of Africa is about as conducive to economic activity as Siberia is a really strong economic and moral argument for open borders
On a more serious note, I had an idea for a new section in the next revision.
Define two variables CR and CGR, representing the number of child rapes and child gang rapes, respectively, per Pakistani immigrant admitted to the UK. Now compute their expectations E(CR) and E(CGR). Jonatan Pallesen did some back of the envelope calculations and came up with a value of 1 for both E(CR) and E(CGR): https://x.com/jonatanpallesen/status/1875192326563172672.
Do these seem like reasonable estimates? You could include a section where you work out the math on this and explain why it's not that bad (while being very circumspect in the illustrations, of course!).
At the severe risk of missing an answer that appears in the book I have not bought -- so the UAE is your "least bad" immigration policy. But a 12% citizen petro-state relying on 88% guest workers with no birthright citizenship to solve the "Somebody has to physically convert my oil to food on my plate" problem is not a role model. The citizenship rules are extremely relevant because this not-even-second-class-citizen tiering system is their solution to the "As a citizen of a rich country, how do I prevent me and my child from having to compete on equal terms with the overworked poor people we import?" problem that more equitable countries solve in other ways.
I'm aware that these workers wouldn't come in the first place if they didn't expect it to be a better deal than staying where they lived. And I agree that an extreme guest worker based economy in a rich country -- quality infrastructure plus educated workers plus a "low-skill" worker class with wages suppressed by directly competing for jobs with the global poor -- has the potential to outcompete both outsourcing (paying people in poor infrastructure countries low wages that are still decent by that country's standards) and a more traditional rich country where even the "low-skill" workers are well paid. I just don't think that outcome would actually be good, especially for the poorer countries that lose even much of their advantage of cheaper wages.
Big big fan of Open Borders, and excited to hear its back in print. I read it a while back and I am currently re-reading it in prep for an interview with Derek Sivers. It's one of the books we plan to explore in my podcast recording with him. I am building a digital media publication where I explore what it means to be an immigrant (The Newcomers)
I would love to host you on the pod to talk about:
1. The book and why it's a must read in these times
2. How to drive a better immigrant conversation across the world especially in the United States and Canada ( I live in Canada)
3. Lessons from the Gulf monarchies on their approach to immigration.
If you’re thinking of adding chapters, it would be great to have one on economic geography. Understanding that most of Africa is about as conducive to economic activity as Siberia is a really strong economic and moral argument for open borders
On a more serious note, I had an idea for a new section in the next revision.
Define two variables CR and CGR, representing the number of child rapes and child gang rapes, respectively, per Pakistani immigrant admitted to the UK. Now compute their expectations E(CR) and E(CGR). Jonatan Pallesen did some back of the envelope calculations and came up with a value of 1 for both E(CR) and E(CGR): https://x.com/jonatanpallesen/status/1875192326563172672.
Do these seem like reasonable estimates? You could include a section where you work out the math on this and explain why it's not that bad (while being very circumspect in the illustrations, of course!).
Lol. Never letting reality get in the way of a good theory, eh?
At the severe risk of missing an answer that appears in the book I have not bought -- so the UAE is your "least bad" immigration policy. But a 12% citizen petro-state relying on 88% guest workers with no birthright citizenship to solve the "Somebody has to physically convert my oil to food on my plate" problem is not a role model. The citizenship rules are extremely relevant because this not-even-second-class-citizen tiering system is their solution to the "As a citizen of a rich country, how do I prevent me and my child from having to compete on equal terms with the overworked poor people we import?" problem that more equitable countries solve in other ways.
I'm aware that these workers wouldn't come in the first place if they didn't expect it to be a better deal than staying where they lived. And I agree that an extreme guest worker based economy in a rich country -- quality infrastructure plus educated workers plus a "low-skill" worker class with wages suppressed by directly competing for jobs with the global poor -- has the potential to outcompete both outsourcing (paying people in poor infrastructure countries low wages that are still decent by that country's standards) and a more traditional rich country where even the "low-skill" workers are well paid. I just don't think that outcome would actually be good, especially for the poorer countries that lose even much of their advantage of cheaper wages.