Newsmedianews - Archived direct input headlines

NEWSMEDIANEWS

______________________________Direct Input News Archive______________________________

Survival or Extinction—Part Fourteen - Into the Wild       printable version

15 Dec 2014: posted by the editor - Features

Survival or Extinction: Part Fourteen—Into the Wild - summary
By Kevin Mugur Galalae
What would happen if all borders were lifted and everyone were free to go and live anywhere on earth? As it is, borders keep citizens prisoner to the history, geography, economy, culture and politics of one’s country of birth and this restriction flies in the face of Article 13-2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country”.

The right to leave one’s country (emigrate), for instance, is meaningless unless complimented by the right to enter another country (immigrate) at will, which is unfortunately still a matter of national sovereignty not personal choice and a fiction since no country on earth permits free entry. So long as emigration is recognized as a human right while immigration is regarded as a matter of national sovereignty, the right to migrate will remain a half-right and therefore a non-right.

In general, opponents to open borders contend that the free movement of people threatens (1) the economic security of developed nations, (2) the social entitlements of welfare states, and (3) the cultural cohesion of all nations.

Recent migration flows indicate that some 200 million people or less than 3% of the global population are being redistributed around the world annually both within and between nations.

Since population control is the world’s substitute to war, finding a legal, global and enduring remedy to the problem of people outgrowing resources will result in complete and universal disarmament once borders are dissolved and armed forces become unnecessary. Positive:

Open borders will diminish the threat of war since the free movement of people will erode nationalist sentiments and loyalties and weaken ethnic divisions and historic animosities in the long run. (Value: 3 points)

The free movement of people will put an end to borders that have become militarized and that brutalize innocent people, criminalize poverty and desperation, and trap migrants inside and outside borders. (Value: 2 points)

The demographic transition and depopulation - Positive:

Borders have allowed governments to manage their people’s fertility, and more recently their longevity, and to monitor the effects of their population control measures. (Value: 3 points)

Conversely, a sizeable influx of retirees from developed countries, where the cost of living is high, to the developing world, where the cost of living is low and medical care adequate, would ease the social cost of the high youth dependency ratio that especially Least Developed Countries experience if the incoming pensioners were allowed to spend their full pensions abroad and if the cost of their medical care would continue to be paid by their countries of origin even though they would be cared for in the receiving countries. (Value: 1 point)

Demographically speaking open borders have more than thrice as many benefits as closed borders, as the score of 7 to 2 shows.

Positive:
Areas in the developing world that are now under great environmental strain due to high population densities will find relief once large numbers migrate to wealthy countries. (Value: 1 point)

Without borders nature becomes more important than the nation state and conservation efforts can truly become global as they should be since nature forms one cohesive whole. (Value: 1 point)

The quality of life would decline worldwide due to the vastly increased industrial output that open borders would engender as more people consume more resources. (Value: 3 points)

Since most migration will take place from south to north, thus from poor to rich countries, people would move from warm, low carbon economies, to cold, high carbon economies, therefore increasing the median carbon footprint and man’s overall environmental burden. (Value: 2 points)

Economic equality and justice
Goods, services, information, knowhow, capital and labor must be allowed to flow freely throughout the world if we are to create an environment of economic equality and a just world.

Open borders would force a global, social and economic mobilization that would never occur without the crisis caused by a migration exodus. (Value: 3 points)

There can be no globally integrated economy without the free mobility of people and until such time as the right to mobility is considered a fundamental right neither development nor poverty reduction can be accomplished and the existing economic distortions caused by the imprisonment of labor behind national frontiers will skew the global economy even further and lead to global collapse. The free flow of capital, information and services that we have achieved through economic liberalization must be met by the free flow of people. For it is only through free migration coupled with the right of capital and goods to reach every corner of the world that we can achieve worldwide economic equality and avert global economic collapse. (Value: 3 points)

The free movement of people delegitimizes the authority of states to control people’s movement therefore weakening the power of the state and empowering the individual. (Value: 2 points)

Globalization has made the free flow of capital, goods and services possible, to the primary benefit of capital holders in developed nations, but not of labor, which would benefit workers in developing nations since human capital is their greatest asset. (Value: 2 points)

This bidirectional migration would speed up the effort to equalize wealth between the developed and the developing world. The developed world has latent qualified personnel without investment opportunities while the developing world has latent unqualified personnel without employment opportunities. (Value: 2 points)

In a world of economic globalization the right to global mobility will have positive consequences on all other human rights in addition to eroding the gross socioeconomic inequalities that now destabilize the entire world. (Value: 1 point)

Consequently, wages will collapse in the developed world, causing great hardship, and will only slightly increase in the developing world. (Value: 3 points)

The neo-colonialism that now allows the developed world to exploit the developing world to ensure high standards of living at home and low standards in the developing world will be replaced by a situation akin to that prior to globalization, when the rich exploited the underclasses within their national borders. (Value: 3 points)

Open borders will within a short time – probably a couple of decades – double the global GDP, but it will take two generations of hard work (and a 50% reduction in the global population) before the high standard of living now enjoyed by western nations can be mirrored worldwide.   It must be remembered that the 1 billion people living in the developed world consume more than half of the world’s resources while the remaining 6 billion are struggling with the remaining half. (Value: 3 points)

Developed nations will not be able to sustain their welfare systems and other social entitlements including pensions and free medical care, as they depend on wealth accrued in large part by being dominant on the free market and exporting large quantities of manufactured goods to the developing world. (Value: 3 points)

The unfair distribution of resources we now see between the developed and the developing world will lead to brutal class stratification within the global society and economy that open borders will create.

By and large, what is gained globally is lost nationally as the population of the developing world will benefit at the cost of the developed world.

Global digital currency
A global digital currency presupposes a central controlling agency and such an agency would be the first political act towards a truly cohesive global economy and society.

Without a global digital currency that replaces all other currencies, is centrally controlled, and reflects the global output the world will not be able to correct the destabilizing effects of the ongoing shift from national economies to a global economy let alone respond to the drastic and unpredictable changes of open borders.

Global governance of open borders
Free migration, for instance, will increase tensions between native and incoming people that would quickly translate into populist, extremist and racist political parties that will use people’s prejudices and fears to close the borders and revert to national isolationism.

Migration tax
Since the cost of free migration will be colossal, the international community must be able to collect a global tax to be able to finance the process of open borders.

One-Child Policy
As with free migration so too must population control be declared an international security prerogative and at least five years prior to opening the borders a One-Child Policy must be adopted and fully implemented by countries in stage one, two and three of the demographic transition and a Two-Children Policy by countries in stage four of the demographic transition.

Employment as a fundamental and inalienable right
Free market capitalism is the economic arrangement of imbeciles and sociopaths. The purpose of all our efforts should be economic security not economic advantage. Without a living wage in everyone’s pocket the current system, with or without open borders, is doomed to an agonizing death.

Immigration cities and food security
Once people are free to move at will across borders, the only way to guide them so they disperse equally and not overwhelm existing urban centers is by seeding the world with cities of opportunity where none existed before. Global citizenship

It is theoretically beautiful but practically impossible to grant full citizenship rights to the large numbers of people who would migrate to the countries of their choice under an open borders regime. Under an open borders regime those who wish to leave their country of birth or of residence will have to abandon their national citizenship and all rights and responsibilities that come with it and accept global citizenship and all rights and responsibilities that come with it.

To forge a cohesive global community and enable free human exchange all Cities of Opportunity will have to communicate in the same official language, English, in addition to which each city will also use the language of the host country.

Every country on earth will have to grant large tracts of land for the construction of Cities of Opportunity, say two cities for every country that is not a city state. Existing cities within nation states may themselves decide to become Cities of Opportunity and join the international community.

Supposing that at least 100 countries are willing to donate land for at least two Cities of Opportunity to the international community, 50 countries are large enough and able to host 10 such cities, and 10 countries are large and brave enough to host 25, this will provide migrants with nearly 1000 choices of residence virtually anywhere on earth. The design and planning of these cities will provide every nation with the opportunity to shine and to show the world what its people are capable of.

FOUR POSSIBLE APPROACHES TO OPEN BORDERS
One continent at a time
Cities of Opportunity
In time, the global community that will have grown along with the Cities of Opportunity will reach critical mass and absorb increasingly more national citizens so that gradually and organically the global community subsumes all national communities.   In other words, the Cities of Opportunity will absorb nations not vice versa since people will migrate from nations into the Cities of Opportunity. Our new frontier is the global horizon.

Full story

Killing Us Softly: Causes and Consequences of the Global Depopulation Policy is considered by the author to be important in understanding the content of Survival or Extinction. Likewise a second book, Chemical and Biological Depopulation is also considered important to understanding. You can download both as a zipfile here

Tags: Survival or Extinction

Back to headlines
comments (0)
recommend

>Local comment

Name: Remember me

E-mail: (optional)

Captcha

Return to full index