I agree with your sentiments but not your facts.

> For example, consider the Maldives, with 300,000 people making about $5k/year.

The sea level of the Maldives fell by more than 20cm since the 70ies. If the worst of the IPCC predictions come to pass, then the Maldives will still be better of in 2100 than in 1970.

Here is a reference - but you can find many more using Google:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2...

Assuming their population has stayed the same and that they haven't built anything on lower lying land since then.

They will also probably be much richer and able to afford ambitious engineering projects. 100 years from now, Bangladeshis are expected to be as rich as the modern Dutch.

That's a great idea! Forced relocations always work out well, just ask the Native Americans. We really appreciated being moved across the country and forced to live in reservations.

We should definitely use that as the solution to climate change.

You're right, letting people drown is a much better solution.

Have you been to the maldives? I live in a particularly beautiful part of the US (Sarasota, FL) and I can say without question that moving to the Maldives would increase my standard of living.

You're right that it would increase their incomes. But standard of living is much more than income...

If that is true, why not move there? Or are you a masochist?

Activation barriers. Cutting ties to where you currently are may be sufficiently painful that moving isn't worth it, even if the end result is an increased standard of living.

If one has offspring, and they have offspring and so on, the gain from moving is indefinitely large and overwhelms any activation barrier. This suggests a new alternative: the poster is either barren or doesn't care about the standard of living of his offspring.

You left out a few possibilities:

-The poster hadn't considered that argument

-The poster doesn't want to have kids

-The poster will have a finite number of descendants

-The poster's concern for the standard of living of his distant descendants diminish according to distance (for instance, he probably cares a great deal for his children and a similar amount for his grandchildren, but by the time you're talking great-great-grandchildren his empathy has diminished significantly)

-The poster's descendants will not want share his fondness for the Maldives

-The poster's descendants will move away from the Maldives for other reasons

I'm sure you can think of a half dozen other alternatives if you think for a minute.

1. If the poster can consider 'activation costs', he most certainly can consider the benefits for his kids. Billions of people have radically altered their lives for the benefit of their kids, it's not some remarkably difficult task.

2. Same as barren.

3. Impossible to know, and under any plausible reckoning of improvement, insufficient to make activation costs predominate.

4. Same as doesn't care.

5. Unlikely; goes against millennia of empirical evidence that people love where they live (nowadays we call that 'patriotism')

6. A fully general counterargument (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Fully_general_counterargument). You can use that to argue against anything: 'You should move away from North Korea', 'Why, my descendants might move away into it for other reasons!'; 'You shouldn't move away from North Korea, then', 'Why, my descendants might then move away elsewhere for other reasons!'

3 (finite number of descendants): "Impossible to know" perhaps--but the possibility of having few or no descendants will factor into the expected value of "number of descendants resident in the Maldives".

5 (his children may not be fond of the Maldives): You just argued that children are likely to have a fondness for wherever they are born. If true, this invalidates the argument for moving at all: whether his descendants love the Maldives or America will make for no gain at all.

6. (children may move away from Maldives): Actually, given the limited economic and educational opportunities of the Maldives, there's likely to be a fairly high probability of one's children moving. Once we use this probability to work out an EV for "number of descendants resident in the Maldives", or even apply the probability recursively to work out a proportion of descendants resident in the Maldives over an infinite number of generations, your infinity argument is pretty well refuted.

> If the poster can consider 'activation costs'

What makes you think people consciously consider it? Most of them just say "I don't feel like moving", or "I'm too lazy". Also, you missed the point of the "fully general counterargument". The point is that if your descendants find it better to be somewhere else later - well, they're fully capable of moving themselves.

You missed the possibility that moving there would increase his standard of living, but would not do the same for his kids. There could be no good college there, for instance - and if he already did college, this would not be a problem for him. But for his offspring, it could be a significant issue.