The standard counterargument is that not allowing mobility is what enabled us to have any nice places to begin with, in an "ant and grasshopper" way. Building a "nice" and affluent country is generally a multigenerational project involving plenty of individual sacrifice for the sake of a future that the sacrificing individuals will rarely themselves experience. If Norwegians knew that they all could move to any country they choose at their pleasure at all times, why would they save their oil money in a sovereign wealth fund instead of quitting work, blowing it all on blackjack and hookers right now, then taking out the greatest national credit line their country can secure to buy some more blackjack and hookers, and relocate a few 100km into Sweden once it's all used up? Knowing that the Norwegians would be thinking along those lines, what would stop the Swedes from racing to beat them onto the blackjack-and-hookers train?

Now, in reality, Norwegians and Swedes are sufficiently similar and familiar with each other that they probably would be able to predict the other's actions and jointly avoid racing to the bottom, but could you say this about, say, Germans and Egyptians, for more complex downward spirals than "burn through our assets faster than the others get to"? Add to it that the short-sighted policies that actually make the difference between successful and failed countries rarely are so straightforwardly bad as buying blackjack and hookers: more commonly, we'll be talking about economic experiments, corruption and kickbacks for interest groups, and really a handful of policies where we still can't confidently say if they were actually good for a given polity in the long run (space programmes, social programmes , infrastructure megaprojects...), but have to rely on history to naturally select for political processes that crystallise better instincts for their selection.

In less abstract terms, I think that especially many right-leaning Americans feel that Latin-American socialism gets close to being an instance of "blackjack and hookers" in the sense of the above metaphor, and in the same vein Germans feel that Levantine... sectarianism?... does. (As in, sitting down and negotiating a sustainable peace with people from other ethnic groups who might be heretics and devil-worshippers is the hardship-and-sacrifice option, whereas using any momentary advantage to enrich your friends and blow up infidels is short-term fun.)

This counterargument conveniently ignores the history of 'European colonization of America from the early 16th century until the incorporation of the colonies into the United States of America [0]'.

I'm not the most well-versed on these topic (colonization / mobility) but it would seem that that mobility is what helped shape America into what it is today rather than "not allowing mobility".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_history_of_the_United...

I think you two both agree, actually. How did colonization work out for the indians?

Well, the original autochthonous inhabitants of Americas would almost certainly preferred to be left alone than getting the Germs, Gold, and Guns "gifts" from the explorers and colonists...

Come on Norway, cheer up. You're wonderful people. I don't believe you'd all go on blackjack-and-hooker downward spirals if your government gave you freedom. Throw off the yoke of state tyranny. Your countries are nice places due to the virtues of your people, not your governments. I had a Norwegian roommate for about a year, here in California. I have to admit I found it a little creepy how her government would do things like keep calling her on the phone every few weeks, to find out what she was doing, how much money she was making, etc. I also got the impression that some of the ideas she was exposed to, in her childhood environment, were going to make it much harder for her to thrive in an economic environment like California, versus an oil rich country like Norway. Very sad, almost like a limiting of potential.

Why should a homeless person be forced to sleep on the street when you have a perfectly good couch in your living room. Yet you keep your door locked.

Because a country is not a house. The analogy is fundamentally flawed. Our government can provide for immigrants in ways that individuals simply cannot.

Governments provide nothing. They make someone else provide.

If the government needs a couch, they don’t poof a couch into existence and everyone’s happy. They either take your couch or have someone sit down and make one.

It’s bizarre though how many people think governments can simply “provide”. America now can’t even provide for all the struggling people who already live there. You could argue that they could redefine their priorities and focus on immigrants, but that comes at a cost of something else, and people affected by those cuts would not be happy.

This is basically saying: I won't help, but I support the government forcing other people to help (and hopefully it won't affect me).

The state is product of citizens time and resources. We all contribute. So it's a perfectly apt analogy.

> sheer luck

Not really. Your ancestors worked hard to improve the environment you were born in. It wasn't luck that created western civilization, it was the hard work and ingenuity of the generations that came before us.

Sure, but none of that has anything to do with you or your accomplishments which is where luck enters the equation as to your starting place.

For the record I think borders should be secure, but also allow pathways to citizenship.

> Sure, but none of that has anything to do with you or your accomplishments which is where luck enters the equation as to your starting place.

We didn't earn it, but we were given it by our ancestors. While it does behoove us to be generous, it is still ours by right. We also have an obligation to our descendants to preserve it for them.

What good is it working to improve the fate of our descendants, if it is only going to be taken away from them because they didn't "earn" it?

Yes you were given it, which means you were lucky in what you received. By all means try to do the same for your descendants I didn't say anything to the contrary, just that they would be lucky in the same way

> Why should people that just happen to be born in a third world country live a shitty life with no way out

What about someone born in a Mississippi housing project where everyone around them is illiterate? Or in some rust belt slum with drug-addicted parents? What about someone simply unable to get the mental health they need so they end up living on Skid Row?

Lots of people are born into very shitty circumstances, and if we have problems taking care of American citizens I don't see how you can make the argument we need to open our borders for everyone in the world born in tough circumstances.

>You were born in a nice place by sheer luck. It's unfair.

Yes, thats life? Of course where there is abundance we ought to use it to fix the unfairness. But life is unfair.

I think it comes down to where do we actually draw the line of abundance. Some feel we're well past it, enough that we shouldn't even have borders, others feel we aren't even close and ought to be quite selective of who gets to stay.

>>>You can't just say they have to do a revolution in their own country,

Uh, yes I can. The US exists because the population staged a rebellion. I don't find it unconscionable to expect others to undertake the same effort our forebears did to improve their situation.

>>>You were born in a nice place by sheer luck. It's unfair.

Some of us are also taller than average as well, which is directly correlated with total career earnings. Sheer luck and unfair. Outcomes will ALWAYS vary due to the inherent genetic variations and capabilities in the human population.

There's a tragedy of the commons problem. While I think there's nothing wrong with wanting to move your family from a poorer country to the US, if in theory every person who wanted to do this did do this - from every country (Latin America or otherwise) - it'd eventually become unsustainable. At least not without a huge government program to try to manage it all, which may or may not succeed. Another issue is that criminal organizations can try to exploit this for their own gain, to the detriment of all, and it can become harder and harder to detect or prevent this as the rate increases.

Perhaps we'll eventually be in a future where surplus and government and security improvements makes this much easier to manage, and then maybe more countries will start moving to a more open-borders / global union model, but that future is probably at least a century away (probably several centuries). I think we should strive for that future, but that we should also accept pragmatic reality until it happens.

And I do think we should probably increase the amount of families we currently accept every year. Especially war refugees. Totally eliminating national boundaries is very different from that, though.

> it'd eventually become unsustainable.

If a sizable fraction of a country started to leave or plan on leaving, it could also force these countries to get their shit together to become more attractive and retain them. Similar to what we have now with counter-measures to brain drains.

If anything, I think they'd just be relieved that dissenters are leaving while true believers / "patriotic citizens" are staying put. Makes politics a lot easier. But I'm sure the reaction would vary a lot by country.

If you can move anywhere then you would have many more economic migrants looking for the best benefits.

I was wondering about this topic not long ago as well and came across this article: http://dieoff.com/page99.htm (not sure if that's the original link I saw but it is the same paper).

Basically it's about there being a curve for population size vs standard of living. We can't control the size of the population for the entire world, but a country can for themselves.

I don't really have much of an opinion on it, and can't say whether the article is bunk, but I did find it an interesting read.

Yeah, and I wasn't born to billionaires. So, we should take all the money from rich people and redistribute and become communist?