25 Comments

Nation states do matter, and reducing inequality among them is caring for individuals. Milanovic forgets that developed countries are developed because there is a 500 years history of colonialism behind them. It is just very insensitive to presume that individuals should be "allowed" to be better off in France or Italy than in "Chad, Liberia and Mauritania", when in fact Chad, Liberia and Mauritania should be allowed to develop and offer their citizes the same level of welfare than Italy and France. Immigration is a painful business for everyone, no one wants to be unrooted, and the ones who do that is because of an extreme lack of options. This is really carring for individuals. I am very, very disapointed at this.

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I think this is a necessary provocation. It's meant to make us think about how the still majority of the world's population can share in the prosperity of those economies which have prospered most. Because if they don't, then morbid symptoms will continue to emerge. Part of this, referenced by M, is that now everybody knows, or thinks they know, what is going on in the rich countries. Hence the urge to emigrate. Once this process is understood, at least by our notables, then something may change.

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The trade-off between the maintenance of diversity and freedom of movement is not a binary one. 1) There is no guarantee the local people would preserve the culture, especially if enamored by an ideology of anti-tradition revolution; 2) it is not given that if emigrated, the diaspora would give up on their culture. Both 1) and 2) have significant empirical evidence.

On the diaspora preserving their own cultures, there are two perspectives. One is from the immigrants': Pacific Islanders, including Mali, are a notable group who are actively pursuing emigration in order to preserve their cultures, due to climate change deteriorating the living standards on their islands. One is from the host country: the conservative wing usually oppose open immigration because they believe immigrants would bring with them their foreign cultures, supposedly incompatible with that of the host country. Between this push and pull many creative minds have evolved the culture of both the immigrants and the host country, resulting in more variety, but because the names of the cultures do not change, and rarely are the changes enough to be accounted separately, this evolution is often neglected in variety accounting.

Just like nation-state may not be the proper unit for economic accounting, it may not be the proper unit for cultural accounting either.

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"If Chad, Liberia and Mauritania cease to exist because everybody wants to move to Italy and France, why should one be concerned: people have freely chosen to be better off in Italy and France, and that’s all there is to that. But then, it could be asked, would not disappearance of countries also mean disappearance of distinct cultures, languages and religions? Yes, but if people do not care about these cultures, languages and religions, why should they be maintained?"

You do realize that France and Italy would soon cease to exist if that happened. They could not long maintain their distinctive national cultures and forms of government.

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The piece has a map of the Roman Empire and then talks about o "Marcomanni, Quadi, Sarmatians, Visigoths, Alans, Vandals, Avars" disappearing from Earth. So it is basically defending empire and genocide. Man, this is Nazi crap!

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This argument is ridiculous: the people of Japan, Korea-south, China-Taiwan, Singapore, China-mainland did not achieve first-world levels of income (or "moderate prosperity" in the case of China-mainland) by mass emigration to the USA and Europe.

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A couple of comments:

1. It is simplistic to argue that cultural traditions disappear just because people wanted them to. Because traditions are collectively maintained, they involve externalities. When someone leaves a village (or region, or country) it may become harder for those who stay behind to maintain their culture. Of course, that does not imply that everyone should be forced to stay home!

2. Here is a parallel that you may not like very much. Imperialists brought governments to peoples, motivated by high-minded arguments of the blessings of Western rule. (Also, underneath, by varying degrees of greed.) The argument you're outlining, which is popular with many contemporary economists, is to bring people to governments. There is an odd parallel: the outcome in both cases is that everyone ends up ruled by rich countries, and the poor countries disappear.

Of course, the difference is that migration often entails becoming a full citizen of the host country, whereas subjects of colonial empires did not have the same rights as citizens of the metropolis.... Would that stay true if there was real, Clemens-"big bills on the sidewalk"-style *mass* migration? Some neoliberal-ish economists have already suggested, as a political compromise, weakened forms of citizenship for immigrants. Some countries effectively do that already.

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... at the start of the pandemic fearful local people in my community tried to discourage people even from the neighbouring towns coming to visit, shop, play. I live in Scotland. Fear and tribalism lurk right beside ignorance even in the best off best served places. Inclusion is a journey we must press on with always... everywhere.

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Aug 6, 2023·edited Aug 6, 2023

I think that inevitably if this were to happen in an extreme way, and it just might, we would have a bigger problem. The world would be destabilized further and other consequences would emerge. The West cannot support such migrant influxes -- look at what is happening now. I think the answer is to bolster national economies and for governments to pursue policies that stimulate brain retention and not brain drain. Losing modern cultures and all that comes with seems to me quite tragic. We live in a different world now than the era of Visgoths, for example, and I believe preserving what we have is of paramount importance because we have the consciousness and ability to do so. I view cultural diversity as a richness and intangible wealth that we have to preserve. Otherwise, we will be living in a monochromatic, hyper-capitalistic, individualistic and maybe vapid world (I guess this sounds familiar already).

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I miss the Visigoths.

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I think this model treats rich countries as perfect receptacles with unlimited capacity, like addition of any number of any people changes only the averages, not the functional basis of society. It seems to be not the case.

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Great article. Global freedom of movement is the greatest step we can take to improve poor people's quality of life.

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Another wonderful piece - not because I agree (I don't) but because you force me to interrogate myself as to why and where I disagree.

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I love how Branko ignores the fundamental side of the coin: why can't countries reject migrants and why should they be obligated to disappear due to immigration, not just emigration? We might not miss the Marcomanni because Marcus Aurelius committed a genocide (two actually, like the Quadi). But did the Burgundians, Franks and Saxons miss the Roman Empire, after they destroyed it? Well, they spent 1000 years trying to rebuild it...

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Bastiat was simply stating the obvious, that nation-states are just imaginary lines used for economic purposes. Hence, if they cease to serve that purpose, they become useless. Iraq no longer served a purpose to the imperialist powers, so their existence is threatened. Haven't a clue what this means to places like Libya, Yemen, Taiwan, or even Serbia but leaders better take notice--Branko has a point

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