We live in an increasingly globalised world, where moving between countries is both easier in terms of transport costs and more socially acceptable. Once translation reaches near-human levels, language barriers will be far less of a problem. I’m wondering to what extent evaporative cooling might happen to countries, both in terms of values and economically.
I read that France and Greece lost 3 & 5% of their millionaires last year (or possibly the year before), citing economic depression and rising racial/religious tension, with the most popular destination being Australia (as it has the 1st or 2nd highest HDI in the world). 3-5% may not seem like a lot, but if it were sustained for several years it quickly piles up. The feedback effects are obvious—the wealthier members of society find it easier to leave and perhaps have more of a motive to leave an economic collapse, which decreases tax revenue, which increases collapse etc. On the flip side, Australia attracts these people and its economy grows more making it even more attractive...
Socially, the same effect as described in EY’s essay I linked happens on a national scale—if the ‘blue’ people leave, the country becomes ‘greener’ which attracts more greens and forces out more blues. And social/economic factors feed into each other too—economic collapses cause extremism of all sorts, while I imagine a wealthy society attracting elites would be more able to handle or avoid conflicts.
Now, this is not automatically a bad thing, or at least it might be bad locally for some people, but perhaps not globally. Any thoughts as to what sort of outcomes there might be? And incidentally, how many people can you fit in Australia? I know its very big, but also has a lot of desert.
And also competitive tax rates have been a popular subject in politics for a long long time. “If we tax millionaires/businesses, what stops them from just leaving to another country/state/city?”
In my view, segregating the world by values would actually be really good. People who have very different belief systems should not try or be forced to live in the same country.
But the problem is it’s not just by values. It’s also by wealth and intelligence and education. If you have half of the world that is really poor, and anyone that is intelligent or wealthy automatically leaves, then they will probably stay poor forever.
Yes, those with my values will live here, in Gondor. Your folks can live other there, in Mordor. Our citizens will no longer come into contact and conflict with one another, and peace will reign forever.
What, these segregated regions THEMSELVES come into conflict? Absurd. What would you even call a conflict that was between large groups of people? That could never happen. Everyone who shares my value system knows that lots of people would die, and we all agree that nothing could be worth that.
Segregating the world, period, based on whatever, is impossible without a coercive power that the existing nations of earth would consider illegal. Before you could forcefully migrate a large percentage of the world’s humans you’d have to win a war with whatever portion of the UN stood against you.
If you could do it, no one would admit to having any values other than those which got to live in/own the nicest places/stuff/be with their family / not be with their competitors/whatever. The technology to determine everyone’s values does not exist.
If you somehow derived everyone’s values and split them by these, you would probably be condemning large segments of the population to misery (Lots of people’s values are built around living around people who don’t share them.), and there would be widespread resentment. The invincible force you used to overcome objection 1 would be tested within a generation.
Okay, I obviously don’t mean that we should value-segregate people at the point of a gun. I mean that if people naturally want to migrate towards geopolitical communities that better fit their particular value system, this is probably a good thing.
In Australia we currently produce enough food for 60 million people. This is without any intensive farming techniques at all. This could be scaled up by a factor of ten if it was really necessary, but quality of life per capita would suffer.
I think smaller nations are as a general rule governed much better, so I don’t see any positives in increasing our population beyond the current 24 million people.
We live in an increasingly globalised world, where moving between countries is both easier in terms of transport costs and more socially acceptable. Once translation reaches near-human levels, language barriers will be far less of a problem. I’m wondering to what extent evaporative cooling might happen to countries, both in terms of values and economically.
I read that France and Greece lost 3 & 5% of their millionaires last year (or possibly the year before), citing economic depression and rising racial/religious tension, with the most popular destination being Australia (as it has the 1st or 2nd highest HDI in the world). 3-5% may not seem like a lot, but if it were sustained for several years it quickly piles up. The feedback effects are obvious—the wealthier members of society find it easier to leave and perhaps have more of a motive to leave an economic collapse, which decreases tax revenue, which increases collapse etc. On the flip side, Australia attracts these people and its economy grows more making it even more attractive...
Socially, the same effect as described in EY’s essay I linked happens on a national scale—if the ‘blue’ people leave, the country becomes ‘greener’ which attracts more greens and forces out more blues. And social/economic factors feed into each other too—economic collapses cause extremism of all sorts, while I imagine a wealthy society attracting elites would be more able to handle or avoid conflicts.
Now, this is not automatically a bad thing, or at least it might be bad locally for some people, but perhaps not globally. Any thoughts as to what sort of outcomes there might be? And incidentally, how many people can you fit in Australia? I know its very big, but also has a lot of desert.
Brain drain has been a concern of some for a long time.
And also competitive tax rates have been a popular subject in politics for a long long time. “If we tax millionaires/businesses, what stops them from just leaving to another country/state/city?”
Indeed, but I was wondering whether modern social and technological changes will accelerate this.
In my view, segregating the world by values would actually be really good. People who have very different belief systems should not try or be forced to live in the same country.
But the problem is it’s not just by values. It’s also by wealth and intelligence and education. If you have half of the world that is really poor, and anyone that is intelligent or wealthy automatically leaves, then they will probably stay poor forever.
Yes, those with my values will live here, in Gondor. Your folks can live other there, in Mordor. Our citizens will no longer come into contact and conflict with one another, and peace will reign forever.
What, these segregated regions THEMSELVES come into conflict? Absurd. What would you even call a conflict that was between large groups of people? That could never happen. Everyone who shares my value system knows that lots of people would die, and we all agree that nothing could be worth that.
Downvoted for making a flippant, argument-based-on-fiction response to serious comment.
Here’s a more serious response.
Segregating the world, period, based on whatever, is impossible without a coercive power that the existing nations of earth would consider illegal. Before you could forcefully migrate a large percentage of the world’s humans you’d have to win a war with whatever portion of the UN stood against you.
If you could do it, no one would admit to having any values other than those which got to live in/own the nicest places/stuff/be with their family / not be with their competitors/whatever. The technology to determine everyone’s values does not exist.
If you somehow derived everyone’s values and split them by these, you would probably be condemning large segments of the population to misery (Lots of people’s values are built around living around people who don’t share them.), and there would be widespread resentment. The invincible force you used to overcome objection 1 would be tested within a generation.
Okay, I obviously don’t mean that we should value-segregate people at the point of a gun. I mean that if people naturally want to migrate towards geopolitical communities that better fit their particular value system, this is probably a good thing.
Yeah, I agree that people being able to travel freely and choose where they live is good.
You can fit many people in California despite it being desert.
*Southern California
In Australia we currently produce enough food for 60 million people. This is without any intensive farming techniques at all. This could be scaled up by a factor of ten if it was really necessary, but quality of life per capita would suffer.
I think smaller nations are as a general rule governed much better, so I don’t see any positives in increasing our population beyond the current 24 million people.