It’s been argued that open borders could give a massive boost to the world economy. Let’s see what happens if we try to apply this cost-effectiveness model to the problem of successfully lobbying for open borders. (Lack of inevitability means the model is not ideally suited compared to with research problems, but it still seems like a reasonable position.)
We’ll look at the problem of getting to a political situation which permits emigration levels of 5% of the population of poor countries. This might produce a 20% increase in the population of rich countries.
Let’s:
Measure R(0) in $; remember to count any free press or similar that the cause gets.
R(0): I’m very unsure. It seems like it’s at least in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and not higher than tens of billions of dollars. So I will guess $5 billion. I’ve put little research into this and this number could easily update a lot.
B: Based on some of the estimates in this paper, emigration of 5% might add in the region of $2.5 trillion to the world economy.
y/z: If $1,000 of resources were dedicated annually to this for each of the ~2 billion people living in the rich world, I’d be happy that there was a significant chance of success. So I’ll estimate that y/z = 2000⁄5 = 400.
It’s been argued that open borders could give a massive boost to the world economy. Let’s see what happens if we try to apply this cost-effectiveness model to the problem of successfully lobbying for open borders. (Lack of inevitability means the model is not ideally suited compared to with research problems, but it still seems like a reasonable position.)
We’ll look at the problem of getting to a political situation which permits emigration levels of 5% of the population of poor countries. This might produce a 20% increase in the population of rich countries.
Let’s:
Measure R(0) in $; remember to count any free press or similar that the cause gets.
Measure B in $
Take p = 0.3
My estimates:
R(0): I’m very unsure. It seems like it’s at least in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and not higher than tens of billions of dollars. So I will guess $5 billion. I’ve put little research into this and this number could easily update a lot.
B: Based on some of the estimates in this paper, emigration of 5% might add in the region of $2.5 trillion to the world economy.
y/z: If $1,000 of resources were dedicated annually to this for each of the ~2 billion people living in the rich world, I’d be happy that there was a significant chance of success. So I’ll estimate that y/z = 2000⁄5 = 400.