betabrain · August 3, 2012 22:01
diff --git a/gistfile1.txt b/gistfile1.txt
 1. Where is the problem?

 There is lot of talk about tightening borders of late.
 Right wing parties blame immigrants for anything from crime to unemployment
 to the bankrupcy of social services to the disintegration of society which they
 claim was taking place.
 A end-of world vibe seems to spread among their ranks, while they argue that
 we were in a dog-eat-dog world.

 Is there really a immigration-caused crime problem?
 Are immigrants "stealing" jobs?
 Are social services heading for bankrupcy, and are immigrant loafers the cause?
 These are the questions we need to answer positively, if we seriously want to
 argue to solve these problems through tighter borders.

 1.1. Crimmigration

 Why should crime be an immigration related issue?
 Are immigrants largely criminal?
 No, they are for the most part nice people like the rest of us.
 Are there criminal enterprises that profit from immigration?
 Sure, human trafficking is a form of immigration, though nobody would suggest
 that the victims of traffickers are criminals.
 They are victims.
 And there is smuggling, which might depend on a constant stream of couriers,
 but usually tourist are much better suited for the task.
 Anyway, to conclude from the existance of criminal structures that depend on
 immigration that immigration is the source of these structures is a non sequitur.

 We can look at crime from an economic standpoint.
 A life of crime is a high risk, high yield investment, although the risks are often
 higher than the return.
 Crime only flourishes, when earning an income through legal means has become
 sufficiently difficult or unobtainable.
 In short, it only pays to rob and burglarize when running from the police is less
 difficult than earning a good living through legal means.
 Are fair work opportunities for immigrants rare and repercussions if caught
 negligible, then immigrants might become more likely to commit crime, though
 this has less to do with their immigrant status, than with the difficulty of earning
 a living.

 1.2. Job Stealing

 Interestingly enough, are proponents of tighter borders often especially
 adamant, that immigrants must be able to support themselves.
 They argue, that immigrants without the means or skills to support themselves
 would just become a burden to society by collecting unemployment benefits.
 This would be perfectly alright, if they wouldn't blame immigrants of stealing
 jobs from the native workforce.
 How can immigrants support themselves if they are not supposed to work in
 a paid job?
 It is a logical contradiction to demand from immigrants that they support
 themselves, but not to take up any paid work.

 Now, are immigrants really stealing jobs from the native workforce?
 No.
 If the local economy prefers to employ cheap, and often unskilled laborers,
 over the native workforce, then this economy is not exactly playing nicely,
 and should be looked at.
 The local enterprises are making the decision to employ immigrants and
 saving on salaries.
 It is not like the immigrants have an interest to provide underpaid labor.
 It is their lack of skills and abundance that allows local companies to force the
 prices down to the disadvantage of immigrants and the local workforce.
 The local cooperations should reprioritize their relationship with the native
 workforce over stock revenue.
 
 1.3. Social Services Bankrupcy

 We cannot hope to keep all immigrants without a job forever, and ask them
 to support themselves.
 One way how they can get out of this trap is by applying for social benefits.
 Currently social services are under strain in almost every country, but
 immigration makes up just a small percentage of the money paid by social
 services.
 Giving immigrants desirable opportunities to earn a living will cut these
 benefit payments dramatically.

 It must also be said, that the social services are usually paid through public
 debt, also known as inflation.
 Therefore, all budget decisions are doubly a product of politics.
 Immigrants have virtually no influence on these decisions.
 Inflation might not be the best way to finance social services, but it is still
 the most worthy cause to justify inflation.
 Bailout programmes for private sector enterprises are much more
 objectionable.

 2. Measure

 2.1. Can we achieve tight borders

 The proposal to tighten down national or supernational borders, e.g. the EU
 border, is ultimately a futile endeavor.
 Every nation or political region will still want to allow tourists, trade,
 diplomacy, highly-qualified and menial workers, and asylum seekers to enter.
 To keep out tourists would decimate any countries tourism sector and leave
 a large number unemployed.
 (Rendering immigration-blamed unemployment even worse.)
 Today's living standards depend on international trade.
 It also depends heavily on cheap labor to do the dirtywork and the free
 movement of brains to drive progress.
 As long as we are unwilling to skip our coffees, chocolate and live without
 computers, trade must continue.
 Since we want neither the absence of tourism, nor the consequences of no trade,
 not to mention wars, diplomacy must stay.
 Finally, we do proud ourselves of our humanitarian qualities, in short, that we
 aren't nazi-ish brutes.
 Now, tourist and work visas can be overstaid, diplomatic status given for
 creative reasons, and trade even requires occasional visits of foreign
 representatives.
 All of them could go into hiding. There is no way to track these people for
 eventual deportation.
 To have anything even remotely similar to a tight border, the entire physical
 border must be superveiled and patroled.
 Adding the costs of sucha measure to the absence of trade and tourism prosperity
 really leaves but one conclusion.
 The costs outweigh any possible benefit.

 2.2. Reaction tardiness

 A closed border does not diminish the attractiveness of living in a country,
 but just of the attractiveness of the journey there.
 As long as a country is attractive, some people will try to sneak in.
 By pushing prospective immigrants to go to greather length, they will have to
 keep up inventing new tricks to cross the border.
 In turn more resources are needed to control the border.
 Costs rise.
 A continuing armsrace ensues.
 A endless series of more or less successful actions on both sides is the result.
 In any case, the immigrants are forcing the border control's hand.
 The border control has a disadvantage, since they can only fight the
 immigrants when they make their move.
 They are always one step behind the immigrants.
 This leads to the question:
 Is one willing to put control over the border budget in foreign hands?

 2.3. Outcome distribution

 There is a disbalance between what both sides, the separatist country and
 the prospective immigrants can achieve.
 The best outcome the country can hope for, is that it can keep everybody
 out for some given price, and that this price is not too high.
 In the worst case the country pays a horrendously high price, but fails to
 keep the immigrants out.
 It's outcome spectrum lies between a reasonable price and a ridiculous waste
 of resources.
 The immigrants however either win a new, more positive existance, or go back
 to their old lives.
 Their outcome spectrum lies between loosing nothing and a huge win.

 The world isn't an exact place.
 On average the outcomes for both lies somewhere between the ends
 of the outcome spectrum. 
 On average the country looses.
 On average the immigrant wins.
 It's a sucker's game, that any country should refuse to play.

 2.4. Problem Solving vs Problem Export

 If tight borders worked, and immigration was the cause of all the problems
 usually discussed in this context, limiting immigration or even deporting
 people might actually do what is expected from it.
 Except, the immigrants keep returning again and again and run up the costs
 of autorities.
 Yes, the immigration would be managable, but the situation would not have
 been defused.
 Why play a game that is not winnable?

 A much better solution would be to export solutions.
 Helping other countries to give people better perspectives might be a
 cheaper solution in the long run.
 However, this isn't an easy task, and all the details have to be done right.
 Existing student exchange programmes for example are only available to
 students with exceptionally good grades.
 These students often end up staying in their host country, because to local
 employers they are more attractive than the local students, who have
 mostly normal grades.
 Smart immigrants are a much bigger problem than cheap workers.
 Cheap workers fill the menial jobs that no local wants to do.
 Smart immigrants take the jobs every local would like to have, and leave
 them without prospects.
 Local university graduates are usually not happy to do menial work, nor
 are they always well suited to work abroad.
 Most study programmes are industry oriented and therefore to some degree
 location specific.
 The best thing would be to build and run universities and other schools
 abroad with programmes that are of local value.
 Exchange students should be average, but willing to become teachers in
 their own countries to replace the foreign guest teachers.
 Actually, it doesn't matter if tight borders work or not.
 As long as people's perspectives abroad are improved, they don't need to
 immigrate to any other place.
 Conversly, the local people from the original immigration country might
 emigrate if their local perspectives are declining.
 Building up foreign places can be like an insurance for bad times.

 2.5. Nation Concept

 The concept of a nation is a rather new invention and goes back to the
 industrial age.
 Before that, there were numerous little kingdoms scattered everywhere.
 Borders were short enough and trade small enough in volume to allow the
 local king or baron to keep an eye on all movements across the border.
 Back then movement of goods and people was havily taxed.
 People would not travel unless it was really necessary.
 Plus, live in the neighbour kingdom was on average as drab and and hard
 as anywhere else.
 Migration only occured in the context of wars, but if they did, the
 scale was massive.
 Modern migration is nowhere near as grand and disruptive as it was.

 The nation as we know it was introduced in a relatively short time.
 Obviously, the concept of an uniform political zone existed long before
 that, e.g. in the roman empire, but it was always clear that this was
 not a rigid situation, but a constant process, hence the romann legions
 stationed along the borders of the roman empire.
 Armed conflicts were common.
 The roman empire used it's far-away provinces as a buffer against
 invaders and to isolate it's core from the negative effects of the wars.
 This is a very different concept than that of nations.

 Nationbuilding was largely a legal and economic process.
 Concentrating territory required a single, common legal standard and
 processes, but allowed to abolishing customs within the territory and
 therefore to profit from a larger domestic market.
 This is basically the same idea as breaking down national borders today
 to profit from an internatonal market, but on a smaller scale.
 In order to gather support for the changes that needed to be made to
 law and business practices, popular support was rallied through the
 emphasis of a common culture.
 Folk tales and the works of composers were collected and published by
 editors, the same way as lawyers on the continent codified laws and
 published comprehensive volumes of all national laws, e.g. the french
 code civil.
 It did not matter if there had actually been a common culture in the
 first place, because it did after these works were published.
 After the necessary changes were made and the understanding of the own
 nation as a economically, legally and politically uniform space sown in
 it's people's minds, the process took off, more or less self-driving.
 The current interest in free international trade is only as strong as it
 is, because it is nothing else than the logical continuation of the same
 basic principles.

 Now, the nation is still the most powerful entity in existance today, but
 there is no reason why this couldn't change.
 The nation concept might disappear as fast as it was conceived.
 Only contemporary politics and political theory mistake the concept of
 nations for the only viable alternative.
 The cyberspace has long developed in a nationless space, governed not by
 politics, but by technical feasibility, personal contribution, and largely
 popularity.
 Without the dedication the early engineers put into it, the internet would
 not have gotten of the ground.
 Since then, individuals have changed the face of the net again and again.
 The invention of search engines changed the net from a network of bulletin
 boards into a collection of notepads.
 Along came the dynamic web and multimedia, and everybody can now be a
 makeshift tv station.

 There is no guarantee, that solving problems in the current system is
 cheaper than reinventing a new and better political system.
 Continuing to think in the current boundaries is definitively rather limiting
 access to creative solutions than supporting finding solutions.
 The internet has already proved, that it's openness to change and outside
 influence leads to all sorts of solutions to problems and even problems that
 don't exist yet.
 It would certainly be a foolish decision to ignore such powerful lessons of
 the capabilities of open systems for the problem at hand.

 2.6. Diversity

 What does it mean, when a country is described as having a rich culture?
 Usually, having a rich culture refers to foreign influences, a mix of
 cultures and a liberal attitude.
 The regular trott of a homogenous society does not lend itself as
 birthplace of new traditions and ideas.
 It is the need for adaption, the challenge of change or even the threat of
 outside influence that drives the cultural process.
 A diverse culture therefore is a rich culture.
 A country kept clean and sterile of anything new is a cultureless place.
 A sterile country is also a country which is the most endangered from
 actual degeneration, while a culturally diverse country already posseses
 the means to change and adapt instead of perish.

 2.7. Personal Freedom / Human Rights

 Personal freedom can only effectively be realized, when they people
 involved can move about freely.
 Freedom in a box, even if that box is country-sized is not freedom.
 It is a generous prison.
 It is lavish packaging around a little privatized freedom.

 2.8. Nationbuilding through Immigration

 2.9. Cause or Consequence?

 2.10. Age Distributions and Marrygration
	1. Where is the problem?

	There is lot of talk about tightening borders of late.
	Right wing parties blame immigrants for anything from crime to unemployment
	to the bankrupcy of social services to the disintegration of society which they
	claim was taking place.
	A end-of world vibe seems to spread among their ranks, while they argue that
	we were in a dog-eat-dog world.

	Is there really a immigration-caused crime problem?
	Are immigrants "stealing" jobs?
	Are social services heading for bankrupcy, and are immigrant loafers the cause?
	These are the questions we need to answer positively, if we seriously want to
	argue to solve these problems through tighter borders.

	1.1. Crimmigration

	Why should crime be an immigration related issue?
	Are immigrants largely criminal?
	No, they are for the most part nice people like the rest of us.
	Are there criminal enterprises that profit from immigration?
	Sure, human trafficking is a form of immigration, though nobody would suggest
	that the victims of traffickers are criminals.
	They are victims.
	And there is smuggling, which might depend on a constant stream of couriers,
	but usually tourist are much better suited for the task.
	Anyway, to conclude from the existance of criminal structures that depend on
	immigration that immigration is the source of these structures is a non sequitur.

	We can look at crime from an economic standpoint.
	A life of crime is a high risk, high yield investment, although the risks are often
	higher than the return.
	Crime only flourishes, when earning an income through legal means has become
	sufficiently difficult or unobtainable.
	In short, it only pays to rob and burglarize when running from the police is less
	difficult than earning a good living through legal means.
	Are fair work opportunities for immigrants rare and repercussions if caught
	negligible, then immigrants might become more likely to commit crime, though
	this has less to do with their immigrant status, than with the difficulty of earning
	a living.

	1.2. Job Stealing

	Interestingly enough, are proponents of tighter borders often especially
	adamant, that immigrants must be able to support themselves.
	They argue, that immigrants without the means or skills to support themselves
	would just become a burden to society by collecting unemployment benefits.
	This would be perfectly alright, if they wouldn't blame immigrants of stealing
	jobs from the native workforce.
	How can immigrants support themselves if they are not supposed to work in
	a paid job?
	It is a logical contradiction to demand from immigrants that they support
	themselves, but not to take up any paid work.

	Now, are immigrants really stealing jobs from the native workforce?
	No.
	If the local economy prefers to employ cheap, and often unskilled laborers,
	over the native workforce, then this economy is not exactly playing nicely,
	and should be looked at.
	The local enterprises are making the decision to employ immigrants and
	saving on salaries.
	It is not like the immigrants have an interest to provide underpaid labor.
	It is their lack of skills and abundance that allows local companies to force the
	prices down to the disadvantage of immigrants and the local workforce.
	The local cooperations should reprioritize their relationship with the native
	workforce over stock revenue.

	1.3. Social Services Bankrupcy

	We cannot hope to keep all immigrants without a job forever, and ask them
	to support themselves.
	One way how they can get out of this trap is by applying for social benefits.
	Currently social services are under strain in almost every country, but
	immigration makes up just a small percentage of the money paid by social
	services.
	Giving immigrants desirable opportunities to earn a living will cut these
	benefit payments dramatically.

	It must also be said, that the social services are usually paid through public
	debt, also known as inflation.
	Therefore, all budget decisions are doubly a product of politics.
	Immigrants have virtually no influence on these decisions.
	Inflation might not be the best way to finance social services, but it is still
	the most worthy cause to justify inflation.
	Bailout programmes for private sector enterprises are much more
	objectionable.

	2. Measure

	2.1. Can we achieve tight borders

	The proposal to tighten down national or supernational borders, e.g. the EU
	border, is ultimately a futile endeavor.
	Every nation or political region will still want to allow tourists, trade,
	diplomacy, highly-qualified and menial workers, and asylum seekers to enter.
	To keep out tourists would decimate any countries tourism sector and leave
	a large number unemployed.
	(Rendering immigration-blamed unemployment even worse.)
	Today's living standards depend on international trade.
	It also depends heavily on cheap labor to do the dirtywork and the free
	movement of brains to drive progress.
	As long as we are unwilling to skip our coffees, chocolate and live without
	computers, trade must continue.
	Since we want neither the absence of tourism, nor the consequences of no trade,
	not to mention wars, diplomacy must stay.
	Finally, we do proud ourselves of our humanitarian qualities, in short, that we
	aren't nazi-ish brutes.
	Now, tourist and work visas can be overstaid, diplomatic status given for
	creative reasons, and trade even requires occasional visits of foreign
	representatives.
	All of them could go into hiding. There is no way to track these people for
	eventual deportation.
	To have anything even remotely similar to a tight border, the entire physical
	border must be superveiled and patroled.
	Adding the costs of sucha measure to the absence of trade and tourism prosperity
	really leaves but one conclusion.
	The costs outweigh any possible benefit.

	2.2. Reaction tardiness

	A closed border does not diminish the attractiveness of living in a country,
	but just of the attractiveness of the journey there.
	As long as a country is attractive, some people will try to sneak in.
	By pushing prospective immigrants to go to greather length, they will have to
	keep up inventing new tricks to cross the border.
	In turn more resources are needed to control the border.
	Costs rise.
	A continuing armsrace ensues.
	A endless series of more or less successful actions on both sides is the result.
	In any case, the immigrants are forcing the border control's hand.
	The border control has a disadvantage, since they can only fight the
	immigrants when they make their move.
	They are always one step behind the immigrants.
	This leads to the question:
	Is one willing to put control over the border budget in foreign hands?

	2.3. Outcome distribution

	There is a disbalance between what both sides, the separatist country and
	the prospective immigrants can achieve.
	The best outcome the country can hope for, is that it can keep everybody
	out for some given price, and that this price is not too high.
	In the worst case the country pays a horrendously high price, but fails to
	keep the immigrants out.
	It's outcome spectrum lies between a reasonable price and a ridiculous waste
	of resources.
	The immigrants however either win a new, more positive existance, or go back
	to their old lives.
	Their outcome spectrum lies between loosing nothing and a huge win.

	The world isn't an exact place.
	On average the outcomes for both lies somewhere between the ends
	of the outcome spectrum.
	On average the country looses.
	On average the immigrant wins.
	It's a sucker's game, that any country should refuse to play.

	2.4. Problem Solving vs Problem Export

	If tight borders worked, and immigration was the cause of all the problems
	usually discussed in this context, limiting immigration or even deporting
	people might actually do what is expected from it.
	Except, the immigrants keep returning again and again and run up the costs
	of autorities.
	Yes, the immigration would be managable, but the situation would not have
	been defused.
	Why play a game that is not winnable?

	A much better solution would be to export solutions.
	Helping other countries to give people better perspectives might be a
	cheaper solution in the long run.
	However, this isn't an easy task, and all the details have to be done right.
	Existing student exchange programmes for example are only available to
	students with exceptionally good grades.
	These students often end up staying in their host country, because to local
	employers they are more attractive than the local students, who have
	mostly normal grades.
	Smart immigrants are a much bigger problem than cheap workers.
	Cheap workers fill the menial jobs that no local wants to do.
	Smart immigrants take the jobs every local would like to have, and leave
	them without prospects.
	Local university graduates are usually not happy to do menial work, nor
	are they always well suited to work abroad.
	Most study programmes are industry oriented and therefore to some degree
	location specific.
	The best thing would be to build and run universities and other schools
	abroad with programmes that are of local value.
	Exchange students should be average, but willing to become teachers in
	their own countries to replace the foreign guest teachers.
	Actually, it doesn't matter if tight borders work or not.
	As long as people's perspectives abroad are improved, they don't need to
	immigrate to any other place.
	Conversly, the local people from the original immigration country might
	emigrate if their local perspectives are declining.
	Building up foreign places can be like an insurance for bad times.

	2.5. Nation Concept

	The concept of a nation is a rather new invention and goes back to the
	industrial age.
	Before that, there were numerous little kingdoms scattered everywhere.
	Borders were short enough and trade small enough in volume to allow the
	local king or baron to keep an eye on all movements across the border.
	Back then movement of goods and people was havily taxed.
	People would not travel unless it was really necessary.
	Plus, live in the neighbour kingdom was on average as drab and and hard
	as anywhere else.
	Migration only occured in the context of wars, but if they did, the
	scale was massive.
	Modern migration is nowhere near as grand and disruptive as it was.

	The nation as we know it was introduced in a relatively short time.
	Obviously, the concept of an uniform political zone existed long before
	that, e.g. in the roman empire, but it was always clear that this was
	not a rigid situation, but a constant process, hence the romann legions
	stationed along the borders of the roman empire.
	Armed conflicts were common.
	The roman empire used it's far-away provinces as a buffer against
	invaders and to isolate it's core from the negative effects of the wars.
	This is a very different concept than that of nations.

	Nationbuilding was largely a legal and economic process.
	Concentrating territory required a single, common legal standard and
	processes, but allowed to abolishing customs within the territory and
	therefore to profit from a larger domestic market.
	This is basically the same idea as breaking down national borders today
	to profit from an internatonal market, but on a smaller scale.
	In order to gather support for the changes that needed to be made to
	law and business practices, popular support was rallied through the
	emphasis of a common culture.
	Folk tales and the works of composers were collected and published by
	editors, the same way as lawyers on the continent codified laws and
	published comprehensive volumes of all national laws, e.g. the french
	code civil.
	It did not matter if there had actually been a common culture in the
	first place, because it did after these works were published.
	After the necessary changes were made and the understanding of the own
	nation as a economically, legally and politically uniform space sown in
	it's people's minds, the process took off, more or less self-driving.
	The current interest in free international trade is only as strong as it
	is, because it is nothing else than the logical continuation of the same
	basic principles.

	Now, the nation is still the most powerful entity in existance today, but
	there is no reason why this couldn't change.
	The nation concept might disappear as fast as it was conceived.
	Only contemporary politics and political theory mistake the concept of
	nations for the only viable alternative.
	The cyberspace has long developed in a nationless space, governed not by
	politics, but by technical feasibility, personal contribution, and largely
	popularity.
	Without the dedication the early engineers put into it, the internet would
	not have gotten of the ground.
	Since then, individuals have changed the face of the net again and again.
	The invention of search engines changed the net from a network of bulletin
	boards into a collection of notepads.
	Along came the dynamic web and multimedia, and everybody can now be a
	makeshift tv station.

	There is no guarantee, that solving problems in the current system is
	cheaper than reinventing a new and better political system.
	Continuing to think in the current boundaries is definitively rather limiting
	access to creative solutions than supporting finding solutions.
	The internet has already proved, that it's openness to change and outside
	influence leads to all sorts of solutions to problems and even problems that
	don't exist yet.
	It would certainly be a foolish decision to ignore such powerful lessons of
	the capabilities of open systems for the problem at hand.

	2.6. Diversity

	What does it mean, when a country is described as having a rich culture?
	Usually, having a rich culture refers to foreign influences, a mix of
	cultures and a liberal attitude.
	The regular trott of a homogenous society does not lend itself as
	birthplace of new traditions and ideas.
	It is the need for adaption, the challenge of change or even the threat of
	outside influence that drives the cultural process.
	A diverse culture therefore is a rich culture.
	A country kept clean and sterile of anything new is a cultureless place.
	A sterile country is also a country which is the most endangered from
	actual degeneration, while a culturally diverse country already posseses
	the means to change and adapt instead of perish.

	2.7. Personal Freedom / Human Rights

	Personal freedom can only effectively be realized, when they people
	involved can move about freely.
	Freedom in a box, even if that box is country-sized is not freedom.
	It is a generous prison.
	It is lavish packaging around a little privatized freedom.

	2.8. Nationbuilding through Immigration

	2.9. Cause or Consequence?

	2.10. Age Distributions and Marrygration