A Small Vacation

post by DanB · 2021-08-29T19:55:34.970Z · LW · GW · 21 comments

Contents

  The Singaporean Miracle
  A Difficult Conversation
  Greed for Gold, Greed for Slaves, Greed for Land
  Principles of Vacation
  Potential Objections
  Conclusion: Have We Surrendered to Zombie Institutions?
None
22 comments

(note: I have been thinking about this essay for several months; I did not realize it would turn out to be so timely).

Many people in the rationality community and adjacent corners of the intellectual world are sympathetic to the idea of Open Borders. This concept can be explained easily. People in the developing world are suffering because of poverty and government oppression. When a migrant moves from a country like Guatemala to a country like the US, her economic prospects brighten dramatically. At the same time, according to OB proponents, she does not substantially reduce the well-being of the previous inhabitants of her adopted country, and may actually improve it. Even if the net benefit to the current inhabitants is zero, the fact that the immigrants accrue so much benefit, should be enough to persaude most fair-minded people that immigration is good - and in fact most people are in favor of modest immigration. The OB position takes this logic far further than most people are comfortable with, but the rationale is clear.

Unfortunately, most people won't accept "scaled-up" economic arguments. If the evidence shows that immigration is mostly good, normal people will accept a modest level of immigration, but not the complete abolition of immigration restrictions. In recent times this issue has become politically polarized, but it wasn't always a clear-cut Left vs Right battle - here's Bernie Sanders deriding Open Borders as a Koch brothers proposal. Depending on your own views, you might regard the mainstream attitude as sensible, or you might regard it as cold-hearted and self-destructive. Either way, it's clear that full Open Borders isn't politically feasible in the near term.

I believe there is a policy that is more likely to be politically acceptable, while also capturing many of the ethical benefits of Open Borders. That policy is Vacation - the US should vacate small strips of territory to make a space where refugee and migrant populations can construct independent city-states. A key piece of the argument is the fact that small nations are in fact quite viable, so let me talk about Singapore for a moment.

The Singaporean Miracle

Singapore is a city-state in Southeast Asia. Formerly a part of Malaysia, SG was expelled from the mother country in 1965, largely due to ethnic strife between the Chinese and Malays. Under the pragmatic - and somewhat authoritarian - leadership of the great Lee Kuan Yew, SG rose fast. Starting far behind most Western countries, SG is now far ahead. It's PPP-adjusted GDP per capita is an astonishing 100K. It's life expectancy is 83.2 years, as far above the US (77.6) as the US is above Egypt (71.8). SG comes in a solid 11th in the Human Development Index, losing slightly to countries like Norway, Switzerland and Australia. But if you dig into the HDI equations a bit, you'll notice that one of the factors is years of education, so they get a boost from all their professional students who spend decades accumulating degrees of questionable utility. A more concrete measurement of educational attainment is the PISA ratings which puts SG at the absolute top, unless you accept China's weird cherry-picking of a few top-performing cities instead of their national averages. SG has fewer homicides per capita than Japan (0.16 vs 0.26 per 100k per year), and 30x fewer than the US (4.96).

Okay, so, you get the idea - Singapore is a prosperous, safe, 1st-world country. What's important for this essay is that SG achieved all of this with an absolutely tiny geographic footprint. Though it has a substantial population of 5.6 million, SG's land area is only 730 km2. Rhode Island, the smallest US state, has an area of 2700 km2, into which it fits about 1 million people. Nevada extends to 287,000 km2, or 390x the size of Singapore, but with a population of just 3.1 million, has fewer people. The federal Bureau of Land Management is responsible for just under 1 million km2 of territory, more than 1300 times the area of SG.

A Difficult Conversation

With those statistics in your mind, I want you to imagine you are on a road trip in Nevada, with your young daughter, who is very smart and sensitive and likes to ask pointed questions. A few days ago, she happened to watch a television news report that showed some heart-rending scenes of suffering people. Perhaps the report was about how 13% of children in Venezuela are stunted because of hunger. Or maybe it was about how Syrian refugees are freezing to death because they don't have enough shelter. She didn't say much at the time, but apparently those images have remained in her inner world, because during the road trip she suddenly starts asking questions:

C: Daddy! Mommy! Remember the people on the news the other day? The people who were hungry and sick?

P: Yes, honey.

C: What happened to them? Why can't they have enough food like us?

P: (sigh) well, kiddo, they live in a country with a bad government. You know how some people think the police are really mean and bad? Well, the police in their country are even meaner and badder than the ones we have here.

C: But why don't they just leave?

P: The thing is, they don't have anywhere to go. Other countries won't take them.

C: (points out the window at the endless Nevada landscape full of nothing) Why can't they just come here?

Greed for Gold, Greed for Slaves, Greed for Land

The history of European colonization of the Western hemisphere can be summed up in one word: greed. During this era in history, Europe's economy and technology had jumped forward to an incredible degree, but European morality was still governed by medieval principles. According to those principles, it was reasonable to just take as much as you could get your hands on, because the people you took it from didn't count. If the natives had some gold, you just took it from them. If you could capture some Africans, you could take their freedom. If you defeated another nation in war, you took their land.

In hindsight, this greed was not just ethically despicable, but also pragmatically foolish, because the resources the Europeans grabbed didn't really help them very much. It's likely that a major cause of the fall of Spain as a global power was the economic turmoil and inflation caused by a massive influx of gold from the New World. As any fan of Warren Buffett knows, gold doesn't actually do anything, it justs sits there inert, and you have to pay people to guard it.

Slaves might seem a bit more profitable. After all, if you whip someone enough, you can probably get him to do some work for you. But some early economists, including Adam Smith, thought that slavery was actually less efficient than free labor, because the slave had no incentive to do any more work than was absolutely necessary. In comparison, a free man would want to work hard to increase his income, thereby maximizing the productivity of the land. You might not believe Smith's theory, but there's no doubt that the economy of the industrial North developed much faster than the agricultural South, and this was a major factor in the South's defeat in the Civil War.

Early American greed for land illustrates a similar failure of vision. American presidents grabbed as much land as they could, by purchasing it from Napoleon, waging war against Mexico, and evicting the native American tribes. The desire for land is a holdover of medieval thinking, where land was the main source of wealth, since agriculture was the most important sector of the economy. In our post-agricultural economy, most land is not very profitable. Wealth is created by technology, trade, science, industry, marketing, education, and finance - activities that generally happen in cities, where most wealthy people live. Rural areas are plagued by obesity, opiate addiction, poverty, and lack of education.

If the trend in the early history of Europeans in America was greed, then perhaps the trend of the recent history is an unwinding of that greed. People are no longer obsessed with gold, realizing that heavy, soft, shiny metals do not actually produce wealth. Slavery has been abolished, and there is talk of reparations for the descendents of slaves. That leaves the third part of the triangle - land. Our forefathers were greedy, so our government now controls vast swaths of territory, but it doesn't benefit us very much. Surely we could find a spare 700 square kilometers that nobody really needs.

Principles of Vacation

America has tremendous political inertia: it's incredibly difficult to get enough bipartisan political support for an idea to actually implement it. These principles are intended to placate the more stubborn elements of the body politic, while reducing the costs and mitigating the fallout if the new city fails.

No Citizenship Benefits to Migrants. The refugees and migrants who come to inhabit the new city-state are neither citizens nor residents of the host country, and receive no benefits that are reserved for those categories. Individuals who attempt to immigrate illegally into the host country may be subject to criminal penalties, including deportation to their country of origin.

Commitments of Host Country. The host country is expected to administer a provisional government in the early years of vacation. The main task of this government is to maintain law and order, and to develop the economy of the new city. Food and medical supplies shall be provided by an international coalition.

Path to Independence. In the long run, the new city is expected to become self-governing and independent. The host country may determine an appropriate schedule for transferring power.

Free Trade with Host Country. It is expected that the new city will be economically integrated with the host country. There shall be no obstacles erected to commerce between the host country and the new city. It is expected that some economic benefit will accrue to businesses and individuals of the host country; this benefit can be viewed as compensation for the territory that is granted to the city.

Minimal Taxes and Regulation in Initial Stage. During the early years of vacation, the goal of the provisional government must be to develop the economy. In pursuit of that goal, taxes and regulation must be kept to a minimum. When the new city becomes fully independent, the choice of taxation and regulation will be determined by the new government.

Controlled Scale-Up. it is expected that the population of the new city will eventually be on the order of several million, but in the early years of vacation, the host country may determine the rate at which newcomers are permitted to enter the new city. This principle is intended as a safeguard against a collapse in public safety or sanitation, which might lead to the failure of the city. In the long term, the city government may decide its own immigration policy.

Potential Objections

The US is terrible at nation-building. In recent decades, the US does not have a very good track record of setting up new governments. While we did well enough in Japan and West Germany, we failed utterly in Iraq and Afghanistan, so it's unlikely that we will succeed in setting up a new government in the vacated territory. I think this objection is fair, but misses a key point. In the Middle East, the US was viewed as a foreign occupier, and hated for that reason. But the fact that we are giving up territory in order to help foreigners will give us a decisive moral advantage in this case. Furthermore, the hardliner anti-American elements will likely decide to remain in their home country and take their chances there, rather than move to the new city.

Failure of City and Refugee Influx. Building on the above objection, if the new city simply collapses because of bad government, then we will now have a big refugee problem right on our border. The scale-up principle is partially intended to address this objection. If it looks like the new city is failing, the US can limit the number of new arrivals who are accepted, thereby limiting the scale of the resulting refugee crisis. But in general, I consider this outcome to be an acceptable risk. The US has absorbed millions of immigrants, legal and otherwise, over its history. If we try to build a new city, but fail and therefore have to absorb another half a million people, it is hardly the end of the world.

Territory is Abundant, but Good Territory is Not. Some objectors might say that while the US has vast swaths of territory, most of this territory is not suitable for a new city. In particular, a new city-state should be on the coastline, to facilitate trade, and good coastal locations are already being used. I think this concern can be assuaged by studying a map of the US and observing the sizes of the territories involved. There is a place in the Florida panhandle called the Apalachicola National Forest, which extends over 2500 km2 of land, more than 3x bigger than Singapore. On the west coast of Oregon is the Siuslaw National Forest, which is also 2500 km2. As far as I can tell, the entire west coast of the US, north of San Francisco, is very sparsely settled.

Environmental Concerns. Some of the territory that might be vacated to make room for the new city may currently be designated as parkland or wildlife refuge. Furthermore, when the new city achieves full independence, its government might not be very concerned with environmental protection. I see this as a valid concern, but modest compared in ethical magnitude compared to the benefit of creating a safe and prosperous life for millions of people who are now harshly oppressed. Also, the new city will be highly dependent on trade with the host country for its economic well-being. The US government can therefore apply a lot of pressure on the city to be environmentally friendly, by threatening sanctions.

What about the Next Crisis? Another potential concern is that if the city does succeed at some level, then when the next refugee crisis occurs, the US will have to give away another block of territory, and then another, and another, so eventually we will have lost a huge amount of territory. If this issue becomes a concern, it will be a good problem to have, because it will mean that the initial vacations were successful. Refugee crises don't happen so often that we will lose substantial amounts of territory in any kind of near-term time frame. Also, if the early US vacations work out well, we should be able to convince other large countries like Canada, Mexico, and Australia to implement similar policies.

Conclusion: Have We Surrendered to Zombie Institutions?

In the minds of everyday people, immigration is good but also comes at a social cost. This cost includes an increased burden on social services, depressed wages of native-born workers, and an increase in crime. Now, these costs may be imaginary, but that is irrelevant to the calculus of political feasibility. Whether or not it is true, the commonly held belief that immigration is costly limits the number of immigrants that the US can accept.

In my view, Vacation offers a way to help a far greater number of migrants at a cost that is smaller in both the real and imaginary dimensions. I think most Americans will understand that the social cost of Vacation is small, because the migrants do not receive social services or other citizenship benefits.

However, I do think there is an obstacle to Vacation that is probably insurmountable, which is its novelty. As far as I can tell, our political institutions are now essentially zombies. They are creatures with no inner intellectual or ethical life. They do not respond to ideas, however well-reasoned, nor do they have any interest in carrying out the will of the people. Instead they merely shamble along, following their broken bureaucratic procedures, regardless of the cost in human lives or public trust. According to this gloomy perspective, there is no chance that our zombie institutions could carry out a modestly complex maneuver like Vacation, even if it were widely supported by the public. Furthermore, it appears that the American people have surrendered to the zombies. No matter how badly the institutions fail, they will continue to wield power and exert their baleful influence on our society.

Even though I believe we are governed by zombies, I decided it was worthwhile to write this essay, because of an expected-value calculation. I think a well-executed Vacation could substantially improve the lives of more than a million people. If it only has one chance in a million of being implemented, then this essay has, in expectation, helped one person. Thanks for reading it.

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