<story><title>Full Employment</title><url>https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>setgree</author><text>&amp;gt; we&amp;#x27;re trapped in a system that doesn&amp;#x27;t provide workable means to solve our pressing problems&lt;p&gt;Generalization: most of those problems are political rather than technical, and unlike with technical problems, if you make a wrong guess about how to solve a political problem, the costs might be unboundedly catastrophic (e.g. world war).&lt;p&gt;I personally believe that the best response to global warming is open borders, because it would mean that all the people who:&lt;p&gt;* are living in the global south could relocate somewhere colder and further inland, if they wanted;&lt;p&gt;* are subsistence farming, but who would be great engineers, scientists, etc. given the right opportunities, would be more likely to get those opportunities.&lt;p&gt;Most people think that open borders would be bad, and I don&amp;#x27;t think I will be able to persuade them otherwise in my lifetime.&lt;p&gt;In general, alternatives to persuasion in politics amount to seizing power and&amp;#x2F;or changing the rules of the game. Even if I thought I &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; do that, which I don&amp;#x27;t, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t, because all too often in history, the cure is worse than the disease.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why I think these problems are hard -- and why I&amp;#x27;m scared of people who propose grand solutions to them.</text></item><item><author>andyjohnson0</author><text>Reading the economic and tech-fix discussion here, it strikes me again that we&amp;#x27;re trapped in a system that doesn&amp;#x27;t provide workable means to solve our pressing problems. Yet we continue to treat it (economics, the global financial system) as some kind of inevitable force of nature, rather than as something that we invented and (to some degree) chose. I wish I knew why that is.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know how we get from here to a place where these problems become solvable (or even what that place looks like) and from there to a world that is actually going to sustain us again. So its hard to have much confidence that we have much of a future beyond the later part of this century. My children will by my age then and I don&amp;#x27;t envy them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nine_k</author><text>The more obligations a state takes to its population (not limited to citizens), the harder it is to enact an open-borders policy while keeping these obligations.&lt;p&gt;The US used to accept basically anyone, but it did not have any Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, unemployment benefits, etc. In EU states, the problem is even more severe, as they provide more benefits, to those who pay taxes an to those who don&amp;#x27;t alike.&lt;p&gt;So, high life standards, advanced social protections, open borders: pick any two.</text></comment>
<story><title>Full Employment</title><url>https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>setgree</author><text>&amp;gt; we&amp;#x27;re trapped in a system that doesn&amp;#x27;t provide workable means to solve our pressing problems&lt;p&gt;Generalization: most of those problems are political rather than technical, and unlike with technical problems, if you make a wrong guess about how to solve a political problem, the costs might be unboundedly catastrophic (e.g. world war).&lt;p&gt;I personally believe that the best response to global warming is open borders, because it would mean that all the people who:&lt;p&gt;* are living in the global south could relocate somewhere colder and further inland, if they wanted;&lt;p&gt;* are subsistence farming, but who would be great engineers, scientists, etc. given the right opportunities, would be more likely to get those opportunities.&lt;p&gt;Most people think that open borders would be bad, and I don&amp;#x27;t think I will be able to persuade them otherwise in my lifetime.&lt;p&gt;In general, alternatives to persuasion in politics amount to seizing power and&amp;#x2F;or changing the rules of the game. Even if I thought I &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; do that, which I don&amp;#x27;t, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t, because all too often in history, the cure is worse than the disease.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why I think these problems are hard -- and why I&amp;#x27;m scared of people who propose grand solutions to them.</text></item><item><author>andyjohnson0</author><text>Reading the economic and tech-fix discussion here, it strikes me again that we&amp;#x27;re trapped in a system that doesn&amp;#x27;t provide workable means to solve our pressing problems. Yet we continue to treat it (economics, the global financial system) as some kind of inevitable force of nature, rather than as something that we invented and (to some degree) chose. I wish I knew why that is.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know how we get from here to a place where these problems become solvable (or even what that place looks like) and from there to a world that is actually going to sustain us again. So its hard to have much confidence that we have much of a future beyond the later part of this century. My children will by my age then and I don&amp;#x27;t envy them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SAI_Peregrinus</author><text>If you haven&amp;#x27;t seen it, you might like Open Borders by Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith[1]. Comic-book form advocating for open borders, with pretty good reasoning.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;smile.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;Open-Borders-Science-Ethics-Immigration&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;1250316960&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;smile.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;Open-Borders-Science-Ethics-Immigra...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>