I live on FIlipino shores and sometimes I look around me and think: "What if this place were run by Americans?" It's obvious, but it's hate speech these days, that it would quickly turn into a Hong Kong of the Sulu Sea. The answer you seek cannot be reduced to one simple insight, because humanity is a complicated tapestry. So while it's true that Japan is an explosion of wealth and creativity, as colonizers they were destructive barbarians, not builders, but sort of like ISIS with battle ships and samurai swords. Modern Chinese colonialism is an elaborate scam consisting of butt-wipe contracts and tofu-dreg projects that fall apart even while they're under construction. The only way to enrich the whole world so people stay where they were born, if that's a commendable goal, would be to actively encourage European re-colonization of parts of the world which lack competence to rule themselves. Your underlying assumption is that everybody deserves to be rich, safe, and modernized, when what they deserve is the sort of home they have created for themselves.
Ironically it was run by the US for a while, and I'd strongly argue that the Philippines would be in a much worse place had the US not acquired it after the Spanish-American War.
If we could defeminize our political thinking and consider seriously the biologically-grounded ideas expounded by the likes of people like Francis Galton, Arthur Keith and Raymond B. Cattell, we could figure out how to intervene in the population explosion in these doomed and damned societies, and implement humane measures, such as chemically-induced sterilization, to greatly reduce their populations.
Perhaps we should learn from and adapt for today's needs, the practices of the Victorian Brits.
Whatever anyone may think of The Socialist Islamic Dystopia of Formerly Great Britain, as imperialists first, and colonizers a distant second, they did a damned good job of civilizing savage regions of the world, before white guilt overwhelmed their inbuilt sense of self preservation.
Everywhere they went they not only imposed order by force and backed it by law, they built institutions, trained locals for military and civic duties and exploited natural resources that the local cultures could not have dreamed of exploiting. They created infrastructures that survive to this day. The cultures that built most successfully on that heritage are India, Kenya and Nigeria, all of whom retained their dominant cultural characteristics. The least successful ones look and govern like Zimbabwe. Mahatma Ghandi was a British lawyer before he was an anti colonialist.
Most of the Brits eschewed integration with the locals and coined the derogatory "gone native" for those who did. The majority assumed that they would return "home" when their tours of duty were over and by far the majority did so. They lived more privileged lives abroad than they might have in Britain and benefited from the right to return to Britain "on leave", which stimulated a steady and lucrative demand for to and fro passenger traffic by sea.
Given that imposing such arrangement these days tends to evoke quagmires and endless wars, perhaps the art of the deal might be adapted to a suitable carrot and stick collection of incentives?
Your argument is cleverly disguised as economic, but underpinning its premise is the moral obligations constructed by cosmopolitans, as you put it: "you’d better start figuring out how to make the rest of the world a far nicer place to live." We owe only a limited duty of assistance to the global poor, nothing more, as John Rawls suggested in his book "A Theory of Justice"; we are not the causal inference for global poverty; therefore, we owe no duty of redress or reform. The primary moral duty of a Nation-State is to its native populations, something that has been papered over in the contemporary era, and if this means mass deportations, scraping asylum systems and ending migration from the third world for an extended period, so be it. The current inflows will be remedied when our borders are secured by a new elite who subscribe to realism and have no interest in occupying a hermetically sealed cosmopolitan normative box, oblivious to empirical facts.
How do you propose the West build up strong borders, deport non-white residents, and then hopefully replenish the birthrate so that business interests don't complain about not being able to build enough houses or pick enough fruit?
If you want to limit migration from poor countries what you really want to do is keep them poor. It's a common misconception that economic development inhibits emigration, probably encouraged by pro-migrant elites because it provides a plausible sounding argument for what they wanted to do in the first place (give poor countries your money). Poor countries only really start sending massive waves of emigration when they start developing into middle income countries. Eg, Chinese migration in the 90s, Korean migration in the 80s
It starts to slow down when the country becomes fully developed, but that's far more difficult to do than to keep poor countries poor. The latter practically happens by itself anyways so you don't have to do much
I think Sun Yat Sen came to the same conclusions when he saw Hong Kong. Institutions! Rule of Law, strong property rights and civil society allows all people to prosper IF there is no corruption
I live on FIlipino shores and sometimes I look around me and think: "What if this place were run by Americans?" It's obvious, but it's hate speech these days, that it would quickly turn into a Hong Kong of the Sulu Sea. The answer you seek cannot be reduced to one simple insight, because humanity is a complicated tapestry. So while it's true that Japan is an explosion of wealth and creativity, as colonizers they were destructive barbarians, not builders, but sort of like ISIS with battle ships and samurai swords. Modern Chinese colonialism is an elaborate scam consisting of butt-wipe contracts and tofu-dreg projects that fall apart even while they're under construction. The only way to enrich the whole world so people stay where they were born, if that's a commendable goal, would be to actively encourage European re-colonization of parts of the world which lack competence to rule themselves. Your underlying assumption is that everybody deserves to be rich, safe, and modernized, when what they deserve is the sort of home they have created for themselves.
Well then, you'd best find a way to create 1,000,000 Swedes!
No. Swedes best find a way to draw boundaries so they aren’t wiped out
Ironically it was run by the US for a while, and I'd strongly argue that the Philippines would be in a much worse place had the US not acquired it after the Spanish-American War.
Yeah, likely so. The USA had major education initiatives here trying to get the country on its feet.
If we could defeminize our political thinking and consider seriously the biologically-grounded ideas expounded by the likes of people like Francis Galton, Arthur Keith and Raymond B. Cattell, we could figure out how to intervene in the population explosion in these doomed and damned societies, and implement humane measures, such as chemically-induced sterilization, to greatly reduce their populations.
No. Just no
Brave!
Perhaps we should learn from and adapt for today's needs, the practices of the Victorian Brits.
Whatever anyone may think of The Socialist Islamic Dystopia of Formerly Great Britain, as imperialists first, and colonizers a distant second, they did a damned good job of civilizing savage regions of the world, before white guilt overwhelmed their inbuilt sense of self preservation.
Everywhere they went they not only imposed order by force and backed it by law, they built institutions, trained locals for military and civic duties and exploited natural resources that the local cultures could not have dreamed of exploiting. They created infrastructures that survive to this day. The cultures that built most successfully on that heritage are India, Kenya and Nigeria, all of whom retained their dominant cultural characteristics. The least successful ones look and govern like Zimbabwe. Mahatma Ghandi was a British lawyer before he was an anti colonialist.
Most of the Brits eschewed integration with the locals and coined the derogatory "gone native" for those who did. The majority assumed that they would return "home" when their tours of duty were over and by far the majority did so. They lived more privileged lives abroad than they might have in Britain and benefited from the right to return to Britain "on leave", which stimulated a steady and lucrative demand for to and fro passenger traffic by sea.
Given that imposing such arrangement these days tends to evoke quagmires and endless wars, perhaps the art of the deal might be adapted to a suitable carrot and stick collection of incentives?
Your argument is cleverly disguised as economic, but underpinning its premise is the moral obligations constructed by cosmopolitans, as you put it: "you’d better start figuring out how to make the rest of the world a far nicer place to live." We owe only a limited duty of assistance to the global poor, nothing more, as John Rawls suggested in his book "A Theory of Justice"; we are not the causal inference for global poverty; therefore, we owe no duty of redress or reform. The primary moral duty of a Nation-State is to its native populations, something that has been papered over in the contemporary era, and if this means mass deportations, scraping asylum systems and ending migration from the third world for an extended period, so be it. The current inflows will be remedied when our borders are secured by a new elite who subscribe to realism and have no interest in occupying a hermetically sealed cosmopolitan normative box, oblivious to empirical facts.
How do you propose the West build up strong borders, deport non-white residents, and then hopefully replenish the birthrate so that business interests don't complain about not being able to build enough houses or pick enough fruit?
Fruit picking robots are now a thing.
People should be auto come to the west. If and only if they assimilate.
An "enlightening", edifying, and entertaining essay; thank you. Godspeed.
If you want to limit migration from poor countries what you really want to do is keep them poor. It's a common misconception that economic development inhibits emigration, probably encouraged by pro-migrant elites because it provides a plausible sounding argument for what they wanted to do in the first place (give poor countries your money). Poor countries only really start sending massive waves of emigration when they start developing into middle income countries. Eg, Chinese migration in the 90s, Korean migration in the 80s
It starts to slow down when the country becomes fully developed, but that's far more difficult to do than to keep poor countries poor. The latter practically happens by itself anyways so you don't have to do much
I think Sun Yat Sen came to the same conclusions when he saw Hong Kong. Institutions! Rule of Law, strong property rights and civil society allows all people to prosper IF there is no corruption
Hong Kong is materially a success and Japan isn't poor.
Wow your last line negated your entire argument. Extra points for gratuitous insertion of conventional wisdom.