[extropy-chat] Nuke the Great Satan

[Jack Parkinson]

 Mike Lorrey said <mlorrey at yahoo.com>
> 
> Actually, the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall worked pretty well for
> most of the Cold War. It certainly kept most all eastern europeans from
> escaping, such that by the 70's, defections were rare things. Hadrians
> Wall worked pretty well too at what it was intended for: regulating
> trade and migration, not defending against invaders.
> 
> Nobody expects a wall to last forever, assuming it should and calling
> its failure at that unrealistic assumption to define the whole idea as
> a failure is a fraud.

Its a matter of perspective of course - but the 'successful' Berlin Wall/Iron Curtain were the cause of a generation or more or conflict and tension and promoted a vast ideological divide. The Wall/Curtain promoted border skirmishes and helped consolidate the ruthless oppression of many. It was also the root cause of untold stories of individual tragedy, blighting, families, trade, peaceful relations, etc etc - not to mention the fact that  very presence of this barrier rammed home the fact that the world was at loggerheads and operating under the ever-present threat of nuclear destruction. T

The Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain were hated icons of miserable, failing governmental policies!

I suggest that such walls are extropian 'successful' only at the limited the local level - they appear to promote order. At the macro level. They are the source of trouble, conflict ...in short, disorder.

> 
>> Europeans do not generally agonise about their stroll-through
>> borders: Why should the US? If you have no objections to the people
>> being there anyway - just make the 'back door' the 'front door!'
> 
> Once again, european countries have far tighter immigration
> restrictions against non-europeans than the US does. Its why our legal
> immigration rates are far higher (we take in more than the rest of the
> world combined).  

According to this press release I quickly grabbed from the UN site:
"Around 175 million persons currently reside in a country other than where they were born -- about three per cent of the world's population. The number of migrants has more than doubled since 1975, and sixty per cent of the world's migrants currently reside in the more developed regions, with 40 per cent living in the less developed regions. Most of the world's migrants live in Europe (56 million), Asia (50 million) and Northern America (41 million). Almost one of every 10 persons living in the more developed regions, but only one of every 70 persons in developing countries, is a migrant. In the 10 years from 1990 to 2000, the number of migrants in the more developed regions increased by 23 million persons, or 28 per cent."

Nothing there to say the US is doing more than its share I think? 

Australia is almost all migrants - it is difficult to find a second generation adult in some towns, but that is by the by... Controlled migration on a global scale is an entirely recent 20th Century phenomenom. Yet, we already take it for granted - ignoring the fact that throughout the entire history of the world people have mostly been able to wander where they will. In fact, there is no reason why this should not be the case again at some future point. Personally, I would hope so. I have lived and worked on three continents and I value my freedom to travel. However - this freedom is an accident of my birth, I could easily have been trapped for life with a passport unacceptable to Western democracies... 

I have a good deal of sympathy with migrants. Sure they want want more money and a better life and why not? Who am I, and who are, you to deny these people a chance to win or lose? The conflict there is in this world arises IMHO in the persistent attitude that one person's comfortable life-style can, and should, be maintained by denying basic resources and basic freedoms to someone else. THAT is why fortified borders are to be opposed - they are at bottom just an indication that we love our state of blissful ignorance and are unprepared to tackle the real reasons for militancy, terrorism and hatred.

My comments directed at Kevin previously have little to do with walls - What makes me seethe is the parochialism that is so easily satisfied by retiring into some (figurative or physical) walled enclave of privilege. We have the entire world to deal with now. We can't afford to protect our small patch and let everyone else go to hell.

Europe, America, Australia - all have much to learn in this regard. WE don't know what overcrowding is!There are 200 million people jammed like sardines into tiny Java - while just to the south is a land mass a hundred times bigger or more with only a few hundred thousand people spread across an area many times the size of Texas... I am only surprised they haven't moved in already!

Jack
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