The challenge is, an ATL or FH in which the countries of a world with 21st Century levels of technology allow people to freely move into their countries and work and settle there.
This might seem easy, but I think there are things that make it tricky. With modern transport and so many people speaking world languages such as English, French and Spanish it is simple to move from one country to another. The only real barriers to free movement today are legal ones. There are huge differences in living standards between the richest nations and the poorest (according to Oxfam, East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa and Sudan and Chad are all facing potential famines this year), so this provides an incentive to people to move. And most rich nations provide some kind of welfare, in cash or in kind, to poor people resident in their countries including immigrants.
Taking the UK as an example, it provides free healthcare, free education up to the age of 18 and money to ensure that poor people are not homeless or hungry. With unlimited immigration, taxes would have to rise to support immigrants - and since provision is unlimited and free would there be any limit to demand? If immigrants just kept entering the country the UK would be bankrupt. Suppose you changed things so that only British citizens were entitled to these things, while allowing unlimited immigration. What would happen? I think in a best case scanario you would get lots of men travelling to the UK from third-world countries, leaving their families behind, initially staying with friends or relatives, and finding jobs fairly quickly. The downside of this would be that the labour market would be saturated and unemployment would rocket. Would immigration stop once unemployment had reached a certain level? In a worst case scenario you can add communities of poverty-stricken immigrant families who are homeless or living in shanty towns or crammed into low-rent accomodation with children who aren't being educated and health problems that aren't being treated.
The only way I can think of to solve this would be to have all the countries in the world at an equal standard of living. But is this plausible, either in AH or FH?
If you were to allow unlimited immigration in an unequal world then eventually there will be a levelling off of relative living standards as wealthy countries get third-world standards of living, either through the massive tax-burden of supporting welfare for immigrants, or through the effects of large numbers of people with no money coming to live in wealthy countries. Money would flow the other way too, from immigrant workers to their families back in Somalia or wherever. If one were to add to this a genuine free market with no tariff barriers so that jobs can flow from rich to poor countries and goods from poor to rich ones, then after a while, would you have a world where everyone was at approximately the same standard of living? If all the wealth in the world was spead out equally, then GDP/person would be equal to that in Brazil, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Botswana or Mexico. Voters in wealthy democracies would not necessarily see this as a good thing. Or would you end up with a situation where all the money and people flow towards those areas that are rich already, just as it all flows towards London in the UK? For example, the first people to move from poorer to richer countries will be those with the most money, skills and "go-getter attitude". Their countries would be better off if they stayed. Multinational companies might be happy to build factories in the better-off regions of the third-world but I think they would ignore the really poor parts.
Thinking about this as AH, what if instead of winding down or abolishing immigration controls, the world just never developed them in the first place? What would the effect be then? Could it have happened or is it totally implausible? Or could you get some kind of early world-government that ensures equal living standards - a worldwide welfare state?
I would appreciate anybody's thoughts on the subject. If possible, I'm hoping to see a timeline come out of this even if it's only a very short one.
This might seem easy, but I think there are things that make it tricky. With modern transport and so many people speaking world languages such as English, French and Spanish it is simple to move from one country to another. The only real barriers to free movement today are legal ones. There are huge differences in living standards between the richest nations and the poorest (according to Oxfam, East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa and Sudan and Chad are all facing potential famines this year), so this provides an incentive to people to move. And most rich nations provide some kind of welfare, in cash or in kind, to poor people resident in their countries including immigrants.
Taking the UK as an example, it provides free healthcare, free education up to the age of 18 and money to ensure that poor people are not homeless or hungry. With unlimited immigration, taxes would have to rise to support immigrants - and since provision is unlimited and free would there be any limit to demand? If immigrants just kept entering the country the UK would be bankrupt. Suppose you changed things so that only British citizens were entitled to these things, while allowing unlimited immigration. What would happen? I think in a best case scanario you would get lots of men travelling to the UK from third-world countries, leaving their families behind, initially staying with friends or relatives, and finding jobs fairly quickly. The downside of this would be that the labour market would be saturated and unemployment would rocket. Would immigration stop once unemployment had reached a certain level? In a worst case scenario you can add communities of poverty-stricken immigrant families who are homeless or living in shanty towns or crammed into low-rent accomodation with children who aren't being educated and health problems that aren't being treated.
The only way I can think of to solve this would be to have all the countries in the world at an equal standard of living. But is this plausible, either in AH or FH?
If you were to allow unlimited immigration in an unequal world then eventually there will be a levelling off of relative living standards as wealthy countries get third-world standards of living, either through the massive tax-burden of supporting welfare for immigrants, or through the effects of large numbers of people with no money coming to live in wealthy countries. Money would flow the other way too, from immigrant workers to their families back in Somalia or wherever. If one were to add to this a genuine free market with no tariff barriers so that jobs can flow from rich to poor countries and goods from poor to rich ones, then after a while, would you have a world where everyone was at approximately the same standard of living? If all the wealth in the world was spead out equally, then GDP/person would be equal to that in Brazil, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Botswana or Mexico. Voters in wealthy democracies would not necessarily see this as a good thing. Or would you end up with a situation where all the money and people flow towards those areas that are rich already, just as it all flows towards London in the UK? For example, the first people to move from poorer to richer countries will be those with the most money, skills and "go-getter attitude". Their countries would be better off if they stayed. Multinational companies might be happy to build factories in the better-off regions of the third-world but I think they would ignore the really poor parts.
Thinking about this as AH, what if instead of winding down or abolishing immigration controls, the world just never developed them in the first place? What would the effect be then? Could it have happened or is it totally implausible? Or could you get some kind of early world-government that ensures equal living standards - a worldwide welfare state?
I would appreciate anybody's thoughts on the subject. If possible, I'm hoping to see a timeline come out of this even if it's only a very short one.
aah... Yes I can see it now, one unified country with president Fabilius in charge of things.