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We live in an increasingly globalised world, where moving between countries is both easier in terms of transport costs and more socially acceptable. Once translation reaches near-human levels, language barriers will be far less of a problem. I'm wondering to what extent evaporative cooling might happen to countries, both in terms of values and economically.
I read that France and Greece lost 3 & 5% of their millionaires last year (or possibly the year before), citing economic depression and rising racial/religious tension, with the most popular destination being Australia (as it has the 1st or 2nd highest HDI in the world). 3-5% may not seem like a lot, but if it were sustained for several years it quickly piles up. The feedback effects are obvious - the wealthier members of society find it easier to leave and perhaps have more of a motive to leave an economic collapse, which decreases tax revenue, which increases collapse etc. On the flip side, Australia attracts these people and its economy grows more making it even more attractive...
Socially, the same effect as described in EY's essay I linked happens on a national scale - if the 'blue' people leave, the country becomes 'greener' which attracts more greens and forces out more blues. And social/economic factors feed into each other too - economic collapses cause extremism of all sorts, while I imagine a wealthy society attracting elites would be more able to handle or avoid conflicts.
Now, this is not automatically a bad thing, or at least it might be bad locally for some people, but perhaps not globally. Any thoughts as to what sort of outcomes there might be? And incidentally, how many people can you fit in Australia? I know its very big, but also has a lot of desert.
In Australia we currently produce enough food for 60 million people. This is without any intensive farming techniques at all. This could be scaled up by a factor of ten if it was really necessary, but quality of life per capita would suffer.
I think smaller nations are as a general rule governed much better, so I don't see any positives in increasing our population beyond the current 24 million people.