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knb comments on Open thread, September 15-21, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: gjm 15 September 2014 12:24PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 17 September 2014 05:40:53PM *  -1 points [-]

I should probably update this prediction. Considering Yudkowsky's recent pwnedness and pieces like this becoming common it is at least 10%.

Moldbug in 2008.

There is a very easy resolution to this problem: adopt the principle that no person is illegal. This rule is perfectly consistent with "applied Christianity." It is taught at all our great universities. It is implied every time a journalist deploys the euphemism "undocumented." And I'm sure there are dozens of ways in which it could be incorporated into our great Living Constitution. There is only one problem: the people are not quite ready for it.

But perhaps in thirty years they will be. Perhaps? I would bet money on it. And I would also bet that, by the time this principle is established, denying it will be the equivalent of racism. Us old fogeys who were born in the 1970s will be convulsed with guilt and shame at the thought that the US actually considered it ethically acceptable to turn away, deport, and otherwise penalize our fellow human beings, on the ridiculous and irrelevant grounds that they were born somewhere else.

So the Cathedral wins coming and going. Today, it does not suffer the political backlash that would be sure to ensue if the Inner Party endorsed opening the borders to... everyone. Still less if it actually did so. (Unless it let the new Americans vote as soon as they set foot on our sacred soil, which of course would be the most Christian approach.) And in 2038, having increased North America's population to approximately two billion persons, none of them illegal, and all living in the same Third World conditions which it has already inflicted on most of the planet, our blessed Cathedral will have the privilege of berating the past with its guilt for not having recognized the obvious truth that no person is illegal. Ain't it beautiful?

Comment author: knb 17 September 2014 06:56:47PM 7 points [-]

Two billion is a crazy population prediction even if open borders was enacted. Relative quality of life would decline very quickly with open borders, and the immigration level would slow down dramatically.

I also read some estimate that "only" 500 Million people world wide want to immigrate to the US. Overall I expect the quality-of-life gap between USA and the 3rd world to continue declining over the next couple decades.