We live in a world peopled by similar barbarians. In the post-Industrial West–I won’t say East since this is not a problem in Japan or Korea–there are vast disparities in standards of living. This causes people to invade. In the old days, we would invade back, spank them, school them, and add them to the boundaries of the Empire. Eventually, in the Roman model, they would out-Roman us as we got decadent, and have to let them in.
In our modern world, though, it is scarcely cause for wonder that so many Mexicans (and Central Americans, but the Mexicans very aggressively prevent citizens of other nations from transiting Mexico to get here) want to be in America, and so many people from the Middle East and South Asia want to be in Europe.
What is the solution? Has anybody proposed global prosperity? Can we not put that on the table? Peter Bauer and others very accurately diagnosed the causes of developmental failure, and they have nothing to do with us, other than that the things we do to help usually make things worse, sometimes much worse.
In Mexico and much of Latin America you have grotesque and long term economic disparities. The ruling elites run in families, and those families like their power and privilege. They don’t like working for a living, and somebody has to, so the poor stay poor, and they have large villas with fountains, gates, and heavily armed guards. Part of the reason the rulers of Mexico seemingly LIKE having people tell them Mexico sucks and we are getting the hell out of here, is that chronic poverty with no safety valve might easily lead to a justified uprising. And in the modern era, the bullets would be televised.
But if we were able to end apartheid in South Africa, why would we not be able to put pressure on the oligarchies of Latin America? Why could we not put pressure on the Middle East to get out of the 7th century?
The simple fact is that if you put too many people on a boat, it collapses. We saw that in the Mediterranean. And national economies are no different. Too many piglets sucking at the teats and momma dies or dries up. That is the way the world works. That is the way the world has always worked. Anyone trying to claim otherwise is stupid or selling something.
In all affairs of life clear thinking helps. The task is not to get attention focused away from the problem, but to SOLVE the problem. Most Mexicans don’t want to live here. They want to live in Mexico. This is obvious because so many of them thought to bring Mexican flags with them. If they wanted to live in the United States, they would wave American flags like proud immigrants always have.
So over the coming decades, if we don’t have a nuclear “workplace violence” (Iran, North Korea) incident, if the robots don’t take over, if we don’t have a plague which kills all of us, then we need to focus on global development using INTELLIGENT strategies, like microloans on the model of Kiva. We could have national Kiva “adopt a country” months. We can use economic pressure to support liberalization.
And we can expand the idea of local control. We can reverse empire. What the Romans spread was a system of law, of discipline, of science. Those are available everywhere now. There is nothing that could be gained through colonialism that has not been exported. Most of Africa now at least mouths support for self rule and democracy. Most of the world has at least been exposed to the idea of the toleration of difference, and the importance of equality before the law. The Muslims of course reject this idea, but all we need to do with them is stop kowtowing, and start asking them to act like civilized human beings. Many of them will respond to this idea. The radicals are mainly responding, now, to craven weakness, and the very real possibility that Europe will simply lay down and say Allahu Akbar.
All of our problems can be solved, solved peacefully–or largely peacefully, and where violence is necessary, we are well positioned to deliver it–and solved finally.
I really don’t know why more people don’t talk like I do. So many of our leading intellectuals simply want to give up, to give in. They are cowards. But most of us are not. It is simply the case that the people who do most of the talking have never done anything in their lives. Nor do they plan to start, ever. That’s what the proles are for.