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Comment by msie | Hacker News Reader

My crazy/naive idea is to build stable countries in South America and Africa to attract migrants and asylum seekers. It would be more economic and palatable than tackling regime change/culture change in troubled countries (mexico, el salvador, iran, afghanistan) where these migrants came from and lessen the need to beef up local infrastructure. Isn't this how cities emerged in the past?

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You can't build stable countries in those places as long as narcotraffickers and commodity smugglers exist, and they will exist as long as we have repressive laws on drug use (in the United States and other Rich Nations) and sanctions on commodities from the same. The problem is these combined policies incentivize defacto states that aren't democratic and will extort or thwart any well meaning developers. In countries without a strong rule of law you won't get far (absent finding a way to monopolize force yourself).

>> (absent finding a way to monopolize force yourself)

Exactly this.

Any person who wants to live a self-determined life, and have a self-determined govt must be (individually or collectively) better armed and better prepared than everyone form the wannabe local lunch bully, regional warlord, or national authoritarian. IF not, they will take your lunch and your government every time.

The GP's plan is great, but (s)he will need to start with a significant well-managed armed force. Otherwise, the local drug lord, warlord, mafia don, or authoritarian will ignore you until you create value, then decide they want it for themselves. If you cannot defend it, it will be theirs until they destroy it.

You’re putting the cart before the horse here. If there isn’t a strong rule of law, any economic activity is going to come under the control of protection rackets and other armed factions. That’s completely independent of any drug prohibitions or commodity sanctions. When it comes to commodity sanctions you’re even reversing cause and effect; the sanctions are usually imposed as a half measure against whatever armed faction ends up controlling commodity extraction in a particular failed state.

>>> If there isn’t a strong rule of law, any economic activity is going to come under the control of protection rackets and other armed factions.

I think you're restating what I said. Narco traffickers are able to subvert the rule of law via corruption. Their ability to perform corruption is a function of their profitability, which in turn is a function of the demand (and their ability to supply it), in rich countries. The demand is unmet domestically because of our prohibitions and draconian federal enforcement.

So the rule of law breaks down there due to strong rule of law here. We are essentially exporting the market making there, and that sort of market making, while risky, is profitable in the extreme.

As for the commodity sanctions while most maybe are well intentioned, they only serve to again allow those willing to take the risk of market making to rack up obscene profits. This is regardless of what circumstances lead to them, they empower actors who aren't particularly altruistic and certainly aren't democratic, to subvert the rule of law.

> I think you're restating what I said.

I’m not. Let me restate what I said, with emphasis:

If there isn’t a strong rule of law, any economic activity is going to come under the control of protection rackets and other armed factions.

Any. Economic. Activity. Not just drug trafficking. I’m very familiar with the argument that drug prohibition creates organized crime, but it’s not a fully general explanation for global instability or the resource curse.

> As for the commodity sanctions while most maybe are well intentioned, they only serve to again allow those willing to take the risk of market making to rack up obscene profits.

You still aren’t explaining how Western sanctions on conflict diamonds are capable of traveling back through time and creating the problem of conflict diamonds in the first place.

Upon reflection, you are right about the cause/effect wrt sanctions. While I don't see how sanctions can be part of a solution, I do now understand that they aren't the cause of instability either, as corrupt actors, or even completely legitimate governments can cause violent conflict over these sanctioned commodities.

But, the part about narco states still stands...I don't see a way to fix the rule of law problem by just "having strong rule of law". Those countries already have laws e.g. against corruption. Especially in South and Central America, narco-organizations and drug related violence predominates the causes of instability.

> I don't see a way to fix the rule of law problem by just "having strong rule of law". Those countries already have laws e.g. against corruption.

El Salvador did it.

At some point, which Mexico already reached a long time ago, cartels metastasize beyond narcotics and can sustain themselves on protection rackets. It’s very tempting to treat drug prohibition as some sort of monocausal explanation for organized crime, but even if that were true at some point, that doesn’t mean legalization would solve the problem. And I think the existence of conflict diamonds and the like already demonstrate that drug prohibition isn’t even necessary for this kind of problem to emerge in the first place.

You can, but it requires a strong authoritarian hand. China used to be rife with corruption and organized crime, now corruption has been significantly reduced and organized crime is essentially nonexistent. Singapore is broadly considered one of the least corrupt countries on the planet. Mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking and people will simply go around your city.

You may think those punishments are unreasonably harsh, but then again you’re probably not a drug trafficker. And it’s not like the American punishments (decades in dangerous prisons) are much better.

You don't need to be a drug trafficker. They just need to plant evidence and off you go.

UK has an agreement with Rwanda to send refugees to Rwanda.

But the UK High Court nixed it, because Rwanda is "not a safe country".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda_asylum_plan

There's a big difference between needing asylum and needing asylum in a stable country with universal healthcare and a benefits system.

Refugees are trying to flee to a developed country with healthcare, jobs and safety. Why would you want to go to Rwanda? I realize it has improved by leaps and bounds but very few people are going to want to emigrate to an African country.

The magic handwavy part is the first step:

> build stable countries

If you know how to do that, please tell the world. Stable countries need a half-century or more to create, and that's with existing institutions and culture, and still the outcome is very uncertain.

Oh, they are down to a half century now? Switzerland took 700 years to make. Progress!

I was thinking of South Korea, but they are extraordinary.

Singapore achieved this as a city-state.

In how long? Don't forget the building of the institutions that predated Yew.

1959 was when Yew became Sg's first PM. in his famous televised speech, yew announced the separation from malayasian federation in 1965.

dont forget that singapore was under colonial rule before that. noone can deny the success of singapore, the city state with all the regional challenges. it took them about two decades.

i would give 5-10 years for our nation states to become functionally successful if they split and became city states.

its time for a change.

Singapore government definitely made smart moves and had a strong vision. But you can't omit that its geographical position gave it a tremendous advantage with regards to trade. It will be very hard to replicate elsewhere, others will have to find similar stable streams of income. On top of that, Singapore has access to a very large low-paid workforce in the neighboring countries, which eases offloading necessary but low-value activities.

You think it has not been tried by the people in those countries?

I’m not sure I understand your idea; the only way to build a stable country in these regions would be to regime change a less stable country, or perhaps carve out some territory from the existing countries. At any rate, many of the countries on both of those continents were founded as attempts to build stable countries.

On a happier note, El Salvador seems to have sorted itself out in recent years.

such places would be flooded by desperate people in millions, creating slum town around it, a good breeding ground for crime. South Africa, once a functioning country got "invaded" by Zimbabweans escaping their hellhole, distorting the labour market and creating tension/crime. Too many people, unless you create hundreds of such experiments around the world.

> South Africa, once a functioning country

A functioning country for a few white people; hell for everyone else.

South Africa was still functional after the end of apartheid. It really only became a failed state during the Zuma administration. Despite the history of institutionalized racism the country had enormous potential, but sadly a few corrupt politicians sacrificed the future of the country for their own benefit.

> South Africa was still functional after the end of apartheid.

It wasn't functional before the end of apartheid. 'Functional for a small minority' != 'functional country'.

So... America from 1850 to 1920. If you can anticipate and scale up industrial production to meet the wave of immigration and not just pen them up in refugee camps you have yourself another BRICS nation.

The country you seek is called Heaven. I don't blame you for recognising the need - I'm the same. Sadly many of our companions would rather see themselves in charge, just to make sure everyone is treated justly of course, but that always causes Hell for somebody.

Building heaven on earth is a good aspirational political goal.

Yes!!

Immanentize the Eschaton am I rite?

Just like the Gnostics, Marxists, communists, Obama, Trump ...

>Immanentize the Eschaton

What else can you do with the Eschaton?

Build Heaven in your own heart - you won't be sorry :)

Outer Heaven?

This is one of my long-term goals with my home country, South Africa. We've got the legal starting point with a progressive constitution and a reasonably independent judiciary/media. The economy could be doing better, though, and we'd need to bring equal opportunity to all. And there's a lot more in the future that could hamstring this idea. But I do believe that it's possible in my lifetime.

  build stable countries

you can't do that remotely. and people who build this will develop a strong sense of identity and won't accept migrants in their community

> mexico, el salvador, iran, afghanistan

None of those are in South America or Africa. Maybe it would be good to first understand the problem, including the geography, before proposing ideas.

Get your AI army ready to enforce law, I guess.

If the settlement is doing better than the actual country it is in, it is going to be overrun with locals. The only way to do that would be to fence out the locals and no country is going to agree to that.

We need immigrants in North America, why send them somewhere else

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