What Do We Do Then?
Consider U.S. itself. It has states like California and New
York that are fairly advanced with lot of high paying job opportunities, better
social net services, good public transport and so forth. There are also states
like Mississippi and West Virginia that are comparatively impoverished
with not very many job opportunities, where existing jobs are from earlier era
like coal mining and so are dwindling by the year. Those states don't have good
social nets and so poor citizens are left to fend for themselves. Compared to
other states, public transport systems are non-existent. So, you would think
people from such poorer states will start migrating en masse to those richer
states as there are no borders in between and there are no regulations
restricting movement between states within the U.S.
Some countries do maintain different levels of artificial
barriers making it difficult for people to move from one part to another even
within their own country. For example, in China, you need to get some level of
government approval to move from one state to another. If you didn’t, you will
lose many of the concessions like food subsidy, access to loans,
etc. There is no such restriction in the US as anyone can pack up
and move any day they want. Of course once you settle in the new place, you
need to get that state's driver's license, may need to get your mail
redirected, etc. which are all minor paperwork. Still we don't see any state
getting flooded with other states losing population year after year in big
numbers. Why? Reasons are multi-dimensional. People usually have extended
family in one place, they like the weather, food, culture they grew up with,
may not like the progressive/regressive values of the other state, and may not
like the expensive real-estate/taxes that may cancel out the extra money they could
potentially make in the richer state. So, though there are no borders,
migration of population tends to be self-limiting.
Even within India there are some states/cities that are richer
with lot of job opportunities with expensive real estate and taxes. Tamilnadu
and Gujarat are couple of examples. While there are other states that are
considered backward with not many job opportunities, inexpensive real
estate/taxes and so on. For decades the first letters of the names of four
states namely Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Utter Pradesh used to be
strung together to form the word BiMaRU that means sickness in Hindi, which is
also supposed to reflect the overall status of those four states. They usually
lagged behind other states in literacy rates, reduction in infant mortality,
job opportunities, and used to be ruled by corrupt government officials.
Perhaps some states are improving these days. But there is no question that
huge differences exist between Indian states. I myself and my friends who
routinely visit richer states of India every other year return with a bunch of
surprises as to how some latest technology has pervasive presence or how good
the toll roads look, and how expensive real estate has become. Friends who
visit states that are still struggling tell me that they don’t see much change
in their native states at all over the decades. They wonder aloud as to where
are the effects of this Raising India nonsense everyone is talking about.
India doesn't limit migration within the country either and so
there is some migration that is perceivable. For example, most construction
workers and waiting staff in restaurants in states like Tamilnadu are from poorer
Northeastern states of India like Mizoram, Tripura, that are
comparatively very slow growing. Since these migrant workers’ skin color,
facial features, language are all very different from the Tamilnadu natives,
they are easy to identify. But since their language, food, culture is all
fairly different, they don't seem to migrate en-masse with family to settle
down in the richer state. Instead they work day and night, cook and eat their
own food to save money and then head back to their native states within India
to see family/friends every few months. It is possible that they don't return
after a trip. Or bring a cousin or two with them. Still despite there not being
any government imposed barriers, there is no evidence of mass migration
changing the culture/language/food of Tamilnadu till now.
When I was discussing this topic with a Professor friend of
mine who lives/works in India, he asked an interesting question. He thought he
could understand the language/cultural differences that exists between
different states of India limiting interstate migration. But since US has one
language across the country and is culturally more homogeneous compared to
India or the Continent of Europe, what prevents the US population from
migrating to richer states as the family bonds are also comparatively weak? He
wondered if it is more of an economic issue where we see larger levels of
migration among well to do white population compared to poorer black or
Hispanic population. I think my cumulative learning/understanding through
observations over the past 30 years in US, leads me to conclude that the
reasons are not that different as illustrated by the next three paragraphs
below.
Recently our daughter participated in a cultural function that
took place in an Allentown high school. So, as we were walking by the teacher
offices in a corridor of this local school, I noticed the teachers' name and
the college they graduated from posted on the doors. After reading a bunch of
names/colleges, I was commenting to my wife as to how pretty much everyone
seems to have graduated from colleges that are in Pennsylvania. She pointed out
as to how there is a sense of belonging, family and cohesion that people find comforting when
they live in the same place where they grew up. This is again anecdotally
correlated by her nurses, clerks in her office or via colleagues in my office.
I hear endless stories of grandparents baby-sitting grandchildren routinely
when their children go to work. Our own babysitter, white woman of Polish
descent, currently lives with her son & family as she & her husband
have sold their house and is planning to buy a new one in the next few months.
Son doesn't seem to mind putting up mom/step-dad into his house for months.
There are well educated (white) people that are engineers,
doctors, lawyers in my street that are mostly born and brought up in
Pennsylvania. When we meet in community events/parties, they often comment
about how their multigenerational family members/relatives live nearby (my
cousin works there, my Dad lives there, my uncle volunteers there, my niece is
graduating from that college, my grandmother is in that retirement community).
While there are certainly white people in my neighborhood who have moved in
from other states, majority seems to be born in PA. I lived in Louisiana for
about 12 years and in New Jersey for 3 years and saw the same phenomenon in
action in those states as well. What I have come to realize over the decades is
a subtle but a strong factor.
We (Indian diaspora) know how close knit our families are and
so based on factors like U.S. divorce rates or the importance given to individualism
in the American culture, Indians tend to think that US family ties are not that
strong. Even if that can be proven true by some objective measure, average
American families living the U.S. do not think of themselves that way. Though others
may consider them as Sui Generis, they consider themselves very tight knit
through family bonds just like any other families that may have immigrated to
the U.S. or born and brought up here itself. They know their family and are not
living in another culture for a long time to draw comparisons as they are not
exposed to multiple cultures or travel all over the world. Thus, since they truly believe their family
bonds are strong, they tend to stick around the same place where they grew up. These
notions apply to U.S. descendant families of Black, White, Asian, Hispanic
heritage equally well. In other words, despite how different populations
perceive each other, effects of bonds & kinship within the population are modulated
more by their own self-perception and so are equally effective across
demographics!
I do recall Bill Clinton being interviewed during early Obama days
when U.S. was going through a major recession. He pointed out as to how we can
erase a considerable percentage of unemployment in the U.S. if we can fill all
the available job openings by encouraging people to move. He said there are
about 5 million job openings in U.S. that don't get filled since needed talent
is not locally available and people hesitate to move or have real impediments
preventing them from moving that as a society we should try to address. These
notions apply to the transnational migration phenomenon as well.
Switching continents, consider Schengen countries mostly
located in the continental Europe. In case you are not familiar with it, you
can take a quick look at
this site.
These 22, once separate countries have formed a union that has been operating
like a single country with no borders between them. People who are citizens of
any of these 22 countries can freely move within this zone. Subsequently came
the European Union. The
https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/eu-countries/ site
has a simple animated map that shows how the EU has grown over the last several
decades. It currently consists of 28 member countries and few more in the
process of getting in and a couple at the "future potential" status.
While there is a large overlap between Schengen countries and EU countries,
there are few countries that are in Schengen but not in EU (e.g. Norway,
Switzerland) and there are countries that are in EU but not in Schengen (e.g.
Ireland). Total population in the European Union is about 510 million now.
People from any of those 28 countries are allowed to travel, stay, live and
work anywhere within the EU. Though we do often hear about far right
politicians giving xenophobic talks, I don’t see any of the member country
emptying out with most citizens moving to a richer country within the union.
One may counter that view saying there are a lot of rules for
countries to join EU, one of which is to bring down their inflation under 1.5%
compared to the best performing states in the Union. This will ensure that the
nation states are economically comparable in quality. This is true as it is part
of the
Convergence
Criteria. But that is a rule for a country to newly join the EU. We
know what happened to Greece. Their numbers related to the performance of their
economy were all manipulated ones before they joined that subsequently
exploded. Still we didn’t see a Grexit or everyone in Greece moving to France
and Germany.
I was in Berlin recently to give a talk in a geek conference.
When I took a city tour, saw the Berlin wall and
Checkpoint
Charlie. I was talking to Berliners that were old enough to
remember the wall that separated East & West Germany for decades and people
getting shot when they crossed the wall from East to West to go live in the
West Germany. I distinctly remember the day the wall went down in Berlin
leading to the unification of East & West Germanys. I was a new grad
student in Baton Rouge, Louisiana watching it as it was happening on a small
apartment television. Close to three decades have passed. The current
Chancellor of United Germany Angela Merkel has been in that position since 2005.
The fact that she was originally born in West Germany but moved to East Germany
as an infant and grew up there is testament to the fact that combined societies
that erase man made borders can still thrive. Germany is one of the best
performing economies in the EU, fairly safe, and has a large global presence in
political, technological and social leadership combined with good quality of
life.
The Pew Research center site
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/18/5-facts-about-the-u-s-rank-in-worldwide-migration/ states
that today all over the world about 244 million people live in a country other
than the one where they were born. While it is a big number and this site
points out as to how if all of them lived in one country, it will be the
world's 5th largest country, it depends on how we look at it. It is equally
valid to say compared to the world's total population of about 7.6 billion
people, this is only about 3.2%. So, close to 97% of the people live within the
same country where they were born!
While about 14% of the US population is foreign born, it
is not really anywhere near the highest known numbers in the world. While
Canada has 22% foreign born population, some of the gulf countries that
actively recruit workers from other countries have some of the world's highest
percentage of foreign born population. For example, Qatar and United Arab
Emirates have 75% & 88% foreign born population respectively. It
is easy to see none of these countries are struggling to maintain their quality
of life despite having such a huge influx of immigrant population. If so, what
factors make high levels of immigration a boon rather than a curse? Answer
seems to point to two factors as discussed in this
Planet Money podcast. It analyzes as to
what happened to the US economy (particularly the Miami, Florida
area) in the 1980s when 80,000 Cuban immigrants were allowed to come to the US.
By any measure that acute influx of a large number of
immigrants didn't deteriorate the local economy. For such a successful
assimilation two conditions need to be met as per David Card, who is a
Professor of Economics in UC Berkeley focusing on labor economics.
1. The country that is receiving the immigrants should
have a large pre-existing economy. This will ensure that the immigrant
population is not posing an undue burden in attempting to assimilate.
2. The society should also have connections and processes in
place to help new immigrants find work quickly so that they become productive
members of the society rather than simply depending upon the welcoming
society's largesse.
The common fear in countries/societies forced to take in
immigrants is that there is only a set number of jobs or quantity of wealth,
that when shared with the new immigrants will deprive pre-existing members of
the society by an equal amount, thus bringing down the quality of life and
opportunities for them. But when the two conditions stated above are met, the
new immigrant population that lands without a lot of possessions spurs local
economy as they purchase food, housing, clothes, transportation and other
products & services required to run a normal life. This will create a
larger pie that can enlarge the size of the economy helping everyone in the
end. This effect will be more pronounced with fresh immigrants since they
initially need lot more things (e.g. a vehicle, cooking utensils, clothes, a
refrigerator) than what the previously existing population will need for
routine upgrades. Thus absorbing a large number of refugees can actually
benefit the accepting country economically when the assimilation is successful.
Raj Raghunathan is a professor of marketing at the UT Austin’s
McCombs School of Business. You can find an interesting interview he has given
here
in which he argues that our brains trained by evolution, view everything in the
world using the ‘scarcity model’, where some scarce resource (food, jobs,
opportunities) need to be fought for. Even our economic models use the same
approach. This may still be true in some cases where it is a zero sum game. We
can think of a boxing match where there is only one medal to be had that two
boxers fight for. But this is not universally true for every resource in modern
societies. There are endless examples in today’s world where resources are in
abundance and so working together, rather than competing, will actually help
everyone enjoy access to lot more food, jobs and opportunities. This is a new
realization that is just entering our collective conscious. It may take some
time to reconcile such notions with our scarcity based model mindset and then to
selectively switch ourselves to abundance model approach where appropriate. But
it is exciting and provides a lot of hope.
There are about 800,000 people in the U.S. who were brought
into the country without valid visa or other paperwork by their parents or
relatives years back when they were small children. Most were brought in as
early as when they were one or two years old. It is easy to see that it is not
really their fault and these youngsters will know only U.S. as their country.
Many don’t speak the languages of their country of origin and don’t have any
family/friends or other connections there as they have been living in the U.S. practically
for their whole lives.
Since almost all of them have lead clean lives, President
Obama instituted a program called DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals)
that allowed them to stay in U.S. legally, study, work and be productive
citizens. Plan is to let them apply for permanent residency/citizenship after
they continue to live normal lives for a decade without any brushes with law.
More than eighty percent of the American population supports this program as it
makes complete sense.
President Trump cancelled this program few months back saying
Obama exceeded his constitutional authority and should have gotten
congressional approval. President Trump also says he fully supports the
youngsters as they have done nothing wrong and wants congress to reinstate the
program. Then why did he cancel it? He did that in order to use it as a
negotiation chip to bargain with the congress and get money to build a wall
across the U.S. Mexico border. No one including Congress thinks spending
billions to build a wall is useful. As President Trump himself has said,
determined immigrants can throw a rope ladder and climb over it. So, since
congress doesn’t want to fund the wall, the DACA kids are stuck in limbo.
You would think since more than 80% of the Americans support
this program, it should be easy for congress to pass this bill and force the
President to sign it and move on. In fact a retiring Republican Senator named
Jeff Flake, who is from the southern border state of Arizona juxtaposed to
Mexico wants to get this bill passed before he leaves congress at the end of
the year. But this hour long
This American
Life podcast episode explains why he is having such a hard time
getting this simple bill passed. It goes to show how difficult these issues
are. So, rather than saying DACA bill should be passed or other such micro
measures should be implemented, let us think on much bigger terms to see how
will we design a system that will work in practical terms, eliminate current
idiosyncratic restrictions found all over the world and will be better than
what we have today.
We have established that even when there are no borders, there
are no mass migrations that totally empties out one area and overwhelms another
as indicated by EU or U.S. or India scenarios we discussed earlier.
But opening up the borders with all good
intentions too quickly can certainly overwhelm the system, particularly when
the country opening up its border doesn’t have a large economy and the needed
infrastructure capable of absorbing all the incoming immigrants. Case in point
is Ecuador. You might have heard that Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame is stuck
in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. When he originally entered that embassy
years back, I thought Ecuador is granting him asylum just to stick it to the
West. I was quite wrong. Ecuador actually has one of the most lenient border
control in the world and treats it as a quality of an exalted nation promoted
by its egalitarian President Rafael Correa. You can read
this
long The Atlantic article that explains the policy and its
unintended consequences to get the full picture. So, it certainly doesn’t make
sense to open up just one country unilaterally. But opening up in consort with
other nations slowly and deliberately does make sense. Even Africa has been
trying an EU like approach to slowly bring in nations into the AU (
African Union)
umbrella similar to EU. It hopes to erase borders and create a large coherent
economy that makes logical sense. If achieved, it can bring in social changes
and help improve the quality of life for its residents. It has about 55 member
states and is hoping to support visa free travel within the zone launching air
travel cooperation earlier this year. It certainly is not as advanced as EU
currently is but is moving along slowly with similar intentions.
We can create new versions of the nation states that will let
the population live/work where they want while still preserving structures
needed to provide products and services to the habitants. We don’t need to fear
that everyone in the planet will want to move to one corner of the world. In
order to think differently, let us use the term Union instead of nation or
country to see how we can go about designing a new system of geographical
domains to support 21st century societies.
-
Structure the Unions around naturally existing
boundaries on earth. Thus Australia can be one Union. North America can be
another Union, while South America and Africa can become Unions by themselves.
Though these are close to continents, I am using the term Union to emphasize
all the countries within these landmass functioning more or less like one
“nation” as nations exist today. Continent of Asia can be demarked into two or
three Unions along the lines of natural boundaries where no one could
potentially live (think of the Himalayan Mountain).
-
Need to leverage technology to deliver the
needed product and services to the citizens wherever they are, and also keep
track of who is living where. This is not impossible. As an example of a massively
scalable programs launched to identify and serve a huge population, you can
look up India’s
Aadhaar (translates
to Evidence) or UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) deployment.
You will find a lot of pros/cons debate online. But those debates apart, we
can’t deny that it is a program launched a decade back to provide IDs and
verification support to every individual in India (about 1.2 Billion) at very
low costs and is being successfully rolled out though the ruling
parties/Government has changed in between. China is launching an even more
ambitious program to provide social scores to all its citizen (similar to
credit scores) to make them behave better. You can
read
about what a dystopia it may lead to as it is quite an
invasive/intrusive program. But these programs actually being implemented today
show that it is possible to use technology to reach the entire planet
population to provide needed services.
-
Structure the tax & spend systems to ensure
income inequality is kept under a reasonable limit in each Union. This will
ensure pure economic reasons do not overwhelm any part of the system. This may
also help in the long run to merge multiple unions into an even larger union
thus forming a single planet wide habitat eventually.
We do need to address all the concerns we discussed in the
first part as to why they won’t deter such an open borders model. Let me try to
do that here.
-
First step is to discuss/debate these models to
make everyone understand the virtues so that reflexive opposition to open
borders are assuaged. There is ample evidence that well thought out integration
of geographic zones work well. But counter examples based on anecdotal evidence
are very powerful and will be emotionally appealing compared to dull policy
discussions and tables/numbers. For example, safety is a reasonable and important
concern citizens will have when they oppose opening up borders. Despite what
right wing politicians all over the world may say,
crime
trend lines are on the decline not only in the U.S. but
all
around the world.
-
Comprehensive discussions that not only show
macro numbers/charts/proof like the ones listed in the bullet above but also
provide micro level personalized evidence to help people and policy makers
understand the issue well are important. For example, this famous picture of a
Syrian boy in an ambulance did a lot to move people than what hundred hours of
policy debates in UN might have achieved.
-
On the other end of the spectrum, using the same
idea of leveraging a personalized story, President Trump has been talking about
how a young innocent white woman he refers to as “Beautiful Kate” was shot and
killed by an illegal alien. It is a very powerful story that will easily rile up
white citizens feeling that their young women are being attacked by dark
skinned thugs entering U.S. illegally. You can read
this
Slate article to understand how twisted that narration is. It is
clear that negative stories are better click bait compared to positive ones and
so positive stories may not get shared virally. But presented truthfully, the
devastation effected by blocked migration can be very effective in changing
common people’s understanding as this Syrian boy in the ambulance story did.
-
Arguments like letting outsiders to come in may
bring in terrorists, rapists and criminals has no real evidence.
Statistics
show that immigrants all over the world tend to be more law abiding
and less crime laden than the natives. This is certainly applicable to U.S. It
is certainly appropriate for public to worry about terrorists like the ones
that conducted the 9/11 attack in the U.S. or the November 2008 Mumbai attack
in India (referred to as the 26/11 attack) getting inside the country when the
borders tend to be open or even porous. But closer examination shows that those
terrorists either got into the country legally passing all the checks or were
able to easily bypass checks thus proving that border protection is not really
preventing motivated terrorists but only excludes people who should be allowed
to migrate.
-
On the other hand, if we evaluate sheer numbers,
heinous acts of terrorism and violence committed by citizens within their own
country is orders of magnitude more compared to acts committed by foreigners.
In U.S. acts of violence conducted by citizens can not technically be termed as
terrorism and so get covered in the media as generic violence or hate crime.
-
Creating a world where there is not a lot of
motivation for terrorism will work better in the long run as demonstrated by
this
Denmark experiment rehabilitating young Islamic ISIS jihadists. This
may also be cheaper in the long run compared to spending endless billions to
strengthen borders and militaries that does not effectively deter motivated
terrorists.
-
The next most important concern of economic
deterioration can be addressed via well managed social security programs such
as BIG (
Basic
Income Guarantee). It is certainly hard for a WV coal miner to move
to California, learn coding and start to work for Google. So, it is important
to help the affected/threatened population first as discussed earlier in
detail.
-
Another big concern might be religious persecution
of the majority by the minority within a country. This appears to be mostly in
the minds of the majority as I see it on both sides of the planet. As we saw in
the first section, Christian majority in U.S. feel they are threatened by
non-Christians while the Hindu majority in India feel they are threatened by
non-Hindus, though neither religion seems to be on the wane in these two
countries. My suggestions to solve this
problem is to push people of one religion to get to know people practicing the
other religion personally. I haven’t seen a lot of cases where someone says I
know this person really well personally and their religion/culture or
country/language is really bad and threatening to me. It could be uncomfortable
compared to being with our own kind talking within our own echo chambers. But
promoting this reach out could be very effective in changing minds.
-
Open borders will also encourage interaction as
people traveling all over the world will certainly develop appreciation for the
practices found in other parts of the world. Whoever I have hosted in our home
in U.S. from other parts of the world have consistently appreciated U.S. for
its orderly behavior, friendly people, cleaner public spaces, etc. My friends
in U.S. who have traveled abroad have always appreciated the warmth of the
people they encountered, food they enjoyed and so on around the planet.
-
Having charismatic world leaders that can
communicate well fighting for the open borders cause will help a lot. Listen to
this
TED
Radiohour podcast episode that is discussing how movements get
built, how do they grow organically, and what communication skills used by
people like Martin Luther King who delivered the “I have a dream” speech are
effective in galvanizing people into action. If you are not familiar with the
U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s, please do read up and particularly
listen to the
MLK
speech available on the web. It is bound to give you goosebumps.
-
Going back to economic concerns, immigrants in
U.S. are often lot more entrepreneurial as they often start new businesses
since they find it much easier to start and own a business in U.S. compared to
their country of origin. Even if all the new businesses don’t turn out to be
Google and Intel (two famous companies started by immigrants), there are
thousands of smaller companies that generate local jobs and tax revenues.
-
The unrelenting march forward by technology is doing
all it can to erase borders virtually and optimize our transportation costs of
goods & services. So, the alternative to open borders will be exporting all
the jobs to parts of the world where it is cheaper to get it done and shipping the
product and services to wherever they are needed. It will affect closed
societies even more negatively rather than taking them back to some long past
glory days.
-
While countries like Norway, Sweden and Japan are indeed doing well, designing
a world full of very small countries with extremely homogeneous population is
not a sustainable long term model. To begin with, there are a lot of small
countries with very homogeneous population that still don’t do well. I will
cite Rwanda as an example, which is a very small country. But the 11 million
size comparatively tiny population managed to divide itself (perhaps thanks to
Belgian colonial days) into Hutu and Tutsi subgroups and fight/kill each other
off ferociously in the mid-90’s, though it appears to be on the mend these
days. Such examples demonstrate that simply creating small homogeneous
societies is not the correct solution.
-
On the other hand, Singapore is an extremely
small city state that is very prosperous despite having a mix of Chinese, Malay
and Indian descendants in the population in large percentages. I spent a week
there late last year while attending a conference. Spoke to a lot of local
people and toured around the city to develop a sense for myself. Though it is
not without flaws, it did feel like a well-run system.
So, how well a small country does
might have more to do with how it is managed and whether its people have a
sense of belonging or not rather than its smallness and homogeneity of the
population per se. In general it is easy to see there is strength in size and
numbers. This is the reason EU is being created so that it can have the same
clout comparable in size and power to the U.S. If all the countries in the
world turned out to be small countries with miniscule population, developing
any standard or implementing large projects will all become expensive and
complicated if not impossible.
-
It is also important to let immigrants settle
down permanently wherever they want to rather than allowing them to stay temporarily
for a period without letting them feel that they are part of the society. For
example, Gulf countries like Dubai, Saudi Arabia allow a large number of
immigrants to come and work. But once their working age is over, whether they
are highly educated individuals or unskilled laborers, they are forced to
return to their country of origin. This model prevents them from developing a
sense of belonging to the society where they live. This is cited as one reason
as to why Germany’s attempt to develop an equivalent of the Silicon Valley in
the late 90’s failed. Though they aggressively recruited and welcomed IT
workers from all over the world, particularly from countries like India, they
were told that they had to go back after 6 years of so. So, the temporary
immigrants, who did enjoy the stay and the money they made, ran out the clock
and returned to their native countries without ever buying property in Germany
or participating in civic organizations or learning the language well. Compared
to that, since U.S. traditionally encourages people (though on a diminishing
scale these days) to become citizens and be part of the society, immigrants in
U.S. clearly have a sense of belonging and are much more involved in the local
communities.
Many readers may feel apprehensive about these proposals as
they all may sound too utopian. But I would challenge that opinion from
multiple angles. We have discussed enough examples in this work where such
solutions do work well. Now let us look even beyond those examples for
additional reinforcements that augment our understanding.
I remember our company Intel Corporation’s founder/CEO Andy
Grove facing an existential crisis for the company in the early 80’s. Intel was
originally making most of its money by selling memory chips it invented. But at
this time it was losing its lunch to Japanese competitors that were competing
with Intel on price. While it was emotionally wrenching to let go of a business
Intel invented, Grove famously asked his partners what would a new CEO taking
over the company to turn it around would do. The answer was to ditch the memory
business and find another area of business where the company can thrive. He apparently
said, let me walk out of this room and walk back in as the new CEO and make
that change. He did that and the company survived. Point of the story is that
at times, though it is emotionally difficult to let go of some ideas and fears,
when we recognize the current system is not working well, we need some bold
initiative that will set the situation right.
If we need to design a brand new planet earth, will we design
a system with this mess of restrictive borders and movement limitations? If
not, we need to let go of old models that are not working and initiate a bold
new model that will. I would also point to M.K.Gandhi’s non-violent struggle
for India’s freedom to derive more inspiration. I am not sure if he would have
succeeded and garnered the world’s respect if he had tried to raise an army to
fight the British rulers. His trailblazing move into non-violent freedom
struggle even looked silly against the British juggernaut when it started. It
is so disappointing and unfortunate that the non-violent model is not being
followed anywhere much now. But we know very well he succeeded and till date
has the respect of the world.
Though the world is currently moving towards closing borders
and limiting migratory movements, I hope these trends turn out to be temporary
when we stand back and look at the big picture spanning several decades or a
century or two. Books like
Clash
of Civilization,
In
Defense of Globalization, and
The
Rational Optimist might all be interesting reads related to
peripheries of this topic. Factors like the raise of technology and demographic
shifts are bound to interfere with production and consumption of goods &
services profoundly. Thoughtful planners should be able perceive how allowing
fluid migration of people all over the planet can significantly help and
leverage those changes to make the lives better for everyone in the world. I
hope we won’t let them stop at just perceiving but will also abet the changes
while communicating the expected resulting changes well to the worldwide
population. It will help develop the needed grass root support as long as it is
complemented with support services needed for those who will be disadvantaged
in the short run. True, it is easier said than done. But let us get the ball
rolling. The Maricelas and Khairo Hassans of the world should not be forced to
wait even a day longer. If they can’t even feed themselves, as Bharathiyaar
would say, this world is not worth preserving. Another Tamil poet named Kaniyan
Poongundranaar centuries back said:
யாதும் ஊரே, யாவரும் கேளிர்
It translates to “Every
town is our town and all the people we see are our relatives”. Hopefully
within our lifetime, that will become the
norm & reality.
(The End)
References:
20. https://uidai.gov.in/your-aadhaar/about-aadhaar.html
22. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/30/5-facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/
23. Basic Income Guarantee
(BIG):
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.php
25. https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=612154435
27. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/12/deradicalise-isis-fighters-jihadists-denmark-syria
28. Samuel P. Huntington,
Clash
of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order
Book starts with the close relationship between energy and the society's development. This is followed by more or less a chronological narration of the role of energy in prehistory, traditional farming, preindustrial prime movers and farming, fossil fuels, electricity, renewables, and so on. Book concludes with a chapter titled energy in world history, which doesn't bother to tie it all together but just states how many aspects of world history is affected by energy while many other aspects are not impacted by energy. You feel like you finished reading a text book. No major insights or hitherto unknown view points. But the author has indeed put in enormous amount of thought into drilling down the available data. For example, when he is simply talking about human beings walking/running on the land, he analyzes the data this way: Running requires power outputs mostly between 700 and 1,400 MW equivalent to 10-20 times the basal metabolic rate. The energy cost of running for humans is relatively high, but people have a unique capability of virtually uncoupling this cost from speed. Body weight support and forward propulsion account for about 80% of the total cost of running; leg swinging claims about 7%; and maintaining lateral balance about 2%-but arm swinging cuts the overall cost by about 3%. Smil quotes his own research and a whole bunch of papers and articles to support his claims.
