An occasional reader of the K-Landnews offered this solution to the immigration debate.
Make everybody move every generation and a half.
You can't do this!
Oh, no? Just ask the native Americans, ask people in large parts of Africa, look around India and Pakistan, Tibet or Russia. Go back a few hundred thousand years and all our ancestors were on the move out of Africa. We can all finally live up to our tourism brochures, you know, the ones that already say "welcoming and friendly country" - or is there a country whose brochures say otherwise?
The suggestion is not without pitfalls and questions. What can we make a huge fuss about if there are no more illegal immigrants anywhere? What to do with the grandparents, for instance? Or your pets?
Which direction should everybody go, East, West, North, South, in between? How far -- a couple hundred miles is far for present day Central Europeans but just an extended commute distance for current North Americans.
What is to be done with the achievements of existing societies, such as Social Security? Can we trust the new arrivals to manage our money for us like China manages current U.S. debt? Can you see a better way to try and get rid of Obamacare? How will the piece of real estate you are still paying your mortgage on be handled? Can the Swiss take their mountains along? Will my iPhone continue to work?
If the anti-consumerist option wins and we are allowed only as much stuff as we can carry in a backpack, will wealthy folks pay poor folks to go back and pick up some more bling, or will the evolution of consumers slowly turn those who need three power drills into a new pack animal lookalike version of human?
All of these petty questions prove no obstacle today for a select group of youngsters: those who get kicked out of their parents' house the day they turn eighteen.
Or remember Adam and Eve? The apple was just a pretext, by the way.
Let's give it a try before global warming forces a third of the planet's population to move anyway.
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