<most things of value don't directly come from citizenship. > That depends on which country. The most primal places don't have much public value, but places which have been civil for a century or two have accumulated a great deal of public value per capita. Not just in material assets such as roads,
Its pretty much true for all countries. Note I said they don't directly come from citizenship, not that the citizenship didn't play an important part. Actually its the location that plays an important part in terms of the infrastructure, but of course citizenship or legal residence gives you access to that location (so does illegal immigration, but not in as secure of way).
Beyond infrastructure, good government matters a lot, protection for property rights, a tolerable level of taxation and regulation, a relatively (if rarely absolutely) efficient and honest bureaucracy, etc. That's a bit more directly connected to citizenship, because it deals with the actions of government, but its mostly the government refraining from impairing value for its citizens. Its mostly the government not taking (too much) from you or stopping you from generating wealth in the first place, so its not really wealth from your citizenship or government in that they are not mostly creating it.
If such a place was opened to another umpty million or billion people, the dilution would be enormous and the value destroyed in not just years, but months.
If the US allowed totally unrestricted immigration, it would likely be problematic. It would not OTOH destroy the value of the US in months. An extra couple of million people a year for twenty years (to pick one possible result pretty much out of thin air, its hard to say exactly what the population change would be), might not be a negative sum game at all, and if it is, it would not be as much the mere presence in the country, as it would be the possible political ramifications of the new people's votes (if they vote in worse government, which they might but there is no real way of knowing, then it would be a negative sum game).
BTW - I'm not calling for unrestricted immigration, just pointing out that even that wouldn't result in the quick and massive devastation you seem to think it would cause. That's even further from the case if new immigrants are not eligible for public support for many years (which isn't true now in many cases, but that's a welfare state issue, not an immigration issue)
They would be highly liquid. Tens of thousands of people move around, permanently to other countries.
Many of them do keep their citizenship, I suspect that would still be true if they could sell it, and it would be true to a greater extent if they had to buy the new citizenship. Also in the context of 7 billion people tens of thousands per year is highly illiquid. Or to look at it another way, the housing market, even in good times, is relatively illiquid, a liquid market is more like the market for a major stock, or a widely traded commodity. Oil is liquid (in more ways than one) GE stock is liquid.
Yes, and some are fantastically superlative. But being a net producer of assets isn't quite enough unless you include dilution of the public value such as uncongested roads, water supplies, fisheries, unpolluted air and spectrum.
The US could have a huge amount of immigration, and still be far less dense than say France. I don't think France is suffering from too many people, and in fact if productive net producers moved to France they would make things better (esp. if they voted for less socialist governments).
How many immigrants would you want living in your house, even if they do net economic benefit such as mowing the lawn in exchange for free rent, free water, free tv watching, free couch sitting....?
They would not be in my house, they would be in a country that isn't that much smaller than 10 million square km.
Some of the Mexican flag waving looks similar to a victory parade.
Immigration doesn't just mean Mexican immigration, many Mexican's who do become citizens are proud of their citizenship, those wanting to bring territory back to Mexico, or impose a system more like Mexico's here are a small fringe. Also set up your tradable citizenship idea and they will come anyway. Its not self enforcing.
Plenty of the acquisition is by outright fraud
And most of it is not. |
