This article seems symptomatic of a general decline in the quality of The Economist. I used to be a subscriber but there was a noticeable sharp drop some time ago, I think when Micklethwaite stepped down as editor, and things seem to have got worse since. Shoddy thinking, bizarre arguments and extremist conclusions seem more common than they used to be.
Firstly, the core thesis of the argument is that merely by moving to a richer country, people become automatically more productive:
> Workers become far more productive when they move from a poor country to a rich one. Suddenly, they can join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable legal system. Those who used to scrape a living from the soil with a wooden hoe start driving tractors. Those who once made mud bricks by hand start working with cranes and mechanical diggers
This can only be described as some sort of fantasy. People who have spent their lives making mud bricks by hand don't suddenly become qualified crane operators by mere virtue of migrating to a developed country. They need the same training any native born person would, but they also need to learn the local language and customs too.
Indeed, a common effect of mass immigration is that mechanical diggers and cranes are less used, because why buy expensive automated machinery when labour is nearly free?
A clear counterpoint is the state of Germany. Over 1 million migrants from Africa and the ME let in with no border controls worth talking about. Did they all immediately become high earning crane operators. No. Aydan Özoğuz, commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, told the Financial Times that only a quarter to a third of the newcomers would enter the labour market over the next five years, and “for many others we will need up to 10”.
The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) found only 45 per cent of Syrian refugees in Germany have a school-leaving certificate and 23 per cent a college degree.
Statistics from the Federal Labour Agency show the employment rate among refugees stands at just 17 per cent.
The Economist also seems to struggle with the basics of why some countries do better than others. They do sort of comprehend the shape of the problem:
> On the contrary, the reason why migration is so attractive is that some countries are well-run and others, abysmally so.
> It is very hard to transfer Canadian institutions to Cambodia, but quite straightforward for a Cambodian family to fly to Canada.
Hmmm. So. Some countries are run abysmally, and others are well run. Why is that? The Economist acts like good governance is a feature of geography, something the Canadians dig out of the ground. But it's not, government is people, so presumably the people in those countries aren't very good at building wealthy societies. For example their cultures frequently turn a blind eye to graft, dictatorship is common, installing relatives in government posts is expected, work gets done slowly or not at all, votes are seen as things useful to sell for a bit more income and so on.
So what happens if all those people simply move to another country? Does their culture change overnight? And if not, what makes The Economist so sure that the bad administration and poverty those people were trying to escape won't just follow them to the west?
This problem is not theoretical or simply scaremongering. The sad tale of Lutfur Rahman is a warning sign of what can go wrong when large numbers of people settle in the west from parts of the world where western values are not well established - they don't simply change overnight and instead western political systems start to look like third world countries too:
> The Economist acts like good governance is a feature of geography
Where did they say that? It's a common and well researched problem that institutions are not easily transplanted.
I am also not really sure what "government is people" is supposed to mean. Creating and maintaining institutions that produce wealth and stability is very difficult and dependent on many conditions like path dependencies and global embeddedness. In no case it was ever as easy as saying something like: Those people are just great institution builders!
Things like corruption aren't personal traits but rational under specific systemic environments.
See my comment below. It's a useful anecdote because the politician in question wasn't merely corrupt. He turned Tower Hamlets into an area with the same political problems of Bangladesh itself - possible because so many of the people who lived there were also from Bangladesh and were willing to e.g. act as enforcers, sell votes, exploit or be exploited by religious loyalties, take part in electoral fraud and so on.
By himself he couldn't have accomplished much, but with a large base of people for whom this sort of thing was culturally acceptable in that electoral ward, suddenly a part of London started to look politically much like a third world country.
>Firstly, the core thesis of the argument is that merely by moving to a richer country, people become automatically more productive:
>> Workers become far more productive when they move from a poor country to a rich one. Suddenly, they can join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable legal system. Those who used to scrape a living from the soil with a wooden hoe start driving tractors. Those who once made mud bricks by hand start working with cranes and mechanical diggers
>This can only be described as some sort of fantasy. People who have spent their lives making mud bricks by hand don't suddenly become qualified crane operators by mere virtue of migrating to a developed country. They need the same training any native born person would, but they also need to learn the local language and customs too.
Um, what? Of course they do. Capital is a complement to labor. Moving to a high-capital country means the fruits of your labor are multiplied because you can take advantage of that capital to increase your productivity.
>Indeed, a common effect of mass immigration is that mechanical diggers and cranes are less used, because why buy expensive automated machinery when labour is nearly free?
Labor is sometimes a substitute for capital, and we can observe this substitution at the margin as you describe. However, overall, capital is a complement to labor once scale effects are taken into account — as overall output increases after a right-shift in labor, demand for capital increases as well. This is the same effect behind why Luddism is wrong.
>A clear counterpoint is the state of Germany. Over 1 million migrants from Africa and the ME let in with no border controls worth talking about. Did they all immediately become high earning crane operators. No. Aydan Özoğuz, commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, told the Financial Times that only a quarter to a third of the newcomers would enter the labour market over the next five years, and “for many others we will need up to 10”.
Refugees in Germany face significant regulatory obstacles to participating in the labor force.
>This problem is not theoretical or simply scaremongering. The sad tale of Lutfur Rahman is a warning sign of what can go wrong when large numbers of people settle in the west from parts of the world where western values are not well established - they don't simply change overnight and instead western political systems start to look like third world countries too:
An immigrant from a third world country was corrupt, therefore corruption is endemic to all immigrant populations because they don't know any better? Not touching this one.
Moving to a high-capital country means the fruits of your labor are multiplied because you can take advantage of that capital to increase your productivity.
In the world of perfectly-informed, perfectly-rational, perfectly-enlightenedly-self-interested frictionless spherical humans, maybe.
Here on Earth, companies move their operations out of high-capital countries on a regular basis.
Well written. Totally agreed. There is systematic underestimation of culture migration along with all its goods and bads in these articles. No one digs into why the country became what it is.
Have you ever considered that what you consider "western values" are in fact values that emerge in a society that lives in conditions where there is political stability and economic opportunity? That people's "culture" is affected by the environment around them as a general pattern?
Yes, I have considered that. It doesn't appear to be true.
If it was, cases like Rahman's would not have happened. After moving from Bangladesh as a young person, and becoming surrounded by political stability and economic opportunity, he would have adopted western values and become an ordinary politician. So would the people in Tower Hamlets, which has a very large Bangladeshi immigrant population.
In fact what happened was this:
• He engaged in massive election fraud, including buying votes, organising large numbers of faked votes, bribery, buying support of local Bangladeshi TV channels, intimidating witnesses and doubling council funding to local Bengali charities in return for their political support.
• He did this so successfully that he won a local election that was found (years later) so riven with corruption that it was declared by a judge to be entirely void and would have to be re-run from scratch.
• He also gained votes by telling Muslim voters that his political opponent was racist and that voting for him was an "Islamic duty".
• He was kicked out of the Labour party for having links with an extremist group.
• He benefited from a group of "enforcers", people attached to youth organisations funded by his council, who would visit and intimidate any Bangladeshi who spoke out against the mayor. This included threatening to burn down the houses of witnesses during the corruption trial.
• He has also been accused of extensive mortgage fraud and tax evasion.
Corruption, bribery, intimidation of voters, stuffing ballot boxes, buying political support, exploiting religion and race to gain support - these are all the sorts of behaviours strongly associated with third world countries like Bangladesh, but they showed up in the UK in the modern era too, even with people who moved as children.
If values were created by the environment, then this wouldn't happen (unless you consider the cultural effects of immigrants who pool together in the same areas to be able to overwhelm the cultural effects of the new host country).
Having interacted with immigrants from many different places, I find for a vast majority of them, the environment does in fact determine their culture. Are there a few for whom it doesn't? Sure. In the same way there are criminals even among people who grow up in such an environment.
I would love to visit this magical place you describe where ordinary politicians are the bedrock whence we judge the morality of the underlying society.
> Corruption, bribery, intimidation of voters, stuffing ballot boxes, buying political support, exploiting religion and race to gain support
Sounds like business as usual in Chicago...joking, of course I'm joking...
I've considered this and deemed it to be false. A great counter example is Imperial China around 1300-1400AD. They were fantastically wealthy and politically stable yet "western values" did not develop.
The unending spate of banking frauds, VW, Theranos, price fixing in the pharmaceutical sector, the opiod crisis, gerry mandering, widespread lobbying and political corruption seems to contradict your position.
To suggest corruption is a 'third world thing' and does not impact the western world seems to be disconnected from reality.
To talk about 'western values' in the same context is dangerously close to bigotry and jingoism.
That's a strawman - I never claimed there was no corruption in the west. The Economist claims there's much less in the west than elsewhere and this is in fact the core of the entire article - the assumption that with open borders globally, corruption as a drag on the global economy would shrivel because everyone would move to much less corrupt places. That's where they get the 78 trillion dollar figure from.
And it's also the Economist that ponders the problem of what happens if the immigrants vote in an Islamist government (their solution: immigrants may never be allowed to vote, i.e. taxation without representation on a massive scale, which is hardly a western value).
Also, I'm not sure Theranos is a case of corruption. Seems more like a delusional founder who got in too deep and was eventually discovered and dealt with through the sorts of mechanisms (the free press, medical regulation) that is usually under the umbrella of "western values".
of course there is corruption in the west, the west is not immune from human nature. the west is really not different than any other country, it just has a "strong" economy and pretends it is the standard and a really effective "narrative", everyone else "unquestioning" believes in this one measurement ruler to rule them all mentality and buys the products it sells. it is quite simple. west and east, are the same, just a unreal division so they can make you choose sides and not pay too much attention to other things.
Firstly, the core thesis of the argument is that merely by moving to a richer country, people become automatically more productive:
> Workers become far more productive when they move from a poor country to a rich one. Suddenly, they can join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable legal system. Those who used to scrape a living from the soil with a wooden hoe start driving tractors. Those who once made mud bricks by hand start working with cranes and mechanical diggers
This can only be described as some sort of fantasy. People who have spent their lives making mud bricks by hand don't suddenly become qualified crane operators by mere virtue of migrating to a developed country. They need the same training any native born person would, but they also need to learn the local language and customs too.
Indeed, a common effect of mass immigration is that mechanical diggers and cranes are less used, because why buy expensive automated machinery when labour is nearly free?
A clear counterpoint is the state of Germany. Over 1 million migrants from Africa and the ME let in with no border controls worth talking about. Did they all immediately become high earning crane operators. No. Aydan Özoğuz, commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, told the Financial Times that only a quarter to a third of the newcomers would enter the labour market over the next five years, and “for many others we will need up to 10”.
The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) found only 45 per cent of Syrian refugees in Germany have a school-leaving certificate and 23 per cent a college degree.
Statistics from the Federal Labour Agency show the employment rate among refugees stands at just 17 per cent.
The Economist also seems to struggle with the basics of why some countries do better than others. They do sort of comprehend the shape of the problem:
> On the contrary, the reason why migration is so attractive is that some countries are well-run and others, abysmally so.
> It is very hard to transfer Canadian institutions to Cambodia, but quite straightforward for a Cambodian family to fly to Canada.
Hmmm. So. Some countries are run abysmally, and others are well run. Why is that? The Economist acts like good governance is a feature of geography, something the Canadians dig out of the ground. But it's not, government is people, so presumably the people in those countries aren't very good at building wealthy societies. For example their cultures frequently turn a blind eye to graft, dictatorship is common, installing relatives in government posts is expected, work gets done slowly or not at all, votes are seen as things useful to sell for a bit more income and so on.
So what happens if all those people simply move to another country? Does their culture change overnight? And if not, what makes The Economist so sure that the bad administration and poverty those people were trying to escape won't just follow them to the west?
This problem is not theoretical or simply scaremongering. The sad tale of Lutfur Rahman is a warning sign of what can go wrong when large numbers of people settle in the west from parts of the world where western values are not well established - they don't simply change overnight and instead western political systems start to look like third world countries too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutfur_Rahman_(politician)#Cor...