A world of free movement would be $78T richer - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of-free-movement-would-be-78-trillion-richer <comment> temp-dude-87844 Open borders will, at first, cause downward pressure on wages, as the labor pool of workers able and willing to perform work for a lower price grows. The magnitude would be more pronounced than with what we've been currently able to observe with controlled borders, because the article proposes a scenario where welfare and public assistance would readily apply to newcomers too. In fact, there would be a growth in the lucrative industry of coyotes who offer transportation and relocation assistance, because their line of work would now be legitimate.

Increased demand for housing will cause costs to spike, which means that those most willing and able to pay larger amounts will live where they wish, and everyone else will be relegated to far outskirts, including nonimmigrants whose incomes fall further behind cost of living. In this scheme, generous profits will be made by landowners of high-demand locations, and shareholders of corporations who can take advantage of the influx of labor and the expanded customer base. It's not too different from our world's current direction, except within a particular state, the absolute numbers of the wage class and the underclass would be much larger.

<comment><USER2> If this was true, then US being the biggest immigrant-friendly country in the world, would do so in a heartbeat. But neither the government nor corporations are advocating this. America currently has the biggest economy in the world, an average of $58,000 income, a low 3.9% unemployment rate while enjoying GDP growth rate of close to 5% in Q2, as well as close to 220,000 new jobs every month, and growth in wage increases. In some areas (like silicon valley), employees are offered 200k-300k salaries. It got to here by having a strong republic/democracy and rules and laws, support technologies in public and private sectors, limit immigration to skill-based, and recently choosing to lower corporate tax rate and reduce corporation regulations.

<comment><USER3> How does the rosiness of this assessment jive with the UN's report that 40 million Americans live in poverty? Perhaps they are an ancillary component of such a Republic?

<comment><USER2> if we look at this

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage_of_population_living_in_poverty)

it would appear US is in similar leagues with Canada, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, etc, of having close to 0-1% in poverty. Check out the other countries in Asia or Africa if you really think America has it bad.

<comment><USER4> Theres only ~300 million people in the us, so the gp's source is claiming something like 10% poverty

Something's clearly misaligned with the definition of poverty between your sources; you're differing by an order of magnitude

<comment><USER5> That's a huge difference. I assume different sources did use quite different measures:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty#Measuring_poverty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty#Measuring_poverty)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A world of free movement will not have a single welfare state.

Even after decades, and generations, immigrants from certain regions have absolutely abysmal rates of employment in more developed countries they have settled in. How would an even larger scale of immigration flip the trend we can already witness, a complete 180 degrees? Many seem completely content on living on benefits alone, or fully unable to find employment with the skill set they have gathered, even when they have born in the country where the natives fare much better. The way I see it, the money that is being spent on these people could be spent with a far better interest elsewhere.

78 trillion, truly, is a fantasy pulled from a behind.

<comment><USER7> I don't know where you got your information from. It's half true. No, immigrants do not have abysmal rates of employment. The unemployment rate for foreign-born persons in the United States was 4.1 percent in 2017 compared to 4.4 percent for native-born persons (Dept of Labor, Labor Force Characteristics of Foreign-born Workers Summary). Immigrants do use more entitlement than native-borns, but that's because immigrants tend to have more children. Given how low the fertility rate for native-borns is, the entitlement that immigrants use to bring up their children probably pays itself off once the children grow up and contribute to the economy.

<comment><USER8> > No, immigrants do not have abysmal rates of employment

I think it depends on the specific form of migration to that country. For example the USA or Switzerland have very high skilled people coming to their country. In Germany too, but there was and is also a large influx of very uneducated migrants. Currently 55% of all welfare recipients in Germany are people with a migration background which shows that the opportunities/capabilities are not equal.

I do think though that welfare can still work with free movement, it is just that there would need to be a similar level in all/many countries.

<comment><USER9> Most immigration into USA is through the family track rather than the skilled worker track.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >"A world of free movement would be $78 trillion richer"

...A world where everyone's mother is a prostitute would be considerably more economically active.

Its a shame the economy is seen as a end rather than a means.

<comment><USER11> ^^^^^^

I would also like to ask to whom would the majority of that increase in wealth go? I would argue it wouldn't be to the people doing the moving. It would be to the people driving them to move.

<comment><USER12> Supposing this is true, does it matter, if the overall size of the pie increases? Isn't everyone better off? Would you rather the poor stay poor so that the rich don't get richer?

<comment><USER11> I think all you have to do is look at modern American income disparity in the United States over the last 50 or so years and you have your answer. Sure, the poorest did become moderately better off financially in terms of wages. Yet did there quality of life increase? I would argue that the size of the pie is irrelevant past the point of what is required for basic survival. What truely matters is the relative size of the pieces. Especially in a country where we have equated money with speech.

<comment><USER13> > Yet did there quality of life increase?

You seriously think poor people's quality of life hasn't increased in the last 50 years?

Go drive around "working poor" neighborhoods right after Christmas and see how many huge flat-screen TV boxes are curbside waiting for "big trash day" (small hint: a lot) or see how many people _don 't_ have smartphones.

I would argue that Wallyworld did more to bring up the standard of living for poor people than the last 50 years of social engineering but I know how much people like the downmod button...

<comment><USER11> I think you confuse the proliferation of techno-toys with quality of life. The same could be said of the proliferation of radio, automobiles, etc.

<comment><USER13> If they have the disposable income to purchase "techno-toys" then obviously they have the means to support their basic needs.

I'm actually curious what quality of life metric you're judging by that's declined in the last 50 years?

<comment><USER14> The cost of huge flat-screen TVs has plummeted. Meanwhile, the cost of housing and healthcare is going through the roof in most of the western world. It very much does not follow that people who have the disposable income to purchase techno-toys can support their basic needs.

<comment><USER13> The cost of _most things_ has plummeted since 50 years ago which, arguably, improves people's lives.

And, btw, I wasn't proposing some new measure of Quality of Life through the size of the living room TV but using it as an illustrative example of technology becoming more accessible to more people at lower costs. Same with the smartphone reference, having the sum total of human knowledge at your fingertips seems like a quick and easy way to improve one's lot in life.

I do wonder if people would complain if Walmart managed to decrease housing and healthcare costs using their aggressive bargaining tactics like they've done with generic prescription drugs?

\--edit--

Forgot a requisite huffpo link praising Walmart for prescription drugs prices (whoops, wrong link the first time around) --> [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-a-london/a-way-to- save-b...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-a-london/a-way-to-save- billions-an_b_189729.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This an interesting article because it reframes current immigration discussions from humanitarian issues to economic ones.

I'd like to see more modelling on wage depression to see why this wouldn't have a widespread negative impact.

Additionally this seems like a weird point:

>Unskilled migrants care for babies or the elderly, thus freeing the native- born to do more lucrative work.

If lucrative work were available, wouldn't native-borns already be doing it?

<comment><USER16> Have you tried getting adequate and affordable child care? Fortunately our kids don't need it any more.

It hugely restricts available options. Either from hours available, lengthy waiting lists or simply finding that after paying childcare work is no longer making economic sense.

<comment><USER17> Proper child care means a high level of interaction with well-educated people who speak crisply perfect English.

For the child, this is a time when they are developing language and cultural habits that will have a lifelong impact, ultimately impacting the quality of their employment and spouse. Immigrants will not provide that. It's hard enough finding non-immigrants who can provide it.

<comment><USER18> >with well-educated people who speak crisply perfect English

Source? Personally, i'd rather my kid have an immigrant baby sitter speaking and teaching my child in their native language. Plenty of studies around long term intelligence of children learning second languages early on....

<comment><USER19> > Plenty of studies around long term intelligence of children learning second > languages early on....

This in itself may be a myth:

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debate-rages- over...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debate-rages-over-whether- speaking-a-second-language-improves-cognition/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >If the worry is that immigrants will outvote the locals and impose an uncongenial government on them, one solution would be not to let immigrants vote—for five years, ten years or even a lifetime.

This is actually an interesting idea worth thinking about more. If the concern for those on the right is that more immigrants to the US would cause a permanent electoral Blue Wall by flipping Texas in a couple election cycles, and those on the left see economic migration through a humanitarian lens, then re-thinking what Citizenship means and the rules for participating in a democracy could be on the table as part of a compromise. I imagine a sizable percentage predicate their reason on wanting to come to the United States on earning money, not voting in elections (though I could be wrong, but I don't think I am and I doubt this question gets asked to newcomers). The natural reaction to such a proposal would be that we'd be creating tiers of citizens (Native Born vs Full Citizens vs residents or something along those lines). I don't have a problem with that, per se, but I can see how a lot of people would.

<comment><USER21> No taxation without representation is a huge part of the culture of the US. I'm guessing suggesting open immigration without voting rights will have a large amount of detractors for this reason. Unless the immigrants aren't taxed, which is kind of the current situation anyway for illegal immigrants.

<comment><USER9> First of all, the system as described in the article is already effectively in place: once you get your green card, you have to wait 5 years (3 if it's through marriage) before you can naturalize. In that time - or more, if you don't apply immediately - you pay taxes etc, but you cannot vote.

It's even more amusing with non-citizens who aren't green card holders, because not only they still pay all the taxes, but they're denied most of the benefits those taxes fund (so e.g. you still pay social security on your wages, but you don't get to actually claim any payments when a citizen could).

So I don't think there's any insurmountable political obstacle here.

But even beyond that, "taxation without representation", as originally used, didn't actually mean voting rights per se. The complaint, rather, was the lack of anyone specifically representing the interests of the colonies, because they were basically arbitrarily assigned to districts in Britain proper for the purposes of parliamentary election. So not only colonials didn't vote, but their MP would typically never even set foot on the territory he supposedly represented... which is why it was pointed out that it's not really representation.

However, representation was not equated to vote - keep in mind that the original franchise wasn't even universal among white males. However, those that couldn't vote were still deemed to be represented, on the basis that they lived in the same district as the voters.

Even today this principle still applies: while only citizens vote, the number of congressional seats, electors etc is calculated on the basis of the entire state population as of the last census, which doesn't distinguish citizens and non-citizens. So areas with large non-naturalized immigrant populations effectively award more voting powers to their resident citizens to "represent" the rest of the district. And this practice was explicitly blessed as valid by the Supreme Court in Evenwel v. Abbott.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This would be a very shitty world to live in unless you were very rich.

It's efficient because it reduces the bargining power of labour to nothing, and those that gain are the owners of capital. With no bargining power, benefits will disappear and everyone will be non permanent except those in very secure positions or in very specialist jobs.

People will no longer have a home - a place to belong, they'll either break up families with parents working on other countries, or children will endure an existence of jumping from place to place eroding the chance for normal development.

Society will be broken and the ability to self organise to build political movements will evaporate.

This will not be a nice world to live in for 99.9pc of the population.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not entirely sold on the idea of cramming the vast majority of the world's population into the subset of countries that are relatively wealthy and well- run. In practice, the cramming continues within those countries into the most favoured cities.

If we are thinking of pie-in-the-sky ideas like open borders, then why also try to think of a way to spread good government and wealth across all parts of the world? I.e., spread the best practices so they become universal.

Some ideas in the past, like Europe colonising and controlling much of the world, are obviously out of fashion today. Yet ironically many people have voted with their feet (or would like to, if given the opportunity) and moved to Europe.

<comment><USER24> I like the idea of open borders, guaranteed basic income (only for citizens), getting rid of income taxes, making all citizens pay a national sales tax instead (gbi would offset some of this), having a national id (with id you save 10-15% on sales tax without you pay a lot more, say 4-5% for citizens, 15-20% for migrants/travelers from abroad). -- This would make immigrants legal or not pay 3x the taxes, and I think a lot more people would be fine with that.

Sales tax would be more of a consumption/outbound tax -- all outbound expenses would be taxed if you buy or pay anyone it's taxed on payers side. So example a company pays wages they pay a sales tax on the wage, they buy office supplies, pay dividend to shareholders, pay ceo a bonus or golden parachute, buy land, etc... People would be taxed for paying rent, buying food, buying houses, buying land, etc.. on the purchase/exchange of money.

GBI would paid out to all citizens and sales tax could be adjusted yearly to balance the budget if there's a surplus/deficit from previous year.

Welfare/IRS can be dismantled completely and everything automated via technology. Saving billions. We'd need a lot less accountants, and tax workers. Tax software for consumers wouldn't be needed, etc.. It'd shore up a glut of industry we don't need.

<comment><USER23> As an immigrant I feel sufficiently discriminated against already: pay the same tax rates as anybody else, but ineligible for various government benefits and unable to vote. All because of a technicality: I don't have a parent born in the country I live in.

<comment><USER24> But you'd never have to fear being kicked out or deported, I think that would be better at this juncture in history than having a higher tax rate.

GOP'ers claim they hate immigrants because they don't pay their fair share, or will take their jobs. If they paid more than their share of taxes then it would get rid of that entire argument, and is the basis for my idea.

There could be tiers perhaps.. Citizen, ALmost a Citizen, Visiting w/ Work Visa temporarily, No documentation. W/ the last segment having the highest tax bracket. I mean no offense, but you'd then just need to choose does living in America = worth it by paying the extra taxes. At least you wouldn't be pushed out..

Maybe they could have another level Not-citizen but has voting privileges (of course that might come with a higher tax bracket in exchange for the privilege to vote..this would be up for debate obviously... ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As this sort of thinking becomes more and more popular, I wonder how close to some kind of singularity we truly are. If the people of the world are really so eager to transform the planet into a single global monoculture, then some sort of technology-driven unification of all human consciousness can't be too far off. Me, I personally like a world of true diversity, where people of different physical regions are allowed to have unique local cultures.

Complete and total globalization of everything on the planet (and perhaps beyond) might be inevitable, but I don't trust the people who are trying to make it happen right now to have any common peoples' best interests in mind, because I'm not naive to human nature (plus I've read up on them).

<comment><USER26> > Me, I personally like a world of true diversity, where people of different > physical regions are allowed to have unique local cultures.

I think free movement is likely to amplify culture, not mute it. Right now I have to go through tons of hoops to live in Taiwan. The culture is precisely my aesthetic. I've spent untold hours studying the language. There are lots of Taiwanese-culturally-minded Americans and Dutch and South Africans who don't feel at home in their birth culture. Making it a big hassle for them to live in a culture that reflects their values just smears out culturally-Taiwanese across those countries.

<comment><USER25> Surely the hoops you have to go through to live in Taiwan despite not being a native prevent the country from being overrun by people who are culturally incompatible with the local populace? It sucks you have to go through hoops and can't just fly there and move in tomorrow I guess, but in a world where you could do that, so could I, and I can't speak any Chinese or Taiwanese, I don't know anything about their culture, and my only connection to the country is an aunt who married into the family. What if a bunch of people like myself moved there suddenly for some random reason, and the local culture was essentially eradicated as we altered it to suit our desires? with global open borders, this sort of thing would happen constantly, all over the place, and with the advent of the Internet, most of culture would merge into even more of a ubiquitous monoculture than the world already is.

<comment><USER26> I suspect you underestimate how massively disruptive it is to move to another country, particularly one that doesn't speak any language that you speak. Maybe America would pick up a lot of random people, being huge and wealthy, but everywhere else, I would seriously doubt it would get this kind of drive- by immigration you imagine.

<comment><USER25> Do you have any evidence to back any of that up? Personally I'm seeing a lot of mass migration across the world--not all of it wanted by the citizens of the countries being migrated to--right now, even without globally open borders. Why would having globally open borders do anything but increase this rate?

It's also interesting that you think globally open borders would only affect the culture of America, but you're okay with that, presumably because whatever Americans consider to be their culture currently is meaningless in your eyes compared to the glorious no-nations-no-borders future world you envision, which conveniently has no negative consequences and is only a positive thing for everyone (except Americans who like their country and culture more or less the way it is now but eh tough luck for them I guess)

<comment><USER9> There are some numbers right there in the article about that, including some examples with open borders (e.g. within EU).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am ok with selective immigration. But open borders is truly crazy idea at this point. If we open borders like suggested next thing we know will be - developed countries becoming like garbage dumps we see in other countries. There is a reason why some countires fall into downward spirals. If u get its people en mass without filters, you get that mentality too.

Why dont we experiment in smaller scale with liberal companies like facebook/google/microsoft opening its employment where anyone from anywhere can come and say i want to be employed here and goog/fb/msft have to take them in? Lets even throw in a restriction that person should be cs degree holder from anywhere in the world. Lets see how it goes.

<comment><USER28> You can have open borders or a good social safety net. Pick one.

<comment><USER29> Explain please? Immigrants pay into safety nets just like anyone else who pays into them.

<comment><USER30> If 10 million poor people with no employable skillsets move into Europe, they would be withdrawing vastly more from the tax pool than they would be putting into it. People who do not contribute to production would just move wherever the local government will give residents the most resources.

<comment><USER29> > If

 _If_ , yes. All this is conditioned on your racism that tells you that all foreigners are uneducated (and uneducatable)/lazy/freeloaders.

In addition, all of the tax money paid out would immediately be spent by these alleged freeloaders on meeting their needs for food etc., so it would flow back to producers of useful stuff and a lot of it come back as taxes.

<comment><USER28> That's not a racist 'If'. There's a massive backlog of unskilled rejected immigrants from poor countries that would be way better off living on the US social system than the one in the country they originate from.

Immigrants aren't magic, the ones that want to leave the most to come to the US are the ones from countries with bad education systems and bad social safety nets. Why would someone leave a good social safety net for a worse one?

>In addition, all of the tax money paid out would immediately be spent by these alleged freeloaders on meeting their needs for food etc., so it would flow back to producers of useful stuff and a lot of it come back as taxes

Except for all of the loss incurred by the things they consume. The only thing that comes back in taxes is a fraction of the profit on whatever they consumed.

Unless someone is producing more economic value than they consume, they are a net loss on the whole economy. There is a limit to how many people like this an economy can support before it will collapse.

It's just another insurance market like any other. The premiums coming in (tax rev) have to be more than the payouts (safety nets).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One could argue that this was tried on a micro scale with the EU. While there is an argument to be made that it did bring some economic growth but nothing near as close to the growth advertised by the economist.

<comment><USER32> How would you feel about all states in the US instituting their own immigration controls? Would there be a negative effect on the US economy if moving from New Jersey to New York required lengthy visa applications and waits for green cards?

<comment><USER33> Fewer than you'd think. New York and California would be places you could actually live in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> One area's net immigration is another area's brain drain.

Look around your own country and ask if the movement to the richer areas has helped the areas the people come from, or the _all_ the people that were there in the first place or even really those that did the moving.

We keep recreating the slums of 1840s Manchester with every cycle and still we never learn.

Never take open borders arguments from anybody with a lock on their front door. Free movement is essentially the privatisation of borders for the benefit of the rich. You can have a border if you can afford to purchase enough land, put a fence up and hire the heavies to keep the riffraff out. Everybody else gets to fight it out in the mud pool.

<comment><USER35> Equating someone moving to the town you live in (wherever they come from) and breaking into your home is disingenuous and childish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> 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:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutfur_Rahman_(politician)#Cor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutfur_Rahman_\(politician\)#Corruption)

<comment><USER37> 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?

<comment><USER36> 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).

<comment><USER37> 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.

<comment><USER36> Yes, immigrants obviously can and do adapt to their host culture and it happens often, perhaps most of the time (I don't know of stats on that).

But what causes this, and what's the "absorption rate"? With no migration controls at all, could such absorption be overwhelmed and cease working?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> ahh yes, open the borders and import every type of third worlder into western countries for the sake of profiting over cheap labor... Let us forget about the clash in cultures, and how unrestricted immigration leaves the native population in a worse off state by rising housing prices, demographic replacement and stagnant wages. I have experienced first hand the effects of such policies here in California. This article is the equivalent of selling your lung to afford a kidney.

Also as a side note, Why is it that more developed nations have to find solutions for failed states by re-homing the population which voted for those same policies instead of leaving them to fight and improve the conditions in their own countries. Absolute globalist non sense.

<comment><USER39> > Why is it that more developed nations have to find solutions for failed > states by re-homing the population which voted for those same policies > instead of leaving them to fight and improve the conditions in their own > countries.

Because developed nations have a vested interest in keeping international peace where possible as it is good for trade and national security.

You're also assuming every country is a fair democracy, and that they can resolve issues without international support.

Remember that every developed country (including your own) has only been able to develop by leveraging cheaper labour and goods from 3rd world countries over the past 300 years, we are all very closely linked, whether you like it or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This article (and the comments) seem to focus on migration from poorer to more developed areas.

But what if people could migrate from the developed world to resource rich regions (like Africa and South America) and have the chance to unlock the potential of those regions? All that potential wealth which is currently held back by corrupt governments and non-progressive cultural habits could be unlocked.

Wait, that happened before and was called colonialism and wasn't good for the natives. But neither is uncontrolled inflow of third worlders into industrialized nations. Is growing global wealth more important than effects on local populations?

<comment><USER27> Well i hear sometimes that india was better off under imperial rule than now. There was better rule of law. I guess india should have waited another 50-100 years for independence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This article was kind of a roller coaster for me, I was like "no screw that, that'll screw all sorts of things up" then it had all these fairly reasonable proposals for minimizing the impacts and I was ok with it.

>This, they fear, would make life worse, and perhaps threaten the political system that made their country worth moving to in the first place.

The latter part of that sentence is of key importance. Ask the people of Denver what they think of migrants from CA, ask Mainers what they think of the Massholes and the way those groups have affected their society (comically, most Mainers would rather have more poor Somalis than MA migrants). It's really easy to say "well it wasn't that bad" as an outsider 50yr or 100yr after the fact but for the people who have to live through it these changes really suck.

>for five years, ten years or even a lifetime. This may seem harsh, but it is far kinder than not letting them in.

I support this so, so, so, much. So many cultural problems caused by migration would be solved if when moving somewhere your vote counted as 1/X and increased to 1/1 over some period of time. This should apply to citizens too. If I move to the next town over my vote should count at 1/X in town elections but still count as what it previously did in state/federal elections

As an aside, I thought this was going to be a piece about the cost to the economy of transportation and physical distance but I was disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER42> Utterly ridiculous rubbish.

The reason why Mexican immigrants make more money as mentioned in the article in the US would be erased under open borders. It would be a race to the bottom, globally.

<comment><USER43> Race to the bottom is what makes a progress.

Would you prefer to work a month to be able to afford a shirt, like it was just a few centuries before? Or do you prefer when "race to the bottom" made the cost of the same shirt into a few hours of work?

<comment><USER42> That's automation, not immigration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> "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. Those who cut hair find richer clients who tip better."

Like hell they do.

In the first two scenarios, the hypothetical worker is almost certainly not qualified to be operating any sort of heavy machinery. In the third, stylists/barbers tend to require certification.

I'm sure this paragraph wasn't meant to be taken literally, but it does nonetheless betray a gross underestimation of the costs of actually training someone to be an effective and safe worker in a new, more technologically- driven environment.

</comment><comment><USER45> One thing open borders would completely destroy would be the social safety net of many countries. Let's say there is completely open borders between Sweden and the United States. Sweden has high taxes and an significant social safety net. The United States has low taxes and a non-existent safety net. Over time, people who pay a lot of taxes migrate from Sweden to the United States. People from the United States who are unable to work for whatever reason, migrate to Sweden.

This would also affect government. You either end up with a large underclass that doesn't have voting rights (see Qatar for example) or else they have voting rights and the laws of the receiving country change to reflect the culture of the immigrants.

<comment><USER46> >People from the United States who are unable to work for whatever reason, migrate to Sweden.

I think you're overestimating the number of Americans who would have the means to do so, despite not having an income.

<comment><USER47> They would get the "means" in their destination country through welfare. That's the entire point.

<comment><USER46> But they wouldn't already _have_ the means, unless welfare was somehow globally distributed and universal.

Which would be a qualitatively better situation for everyone, so I don't see the problem in that case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> $78T for 8G humans are roughly $10,000 per person.

If this is per month then its an interesting idea. But if this is per year then there is no incentive for the Western citizens to open their borders. Average income is about $30,000 per year right now. If the job market is flooded with workers then there is no way that people will keep on earning that much. Additionally, the housing market will explode and people who rent their homes will have to move.

I wouldn't be surprised if opening all borders would lead to even bigger gains. After all, China's source of income is their huge pool of workers. But I don't think that $78T profits are a good argument to convince the West to open its borders.

<comment><USER49> The housing market would be fine if people were allowed to build housing on their own land without an extremely expensive and onerous zoning process driven by those with a vested interest in expensive housing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What if instead of open borders, there were no borders.

What if the entire world (democratic regions at least) sign some sort of pact, each city-state gets 1 vote. Each state is taxed x amount to preserve an international military force that's goal is to thwart axis-type powers that might arise, but needs a 60%+ vote from city states.

Maybe an ai of some sort could decide the size/scope of region that equates to fair city-states. -- Travel between cities/states would be open as long as you don't mean harm to the area. Cities/states could set their own solutions to problems like healthcare, drugs, basic income, jobs, etc...

I think large governments like USA/Canada/EU/China create represive regimes, smaller self-governed entities could run things better locally, and still have open communications/trade/etc with nearby states/cities. It would also be less-prone to corruption as you'd need to pay thousands more politicians (ones in each locality) instead of just in D.C.

Personally, I'd love to start a blockchain/identity project to create a universal basic income with fool-proof/sybil-attack proof identity system, making fiat currencies un-needed and creating one-world blockchain-based currency, that helps alleviate pain caused by automation. I think a monetary system like this could take away some of the power and corruption from government.

</comment><comment><USER50> At least they use "Potentially" in the subtitle, sheesh.

"If we had open borders we'd be $X trillion richer" is silly. It makes the huge assumption that institutions would stay the same, or inexplicably trend better everywhere, instead of worse. There is no thesis for why this is so, it is hand-waved here.

> Suddenly, they can join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms > and a predictable legal system.

This should prompt some navel gazing about:

* Why some countries succeed in building institutions and what is different about them.

* Why some countries used to have good institutions and now have dysfunctional ones. (Like say, Argentina, Lebanon, etc)

They might even learn something about why free movement isn't common.

> A Nigerian in the United States cannot be enslaved by the Islamists of Boko > Haram.

The author has almost figured it out.

> If lots of people migrated from war-torn Syria, gangster-plagued Guatemala > or chaotic Congo, would they bring mayhem with them? It is an understandable > fear (and one that anti-immigrant politicians play on), but there is little > besides conjecture and anecdotal evidence to support it.

Okay, he hasn't quite.

The planet is awash with dysfunctional institutions clawing away at function and semi-functional ones. Just going off of his Boko Haram example, the South Thailand Islamic insurgency is 13 years and counting of fighting from Muslim separatists. The Myanmar Islamic insurgency has been going on for 70 years and counting. The Somali civil war has been ongoing for my whole life, the Nigerian insurgencies over the years are numerous and ongoing, boko is just a continuation. I'm sure you know the story of other countries, weary reader.

So why isn't the thesis "A world of free movement would spawn a new era of separatists"? Crazy, yes, but at least we have some precedent for it as a nonsense headline.

No discussion of why nations differ in institutional quality is one thing, but no explanation of why the good-institution countries wouldn't degrade is another. As Taleb says, Economists don't seem to understand things that move.

<comment>

A little tangential, but one of the things I think is under-discussed, is what happens to the places where people mass migrate from.

Recently there has been _massive_ brain drain from Southern & Eastern Europe to West: _Half_ of Romania's doctors left between 2009 and 2015: [http://www.politico.eu/article/doctors-nurses-migration- heal...](http://www.politico.eu/article/doctors-nurses-migration-health-care- crisis-workers-follow-the-money-european-commission-data/)

In Venezuela, 40% of recent medical school graduates have left. Medicine shortage + lack of physicians = countrywide health crisis: [https://panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2017/12/12/venezuela- he...](https://panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2017/12/12/venezuela-health- crisis-medical-graduates/)

Other countries, like Lebanon after its civil war, are similar. Syria might end up similarly, I don't know.

It is hard to fault people moving en masse for a better life, but it further solidifies that the places they leave behind will continue to be governed by the looney bin for the decades to come. I wish there was a more thinking about solutions to this problem, and less glee at the capital class counting chips over the obverse.

<comment><USER51> > _Why some countries used to have good institutions and now have > dysfunctional ones. (Like say, Argentina, Lebanon, etc)_

I believe the answer for Argentina is "right-wing US support of right-wing death squads because of a fear of communism" and for Lebanon is "The pro- Western president of Lebanon requested American military intervention against internal opposition, which the US was happy to do because of a fear of communism", right?

<comment><USER50> Around the early 1900's Argentina was the 10th(?) richest country in the world. Wiki:

> In 1913, the country's income per head was on a par with that of France and > Germany, and far ahead of Italy's or Spain's.

Several bad government decisions changed that. No US support was needed to knock it off the list into a dizzying number of defaults.

The first Infamous Decade needed no help from the US.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infamous_Decade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infamous_Decade)

(edited with more accurate dates)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is a idealistic thought experiment, but Europe is still reeling from the the Syrian refugee crisis and that is just one small country. Throwing open boarders when there's differential welfare systems would be chaos. The world wouldn't be $78T richer, it would be $78T poorer because it would lead to widespread civil war. Even if the author was right about the economic impacts she is discounting people's tolerance for change, especially is a country's conservative faction. For developed nations it would effectively be asking for forfiteture.

The author uses Greece as an example, but Greece has nowhere the poverty of much of the developing world (and that's a big number).

What incentive is there for the average middle class American to partake in such a grand experiment? Look at what happened when you introduced scarcity to an educated and industrious population after WW1. Mass genocide.

And let's not forget housing inflation in developed countries. Immigrants are not going to head to Reno, they're going to go to cities like NY, SF, LA, London—cities that they've heard about and where there are already large immigrant communities. Good luck adding another million people to NY over a three year period.

<comment><USER53> "The world wouldn't be $78T richer, it would be $78T poorer because it would lead to widespread civil war"

Nope, 90% of people would stay where they are. Most people don't like migrating: to uproot yourself and your family from the land, culture and language you love is a big deal and people only do it when the have no other choice.

<comment><USER52> Okay and what about the migration of the other 700m people with most frequent destinations being US and Europe from the bottom quartile of countries by GDP?

Mexico has 125m people and the US has around 12m illegal aliens. Let's generously assume that only half are from Mexico, that's 5% of the population that was willing to take the risk to live in the US illegally. Now create an open boarder? You'd have 10% of Mexico moving to the US tomorrow. It's human nature to want a better life and it's also human nature to want to protect the life one already has.

<comment><USER53> the USA was founded by migrants

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> It might be. But I am pretty sure that 90% of that will accrue richest 1% people or to those who work for them in important positions.

</comment><comment><USER55> Borders are, & have always been, fundamentally open, because it's a plain physical (biological) reality that H. sapiens is a resourceful, migratory species. Erection of walls and legions of petty border-guarding popinjays is no more than a can-kicking exercise, a waste of time & resources analogous to those squandered pretending that climate change requires little response. You either face physical reality, or exert tremendous material effort on crass denial. Story-based entities (cultures, businesses, nations) are necessary but in the end, they are only temporary tactical fictions. They supervene on physical reality and when they attempt to deny it, will be swept away.

</comment><comment><USER56> These are the same geniuses that were cheerleading financial deregulation before the crash. Before that, they were cheering liberalization of international capital flows before the asian crash. After, they were cheering austerity.

The economist is like an anti-oracle.

</comment><comment><USER57> Hate to say it but if you suddenly open borders you will have a huge immigration crisis. Half the planet would literally move to western europe and north america.

Maybe open border can work for trade and business related immigration with sponsors on either side.

<comment><USER27> I doubt it even works for trade. Full free trade has caused money flow to 3rd world countries at the cost of natives. China has policy of trading off ip for privilege of cheap manufacturing. So its growing in tech at the cost of west. What west gets in return in temporary cheap goods and must of 2$ crap toys which break.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Okay, take the people the OP is talking about, with spouse and children. Then look at their qualifications for work in the US. Look at their skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic, knowledge of English, US civics, etc. Some of the immigrants need training in bathing, using a toilet, and other basic hygiene. And there tend to be serious medical, including communicable disease, problems -- TB, measles, polio, GI parasites, etc. And look at job skills -- computer usage, basics of electricity in factories and on job sites, skills with important work place tools, etc.

The US has long had immigration criteria that ruled out such people.

Okay, now take a US citizen that on qualifications is a good match for such an immigrant and see what their job and career prospects are. As we know very, very well, they are unemployable or nearly so. Well, so will be the immigrant. The ability of the immigrant to get a job, have a career, and support themselves and their family is from poor to zero.

So, why do such immigrants want to come to the US? And how can they hope to make it?

First, the usual way has been the immigrants were young men who left their families, friends, villages behind and did common labor, e.g., picking fruit. They lived several to a room sleeping on a mat on the floor. They were here only the warmer parts of the year, not through the winters. They got paid in US cash with no deductions for taxes or US Social Security. Then at least for the winter, they went home and took their US cash with them. Due to currency value differences, their US cash would go really far back in their home village. Of course, that whole situation is wildly illegal, on taxes and more. A US citizen here for 12 months a year can't do that and support a family or even themselves.

Second, if the immigrant brings their family, with children, then the family and especially the children are one heck of a huge expense for the US education and welfare systems, paid for by US workers paying taxes.

More broadly the OP does poor accounting: Sure, there are a lot of people in the world who are, in US terms, not very productive. Some of these people are current US citizens, and the US is struggling to get those people trained, into jobs, and productive. The US has many dozens of job training programs. Those candidate immigrants are on average less well qualified than the millions of current US citizens struggling to be productive in the US economy. Where do the OP authors get the funny stuff they've been smoking to conclude that immigrants much less well qualified than millions of US citizens who are already struggling to get good jobs in the US will do better than those already struggling US citizens?

Or, if those immigrants are such a valuable, neglected resource, then, sure, take some US tools, supplies, know-how, etc. to some foreign countries and give the people there jobs. Chrysler tried that in Mexico and has decided that it was a mistake and are returning to Detroit.

Uh, apparently to make people as productive as in the US takes more than just some people and training for a job; also required are huge investments in _infrastructure_ from water and sewer, roads and bridges, suppliers and supplies, communications, regulations, laws, law enforcement, public health, medical care, citizenship, ..., the whole thing. The OP is being simplistic, straining over gnats and forgetting elephants.

IMHO, too many powerful people in US business see the immigrants as a new version of slave labor. In 1861, the US had a lot of slave labor and people who liked that situation; we fought a bloody war over that issue, killed IIRC 600,000+ US soldiers and maybe a comparable number of other US citizens. Net, slavery was a big mistake. Bringing back slavery will be a bigger mistake. The forces in favor of slavery have been strong for thousands of years and did not end in 1865 or so.

If the authors of the OP want to take some funds, rush to some country with lots of really poor people that are unproductive, set up some businesses, give those people jobs, training, etc., so be it. People have been trying that off and on around the world for a long time. We've long had international organizations for such development. Successes have not been anything like the claims of tens of trillions of dollars claimed in the OP.

So, the OP looks like really bad, simple economic and business arithmetic, so bad the OP does not look like economics. So, what really is the OP? Hmm .... For a candidate answer, consider the advice "Always look for the hidden agenda.".

</comment><comment><USER59> The world might be $78 trillion richer, but if current wealth distribution patterns hold up most of that will end up further enriching the rich.

</comment><comment><USER60> Closed borders is a form of discrimination. But if we open them and want to maintain our standard of living we'll have to make them second class citizens.

As the article argues, this is better than excluding them from our labour market.

But discrimination like designating people as 2nd class citizens is probably more repundant to people's sense of ethics than closed borders.

And perhaps these moral tabu's are not without importance. I'm not sure, but "closed borders" do seem worse than a 2nd class of citizens.

<comment><USER60> Okay, maybe this was ill phrased :)

My point is that the article argues that a "2nd class of citizen" is better than closed borders.

In many ways those arguments make sense. However, that doesn't make any of this feel better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Globalists only think in terms of profit and not of culture, tradition and the mental well-being of the average person. There are plenty of studies which show that homogeneous societies are happier, more trusting and more engaged in the political system as well as their fellow man.

Reducing people down to a line in a calculation of your bottom line is dehumanising.

[http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...](http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/)

</comment><comment><USER62> Of course that $78T will be mostly monopolized by the usual suspects but more is better no matter the circumstances!

</comment><comment><USER63> 78T of how much? Is it 50% of worlds GDP or 0.005%? I hate titles like this.

</comment><comment><USER64> after visiting 52 countries i came to the same conclusion, it is not like we are not implicitly sharing the space and all our physical objects with everyone else by proxy of the same space encapsulating them and their presence on one planet, nobody is taking their own personal lawnmower off the planet just yet... we are so indoctrinated that we fail to see that at the physical level everything is shared and everything is recycled if you look at the lifetime of any object. however in a system which has gateways at every speedbump the potential for a few actors to make big profits is so high that they resist anything else...

<comment><USER11> I don't know if I follow. Are you saying you've travelled to 52 different countries and found that they all exist on the same planet populated by a species devoid of interplanetary travel and that they have set up a system of artificial geographical barriers to control the distribution resources and movement of individuals of the species?

<comment><USER39> I think they are trying to say we're all basically the same across all countries, and all of these lines, boundaries and definitions are arbitrarily drawn by others in order to profit off our evolutionary tendency to work together as groups.

<comment><USER11> This seems to indicate that the borders themselves are an intensional form of profiteering. I see this more as the incremental and accidental process that takes advantage of the peculiarities of geography.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Richer? But will it be happier?

</comment><comment><USER66> Without paywall: [http://archive.is/CXzWM](http://archive.is/CXzWM)

<comment><USER67> Or just press ESC several times after the article is displayed and before the paywall popup.

<comment><USER68> Cool trick! Are there any other websites it works on?

<comment><USER69> Hitting ESC during pageload stops in-progress asset loading and (sometimes) javascript execution. That's why it works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Free movement will drive down wages and labor costs. Labor will lose value while capital will increase in value.

Combine this dynamic with our current world in which the gulf between a small elite class and everyone else is widening with the middle class in between deteriorating, and you have a recipe for disaster. The modern welfare state that exists in Europe and to a (much) lesser extent in the US would crumble from the stress of millions of new individuals flooding the economy at the low end and being stuck there because of economic dynamics beyond anyone's control.

Rather than importing the impoverished from poor nations to rich nations, we should be working together as a community of nations to establish law and order where there is lawlessness. Once law, order and in particular property rights are followed and enforced, wealth can and will grow as it has in places like China and Vietnam.

Encouraging freedom of movement will result in poor regions becoming even more destitute. As one of my wealthy friends from Pakistan lamented to me once when considering whether she should move to Canada or stay in Pakistan, "if people like myself flee Pakistan, who will stay to build it into a strong and prosperous nation?"

Overall, free movement would be a terrible idea for most people. This article does a really poor job of considering the issue.

</comment><comment><USER71> The immediate goal of everyone in this country should be to open the borders and open trade.

There is no excuse.

Borders serve no useful purpose in a globalized economy. Can you imagine how terrible it would be if the states had hard borders between them?

People act like having open borders mean invading marauders of foreigners, but did everyone from Ohio invade Maryland because of the open borders the states have? In reality, most people would stay where their family and relatives are.

"My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, sometime in the future with energy that's as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere." \- Hillary Clinton

Let's start by making annexing the states of Canada and Mexico into the US, and work other countries from there.

Do it.

<comment><USER34> Open borders without a transfer union leads to Greece and Italy. But when did evidential practice ever impact neoliberal economic theory

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Prior to reading the article, I'm struck by the thought of a possible analogy:

An internet with no firewalls and free, unauthenticated root access would be $78T richer.

<comment><USER72> FWIW, I read the article and found lots of hand-waving. Strong counter- examples came quickly to mind for most of it's claims.

It's saying pretty much the same thing as, "Think of how productive the world would be if there were no more crimes or wars! What if we stopped having police or armies!" Yup--that sure would be nice but I'm not going to hold my breath.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> ... but only about 1 million people would own these $78T. All the rest would share the costs of it.

</comment><comment><USER74> $78T, or, half of one Jeff Bezos.

Let's not pretend the majority of that wealth wouldn't accumulate in a small number of pockets.

<comment><USER75> A trillion is not a billion

$78 trillion = $78,000 billion (or many, many, many times Jeff Bezos)

<comment><USER76> > A trillion is not a billion

There is a way to get these mixed up: a mis-conflation of the short and long number scales, where a "billion" on the long scale is 10^12 (which, of course, on the short scale is called a "trillion"). If you're curious about this, I suggest you read Wikipedia's article about it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Tool to manage your dotfiles - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/robertdolca/dotfiles-manager

<comment><USER2> nice and simple tool :D GJ</comment>


Your Comments are Mostly a Waste of Time :) - <AUTHOR> http://www.futureofcommunities.com/2007/02/24/your-comments-are-mostly-a-waste-of-time/ <comment><USER2> Yes, I am wasting a lot of time at this site. However, I have also gotten some great advice for my situation - and who knows, I may also meet a co-founder(s) here!</comment>


Living Underwater with Jacques Cousteau - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/living-underwater-jacques-cousteau <comment> bjelkeman-again One of Jacques Cousteau's book, A World Without Sun, I think it was, was one of the most fascinating books I read as a young teenager. It made a huge impression on me. It made me believe a person with a vision and drive can make a difference.

</comment><comment><USER2> James Miller wrote a really informative book that includes the Continental Shelf stations along with others. Here's the reference:

Miller, James (1995). Living and Working in the Sea. Plymouth, VT: Five Corners Publications, Ltd. ISBN 1886699011.</comment>


User experience (UX) audit of iOS 8 for iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://uxchallenge.org/post/101193904067/ios-8-for-iphone

<comment><USER2> terrible. not worth reading. or commenting on. wait...</comment>


Orkut Bom Sabado Virus and How to prevent it - <AUTHOR> http://www.comptalks.com/orkut-bom-sabado-virus-and-how-to-prevent-it/

<comment><AUTHOR> must know about it ,your you can be hacked quite easily</comment>


The Julia Language: Case Studies in Economics, Aviation, 3D Printing - one-more-minute http://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/ <comment><AUTHOR> Website is coming along nicely :)</comment>


Ask HN: issues involved with implementing secure RESTful APIs - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I was curious about the issues involved with implementing a secure RESTful API over HTTP/HTTPS.  I have a passing knowledge of the issues (HTTP basic authorisation, API tokens, etc.), but I couldn't find any detailed literature on the subject, and I would like to be able to assist our clients in designing these systems from a more enlightened position than "I know slightly more than you."
Any explanations of API design decisions, or more thorough treatises on the topic would be greatly appreciated.  I'm also open to suggestions such as XML RPC/SOAP, etc.  I need as much knowledge as I can - dealing with client-designed APIs constitutes most of my work. <comment><USER2> RE: designing a set of reusable APIs, or APIs built in reusable components A lot of what results in a successful, security-conscious API stems from adherence and discipline to good development practices and thinking through your API. A few that have really helped me:

\- leverage the power of a suite of SCM/dev tools that match your work flow \- realign your work flow to include good development practices: scm such as hg/git, rst documentation with sphinx/etc, build and testing suites \- use a simple svg editor for diagraming (anyone can use inkscap) \- learn how to think of these abstract model-relationships spatially and relationally \- build new functionality out of tests that define your goals/intentions and the limitations imposed \- use automated tests at various levels, to ensure the above fits your design \- write code with the intention that it be reused, decouple sensibly \- understand that there is 'the right way' and 'just- another-hack', try to go 'the right way' as often as you can, you'd be surprised how much it saves you in the long run

Most web APIs could be broken up into a standard set of steps: \- initial authentication & authorization, note the difference between these steps, of request source \- validation & verification of request data \- processing & preparation of request/response data \- formatting of response \- response & backchannel communication

consider how your APIs can share common code, use APIs internally where it appropriate. decouple components. for example, your data processing components could function independently of the formatting of the input data, and which could be different from the response formatting itself. offer flexibility to your clients and support good development practices everywhere.

use white lists instead of black lists. "what is allowed" over "what is not allowed" as it easier to extend than patch. hack your system, bend it and break it, consider a vulnerability assessment application. consider your audiences and who would want to break your app, intentionally or not.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is nothing fundamentally different about a RESTful API compared to any other type of HTTP request.

Use SSL to encrypt all sensitive data during transit, and think carefully about the best authentication method for your circumstances: you could consider the use of OAuth2 so that developers can authenticate your users, without requiring the users to expose their credentials.

There are a few ideas here: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7551/best- practices-for-s...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7551/best-practices- for-securing-a-rest-api-web-service)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that. The ensuing discussion helped.</comment></comment>


How Does Germany Do It? - <AUTHOR> https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/manufacturing-processing/how-does-germany-do-it <comment><USER2> German unions, much like Japanese unions, take the good of the country into their wage negotiations. US unions engage in strike after strike, even if they are well paid. The end game for Detroit was written in the union halls, 75-80% of all UAW jobs were lost to imports (and automation) from the 1960's onwards.

<comment><USER3> Unions allowed Volkwagen in Germany to switch to a 4-day week (28h) 1995 to avoid layoffs. It was switch to 5 days (33h) again in 2006. I could imagine in a different environment (country) unions might have acted differently. [http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-01-04/news/1995004005_...](http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-01-04/news/1995004005_1_germany- vw-plan-wolfsburg)</comment></comment>


Why the NSA thing isn't keeping me up at night - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/c4e295f6e05b

<comment><USER2> An interesting perspective but here is the problem with it. Yes black people were overtly persecuted for a good portion of US history, however I would argue that because it was so overt and obvious and often underpinned by law, that ultimately led to its downfall. It was a visible and obvious wrong that a light could be shined on.

The problem with a secret programme is the govt can decide to target a group of individuals and you and I would have no idea it is happening. Those perhaps who have strong environmental feelings or perhaps gun owners, and with the advent of remote prison camps and extra-judicial courts presiding over individuals rendered from their country of origin the fact that in the past the government WAS overt about persecution should make people be more worried not less.</comment>


A multi-trillion dollar blockchain use case - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/syndication/2018/04/18/multi-trillion-dollar-blockchain-use-case/ <comment><USER2> Wonder why it would stop at businesses. What if every physical asset could be:

1\. co-owned by one or more people

2\. borrowed against

3\. leased long or short term.

and every digital assets could be the same but also could be forked(create a derivative of)

obviously there would need to be some kind of insurance and reputation around it.

And the loans were based on a % revenue streams So, there is minimal risk of loss just time the money is returned.

<comment><USER2> And you could get notified of items when things changed on them. Someones willing to take less money for their share of the equity, etc. You next on the usage queue.</comment></comment>


Creepy 3D-printed robot spider is here to help - <AUTHOR> http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2011/november/high-tech-spider.html

<comment><USER2> As an expert on creepy robots (<http://creepyrobots.tumblr.com>) i declare this to be less creepy than expected. if it worked they'd have a video, not a picture.

<comment><USER3> The captions on this site are most excellent.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. Sadly I haven't had the time to keep running with it. Maybe someday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can only wonder what sort of toys kids will be playing with once we have cheap 3D printers and everybody can do this.

I wonder if schools will have to ban robot spiders someday?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> FYI, Fraunhofer IPA is known for their robotic arms, e.g.:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdVzrSgt_Hc>

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there a video? Otherwise, what makes this interesting? And why is it creepier than any other plastic toy?

</comment><comment><USER6> Saw this and thought of the Replicators from Stargate SG1 :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Creepy? Actually I think it's sexy.

</comment><comment><USER8> I for one welcome our self-replicating Teutonic arachoid robot overlords</comment>


First case of malware in the Apple App Store. - <AUTHOR> http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208193641/Find_and_Call_Leak_and_Spam

<comment><USER2> I thought it was a measured analysis, and it was nice to see disassembled and decompiled code. But the last bit is strange: _'Creating' phrases with hexadecimal numbers is not new. And in many cases such things have been noticed in different malicious applications._

Many applications do that for sanity checks, I don't think it's any kind of indication of malware. It's a common technique to have some "magic number" that you can recognize to make it less likely that a transfer of data has some kind of corruption [1]. The benefit of using a number like 0xdeadbeef over, say, 0x1857de89 is that you can tell at a glance if the first one is correct.

[1] Yes, one should use error codes and do this the real way. Not everyone does.

<comment><USER3> > benefit of using a number like 0xdeadbeef over, say, 0x1857de89

I remember a blog post of someone who ran the whole dictionary through 'l337sp34k' filter. The best word they found was 0xdefeca7e.

<comment><USER4> There's some other fun spellings using "8" = "ate", like 0xdefec8ed and 0x8badf00d.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As far as malware goes, this isn't really that bad. (EDIT: it doesn't e.g. steal your credit card info [unless you keep that info in your contacts list])

It's simply an app that uploads your address book to a remote server. Up until recently, it was considered industry standard to do that.

The only thing this app does different is that the server then sends SMS messages to the numbers it uploads from your address book.

All this really is showing is that Apple should've made iOS from the beginning ask the user for permission before allowing an app to access the address book. After iOS 6, this app won't do anything.

<comment><USER6> I think you're downplaying this. The illegitimate use of the address book is being masked by a legitimate use - even if permission is asked for it will likely be granted. What is essentially impossible to control except through manual app verification processes (and very hard even then) is what is done with the data once the app has access to them.

As a total aside, if you are an AT&T customer you can just forward SMS spam to 7726 (SPAM) and they take care of it - I'm not affiliated with AT&T (just a customer) and I wish they would publicize this stuff more.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the information about reporting spam text messages, I had never heard about it. I just received some spam text the other day and ended up reporting it through the FCC, but reporting straight to your mobile operator on the phone is much nicer.

ceejayoz is right about Verizon also supporting this feature (I just reported the spam message I had from the other day). Via <https://community.verizonwireless.com/message/696743#696743> :

        From MikeS1_VZW

        We have heard our customers on this, and we have launched a new program
        to help with SPAM. Take one (or several) of the SPAM messages and
        forward it to 7726 (which spells SPAM). This is a new process. Once you
        forward the message to 7726, you will get a reply text message asking
        the identity of the SPAM sender (the "From" address in the SPAM message
        you received). Once received, you will get a "Thank-you" message from
        the 7726 number. We will investigate on the back end.

        The messages you send to and receive from the 7726 number are free of
        charge. This is a brand new program we are testing, and it just started
        on 09/1/11. Please make this common practice when receiving SPAM
        messages. This is not to be confused with alerts though. If you get
        alerts (something you signed up for), you should reply STOP to the
        message received before going the whole 7726 route.

<comment><USER8> Great info, but given that carriers are paid for every message I receive, I doubt their commitment to fighting text spam.

Here's what I want: a whitelist. If I want to add you to my whitelist, I put my phone into "receiving" mode. I get your text, confirm adding you, then go back into normal mode, where texts from anyone not on the list are rejected and I don't pay for them.

<comment><USER9> It would be nice if phones had an option to treat text messages differently if the number isn't in your phone book. I wouldn't care about text message spam so much if it went to a spam folder and didn't alert like a regular text message.

<comment><USER6> I think you just described how Facebook handles email...

But I agree with you for the most part a distinction between known senders and unknown senders would be great. The only exception to this that I can think of personally, is for things like the Google 2-factor auth messages which appear to be sent from random numbers (in addition to _being_ random numbers!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a good thing Facebook overwrote my entire contacts list with useless data, so apps like this can't affect me anymore.

<comment><USER11> Unless Facebook overwrote their phone numbers with 1-800-[friends name], this is a pointless argument and completely out of context.

Facebook's issue was email. This is phone number SMS.

<comment><USER10> (Yes, I am aware. It was a joke. iOS has many issues with its contact list.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article is total linkbait. They redefine "malware" to create a sensationalized headline. The article never mentions what the consumer facing features were suppose to be. It could have had a legitimate use, but also this privacy violating code. This is more properly an app that violates user privacy - which is not something new or particularly newsworthy - and not malware.

</comment><comment><USER13> First _known_ case.

</comment><comment><USER14> First _publicized_ case perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER15> It also shows problems with SMS in general:

\- How can a 3rd party send a message that appears to be from the user that ran the program?

\- Why can't someone have the same control over SMS as they can over email? (Filter based on trust, spam control)

I'd also be interested to know what sort of filtering is done by mobile operators. I'm guessing there is some, (based off of pacaro's comment), but do these features differ by operator? Is there a standard?

<comment><USER16> "- How can a 3rd party send a message that appears to be from the user that ran the program?"

Unfortunately this is just an issue of cid spoofing. Nothing new and carriers still let it happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> That was a really interesting analysis. A malware scam with a global reach. A phone designed in California, malware written in Russia or former soviet Republic, and Banking routed through Singapore. I gained a wealth of knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me of this gem from a few days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4156438>

I guess that's just one more reason to keep their marketing the new way.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is not the first case by a long shot.

</comment><comment><USER20> How does the server send SMS as if it came from the user? I've never heard of that ability before.

<comment><USER21> Spoofing sender in SMS is easy, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_spoofing>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd like to see a translation of the app store description.</comment>


Ask HN: Box vs. Dropbox - <AUTHOR> Dropbox seems to market itself as a more consumer friendly product, but I switched to Box last week, and experienced no issues at all as a consumer. There were no significant switching costs in terms of time or annoyance,  I just dragged and dropped all my files from one drive (or folder) to the other on my Mac. They magically synced across all my devices, just like Dropbox.<p>It's fair to say Dropbox had an early mover advantage in the consumer segment, but I can't seem to find anything special about Dropbox now compared to Box. I see a lot of articles out there touting Box as an enterprise focused company and Dropbox as a consumer first company but from consumer perspective, I see no tangible differences. In fact, Box is more enticing because it offers more free storage. What am I missing? Is it like the Cola market and I'm unable to tell the taste difference between Pepsi and Coke? <comment><USER2> Yep. Where I work at Box is the enterprise solution for sharing files externally.</comment>


WebGL water - <AUTHOR> http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/

<comment><USER2> Wow. This is about the 20th time I've seen this posted. :/

</comment><comment><USER3> To create waves twice as height of the ball, make the ball go at the speed of a wave.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is older than dinosaurs. Well not quite, but pretty close.

<comment><USER3> Copyright says 2011. 4 years old.</comment></comment>


Coal Is Now the World's Most Expensive Fossil Fuel - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-23/coal-is-world-s-most-expensive-fuel-after-oil-s-brutal-collapse <comment><USER2> Bloomberg's journalists should really start to consult their articles with some experts...

First of all, oil is still not cheaper than coal in terms of energy efficiency:

1 oil barrel is equal to 159 kilograms.

1 metric ton is equal to 1000 kilograms.

oil heat of combustion = 47 MJ/kg (optimistically)

coal heat of combustion = 25 MJ/kg

[https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and- figu...](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and-figures/heat- values-of-various-fuels.aspx)

coal price per metric ton from article = $66.85

oil price per barrel from article = $26.98

Which give us:

coal: 25 [MJ/kg] * 1000 [kg] = 25000 MJ / 66.85$ = 374 [MJ per $]

oil: 47 [MJ/kg] * 159 [kg] = 7473 [MJ] / $26.98 = 276 [MJ per $]

Secondly, we have regulations and limits on coal and some artificial anti free market regulations on renewable. So comparing it does not make any sense. You newer know what would be a price of renewable energy in total without these regulations.

Thirdly, as a homework please make a similar calculation for wood :)

<comment><USER3> In addition it seems that that the drop in oil prices is more from the massive drop in demand due to the coronavirus than the new flood of supply from Saudi Arabia. So if demand picks up oil prices will go up.

<comment><USER2> I totally agree. Additionally in times of crisis or recession coal price may also drop as all industry related materials.</comment></comment></comment>


Haveibeenpwned in terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/harmankang/breach-inspector <comment><USER2> Awesome that you've done this in bash! I did something similar for the terminal, but in python: [https://gitlab.com/roelofs/hibp- tools](https://gitlab.com/roelofs/hibp-tools)</comment>