Interesting point raised on LidlessEye- would Africa have been better off if empire had continued. The obvious answer is yes in some ways and no in others. Red Block would have provided arms for liberation wars. Such a war imploded the French Republic in 1958 and the Portuguese in 1974.
The more interesting question is that a half a century after decolonization began [Palestine, Syria, Lebanon,Egypt,Gold Coast, Indonesia, Indochina, South Asia] we are still in the same sterile debates on human rights, race, national dignity, national sovereignty, property rights, globalization, reparations...Meanwhile the rot continues to fester.
Basically it is no longer possible to effortlessly keep the 3rd and 4th worlders rotting in their failed states. Thanks to modern media they now know that there is BETTER out there. So they will vote with their feet and are doing so by the tens of millions. The not mutually exclusive choices are:
1. The First World becomes national security states - constant monitoring to eliminate illegals, black economy, money transfers. Abolish sin laws that need a cash economy. You make a fortress and machinegun refugees landing on the beaches. Unpleasant but possibble.
2. You allow labor mobility to match capital mobility. There are two variants on this. Born residents are only ones with rights - this preserves cultural cohesion but creates a two tier caste society which as HTG will quickly point out turns mostly on skin color. Alternately you let residence equal citizenship and preserve legal equality at the cost of imploding social cohesion and driving the living standards of the native born down to a least common denominator. Engineers in San Jose get paid $6K /yr. This is a cyberpunk reality where the holders of capital are everything. It is sociopolitically absurd but technically possible.
3. You take a Draka solution and exterminate the population of the lesser states. End of problem. Some might have moral objections. We have the power but would NOT like becoming this polity.
4. You make the failed states into protectorates. It CAN be done. Europe did it with the Club Med states and to some extent with Turkey. The US and Japan did so with East Asia. However it means junking globalization and it means real costs. The voters of the industrialized parts of the EU - Benelux, Germany, parts of France and Italy - found the costs better than risking a 3rd European civil war. So far no one has shown any interest.
The point is that no decision is a vote for some variant of #2. As a practical matter the first world lacks the hardness of heart for mass expulsions so the longer you wait the more people you will amnesty and the more relatives your new citizens will petition to bring in. Joshua and I have got maybe another decade. Those of you that are younger might think long and hard about the hole being dug for you.
posted by scott 12:15 PM