Can globalization be reversed?: Part II (migration)

Are you proposing open borders? Why won’t you just tell us straight out whether you’re proposing open borders?

In 3, 2, …

Perhaps not so much for the Antipodes, but for the Americas, or at least N. America, migrants not-infrequently intended to return home once they had made a large enough nest-egg to marry, buy a plot of land, or whatever.

This is right. My understanding is that, in the US, return migration was typically at least 1/3, often closer to 1/2, for much of the mid 19th and early 20th century. Relevantly, with migration from Mexico in the 2nd half of the 2oth century, the large majority was short-term circular migration, usually by young males doing different sorts of physical labor, usually staying less than two years. That changed with increased enforcement in the mid 80s and even more in the 90s, where the trip became more expensive, more dangerous, and generally harder, leading people to stay longer, be more likely to settle, and more likely to bring family to join them. So, the large growth in the unauthorized population in the US from the late 80s on is mostly a result of increased enforcement and the lack of legal ways to engage in the sort of circular labor migration that was otherwise desired. This, I think, fits with the general point of the post.

Rather than holding on to the ideal that every resident in Australia have exactly equal rights, consider reserving certain rights … to indigenous residents.

Note that in Australia “Indigenenous citizens” is normally only used for the traditional owners, and they already have special status (distinctly inferior, but still special). We also restrict “permanent residents” from many, many privileges of citizenship and there is absolutely no question that we would ever permit “every resident in Australia have exactly equal rights”. We’ve fought wars on the issue, and will do so again if need be.

While more liberal countries do permit foreigners to become citizens, we still make sharp distinctions between natives, born citizens, legal immigrants of various degrees, legal refugees and various types of illegal residents. We also distinguish between “good” illegal residents (generally white and from other rich countries) and “bad” ones (non-white or poor). There are even white Australians who thing aboriginal Australias should “go back where they came from” (by which they mean somewhere that’s not Australia).

Also, in response to Chris: Australia firmly believes in torturing refugees “pour encourager les autres”… which is criminal in a variety of ways as well as unethical, but it’s a practice that has wide support in Australia. To reinforce that point, we elect a variety of far right lunatics to our multitudinous parliaments. Seems like as soon as one fails to get re-elected we gain a worse replacement… Cardinal “Catholic Law trumps Secular Law” Abbott and Herr “Final Solution” Anning has gone but we still have Bob “Proud Boy” Katter.

I’m having a hard time seeing the quantitative argument here. Countries clearly differ dramatically in the rates at which they accept immigration; Japan, for example, is notoriously stingy with refugees.

Given the degree of control possible in the modern surveillance era, it seems pretty clear to me that nations could in fact enact pretty draconian restrictions on immigrants if they decided to, and that these could be extremely effective. Sanctions on employers, for instance; and that’s not even getting to dystopian China-style mass facial recognition technology.

I don’t want to live in the sort of society that these things would produce, but that’s a different statement from the claim that they can’t exist.

KC

I grew up in Malaysia, and if Chinese Malaysian are considered migrants (along with Indian Malaysians), then migrants make up close to 50% of Malaysia’s population.

Are they–and why should they be–considered migrants?

Having said that, I would also argue that no one should be expelled without due process, and children of migrants who are born in Australia should have the same rights as any indigenous resident.

But that’s not the policy in Malaysia, is it?

@
”Not buying it. The social costs of migration are far to high for a significant number of people to move around on a more permanent basis because they looked up a nice countryside on the internet or liked their erasmus university”

BUT then there is this:
EVEN
”a significant number of alcoholic xenophobes voting AFD are also adding to the diaspora somehwere on a Spanish Island”.

So yes, you can get a 10 Euro Ryanair Ticket and move to a Spanish Island, all legal within the EU and on a level of how much does it cost me to get there it is quite easy, but to make that a satisfactory life plan, things get so much more complicated”.

They do –
but anywhoo – Spain is full of British ”Expats” who (already) understood that –
Life in Spain is better than the Rain – and let’s not even talk about all of these Germans who are NOT permanently spend their winters in ”dirt cheap” turkey – and that’s the thing – it’s NOT ”the permanent migration” which is so… let’s call it ”effective” in turning ”the people into more ”openminded” Weltbürger – who ABSOLUTELY cab’t be stopped anymore!

It’s the temporary migration who absolutely can’t be stopped anymore!
-(and there is this great theory of a ”mathematical friend” of mine – who thinks that ”migrating just one month” to a ”foreign place” – might offer you the equivalent of one years bits of information – if you stay at home)?

Speaking for my part of the world, I’ve lived most of my life in northern Italy (Lombardy).

Here, since my high school day, the Lega party was one of the strongest parties locally. At the time, the Lega was mostly about secession of northern Italy from southern Italy.
The reason of this secessionism is mostly that northern Italy is way more industrialized than southern Italy, and therefore much richer; as a consequence, when all itlians pays their taxes, northeners tend to pay much more than southeners, but then when the government spends the money for services it tends to spend more in the south (per person), because of higer unemployment there, and because the south is more rural (that makes services more expensive).

So basically the Lega is the party of northeners that don’t want to fork money to the southeners, this is rather evident. It is also a party that is generally for low taxes and pro small business.

The Lega also generally mantained that sotherners were lazy bums, and that southern immigrant into northern Italy (we are speaking of internal migration here) stole the jobs of northern workers.

The Lega also gave a big importance to local culture and traditions, for example printing dictionaries of lombard dialects (that are on the way of extinction, due to internal migration of southeners into Lombardy), or collections of traditional Lombard folktales etc. (I have one that I think is really cool).

The Lega also worked very much on the creation of a sense of identity, posing the northeners as the “celtic” italians against the asshole roman invaders southern italians. This sounds very stupid because it is, however I can grant you that they really did. For example when I was around 20 I was in a live action roleplaying game association, and once we were part of a “celtic” fair that, I later learned, was sponsorized by the Lega as a way to show the true roots of Lombard culture (as you can quess their concept of true roots was quite elastic).

The historical boss of the Lega, Umberto Bossi, once said that there is a big cultural difference between northern italians, who are mitteleuropeans (his words) and souther italians, who are latins (or mediterraneans or something like it, I don’t remember the exact words).

Currently, though, the Lega won big by positioning itself as the pro-Italy party, against evil immigrants from one side, and uber-evil EU burocracies on the other. Salvini, current boss of the Lega, oftes speaks of “italians first”.

So, there are some questions that arise from this evident about-face, and from the fact that apparently voters are ok with it.

First question: how real is the cultural difference between southern italians and northern italians, and how much of this was BS to begin with? And what about the difference between immigrants of today and locals of today?

My opinion is that the cultural difference between northern italians and southern italians in part are real, but those differences are more like a continuum and, more importantly, became important only because they were politically activated: only when northern italians became pissed off by southern italian immigrants and by taxes to Rome (Roma ladrona, Rome the bandit), those differences became important.
So basically, there are many cultural differences and similarities between peoples, but in this chaotic mix only some differences are pinted out, depending mostly on economic and political interests.

This is the reason the Lega could easily (in the space of 2 years!) change from a northener secessionist party to apan-italian nationalist party:
because the economy changed, so different cultural differences became relevant, so people easily changed flag.

– At the time of Umberto Bossi, 20 years ago, he tought that northerners were mittel-europeans so he wanted secession, and for northern Italy (“Padania”) to become part of the EU, a bit like the Catalans. Thi happened because northern italian business was paying a lot in taxes to Rome, so he activated the cultural difference between northern italians and southern italians.

– At the present time of Matteo Salvini, the EU is enforcing fiscal discipline on Italy, so northern businesses dislike the EU and therefore they become italin nationalists against the EU (that is also forcing Italy to accept migrants, who wouldn’t absolutely exist if it wasn’t because of the EU, you see).

So honestly I don’t think that this whole idea that people are localists on principle and don’t want “different” people is true, I honestly think that it’s mostly BS cooked up to give an appearence of respectability to economic interests.

The second question: then what is the dominant economic interest underpinning so called populist right, of which the Lega is a part?

My opinion is this, that at the origin of this “localism” the main interst is that of businesses, mostly small businesses, who want to keep taxes low but also fear competition from multinationals. However, this doesn’t really explain why they are anti immigration, since small businesses are not particularly impeded by immigration.

But these small business guys, they almost naturally think in terms of being mooched by the state through taxes, they think that they are the only one producing stuff and that everyone is living on their shoulders, so they naturally develop a “moocher theory”, where they are the victims of poor people who abuse them through the power of the state. So they see also immigrants (who often are poorer than locals) as moochers, and they convince the local working class (or at least part of it) that thy too are mooched by the immigrants, and that if they didn’t have to pay taxes the workers too would have much higer wages, and there would be no unemployment.
The workers also have to think that they are not the beneficiaires of the redistribution caused by government taxes.

This is the actual root of anti-immigration sentiment, and the link between the idea of corrupt politicians (who are supposed to embezzle all the money so that taxation is theft) and the anti-immigrant idea, so much that at time populist right wingers arrive to the idea that corrupt lefties are calling in immigrants on purpose.

This is also the root of the idea that immigration makes the welfare state more expensive, that is a nonsese because the welfare state is payd for by taxes, and immigrants too pay taxes, and so do their employers.

Finally, I think this is also the root of the idea that immigration creates unemployment, because apparently some people cannot accept the idea that a large (if we think in terms of U6) level of unemployment is endemic in capitalism (this incidentially is also a problem for keynesian theories because they promise “full employment”, but this full employment will allways fall short of what people hope for).
_______

Conclusion: I don’t think that, in reality, anybody really gives a shit about actual levels of immigration. The reality is that a lot of people believe that they are losing ground (which is true), but they blame immigrant for this because of a very bad case of false consciousness, aka they don’t really know what they want.
Therefore the idea that immigration can or should be reversed is irrelevant: even if immigration is blocked or reversed rightwing populists will find something else to blame, it is something more similar to what Freud called a “remotion” than a real demand for lower immigration.

The framing of the question in the post seems a bit odd. Wanting immigration reversed or halted altogether probably makes you a fascist by definition and afaics is some way outside of the political reality anywhere I can think of. Significant reductions in the current flow do seem politically likely in many places and practically feasible, even if they entail inhumane and economically damaging consequences. Whether or not that really counts as ‘reversing globalisation’ is a semantic issue I guess.

“would” obviously misplaced. Oh for an edit function.

@16
”Speaking for my part of the world, I’ve lived most of my life in northern Italy (Lombardy).
and:
”The Lega also generally mantained that sotherners were lazy bums, and that southern immigrant into northern Italy (we are speaking of internal migration here) stole the jobs of northern workers”.

And this type of… let’s call it ”a… hole behaviour” keeps showing up when one moves form Verona -(as we did) to Germany or the UK or the US.
And as an Italian friends of us so well said:

It only changes when your ”sister” or ”brother” brings one of these ”job steelers” into ”the family” – as a new member – and then suddenly ”most” of the family members understand their… ”behaviour” and start to see the (migrating) world in a whole new… ”light”!

This is also the root of the idea that immigration makes the welfare state more expensive, that is a nonsese because the welfare state is payd for by taxes, and immigrants too pay taxes, and so do their employers.

The problem is that at present the welfare isn’t being properly paid for by taxes (because the money is being used for upward redistribution instead). Deliberate underfunding creates the impression of unsustainable demographic pressure.

@Stephen, 19.

I know an elderly Greek man who born in Alexandria, Egypt and he thinks Nasser, and Egyptians, had a point when after the ’56 British/French/Israeli invasion they brought to end the “good times” his fraction of society–completely cut off from 98% of “natives”–had enjoyed till then. Many Asians are also ambivalent about what Idi Amin did to them in 1972 (with near total support from local populace):

https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2007/05/uganda_the_retuint.html

There is also a tactical ploy to play the “multicultural” card by some who stood to lose their racially/ethnically superior status when the balance of power shifts. A letter to editor about the talented rhetorician, Albert Camus–whose opinions about the “Arabs” dovetailed nicely with those of South African Boers about “Kaffirs”, yet who is still lionized as the “conscience of his times”–illustrates the point:

—

To the Editor:
It is a pity that Albert Camus’s rehabilitation from the effects of an
old political correctness should be pursued in complicity with a new
one. In his review of “The First Man” (Aug. 27), Victor Brombert duly
appeals to current shibboleths: Camus “opposed extremism and violence
on both sides” and “favored a multicultural Algeria.”

But it must be said that this “multicultural” vision presupposed
French rule over Algeria. “I believe in justice,” Camus said, “but I
shall defend my mother above justice.” This meant seeking solutions
well short of majority rule and self-determination for Algerian
Muslims, including bizarre schemes evocative of later Afrikaner
designs to retain power in South Africa. Certainly we must appreciate
why this Algerian Frenchman who truly sympathized with Algerian
Muslims stopped short of accepting their right to self-determination;
the fact remains that he had effective citizenship in two countries,
Algeria and France, while they had none at all. Today there is little
point in blaming Camus for not envisioning a form of majority rule
that would have genuinely protected the cultural and political rights
of minorities, but even less in celebrating a “multiculturalism” based
on minority rule.

Rather than providing new ammunition for fighting such old battles,
the long-delayed publication of Camus’s unfinished last novel should
provoke a rethinking of the intellectual climate of the cold
war. Rather than simply turning the tables, we might ask why various
people acted as they did, noting both their strengths and their
weaknesses.
RONALD ARONSON
Detroit

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/01/books/l-camus-s-schemes-029220.htm

—

More links on Camus:

http://coreyrobin.com/2013/12/07/albert-camus-dancing/

Two types of Colonialism–Franchise and Settler–also need to be distinguished and treated separately when the term “Globalization” is thrown about. British India was an example of the former, French Algeria of the latter. British were out of the former in 6 weeks and other than the buildings you would have thought they had never been there. The aftermath of the French departure from Algeria is still with us in the form of the toxic Le Pen political dynasty:

The late Patrick Wolfe’s talk entitled ‘Comparing Colonial and Racial Regimes’ might help clarify the issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwj5bcLG8ic

Ilan Pappe is also stellar on the only ongoing settler-colonial project of our times (which also tries to pass itself off as a beacon of “multiculturalism”, “Western values”, etc. by hosting the likes of Eurovision, while keeping the boot on neck of the local population in a manner that draws admiration from white supremacists everywhere):

@Matt … there are of course studies conducted in other countries, so I don’t see why you have to take a US-study and then extrapolate!

See this link, for example

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/

@Matt “net cost” and “net fiscal cost” are different things, even where we’re just talking about the narrowly economic.

@Matt, well no….

You were responding to

This is also the root of the idea that immigration makes the welfare state more expensive, that is a nonsese because the welfare state is payd for by taxes, and immigrants too pay taxes, and so do their employers.

But when we’re thinking about whether a nurse from the Philippines makes the UK’s NHS more expensive or not, we need to consider more than what she contributes in taxes and costs in her own direct consumption of services. The NHS couldn’t function without many such people.

@Matt 31

“It determined that, if an immigrant had a high school education or more, the immigrant would make a net positive fiscal impact, at least when then impact of the children was included, for those with just a high school education. That is, they would pay slightly more in taxes then they would use in services.”

You are misunderstanding what I wrote. I wrote: “the welfare state is payd for by taxes, and immigrants too pay taxes, and so do their employers.”

If someone is employed in a private business, apart of some weird situation his or her wage will be lower than his or her actual productivity, otherwise profits would be 0 and there would be no point in employing him/her.

Suppose that A has a productivity of 100, is paid 70, and both A and A’s employer have a tax rate of 20%.
A will pay 14 in taxes, A’s employer will pay 6, for a total of 20.

Suppose that B has a productivity of 100, but is paid only 60.
B will pay 12 in taxes, B’s employer will pay 8, again for a total of 20.

Suppose that A and B receive, in terms of benefits, 13 each. This would make A appear as a net beneficiary, and B a net contributor.

But this difference is only apparent, since both A and B cause the same tax flow to the state of 20.
This is also the reason that, if inequality (that largely depends on the wage share) increases, the tax system will look more redistributive: but it is mostly just appearence.

The problem of this logic is that it doesn’t apply to immigrants alone, but to all workers, so if we accept the idea that immigrants “cost” to locals when they are net beneficiaries of welfare, we have to accept that local workers too “cost” to the government (or to the generous contributors) in terms of welfare, even though the income from which taxes come has been produced by workers to begin with.

This kind of logic leads to the idea that all workers are moochers, all they have has been produced by might job creators, and in fact if they have a job it’s because job creators like them and are generous.
Workers who believe this will them blame immigrants and paint them as bad so that the generosityof job creators will go to them and not to the immigrants. But this logic, as is obvious, is not going to help workers on the long term.

This logic also implies that everyone who is a net beneficiary of welfare is a moocher, instead than to the idea that the purpose of taxation is that of redistribute (partially) an unjust income distribution.
This is the seriously problematic idea on which “the immigrants steal or benefits” is based, and it shows why it comes, normally, from the party of small businesses.

MisterMr – you’re right, I’m not addressing your larger point. I don’t think that “moochers” is the right way to think about the vast majority of people using public benefits, so didn’t and wouldn’t suggest that. (I suppose it might be right of a small number, but small enough that it’s probably not worth caring about.) There are, I think, plausible stories as to why our obligations to our fellow citizens are more extensive than to people in general, but looking at those would take us too far away from the topic, and is more than can be addressed in blog comments. (The literature is extensive and easy to find if you want to look at it.)

The more narrow point I wanted to make was just about the expected impact on existing welfare systems, one supported by the research I reference (and also by the research Chris links to.) If I understand right, you’re suggesting that society can and should be set up in a different, better way. I agree that it should be! But, that’s a much bigger issue than addressing current immigration policies.

The OP seems to assume that migration in the age of “globalization”, whatever that is, is in some way a novel phenomenon. That is a bit surprising coming from an Aussie. Countries like Australia and the US have historically experienced much higher immigration rates than what is presently observed. And even less traditional immigrant countries like the UK, France or Germany have experienced important immigration movements long before anybody talked of “globalization”. Most immigrants in these countries are not recent arrivals.

“By contrast, the number of migrants as a fraction of the population residing in high-income countries rose from 9.6% in 2000 to 14% in 2017.”

I found somewhat conflicting numbers when trying to verify these statistics.
The following list is based on a 2015 UN report and supposedly lists the foreign born population share:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_immigrant_population

In the list, the foreign born population of Germany is 14.9%. The migration report of the German government (http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Publikationen/Migrationsberichte/migrationsbericht-2016-2017.html) puts the share of people with “migration background” at 23.6% but only about 10% are actual immigrants, most are descendants of immigrants.

I couldn’t find longitudinal figures for Germany but I can ascertain that immigration already caused tension in the 1960s and 1970s.

Regarding the question of reversibility: Unfortunately, any social progress can be reversed.

It is important to realize that the political discourse about migration isn’t really about whether there should be migration – as long as capitalists want migration and the economic conditions are favorable, there will be migration. It is about the status of the immigrants. Right-wingers and nativists, and obviously capitalists, prefer a legally precarious status for immigrants so they can be easily kicked out and are thus easier to exploit. The EU regime of free internal movement is insofar a huge social achievement: For the first time in European history, people from all over Europe have a guaranteed right to choose freely where to live and settle where they wish, and not depend on the goodwill of bureaucrats or employers. The importance of this progress cannot be overestimated. It should be highly appreciated by the left and be defended uncompromisingly against those who prefer that the workers be without rights.

A policy to push net immigration to zero, or even close to zero, would almost certainly impose personal and economic costs on the country concerned so high as to be politically untenable.

That is true, but I don’t think it’s ever the case that people or political forces are in favor of zero immigration in the literal sense (or even that they pretend to be). What they say they want is a control or an abolition of what they call and what is constructed as disruptive immigration, typically from less educated part of the world.

And I don’t think it should be brushed aside without a second thought. In a world of low growth, very low social mobility, competition for education and general transfer from public wealth to private wealth, it is clear that recent immigrants from countries with lower levels of education and their children (who start at the bottom of the ladder on all the dimensions above) will find themselves disproportionately among the losers, and in particular will find themselves concentrated socially and geographically in specific sub-parts of the society they inhabit, putting these particular parts under specific pressure. While it is absolutely true it is xenophobic and misguided to blame them for that pressure and to assume that making their lives miserable is going to relieve it, it is also unequivocally true that pronouncing this moral judgment and not doing anything to alleviate the structural causes of that pressure or even supporting political projects that increase it (typically further weakening public social dispositions) is quite hypocritical.

Ironically, immigrants from countries with lower levels of educations and their children are in that respect quite similar to other losers in the social order, for instance people with a high-school education at most in rural or formerly industrial areas; the typical electorate of Trumpist parties. Some people see a machiavellian plot in the political oppositions of these two groups, but I’d rather blame inertia and obliviousness myself.

@44
”The EU regime of free internal movement is insofar a huge social achievement: For the first time in European history, people from all over Europe have a guaranteed right to choose freely where to live and settle where they wish, and not depend on the goodwill of bureaucrats or employers”.

This can’t be repeated often enough – as it taught and teaches young Europeans why they – in their majority don’t want closed border anymore – and why most of them have a far more openminded opinion about migration than for example – some older and often ”nationalistic” thinking generation.

And so – how true:
”The importance of this progress cannot be overestimated. It should be highly appreciated by the left and be defended uncompromisingly against anybody.

Let me second there is no way work time law changes are in anyway connected to labour shortage. Its just another neoliberal trend and a pretty old one too, just getting worse.

For example: https://kotaku.com/inside-rockstar-games-culture-of-crunch-1829936466
“As Rockstar has confirmed, Lincoln’s testers have been asked to work on evenings and weekends since then, starting with three nights a week and later moving up to five, and starting with one weekend day per month and later moving up to every weekend. Anyone who wanted a two-day weekend would have to work an extra weekend day on another week, which meant 12 straight days of work between days off.”

Or anything written by Alexandra Michel (the American one) for a more academic source.
A Distributed Cognition Perspective on Newcomers’ Change Processes: The Management of Cognitive Uncertainty in
Two Investment Banks (2007):
Two Investment Banks: “we have a hard-charging work ethic,” that “it just looks bad if you leave at 10 or 11 in the night while everyone else
is still there,” and that associates should at least stay until
midnight.”

For the first time in European history, people from all over Europe have a guaranteed right to choose freely where to live and settle where they wish

Try telling that to anyone in Britain with a normal income wants to move to London.

I’m surprised that climate change is not a larger part of the view of migration in the future. Really, climate change so far seems not to have penetrated the economics departments. Or when it does, the results are appalling. Economist Richard Tols, who somehow got to contribute to the last IPCC paper, has tweeted that a 10 degree change in global temperature wouldn’t really matter, cause we’d stay inside – we all have airconditioning. And besides, isn’t there a ten degree difference between different parts of the world? This seems almost to be the standard model in neo-classical economics. But surely if, say, Caribbean islands start going down, migration is going to happen, cause the cages will not be big enough. Similarly, what is Europe going to do?
I think we can’t ignore the unavoidable. Maybe we’ll have another decade to pretend it isn’t happening. Or maybe not.

Frankly, I think Tol is an idiot. But he is on the extreme end of idiocy. Nordhaus, who is supposed to be the go-to person on the economics of climate change, isn’t much better. Economics as it is is astonishingly uninformative about climate change. You would think this would interest economists slightly, and especially as the Middle East is already a sort of petri dish of water fights and migration because of climate extremes. But economists just don’t seem to have any disaster models that fit what is happening. And they come to the issue with a defensive air – like, don’t use this as an excuse to put your hands on my beautiful free markets! That these guys are guys, male, and are very identified with their consumer lifestyles, also counts, I think.

@56
Yea I did actually know that. I didn’t express myself very clearly: my bad.

I didn’t actually mean to imply that we might run out of oil, coal, gas (which was what Jevons was writing about). I meant that neo-classicism emerged in a society in which the growth produced by cheap fossil fuels was unproblematic. And so, for the 20th century, the pursuit of growth was considered to be desirable and unproblematic.

But we are now entering into an era where economic growth insofar as it ultimately derives from the use of fossil fuels has itself become problematic. To put it bluntly, at present…more growth equals more CO2. (Solutions to this have been produced but at the moment they remain on the drawing board).

So what I really meant was that neo-classical economics, insofar as it is orientated towards the growth of national economies, is predicated on the idea of cheap, available and safe availability of energy (i.e. fossil fuels). If growth is good then the consumption of the good that produces this growth must also be good.

But in a world where more growth implies more CO2, the use of those fuels becomes problematic. The laws of supply and demand means …more demand means more supply. But in a rapidly warming world, we can’t afford that supply (and by ‘we’ I mean the world). Which implies that the State will have to interfere in the ‘laws’ of supply and demand, perhaps radically (insofar as it’s the supply of fossil fuels we are talking about).

Which is not to say that none of what Jevons talked about is irrelevant to our current situation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

But that’s the familiar experience of many people *within* demographically growing societies. Liverpool, Sunderland, rural Spain, rural France

Well, I’m not sure that it’s the same thing to live in a globally collapsing society and in a collapsing part of a growing societies, but taking this point for granted, I’m happy to generalize and ask people living in steadily growing regions to imagine how radically different the experience of living in collapsing regions must be.

True, but also paradoxical. Australia is growing steadily through natural increase, and despite our appalling treatment of refugees, the main immigration debate is between proponents of high migration and those of very high migration (a “Big Australia”). Meanwhile, Hungary is losing people through emigration, while trying strenuously to keep migrants out.

I don’t think it is that counter-intuitive. A growing population can collectively feel optimistic enough that it welcomes newcomers (after all, a baby is an alien newcomer). A decreasing population may feel threatened and inclined to conservative reflexes, starting with a distrust of what is new and different. We don’t quite know what is the typical socio-political expression of aging and demographically decreasing societies, as they are extremely new, historically speaking, but the little data we have does not suggest optimism.

So what I really meant was that neo-classical economics, insofar as it is orientated towards the growth of national economies, is predicated on the idea of cheap, available and safe availability of energy (i.e. fossil fuels). If growth is good …

Forgive my ignorance, but to what extent (and/or in what way) is neo-classical economics orientated towards the growth of national economies? Is it a tenet of neo-classical economics that growth is good?

The sources I can find online don’t seem to be in complete agreement about what the basic assumptions or tenets of neo-classical economics are, but the most common answers to this question don’t refer to economic growth at all.

Z: “to live in a globally collapsing society”

It is frustrating that the tenets of growth capitalism are so widely and reflexively upheld among supposedly leftist circles. The alternative to population growth isn’t “societal collapse”. Hungary is a good example, 5% decline in 20 years is hardly indication of a “collapsing society”. Perhaps Z should instead talk of the “collapse” of the city of Paris – 22% population loss in 20 years (1962 to 1982). Perhaps Paris, London and New York developed that typical “distrust of what is new and different” due to their demographic history. Perhaps these urban people deserve some empathy.

the “collapse” of the city of Paris – 22% population loss in 20 years (1962 to 1982). Perhaps Paris, London and New York developed that typical “distrust of what is new and different” due to their demographic history

Iirc there was something of a millenarian vibe there 40 years ago (very different now obviously)

It is frustrating that the tenets of growth capitalism are so widely and reflexively upheld among supposedly leftist circles. The alternative to population growth isn’t “societal collapse”.

I didn’t write a word about economic growth nor about societal collapse. Juste about demographic one. And I never ascribed any moral value (positive or negative) to demographic collapse vs. demographic growth, just commented that it is very different to live in a society experiencing the first vs. the second. But sure, I’m the one who “reflexively” reacts.

Hungary is a good example, 5% decline in 20 years is hardly indication of a “collapsing society”.

I never made the claim that Hungary was a collapsing society, even though you put it in quotes. It is a demographically collapsing society, as was also observed by John Quiggin and as is well-known in demography.

Perhaps Z should instead talk of the “collapse” of the city of Paris – 22% population loss in 20 years (1962 to 1982).

Being told you reflexively react to things by imagining opinions, then inventing quotes and now this. Great. It is Chris Bertram (and you), not I, who took the example of cities with decreasing population. I spoke of societies. Maybe you think Paris is a society that is cut out of the rest of France by the périphérique but then I would be glad if you would argue your own positions under your own name, and refrain on deciding what I “should” talk about.

Anyway, as you surely know because you read the demographic literature with more care than my comments, the Paris area had 8 millions people in 1962, 12 millions in 2019, with a current fertility rate around 2,02. France had 42 millions people in 1962, 67 millions in 2019 with a current fertility rate around 1,94. Hungary had a population of 10 millions in 1962, 9,7 millions now, with a current fertility rate under 1,5. The former two are demographically very dynamic entities (and are quite comparable demographically, which underlines the absurdity of your position), the last one is demographically collapsing. Is it good, it it bad? I never said a word about it. It is very different.

Some nice maps:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/3d-shifting-urban-populations/

Z: “[Hungary] is a demographically collapsing society, as was also observed by John Quiggin and as is well-known in demography.”

JQ has not made no observations about any country’s demographic collapse. The term was used by you Z several times before anybody else quoted it. Apparently you wish to use the term “collapse” in a different sense than I use it. Perhaps my grasp of the English language is at fault?

Merriam Webster suggests the following definitions of “collapse” (verb):
– “to fall or shrink together abruptly and completely”
– “to break down completely”
There is no question that the terminology you have chosen implies an abrupt breakdown. It is absurd to apply that terminology to a society like Hungary (5% decline in 20 years). I regret that you insist on repeating that absurd claim even after I pointed the facts out to you. I find it hard to credit your comment 70 as having been made in good faith.

On a related note: Germany (East and West added together) has been demographically near stationary for a whopping 50 years, fluctuating between 78 and 83 million residents, with periods of decline (1974 to 1986 and 2004 to 2012) in between. It is simply false to claim that demographic decline on this order is “historically unprecedented among fully alphabetized societies of the modern period”. And obviously a period of decline can be temporary, and clearly doesn’t imply “collapse” – although I can assure that the “imminent extinction” of the German people has been much discussed in certain circles.