Migration Issues

>And I don't understand why people absolutely need to have biological children. Consider these possibilities: 1. A best case scenario is that what you have expressed is a personal opinion that takes your genes out of the future in a Marty McFly fading away fashion as this opinion hardens. Fine. Your choice. More pie for the rest of us. 2. A worst case scenario where this opinion accumulates in the market place of ideas and inevitably leads to human extinction. Impossible right? Well, know that disgust with sex is climbing in rich nations (like Germany and Japan) and the number of births per woman is falling. Is this a function of wealth, or technology? South Korea has fewer than 1.1 births per woman. That can only translate into a poorer, older, and smaller country for the future. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/KOR/south-korea/fertility-rate (I tell people that this was the thickly veiled premise of the movie Bird Box.) If that is true, then can it be called a choice? Are people actually choosing to have fewer sexual partners than their parents generation? Are people really choosing to feel disgust at the thought of intimate contact? Maybe repulsion-to-sex is a bigger threat to continued human existence as nuclear weapons. Another fun article: https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-long-until-were-all-amish-268e…

> Having children is a horrible deal for women though Women in every rich country have fewer children than they desire: https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-big-is-the-fertility-gap-in-am…

In our resource-abundant modern world, you should expect genes that cause people to want kids to do very well. Fertility is low in most developed countries, but that masks particular sub-populations that are growing at a rapid rate. See this article for instance: https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-long-until-were-all-amish-268e… Similarly, expect future generations to be full of people who just can't stand wearing a condom during sex.

There are certainly specific religious groups that have much higher fertility, even when controlling for everything else. For example: https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-long-until-were-all-amish-268e…

Student loans can be a big one - your payments are the same no matter where you live, so nominal income matters quite a bit. Lyman Stone wrote a good piece on this where he speculates that part of the reason Millenials have been clustering in cities is that "Given that student loans have a fixed nominal value, they are often easier to pay off in high-wage, high-cost cities."[1] [1] https://medium.com/migration-issues/millennials-have-less-debt-more-de…

Even most postmodern industries are geographically clustered, and regional evidence within the US suggests economic prosperity is not getting more even, ergo, migration is likely to continue. Globally, migration is likely to accelerate in the near term. For my forecasts of future immigration, see here: https://medium.com/migration-issues/a-prophecy-of-immigration-40abf4a2…

>This also helps explain for example why feudalism was so prevalent in Europe during the Middle Ages. Without well-maintained Roman roads, the time needed to go from one place to another extended, which made it that much harder to control big empires. Small, local warlords emerged. They were the ones with enough money to afford a horse and armor This point is another reminder for me that Game of Thrones' Westeros, the Seven Kingdoms, should've collapsed the minute all the dragons were lost in the Dance of Dragons, particularly the North, where it takes months to get to Winterfell from King's Landing. This writer[0] also noted how impossible Westeros as a united entity should be along with other issues with GRRM's world design. Nevermind that the size of Westeros should have a significant impact on its anthropology. This is a needlessly nerdy analysis, but no one even comments on anyone having an accent in Westeros, except for that of the Dornish (which is kinda sketch IMO). * The relative isolation of the North and the Iron Islands would've seen them continue to speak and evolve the First Men's language * Dorne would speak spectrum that goes from the Andalic of the Marches to the Andalic/Rhoynish patois most people would speak in Sunspear * The Sea Lords, much like the Channel Islands IRL, would've continued to speak a dialect of High Valyrian that would've had a strong Andalic influence and the Targaryens would've spoken this dialect * The Riverlands' dialect would be…

> There's no reason for people moving out of cities to cluster anywhere in particular. Economy of scale. Given fixed size of the UBI check, you want to live where services are cheapest. And services will be cheapest in places where more people are serviced together, because that cuts down on distribution costs and other such overheads. Also, areas where people who have more money than just UBI live, would have higher prices simply by virtue of there being more money in the local economy. This isn't really dissimilar from the existing arrangement, where rich areas are expensive to live in, and so there's natural geographic segregation. But UBI would boost this into high gear. To clarify, I am a strong proponent of UBI personally. But I think we should be really careful with these kinds of unintended side effects, and try to anticipate and manage them before they cause a bigger mess than what we're trying to address. Also, have a look at this: https://medium.com/migration-issues/should-a-universal-basic-income-be…