Motus Mentis

With a hat-tip to Nick Land, here is a densely mathematical paper that purports to model the world economy in terms of the degree of restriction of migration policy.

I have looked it over, but I cannot say that I have followed its argument in detail. (If any of my readers would like to do so, I’d be interested to know what they think.) But two things are worth noting.

First, the model, as far as I can tell, treats every human on Earth as an identical, fungible token. It does take into account regional differences in “human capital”, but ascribes them entirely to remediable externalities (such as education). It is not hard to understand why a team of researchers laboring in the contemporary academy would make such an assumption, but I’ll just say (for the sake of preserving my chances for a future Supreme Court appointment) that choosing such an axiom may perhaps be a fundamental error.

Second is what caught my eye when Nick tweeted it:

[G]rowth in utility drops substantially in the short run as many people move to areas with high real GDP; hence these areas become more congested and become worse places to live (lower amenities). This initial loss in growth is, however, compensated in the long run by a large surge in productivity growth after year 2200.

You read that right: 2200. Let me restate that for the record: if the West floods itself with Third World immigrants, it will become a “worse place to live” — but only for a couple of centuries, at which point those of us who have managed to wait patiently enough will begin to be “compensated” by a surge in “productivity growth”.

I hardly know what to say in conclusion. It’s rare that I find myself at a loss for words, but…