We've already posted on mega cities as threat environments; where sheer size, as well institutional collapse, and economic disarray, create the crime, corruption and abject misery that form a breeding ground for desperation; where that then channels itself through various forms of population flight, extremist group recruitment, or simply more numbing, mass starvation.
The corollary of that, quite apart from size, is the failed state; that, often arbitrarily bounded nation that has been the battleground of other, larger states, for many decades, if not actual centuries. The poster children for these, of course, usually coming from the middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Because of colonialism, anti communism, and our perpetual drug war, though, we have our own group of states that are now beginning to meet this criteria as well, in central and South America.
I mention this now because another article on the change in the makeup of who is trying to immigrate here demonstrates clearly that it is people fleeing in fear for their lives, and not simply because of economic deprivation. The kind of personal threat that make their claim for asylum justifiable, for which we are obliged by law to give serious consideration too.
What this does is to provide further evidence that what we see as an immigration problem, is really just a symptom of much larger problems; a bigger picture where our foreign policy, our global economic policy, as well as our virtually non existent policy on displaced peoples in general, have to play a much more coherently integrated whole. A bigger picture where that integration must work with partnerships with as big a consortium of nations as we can muster.
Make no mistake here. The displacements, as well as the incubation of extremists, will only continue to grow as sea levels rise, as the competition for resources increases, and the gap between the haves and the have nots increases. And the simple fact of the matter, from my point of view, is that we will never be able to fully address these challenges if we remain with a cost based form of economic operating system. The very system that fostered the Colonialism, the resource rape, and massive inequality of living standards. The very system that makes trying to do anything to alleviate poverty, or squalid living conditions, disease, or starvation, a matter of money; rather than a matter of personal involvement, and the diversion of resources made not nearly so dear once mass production and consumption for livelihoods was eliminated.
What this comes down to is not only a change in view in how we see interrelated problems as a complex whole, but also that a much different way to operate within that complexity is also required. The old mechanisms of money, markets, investors and laborers is simply so far out of date, and out of its depth to handle what's coming, as to be comparable to expecting vast arrays of clerks, working in ledgers, to handle problems that now require trillions, and quadrillions of operations per second. A problem not only of the scalability of one type of organizational structure, as opposed to another, but also of the reality check that ought to be going on as to why we've allow the pace of things to get to the point where quadrillions of operations per second are needed in the first place. Some of the time perhaps, but all of the time, and always increasing? Seriously?
Misery loves company after all, and you should have do doubt whatsoever that we be up to our rears in such company if we don't start thinking about new ways to look at, and deal with what is coming.
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