Post by @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world

2026-09-04 13:02 UTC

I’m asking why a not real place that actually does democracy well and isn’t dragging a legacy of being shitty behind it A number of Latin American countries have very loose and friendly immigration policies. Argentina and Paraguay are the most notable. Idk if you’d say they “do democracy well”. That’s a real subjective criteria. why does someone being a human give them a right to go anywhere and do anything? We’ve got a wealth of political philosophy and ethics debates that help answer that question, from John Stuart Mill to Lea Ypi who can answer that question better than I can. But a better question might be, why wouldn’t they? Holy shit, you really trust social media and advertising to be left unchecked? A lot of peple would 100% move to the Wal-Mart corporate town and condos. Why would I trust the owners of social media and advertising companies to be the gatekeepers? People already move to the Walmart Corporate Towns, in large part because Walmart dictates what criticism it will tolerate and what opposition it will face. People screaming about corporate fascism today wanted to put Walmart Board Member Hillary Clinton in charge of the whole country not ten years ago.

Replies (1)

@hansolo@lemmy.today 2026-09-04 14:26

First off, I want to thank you for engaging on this in a reasonable and respectful way. This is a touchy subject, and I’m honestly curious how people that talk about it think it should work. Doesn’t mean I agree with the conclusions, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate and respect your time and energy here. Thank you. A number of Latin American countries have very loose and friendly immigration policies. Argentina and Paraguay are the most notable Right, but I’m not asking about their democratic structures. I’m saying with all the open, and open-ish borders, what actually happens? Do people from Peru and Ecuador typically go to Brazil for work? OK, well, so is that constant draining of talent good for Peru and Ecuador? Economic migration is usually a one-way street for decades at a time. Another good example is Bulgaria and Croatia joining the EU. There’s already a lot of migration from the Balkans into western Europe, and as soon as free movement was allowed, both places saw huge migrations of young people. Bulgaria is genuinely having a demographics crisis right now, and because it’s only a bunch of old Boomers left, they’re doing a bunch of typical Boomer things, like being extra conservative. Which isn’t to say that people should be forced to stay put, but that in every instance of people having low barriers to movement, there’s a losing side. And then the free, or even low-cost movement only makes it harder to fix the problems that made people leave in the first place. And Lea Ypi is a great example, ironically, of someone who is brilliant having opportunity to move to study in Italy and sort of proving her own point wrong in a sense that she’s not some Albanian drug dealer. Though I don’t think that’s relevant here, as the opportunity sought her out in a sense. Though, I would say that Albania is by far its own special case. Tons of Albanians have a personal ethnic pride and intentionally move back to Albania and Kosovo specifically to make the place better. It seems fairly family-oriented, as even their Eurovision songs very often feature “don’t disappoint mom” lyrics. And I wasn’t saying that companies would be gatekeepers, I mean abusers. Unfettered abusers.

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