Your Nation Sucks, and its Your Fault

Famed economist and Nobel laureate Robert Shiller proposes the abolition of 'nation privilege':

The next revolution will not abolish the consequences of place of birth, but the privileges of nationhood will be tempered. While the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment around the world seems to point in the opposite direction, the sense of injustice will be amplified as communications continue to grow. Ultimately, recognition of wrong will wreak big changes.
For now, this recognition faces strong competition from patriotic impulses, rooted in a social contract among nationals who have paid taxes over the years or performed military service to build or defend what they saw as exclusively theirs. Allowing unlimited immigration would seem to violate this contract.
But the most important steps to address birthplace injustice probably will not target immigration. Instead, they will focus on fostering economic freedom.

There's  lot of economic gobbledygook too, something about factor-price-equalization or some such. It ain't called the dismal science for nothing, folks.

Haven't we been doing this for 20 years or so? I mean, I remember meeting a lot of Iranians in on-line chat rooms, this was back in the late 90's.

Let's move on to this nefarious notion that some nations are bad through no fault of their citizens. In his excellent work, Eat the Rich, PJ O'Rourke (PBUH) tried to answer that question. Cuba and Sweden are both socialist. Why is Cuba a crap-hole and why is Sweden a paradise? O'Rourke figured it all came down to the rule of law.

Mark Steyn noticed that most of the nice places in the world used to have a Union Jack flying over them. The U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Australia. Of course the last three still do. Herr Shiller no doubt believes this is the result of some sort of privilege; no doubt of the white variety. But what, then, about Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya, India? The only privilege here is that of having once been run by mild-mannered, competent and utterly incorruptible British colonial ministers.

India is an ethno-linguistic hodgepodge that ought to be as conflict riven as your typical African crap-hole, like say, Nigeria.  But its not because since the late 19th century it had been run by a British trained civil service. The Indian National Congress actually began as a trade organization in 1885. Gandhi was a lawyer, after all. The British thought so highly of the Indian governing class they trained that they used them to run the far-flung reaches of the empire. Most British colonies had an Indian run civil service.

Of course, African psycho-leaders in places like Uganda and Kenya upon independence fired the Indians, confiscated their property and exiled them. Black spaces for black people, of course. Hey, look at Detroit!