Why Isn't the Whole World Developed?

The American Spectator ^ | 20 June 2006 | Tom Bethell

[ChessExpert]

...

There are said to be 11 million illegals in the country. .... Why are they here at all? Most of them come across the Mexican border.

Now the truth is that the great majority of people, Mexicans included, would rather live and work in their native country. It is preferable to trekking across deserts, risking death by exposure and thirst, climbing fences and fording rivers in exchange for part-time labor in fields and sculleries in a land where they don't even speak the language. So why don't they stay in Mexico and work there?

Because they can't find jobs, we are always told. And inquisitiveness stops right there. No jobs in Mexico. But why are there not?

Why does the U.S. create millions of jobs every year and Mexico create refugees? In all the hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles I have read about immigration, I have not once seen this question addressed. What exactly is wrong in Mexico? Clearly Mexicans are effective workers, otherwise they wouldn't be in demand as day laborers here. Mexicans come with brains and muscles like everyone else.

[Caipirabob]

Because, in short, despite some wonderful places and outstanding people who live outside of our dear United States, there is a disproportionate quantity of absolute morons who fill out the rest of the planet.

[alloysteel]

Oh, the Mexicans that are fleeing their country can find jobs in Mexico, if they are willing to live at somewhat lower level than a freed slave turned sharecropper in Mississippi in 1920.

There is an intense internal racial prejudice within Mexico, in which the descendents of the "hildago" class, the most European of the Mexicans, have always retained their position as the (mostly) unelected ruling clique, while the indentured servant class, the "mixed" Mexicans, and relatively unintegrated Indians have always been the underclass. The ruling clique has title to most of the land in Mexico, and have maintained a legal system that preserved the status quo since about the time the Hapsburgs were kicked out of Mexico. There have been various peasant revolutions, but always, the ruling clique eventually reasserts control.

Time for the US to invade Mexico and give them at least as modern a constitution as has been drawn up in Iraq. Or maybe the US could simply annex the entire country and give all Mexicans the same status as Puerto Ricans.

[The Cuban]

The legal infrastructure in developed countries is "the hidden architecture of capitalism," de Soto says.

Used to exist in Cuba. Oh well.

[DC Bound]

Excellent article; thanks for posting. It brings to mind John Locke's contribution to our coutry's foundation. Property is imperative. The corollary, of course, is that until a culture is wise enough to conceive of government as an entity that is subject to the will of men, they will not be capable of establishing property rights within that government. Property rights are tangled up with freedom, equality before the law, etc... and most important, individualism. We have those things here, enshrined in our founding document, and protected by a red-blooded culture. That is why the U.S. is the greatest nation that has ever existed, any way you want to measure it.

And the corollary to that is why the illigal immigration problem is so important. The cultural threat posed by waves of millions of people who seek to get something from government, rather than demand a small government that is limited in power, is the threat we need to have our eye on. We already have enough leftists in this country, gumming up the works. We must protect our culture. Individualism, not pluralism.

[DC Bound]

I had a poli sci professor whose specialty was coups de etat in Latin American countries. He mentioned there have been hundreds. He also said that the US Constitution has been tried there many times, and has always failed. The reason: culture. They don't think of government as subject to man; they don't revere their institutions (except their militaries, which have stepped in time and again to rescue them from despots.) Our Protestant heritage is what separates us. Samuel Huntington develops the argument very well in "Who Are We." Excellent read.

[RightWhale]

The secret is that America was constituted to promote commerce.

[RightWhale]

The secret solution to that is national registration of private property. The Recorder's Office.

[Mike Darancette]

We should annex Mexico and open it up to settlement from Eastern Europe.

[DC Bound]

And when virtually every public official in their country is corrupt and expected to be corrupt, how is a national property registry going to work? We have eminent domain problems in our own country, where we expect the rule of law to matter. How is it going to help down there, where they make up the rules as they go? I don't think they solve their economic problems until they get their cultural minds right regarding man vs. state.

[RightWhale]

Yep, it's paradoxical. They have the solution and they know what it is.

[LadyNavyVet]

What is wrong with Mexico? The same thing that's wrong with every third world country--bad government. And in all cases, we cannot solve their problems for them. The people must decide on their own to become a free, modern, capitalist society or stay a corrupt cr@phole. Unfortunately much of Latin America seems to be trending in the cr@phole direction.

[Redcloak]

The US is a perfect storm of natural resources and Capitalist values. Mexico has the first half of the equation, but not the second. Other places around the world have values like ours, but not the resources. Mexico had as much of a chance as we did of becoming the dominant country in the hemisphere. They blew it when they failed to throw off the old kleptocracy.

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

I read this author's book "The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages." It is an excellent book. Private property rights and the rule of law are essential to prosperity. The English Common Law system that we have in the USA protects private property through the rule of law as it developed in England over the centuries. Small wonder that Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and UK are at the top of prosperous countries and that protect such rights.

The threats to these rights are primarily from the Endangered Species Act, EPA and Emminent Domain. Private property rights must be protected to maintain the vitality of our economic system.

[wouldntbprudent]

The moment Westerners were able to focus on the title of a house and not just the house itself, they achieved a huge advantage over the rest of humanity. With titles, shares and property laws, people could suddenly go beyond looking at their assets as they are (houses used for shelter) to thinking about what they could be (security for credit to start or expand a business). Through widespread, integrated property systems, Western nations inadvertently created a staircase that allowed their citizens to climb out of the grubby basement of the material world into the realm where capital is created.

This article is well worth reading in its entirety and pondering.

[wouldntbprudent]

And since libs hate private property rights, and libs control most foreign aid mechanisms, foreign aid can never be used to create a local wealth-creating infrastructure based on private property rights.

It's communism/tyranny all the way, regardless that this has been a dismal failure all over the world, for all time.

[wouldntbprudent]

Corruption indeed is the poison in the well. It makes everything in life uncertain and unstructured and unjust. The article makes the important point, without saying so exactly, that much corruption comes about because there are no enforceable private property rights. Therefore, everything is done "off the books."

[wouldntbprudent]

But the author is asking, WHY is it a "corrupt filthy . . ."

[wouldntbprudent]

All of that, at bottom, is based first on an enforceable, stable system of private property rights.

[wouldntbprudent]

I think more fundamentally the author is saying that the Mexicans come here for jobs because there are no jobs in Mexico, and there are no jobs in Mexico because there is no true economy, and there is no viable economy because there are no stable, enforceable private property rights.

[wouldntbprudent]

So,to finish, I'm agreeing with what you said:

If Mexico were to begin a path to formal, legal property rights, and then enforce it, Mexicans would be perfectly happy to stay in Mexico.