A little while back Matthew Yglesias proposed letting in lots of immigrants to Detroit (and restricting them from entering the rest of the U.S) rather than demolishing the empty parts. From my perspective that plan has the great feature that I don’t live there and don’t see any upside to preserving Detroit. But there are a lot of very poor people around the world and it might be hard to contain all of them. Better to focus on a small population who are a real pain in their current location and have no worthwhile future there. Palestine! Detroit is already full of Arab Muslims and relatively speaking they probably improve the place by their presence. What seems to be the obvious solution to the Palestine problem of just reverting to the status quo ante-bellum by giving the area back to Egypt & Jordan is a non-starter for reasons rarely discussed, but I imagine have to do with those respective governments not wanting to deal with all those Palestinians. I don’t know exactly how many of them there are, so perhaps they might not fit in Detroit. Fine, all of Michigan seems screwed from what I hear, so we can make that the limits of their roaming (the upper-peninsula will go to Wisconsin, where it always belonged, and remain available for deer-hunting). In order to immigrate they’ll all have to agree to a charter that ensures they live boring lives that don’t bother us, but since their current home is deemed an “open-air prison” currently, why wouldn’t most sign up? With a small enough remainder, Egypt & Jordan (and perhaps even Israel) might be able to handle the sub-critical mass left over. Mark Kleiman Jonathan Zasloff thinks Sari Nusseibeh is some wise man, so they can make him Daley of Paliland. And if it turns out he’s no good, hire a successful manager from elsewhere: Sheikh Mo. I realize that contentious issues like this don’t get resolved when a genius like me proposes a perfect solution, because you idiots want symbolic sacrifices. Here goes: nobody gets the land they were living on (again, this has the great feature that I don’t live there). A permanent no-go zone. A monument to our inability to live peaceably side-by-side and remembrance of how much attention was wasted on that miserable strip of ground. In honor of America’s sacrifice of Michigan we will solemnly be exempted from ever giving a shit about the Middle East again.
Now, does anyone have any miserable rust-belt cities to resolve Kashmir? Flint maybe?
September 20, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Right, most wouldn’t take up the offer (though if a fantastic and politically unrealistic offer were made, an equally fantastic and unrealistic response might follow). It would be considered an unseemly bribe.
September 21, 2010 at 2:53 am
“… the upper-peninsula will go to Wisconsin, where it always belonged [emphasis added] …”.
No, actually. The borders make a lot of sense according to the transport links and technology of the time when they were set up – no railways, poor roads, and convenient water access by rivers as well as the Great Lakes for Wisconsin, but with practically only the latter water access for peninsular Michigan.
September 21, 2010 at 6:03 am
Nothing is stopping America stopping giving a shit about Palestine tomorrow, if that’s your problem.
To be honest, if the “international community” stopped giving a shit about Palestine tomorrow, the Israelis drive in there with their tanks on Wednesday, commit war-crimes on Thursday and Friday and Saturday and peace out on Sunday. Voila. Palestinian problem solved.
Sure it might not be a “just” solution, but we’re not giving a shit, remember?
September 21, 2010 at 7:42 am
The cynics will point out that the Palestinian issue has never been about simply moving some people around, as this solution seems to think it is. It has been about political power and leverage.
September 21, 2010 at 11:26 am
Rather than giving the Kashmiris Flint, how about giving them Gary, Ind.? Hiving Gary off the rest of Indiana would make excellent sense for Indiana, and Gary could hardly get any worse by such a change than it already is.
September 21, 2010 at 2:01 pm
To be honest, if the “international community” stopped giving a shit about Palestine tomorrow, the Israelis drive in there with their tanks on Wednesday, commit war-crimes on Thursday and Friday and Saturday and peace out on Sunday. Voila. Palestinian problem solved.
Not if you’re convinced that America is responsible for the bulk of Israel’s military might. Of course if the US backed off now, in the near term Israel would still be strong enough to do what you describe, if not willing to do it all in 4 days.
September 21, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Does anyone really argue that America is responsible for israeli military might? I mean, nukes, sure, but we sell Isreal the same planes, tanks, etc. that we sell to the Saudis, and does anyone doubt how that war would work out? An IDF deprived of american weapons would still be massively more powerful than it’s neighbors, for the same reasons Isreal is massively richer and more functional than it’s neighbors.
September 21, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Sure, the US sell Israel a lot of bodacious hardware. The antimissile defense system is the one I know offhand.
Yet it doesn’t take much to militarily defeat an insurgency if you’re not bothered about human rights, cf. Cromer, the Ottomans, the French in Algeria.
September 21, 2010 at 6:13 pm
One of the commenters on the Yglesias site proposed moving the Federal government to Detroit, which seems to me the better idea, particularly if Federal employees were prohibited ever from travelling beyond the city limits.
But if we’re going to engage in international population exchanges, I’ve got an idea. Afghanistan is full of irascible Talibs and Jihadis who’ve nevertheless go the grit and determination to make a go of it in the New World. Why not set them up in all those empty, foreclosed-upon houses in Vegas, then put them to work processing and guarding the nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain facility. For that matter, why not let them maintain the alien spacecraft at Area 51?
What’s not to like?
September 21, 2010 at 8:10 pm
I think poor people are often willing to accept unseemly bribes (or something like it) on an individual basis. Collectively they have to put on a tough front though.
P. M. Lawrence, you are really ruining the ignorant loudmouth flow of this with your historical context.
sconzey, I’m not so quick to attribute the ills of a country to the “international community”. I will blame them for helping to create the permanent refugee thing, but I haven’t seen poll numbers indicating that most Israelis favor that step. I’m guessing that their time in Lebanon has soured them a bit on the prospect. In the future that option might become more popular though.
gwern, I’m inclined to agree with Stalin. No man, no problem.
Thanks for the suggestion, Michael. Is that where Michael Jackson is originally from? That also remind me that I’ve never seen “The Music Man”.
studd, we don’t just sell them stuff, we have given them large amounts of aid over the years. We weren’t their original sponsor though, that was the Soviets via Czechoslovakia.
I’m not that familiar with the history of Ottoman insurgency repression. Greece is one of the few such conflicts westerners hear about, and not even much of that.
Dr. Horsemeat, I have also heard it proposed that they move the government to somewhere in the middle of Montana, but Detroit may be a better choice.
The Pushtuns are mountain-men (even their women!), so not Vegas. Yucca Mountain sounds fine though.
Israel is richer than its neighbors, but it’s also small. It’s nominal GDP (as of 2009) is 194,825 in millions of USD. That’s actually less than the United Arab Emirates, Iran or Saudi Arabia. It’s more than Egypt though at 187,954.
September 22, 2010 at 2:58 am
Oh, I didn’t intend to make a moral judgement about the International Community, merely the factual statement that they are — so far as I can see — the main restraining influence on Israel’s military might. Whether this is morally good or bad depends on your moral code. :P
As to Israeli public opinion; that’s formed of a rational analysis of the balance of power. Israel, as a right-wing, nativist country, is rightly terrified that they might suffer the same fate as other right-wing, nativist countries.
September 21, 2010 at 11:55 pm
There are still people starving in Africa, right? Of course there are. And they’re the key to my Modest Proposal for solving the Palestinian problem.
September 22, 2010 at 4:32 am
Couldn’t we just send Detroiters to Palestine?
September 22, 2010 at 4:19 pm
> An IDF deprived of american weapons would still be massively more powerful than it’s neighbors, for the same reasons Isreal is massively richer and more functional than it’s neighbors.
The balance of power is different now. Iran has allegedly had missiles that can reach Israel for at least 18-24 months. But possibly longer:
Jane’s Information Group said in 2006 that Iran had six operational Shahab-3 brigades, the first of which was established in July 2003. They said that the six brigades were mainly equipped with standard variants, but with others described as enhanced Shahab-3 variants, with ranges of 1300-km, 1500-km and 2000-km respectively
The two nations are 1,000 miles apart. These supposed missiles could all be a bluff, I guess, but the vibe I get is that they are probably real. It seems that no few of them are duds, or have been in the past, but that doesn’t really make much difference.
I reckon these missiles have a lot to do with the lack of attack on the nuclear site in Iran. That sounds like parsimony to me. Israel was glad to blow up similar equipment in Syria and Iraq. To me it looks like they are going to accept Iran’s future bombs under the mutual assured destruction doctrines, rather than get their cities banged by missile fire. After all Pakistan has the bomb too, already.
September 22, 2010 at 9:51 pm
sconzey, I wasn’t making a moral claim either but a factual/causal one. I don’t think of Israel as right-wing/nativist. It’s a quite ethnically diverse country, I believe the Ashkenazi are a minority. At it’s creation it was supported by the Soviets, it had one of the most notable experiments in voluntary socialism (the kibbutz movement, which Noam Chomsky at one time participated in) and its economy has only recently (like many scandinavian countries) been moving toward neoliberalism. Avigdor Lieberman (an immigrant whose party relies on immigrant resentment of sabras) is the boogeyman people like to point to, but it’s ambiguous how to characterize him (other than as quite undiplomatic). He’s been compared to Jorg Haider (who caused Israel to cut off relations with Austria), but I don’t think Austria qualified as a right-wing nativist country when he was in government. Rhodesia lasted 14 years under UDT, South Africa lasted 44 after their independence. Israel has survived and presidential candidates still attend AIPAC gatherings to mouth the appropriate shibboleths.
robert61 and Mudpuppy are both exemplary creative thinkers.
I think the distance and the fact that the direct route would use Iraqi airspace has a lot to do with the lack of a strike. During the Gulf War, Iraqi Scuds killed just one Israeli.
September 22, 2010 at 11:18 pm
The SCUDs targeting Israel were ineffective due to the fact that increasing the range of the SCUD resulted in the dramatic reduction in accuracy and payload.
Another source:
The Al Hussein apparently had the same guidance system as the SCUD B, which made it less accurate when flown to a longer range (the radius of accuracy was between 1.6 km and 3.2 km). Its payload, estimated to be about 500 kg, was smaller than the SCUD B’s. The fact that the missile could be launched from an eight-wheeled TEL vehicle gave it sufficient mobility allowed it to evade US planes, which were unable to destroy a single operational SCUD missile during the first Gulf War.
[...]Iraq is believed to have fired 516 SCUD-type missiles at Iran during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. The first Al Hussein was reportedly fired at Tehran on February 29, 1988. The destructiveness and terrifying threat of these missiles helped persuade Iran to cease its missile attacks on Iraqi cities.
I don’t see how Tehran is closer to the Iraqi border than Israel is to the Iraqi desert far west. But a SCUD rig out there in the sand would perhaps be obvious on satellite, and get effortlessly blown away by highly accurate Coalition missiles. There’s also the Coalition anti-missile missiles, but their contribution has been debated.
Also, I think the new Iranian systems are probably way better, even at the much farther distance we are discussing. But I’m all researched out, for today.
Save for one more thing. While Israel has denied it, the London Times (at least) says the Saudis granted Israel overflight. Obviously this blew the Saudis’ plausible deniability, which may be one more reason for the lack of an attack.
“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”
Sources in Saudi Arabia say it is common knowledge within defence circles in the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. Despite the tension between the two governments, they share a mutual loathing of the regime in Tehran and a common fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” said one.
September 22, 2010 at 11:26 pm
> Obviously this blew the Saudis’ plausible deniability
Not quite the right phrase. What I mean is that the Saudis could otherwise have said that they failed to detect the intrusion. Now they can’t.
Evidently the London Times has a third source. Israel’s denial of the affair rings rather hollow, then. The source is the infamous John Bolton:
“None of them would say anything about it publicly but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn’t trumpet it as a big success,” Bolton told The Sunday Times.
September 30, 2010 at 3:57 am
Seems like cheap comedy. I think it would be better for the whole world if Jews left Israel. I think the evidence is ample that the problem isn’t jews per se, but jews + arabs. Few other regions of the world are as violent, and plenty of places tolerate having a high population density of deviantly wealthy jews in them with much lower levels of conflict.
Let New York be a Jewish/Southern European Catholic Utah. If Mormons and Scientologists can make do without a sovereign state, I think Jews will do fine. Israel isn’t a great place to stick all those scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Leave the Talmud-studiers and 5 times a day prayer guys to their resource-poor holy land.
October 1, 2010 at 7:25 am
Yes, I believe there were a few other candidate destinations in the early days of Zionism, and it is unfortunate that Israel/Palestine won out. I have also heard that at that time religious authorities were opposed to the project because they thought the Messiah had to arrive first (the Satmar still carry on that tradition) and the Zionists themselves were secularists. Kind of odd since the only reason to choose Israel is the old biblical claim to it. Maybe a bunch of them had already started moving there and they figured that was the easiest Schelling point.
Either of them could leave, but I think the Palestinians are least-cost movers at this point. As demographics change, so could that.
October 1, 2010 at 6:49 pm
I look at it as quant-talented jews are most-cost stayers That’s the talent we want to be logistically optimized.
October 1, 2010 at 9:05 pm
I hadn’t thought of the costs of them being in Israel. I suppose the world is “spiky” rather than flat and cities have significant returns to scale. There are already a bunch of them concentrated in there, but I hadn’t thought about how it stacks up compared to other places or the difficulty they might have due to weaker connections with the first world.
The Tel Aviv metropolitan area has a population of 3.2 million. New York’s is 19.75
October 3, 2010 at 11:13 am
Uganda was considered as a Zionist relocation point. See also the recent Michael Chabon novel The Yiddish Policeman’s Union which takes place in an alternate world in which the Jews were settled in Alaska. But yeah, Palestine is a Schelling point, in particular the Temple Mount which is even more point-like and claimed as sacred by both religions.
October 5, 2010 at 4:07 pm
The best argument I can think of against me is that it could turn orthodox jews from being mormon-like to being Hong Kong Han Chinese-like, which could rise to the level of a global existential risk problem (fertility of organized high iq populations).
Perhaps we should be encouraging fertility religions in organized high iq elites, building off strains of their traditional ones.
October 5, 2010 at 9:59 pm
You’ll have to elaborate on the difference between Mormons and Hong Kong Han Chinese.
October 6, 2010 at 2:43 am
fertility in an organized high IQ population, from what I’ve read third hand in Sailer type threads.