foreign invasion, welfare economy and immigration

Economics Economics Questions
1

Consider the following scenario.

Some persons acquired some fertile land along with other natural and artificial/technological resources and started living there without economic dependencies on any other than their limited set of similar minded persons and descendants. They have even taken oath that they would not go outside thier “society/community” in order to get resources even in the case of any of them is going to die. In other words they want to be and can be and are economically and mentally self-sufficent. And they find “boundless” joy and happyness in this mode of living. Lets call them Happymen and thier land as Happyland :slight_smile:

Unfortunately, people outside Happyland are not as “happy” as those Happymen and notice this highly “happy” society. What will they do?

CaseA: Outsiders will invade Happyland and try to steal resources.
CaseB: Outsiders will communicate with Happymen about their demands which they think Happymen can supply.

In caseA, if Happymen decide and perform fiercefull fighting and raising stone wall to defend themselves, they will either be successful or unsuccessful. If they become unsuccessfull, outsiders will finally takeover the Happyland making it an Unhappyland. If Happymen become successful, it will be for a timebeing, may be for thousands of years, only to be again threatened by another invaders.

In caseB, if Happymen deny to provide the supply for the demand of the outsiders, the outsider may go away or invade and ultimately raising the caseA.

But in caseB, if Happymen provide some supply to the demand as welfare, things start to get little bit interesting!

The outsiders may become happy after getting the supply and after few times they may stop asking for more supply. But if they again become unhappy they will probably ask the Happymen again, resulting in an unending loop of welfare. But if Happymen donate their knowledge, which has led themselves to what they are today, along with some supply of the immediate demand of outsiders, there may have a chance that the outsiders will start to become Happymen i.e. self-sufficient.

In this knowledge-welfare situation, the outsiders may settle inside the Happyland or make thier Unhappyland into an Happyland extension. If they settle inside the Happyland, this will be a special case of immigration.

Now, the question is which one would be a better attempt for Happymen: provide welfare to unhappy outsiders and accept immigration or block unhappy outsiders and prepare to defend an invasion?

2

That will depend on the cost and benefit estimates those people have in their situation as such. What else?

3

What are the items that are supposed to be counted under “cost” and “benefit” headings, considering their stated situation?

4

What’s wrong with the answer ‘that’s subjective’?

5

In order to solve a problem with “cost and benefit” methodoloy, there is an absolute necessity to identify the keypoints or items whose costs or benefits are to be compared. Moreover, even after preparing the cost and benefit chart, there will arise another issue, in this special case,of how to quantify those items with currency as Happymen do not know the currency of outsiders and hence the exchange rate. Even if outsiders’ currency be known, it is going to fluctuate due to the very nature of currency itself.

Categorizing a problem into “cost and benefit” issue and then making both the constituting items and their values as “subjective” is not a solution to the problem. This approach is same as saying “the correct answer of the question is exactly that what the questioner will answer it”.

6

Which is sort of the correct answer. What you are asking is not an economics question, but an entrepreneurial one. But the thing is: there is no such thing as entrepreneurship in a vacuum; it’s always and everywhere, by necessity, within a given context.

You are asking what is ‘better’; but that really depends on the marginal trade offs. How strong do they think the power of the invastion will be? How unhappy will they be when they accept immigration, etc. etc. The only way to answer this question is to know what are the relevant cost/benefit estimates of those people; which doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Basically your question is: ‘well, what would you do in situation x, but all the relevant variables aren’t given’. Well; it’s kind a hard to answer then, isn’t it…

This problem can not be solved given the information given. When you ask ‘what should they take into account’, your are entering the case of subjective normative statements - and I’m not even talking about something about natural law or something that at least has some chance of being determined objectively. Different people will take into account different things and there is no correct answer.

‘Preparing’ the cost/benefit chart really makes no sense in a vacuum. There is no solution to this problem absence real life circumstances; only subjective evaluations - most definitely because the marginal trade offs aren’t know, nor all the relevant variables.

So it’s really hard to see what you’re trying to achieve with this. It’s not economics, not history, not sociology, not antropology, not philosophy; it’s just a hypothetical situation where a lot of the relevant data is missing. And then you ask: what should be done? It really makes no sense.

7

If the question is an entrepreneural one, it must be an economical one too. What entrepreneurs do is to provide supply for certain goods which are not yet being provided by others and which have potentiality of providing considerable profit to him. But i do agree that the question is not a pure economic one, it involves political or more clearly praxeological issue.

Well, i found two contributing items to analyse cost and benefit from the above quote and framework of answer is emerging out from it! Indeed the Happymen can not just write off one or other as better or worse. They have no other way but to try one, either doing welfare and allowing immigration or fighting against invasion, at the start. And as things will progress from that point, they need to update their cost/benefit estimates and change their course accordingly.

Yes, absolutely but i asked to look into the situation from side of Happymen. And surely it’s hard to answer, at least to me; that’s why i asked the question in the first place.

I guess, i have now given the answer myself above (making your comment "Which is sort of the correct answer. " literally true!). The answer was not required to be a binary - YES/No type.

I found no reasonable point in calling the context of the question a “vacuum”. Making an imaginary situation may help understanding real life issues. For example the imaginary construction of “evenly rotating economy” does help to understand rate of interest. So, i thought providing solution to this problem of imaginary condition might be possible and might help to understand real life situation.

I think if one try to judge the motive of the questioner before making attempt to answer the question, he is making the whole point of discussion useless even if the question itself is ill-formed or lacks variables. The question is firmly attached with economy of the Happyland because in one way or other it is going to be affected by outsiders. If i can not make sense of something then it is not necessarily a non-sensical thing to other. The solution to the question helps to understand the issue of immigration and welfare economy.

So, i would conclude that the residents of Happyland can apply cost and benefit analysis to arrive at which one is better only after they ventured on either one of two available paths - a)welfare and immigration and b) fierceful fighting.