Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the switching-to-mac dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has called on Europe to stop demonstrating generosity towards asylum seekers to avoid an overwhelming migrant influx. He also advises European states to make Africans' way to the continent much more difficult.

During an interview Germany's Welt am Sonntag, Gates, one of the richest people on the planet, warned of the grave consequences of exceeding generosity towards refugees coming to Europe, whose numbers would only rise unless something is done.

"On the one hand you want to demonstrate generosity and take in refugees, but the more generous you are, the more word gets around about this – which in turn motivates more people to leave Africa," Gates said.

While Germany has been one of the pioneers of the open door policy, it cannot "take in the huge, massive number of people who are wanting to make their way to Europe." Thus Gates advised European nations to take action in order to make it "more difficult for Africans to reach the continent via the current transit routes."

Source: https://www.rt.com/news/395356-migrants-overwhelm-europe-gates/


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:08AM (14 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:08AM (#538491) Journal

    There's an inherent assumption that the money came from productive people. They might do that at the bottom. But those in charge are too often rent seekers or legal scammers in various forms.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:31AM (13 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:31AM (#538499) Journal

    But those in charge are too often rent seekers or legal scammers in various forms.

    Yet more government-caused problems. Just because government causes problems at multiple levels doesn't mean it's a good idea.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:52AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:52AM (#538510)

      As Ronald McDonald Reagan said: "Khallow is not the solution. Khallow is the problem!"

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:21AM (7 children)

      by kaszz (4211) on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:21AM (#538521) Journal

      And you think a government less country will have less problems? Bad people cause problems. So there need to be a mechanism to keep them in check without the mechanism being run by.. bad people.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:37AM (6 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:37AM (#538523) Journal

        And you think a government less country will have less problems? Bad people cause problems. So there need to be a mechanism to keep them in check without the mechanism being run by.. bad people.

        I'll just note here that enabling bad people to cause problems is one of the more common and glaring failure modes of government whether it be protecting rent seekers or looking the other way while a terrorist cell does 9/11. And I can't help but notice that quite a few of the people complaining about the megacorporations running governments propose to have the governments allegedly run by megacorporations, run the megacorporations. I'm sure that will end well.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:02AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:02AM (#538528)

          propose to have the governments allegedly run by megacorporations, run the megacorporations. I'm sure that will end well.

          It is a pickle, no doubt about it.

          It will end because it is unsustainable, just as running a car on fumes is unsustainable. The faster you go, the more fuel you consume for the most part.

          The solution to the problem will become more apparent during the walk to the gas station. It's for your own good. You'll remember to keep a spare gas can for the next time down that road.

        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:11AM (4 children)

          by kaszz (4211) on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:11AM (#538555) Journal

          Perhaps it's possible to make the governments own shortcomings to work against themselves?

          Kind of like where big cities causes housing prices to soar until employees that make the city work moves away and the city starts to having trouble performing as well as other cities.

          • (Score: 1, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:45AM (3 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:45AM (#538567) Journal

            Perhaps it's possible to make the governments own shortcomings to work against themselves?

            Kind of like where big cities causes housing prices to soar until employees that make the city work moves away and the city starts to having trouble performing as well as other cities.

            We call those sorts of things, "businesses". And shortcomings work when the business doesn't have a captive revenue stream, that is, tax money, to do things no matter how harmful those actions are.

            • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:09AM

              by kaszz (4211) on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:09AM (#538577) Journal

              If "tax units" abandon ship or government spends the stolen goods on self defeating projects. It might work anyway?

            • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:09PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:09PM (#538717)

              Why are you so ignorant? Are you fresh out of high school??

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:46PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:46PM (#538831)

                Go easy on him. The person who looks after him has a couple of hours off now and then and lets him go on the Internets all by himself.

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:02PM (3 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:02PM (#538878)

      Rent seeking is a market problem - get rid of government, and the rich will still engage in rent-seeking behaviors.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 14 2017, @01:19AM (2 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 14 2017, @01:19AM (#538928) Journal

        Rent seeking is a market problem - get rid of government, and the rich will still engage in rent-seeking behaviors.

        But they'll have a much harder time succeeding. Government provides several things that can't be matched in an actual market: a captive revenue stream - the taxpayer; powerful protection of rent seeking opportunities like barriers to entry (your business has the only contract or is one of the few that has the resources to meet the stringent licensing requirements); and invisibility - in the US, publicly funded rent seeking is hidden in over 3 trillion dollars of budget with a vast number of other rent seekers present.

        It's extremely difficult to appreciate the scale and complexity of the rent seeking that goes on in a large government like the US and the state-level governments. Every program or entitlement provides a variety of subtle ways to profit from the public. For example, I once had unemployment insurance (state of California) which required a Bank of America account and card in order to access. That's rent seeking by BoA that wouldn't be present in a real market (I already used a credit union for my regular financial services). It's not huge money, but it was highly profitable for the bank since they collected fees from a fair-sized population and provided little in the way of services in exchange. This is the typical invisible rent seeking.

        Meanwhile large government projects can have thousands of rent seekers attached. Money just vanishes and everyone acts puzzled as to why the project has experienced cost overruns.

        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 15 2017, @01:34PM (1 child)

          by Immerman (3985) on Saturday July 15 2017, @01:34PM (#539537)

          Hardly. Without government there is nothing to hold the wealthy even as much in check as they are now. Which makes something like feudalism the expected outcome. In the absence of collective government, those with power will force the rest to accept their rules, and their rules almost always include "everything is ours, but you can use it in exchange for a substantial fraction of the results of your labor".

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 15 2017, @11:16PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 15 2017, @11:16PM (#539686) Journal

            Without government there is nothing to hold the wealthy even as much in check as they are now.

            I glossed over this excluded middle fallacy in my previous post, but this is getting ridiculous. No one has advocated the elimination of government. It's just that business isn't not a serious problem in any developed world country while we have plenty of examples of overreaching government power (such as surveillance, imposing restrictions on freedoms, and massive, almost unaccountable government spending.

            At this point, government is holding the wealthy back from doing things like paying people to work or creating new businesses. We can have considerably less government and still have it keeping wealthy in check. I'd start with the massive rent seeking and such first, if you want ideas on what to cut since it actually runs counter to your expressed interests. Then I'd move on to the entitlements. Sorry, giving a mediocre pension to every citizen (especially when it's set up as a pyramid scheme where the early participants get good returns and the latecomers get awful returns) is not going to keep the wealthy in check nor serve any other necessary interest of the country.

            In the absence of collective government, those with power will force the rest to accept their rules, and their rules almost always include "everything is ours, but you can use it in exchange for a substantial fraction of the results of your labor".

            Wealth isn't power. Sure, you can buy power with it, but you can also be robbed blind by the more powerful. Such a government would not be a government of the richest, but instead a government of the most powerful who just happen to use that power to get rich.

            And we forget here that the wealthy can be a check on the power of government. The division of economic power between government and business is yet another division of power. In democracies, such divisions of power help keep societies democratic.