That's Not Funny!

Well, Mark Steyn's The Spectator.co.uk column is not a laugh riot like we've come to expect from the Master. But it is an important column: "The age of the sovereign individual."

Ireland managed to persuade its wandering sons of Erin to return. Imagine if China did the same. For two generations, as fertility rates have nose-dived in the West, the complaceniks of Canada and Western Europe have clung to the assumption that they can go on using the Third World as a farm team and denude developing societies of their best and brightest. Even if one accepts this as enlightened and progressive rather than lazy and selfish, how could anyone seriously credit it as a long-term strategy on which to pin the viability of Euro-Canadian welfarism? The most vital economic resource is people, and that’s the one thing much of the Western world is running out of. The anti-globalists can demonise sovereign states and sovereign companies — the Dells and other multinationals — but we’re entering the age of the sovereign individual, and that will be a lot harder for the anti-glob mob to attack. By 2010, a smart energetic Chinaman or Indian will be able to write his own ticket anywhere he wants. How attractive will the prospect of moving to the European Union and supporting a population of geriatric ingrate Continentals be? Not just compared with working in America or Australia but with the economic opportunities in his own country?

Here’s a prediction: Europe’s dependence on immigration will in the end prove far more catastrophic than America’s dependence on oil. The immigrants will run out long before the oil does.

Read the whole thing. Steyn nails some important topics -- and don't worry, there are some laughs to be had.

Hat-tip: Samizdata

Economics and Markets Posted by jk at April 18, 2005 12:05 AM