Barriers and Equilibrium

That's a fragment of the Berlin Wall that is in Midtown Manhattan. (Or was when I took the picture. I bet it's still there.). I saw the Berlin wall when it was in operation. We took a bus to East Berlin. On the way back we stood aside while they looked in and under the bus for people who were trying to escape their Utopia. I didn't see Berlin again for over two decades. The fragments of the wall were museum pieces (and chips were sold in souvenir shops). I also took pictures of fragments of the wall in Canada (Toronto I think) and Dallas. We scoff at the wall. We exhibit pieces as relics. "Tear down this wall!" we cry imitating Reagan. Yes, Reagan.

I am using this picture to represent walls and barriers everywhere. But I especially want to talk about the long border to our south, the one between the United States and Mexico. The idea of building a wall along our southern border to keep the flow of economic refugees out is so ludicrous that I thought it would never go forward. But go forward it did. If you are a fan, I'm sure you are saying: "But it also keeps mean old drugs out of our country." Yeah, like with the profits involved a wall could ever stop that. They have planes and other sophisticated means. The whole drug war is a subject for another JUC entry. Maybe another day. But we will keep getting back to it here.

No. We are building a wall to stem the tide of maids and laborers. To cut off a cheap labor supply for meat-packing plants. Perhaps the well-paid, unionized auto workers see a future there. Will they just miss the boat on efficient hybrids to encounter a turn to the vegan life style to interrupt their careers with their high school diplomas? But, I digress. (Ed. Note: Save unions for another day.)

We are actually building this wall. People are protesting the splitting of neighborhoods from shops and the condemnation of land and the walling of wildlife movement and other inconveniences. I doubt it really changes the game in illegal crossing with the risks and human suffering.

Well, recently, I started to hear that Mexican immigrants were getting squeezed out of jobs and returning to Mexico. (Although I did find that one wall contractor was busted for using illegal labor. Ha.) This wall is trying to stop, after all, a barrier to economic equilibrium. There is no reason that Mexico and, say, South Texas should have this huge economic difference. It is maintained by the border itself, the border that defines what government you have.

When I heard about the potential recession-era return of immigrants, I thought, "Now that belongs in the Journal of Unintended Consequences. Who knew we could solve that problem by destroying our own economy buying houses we couldn't afford that were so big we had to hire illegal immigrants to clean them?"

But if that was the end of the story it might not have been enough to get JUC out of its hiatus. (It wasn't a retirement exactly. Isn't hiatus a great and useful word?) No, there had to be something more. Then I learned that the situation in Mexico with corrupt and ineffective police was so bad that people were afraid to return. Indeed, the relatives of people who are in the U.S. (legally or illegally) are being kidnapped and ransoms paid from the U.S. These people aren't going home but are trying to get their relatives out, merely to get them in a more secure environment.

Amid the terrible violence in Mexico is another unintended consequence. Maybe the whole of history is one unintended consequence? We (well me) at JUC tend to think so. Yeah, in some cases the police and army are getting control of drug lords in certain areas. This has sent these goons off to other regions where they duke it out with other bad guys for dominance and, in the process terrorize more poor, honest citizens. (I tried to find a link to the story that made this assertion but I was quickly overwhelmed with stories about the violence in Mexico. Ed Note: If I'm going to link up specific news stories you read you are going to have to save them!)

Border towns used to benefit from tourists from the U.S. Our politicians didn't really mean to stop this, but first the long lines to return and now the high probability of violence have shut down the innocent trade in onyx chess sets and sombreros.

I was against the wall. (As in 'not for it' as opposed to up against it!) Fact is, I'm against illegal drugs. (In that, I'm against creating a huge economy of violent sellers of same and filling up our jails with people who are caught with the substances.) Naturally I realize that legalizing drugs and liberalizing immigration have a vast potential of unintended consequences of their own. But thank your lucky stars that you live where the police and army still have the bandwidth to control criminals somewhat while rounding up thousands of economic immigrants and people with a ounce of weed. (If indeed you do live in such a place. There are spots in the U.S. where I suspect the drug lords run the show.)

But illegal drugs? Well, that's a subject for another day. Today I just want to say that walls do not succeed long term in changing economic and political imbalance. And that this economic imbalance between us and Mexico is subject to the laws of unintended consequences with the recession sending people home, but the violence there making them want to stay, job or not.