1/ J.G. Ballard wrote a great shorty story "Billennium". In the overpopulated future where the maximum legal living quarters are 3.5 square meters, two friends discover a room, accidentally walled over decades ago. It's HUGE - a big 20th century bedroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billennium_(short_story) …
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2/ The two guys share the room - blown away by how much space they have. It's AMAZING. ...and then they each invite in a friend to share it. ...and the friends invite friends. And pretty soon...the thing is a crap hole, just like the rest of the overpopulated city.
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3/ The consensus immigration policy in the US is basically "that's an awesome short story, and we should definitely do the same thing with all of America."
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4/ 500 years ago the West discovered an entire hemisphere. No kings, no taxes, thanks to plagues almost no inhabitants. For 400 years it worked very well. Unprecedented wealth, freedom, self government. Friends were invited, but only good ones. Brothers, and a few cousins.
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5/ But somewhere along the line someone invited in enough !@#$-holes, who liked ruling people. When you like ruling, you need (a) more people to rule, (b) less restrictions on your power.
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6/ So that's when we threw the doors open and started inviting in tens of millions of absolute strangers. People with strange religions, strange political theories, strange lack of desire to work, strange lack of intellectual gifts. We've crossed the tipping point.
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7/ The secret room / secret hemisphere is going to go under, and be just like the craphole we left.
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8/ This is why we need spaceflight. Exit. Exit. Exit.
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9/ We've got to make that big jump.
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10/ Korolev smiled. Andy grinned back. "We grabbed those power cables and just pulled ourselves straight up. And when you get to the top, well, man, you either make that big jump or else you rot there." http://lib.ru/STERLINGB/r_star.txt …
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