In the old system, you needed "pen, paper, stamp and a passport picture" plus english literacy, the money to come to the States if you win, no doubt other stuff... While I'm with you that having the system only online further skews the process, we were already talking about a small elite in developing countries anyway, even then with a very small chance of winning.

So you're in favor of the free movement of global labor, then? In order to be realistic, I assume this means you are willing to give up retirement benefits, national health, free education... I think this may be the right position, but it is fairly radical.

Although English is now officially your third language, you seem to have mastered the very Anglo art of Obfuscatory Passive Sentence Constructions: "I am forced to resort to such ploys as the annual US diversity visa lottery." Does this mean you're applying for a visa to move back to the U.S? Stockholm too dark for you? Its lauded social democracy too stifling?

A word of caution in the event that you are "lucky" enough to win the eligibility lottery: Be sure to complete the required application within the fiscal year for which you are eligible. I have seen several cases where a person failed to do so. Denial is automatic; the courts have zero discretion.

Matthew, not at all, I am trying to replicate as far as possible the state of things I would like them to be like. Do I fancy a stint in New York? No problem. Back to Europe? No problem. That sort of thing.

Charles, I don't get any and never have had any of those things anyway, so when do I get to see the upside for me?

Stefan-- almost certainly the first order effects of the free movement of labor are good for you. You're rich enough not to need the free stuff and to enjoy the house servant on a dollar a day as well as educated/skilled enough to keep a well-paid job even in the face of increased competition. If that's what you care about, go wild. But stop giving Matthew a hard time for being right-wing, and embrace your neoclassical self.

Charles, you dolt, clearly I am aligning myself with the poor when I say "I". The world's poor would be immensely better off if they had the ability to move anywhere where there is work. It should be coupled to absolute free trade, however, because moving entire countries to the First World is not nearly as efficient as moving factories from the first to the third.

Everybody wins except unskilled laborers in the west, and even with services like software developers. So US unions are right to try to prevent globalization.

Trade tariffs and visas are preventing a natural "evening out" of the wealth disparity between first world and third. Unskilled laborers in the first are being overpaid for their output, those in the third world underpaid.

Anybody who is truly on the side of the poorest thinks Naomi Klein is a dupe.

Stefan-- try this little experiment. While in Sweden, chop off your right hand and, using your left, dial whatever the Swedish for 911 is and say "I've chopped off my hand and I'm bleeding to death but I have no insurance." Record the quality of care that results.

Next, go to Chad and chop off your left foot. Using your left hand, and making sure you've done all this near one of the six phones in the country, call directory services (if they have it) and ask to be put through to a hospital (they certainly don't have a 911 system --so this will have to do). Tell the hospital where you are, what's happened, and that you have no insurance. Then bleed to death.

You already benefit from the free stuff. You do point out (and I agree) that you could benefit more. But this just shows that you are not the world's poor, or anything like it. You can tell this because you've never benefited from the free stuff and yet you are healthy and educated.

For example, your twenty-odd years of education must have been private. At (say) $2,000/year average (low, surely), your education alone has cost the total life income of a couple of people living on a dollar a day.

Meanwhile, on the trade evening out inequality issue, nice theory, shame about the evidence. Global trade barriers have been falling very fast over the past 50 years. Both the costs of transporting goods and the tariffs they face when they arrive. And yet global income inequality is shooting upwards. Go figure.

Maybe free movement of labor would work better, who knows. Whatever, I'd say that the probability is that you as a rich person in a rich country would benefit, at least in terms of purchasing power. So I can see why you might like it.

urk glak bleeuuuuchh. that's me being sick because i agree with stefan again.

where exactly are you going, charles? whaddaya want? autarky? stay in your miserable country, you chaddian (you chaddist? you chad? you chaddish person? help) you can't come over here because you have to stay behind on a dollar a day. perhaps who gets to go to different places should be decided by smart people who work at the world bank.

there's an aspect to free trade and movement of labour independent of economic theory and it's to do with freedom and ultimate equality. why should arbitrary things like borders determine life chances? if i want to work in the US, what is the moral or utilitarian justification that should i not be able to? for that matter if i want to buy my widgets from japan where they are cheaper (or where they might be more expensive), why should i not be able to? clearly, preventing me from doing this is a form of coercion. it might be that all the crap we learned about "Free Trade Good, Protection Bad" that Stefan is parroting is based on an economic theory that may be falsified in the future. but even if it is there's ample reason in terms of a working theory of liberty to keep free trade and movement of labour as a Good Thing.

it's very pertinent to current issues in the UK right now. New Labour is apparently readying a very tough bill to give illegal asylum seekers a good sorting out. many of them trying to get into the UK have made it here from places like nigeria where most've apparently had to cross the sahara on foot to morrocco and risked death in a dinghy on a crossing to spain and spend their life savings for the privilege. anyone who's done that to live here should get a visa just like that if you ask me. if certian people are worried about overcrowding or the ethnic makeup of this country changing for the worse, i'd be in favour of forcibly deporting them to nigeria to even things up.

Charles, let us remind ourselves why these good doctors on the shores of Lake Nyasa in Malawi are not getting their green card: Because you haven't done your job properly. What good have all your trips to Africa brought the inhabitants there? Internet access -- The one thing you've been responsible for? Instead you sit at comfy hotels discussing how latency issues and nonexistent land lines make such access economically unviable. What's keeping you from taking a pick-axe and digging a trench? You might actually do something productive, even if incredibly inefficiently at your salary.

also, on a technical note, you are confusing cause and effect. If trade barriers had not been lower, income inequality would have been even higher. And you know it. In any case, free labor mobility is the big test. Want to see what the result of it is? Look at NYC.

Stefan--
(1) Even more useless than digging a trench would be sitting in an African country trying to get the US to change its immigration laws. That's why I don't do it. That, and its not in the job description.
(2) "What good have all your trips to Africa brought the inhabitants there? Internet access -- The one thing you've been responsible for? Instead you sit at comfy hotels discussing how latency issues and nonexistent land lines make such access economically unviable. " This isn't English. Try again in Swedish.
(3) I'm confusing cause and effect, you say. I guess that means you think higher global inequality causes more trade. Plausible, but not really a reason to support free trade, now is it. Here's how the last century looks in global economic terms. Freer trade and rising global inequality up to WW I. Trade barriers and falling inequality inter-war. Freer trade and rising inequality post WW II. Draw your own conclusions.
(4) My point was that free movement of people makes free provision of expensive social services, which you benefit from, much more complex. You don't seem to have tackled that point.

Eurof--
Thanks for the hack Hayek. See point (4) above. I'm not saying I'm necessarily against it, I'm saying it raises some difficult questions that both you and Stefan appear to be completely unable to grasp.

re point 4 no, you're right, we haven't tackled it because as people intimately acquainted with the welfare state we know that most economic immigrants don't actually qualify for insurance-based benefits in their new countries until they've worked productively for a while and paid their contributions. we sort of assumed you understood that but shan't overestimate you again. plus they tend to be the sort of people who get jobs immediately, and tend not to get sick as often (crossing the sahara on foot might weed weedy ones out), plus as you know they send a lot of money home to help chaddians left behind. so the problem isn't at all as bad as you and jˆrg haider might think.

This is based on your intimate experience of a modern welfare state which has an open-door policy for immigrants. Which welfare state would that be, then? And, while we're at it, regarding the comparison to Jorg Haider, sod off.

I think Jˆrg would say "sod offen zie".

a thousand apologies, charles, i would never dream of comparing you to jˆrg haider. all i meant to say is that the pro-welfare state anti-immigration argument you're alluding to is one that he uses to scare middle-class austrians into voting for him.

wheras in fact the exact opposite is true: the only way the austrian state can finance its generous welfare programme in the face of an ageing population is through increased immigration to balance out the proportion of retirees to tax-paying wage earners.

there are no modern welfare states with full open-door immigration policies, as you well know, but so long as benefits are insurance-based their immigration policies are moot for the purposes of this discussion. however Sweden is a good example of what i mean, and the UK also, to a lesser extent (people who haven't paid Nat. Insurance contribution still qualify for a type of jobseekers allowance).

Eurof-- walked away my foot. Thanks for the apology. I think you are right to apologise.

(1) The discussion was all about immigration policies, thus suggesting that "immigration policies are moot for the purposes of this discussion" merely shows you haven't been following the discussion terribly closely. (2)The discussion, just to make clear, was about totally free movement of labor --to quote Stefan "The world's poor would be immensely better off if they had the ability to move anywhere where there is work... Trade tariffs and visas are preventing a natural 'evening out' of the wealth disparity between first world and third." (3) I was saying that it is possible that totally free movement of labor would be a good idea but would put pressure on OECD social service provision. (4) You have babbled on about marginal changes to immigration policies which are pretty much irrelevant to this discussion.

From all of this we can conclude that either you are an idiot, or that you don't read stuff before commenting on it by suggesting the author is in communion with a racist thug. The first you wouldn't need to apologise for, I'm being generous in assuming its the second.

charles, nice try to get the last word and to then be able to say i walked away and you won. clearly we were having different discussions. mine however, was much more initeresting than yours.

why don't you just accept that you think that on this point, you think jˆrg haider may be right. it doesn't mean you're a racist at all. after all, hitler thought aspects of the versailles treaty was unjust, and so did woodrow wilson. that doesn't mean woodrow wilson was a nazi.

You started it, saying I'd walked off.

Yes, clearly we were having different discussions, but as I was having the discussion first, based on Stefan's post and response, whereas your discussion was completely irrelevant and was supposedly an attack on what I said, you're an idiot.

And that has been my point all along since you made your slur --Jorg Haider may well agree that completely open immigration was a bad idea, but so would Woodrow Wilson,Michael Foot, etc etc. In the same way as saying "you and Hitler think that parts of the Versailles Treaty were unjust," saying "you and Haider think open immigration is bad" is merely trying to tar the argument as unacceptable by irrelevant association.

Give up. You're wrong.

i'm beginning to get upset at your pathetic atttempts to get the last word in here. having two concurrent discussions on exactly the same thing is pointless and annoying, two adjectives eminently applicable to your style of argument, by the way. i answer your substantive points, insofar as you have any, in the comments following "The End of Ironing", and suggest we leave this comment stream.

So you can have the last word? Never!

you're infantile. grow up.

Why not show *your* maturity by not responding? Why do *I* always have to be the mature one?

because you ARE more mature than me

Damn. Alright then, I won't reply.

charles, please. just take one for the team and stop. we can't keep doing this.

why aren't you a team player?

You ask me to stop and then you ask me a question? What am I meant to do now? Be a team player and stop or be polite and answer?

You are all uneducated about green cards because doctors do not need them. Read up on it. They are allowed entrance anytime.

I'll shut up then as long as you call me Doctor.

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i want to apply for the lottery

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I am a boy who graduated from a secondary school in NIgeria and wish to contine studies in uk/USA but my parent's income is relatively low.
Anybody who feels like helping me.I am fatherless .Please help me.I want to study in the university of leeds but i don't know how to do about it.