On Fixing Shitholes

There’s a point being made that people who live in so-called shithole countries should stay and fix those countries instead of relocating to a better one. This is terrible advice for several reasons: 1) nobody has an obligation to make their country of origin better; 2) your highest priority should be the safety and prosperity of yourselves and your loved ones, and if that means immigrating, do it; 3) attempting to stay and fix a shithole country is statistically a fool’s errand, as it’s in incredibly difficult for a person to effect any meaningful change in the desired direction; and 4) some who are making this point are doing so as to not encourage foreigners to come to their country and exploit their public benefits, a challenging problem to be sure, but if it were truly a simple thing to stay and fix a shithole country, it would be just as simple for us First-Worlders to fix our public benefits problem. It’s a uniquely terrible advice giver to expect anyone to stay and suffer their shithole country and foolishly try to fix it. Nobody should suffer a shithole country. Come to the First World if you please, any way you can. And that’s today’s two cents.

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Founder and editor of Everything-Voluntary.com and UnschoolingDads.com, Skyler is a husband and unschooling father of three beautiful children. His writings include the column series “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” and “One Improved Unit,” and blog series “Two Cents“. Skyler also wrote the books No Hitting! and Toward a Free Society, and edited the books Everything Voluntary and Unschooling Dads. You can hear Skyler chatting away on his podcasts, Everything Voluntary and Thinking & Doing.