Why a Wall Won't Work

There has been a lot of talk about putting up a wall or a fence along the border with Mexico in order to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the country. I don't think this will work. Essentially, the problem is that people will simply go over, under, or around the wall. Let's look at some of the more obvious problems with this:

1) The wall would have to be thousands of miles long to cover the entire border. If it's not, then people would simply walk around it and go across in places where there is no wall.

2) The wall would also have to be very high so that it is not easy to climb over it. It would probably have to be 20 feet high or so, and it would have to have barbed wire on top as well.

3) The wall would also have to be dug deep down under the ground to discourage tunnels. In fact, a tunnel was already discovered under an existing border wall in the San Diego area.

3) Many people have suggested that it would need to be double walls with a no-man's zone between them containing a myriad of high-tech sensors such as infra-red, motion-detectors, sound-detectors, smell receptors, and cameras.

4) And of course, if there is an attempt to cross this wall in some way, then the monitoring equipment has to all be monitored by border patrol. Thousands and thousands more than are there today. Some have said as many as 20,000 more guards than are there today.

5) This wall would be bigger than the Great Wall of China, which, as everybody knows, is the only man-made object that is visible from space.


6) Then, with such a massive, expensive wall running for thousands of miles along the border, that still would not keep out unwanted foreigners. They would get around the wall easily by simply getting in a boat and sailing around the wall and coming up on the coast somewhere - as Cuban refugees have been doing on the Florida coast for decades. And they have further to go.

7) So then, it would become necessary to put up a similar wall all along the California coast, blocking off the entire Pacific Ocean. And of course, that means also another wall all along the gulf coast. And then, of course, we would need another one all along the eastern coast to completely block off the Atlantic Ocean.

8) Then, of course, we have the border with Canada on the north side. Well, we can't block off access from all three sides but leave that side open, so let's just seal that off too, shall we? There's another 4,000 miles of double walls, 20 feet high and 20 feet deep. Let's not forget the coastlines of all the great lakes. Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, The St Laurence Seaway, The Niagra River, Lake Michigan, Lake Superior - seal them all off completely.

Then we would be safe, right? Wrong. What about Alaska? And Hawaii? And Guam? And Puerto Rico? These are also American states and territories. If someone were to enter these places, they could travel to any other place in the US. So - let's wall them all off and seal them all up. Yes. Walls for everyone. Every coastline. No more looking at the water. We can't have open coastline like that! - why, we might get an undocumented worker sneaking in there!

This system of walls along thousands and thousands and thousands of miles of borders and coastlines would be the biggest and most expensive project in all of human history. It would make the Great Wall of China look like a weekend project on a shoestring budget. It would take more people than we have in this country to build it. It would cost more money than this country has or could possibly earn in a thousand years, to make it. It would require more cement than the whole planet has, to build it. And how long would it take for such a massive project? 100 years? 200 years? And it would require at least half the population to staff it - diligently ever watchful for those pesky workers who want to come here and get a $5/hr job.

Remember, this massively expensive GWA (The Great Wall of America) would not be there to repel foreign invaders (as the wall in China was built to do). It would be there to prevent Mexican workers from coming here to work for us. To pick our lettuce. To mow our grass. To cook our food. To build our houses. Yes. That's the horrible fate we would be spending all that money and time and effort to avoid.

But THEN we would finally be safe right? Wrong again, sunshine!

Even an impenetrable double wall for thousands of miles would still not prevent against corruption. There will always be border guards who can be bought off to let people through. It's been in the news lately in the San Diego area where border guards routinely let through thousands of people for money or sex, or other inducements.

Then, people will still hide in the trunks of cars and the backs of trucks, and shipping containers on boats and trains, etc. So they would get in that way.

Also, there are those that come in legally, say, on holiday, but then stay and work illegally. Or then come to work legally on a work visa, but then their visa expires and they stay and keep working and don't leave.

Alright then, out of the remaining 50% of the population, we would have to have an elaborate, massive and massively expensive bureaucracy of immigration officers to constantly be patrolling every business, every house, every school, every street looking for people without their paperwork. And of course, since that is the only way they could tell the people who are here illegally from those who are here legally, then ALL Americans would need to have and carry their identification at all times. And, to avoid these ID cards from being counterfeited they would have to have biometric chips included, for fingerprints, etc. and there would have to be a massive central database system to contain this and millions of readers out there that are portable that the officers can use while patrolling the streets.

So let's add this all up:
We would be completely enclosed on all sides by double walls 20 ft high topped with barbed wire, and 20 ft deep underground. There would be armed guards everywhere. Not just on the walls all around, but also patrolling the streets looking for anyone without papers. We would all have to have our paperwork with us at all times, and we would have to endure constant searches of our homes and businesses. There would be constant monitoring of our phones, our mail, our email, or IM, and text messaging. We would all be completely numbered, classified, and certified. The database would be always up to date with all knowledge about us so the government would know all our secrets, and all our movements. They would know who we are, where we are, what we are doing, and who we are doing it with, at all times. Since they would need to monitor us, and track everyone's movements, that means we would most likely be required to seek permission from the government to move, or travel, or to change jobs. If they decided not to permit you to move or change your job, or if you displeased them in some other way - say speaking out against the government or it's leaders, then you could have your licenses revoked and be without papers. Then as soon as a roving team of ICE officers discovered you - you would be captured and deported immediately.
And for work, most of us would either be working on building the wall, or we would be in security service patrolling it or patrolling the streets.

Yep that should about do it. Finally, we would be .... um....free.

Is this what we wanted? Is this the life so many people tried so hard to come here to have, and died to protect? I guess this is what we would need to do to protect our cherished so-called "American way of life".

Ironically, in the end, this would probably actually work to keep out foreigners. But, it's not the walls that would keep people away. It's the lifestyle. After all, we would have turned the entire country into a prison, impoverishing ourselves in the process, and we would have surrendered all our rights, privileges, and freedoms.
Who the heck would want to come and live here then? In fact, I think the walls would end up having to be used for the opposite purpose - to try to keep the inmates IN...

The obvious question becomes, "So what WOULD work, then?"

Well, for a lot less money than walling-off the entire US and turning this country into a fascist prison, perhaps we could simply invest in Mexico and make THAT place an attractive enough place to live. That would keep people there, and probably would drain a lot of the people currently here illegally out of the US and compel them to go back home. After all, no one really WANTS to be a second or third-class citizen in a foreign country. They are here because this is where the work and jobs are that can keep them from starving. If we help generate those jobs back there in Mexico, then Mexico becomes the best place for them to be. They get to have jobs, have a life, AND be a legal, proper taxpaying citizen with full rights and privileges. They speak the language. They retain their culture and their dignity.

So how do we do that? We could invest in tourist attractions in Mexico.
Lewis Black, the comedian, was talking about this for a place like Mississippi. He says, "No one wants to go there, so you go there and spend a bunch of money build a Bid F--kin' thing there. Then people will come from all over to see the Big F--kin' Thing. So you put in a restaurant and a gift shop. A gas station. A couple more restaurants. A hotel. You start selling tours of the Big F--kin' Thing. Postcards. T-shirts, hats, etc. Pretty soon, you have a whole industry built up on a Big F--kin' thing you built there in the middle of nowhere.

We could do that, but on a larger, more serious scale. We invest in infrastructure there. We put Disneyworlds there, theaters, Sea Worlds, Condos. We put in casinos. We run tours of big stars through there, so they get first rate shows. We put factories of all kinds, we put schools that people want to go to. We start businesses there. Do you suppose there might be some businesses that might like to invest in a place that has less restrictive laws and has a less saturated economy with less competition? Of course there is.

How do we do all this?
Well, whenever a country is inclined to expand and take over it's neighboring country, first they have a war, conquer the army of that neighbor, then they do this kind of investment. They put people there. Settlers. Businesses. Jobs. But we are Americans, so we put in attractions. Build another Las Vegas, .....whatever. Things that attract investment and things that build jobs, and that builds a society. We give tax cuts and other incentives for people and companies to invest in Mexico, and put their businesses there, maybe even re-locate there. We would do that if we suddenly owned Mexico after a war, right?

Well, maybe we can do that WITHOUT having a war. Maybe we can cut a deal with the Mexican government. They want to keep their people from leaving and going to the states. They want to have a wealthy country, and a nice lifestyle, too. Maybe we trade our investment for a piece of the country. We could have some percentage of ownership - like buying stock in a company, only this time, we buy stock in a country. We share in the gains and losses. But we invest - and we make it work. Everybody wins.

Surely, this is less money, and more positive than building a wall around our entire country and becoming prisoners.

Staying Employed After 50

It used to be that a person would graduate college, find a job with a company and work there for 40 years and retire from there with a full pension. Someone who moved to another job had almost a black mark on their career. People wondered why - was he fired? What did he do wrong? Why did he have to go looking for another job?

Then came a time when people started voluntarily moving from company to company every 10 years or so. Sometimes they were laid off during a recession or the company took a bad turn and downsized, or sometimes it was just the ambition of the man to move up quicker, and that was a way to do that.

Then it changed so that companies were hiring only a core set of people as permanent employees, and then another group of people as contractors. The rate per hour was more expensive, but they were temporary, and they paid no benefits such as healthcare insurance, etc. And they could let their contracts lapse when they didn't need them anymore. That way, the number of staff could fluctuate with the peaks and valleys of demand based on the projects that needed to be done at any given point.

Now, some companies hire employees as if they are contractors, but they don't pay the contractor rates. They hire them just to staff a specific project, with the intention of laying them off again in a year or so when the project is over. And when they do lay them off, the settlements are so low - just a week or two of pay and that's it - if they get anything at all. Some, like my old company, give a week for each year of service, but then the average length of service is only 2 or 3 years, so the severance pay is not enough to see you through to getting your next job, especially considering some people in IT now have to look for a year or two to find their next job.

There is no security anymore. You are your own security. It used to be that if a man sacrificed his own dream of owning and running his own business, then he was at least trading that for the security of a decent career job in a decent company. But that is no longer. You cannot rely on a company to provide a secure job. Your personal skill set is the only security you have, and so you have to keep it from becoming obsolete. It has to be current, and it has to be skills that are in demand.

Now age is becoming a problem in remaining employed. This is for everyone who is middle-aged. Unless they work for the government. The problem specifically is with the new implications of the extraordinarily high cost of healthcare insurance. Companies are being forced to pay a high premium for having an employee population with a higher average age.

Last year, Continental Airlines lost $400 million, and when they did the analysis to see why, they found out that they could have saved $800 million dollars on their healthcare insurance if they simply had a younger average age for their employee base. Now, real estate is not the biggest expense a company has anymore. Nor is IT infrastructure. Many times, it's the cost of healthcare insurance for their employees. And when they can save close to a billion dollars in costs just by shifting their workforce to a younger average age, then that provides a huge incentive to replace the older staff with younger staff, doesn't it? In their case, it meant the different between losing $400 million dollars and MAKING $400 million dollars. And that affects their stock price, obviously, because investors only want to invest in companies that make money, not lose money.

So Continental Airlines made a bid to the SEC to allow them to report their earnings in two ways from now on. Once, to show the actual earnings as they do today, and again, to show what the earnings WOULD be if they had a younger workforce. Many other companies are also petitioning the SEC for the same right, since this affects all companies across the country, and this puts them on equal footing. The SEC is considering the request.

Think about what this means. Once this becomes known and public and obviously visible, then no major company will ever want to hire anyone in their 50's anymore because it skews their average age and makes their insurance too high. For a small company with under 100 people, even just one person with claims for some chronic health problem can skew the premiums for the whole group upwards.

I have a feeling that this will all lead to a situation where it will become very difficult to find a job for all of us 50 and older. Even people in their 40's will be at a huge disadvantage. The other thing is that technology and systems change so often now that a person who has experience from 30 years ago doesn't really provide the extra value that they used to anymore. Experience of things more than 10 years ago may be considered obsolete by today's standards. So only the last 10 years counts at all, and of that, only the last 3 to 5 years is really relevant. So a young person of 25 can be just as valuable to a company as a person of 55. The extra experience might mean nothing to them anymore if the job is technology-based. I hate to think that is really true, but that is becoming the attitude of some managers now.

So what is next? Well, I guess since most companies will no longer want to hire people over 50, but people over 50 still have to eat and support themselves for another 30 years or more, this means that they will be forced to become contractors. If they cannot be employed as an employee, then they will probably try to be employed as independent contractors. That means that it makes sense to cultivate relationships and a network of contacts to try to leverage to get work as we try to find the next contract when the current one expires. It means hopping from one contract to the next looking for work constantly. It also means that we have to concentrate on building marketable skill sets that are always current and mainstream and have a market. I guess this is the future for most of us. We become self-employed whether we want to be or not.

For some people, government work might look pretty good right about now.

Has the Time Come for a Global Government?

At the moment, there seems to be very little oversight over the rulers of countries when they go bad. There is the United Nations, but they have little teeth. They hold regular meetings and have limited contributions toward peacekeeping forces, etc., but I get the impression the house is pushed around by the bigger players in the room.

I'd like to see a world-based legislative body with an authority to hold world leaders accountable for their sins against their own people and against their neighbors.
I think countries should still exist and should be allowed to manage their own affairs, but that there should be a higher authority for someone to appeal to when they need to seek justice. It must be someone not easily corrupted by the politics within a single nation.

Imagine if there were a global governing body that Bush had to go to to propose his case for a war with Iraq. This whole nightmare of a mistake that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars might have been avoided if they had said no AND had the means to enforce that decision.

In the larger sense, whether the person is running the US, or the UK, or Sweden, or Venezuela, the world simply can't afford to have a self-serving country leader running around trying to start wars for no good reason except self-interest and self-enrichment, or political influence leveraging. It doesn't serve the common global interest.

I know there are those that view this global governing body to be the future destiny of America - but the global body cannot be American. America is already too powerful militarily, and as it loses it's economic supremacy over the next few years, there will be the temptation to use it's hyperpower military to gain some economic leverage back, and that should not be allowed. It should be an extension of the United Nations, and could possibly be housed in Iceland. Iceland is in the middle of the Atlantic between the power bases of Europe and America. In fact, because of the curvature of the Earth, often the planes on trans-Atlantic flights do pass over Iceland on their way. And Iceland is a country small enough not to have global domination dreams, and they seem relatively impartial, so that might make a good neutral place to set up shop for the global government.

And this new body is needed for more than just resolving disputes between countries, and keeping naughty country leaders in line.

More and more these days, certain companies are larger than the countries that used to contain them. They play gamesmanship by pitting one country against another as they move their jobs and assets around the globe. If they are big enough, no single country's government can really touch them. They are citizens of the world - not of a single country.
These include G.E., G.M., IBM, HP, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Cerberus, Royal Bank of Scotland, Phillips, Toyota, Volkswagen, etc. there are thousands of such companies. The Fortune 500 are just the biggest 500 in the US. But this is only one country in a big world that is getting bigger all the time.

Someone needs to be the global authority to regulate these companies in the common global interest. Having them escape prosecution or compliance with one country by leveraging their ability to move to other less restrictive countries does not work in the best interests of the world in general. Companies operate completely by pursuing self-interest. That is fine on a small scale, but when a company has hundreds of thousands of employees and makes more money than hundreds of countries, and when they make decisions that affect millions and millions of people and the marketplace and economies of countries - then they need to be controlled to some degree.
That's why we have governments at all. If we were left to the desires of companies, then those who own the companies would pollute the world, and keep everyone who is not an owner in abject poverty and would operate unlawfully in every possible way at every possible opportunity. The only thing that keeps them controlled is a government body that enforces it's laws. But now that companies extend beyond the borders of any one country, and in a time that has companies that have offices in literally hundreds of countries - the time has come for a global authoritative body to provide that measure of enforced control for the common good.

For example, if a large company that has plants in the UK and the US is not permitted to dump toxins in the countries it inhabits, then who is to stop them from taking them to the middle of the Atlantic and dumping them there? It does not fall under any single country's jurisdiction. We need that global oversight.

Also, from an equalization perspective, a global authority could correct economic inequities to bring the poorer, uneducated people of some countries up to a common standard.

People look to the US to provide aid to every poor country in the world. It is not the job of the wealthiest neighbor on the street to pay everyone else's mortgage, or cut their grass or educate their kids.
The US, like a good citizen of the world should just simply pay their proportionate amount of "taxes" into a global pool and the global authority can take care of the less fortunate ones.

That way, no one can accuse the US of using their money to influence the politics of other countries for self gain, etc.

Also, in cases where poorer countries in one area deliberately allow their people to emigrate illegally to wealthier countries thus placing a potential burden on the hosting country, the global authority could stop that and force the sending countries to comply with immigration/emigration guidelines. It's simply not fair to dump their resource mis-management problems on the wealthier countries.

Also, there is so much business done internationally over the internet now, that there needs to be a central global body that regulates and oversees the transactions to make sure that everyone is playing fair, no one cheats or does an end-run around the country they live in to escape taxes, or duties, or import quotas, or contraband, or whatever they are trying to get away with.

In this day and age where so much is done in the global space, I think we need a global authority with the power and resources to police it. It simply cannot be left up to the individual countries to fight it out one to another anymore.

Of course, not every nation would want to pitch in at first - it would have to be explained to them how they stand to benefit.

For example - no one would suspect that the US would want to voluntarily submit to a higher authority like that. Because for the last 60 years, we've been king of the world and everyone else is subordinate to us. We are the sole superpower, we have the biggest economy, we are the most this and the biggest that, etc. etc., etc.

HOWEVER - that is all changing quickly.

The US's strongest power is it's military might, correct? Yes, we have the largest military in the world. We should - we spend more than all other countries in the world combined on military spending. 51% of all military spending in the world is done by the U.S.

BUT - we are being taught new lessons in Iraq. We can conquer armies, but we cannot conquer terrorists and insurgents. A small, cheap, determined force can undo us every time. This is because it costs money and time to mobilize a massive force like ours. We have 180,000 troops and 145,000 contractors in place in Iraq - that's 325,000 military personnel - and they kick our butts whenever they want by sneaking in, attacking, then sneaking out. Our military is designed for a full frontal assault where the one with the most toys win.

But their approach is completely different. Terrorists have no capital city to bomb. No capital building to storm. No congress or parliament to overtake. They live in mountains and fields and meet in people's kitchens. They can outmaneuver us. Also, they can attack our presence or our interests in many different countries simultaneously. They can attack anytime anywhere - and with respectable force. We have to sort out treaties or make arrangements and negotiate trade-offs to enter into another country - or else go to war with them. So the terrorists can even surround us - despite the fact that they have far fewer men. Due to their decentralized structure, we have no major target and we cannot conquer them by taking out strategic targets or winning decisive battles. We would have to kill every single person.

Al-Qaeda is more than a group of terrorists now. It has become a movement. It is a philosophy of hatred toward America. It is an idea. You can kill a man with a bullet, but you cannot kill an idea so easily. We are spending well over half a trillion dollars using the most expensive high-tech fighting force in the world to fight phantoms, shadows, and ideas. And every time we attack, we make them hate us more - which only makes them stronger.

And at the moment, we seem to be ramping up to a military confrontation with Iran, and we seem to be initiating recent confrontations with Russia again. We are already spread too thin with Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no way we have the money and resources to fight two more major countries like that - plus whomever they can align on their side. This whole military aggressiveness may be our undoing.

So our great massive military engine is in the process of being rendered obsolete and over-stretched at the same time. Where does that leave us in our global power base?

Then we have our consumer economy. The whole country's infrastructure is based on an assumption of cheap oil. But that is disappearing now and our prices are starting to shoot up. I just paid over $3.50 per gallon which is unheard of in this country - and it's heading up higher as China is taking more and more of the world's supply and as the supply itself dwindles.

As we export our middle class jobs offshore to India AND at the same time we export our manufacturing base to China AND we import all our manufactured good from China AND we add the increased fuel prices for transporting goods across the country, AND the Chinese government starts to wield their big ace card - they are starting to use their 1.2 trillion dollar US dollars stockpile of treasury bonds to buy things, which puts that money into circulation, which devalues our currency - suddenly everything becomes much more expensive here in the US and we have fewer jobs and they pay less so we have less of an ability to buy stuff - so the consumer feeding frenzy grinds to a halt - unless something drastic changes, that will collapse our economy.

Suddenly we lose our military effectiveness AND our economic power base in the world.

Then we have every other nation in Central and South America dumping their economic problems on us by exporting their poorest people as illegal immigrants AND looking for aid all at the same time.

AND we are being held ransom by huge global conglomerates who break our laws and flaunt their global leverage and we are powerless to stop them because they can so easily take their taxbase to another country any time they like.

We could actually USE some help from a higher power. From a global authority that could regulate and ease the pressures on us. We didn't need anyone's help before, but we are now heading into a new era where things may not be so rosy for us, and a little help might be welcome.

Also, the smaller countries can benefit in obvious ways.

I think the concept could be sold to people if it is presented in the right way.