[thechat] "I guess we'll buy them"

[deke]

On 18 Sep 2001, at 15:50, Scott Dexter posted a message which said:

> > Anyway, let's just buy Afghanistan.
> With a GDP per capita of US$800, it wouldn't take much....

There's 25 million people in Afghanistan.

Set up offices there, offer resettlement to everyone.
That means you ship people to their choice of several
target destinations, and six months of free food, free 
shelter, and free education so that they have a good 
chance to succeed in the new location.  

A *lot* cheaper than a war. If you spend $3,000 apiece,
you're talking less than $100 billion. That's something
that Ellison or Gates could do, not just a government,
although you'd need the involved governments to agree.

But you're going to need to do more than Afghanistan.
I think this all has to do with Palestine.

The *real* solution, though, would be to buy *Israel*.  
Much of this hostility comes from the fact that it was
created by taking land from people who had inhabited
it for thousands of years. The country has only existed
about 50 years, and most of the jewish citizenry has
been there less than half that time. And they have a
reputation of merchantilism. 

Make an going-out-of-business-sale offer to Israeli 
citizens: they sell their property in Israel to us at 
a fair price, travel here at our expense, and swap 
their Israeli citizenship for US citizenship without 
the usual waiting period. Match the Israeli policies 
for jewish immigration so that jews in the rest of the 
world move here instead of moving there. We don't 
want the property in Israel, of course, so we sell it 
off, slowly so as not to disrupt the economy, with a 
covenant that it cannot be sold to a jew in the 21st 
century. And we insist that Israel give equal rights
to everyone, regardless of race, religion, or ethnic 
origin.

It probably would cost a little more, but still less
than a war - and would probably be profitable in a
very short time. These immigrants would be better
capitalized and better-educated than many others,
and given the ability of other immigrants to invigorate
the economy through entrepreneural efforts, it'd be
an easy way to start collecting a *lot* more of income 
tax in a few years.

Sheesh, it'd be a smart move to buy Israel even if 
the formation of that country hadn't caused a lot of
warfare....

deke













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