In one scenario, the political leaders of the two towns decide to unite the two towns. Nothing except the name will change. So, there is now a town C that has 1010 inhabitants. Will town C have a functional economy? Of course! After all, all that was done was subsuming two already functional economies.
I feel a bit wary of using this as an axiom for further thinking about immigration between countries. I’ve not really thought about this issue before, but my guess is if two countries with very different levels of economic development open their borders to each other this could be fairly damaging. It might substantially increase prices and demand of land in the less economically developed country, causing upheaval (e.g. poorer people in the more developed country buying out middle class people in the less developed country); it may damage a lot of their industries where the more economically developed country has more efficient abilities. I also think, especially if there’s big cultural and language barriers that a lot of basic norms for interacting with strangers and such can be very confused and cause damage in the years/decades it takes to integrate.
I don’t have much of an opinion here, just thought I’d mention that I got off the bus a bit at this part of the argument.
I feel a bit wary of using this as an axiom for further thinking about immigration between countries. I’ve not really thought about this issue before, but my guess is if two countries with very different levels of economic development open their borders to each other this could be fairly damaging. It might substantially increase prices and demand of land in the less economically developed country, causing upheaval (e.g. poorer people in the more developed country buying out middle class people in the less developed country); it may damage a lot of their industries where the more economically developed country has more efficient abilities. I also think, especially if there’s big cultural and language barriers that a lot of basic norms for interacting with strangers and such can be very confused and cause damage in the years/decades it takes to integrate.
I don’t have much of an opinion here, just thought I’d mention that I got off the bus a bit at this part of the argument.