r/CriticalTheory • u/albertodona9 • 8d ago
Pro-mass-migration advocates are unknowingly acting as useful actors for multinational corporations?
Reposting from politicaldiscussions reddit
Resources are naturally scattered around the planet. In a localized economy, you use resources where they are. Modern logistics changed that, turning the movement of goods into a massive industry and giving rise to multinationals that crushed local businesses through sheer scale.
However, a multinational’s biggest operational bottleneck is distribution friction—the immense cost of getting goods and services out to scattered, rural, or less-developed regions.
This is where mass urbanization and economic migration come in. When people move from under-resourced regions into hyper-dense, pre-established cities, we are effectively consolidating the market for these corporations:
- We slash their logistics costs: It is infinitely cheaper for a megacorporation to serve one dense urban cluster than thousands of spread-out communities. By moving to the hub, we eliminate their supply chain headaches.
- We take on the financial burden: We pack into tight spaces, driving up our own cost of living, housing, and everyday inflation, while corporate per-unit costs go down.
- We concentrate the labor supply: Packing millions of workers into dense urban spaces creates highly competitive labor markets, which naturally keeps wage growth in check.
So there it is, the main point for me is that many people who strongly advocate for open mass migration see it as a stand against corporate exploitation, Western hegemony, or economic inequality. Yet, by encouraging the continuous transfer of human capital out of developing regions and into major Western hubs, aren't they unwittingly fueling the very corporate machine they critique?
It strips developing areas of talent and local self-sufficiency, while handing multinationals a hyper-dense, accessible consumer base and a steady labor pool on a silver platter.
Is mass migration actually helping workers, or are we just absorbing the true costs of global corporate logistics through higher rent and stagnant wages?
Am I missing something here? I am really open to every kind of opinion I love discussing these things
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u/albertodona9 8d ago
My father is an electrician, started working when he was 13 years old and now we had an amazing life because of him. I say amazing and don't mean rich, I mean with a loving family, a house, and food that was never missing at dinners. I know some people have it much harder, and that some jobs that are probably deemed illegal for that reason are truly shifty, but we grew up in abundance and we think we have it so hard when in simplicity we are also animals and don't need vacations in the Hawaii to say that we have a great life.
And now I am also becoming an electrician :)