[ebacon]

Fun thread.

Aside from the legal hurdles and funding, I have been noodling on whether the wall would be effective in the long term.

Walls have been around a long time and, unless they are architecturally interesting, get torn down by political forces. In this case it seems that we are talking about an ugly wall and my guess is that no one wants to look at it for too long. Also, if we are building a wall and the purpose is to keep people out, then it should have few gates.

And there, in the number of gates, is the rub that I have. There will be gates for visitors, migration, and trade. Someone would need to tell me how they are going to gate the ugly thing in a way that satisfies an expected visitor, migration, and trade flow equilibrium. See, the bigger issue IMO, is that those in favor of the wall lean more toward a short term status-quo than a long-term equilibrium.

Just thinking out loud.