I don't think you can lay the blame of the uncertainties of this debate on the internet community itself. I would say, rather, that it is the very nature of the question that makes it impossible to nail down an answer. The data just isn't good enough, and frankly, cannot be good enough.

We cannot conduct, document, and repeat a controlled study of real people on a massive scale. At best, simulators write computerized economic engines and analyze the results, but the results of those studies tend to reflect the biases of whoever wrote the rules of the simulation. True economics, however, are conducted on a massive scale of human whimsy. A more chaotic arrangement (and I mean that in a mathematical sense) than the free market is hard to imagine.

Personally, my preference is to err on the side of letting people do what they want to do unless and until that becomes a major problem. I don't expect to ever see a consensus on the internet (some people will argue that c-a-t spells dog), but lacking even a plurality of any supposed facts leaves me thinking that this is simply not a crisis. We have no lack of actual crises (war, hurricanes, corruption, rights violations, energy, rising oceans), so the immigration debate seems pretty pointless to me - perhaps even a deliberate distraction.

The universe is trying to tell you something that you don't want to hear. I'm sorry, but life abounds with unpleasant truths.

...

There are many things that technology shouldn't be trying to fix, and this is one of them.

Eh, this same exact charge has been leveled against everything technology has done. You'll need a much better reason than "the universe is trying to tell you something". That doesn't carry any water at all when "the universe" offers an alternative.

In fairness, you do have another reason handy:

There is no good reason WHATSOEVER that so many people should be alive at the same time.

Okay, population control. That's a reason. But population control through limiting access to fertility treatments? I'm sorry, but that's just dumb. Lots of people complain about China's one-child policy, but at least it has SOME basic element of fairness - one each, rather than luck of the draw.

The few couples who have fertility issues can never make up for the huge productivity of those without fertility issues - or birth control. Limiting access to the former will not work (that sort of thing never does - ref. the drug war, prohibition, abortion, etc., etc.). Further, making birth control easily accessible has been shown to work quite well at stemming the populations which are actually growing.

Notice the "populations which are actually growing" phrase. It's important. The population of people who can afford expensive fertility treatments is NOT growing. In fact, it's shrinking virtually everywhere. Population loss is actually becoming a problem in several developed nations.

Meanwhile, the numbers of the impoverished without access to any sort of reproductive choice are, of course, spiraling out of control for very basic reasons. It is far more proper, efficient, effective, and, well, nice to offer them easy access to reproductive freedom than to deny it in the developed world.

Millions of children die every year, from disease, starvation and the ravages of war, so Pyrian, what would be the problem of parents in your first world “population loss” countries rescuing a child from the 3rd world? Wouldn’t that be better?

I don't have any problem with adoption. And by "better" do you mean better than fertility treatments and/or surrogates, or better than MY suggestion, which is widely available birth control? Because frankly, I think (voluntary) birth control to reduce unwanted babies is a better solution than adoption to farm them out.

A key word there for me is "voluntary", BTW. Are you suggesting that people who want fertility treatments or surrogates should be forced to adopt instead? Because, if so, I definitely draw the line there. Forcing people to adopt children they don't want would be disastrous.

There was a great blurb on The Tonight Show where Leno said Hu went looking for a souvenir, but couldn't find anything that wasn't made in China. :D

A nice, Catholic girl like Katie knows to deep herself covered.

Uh, right. Go to, say, collegehumor and search on her name.

In September of 2001, no cell phones would work at 30,000 feet so most of the calls that were made were NOT made by the passengers of Flight 93.

The hijackers flew low to the ground, well below a typical cruising altitude of 30,000 feet. If you're going to trumpet extreme conspiracy theories, it helps to have at least the most basic grasp of the subject at hand.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html

Someday in the distant future, a researcher will dig up an IBM warning pamphlet, and say the equivalent of "Eureka!", for here lies a Rosetta stone, only an order of magnitude larger. For these booklets contain every language I've ever heard of and several I haven't, some of which are just plain unrecognizable. The warning is only a couple of small paragraphs, but it fills twenty pages translated.

I know so many people who want so badly to believe that we can live in a world without power. Anarchists and capitalists alike opine that government power can go away without anything taking its place except people doing what they want to do - freedom. But what people primarily want to do is to tell other people what to do; there are no power vacuums.

I find the idea of states in retreat terrifying, because as states' power wanes other powers will inevitably take control: corporations, some of which are already individually richer and more powerful than some nations. Countries are at least encouraged to answer to their people through democracy. Corporations are duty-bound to answer to nothing but profit.