Speaking from the perspective of this side of the Atlantic, not all of them end up under a bridge. Few of them end up living the good life either, but if they work a menial job and can still send home remittances that’s a big step up for them.

I should be clear the research I’m thinking of is about drug cartels, so I’m not an expert either, but in what you’re describing it sounds like the smugglers get “a free lunch”, and there’s never a free lunch.

And then word gets around about who to avoid, assuming any of them survive. Same shit as with drug dealers.

It’s kind of crazy that violent criminal organisations have to worry about silly things like market share, but it’s pretty well documented they actually do.

You know, as much as it doesn’t feel true, I really can’t think of a different reason why this is being allowed. The people in the bible are called Jews, and even though they don’t much resemble the modern ethnic-religious group, that gives them special status in places traditionally Christian.

Technically being a Jew myself, I’m afraid it’s going to swing back the other way because of all of this, and antisemitism will be cool again. That’s a distant second concern to the people dying non-hypothetically right now, though.

Sure, so lets count the people effected by one, and the people effected by the other.

You folks want to make it about specific people. You want to make it about ancient history. You want to make it about religion. You want to make it about systems of government. You want to make it about anything other than the hard numbers about what’s happening on the ground, because that’s devastating to your case.

Economics works there too, though. More passages means lower ticket prices, and at some point people will actually be able to demand “luxuries” like standing room, or else not use that guy.

I have no idea how many boats you’d have to inject to make this work, though. And “donating” is probably the wrong word when for-profit smuggling is involved. I don’t know, I was just thinking out loud.

If you want to help (and piss off the far-right) you can donate to sea rescue NGOs.

Yes, there’s always that. Effectively it’s the same thing, anyway, since smugglers only plan to get to the rescue ships at this point.

I wonder if anyone has tried donating boats to reduce overcrowding. European countries would 100% be butthurt but depending on your location and how you go about it they might not be able to do much.

Uhh, in the wild? I’ve seen some pretty uncommon wetland birds a number of times. Some pretty weird bugs too, although it’s hard to say what they were.

I’ve seen big moose really up close, and that was epic, and would have been terrifying if there wasn’t usually a car-stopping amount of wood between us. They’re not rare, though, just shy.