Migration as Positional Goods Shock

Many crucial goods—political offices, school places, housing in constrained markets—don’t scale with demand. Large migration flows can therefore dilute incumbents’ access to these goods and shift political power, as seen when 19th‑century steamship and rail migration tilted U.S. representation against slave states. Treat migration not only as labor supply, but as a stressor on positional systems. — This reframes immigration policy to include political-capacity and housing constraints, not just GDP gains, altering how we judge costs and benefits.