To some degree, they do. Access to the world's best talent is competitive and it often goes to the highest bidder (in wages/quality of life/etc.) America and e.g., Albania, both presumably want at least a couple of the world's better surgeons for their hospitals, for example. Most of them go to America. Albania gets competitively outbid.<p>The sort of "human capital bankruptcy" scenario described happens all the time. The constant outflux of trained and educated and motivated people from developing countries to the developed world is a major part of why those parts of the world remain perpetually "bankrupt".<p>> This could have the additional benefit of stifling authoritarian governments—because if citizens aren’t treated well, they could just leave.<p>Borders can be controlled both <i>at the entry and at the exit</i>. Those authoritarian regimes are never going to allow them to easily leave because it would be self-defeating. And "If authoritarian regimes opened their borders they might cease to be authoritarian." is not much of a useful observation.