I agree with conservatives that strict boarders are necessary for nation states.
They call it a necessity evil, I use it as an argument to abolish all states.
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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Do you have locks on your doors or windows?
You call it a necessary evil, I use it as an argument that people are violent and need boundaries.
I like my boarders to be easygoing rather than strict, makes the conversation easier.
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Border have to exist to some degree, simply from a management perspective. Even if we threw all state and country borders away, it'd be literally impossible for a single government to effectively govern the world. You'd need to divide it all up into smaller regions to be managed. Otherwise, we'd might as well just fall back into the pre-industrial age as infrastructure erodes due to poor governmental oversight and management.
It would also effectively mean that every region in the world would have to have the same laws.
Take Canada and the US. Very similar culturally, very similar economically, but some pretty important differences in human welfare. Like, every Canadian resident pays taxes to support a healthcare system, and if you need healthcare it's free.
If you eliminated the US/Canadian border, people could live in the US where taxes are cheaper until they had a serious illness, then they could move to Canada to get free treatment whenever necessary, moving back as soon as the treatment was done. That obviously wouldn't work well.
The only ways to make that work are either to eliminate the border, and have both regions have exactly the same healthcare system, or keep the border and allow both to have different systems.
I agree, but those aren't the kinds of borders OP is talking about, I think. And it's a naïve simplification, in any case.
I interpret OPs point is about free travel and employment, without restriction or passports. The kind of "no borders" that exists in the EU: any citizen of a country in the EU can travel to, live in, and work in any other EU member country, without restriction, without limitations, and without passport.
It doesn't require, but is greatly facilitated by, a common currency; and as the EU has demonstrated, there's a lot of moving parts for this to function well. Having a common set of standards for human rights, having some basic economic model alignment, having mutual non-aggression agreements for a members... they're all essential components. Heck, I'd suggest that it'd be super-helpful if there was adopted a neutral, universal second language that all member countries require children to take a couple of years of in the public education system - a conlang like Esperanto (by virtue of sheer numbers of speakers), but certainly one where no single country has a advantage by having it be the natural native language, which excludes English.
Anyway, that's the kind of "no borders" I think OP is talking about, not the governance kind.
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This has so completely disappeared from discourse over the past four years. I remember when it used to be that "building the wall" was stupid at best and bigoted at worst. But now, it's all, "Of course we agree that we need a strong border, but we're the ones who will actually do it, Trump's all talk."
It's always the Republicans that get to set which values and goals the country persues, while the Democrats just run on pragmatism and efficiency. It's like they're allergic to making moral claims.
It's because it's a one-party system masquerading as a two-party system.
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I've never met a liberal irl who gives a fuck about borders or immigration. It's always conservatives that rage about that shit to me.
liberals have a lot of "very serious people" who talk about the sanctity of the nation state.
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No free trade without free movement!
"Yeah, but proceeds to present an argument that completely ignores the underlying premise that everyone should be cool with all being one planet helping each other instead of returning to squabbling tribal mentality of 'us vs them' and 'if I give them some then I'll have less' and people need to stop letting conflicts of our parents and great-great-great-x147-grandparents started decide how we view our neighbors"
Haha checkmate, logical thinkers.
I'm pretty sure neoliberals also actually advocate for open borders and reduced immigration in general, and often accuse the left of being anti-immigration because of concerns regarding wages by unions.
neoliberals advocate for open borders only for capital. Capitalism itself would collapse overnight if there was free movement of labour
Just not true
About 1.7 million people commute to work across a European border each day, and in some regions these people constitute up to a third of the workforce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area?wprov=sfla1
Schengen zone, and to a lesser extent USA, show that capitalism can continue to function with a free movement of labor within relatively large and varied economic zones. This would continue to be the case worldwide, I believe. There remains significant barriers to movement even without borders: time, money, separation from family and cultural support systems, and more. There are people in the US and EU who want to "escape" their current state/country due to local laws but cannot do so despite it being perfectly legal to do so.
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I have never once heard and have not been able to imagine an explanation of how not having borders could possibly work.
Notice how there is no border between your town and the next one? Same, but on a larger scale.
Yes, but the next town over is protected by the same military, is under almost exactly the same laws, is covered by essentially the same tax system, and so-on.
If you're suggesting eliminating borders once there's one world government covering every country and a planetwide tax system, then sure. Until then, it seems like it would be a disaster.
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You can just keep going where the border would be.
Simple. In the past there is no "border". You are someone from Frankfurt who came to Paris to set up business and there was no question asked.
In the past that was true of certain classes, other classes were tied to the land and forbidden from leaving their manor lord's land.
A example that’s not borderlessness, but still interesting, was the Behind the Bastards episode on Harlan Crow which talked about how there was seasonal migration of people from Mexico into the US during peak agricultural seasons. They would return to Mexico in the winter, but the introduction of a hard border incentivized people to remain in the US.
It seems the hardening the border lead to the exact thing Harlan Crow and the other racist trash were trying to fight, increased immigration.
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