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The Case for Getting Rid of Borders Completely

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41–50 of 77 posts

Re: The Case for Getting Rid of Borders Completely

#41
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would be living in my country, demand voting rights, then demand things that the original residents would never vote for, but will have to pay for anyway. Why should I agree to change (from my POV: destroy) the society where I live? Btw: I'm not US citizen. I'm European. You'll be hard pressed to find many people in Europe in current situation, who would agree with disbanding the borders.

> You'll be hard pressed to find many people in Europe in current situation, who would agree with disbanding the borders. A significant part of the political arm (ie. those who aren't just helping because there are humans in need but have an agenda that transcends any concrete situation) of the "refugees welcome" movement start out from the "human right on free movement" that was mentioned here, and effectively want…

Yes, I realize that. However, it is either political arm, as you wrote, or NGOs financed from abroad. Both are doing it for personal gain. But they are still minority, just very loud one and quite powerful one (not in the democratic sense, though).

However, what they are doing is showing great example to the undecided, who are waking up.

Re: The Case for Getting Rid of Borders Completely

#42
post #11

Strong borders came with the welfare state to avoid a tragedy of the commons. Remove various fundamental benefits such as public school, medical care, welfare, transit, subsidized X and the millions of other benefits created in the past 120 years and open borders are not as big of a deal anymore. You just need to hop on a boat and arrive at ellis island, like the ancestors of many americans today. There are also para…

"Strong borders came with the welfare state"

The Hadrian and Antonine walls close to where I am suggest otherwise. Also a lot of borders well before the "welfare state" were policed carefully to collect taxes - which is why smuggling was such a big thing in many areas.

Re: The Case for Getting Rid of Borders Completely

#43
I have been arguing this for years - in a 10% tongue-in-cheek kind of way - and it's strange to see it written down in an article.

The stock response tends to be that in an ideal world it would be great, but it's not practical. Of course, perfectly decent, well-meaning and good-hearted white people sat around dinner tables during apartheid and slavery and said exactly the same thing. History has proven them wrong, and in fact if we imagine popular support for uncontrolled global immigration, it's rather easy to conceive a practical implementation - quotas gradually increased, borders lowered - it could be achieved in a controlled way.

I also hear the 'why should we?' response. Indonesia has squandered its natural resources - aka it's their own fault they're poor. But none of us would stand in front of a classful of Indonesian schoolchildren and say this. Being born in a rich western country is a colossal slice of luck, not a personal achievement. The fact is that thinking of people in terms of nations tends to dehumanise them, and that's one of the reasons why greater migration and a blurring of borders would be a good thing.

The economic arguments around immigration have raged in the press here in the UK for the last few years. Here at least the general academic consensus has been that it's a net plus, and that the additional burden on state benefits is outweighed by the economic benefits of a well-motivated and grateful migrant workforce. The risk to any benefits system is not more people per se, but that it will be abused - ie the development of a benefits culture, where people choose not to work because the safety net will support them. It's up to us to decide whether this attitude is more likely in the indigenous population or with recent economic migrants.

The real barrier to adoption is lack of popular support, and I accept that few people are going to agree with me on this issue. But then again, there's this: http://goo.gl/95g5kQ

Re: The Case for Getting Rid of Borders Completely

#46
post #3

Interesting. I don't know enough about the economics to comment, but I will say that it doesn't have to be all or nothing, and there is a path to a borderless world, which involves something like introducing a process whereby another nation can apply to become another state of the USA. Call it state-level immigration. So, the USA has serious issues, but it still does the really important things well which is a fair v…

> but it still does the really important things well which is a fair vote.

I wouldn't call any political system which allows Citizens United or any form of lobbying fair. It overshadows and taints the entire electoral and representative processes.

Re: The Case for Getting Rid of Borders Completely

#47
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the Mexicans would be working and paying rent or buying your property from you, not squatting in your bedroom for free.

They would be living in my country, demand voting rights, then demand things that the original residents would never vote for, but will have to pay for anyway. Why should I agree to change (from my POV: destroy) the society where I live? Btw: I'm not US citizen. I'm European. You'll be hard pressed to find many people in Europe in current situation, who would agree with disbanding the borders.

I'm European. I disagree with you. Stop generalizing.

Re: The Case for Getting Rid of Borders Completely

#48

No thank you. I prefer strong borders. I like the secular culture of Europe as is. Anything that even potentially threatens it is direct attack on me.

Secular? Angela Merkel fairly recently (in the context of whether to expand the EU to Turkey) made a statement about European values being Christian values.

Not that I agree with her (the "Christian" values of modern Europe are secular values that have replaced the original Christian values because we spent centuries figuring out that they're wrong so calling our modern values Christian is incredibly misleading) but I wouldn't agree with a blanket statement like "Europe's culture is a secular culture" either.

If anything, Europe's culture is incredibly diverse. Saying immigration/refugees threaten our secular culture is just a nice way of saying you're afraid of the possibility of Islam affecting our liberties -- which is fine by me, as long as you're honest about it.

Re: The Case for Getting Rid of Borders Completely

#49

Democracy is when the people can replace the government if they don't like the way it governs. What we're seeing in Europe and the US these days is that government is trying to replace the people because it doesn't like the way they vote. The unfettered-immigration and amnesty-for-illegals movements on both continents are direct attacks on democracy by governments that think they can get more money or power with a di…

Looks like we have partisans here, downmodding the "incorrect dissent". Not only this parent, but all dissenting comments.

Looks like we have a low tolerance for populist nationalist rhetoric.

Frankly, as a German I'm disgusted by some of the "dissenting" comments. We've already been through this nationalist crap before and we're not going to let the rest of Europe repeat our own mistakes.

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