Nationality is ultimately an obsolete concept. What rational basis is there for people having varying rights and privileges based on what side of an invisible line they currently reside on, or at what latitude and longitude on planet earth they were born?
This is in no way an argument for anarchism. Political subdivisions are necessary for representing the people within them and balancing their interests against the other subdivisions. But there is no reason why any person should be excluded from basic rights and privileges because they aren't "owned" by any particular subdivision. Nothing could be less logical than that.
> What rational basis is there for people having varying rights and privileges based on what side of an invisible line they currently reside on, or at what latitude and longitude on planet earth they were born?
Those "rights and privileges" are enforced by physical means.
Modern infrastructure (physical and social) can't handle massive population migrations.
Consider a basic US example. City's deal with their homeless populations in different ways, but if any city is overly generous it quickly gets swamped. Further, cities can export their homeless by being overly draconian. Net result, it’s basically impossible to deal with the homeless problem at the local level.
Now, scale that up to 2 Billion poor people around the world.
PS: The tragedy of the commons applies to far more than just land. Closed national borders allow for significant social progress which is otherwise impossible as it would otherwise need to scale beyond what any country could possibly support.
> if any city is overly generous it quickly gets swamped
It's real. People move different state to live and to do business for various reasons but most are really the benefits that other states offer.
There is a difference between nationalism (being loyal and passionate about one's nationality) and identity. This is particularly obvious when it comes to ethnicity and nationality. Do I identify myself as Chinese or Chinese American? As a Chinese do I identify myself as a Chinese-speaking HK person or a Chinese? Does one identifying oneself as American because of natural birth is the same as being a nationalist? When two New Yorkers ask each other "where are you from" is it significant to hear "I am from Queens", "I am from Bronx"? You don't hear two people say "I am human, an earthly being" because obviously they are human and it would be redundant to even say to each other as introduction. Context, audience matters.
Having a nationality is one form of identity. Yet, some don't have that nationality tag like many here do.
In China there is census register system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system). Basically you can live anywhere you want, but you will be treated as second-class resident outside of your birth/registered city/town. If you are wealthy, fine, if not, you are just as nobody as homeless. This including your education and social welfare. One of the key reasons for this is to manage population distribution and welfare distribution.
> City's deal with their homeless populations in different ways, but if any city is overly generous it quickly gets swamped. Further, cities can export their homeless by being overly draconian.
I doubt the issue is as simple as I believe you intend - I don't think there are many examples of draconian cities eliminating homelessness via exports. I also don't think overly generous cities are swamped as much as you believe - size of city & climate are larger factors in homeless population size than generosity.
> Modern infrastructure can't handle massive population migrations.
Even when migration is allowed, people don't just move to better off-areas en masse. We see this with US states and countries in the Schengen Area. Somehow even Greenfield, CA ($9,226 per capita per year) manages to exist less than two hours from Palo Alto ($56,257 per capita per year).
I think the Schengen treaty approach of slowly adding new countries is a good long-term strategy, and I think US should join it. The population of the Schengen area is already 100M higher than the population of US, and there are several cities there that have higher living standards than anywhere in the US.
The problem is "brain drain". Educated people with in demand skills move to places where they can get the best compensation leaving behind people who are either retired or poor.
The Syrian refugees are there because their cities are being sieged, not because they were seeking greener pastures. They're mostly in temporary camps, so I wouldn't say they have migrated in the sense I was thinking of. They would likely return home if the siege ended.
Would you say they are in temporary camps because Modern infrastructure can't handle massive population migrations?
Don't get me wrong I think most countries could accept far more immigrants, but the much of the world is a long way from what most HN are used to. Consider, ethnic cleansing' is not just something that happened in WWII, it far more common than people want to admit. Poverty, language, ethnicity, and culture are real issues and complex issues.
I'm not sure "accepting immigrants" is the solution.
Okay, so you accept 5% of population, it doesn't help much the rest 95% of it.
And then you struggle to assimilate them and may become a warzone yourself.
UNRWA has been administering "temporary" refugee camps for Palestinians dispossessed from Israel since 1949. There are now people living in those camps whose grandparents were born in them, and the homes their great-grandparents left are long gone.
Why, they do. Baltic states have around 20% (?) of their population non-resident: moved to other schengen states.
Of course, some people stay. But some people always stay - "Greenfield, CA" is a place that would still exist be there 15 thousand residends or ten times less.
By the way, maybe you can consider it insignificant already.
> Baltic states have around 20% (?) of their population non-resident: moved to other schengen states.
I actually didn't think of it from that angle. I guess it could be argued that poor countries shouldn't enter reciprocal open border agreements with rich countries, out of their own self-interest. I'm guessing the movement of these Baltic people mostly benefited their new host nations, though?
People from baltics are well-educated and exhibit no cultural gap, so I believe they mostly benefit their host nations. But it is not granted for every pair of countries.
Poor countries often only have bad choices. Either you leak population but get money from abroad workers, soften tension and enjoy capital movement - or you try to restrain population, get even poorer (less eager capital, same amount of export-able work for less people), face grief and political instability.
In that respect you can compare Baltics with Ukraine.
Well, in Baltic states, there is the cultural gap between Russians and ethnic Estonians, Latvians and Litthuanians in each of the states, respectively. It is not a small one. There are still lots of people who are resident in e.g. Estonia, and were born there, but have no citizenship because they do not (can not, will not) pass the citizenship language test.
The difference to Ukraine is that the Baltic nations grew strong enough already during the final decades of Soviet Union, and they still remembered their pre-war independence.
In 1959, the population of Estonia was roughly the same as in 1939. The difference was that almost a third had been replaced by Russians.
Ethnic Estonians had been first purged by USSR in 1939-1941, then killed by war going back and forth over the country in 1941-1944, and then purged again by Stalin's further repressions until 1950's, by moving people to camps all over the Gulag and killing them there. After that, there was a bit of dual existence, and "Druzhby narodov nadozhnyy oplot!" was rather a less reliable bulwark of friendship than the song was saying.
Then, in 1991, came the singing revolution. After that, many Estonians have migrated to Finland, Sweden, Germany, and other countries, but they send money back home. In exchange, Estonians get guest workers from Russia or Belarus in the same way. Still, it's not that easy for Estonians, as for instance trained doctors and nurses often leave the country after their training.
Ukraine, in contrast, was run by various Russian cronies - the Orange revolution could not build nation -and has had endemic corruption all the time.
What you say about poor nations having bad choices is right as you either leak population or you build a police state that tries to restrain population. Education and eradication of corruption will help, but it's very slow work. I think the Baltic states are showing the way there.
There is a sizeable brain drain, but it's not really that large, especially when you consider that you can get half of an American salary in an outsourcing firm while living somewhere where cost of living is a fifth of what it's in America (numbers out of my ass, but you get the idea). The poor nation also gets oversea investors who want to have things done cheaply and strong labor laws ensure you won't have the Chinese situation of people working as more or less slaves.
Of course that doesn't hold true for all occupations. Doctors being a sore point, for one - they can't make what they would abroad mostly because most of the people are still paid miserable wages and won't be able to afford healthcare which would pay really high salaries to doctors.
At least in the case of Baltics cost of living is not a fifth of what it is in the US. In fact it could even be considered similar. For some reason countries like Spain and Germany have CHEAPER cost of living for day to day things (except rent).
Quality of life is just worse in those regions. It's not very much, but still noticeable. One of the reasons why this is the case is just income being lower for equivalent work. Richer countries just tend to have the better companies with more reach.
I don't know if migration to Palo Alto quite qualifies as "allowed." Think of it in comparison to immigration - you can get permanent residency in the US with an investment of $1 million dollars [1] But if you want to get permanent residency in Palo Alto, aka a house, it's going to cost you more than that, and it's the only way.
Also, just moving to a place with a better per capita income doesn't mean you will suddenly have that higher income; the whole reason certain places have a higher income than others is because there are high skill, high paying jobs in the area. Moving to the area doesn't suddenly give you the skills needed to get that high paying job. In addition, the cost of living is going to be higher in a place with a higher per capita income, so you need that higher paying job just to be able to afford to live there.
> if any city is overly generous it quickly gets swamped.
Is there any evidence that this has ever actually happened? I have a feeling it is one of those lies that get passed around by people trying to score political points.
surveys identified the four most common reasons for mobility.
(1) No jobs available
(2) Eviction from housing
(3) No affordable housing available
*(4) No services available
Additionally, those surveyed revealed strong common reasons for choosing the move destination.
*(1) The presence of relatives or friends in the new community
*(2) Shelters or missions were present in the new community
(3) Jobs were available in the new community
*(4) Good services and programs for the homeless were available in the new community
Note, 1 is part of the feed back loop as a homeless person will often have other homeless friends.
Then so is private property. What rational basis is there for people having varying rights and privileges based on what side of an invisible line is the house they currently reside in. I am sure you won't mind a free for all at your home.
as well as planet or galaxy quadrant or specific species one was born on or at. Many people/societies have evolved past the stage of the valley/tribe/village and now the most of the human species is at region and nationality state. Some advanced people were able to evolve past that. It requires letting go identification characteristics that are just given by birth and mentally moving on to what her or his truely personal identification is, ie. result of her/his personal efforts, like education, life/work experience, personal spiritual and intellectual development, etc...
> What rational basis is there
there isn't. Just our low evolutionary stage. Deeply xenophobic.
> It requires letting go identification characteristics that are just given by birth and mentally moving on to what her or his truely personal identification is, ie. result of her/his personal efforts, like education, life/work experience, personal spiritual and intellectual development, etc...
I don't know what's so great about this. Is HN, a conglomeration of (mostly male) economic and educational elite, a "more evolved" state of social organization than a small-town church, which might draw in people from different economic walks of life?
> Is HN, a conglomeration of (mostly male) economic and educational elite, a "more evolved" state of social organization than a small-town church, which might draw in people from different economic walks of life?
in my view mentally associating yourself with any group is exactly the root of the division "us vs. them (and us obviously better [whatever that means] than them)" and things go downhill from that. In that regard any "elite" group (self-identifying itself as such) is pretty much indistinguishable from a small-town church.
> there isn't. Just our low evolutionary stage. Deeply xenophobic.
This seems to be a deeply confused comment.
What about evolution is "high" or "low"? Which is a higher form of life, the housefly, or the Neanderthal? Which one is still around?
If aliens with FTL travel and psychic powers were to visit us and start wiping us out, would their xenophobia[1] mark them as a being at a "lower" evolutionary stage? If so, what is the use of such a classification?[2]
Evolution is not always "up." For that matter, "up" isn't always "up."
"The feedback loop never really ends, so a tenth year polysentience can be a priceless jewel or a psychotic wreck," ~Alpha Centauri
[1]And if they were the ones wiping us out, who would be more "phobic" (afraid), us or them?
>If aliens with FTL travel and psychic powers were to visit us and start wiping us out, would their xenophobia[1]
>[1]And if they were the ones wiping us out, somehow I doubt they'd have much of a phobia.
you're right - FTL and xenophobia are incompatible. A xenophobia indicates intellectual capabilities level not sufficient for FTL. The same about "wiping out".
>Evolution is not always "up." For that matter, "up" isn't always "up."
"up" has a pretty clear direction on many axes. For a given axis it is the direction of higher degree of symmetry breakup whatever it means on that given axis. Complexity/specialization and sentience level for biological systems. Managed energy density for technological civilization. Violence control for social organization.
A poset is ordered on one relation, and you posit (see what I did there?) that natural selection does the same, and that for humans, it just happens to be greater or lesser degrees of xenophobia?
>A xenophobia indicates intellectual capabilities level not sufficient for FTL.
I don't buy this, and I'm not sure why you do. It certainly shouldn't be taken as an axiom.
> "up" has a pretty clear direction on many axes. For a given axis it is the direction of higher degree of symmetry breakup whatever it means on that given axis. Complexity/specialization and sentience level for biological systems. Managed energy density for technological civilization. Violence control for social organization.
The problem is that the axis isn't given. One is competing on all of these axes all at the same time. And, predictably, progress along one axis may mean regress along another. What if you have a technological civilization populated by sentients with greater or lesser degrees of violence? Did you know that identity theft has increased by astronomical amounts since 1960? And yet we have these shiny iPads. Have we progressed?
> But there is no reason why any person should be excluded from basic rights and privileges because they aren't "owned" by any particular subdivision.
This is something to work towards, but it runs up against some pretty basic problems.
For one thing, enforcement of those rights will entail war.
For another, some rights are contrary to local culture. For example, the right to leave Islam is contrary to the culture of a region which wants sharia law. The right for certain people to get married and live together and have sex (both of which are relevant even if marriage goes away) is contrary to certain other religious cultures. Are those cultures wrong? Are you going to tell people their culture is wrong?
Yes, I am happy to tell those people they are wrong.
Freedom of religion -and that includes no religion- is a right I defend. (Article 18 UDHR)
Freedom to marry is sadly ambiguously worded in UNDHR But I defend the right for people of age -regardless of gender- to marry and have a family. (Article 16)
The think is that while most of us will agree with your point of view, in the end it's just a point if view. These opinions are based on our frameworks --they aren't either natural or universal. So someone else can have completely different framework not based on traditional western thinking and come up with a logical framework which contradicts yours. We're fortunate in that most people have agreement on some principles and that we don't have to figure out why it's undesirable to make theft perfectly legal or make assault perfectly legal foe everyone, bug all of this just happens to be convention. We don't arrive at that because 2+2=4.
You onow these are in the Universal Declaratin of Human Rights, right? And that these are things that many countries have agreed are human rights and are things that they should work to? And that they're now part of international law?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is nothing but a political agreement of the powers that dominated at the time of its publication. My thought (and I admit I may be wrong about it) is that the only state of matters worth having is one that contributes to a system's preservation and prosperity. Having such agreements on what constraints or freedoms to be set on human's irrational beliefs, social convictions on sexual behavior, or one's favorite color, may prevent some conflicts of spurious nature that would be otherwise expensive to deal with, but have nothing to do with the real, objective challenges that we have to face as humans.
> What rational basis is there for people having varying rights and privileges based on what side of an invisible line they currently reside on, or at what latitude and longitude on planet earth they were born?
Same can be said about private property. What the rational basis. Are you ready to give up the concept of ownership? I'd be glad to settle in your home, eat your food and poop in your toilets without flushing.
> This is in no way an argument for anarchism.
> Political subdivisions are necessary for representing the people within them and balancing their interests against the other subdivisions.
But that's exactly what nations are.
> But there is no reason why any person should be excluded from basic rights and privileges because they aren't "owned" by any particular subdivision.
But you just said Political subdivisions are necessary ...
This is very much the EU approach of human rights rather than "constitutional" rights. They apply to immigrants, and this annoys the UK government immensely.
There is also the Schengen right to reside in any EU country.
The long term way this pans out is less clear. People don't lose their ethnicity when they change nationality. You end up with irridentists and conflicts, such as the "green line" across Cyprus.
You and mortehu upthread have mentioned Schengen in the context of being allowed to reside in any country within the area. That's not what Schengen is about, you're thinking of the European Economic Area.
Schengen is a customs union which allows passport-free travel within its borders, but the EEA is the area you can freely migrate within.
I believe that you're not really arguing against nations (or states) but against "exclusion". I think you're arguing that there may be political divisions, but that the individuals themselves should be the sole arbiters of which political division they (for lack of a better word) belong to at any given time. Any political subdivision should not be able to exclude someone.
Is that fair?
[1] The surface contradiction is that "nationality is ultimately an obsolete concept" while "political subdivisions are necessary". This apparent contradiction can be resolved in a few ways but I believe I get what you intended. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
You're confusing cause and effect. Both rights and borders are effects of the same cause: people banding together to defend each other. There's no rights in the state of nature--when a pack of dolphins kill a porpoise for fun, no rights have been violated--they arise only to the extent that people agree to use violence under certain conditions to protect members of their group. Borders are simply symptoms of the fact that groups of people naturally defend contiguous areas of physical territory, within which they undertake the obligation of enforcing "rights."
I think this is a dangerous attitude to take, and please allow me to explain why.
Really it boils down to decentralization vs centralization. You mention that people are "excluded" from rights and privileges, but the problem with the globalist view you espouse is that by lumping in a nation and it's people with the world you remove the political lines in a meaningful form.
National Sovereignty is the real issue at hand here, but it's a sensitive subject that not very many people like to touch. I've heard some fairly powerful beltway people reference it as dead, but if that's true our entire government is operating under a fallacy, there are some big implications here and I would love to see more academic research (as in, if anyone has any links I would appreciate them) on the subject.
I do think the lessons of the internet are important here though, namely that if you try to claim no nationality, peoples nationality becomes Earth, and a global government along with it. I want to go the opposite direction, less federal power, more state power, more local power (constitutionally restricted of course).
The only oath I ever swore was to protect and defend the Constitution, and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit back and watch America be Europeanized without an intellectual fight, because my forefathers fought hard to establish the freedoms I have here that still don't exist anywhere else in the world.
Yes I'm aware of the other countries higher levels of "actual" freedom, particularly the nordic ones, but I think our idealistic vision is still a superior one. For example, Vincent Reynouard of France was recently sentenced to two years in jail for his non-violent historical opinions regarding the Holocaust. I tend to side with Voltaire on free speech, apparently the French don't.
These same issues are also readily apparent in the TPP. I think it is a good microcosm of the kind of affect on nations you will get with a reduction of nationalism, eg, equally exploited populace by a supranational oligarchy.
That's like saying families is an obsolete concept and anyone should be able to come into your family and get all the benefits and rights and privileges as your born children get (including all the love and attention you give them, the twice a year dentist visit, breakfast, etc).
Also rights aren't fundamental in nature, they only exist because groups of people come together, produce/work, and that work provides the benefits you call "rights".
Others just consume those rights.
And given that resources are limited, and that highly advanced societies require highly advanced skills, there is no "logic" in flooding countries with seekers of benefits who are mostly not going to add any value to that society for 3 generations while costing the resources of 10. They will simply consume.
You're saying families are like nations, in that $arbitraryPerson can't just "come into your family/nation and get all the benefits and rights and privileges as your born children/citizens get". They're saying that the difference in scale makes the comparison invalid; a nation is, say, 8 orders of magnitude larger than a family, and, similarly, the earth is 25 orders of magnitude larger than a tennis ball. For the same reason that comparing the earth and tennis balls doesn't work because of scale, comparing a nation and families doesn't work because of scale.
If a family of 10 is increased by 1 member each year, that is an increase of 10%.
You can apply a 10% increase in population each year, due to benefit seeking immigration, to a country.
There is no "scale" issue here.
And even if there was, the reasoning that followed can stand on its own (because the analogy was directed on the OP's analogy, and not on the reasoning provided).
Actually there is something wrong with the concept of families - it's unfair that some children do not get the same level of love and attention (and dentist visits) you provide for your children. However, families are not obsolete because there's no obvious solution to the problem of unfairness between families, and given human nature perhaps there will never be a solution.
But outside the family there is a solution: Just treat everyone equally. There's no biological reason why I should care about the passport of a man I have never met, any more than I should care about his race or tribe or religion.
Yes, mass immigration would mean that you would be worse off and the immigrants better off (although spreading the immigration period over say 50 years might limit your costs in this equation). But isn't that the right thing to do? Do those people deserve to live in absolute poverty? If not, doesn't that mean you have an obligation to help?
Nationality is not yet an obsolete concept, but society is slowly moving in that direction. I think Charles Darwin said it best:
"As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races."
"There's no biological reason why I should care about the passport of a man I have never met, any more than I should care about his race or tribe or religion."
Actually you should care, for a lot of reasons. Your presumption of not caring comes from taking for granted a lot of things. One first thing that you absolutely must care is security. The world around you and your loved ones is relatively safe thanks to multitude of operating services that make sure that the individuals roaming free are not that crazy, not that malevolent, not that contagious, and in short will not have that much of a negative impact on society at large (which includes you). Achieving that is no easy task, especially when you also want such things as freedom and openness to the rest of the world. Of course, there are also a lot of other important considerations that require individual identification, and I'm sure you'll manage to understand many of them on your own.
Perhaps it should be, but it isn't - rather it's the norm of how we do things. It'll be obsolete when you have a passport and nobody cares about it or the country that issued it other than nostalgic hipsters and antiquarians.
That's sorta like a lot of the "Hispanic" immigrant community in the US, isn't it? Many still fiercely identify as their home country, etc., but end up paying local US taxes. But if nationality enforced where they had to live, nearly all of them would drop it to be a US national in a second.
I don't think that's unique to the Hispanic community. I'm from Scotland and our tourism industry thrives on Americans who identify as Scottish or Irish even after many generations have passed. I would imagine this is true for Germany and Italy too.
I don't understand your point. Didn't capital come with smallpox? Capital intensive processes always come with unknowable risk. Coal power means coal mines, which for some people means black lung. Air travel means death by plane crashes. High voltage power lines mean death by electrocution.
Overall, we're better off - but it's silly to claim capital infusion is automagically harmless. Again, perhaps this isn't the argument you're making. Could you elaborate a bit on what you mean?
> We readily acknowledge the benefits of tearing down all the barriers for capital to move between countries, but the ones for humans seem to be sticky.
That's because the same interests that support free movement of capital are served by limited mobility for persons (in the both roles as "consumer" and as "labor"), and those interests are disproportionately powerful in their influence over policy (and the discussions of policy issues in the mass media.)
Who forced the concept of nations upon Africans at first place? Who created most Africans and middle Eastern countries? Sure Africans didn't, but Hélène, France, your country sure did well by fucking up these places.Anybody can go see a map. Countries with almost perfect linear shapes , putting tribes and ethnical groups that have nothing to do with each others in the same country, or putting the tribe in 2 different states. Then writing a blog post complaining about how Africa is fucked up ?
Edit: and of course, most of the comments here have nothing to do with the article, which is specifically about the situation in Africa. Nobody read it obviously.
We can blame France (and others) for colonialism, and for the unnatural borders that African nations have, but remember, the actual existence of African nations is still due to the people there wanting to have nations of their own. In Africa, this process largely happened during 1950-1970.
No one "forced" the concept of nations upon Africans, except by setting an example for what nation states can achieve. The time of colonialism was largely the opposite of having nations. It was the nations that overthrew colonialists.
They haven't got the choice of borders. They could only use colonial borders, and those were counterproductive for a healthy nation.
Sure they wanted nation states, but they got crappy ones. And it could not go much better. Their failure is rooted in past outside their political control.
Borders of nations can be changed by mutual agreement. Unfortunately the national leaders of African nations have been willing to keep these arbitrary borders, and much of the time only the other way is applied, i.e. war.
War is also how the European national borders have been decided. In the U.S., the state borders are remarkably similar to African borders: straight lines along a particular meridian or circle of latitude. So is the Canadian border.
How did they screw up the middle east by creating countries? Almost all of the borders in the North of the Middle East are the same as they were 1000 years ago, barring the size and influence of Turkey and the break up of the Levant (which was largely a good move). South Middle East has it's issues, sure, but they're mostly political/religious than anything else and have to do with oppression rather than borders.
I've always wondered if it's possible to not be a resident of any country... at least for tax purposes.
I do a lot of traveling, and my situation is a little unique. I have 2 citizenships and another permanent residency.
All three of those countries define you as a "resident for tax purposes" as spending over 1/2 a year (usually > 180 days) physically in that country.
So what happens if I don't spend more than 1-2 months in any country, and all of those countries are not ones I have a permanent legal right to be in i.e. I'm just passing through as a tourist.
What country am I a resident of if I keep that up? Last time I did it for 2 years, I'm planning to set off for at least 4 this time.
Yes it is, Jack Tramiel did it to avoid taxes. It helps if you are wealthy, then you can arrange for an appointment to the UN and get a UN Passport[1].
I know a guy who's a stateless refugee. He is the son of African nobility exiled from a country/tribal-organization that wasn't recognized by the colonial countries when they divided Africa.
He has to carry UN travel documents on his person at all time, stating his situation. Its a pain in the bum to be stateless.
94 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 176 ms ] threadThis is in no way an argument for anarchism. Political subdivisions are necessary for representing the people within them and balancing their interests against the other subdivisions. But there is no reason why any person should be excluded from basic rights and privileges because they aren't "owned" by any particular subdivision. Nothing could be less logical than that.
Those "rights and privileges" are enforced by physical means.
Consider a basic US example. City's deal with their homeless populations in different ways, but if any city is overly generous it quickly gets swamped. Further, cities can export their homeless by being overly draconian. Net result, it’s basically impossible to deal with the homeless problem at the local level.
Now, scale that up to 2 Billion poor people around the world.
PS: The tragedy of the commons applies to far more than just land. Closed national borders allow for significant social progress which is otherwise impossible as it would otherwise need to scale beyond what any country could possibly support.
It's real. People move different state to live and to do business for various reasons but most are really the benefits that other states offer.
There is a difference between nationalism (being loyal and passionate about one's nationality) and identity. This is particularly obvious when it comes to ethnicity and nationality. Do I identify myself as Chinese or Chinese American? As a Chinese do I identify myself as a Chinese-speaking HK person or a Chinese? Does one identifying oneself as American because of natural birth is the same as being a nationalist? When two New Yorkers ask each other "where are you from" is it significant to hear "I am from Queens", "I am from Bronx"? You don't hear two people say "I am human, an earthly being" because obviously they are human and it would be redundant to even say to each other as introduction. Context, audience matters.
Having a nationality is one form of identity. Yet, some don't have that nationality tag like many here do.
In China there is census register system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system). Basically you can live anywhere you want, but you will be treated as second-class resident outside of your birth/registered city/town. If you are wealthy, fine, if not, you are just as nobody as homeless. This including your education and social welfare. One of the key reasons for this is to manage population distribution and welfare distribution.
I doubt the issue is as simple as I believe you intend - I don't think there are many examples of draconian cities eliminating homelessness via exports. I also don't think overly generous cities are swamped as much as you believe - size of city & climate are larger factors in homeless population size than generosity.
http://www.kgw.com/story/news/2014/07/26/12578644/
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/11/2602391/san-franc...
Even when migration is allowed, people don't just move to better off-areas en masse. We see this with US states and countries in the Schengen Area. Somehow even Greenfield, CA ($9,226 per capita per year) manages to exist less than two hours from Palo Alto ($56,257 per capita per year).
I think the Schengen treaty approach of slowly adding new countries is a good long-term strategy, and I think US should join it. The population of the Schengen area is already 100M higher than the population of US, and there are several cities there that have higher living standards than anywhere in the US.
Turkey population ~75 million has accepted 1.5 million of them with ~200,000 more looking to enter the country.
For scale there are around 10 million illigal immigrants from Mexico. Picture another 5 million showing up next year with zero notice.
Don't get me wrong I think most countries could accept far more immigrants, but the much of the world is a long way from what most HN are used to. Consider, ethnic cleansing' is not just something that happened in WWII, it far more common than people want to admit. Poverty, language, ethnicity, and culture are real issues and complex issues.
PS: I think most people should read though every item on this list at least once. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_cleansings And then realize a lot of things did not make the cut.
Okay, so you accept 5% of population, it doesn't help much the rest 95% of it. And then you struggle to assimilate them and may become a warzone yourself.
The commenter was talking about "slowly" adjusting rules and a very thought-out plan. Not "next year" and "zero notice".
Of course, some people stay. But some people always stay - "Greenfield, CA" is a place that would still exist be there 15 thousand residends or ten times less.
By the way, maybe you can consider it insignificant already.
I actually didn't think of it from that angle. I guess it could be argued that poor countries shouldn't enter reciprocal open border agreements with rich countries, out of their own self-interest. I'm guessing the movement of these Baltic people mostly benefited their new host nations, though?
Poor countries often only have bad choices. Either you leak population but get money from abroad workers, soften tension and enjoy capital movement - or you try to restrain population, get even poorer (less eager capital, same amount of export-able work for less people), face grief and political instability.
In that respect you can compare Baltics with Ukraine.
The difference to Ukraine is that the Baltic nations grew strong enough already during the final decades of Soviet Union, and they still remembered their pre-war independence.
In 1959, the population of Estonia was roughly the same as in 1939. The difference was that almost a third had been replaced by Russians.
Ethnic Estonians had been first purged by USSR in 1939-1941, then killed by war going back and forth over the country in 1941-1944, and then purged again by Stalin's further repressions until 1950's, by moving people to camps all over the Gulag and killing them there. After that, there was a bit of dual existence, and "Druzhby narodov nadozhnyy oplot!" was rather a less reliable bulwark of friendship than the song was saying.
Then, in 1991, came the singing revolution. After that, many Estonians have migrated to Finland, Sweden, Germany, and other countries, but they send money back home. In exchange, Estonians get guest workers from Russia or Belarus in the same way. Still, it's not that easy for Estonians, as for instance trained doctors and nurses often leave the country after their training.
Ukraine, in contrast, was run by various Russian cronies - the Orange revolution could not build nation -and has had endemic corruption all the time.
What you say about poor nations having bad choices is right as you either leak population or you build a police state that tries to restrain population. Education and eradication of corruption will help, but it's very slow work. I think the Baltic states are showing the way there.
Of course that doesn't hold true for all occupations. Doctors being a sore point, for one - they can't make what they would abroad mostly because most of the people are still paid miserable wages and won't be able to afford healthcare which would pay really high salaries to doctors.
This is an interesting thread about people being surprised about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eesti/comments/2xqd01/can_someone_e...
Quality of life is just worse in those regions. It's not very much, but still noticeable. One of the reasons why this is the case is just income being lower for equivalent work. Richer countries just tend to have the better companies with more reach.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB-5_visa
Is there any evidence that this has ever actually happened? I have a feeling it is one of those lies that get passed around by people trying to score political points.
A little over half of the homeless population stay put, but from the populaion that starts migrating.
http://web.utk.edu/~edegeorg/TECH521/LaTeX/Migration.pdf
surveys identified the four most common reasons for mobility.
Additionally, those surveyed revealed strong common reasons for choosing the move destination. Note, 1 is part of the feed back loop as a homeless person will often have other homeless friends.If I don't like your set of rules, I want to be able to go somewhere that has more agreeable ones.
I think that's still nationality, but a different type of nationality (choice rather than birthright) than we currently have.
Then so is private property. What rational basis is there for people having varying rights and privileges based on what side of an invisible line is the house they currently reside in. I am sure you won't mind a free for all at your home.
http://www.meltingasphalt.com/border-stories/
as well as planet or galaxy quadrant or specific species one was born on or at. Many people/societies have evolved past the stage of the valley/tribe/village and now the most of the human species is at region and nationality state. Some advanced people were able to evolve past that. It requires letting go identification characteristics that are just given by birth and mentally moving on to what her or his truely personal identification is, ie. result of her/his personal efforts, like education, life/work experience, personal spiritual and intellectual development, etc...
> What rational basis is there
there isn't. Just our low evolutionary stage. Deeply xenophobic.
I don't know what's so great about this. Is HN, a conglomeration of (mostly male) economic and educational elite, a "more evolved" state of social organization than a small-town church, which might draw in people from different economic walks of life?
in my view mentally associating yourself with any group is exactly the root of the division "us vs. them (and us obviously better [whatever that means] than them)" and things go downhill from that. In that regard any "elite" group (self-identifying itself as such) is pretty much indistinguishable from a small-town church.
This seems to be a deeply confused comment.
What about evolution is "high" or "low"? Which is a higher form of life, the housefly, or the Neanderthal? Which one is still around?
If aliens with FTL travel and psychic powers were to visit us and start wiping us out, would their xenophobia[1] mark them as a being at a "lower" evolutionary stage? If so, what is the use of such a classification?[2]
Evolution is not always "up." For that matter, "up" isn't always "up."
"The feedback loop never really ends, so a tenth year polysentience can be a priceless jewel or a psychotic wreck," ~Alpha Centauri
[1]And if they were the ones wiping us out, who would be more "phobic" (afraid), us or them?
[2]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvolutionaryLevel...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partially_ordered_set
>If aliens with FTL travel and psychic powers were to visit us and start wiping us out, would their xenophobia[1]
>[1]And if they were the ones wiping us out, somehow I doubt they'd have much of a phobia.
you're right - FTL and xenophobia are incompatible. A xenophobia indicates intellectual capabilities level not sufficient for FTL. The same about "wiping out".
>Evolution is not always "up." For that matter, "up" isn't always "up."
"up" has a pretty clear direction on many axes. For a given axis it is the direction of higher degree of symmetry breakup whatever it means on that given axis. Complexity/specialization and sentience level for biological systems. Managed energy density for technological civilization. Violence control for social organization.
A poset is ordered on one relation, and you posit (see what I did there?) that natural selection does the same, and that for humans, it just happens to be greater or lesser degrees of xenophobia?
>A xenophobia indicates intellectual capabilities level not sufficient for FTL.
I don't buy this, and I'm not sure why you do. It certainly shouldn't be taken as an axiom.
> "up" has a pretty clear direction on many axes. For a given axis it is the direction of higher degree of symmetry breakup whatever it means on that given axis. Complexity/specialization and sentience level for biological systems. Managed energy density for technological civilization. Violence control for social organization.
The problem is that the axis isn't given. One is competing on all of these axes all at the same time. And, predictably, progress along one axis may mean regress along another. What if you have a technological civilization populated by sentients with greater or lesser degrees of violence? Did you know that identity theft has increased by astronomical amounts since 1960? And yet we have these shiny iPads. Have we progressed?
This is something to work towards, but it runs up against some pretty basic problems.
For one thing, enforcement of those rights will entail war.
For another, some rights are contrary to local culture. For example, the right to leave Islam is contrary to the culture of a region which wants sharia law. The right for certain people to get married and live together and have sex (both of which are relevant even if marriage goes away) is contrary to certain other religious cultures. Are those cultures wrong? Are you going to tell people their culture is wrong?
Freedom of religion -and that includes no religion- is a right I defend. (Article 18 UDHR)
Freedom to marry is sadly ambiguously worded in UNDHR But I defend the right for people of age -regardless of gender- to marry and have a family. (Article 16)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...
And so, while they are just shot some people made up they have a bit more going for them than that.
And how do you propose to enforce that right?
Then why don't you give up yours?
> What rational basis is there for people having varying rights and privileges based on what side of an invisible line they currently reside on, or at what latitude and longitude on planet earth they were born?
Same can be said about private property. What the rational basis. Are you ready to give up the concept of ownership? I'd be glad to settle in your home, eat your food and poop in your toilets without flushing.
> This is in no way an argument for anarchism.
> Political subdivisions are necessary for representing the people within them and balancing their interests against the other subdivisions.
But that's exactly what nations are.
> But there is no reason why any person should be excluded from basic rights and privileges because they aren't "owned" by any particular subdivision.
But you just said Political subdivisions are necessary ...
There is also the Schengen right to reside in any EU country.
The long term way this pans out is less clear. People don't lose their ethnicity when they change nationality. You end up with irridentists and conflicts, such as the "green line" across Cyprus.
Schengen is a customs union which allows passport-free travel within its borders, but the EEA is the area you can freely migrate within.
I believe that you're not really arguing against nations (or states) but against "exclusion". I think you're arguing that there may be political divisions, but that the individuals themselves should be the sole arbiters of which political division they (for lack of a better word) belong to at any given time. Any political subdivision should not be able to exclude someone.
Is that fair?
[1] The surface contradiction is that "nationality is ultimately an obsolete concept" while "political subdivisions are necessary". This apparent contradiction can be resolved in a few ways but I believe I get what you intended. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Really it boils down to decentralization vs centralization. You mention that people are "excluded" from rights and privileges, but the problem with the globalist view you espouse is that by lumping in a nation and it's people with the world you remove the political lines in a meaningful form.
National Sovereignty is the real issue at hand here, but it's a sensitive subject that not very many people like to touch. I've heard some fairly powerful beltway people reference it as dead, but if that's true our entire government is operating under a fallacy, there are some big implications here and I would love to see more academic research (as in, if anyone has any links I would appreciate them) on the subject.
I do think the lessons of the internet are important here though, namely that if you try to claim no nationality, peoples nationality becomes Earth, and a global government along with it. I want to go the opposite direction, less federal power, more state power, more local power (constitutionally restricted of course).
The only oath I ever swore was to protect and defend the Constitution, and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit back and watch America be Europeanized without an intellectual fight, because my forefathers fought hard to establish the freedoms I have here that still don't exist anywhere else in the world.
Yes I'm aware of the other countries higher levels of "actual" freedom, particularly the nordic ones, but I think our idealistic vision is still a superior one. For example, Vincent Reynouard of France was recently sentenced to two years in jail for his non-violent historical opinions regarding the Holocaust. I tend to side with Voltaire on free speech, apparently the French don't.
These same issues are also readily apparent in the TPP. I think it is a good microcosm of the kind of affect on nations you will get with a reduction of nationalism, eg, equally exploited populace by a supranational oligarchy.
Also rights aren't fundamental in nature, they only exist because groups of people come together, produce/work, and that work provides the benefits you call "rights".
Others just consume those rights.
And given that resources are limited, and that highly advanced societies require highly advanced skills, there is no "logic" in flooding countries with seekers of benefits who are mostly not going to add any value to that society for 3 generations while costing the resources of 10. They will simply consume.
That's like saying a tennis ball and a planet are the same because they're both round. Scale, you're missing the scale of it.
What is this random analogy and what does it have to do with mine?
> Scale, you're missing the scale of it.
The number of tennis balls that would fit in the volume of this planet has 25 digits in it.
So no, it's not even close to the scale of anything. And what does being round have to do with it?
I can't even figure out what your argument is.
You can apply a 10% increase in population each year, due to benefit seeking immigration, to a country.
There is no "scale" issue here.
And even if there was, the reasoning that followed can stand on its own (because the analogy was directed on the OP's analogy, and not on the reasoning provided).
But outside the family there is a solution: Just treat everyone equally. There's no biological reason why I should care about the passport of a man I have never met, any more than I should care about his race or tribe or religion.
Yes, mass immigration would mean that you would be worse off and the immigrants better off (although spreading the immigration period over say 50 years might limit your costs in this equation). But isn't that the right thing to do? Do those people deserve to live in absolute poverty? If not, doesn't that mean you have an obligation to help?
Nationality is not yet an obsolete concept, but society is slowly moving in that direction. I think Charles Darwin said it best:
"As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races."
Actually you should care, for a lot of reasons. Your presumption of not caring comes from taking for granted a lot of things. One first thing that you absolutely must care is security. The world around you and your loved ones is relatively safe thanks to multitude of operating services that make sure that the individuals roaming free are not that crazy, not that malevolent, not that contagious, and in short will not have that much of a negative impact on society at large (which includes you). Achieving that is no easy task, especially when you also want such things as freedom and openness to the rest of the world. Of course, there are also a lot of other important considerations that require individual identification, and I'm sure you'll manage to understand many of them on your own.
'Rights' and 'privileges' are just as abstract a concept as 'nationality'.
Not to mention that they all rely on underlying 'culture' - different nations, rights, and privileges are all seen in different cultures.
nations should be something you subscribe to, because you like their culture, are willing to learn the local language, and so on.
beyond that, pay taxes to whatever community you live in (infrastructure use fee).
If yes, on what basis and on whose enforcement?
Overall, we're better off - but it's silly to claim capital infusion is automagically harmless. Again, perhaps this isn't the argument you're making. Could you elaborate a bit on what you mean?
That's because the same interests that support free movement of capital are served by limited mobility for persons (in the both roles as "consumer" and as "labor"), and those interests are disproportionately powerful in their influence over policy (and the discussions of policy issues in the mass media.)
Edit: and of course, most of the comments here have nothing to do with the article, which is specifically about the situation in Africa. Nobody read it obviously.
No one "forced" the concept of nations upon Africans, except by setting an example for what nation states can achieve. The time of colonialism was largely the opposite of having nations. It was the nations that overthrew colonialists.
Sure they wanted nation states, but they got crappy ones. And it could not go much better. Their failure is rooted in past outside their political control.
War is also how the European national borders have been decided. In the U.S., the state borders are remarkably similar to African borders: straight lines along a particular meridian or circle of latitude. So is the Canadian border.
I don't think any of us here knows what that means.
I do a lot of traveling, and my situation is a little unique. I have 2 citizenships and another permanent residency.
All three of those countries define you as a "resident for tax purposes" as spending over 1/2 a year (usually > 180 days) physically in that country.
So what happens if I don't spend more than 1-2 months in any country, and all of those countries are not ones I have a permanent legal right to be in i.e. I'm just passing through as a tourist.
What country am I a resident of if I keep that up? Last time I did it for 2 years, I'm planning to set off for at least 4 this time.
[1] https://info.undp.org/global/documents/hr/Guide-to-the-Issua...
He has to carry UN travel documents on his person at all time, stating his situation. Its a pain in the bum to be stateless.