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This is a good reminder of how a ridiculous and outdated concept borders are.

• tedunangst 10y ago
  When were borders not outdated?
  • jwr 10y ago
    Well, they did make sense back until (and including) the industrial age, when it made economic sense to invade territory, and either start using local factories or just loot machinery and bring it back to the home country. But that time is gone, there is nothing you could loot right now that could justify the cost of an invasion.
• tormeh 10y ago
  How exactly are they outdated? It's two different physical powers going "Instead of battle to the death, how about we reach a deal covering who controls what?". That sounds better than the alternative to me.
• jwr 10y ago
  I should learn that one needs to expand thoughts before posting on HN: shortcuts are not allowed and will get fingertwitch-downvoted instantly. Borders are outdated, because a) fundamentally we are all the same and in the grand scheme of things (think global warming, alien civilizations, space) who "controls" what piece of dirt doesn't matter at all, and b) the days of territorial invasions are over: these days it simply doesn't make economic sense to invade and "control" territory — with the inevitable resistance you can't possibly pull out more value out of it than you invested into invading it. Borders are a concept that, like countries, is very attractive to people who profit from it. Politicians want to have something they can rule, hence borders. But as the article nicely shows, this concept makes no practical sense whatsoever these days.