4 ms·

This is a good time to consider what a ridiculous concept "borders" are, especially within the EU. What makes land and people on one side of an arbitrary line s

by jwr 8y ago

This is a good time to consider what a ridiculous concept "borders" are, especially within the EU. What makes land and people on one side of an arbitrary line so different from land and people on the other side of it? Borders are necessary because of power-hungry politicians: without borders, entire levels of governments would become unnecessary. This is why we hear so much about "patriotism" these days.

badpun 8y ago
> What makes land and people on one side of an arbitrary line so different from land and people on the other side of it? Cultures? People on one both sides of the border generally have different culture and hierarchies of values. Thanks to borders, every nation gets to organize their piece of earth as they see fit (at least in democracies).
- Randomswiss 8y ago
  Then what about Switzerland who speak 3 langues (4 officially). We talk English together and the French part is generally more focus on France than Switzerland (I'm from that part)
  - badpun 8y ago
    I guess you are still very distinct from say Belarusians or Japanese? In a world with no borders, the Swiss, Belarusians and Japanese would need to somehow agree on a common set of values that would govern this borderless world. And it’s hard enough to agree on policies in a single country.
    - majewsky 8y ago
      We already have a lot of nearly-worldwide treaties, so there is something like a common baseline already.
      - badpun 8y ago
        I'd say it's enough to look at the US as an anti-example of how politics look like when you create a giant political body which governs people of radically different value systems. IMO, the solution is to pass more power down, to local bodies, not up, to continental or global behemoths.
        majewsky 8y ago
        The problem is that more and more issues are global. No single country can fix the effects of climate change on their territory, you need to cooperate on a global scale to do that. Same e.g. for combatting tax evasion. Many other areas do not strictly require transnational collaboration, but it's immensely helpful. For example, the power network in Europe is incredibly resilient because it is shared across dozens of countries. So every individual failure is rather small, even if it takes a large nuclear power plant offline.
- jwr 8y ago
  I don't think that applies anymore these days. I am from Poland and culturally I have more in common with most Germans than with many of my compatriots. And my point is that the idea of "their piece of earth" is outdated. Apart from silliness and unnecessary politicians it leads to real problems, like countries deciding that they will burn oil and coal on "their piece of earth" and not care about climate catastrophe at all.
  - badpun 8y ago
    I am Polish too and I’d say were are on average very different from the Germans. A common, Polish-German state would be very hard to govern to due constant conflicts in values.
    - majewsky 8y ago
      A lot of Germans feel the same about the Bavarian-German state.
- OscarCunningham 8y ago
  There's some funny business going on in the phrase "their piece of land". It's not like each citizen has the same ownership rights of every bit of the country. If I own a bit of land in Japan, why does it suddenly become "their land" for the purpose of determining laws?
- rags2riches 8y ago
  It has hardly ever been that clean cut in practice. And the attempts to enforce the strict divisions have not been pretty.
coloradoKid 8y ago
If you want to have government provided services funded by taxes, you need to determine who will be paying those taxes. Borders provide a clean division between the paying customers for a particular government's services, and those who are not.
- jwr 8y ago
  Agreed — but do we really need so many governments? Why not have a local regional level (city/region, where you live and where things really matter to you) and then a continental level (EU, US, China, Russia, etc)? I really do believe that we have way too many governments, and borders are an artificial construct used to support politicians.
  - gpm 8y ago
    Speaking in vast generalities, a continental level government seems to get big projects done better, but also seems to often treat their citizens much worse. Personally I like that the world has both types of governments. It provides, to some extent anyways, redundancy against the failures of each type of government.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  This strikes me as a naive, European way to understand borders (governments are services, you get to choose who to pay your taxes to). Most of the world's people are born to governments they do not endorse, and do not want to pay taxes to, yet they still have to. I was born in a shitty country and even though I've been living in the US last 5 years, I still have duties to my home country such as taxes, military, community service etc... And since I'm not a US citizen yet -- even though everyone I care and my life is here -- I cannot reject these duties to my country since I need its services such as providing me with a passport, an embassy (for legal help) etc. Besides US can randomly throw me away any time it feels like, and the one country I can always go is my home country. I love how these sort of bureaucratic things are so simple in the EU. For the rest of us, it is much more complex, and for most of us living in a country we like is a dream that can hardly be achieved. Nearly all my childhood friends living back home are trying to escape their country but it's not that easy (you need to find a job that accepts H1B for US, or equivalent bureaucratic mambo jambo for the EU).
johannes1234321 8y ago
There is a need for rule setting. Starting from rules about capital crimes to local organisational of roads or house construction. If we rule out anarchy as a way to rule this this needs some form of governing body and the exact form of those have cultural, geographic, population, ... differences which need to be respected. There is no global agreement on many of those things. How are different crimes valuated and punished, is a high density road network needed or more public infrastructure. Doing those things in smaller units has benefits, for doing that you need borders to define which rules are valid where. Of course such borders are to a large degree virtual (i.e. you often don't see the exact city borders) and not borders with guards and fences. On top of that then come all sorts of historic, cultural, ... reasons to "protect" each other which have all complex reasoning. Power-hungry politicians are only a quite limited reasoning, as many borders are supported by societies (by far not all, though)
tim333 8y ago
It goes back millions of years with territorial animals but hopefully we are gradually getting over it with the odd glitch like Brexit en route.

by jwr 8y ago

badpun 8y ago

> What makes land and people on one side of an arbitrary line so different from land and people on the other side of it? Cultures? People on one both sides of the border generally have different culture and hierarchies of values. Thanks to borders, every nation gets to organize their piece of earth as they see fit (at least in democracies).

Randomswiss 8y ago
Then what about Switzerland who speak 3 langues (4 officially). We talk English together and the French part is generally more focus on France than Switzerland (I'm from that part)
- badpun 8y ago
  I guess you are still very distinct from say Belarusians or Japanese? In a world with no borders, the Swiss, Belarusians and Japanese would need to somehow agree on a common set of values that would govern this borderless world. And it’s hard enough to agree on policies in a single country.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    We already have a lot of nearly-worldwide treaties, so there is something like a common baseline already.
    - badpun 8y ago
      I'd say it's enough to look at the US as an anti-example of how politics look like when you create a giant political body which governs people of radically different value systems. IMO, the solution is to pass more power down, to local bodies, not up, to continental or global behemoths.
      - majewsky 8y ago
        The problem is that more and more issues are global. No single country can fix the effects of climate change on their territory, you need to cooperate on a global scale to do that. Same e.g. for combatting tax evasion. Many other areas do not strictly require transnational collaboration, but it's immensely helpful. For example, the power network in Europe is incredibly resilient because it is shared across dozens of countries. So every individual failure is rather small, even if it takes a large nuclear power plant offline.
jwr 8y ago
I don't think that applies anymore these days. I am from Poland and culturally I have more in common with most Germans than with many of my compatriots. And my point is that the idea of "their piece of earth" is outdated. Apart from silliness and unnecessary politicians it leads to real problems, like countries deciding that they will burn oil and coal on "their piece of earth" and not care about climate catastrophe at all.
- badpun 8y ago
  I am Polish too and I’d say were are on average very different from the Germans. A common, Polish-German state would be very hard to govern to due constant conflicts in values.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    A lot of Germans feel the same about the Bavarian-German state.
OscarCunningham 8y ago
There's some funny business going on in the phrase "their piece of land". It's not like each citizen has the same ownership rights of every bit of the country. If I own a bit of land in Japan, why does it suddenly become "their land" for the purpose of determining laws?
rags2riches 8y ago
It has hardly ever been that clean cut in practice. And the attempts to enforce the strict divisions have not been pretty.

coloradoKid 8y ago

If you want to have government provided services funded by taxes, you need to determine who will be paying those taxes. Borders provide a clean division between the paying customers for a particular government's services, and those who are not.

jwr 8y ago
Agreed — but do we really need so many governments? Why not have a local regional level (city/region, where you live and where things really matter to you) and then a continental level (EU, US, China, Russia, etc)? I really do believe that we have way too many governments, and borders are an artificial construct used to support politicians.
- gpm 8y ago
  Speaking in vast generalities, a continental level government seems to get big projects done better, but also seems to often treat their citizens much worse. Personally I like that the world has both types of governments. It provides, to some extent anyways, redundancy against the failures of each type of government.
gnulinux 8y ago
This strikes me as a naive, European way to understand borders (governments are services, you get to choose who to pay your taxes to). Most of the world's people are born to governments they do not endorse, and do not want to pay taxes to, yet they still have to. I was born in a shitty country and even though I've been living in the US last 5 years, I still have duties to my home country such as taxes, military, community service etc... And since I'm not a US citizen yet -- even though everyone I care and my life is here -- I cannot reject these duties to my country since I need its services such as providing me with a passport, an embassy (for legal help) etc. Besides US can randomly throw me away any time it feels like, and the one country I can always go is my home country. I love how these sort of bureaucratic things are so simple in the EU. For the rest of us, it is much more complex, and for most of us living in a country we like is a dream that can hardly be achieved. Nearly all my childhood friends living back home are trying to escape their country but it's not that easy (you need to find a job that accepts H1B for US, or equivalent bureaucratic mambo jambo for the EU).

johannes1234321 8y ago

There is a need for rule setting. Starting from rules about capital crimes to local organisational of roads or house construction. If we rule out anarchy as a way to rule this this needs some form of governing body and the exact form of those have cultural, geographic, population, ... differences which need to be respected. There is no global agreement on many of those things. How are different crimes valuated and punished, is a high density road network needed or more public infrastructure. Doing those things in smaller units has benefits, for doing that you need borders to define which rules are valid where. Of course such borders are to a large degree virtual (i.e. you often don't see the exact city borders) and not borders with guards and fences. On top of that then come all sorts of historic, cultural, ... reasons to "protect" each other which have all complex reasoning. Power-hungry politicians are only a quite limited reasoning, as many borders are supported by societies (by far not all, though)

tim333 8y ago

It goes back millions of years with territorial animals but hopefully we are gradually getting over it with the odd glitch like Brexit en route.