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> (and the U.S. would probably be better with more borders and internal political separation, not less) Could you expand on this?

by nkurz 8y ago

rayiner 8y ago
Concrete example. I am a Marylander. We recently decided to raise the minimum wage to $15. Over the river in Virginia, it's just $7.25. Even if Marylanders are willing to shoulder higher prices in order to get a higher minimum wage, we can't make that decision in isolation. We have to worry about businesses crossing the border into Virginia and--because the Constitution prohibits internal tariffs--still being able to freely sell to Maryland customers. Or, consider guns. Most Marylanders support gun control. But Virginians love guns. We have no border so whatever gun laws we make are easily circumvented. Likewise, we signed up for ACA expansion (extending Medicaid to poor adults) when it was first offered. Virginia didn't get around to doing it until many years later, and even then put in various additional requirements. If we were a country and controlled our own politics (and we could be--we're bigger than Norway, Denmark, or Finland) we'd have universal healthcare. Instead, we have to accept whatever we can get after compromising with Alabama, Mississippi, etc. Borders enable self determination. When you’re a political unit and you control your borders, you can have your own laws and own institutions. When you tear down borders, you eliminate the ability of smaller political units to control the flow of goods, capital, and people. But those things must be regulated. So there is pressure to push power up to higher level political units to regulate those things. And in the process that pushes politics and political accountability further away from the people. And because it expands the polity, it forces compromises among people with different values and priorities. A concrete example is guns. Idaho has lots of guns (57% of people own a gun). It also has low homicide rates (lower than Belgium). But because of the lack of internal borders, there is little ability to have different gun laws in different places. So there is a huge push to regulate guns at the federal level. So people in Idaho have to fight federal legislation that is proposed because people in Chicago are shooting each other with guns streaming over the border from Indiana. You’re seeing that happen in Europe right now. The EU started by tearing down trade borders. But once you do that, you needed EU-wide rules for regulating the economy. That pushed more power to the EU, and now you’ve got bureaucrats in Brussels who can override popular law in Sweden.

> (and the U.S. would probably be better with more borders and internal political separation, not less) Could you expand on this?

by nkurz 8y ago

> (and the U.S. would probably be better with more borders and internal political separation, not less) Could you expand on this?

rayiner 8y ago

Concrete example. I am a Marylander. We recently decided to raise the minimum wage to $15. Over the river in Virginia, it's just $7.25. Even if Marylanders are willing to shoulder higher prices in order to get a higher minimum wage, we can't make that decision in isolation. We have to worry about businesses crossing the border into Virginia and--because the Constitution prohibits internal tariffs--still being able to freely sell to Maryland customers. Or, consider guns. Most Marylanders support gun control. But Virginians love guns. We have no border so whatever gun laws we make are easily circumvented. Likewise, we signed up for ACA expansion (extending Medicaid to poor adults) when it was first offered. Virginia didn't get around to doing it until many years later, and even then put in various additional requirements. If we were a country and controlled our own politics (and we could be--we're bigger than Norway, Denmark, or Finland) we'd have universal healthcare. Instead, we have to accept whatever we can get after compromising with Alabama, Mississippi, etc. Borders enable self determination. When you’re a political unit and you control your borders, you can have your own laws and own institutions. When you tear down borders, you eliminate the ability of smaller political units to control the flow of goods, capital, and people. But those things must be regulated. So there is pressure to push power up to higher level political units to regulate those things. And in the process that pushes politics and political accountability further away from the people. And because it expands the polity, it forces compromises among people with different values and priorities. A concrete example is guns. Idaho has lots of guns (57% of people own a gun). It also has low homicide rates (lower than Belgium). But because of the lack of internal borders, there is little ability to have different gun laws in different places. So there is a huge push to regulate guns at the federal level. So people in Idaho have to fight federal legislation that is proposed because people in Chicago are shooting each other with guns streaming over the border from Indiana. You’re seeing that happen in Europe right now. The EU started by tearing down trade borders. But once you do that, you needed EU-wide rules for regulating the economy. That pushed more power to the EU, and now you’ve got bureaucrats in Brussels who can override popular law in Sweden.