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> Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. I have never heard this explanation. Where is it coming

> Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. I have never heard this explanation. Where is it coming from? It sounds not only wrong but inverted to me. Governments enforce borders to effectively secure their territory and people, and thus its own power. Is the idea that, without the “legal fiction” of borders, we’d have some kind of global autoworkers Union or something?

nradov 4y ago
Indeed there is nothing stopping workers from organizing across borders, even if individual workers are only legally authorized to work in one country. Many labor unions have local chapters in multiple countries and can coordinate labor actions. For example, see the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers which operates in the USA and Canada.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  It’s tricky. American unions avoid coordinating with their American counterparts because of corruption. Unions have a very specific set of rules to play by, and these rules are different for each country.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Huh? There is certainly corruption in some labor unions but that doesn't prevent them from coordinating with their counterparts in other unions. Even the most corrupt unions frequently back each other up in order to maximize negotiating power versus management.
    - pyuser583 4y ago
      I’m really sorry. I wanted to say American unions avoid coordinating with their Mexican counterparts. I was listening to an interviewer with a labor organizer on the US Mexican border who worked with new arrivals. He said the workers were used to unions from back in Mexico, but he had to spend lots of time educating folks about how things work in America. Mexican unions have a level of corruption unheard of in even the most corrupt US unions.
  - cmh89 4y ago
    >Unions have a very specific set of rules to play by, and these rules are different for each country. The rules unions have to play by were put in place to reduce their power to effectively organize.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Lately - it seems people inside countries enforce their boarders to make sure other people from less fortunate countries can't come in and drive down their wages... We live in a democracy. The idea that we vote to screw ourselves over completely is strange. Some people forget that everything isn't a zero sum game. Something can be good for companies and not bad for you. And something can be good for you and not bad for companies. Some people DO NOT care about the economy and only care about social issues - or at least the economy's importance is far inferior to social issues (usually because they don't make much money in the first place).
- kdkwsndne 4y ago
  [flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hellotomyrars 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    > because they are a single issue voter. If they're a single-issue voter then - by definition - they are not voting against their interests. They just have different interests than you. Maybe you care about a million things, mostly revolving around taxes. Maybe all they care about is whether or not someone else can get an abortion. That's THEIR interest.
    - 1_1xdev1 4y ago
      That's where their focus lies, not necessarily where their interests do. It's in everyone's interest to get a good deal for their money. For example, we should all be for an efficient government, and efficient markets. However folks vote against those all the time without thinking about it, because their focus is elsewhere.
lesuorac 4y ago
> Governments enforce borders to effectively secure their territory and people Only if by "secure" you mean prevent your population from leaving [1]. The whole origin of border control was to prevent people from leaving. The easy way to think about it is you can't leave a country without a passport but you can enter a country without a visa (exceptions apply). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport#History
- remarkEon 4y ago
  You can think about it that way if you want, but it’s not how it works in reality and the wiki link contradicts what you’re saying about modern practices.
- stale2002 4y ago
  > Only if by "secure" you mean prevent your population from leaving Did you think about this statement for even 1 second? It should be clearly and immediately obvious that it is easier to leave places like the US than it is to enter it. This is obviously the case. You cannot with a straight face claim that actually it is easier to enter the US than leave. Clearly, leaving is easier.
  - lesuorac 4y ago
    There are 4x [1] the amount of people that annually enter the US than have passports issued [2]. It is in fact, 4x easier to enter the US than to leave. Passports are actually rare for a US citizen to have, you just live in a bubble. [1]: https://www.trade.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/Fact%20Sheet%20International%20Visitation%20FINAL.pdf https://www.trade.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/Fact%20She... [2]: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-and-statistics.html/ https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-...
    - stale2002 4y ago
      > Passports are actually rare for a US citizen to have Its not difficult to get a passport, regardless. Pointing to how many people choose to leave the US, or get a passport, does not counteract the true fact that getting a passport is easy.
tap-snap-or-nap 4y ago
Currently, there exist multinational corporations but not multinational unions. Furthermore, some countries do not permit unions to extend their reach across the same industry effectively. This perspective reflects the view that labor has been engaged in a conflict with capital.
l3mure 4y ago
The modern border system has deep roots in colonial policing as a means of labor discipline, targeting anti-colonial revolutionaries (a group which naturally overlaps with labor agitators), and racial delineation. [1] > Dispersed as it was, the village abroad was a curiously intimate place, where people knew each other, or of each other, or at least where one another came from. It has its own networks of information that paralleled the new colonial posts and telegraph. Rumour flew vast distances. It was into these byways that the story of Nguyen Tat Thanh [Ho Chi Minh] became interwoven, as he made his way through, and as the French attempted to trace his movements. The new regime in Indochina emerged out of a blizzard of papers for personal identification and restrictions on exit and entry. [2] > Migrants everywhere lived under the constant fear of sudden displacement or banishment. This practice of medieval rulers was condemned in England by the Magna Carta of 1215, if never wholly discontinued. It was routine in the repertoire of colonial states. It was visited on Asian kings - the last Mughal emperor in 1858 and the deposed rulers of Burma in 1885, Vietnam in 1888 and 1907 and Korea in 1910 - as well as coolies. People of long residence could be suddenly expelled to some distant 'home', a point of imagined origin to which they might have few ties. This was a visceral exercise in power to cow and to shame: the life histories of the banished were recorded, their faces photographed, and the scars and other marks on their bodies mapped to guard against their return. In the Straights Settlements alone in 1914, 416 people were banished for life, and another 801 'vagrants' detained in prison, the great majority to be repatriated. Ministers denied in parliament that they used banishment to expel trade unionists from the colony. [3] > In no small part, modern empires were created in an effort to realize what the British Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill, in 1908 called 'a harmonious disposition of the world among its peoples'. At the cold heart of liberal visions of free trade and progress was a ruthless global and racial division of labour. Europeans monitored movement obsessively, enumerating and marshaling people towards their mines, plantations and households. Colonial regimes' ability to control subjects beyond their own borders, often in the name of exercising 'protection' over them, became a yardstick of their authority and a challenge to their prestige. Who were all these people, and to whom did they belong? Who was what they said they were, and who was not, and how could it be proven? [1] - Underground Asia, pp. 56 [2] - Ibid, pp. 61 [3] - Ibid, pp. 62-63

nradov 4y ago

Indeed there is nothing stopping workers from organizing across borders, even if individual workers are only legally authorized to work in one country. Many labor unions have local chapters in multiple countries and can coordinate labor actions. For example, see the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers which operates in the USA and Canada.

pyuser583 4y ago
It’s tricky. American unions avoid coordinating with their American counterparts because of corruption. Unions have a very specific set of rules to play by, and these rules are different for each country.
- nradov 4y ago
  Huh? There is certainly corruption in some labor unions but that doesn't prevent them from coordinating with their counterparts in other unions. Even the most corrupt unions frequently back each other up in order to maximize negotiating power versus management.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    I’m really sorry. I wanted to say American unions avoid coordinating with their Mexican counterparts. I was listening to an interviewer with a labor organizer on the US Mexican border who worked with new arrivals. He said the workers were used to unions from back in Mexico, but he had to spend lots of time educating folks about how things work in America. Mexican unions have a level of corruption unheard of in even the most corrupt US unions.
- cmh89 4y ago
  >Unions have a very specific set of rules to play by, and these rules are different for each country. The rules unions have to play by were put in place to reduce their power to effectively organize.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

Lately - it seems people inside countries enforce their boarders to make sure other people from less fortunate countries can't come in and drive down their wages... We live in a democracy. The idea that we vote to screw ourselves over completely is strange. Some people forget that everything isn't a zero sum game. Something can be good for companies and not bad for you. And something can be good for you and not bad for companies. Some people DO NOT care about the economy and only care about social issues - or at least the economy's importance is far inferior to social issues (usually because they don't make much money in the first place).

kdkwsndne 4y ago
[flagged]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hellotomyrars 4y ago
[flagged]
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  > because they are a single issue voter. If they're a single-issue voter then - by definition - they are not voting against their interests. They just have different interests than you. Maybe you care about a million things, mostly revolving around taxes. Maybe all they care about is whether or not someone else can get an abortion. That's THEIR interest.
  - 1_1xdev1 4y ago
    That's where their focus lies, not necessarily where their interests do. It's in everyone's interest to get a good deal for their money. For example, we should all be for an efficient government, and efficient markets. However folks vote against those all the time without thinking about it, because their focus is elsewhere.

lesuorac 4y ago

> Governments enforce borders to effectively secure their territory and people Only if by "secure" you mean prevent your population from leaving [1]. The whole origin of border control was to prevent people from leaving. The easy way to think about it is you can't leave a country without a passport but you can enter a country without a visa (exceptions apply). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport#History

remarkEon 4y ago
You can think about it that way if you want, but it’s not how it works in reality and the wiki link contradicts what you’re saying about modern practices.
stale2002 4y ago
> Only if by "secure" you mean prevent your population from leaving Did you think about this statement for even 1 second? It should be clearly and immediately obvious that it is easier to leave places like the US than it is to enter it. This is obviously the case. You cannot with a straight face claim that actually it is easier to enter the US than leave. Clearly, leaving is easier.
- lesuorac 4y ago
  There are 4x [1] the amount of people that annually enter the US than have passports issued [2]. It is in fact, 4x easier to enter the US than to leave. Passports are actually rare for a US citizen to have, you just live in a bubble. [1]: https://www.trade.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/Fact%20Sheet%20International%20Visitation%20FINAL.pdf https://www.trade.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/Fact%20She... [2]: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-and-statistics.html/ https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-...
  - stale2002 4y ago
    > Passports are actually rare for a US citizen to have Its not difficult to get a passport, regardless. Pointing to how many people choose to leave the US, or get a passport, does not counteract the true fact that getting a passport is easy.

tap-snap-or-nap 4y ago

Currently, there exist multinational corporations but not multinational unions. Furthermore, some countries do not permit unions to extend their reach across the same industry effectively. This perspective reflects the view that labor has been engaged in a conflict with capital.

l3mure 4y ago

The modern border system has deep roots in colonial policing as a means of labor discipline, targeting anti-colonial revolutionaries (a group which naturally overlaps with labor agitators), and racial delineation. [1] > Dispersed as it was, the village abroad was a curiously intimate place, where people knew each other, or of each other, or at least where one another came from. It has its own networks of information that paralleled the new colonial posts and telegraph. Rumour flew vast distances. It was into these byways that the story of Nguyen Tat Thanh [Ho Chi Minh] became interwoven, as he made his way through, and as the French attempted to trace his movements. The new regime in Indochina emerged out of a blizzard of papers for personal identification and restrictions on exit and entry. [2] > Migrants everywhere lived under the constant fear of sudden displacement or banishment. This practice of medieval rulers was condemned in England by the Magna Carta of 1215, if never wholly discontinued. It was routine in the repertoire of colonial states. It was visited on Asian kings - the last Mughal emperor in 1858 and the deposed rulers of Burma in 1885, Vietnam in 1888 and 1907 and Korea in 1910 - as well as coolies. People of long residence could be suddenly expelled to some distant 'home', a point of imagined origin to which they might have few ties. This was a visceral exercise in power to cow and to shame: the life histories of the banished were recorded, their faces photographed, and the scars and other marks on their bodies mapped to guard against their return. In the Straights Settlements alone in 1914, 416 people were banished for life, and another 801 'vagrants' detained in prison, the great majority to be repatriated. Ministers denied in parliament that they used banishment to expel trade unionists from the colony. [3] > In no small part, modern empires were created in an effort to realize what the British Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill, in 1908 called 'a harmonious disposition of the world among its peoples'. At the cold heart of liberal visions of free trade and progress was a ruthless global and racial division of labour. Europeans monitored movement obsessively, enumerating and marshaling people towards their mines, plantations and households. Colonial regimes' ability to control subjects beyond their own borders, often in the name of exercising 'protection' over them, became a yardstick of their authority and a challenge to their prestige. Who were all these people, and to whom did they belong? Who was what they said they were, and who was not, and how could it be proven? [1] - Underground Asia, pp. 56 [2] - Ibid, pp. 61 [3] - Ibid, pp. 62-63