4 ms·

The whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty has been with us for essentially all of human history, and I don't see it petering out anytime soon. Ple

The whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty has been with us for essentially all of human history, and I don't see it petering out anytime soon. Plenty of people care, for all sorts of reasons, many of which I would say, are good!

cindyllm 10mo ago
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pksebben 10mo ago
That's partially true; the bit about borders and human history (so long as you sequester 'history' to 'recorded history') - but nationalism is actually newer than you'd think, and there were human societies for thousands of years before there were borders. More recent if you go by the current definition of border (formalized, surveyed borders are also relatively modern). Is nationalism going to peter out? No, of course not. Do some people care for reasons that are important to them? Sure, I don't want to tell anyone how to feel. I am just another jerk with an opinion like the rest of us. But if you were to ask me, it's take it or leave it. I'd be more than happy to see free movement in the world. Just another set of rules I'm not using.
- bluebarbet 10mo ago
  Yes, hard borders are far more recent than people think. As late as the First World War you could travel the world without so much as a passport. But: back then only a handful of very rich people had the means to do that, and taxation and social protection were much lower than today. Those things are related. They (IMO of course!) are what make borders a pragmatic necessity.
  - alva 10mo ago
    Passport equivalents go back to 1350BC
  - jandrewrogers 10mo ago
    You could travel across the North American countries without a passport until quite recently. That only stopped being a thing after 9/11.
mrwrong 10mo ago
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BeFlatXIII 10mo ago
What are those reasons?
- bluebarbet 10mo ago
  The most obvious one is that the modern welfare state relies for its legitimacy on social cohesion, i.e. a certain base of shared values and identity. You will not get people to consent to heavy taxation and redistribution if they feel that their society is full of foreigners. This observation is perhaps more relevant to Europe than the USA.
  - SauntSolaire 10mo ago
    And that's before mentioning the economics of funding a welfare state with a relatively static/shrinking tax base and growing, imported, welfare recipient class - the latter being practically unbounded in the case of illegal immigration.
tomrod 10mo ago
What, your ancestors between 600k years ago up to 150 years ago are a joke to you? Human history began with European Great Powers? Göbekli tepe easily refutes your isolationism, as does stone- and bronze-age globalism.
- crazygringo 10mo ago
  Not really. Tribes generally lived in specific areas, and would go to war with other tribes if those tribes tried to expand into their turf. Or would go to war to expand their turf. That's basically the early version of nationalism and borders, with the tribe as the nation, and neighboring tribes understanding which area was whose. Even nomadic tribes would be nomadic within a certain area, and jealously protect the area they would go to at the start of every spring, for example. Even modern primates establish territories for their groups, and warn off and fight other primates attempting to encroach. So this general behavior is quite natural. The concept of open borders where anyone can just waltz in and live somewhere where they're not from or didn't marry into and haven't been invited -- that's actually the relatively newer idea, historically speaking. I'm not arguing for more closed borders today, but I don't think we're should pretend that the historical human condition has somehow been "open".
  - nullstyle 10mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything Disagrees with you, and has several examples of tribal fluidity and more freedom of movement than you imply here.
    - crazygringo 10mo ago
      If you're talking about "the freedom to escape one's surroundings and move away", the book has been widely criticized for that assertion, as Graeber is extremely ideologically motivated. If you left your tribe without being accepted into another (whether through marriage or some kinds of previous personal alliances you'd made), life would be pretty rough if you survived at all. Sure tribes would split sometimes when they got too big or disagreements split them. But that's not about the individual level. That's akin to nation-state secession today. There's no evidence that people were just regularly packing things up and going off and joining whatever neighboring tribe they wanted to, whenever they wanted to. And this is the type of thing where the book has come under such heavy criticism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything#Methodology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything#Methodo...
phantasmish 10mo ago
The US (where “open borders” are often characterized as national “suicide” by right-wing figures) had open borders well within living memory. By ship? No. But you’re from Argentina and made it all the way up to the Rio and want to cross to work on US farms or whatever? Yeah whatever man, totally fine, just walk in. Anyone from the Americas was welcome, no waiting, no la migra hunting them, no nothin’ We didn’t change that until the ‘60s, and the only reason it didn’t cause a ton of problems immediately (farms at that time were already heavily dependent on migrant labor operating a bit under the table, and their lobbies were not quiet on the issue) was that enforcement was and has been, at times (and especially at first) mostly rather half-assed.
chimeracoder 10mo ago
> The whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty has been with us for essentially all of human history, Quite the opposite. The modern concept of "border sovereignty" as intertwined with the nation-state is a Westphalian construction. (Students of world history will recognize why this timing is not a coincidence). And even then, they didn't exactly catch on immediately. Sovereign nation-states are a tiny piece of human history. They're not even the majority of recorded human history.
guywithahat 10mo ago
It's not just a human thing; people who study wolves find they maintain surprisingly strict borders between different packs, and this behavior continues though a lot of other mammals and even some smaller animals like certain birds and insects.

cindyllm 10mo ago

[dead]

pksebben 10mo ago

That's partially true; the bit about borders and human history (so long as you sequester 'history' to 'recorded history') - but nationalism is actually newer than you'd think, and there were human societies for thousands of years before there were borders. More recent if you go by the current definition of border (formalized, surveyed borders are also relatively modern). Is nationalism going to peter out? No, of course not. Do some people care for reasons that are important to them? Sure, I don't want to tell anyone how to feel. I am just another jerk with an opinion like the rest of us. But if you were to ask me, it's take it or leave it. I'd be more than happy to see free movement in the world. Just another set of rules I'm not using.

bluebarbet 10mo ago
Yes, hard borders are far more recent than people think. As late as the First World War you could travel the world without so much as a passport. But: back then only a handful of very rich people had the means to do that, and taxation and social protection were much lower than today. Those things are related. They (IMO of course!) are what make borders a pragmatic necessity.
- alva 10mo ago
  Passport equivalents go back to 1350BC
- jandrewrogers 10mo ago
  You could travel across the North American countries without a passport until quite recently. That only stopped being a thing after 9/11.

mrwrong 10mo ago

[dead]

BeFlatXIII 10mo ago

What are those reasons?

bluebarbet 10mo ago
The most obvious one is that the modern welfare state relies for its legitimacy on social cohesion, i.e. a certain base of shared values and identity. You will not get people to consent to heavy taxation and redistribution if they feel that their society is full of foreigners. This observation is perhaps more relevant to Europe than the USA.
- SauntSolaire 10mo ago
  And that's before mentioning the economics of funding a welfare state with a relatively static/shrinking tax base and growing, imported, welfare recipient class - the latter being practically unbounded in the case of illegal immigration.

tomrod 10mo ago

What, your ancestors between 600k years ago up to 150 years ago are a joke to you? Human history began with European Great Powers? Göbekli tepe easily refutes your isolationism, as does stone- and bronze-age globalism.

crazygringo 10mo ago
Not really. Tribes generally lived in specific areas, and would go to war with other tribes if those tribes tried to expand into their turf. Or would go to war to expand their turf. That's basically the early version of nationalism and borders, with the tribe as the nation, and neighboring tribes understanding which area was whose. Even nomadic tribes would be nomadic within a certain area, and jealously protect the area they would go to at the start of every spring, for example. Even modern primates establish territories for their groups, and warn off and fight other primates attempting to encroach. So this general behavior is quite natural. The concept of open borders where anyone can just waltz in and live somewhere where they're not from or didn't marry into and haven't been invited -- that's actually the relatively newer idea, historically speaking. I'm not arguing for more closed borders today, but I don't think we're should pretend that the historical human condition has somehow been "open".
- nullstyle 10mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything Disagrees with you, and has several examples of tribal fluidity and more freedom of movement than you imply here.
  - crazygringo 10mo ago
    If you're talking about "the freedom to escape one's surroundings and move away", the book has been widely criticized for that assertion, as Graeber is extremely ideologically motivated. If you left your tribe without being accepted into another (whether through marriage or some kinds of previous personal alliances you'd made), life would be pretty rough if you survived at all. Sure tribes would split sometimes when they got too big or disagreements split them. But that's not about the individual level. That's akin to nation-state secession today. There's no evidence that people were just regularly packing things up and going off and joining whatever neighboring tribe they wanted to, whenever they wanted to. And this is the type of thing where the book has come under such heavy criticism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything#Methodology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything#Methodo...

phantasmish 10mo ago

The US (where “open borders” are often characterized as national “suicide” by right-wing figures) had open borders well within living memory. By ship? No. But you’re from Argentina and made it all the way up to the Rio and want to cross to work on US farms or whatever? Yeah whatever man, totally fine, just walk in. Anyone from the Americas was welcome, no waiting, no la migra hunting them, no nothin’ We didn’t change that until the ‘60s, and the only reason it didn’t cause a ton of problems immediately (farms at that time were already heavily dependent on migrant labor operating a bit under the table, and their lobbies were not quiet on the issue) was that enforcement was and has been, at times (and especially at first) mostly rather half-assed.

chimeracoder 10mo ago

> The whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty has been with us for essentially all of human history, Quite the opposite. The modern concept of "border sovereignty" as intertwined with the nation-state is a Westphalian construction. (Students of world history will recognize why this timing is not a coincidence). And even then, they didn't exactly catch on immediately. Sovereign nation-states are a tiny piece of human history. They're not even the majority of recorded human history.

guywithahat 10mo ago

It's not just a human thing; people who study wolves find they maintain surprisingly strict borders between different packs, and this behavior continues though a lot of other mammals and even some smaller animals like certain birds and insects.