Money can cross borders pretty easily these days, but the rules and their application are inconsistent or misguided and so we get uneven or suboptimal results. Think differing tax outcomes, or ownership or difficulties in monitoring.

Goods can cross borders pretty easily these days too, notwithstanding what’s going on in the US recently, or the economic coercion other countries wield for their own purposes. My observations of various international trade agreements and disputes suggest to me that there’s a lot of politics and quid pro quo involved, rather than the agreement of common rules and effective methods to resolve disputes.

If we want free movement of people then we need global rules to keep it fair. Preferably rules that put the folks’ needs first. Otherwise it becomes a “I’m stronger than you, so I win” situation, which is pretty much how things work now. Rules are needed to settle who gets what rights and obligations so that we have a common framework to live together. And we need a decent system for determining those rules. And a just method of enforcing those rights and obligations. And an effective method for settling disputes. And an effective method for identifying when the rules don’t work and changing them. I don’t think that exists anywhere right now.

So, I’m not hopeful that removal of barriers to people crossing borders would be successful any time soon. There’s just so much societal glue that needs to be in place first. We’re just not very good at getting that agreed, set up and sustainable.

Imagine ten million people pouring into Canada. We have enough of a housing crisis

Humans are animals, all animals have territories. We decided on mutually agreed upon borders and territories to prevent the animal response.

I like the idea of bringing in as many people as possible and treating them all as humans, but I also would like exceptions for militants and espionage. Fuck Russia, Fuck China, Fuck NK, and Fuck Iran. Make all those fuckers jump through a billion hoops, make them choose between here and there.

I’d love a free roaming world. Those that want to roam into a different area better know the local rules and cultures.

Closed borders do seem to cause a lot more problems than open ones.

In theory, of course. Love that.

However, there are people who exist that should be kept out. Known terrorists and criminals should be denied entry, there are severe punishments that if we can’t enact we at the very least should prohibit their return. A modern day exile. You can only confirm who a bad person is by confirming who they aren’t. You need an ID to let Joshua Hamton, candy store owner, into the country but to also keep out Jeffery Epstein, kid diddler, from returning should he escape. A filter must exist but not one this strict. The only way to remove the filter would be to assimilate under a global legal system which we are centuries from obtaining.

I like the idea but you have to have very homogeneous laws and cultures to make it work. The EU despite all the differences between the people and cultures, have similar levels of law and law enforcement. The US and Canada had that similar level until Agent Orange 2: spray tan boogaloo. But it becomes more disparate when you do borders like the US and Mexico or Russia and Norway or Japan and China.

I’m not familiar enough with each of these borders to dive into nuance, but that’d be my impression for a us-mexico analog.

That’s literally Kant opinion on the matter and one of the inspiring principles of the European Union.

continuous, uninterrupted land

Also this guy: “What the fuck is a river?”

“Good fences make good neighbors”. Let’s look at it another way. Does that freedom of movement include encroaching on your home and setting up a tent in your yard? (Or other analogous situation depending on your living arrangement).

If you said “no”, then you believe in the ability to have a secure and defined space. A country is just a pooled space of a larger community that have collectively decided to have a secure and defined space.

I think the bigger issue stems from the inequality and access within reason.

This is impossible without also abolishing the concept of land ownership. Which I’m all for, but that ship sailed like 10 000 years ago.

Culture is such an ethereal thing. It seems like there are three cultural scenarios: immigrants assimilate, cultures mix, and immigrant culture takes over. This is obviously a spectrum and not rigidly defined categories, but I wonder what the major factors are determining how cultures interact. You have to assume the population proportion is a main contributor. I assume language must be also.

If you make completely porous borders does that encourage new cultures to grow through mixing, or does it allow a single culture to dominate?

Just some musings barely related to the topic.

I think we’ll eventually get to that stage - where everything is one big EU-like superstate. It would, of course, require that we don’t annihilate ourselves before then, but it seems to be the general trend at least. I doubt we’d ever get rid of borders entirely, though. Human beings are the same the world over, and should be treated as such, but the world itself is not the same everywhere. Life brings different challenges depending on where you find yourself. So there will always be a greener side of the fence for the vast majority of the population. That ‘temperature difference’ will always bring a certain conflict, and that conflict will always bring a certain siege mentality for those who are on the aforementioned greener side of the fence.

On the bright side, as climate change devastates the planet, we’ll all be living on the same 100-square-mile patch of land eventually, so this debate will be moot.

As someone who lives next door to Russia, fuck that with a rusty fork! open borders are great between Britain and Ireland or between Schengen countries because there’s a level of shared values and goals and no aspirations to expand. But if Estonia for example opened it’s border to Russia, the entire country would be annexed within the year. And they’d all be shitting in buckets too.

There’s a fairly secure high standard of living throughout Europe, which is largely because Russia isn’t part of it. Yeah geography Russia is parry of Europe, but no-one considers them to be. Similarly we don’t necessarily need china sending a few million people into Mongolia or open borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

It’s a lovely sentiment, but grow up.

this is not about Borders, the book store, as i was initially confused by