this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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Lefty Memes

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Borders (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (12 children)

This has so completely disappeared from discourse over the past four years. I remember when it used to be that "building the wall" was stupid at best and bigoted at worst. But now, it's all, "Of course we agree that we need a strong border, but we're the ones who will actually do it, Trump's all talk."

It's always the Republicans that get to set which values and goals the country persues, while the Democrats just run on pragmatism and efficiency. It's like they're allergic to making moral claims.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's because it's a one-party system masquerading as a two-party system.

[–] stupidcasey 4 points 17 hours ago

Oh, oh no, no no no no no, No. this isn’t a one party system, this is something far worse, this is what comes exactly right before a one party system. That is a two radicalized polarized adversarial party system. One must go but neither will leave willingly, there is more concentration of money and power in these two parties than possibly any other group on earth and maybe through out all history, make no mistake the only thing that will hold the country back from civil war is the Bomb, and that is only a maybe.

We might not quite be that bad yet but all the peaces are in place and adversarial moves are already being made.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

it's really not one party.

To be clear we have one party, that is effectively fascist, and another party that is, center left/right and very moderate.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Two parties, one donor class.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

No free trade without free movement!

[–] [email protected] 96 points 1 day ago (17 children)

I agree with conservatives that strict boarders are necessary for nation states.

They call it a necessity evil, I use it as an argument to abolish all states.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

I like my boarders to be easygoing rather than strict, makes the conversation easier.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 day ago (7 children)

I've never met a liberal irl who gives a fuck about borders or immigration. It's always conservatives that rage about that shit to me.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

liberals have a lot of "very serious people" who talk about the sanctity of the nation state.

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[–] bassomitron 45 points 1 day ago (37 children)

Border have to exist to some degree, simply from a management perspective. Even if we threw all state and country borders away, it'd be literally impossible for a single government to effectively govern the world. You'd need to divide it all up into smaller regions to be managed. Otherwise, we'd might as well just fall back into the pre-industrial age as infrastructure erodes due to poor governmental oversight and management.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

It would also effectively mean that every region in the world would have to have the same laws.

Take Canada and the US. Very similar culturally, very similar economically, but some pretty important differences in human welfare. Like, every Canadian resident pays taxes to support a healthcare system, and if you need healthcare it's free.

If you eliminated the US/Canadian border, people could live in the US where taxes are cheaper until they had a serious illness, then they could move to Canada to get free treatment whenever necessary, moving back as soon as the treatment was done. That obviously wouldn't work well.

The only ways to make that work are either to eliminate the border, and have both regions have exactly the same healthcare system, or keep the border and allow both to have different systems.

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[–] jaggedrobotpubes 11 points 1 day ago (13 children)

I have never once heard and have not been able to imagine an explanation of how not having borders could possibly work.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Notice how there is no border between your town and the next one? Same, but on a larger scale.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

Yes, but the next town over is protected by the same military, is under almost exactly the same laws, is covered by essentially the same tax system, and so-on.

If you're suggesting eliminating borders once there's one world government covering every country and a planetwide tax system, then sure. Until then, it seems like it would be a disaster.

[–] lemonmelon 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

But there is...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

There's the border, then there's The Border. One is a line drawn on a map for administrative purposes, sometimes comes with its own road sign. The other is a checkpoint where your documents are handed over and you're at the mercy of the border authority. Usually doesn't happen between towns, but those are pretty popular in places like Soviet Germany, apartheid South Africa and the West Bank for example.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 15 hours ago

Internal border control is common in East Asia. India, China, North Korea, Bhutan, Malaysia and Vietnam have it with varying degrees of strictness.

[–] Allonzee 24 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You can just keep going where the border would be.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Simple. In the past there is no "border". You are someone from Frankfurt who came to Paris to set up business and there was no question asked.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

In the past that was true of certain classes, other classes were tied to the land and forbidden from leaving their manor lord's land.

[–] Jaderick 14 points 1 day ago

A example that’s not borderlessness, but still interesting, was the Behind the Bastards episode on Harlan Crow which talked about how there was seasonal migration of people from Mexico into the US during peak agricultural seasons. They would return to Mexico in the winter, but the introduction of a hard border incentivized people to remain in the US.

It seems the hardening the border lead to the exact thing Harlan Crow and the other racist trash were trying to fight, increased immigration.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

All immigration is a net positive to the economy in a number of different ways, and most of "problems" are caused by material conditions created by having classes of citizens versus non citizens. The US basically had open borders for much of its history and that's a big reason why it became such an industrial powerhouse.

The original idea behind physical border control has more to do with espionage and sabotage than restricting immigration.

[–] qevlarr 7 points 1 day ago

What do you mean "how it works"? What function would 'having no borders' serve?

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