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Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

I’ve spent a lot of time traveling, been to close to 40 countries. A lot of times I had to get a visa. Once to get in Switzerland for two weeks I had to present a lease agreement from a friend there who welcomed me for few nights. Stack of papers I have to the embassy was a finger thick.

Wholeheartedly and fully wish this whole system to go burst in high flames. One of the fondest memories I have is the first time I came across Polish-Czech border without any controls when both countries joined the Schengen agreement. Or the other time when me and a bunch of friends were strolling in a park in Germany and casually strolled over a bridge into Poland. I did it, like, five times just to enjoy it.

People who are rooting for closed borders are either not traveling or privileged enough to not see this. Fuck them.

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UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Grew up in Texas, and back in the 80s it was very normal for kids to just hop into a car and drive south of the border for Spring Break. This was the most normal thing in the world for hundreds of thousands of teenagers and young adults.

And then national media realized they could make a lot of cheap news coverage by scandalizing the practice. So we got a slew of news stories, which became inflated with an even more over-dramatized series of books, tv shows, and movies, showing kids going across the border for drug use and rape and animal abuse and to dispose of dead bodies for the cartels and to get eaten alive by the Chupacabra. We got bombarded by a slew of media with a flashlight under the chin whispering “Oh, you think these kids are having fun? Well, what if the news threw a red filter over the images and used graphical effects to imply everyone was murdered?!”

Both the US and the Mexican police got more and more involved. The borders became militarized. You ended up with these obnoxious traffic situations, which really killed the appeal of any kind of vacationing. Also didn’t help that a lot of the popular destinations got enclosed and privatized, for the benefit of a few insider luxury developers. The cost of a vacation exploded, as cruise lines and chain hotels and resorts took over the best spots. And now it’s been fully Disney-fied, with a heavily demarcated entry and exit for tourists who are heavily discouraged from mingling with locals.

Shit fucking sucks, man.

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hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’ve also travelled a lot, and while visa stuff can be a nightmare, this also sounds like it’s coming from a super selfish reasoning. As if a democratically elected government of people in a place should have no right to its own sovereignty so that YOU don’t have to deal with paperwork?

What’s funny is the exact scenario you all want already exists in Sub-Saharan Africa. Borders effectively don’t exist at all for anyone willing to get off the bus, walk 50 meters into the bush, then 200 meters forward and back to the road. I’ve accidentally crossed several borders dozens of times.

But then when it comes to countries that struggle to find work for their own people, they also get flooded by people from places where no government functions at all. Specifically Nigerians in South Africa and Ghana. Legally present, and subject to xenophobic attacks because there no hope for them in Nigeria because it’s a hot mess.

So… That’s the ideal situation? And people can’t leave that open border situation fast enough because the places that are stable are flooded by people fleeing instability.

Honestly, I’m asking, how is it supposed to work without literally magic being involved?

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- surewhynotlem@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  their own people
  
  Fuck that. Everyone is my people.
  
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  - dragonlover@lemmy.zip ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Exactly, sick of the fuck you got mine mentality. There is enough in the world to go around for everyone, it’s the uneven distribution and monetization of basic resources that makes it so some people in some countries starve.
    
    So many if the world’s woes today come from people vying for money, and for land and resources to…make more money.
    
    If someone is sick you treat them. If someone is hungry you feed them. If someone is thirsty you give them water. I don’t care what nationality they are, what country they are from, what language they speak, what gender they are, what sexuality they are, what disability they have, if they are a human being they deserve basic dignity, respect, and basic needs. Borders are arbitrary.
    
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    surewhynotlem@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    someone is sick you treat them. If someone is hungry you feed them
    
    Careful there. They nail people to trees for crazy talk like that.
    
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  - hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Have you ever been to an intentional community that doesn’t vet new members?
    
    No. Because they don’t last long. I’m down with the oneness of existence and beings. Most people aren’t, though. Many people are a hot mess and don’t know how to deal with themselves or others.
    
    And I promise you that the vast majority of the world does not want you showing up there. For real, test this by moving to rural Texas, or a Mormons-only area of Arizona, or Cairo, or rural DRC without cultural entree or any value provided to a suspicious community and see how that goes. Yes, people might chill out after months or years of you proving not a threat, but as a species, we’re pretty paranoid.
    
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    surewhynotlem@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’ve not met that level of hostility in my travels. But I also never moved to bumblefuck nowhere. I’m guessing if people have never left their town, having people come into the town is a big deal.
    
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- Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I don’t have solutions you need, but it doesn’t prohibit me from thinking about the world where they exist. Or, I don’t know, speaking about it in Lemmy.
  
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  - hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Ok, but I’m really asking. How is it supposed to work? Why doesn’t it work in practice?
    
    Everyone who talks about some world with no borders seems to have some idea in mind, as if it’s some .ml instance FAQ or something.
    
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- UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  As if a democratically elected government representing people in a certain place should have no right to its own sovereignty
  
  I mean, “democratically elected” does a lot of heavy lifting in countries that are choked out by fascist governance and fear-mongering media. “Sovereignty” also has a weird way of being used to weaponize self-determination into surveillance-state policing and xenophobic policy.
  
  But then when it comes to countries that struggle to find work for their own people, they also get flooded by people from places where no government functions at all. Specifically Nigerians in South Africa and Ghana. Legally present, and subject to xenophobic attacks because there no hope for them in Nigeria because it’s a hot mess.
  
  Why is it that a French citizen traveling to Germany or Spain is considered benign, but a Libyan citizen traveling to Germany or Spain is considered part of a “flood” that has some kind of existential threat to the locals? Why does Libya’s dogshit government get raised as a reason why this Libyan visitor can’t stay at my hotel or eat at my restaurant or work in my office?
  
  Does being born in Country A stain someone’s soul in a way that makes them incompatible with Country B?
  
  how is it supposed to work without literally magic being involved?
  
  You don’t need magic to not have borders. If anything, you need a certain degree of magic to rigidly enforce borders. You need mass surveillance to track the identities of everyone entering and leaving your country. You need to engineer increasingly complex systems of identification, digital fingerprinting, financial controls, regulation on business and social activities, and prohibitions enforcement pursuant to a constantly shifting web of sanctions. You need an enormous body of labor to manage these rules and enforce them. You need prisons to hold all the trespassers. You sprawling bureaucracies to figure out who is “legal” and to change the legal status in a timely manner.
  
  None of this shit works as intended. Legal residents routinely get harassed because records aren’t properly maintained and distributed. Illegal residents slip through blind spots in the system. Black market trade grows faster than the regulated trade, because there’s a larger profit margin in it. Legal business activity suffocates under the higher costs of compliance.
  
  You ask how no-borders are supposed to work? I’d say, incredibly easily! Do nothing. Boom! You’ve achieved your goal.
  
  I ask you how closed-borders are supposed to work? You’re going to spend several lifetimes and untold fortunes trying to achieve this fantasy.
  
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- ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You just did the “but what about war?” thing.
  
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  - hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    No, I did the “explain it to me, because it doesn’t work in real life” thing.
    
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- rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  As if a democratically elected government representing people in a certain place should have no right to its own sovereignty so that YOU don’t have to deal with paperwork
  
  Most people I know that want an end to borders also want the end of government.
  
  But then when it comes to countries that struggle to find work for their own people
  
  If people are struggling to survive but there are no jobs to be found, it’s because the work that needs to be done isn’t profitable. The work needs to be done to benefit society, but the ruling class demands that all work must be profitable.
  
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  - UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    Most people I know that want an end to borders also want the end of government.
    
    Idk about that. The line I’ve always seen is that most people want a system which protects-but-does-not-bind. And what they recoil at is a system that binds-but-does-not-protect.
    
    I want the border to be frictionless for me. But I don’t want the border to be frictionless for people I don’t like.
    
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    rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    But I don’t want the border to be frictionless for people I don’t like
    
    And therein lies the rub: if their government doesn’t like you, the border then binds you but does not protect you. Borders exist because it projects power onto people within, and gives arbitrary rules for entry without. If you want truly free movement, you can’t have projections of power
    
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  - hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    Most people I know that want an end to borders also want the end of government.
    
    So, not exactly an unbiased same, eh?
    
    If people are struggling to survive but there are no jobs to be found, it’s because the work that needs to be done isn’t profitable. The work needs to be done to benefit society, but the ruling class demands that all work must be profitable.
    
    Explain how the “ruling class” does this to a rural subsistence farming village in Burkina Faso or Mali or Ghana. I’d love to see you explain it.
    
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    rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    not exactly an unbiased same
    
    There’s no such thing as “unbiased”. If you see something you think is unbiased, that thing just reflects your bias.
    
    Explain how the “ruling class” does this to a rural subsistence farming village
    
    So here’s the thing. I want an end to borders and government, but the reality is that these social constructs exist and are acted upon regardless of my political desires. Those subsistence farming villages are a part of geopolitical governments, so it impacts them based on how the ruling class interacts with their government. The IMF is a concoction from capitalists to project neo-colonial power on the Global South. To get a loan from the IMF, countries are literally required to privatize vast swaths of their public services and public property, they’re required to loosen labor laws, and they need to open themselves up to foreign companies that extract their resources to make a profit that is not reinvested into that country.
    
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    ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Generations of pillaging, murder, theft, slavery, pollution, and political meddling. Also the occasional genocide. Have you ever read a single history book about Africa that wasn’t written by a colonizer?
    
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- kestrel7_7@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This post and the one you’re responding to are basically restating the screenshot in the OP, and you’re the person who’s being unpleasant.
  
  These laws harm more they help and you’ve provided several examples in your post, you just apparently don’t see them.
  
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  - hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    I’m genuinely asking how it’s supposed to work. It’s a real question.
    
    I’m providing real life evidence that it’s not so simple.
    
    If exposing you to reality in hopes of a real answer and not just “uh, like, anarchy, I guess” or restating lofty quotes from Marx is “unpleasant” then that’s not on me, friendo.
    
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merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’ve also travelled and that’s why I want borders, at least for now.

We should definitely be working to raise people in the poorer parts of the world out of poverty. I’ve been to some developing countries, and life there is extremely hard. That’s why so many of them want to move to a rich country where they can live a better life.

Yeah, as a rich westerner, borders are an annoyance. It’s great going around Europe and going from the Netherlands to France without needing a passport or anything.

Having said that, in the Netherlands and France, and most other western countries, there is a great social safety net paid for by taxes that makes sure that everybody living in those countries can live a decent life. But, even Europe was put under stress by the fact that some countries in the EU have a GDP per capita that’s half what it is in other places.

A fair number of people migrated to richer countries within the EU for a better life. Most found a job and worked. They contributed more to the countries than they received in benefits. Even then, that was hard on those richer countries because it displaced some of the lower-wage workers, or depressed their wages. Despite this, the EU has mostly held together, other than Brexit, and the majority of the EU regrets Brexit.

The important thing to remember is that the EU vets members before allowing them in, and was slow to allow the poorer Eastern European countries to join.

If the world eliminated borders tomorrow, the richer western countries would be swamped by poorer people from developing countries seeking a better life. There’s no way that the systems in those countries could cope.

The rich might love it. Suddenly there would be hundreds or thousands of people competing for the lowest paying jobs, allowing the bosses to offer the lowest possible wages, the worst possible working conditions, etc. The ultra-rich business owners could get rid of unions and get local workers for next to nothing.

For the slightly less rich, the professional class, it wouldn’t be too bad. Their jobs are protected. You need to pass the bar to be a lawyer. You need to do a residency to become a doctor. Their professional associations would continue to do the work necessary so that say a doctor in Nigeria didn’t have their credentials recognized in the west.

The less wealthy you are, the less protected you would be. For someone whose job doesn’t require any kind of diploma, certificate or degree, there would be no protection. They’d be competing with every unskilled person who came into the country seeking opportunities.

Even if you personally think that chaos is a small price to pay for a more fair world, a lot of people don’t. The rise of far-right and fascist movements in the west is a direct result of increasing immigration. If borders were eliminated, not only would there be a lot more far-right voters, there would probably be violent clashes, even mass slaughters.

A lot of people hate globalization, but it has resulted in raising a lot of people in developing countries out of extreme poverty. It has done that mainly by taking wealth and power away from the poorest people in richer countries by shipping their jobs overseas. That part sucks. But, at least a lot of people in developing countries are no longer in danger of dying if they have a bad few weeks.

Programs like USAID were a better way of doing some of the same things. These were often subsidies for US farmers whose produce was then just donated or sold extremely cheaply to developing countries. There were of course problems with this system too. Often the “farmers” receiving the subsidies were rich corporations. But, it did raise the floor for some of the worst-off people in the world.

If we can continue to find ways to help people in developing countries, we should do that. Hopefully we can find a better way to do it than we’ve done in the past. But, even a less-than-ideal solution does help. Eventually, we may be able to reach a point at which we can remove borders without resulting in a mass migration that overwhelms the systems of the richer countries.

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- Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Your way too long and easily compatible post is a good summary why I’m in support of going full throttle on investment in neighboring countries until their standards of living are up to par.
  
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  - merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    My post was way too long because it goes against the popular sentiment. If you agree with the popular sentiment, you can afford to have a short post. If you disagree and keep it short, people will downvote you for the things you didn’t mention, or will accuse you of not considering X.
    
    Anyhow, I’m in favour of investing in neighbouring countries, or just donating to them. There are problems with donating some things like food. It helps keep people alive, but it also means farmers take a hit because they’re competing with free. But, it’s hard to argue when people need food or they’ll die. Donating training and skills development is a better path. I know someone who works at an NGO that works with local NGOs to train their leadership to be more effective. I think that’s one of the best things I’ve heard of for helping other countries because it just makes the people living there more effective at what they do. But, it’s not a quick process.
    
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jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Closed borders don’t make things better for a selected few if they make the world those selected few live in shitty.

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