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.
hansolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks 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?
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Fuck that. Everyone is my people.
dragonlover@lemmy.zip 2 weeks 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.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Careful there. They nail people to trees for crazy talk like that.
hansolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks 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.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 2 weeks 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.
Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks 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.
hansolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks 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.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
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?
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.
hansolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Sure, but since we’re talking about hypothetical and fictional situations, I’m asking why a not real place that actually does democracy well and isn’t dragging a legacy of being shitty behind it allowed to manage its own affairs and territory under this “no borders” idea.
And you’re dodging the question I’ve asked, which is open borders in practice are a mess.
Uhh… you do know the EU exists, right? Germany, Spain and France all have treaties in place under the EU and EEC that say they have freedom of movement, labor, and ownership of property among each other’s countries as EU citizens. People from Libya aren’t EU citizens, so laws granting transitive rights between EU member countries don’t include Libya or anyone from Libya as Libya isn’t part of the EU. If Libya joined the EU, then they would.
Plus, have you not seen recent complaints from Italians and Portuguese that they’re being overrun with other Europeans and Americans anyway? How many Brits learned the hard way what Brexit meant when they lost residency in Spain?
You also seem to forget that Europe used to have hard borders. French people used to need permission to go to Spain, and vice versa. Spanish farmers, some possibly still alive today, needed special letters to tend to fields in France back in the 1960s.
Not at all, but why does someone being a human give them a right to go anywhere and do anything?
It also seems like no one has thought out the true dangers of economic imperialism with no borders or governments. Holy shit, you really trust social media and advertising to be left unchecked? A lot of peple would 100% move to the Wal-Mart corporate town and condos. That’s also exactly how you get things like the insane Broligarchy Network State stuff. Highly developed pockets of society that rampantly exert force on neighbors to extract resources. You know, like people used to do to each other during the era of early history and pre-history.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A number of Latin American countries have very loose and friendly immigration policies. Argentina and Paraguay are the most notable. Idk if you’d say they “do democracy well”. That’s a real subjective criteria.
We’ve got a wealth of political philosophy and ethics debates that help answer that question, from John Stuart Mill to Lea Ypi who can answer that question better than I can.
But a better question might be, why wouldn’t they?
Why would I trust the owners of social media and advertising companies to be the gatekeepers?
People already move to the Walmart Corporate Towns, in large part because Walmart dictates what criticism it will tolerate and what opposition it will face.
People screaming about corporate fascism today wanted to put Walmart Board Member Hillary Clinton in charge of the whole country not ten years ago.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
You just did the “but what about war?” thing.
hansolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
No, I did the “explain it to me, because it doesn’t work in real life” thing.
rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Most people I know that want an end to borders also want the end of government.
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.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
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
hansolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
So, not exactly an unbiased same, eh?
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.
rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
There’s no such thing as “unbiased”. If you see something you think is unbiased, that thing just reflects your bias.
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.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks 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?
kestrel7_7@lemmy.world 2 weeks 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.
hansolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks 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.