Walls going up are days of sadness. Walls broken down are days of joy.
The thing to keep in mind here is that such walls built to keep others out can be used just as easily to keep the locals in (on either side).
Depends. Whenever people put up the walls for their house (which serve the same purpose) those are days of joy too.
Same for nations that fought hard to establish their borders and sovereignty.
And fewer national borders is not some "wave of the future" -- it's what was tried and rejected when nation states became a thing.
We had large, all-encompassing empires before and it wasn't that nice...
I don't think that was the context of the OP's comment, but if you wish to extend to those kinds of walls then that's fine with me. It's just not the way I would have interpreted the meaning of a border wall.
Well, consider a country as a people's collective house.
In this, a border, if not analogous to the walls, is at least analogous to the fence around the house and/or the lock on the door.
Note that most dictatorships use walls around their 'houses' to keep the population in, not to keep others out.
Note that countries that are bordering other countries with great wealth disparity are using walls to keep the wealth concentrated and those on the other side of the wall poor so they may be further exploited.
This is not the same as you and your roughly equally wealthy neighbor sharing a wall in a duplex or a fence between your two gardens.
Those fences and walls are there for practical reasons and to delineate responsibility and right-of-way, not to specifically make it harder for your neighbor to share in the collective wealth of the neighborhood.
The equivalent of that would be a gated community in a poor country (which by the way look exactly like inside-out prisons).
I think you miss a "despite" or "notwithstanding" somewhere there.
In any case, even though a country is indeed not a house in some ways (no ceiling for one), it is quite like a house in others -- a set of people live there, some where born there, others came later, but in any case, it's their house, they (and their parents and grandparents) maintained it over the years, and its their decision who comes in and how it's run.
>Note that most dictatorships use walls around their 'houses' to keep the population in, not to keep others out.
That's not generally applicable, except when the dictatorship can't guarantee enough prosperity or is especially violent towards some groups. It's safety and/or food primarily. Otherwise, most people have little intention of living merely for political freedom.
But even if so, it's orthogonal to our subject. Dictatorships might do that (keep their population in), but we're talking about the inverse (keep non-citizens out -- which, by some logic, would be what democracies do).
>Those fences and walls are there for practical reasons and to delineate responsibility and right-of-way, not to specifically make it harder for your neighbor to share in the collective wealth of the neighborhood.
Borders are there for very practical purposes too. To define the area that a nation state controls, taxes, enforces laws, etc, and to keep non citizens of that state, outside of it unless asked to come in.
No, I'm perfectly ok with what I wrote.
What I find interesting is that many people are perfectly ok with exploiting a poorer neighbor, but they definitely should stay on their side of the dotted line.
All this hoopla about illegal immigration, walls and repatriating jobs to the other side of that dotted line will have the exact opposite effect. Illegal immigration will go up.
It's akin to a chemistry process called osmosis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmosis
Since we're in broken analogy territory anyway, why not use another?
So, in osmosis you have a wall - which should be easy to identify as your border - and two liquids on either side with a varying concentration of some substance. Say 'wealth'.
Now for wealth to stop flowing from one side to the other you will have to reach some kind of equilibrium first.
The faster you reach that equilibrium the faster you no longer have to worry about 'illegal crossings of the wall'.
In the end that border wall never was about people: it was all about wealth, and possibly about the sharing of that wealth.
Because HNers will fill in the blanks for you?
Claims to the contrary the map is not the territory and a country is not a house.
The correction is saying this should be:
Despite claims to the contrary the map is not the territory and a country is not a house.
This does not seem to change the meaning, but rather makes the sentence read sensibly.
How is having trade with a poorer neighbor country "exploitation"? Or when manufacturing plants move to the poorer nation? How is that exploitation? It's not good for the higher-paid workers who now are unemployed in the richer country, but it's good for the workers in the poor country who now have jobs which they apparently want because those plants do get staffed quickly.
As for your equilibrium/osmosis analogy, what if that substance differs highly in concentration because there's fundamental differences between the two countries, and one of them is severely broken politically (the other one is too, just not as badly and not in the same way)? Until the fundamental problem in the poorer country is addressed, I don't see how you're going to ever achieve equilibrium unless it's to the severe disadvantage of the richer country (i.e., dragging them down). And the responsibility for fixing that is not with the richer country; doing that is generally called "imperialism" and not viewed positively these days.
They use them for both, as it is common for prisons.
> Note that countries that are bordering other countries with great wealth disparity are using walls to keep the wealth concentrated
As do you - you keep your household's wealth concentrated in your house and your bank account, instead of putting it outside on the street and let anybody who wants take a piece.
> not to specifically make it harder for your neighbor to share in the collective wealth of the neighborhood.
My neighbor's walls definitely make it harder for me to share his wealth. I think that's kind of the point.
/s
> Walls don't impact legal immigration.
Yes, they do. But not in a way that you would immediately recognize as linked so I'll forgive you.
> They only only impact the proportion of illegal immigrants that sneak across the border.
Yes, so they will cross legally and then disappear into illegality. Same thing really, only this time you'll be able to put an exact figure on it.
You know what will really change illegal immigration from Mexico?
Making Mexico wealthy. And if anything that was already happening leading to a decline in people moving to the US and even a reversal (people moving back to Mexico).
But now with the border wall and companies being strong-armed to move their production back to the US how long will it take for that trend to reverse again?
Because the people will follow the work.
I think it would be great to for Mexico to be more prosperous so people wouldn't have to leave their families to come to the U.S. But you also have to ask yourself: does that fit with the purpose of the U.S.?
Having a government necessarily means yoking people, stripping them of their natural autonomy using coercion and under the threat of violence. I'm by no means an anarchist, but the only way I can justify that state of affairs morally is by (1) putting the beast we've created under democratic control, and (2) giving that beast the mandate to work toward the prosperity of its subjects.
Saying that the solution to illegal immigration is for the U.S. government to work to make Mexico wealthy is really difficult to reconcile with what I see as the only legitimate purpose of government.
Mexico was getting wealthier, people were more likely to return to Mexico.
Ironically this whole border wall + move jobs back to the USA thing has made the chances of illegal immigration from Mexico to the USA for a given individual go up rather than down.
As for who would make Mexico wealthy: that would not be the US government but market forces and corporations, the things that America has historically been such a huge proponent of.
But that's all gone now, it's the new times now, market forces are bad, companies need to be 'incentivized' to move their production back to the home country and all those illegals need to rounded up and sent back.
Government would have a hard time achieving the goal of making Mexico wealthy but they sure can do a lot to make things worse which will put upwards pressure on Mexicans to seek a better life elsewhere.
Market forces are merely a means to an end. The U.S. Government should only permit them to operate to the extent that has the effect of making the majority of Americans more prosperous (which it usually does). Do trade policies that have the effect of making Mexico richer have the effect of making the median American richer? I don't know the answer to that. Americans seem to think not.
The US Government should do what is best for the country and it's surroundings in the longer term, not what is best for isolated groups of Americans in the short term, and it was doing mostly that.
Trade policies that only work to the advantage of one of the trading partners are bad for everybody in the long term, they need to be win-win to really work.
> Americans seem to think not.
Americans by and large seem to think things are reasonably ok, as they should given the fact that the country is doing amazingly well. All this talk of doom and gloom is mostly a stage show set up to galvanize the votes of the dis-enfranchised.
It's a natural reaction: who cares if the country as a whole on average is doing much better if your little pocket of it is doing much worse? Who cares about the world as a whole doing better if your part of it is sliding backwards.
Adapt or die is easy to say when you're the one that has adapted, it's a lot harder if you're likely in the part of the population that will simply die.
And that's the heart of the problem, not whether or not the median American is getting richer, if that were the case nothing should have been changed because that was exactly what was happening already.
Also, it is not at the cost of American jobs; of course those specific jobs are lost, but unemployment is down, private sector is adding thousands of jobs etc.
Give it some time.
Not if you're a cell.
For animal cells you would use the cell membrane as an equivalent.
> The thing to keep in mind here is that such walls built to keep others out can be used just as easily to keep the locals in (on either side).
Somehow I'm not too worried about not being able to escape from the US to Mexico and the US trying to keep me in. I think you need to rob a bank or something to make that happen?
Illegal immigration is fine with you if it is to escape a country, but not if it is to enter a country?
Do realize that by using force to escape one country you'd immediately be illegally emigrating into another.
A lot of your Southern neighbors feel just like you. They use force to escape their economic situation, a prison whose walls are roughly as effective a one built out of stones.
America building 'that wall' is essentially simply making the wall a formal arrangement rather than a social construct that is already there.
I'm not sure why I should be ok with you using force to escape your country but why I should frown upon Mexicans using force to enter yours.
Sure, that's fine as long as you aren't illegally immigrating into another.
In my world, it's always OK for someone for someone to enter someone else's land/property if they've been given permission. If's not OK to do so if they haven't. However, holding people prisoner is always morally wrong. That's pretty much the definition of slavery.
IMO, it's always OK for people to forcibly leave someone who's enslaving them; the complication is finding someone who will take them in. Assuming they've found such a place, what possible defense can you have for people who want to imprison them?
>Do realize that by using force to escape one country you'd immediately be illegally emigrating into another.
This is wrong. You're assuming the country they're immigrating into hasn't given them permission. This is a baseless assumption.
> In my world, it's always OK for someone for someone to enter someone else's land/property if they've been given permission.
Good.
> If's not OK to do so if they haven't.
Yes, because that suits you well. Because you only recognize those kinds of hardship that you yourself would want to escape from and ignore those that are actually in play.
> However, holding people prisoner is always morally wrong. That's pretty much the definition of slavery.
No, it isn't. There are some points in common but that's not slavery.
> IMO, it's always OK for people to forcibly leave someone who's enslaving them; the complication is finding someone who will take them in. Assuming they've found such a place, what possible defense can you have for people who want to imprison them?
Good question. Ask those who want to build a wall. You do realize that building that wall essentially says: Mexicans, you're on your own, you won't be able to vote with your feet any more, and we will not allow you to come to work in the USA to send money home in order to slowly increase the standard of living South of the border, made worse by American companies being strong-armed into operating North of that same border?
> You're assuming the country they're immigrating into hasn't given them permission.
I'm not aware of any of my friends who 'made it' having received prior permission to enter the country they fled to.
In fact, without exception they ended up in 'internment camps' after which they were allowed to apply to a number of countries around the world who might want to accept them.
Effectively they were in no-mans land.
> This is a baseless assumption.
No, in fact this is the way it goes. Given that I've actually lived on both sides of such a wall for a while I figure my assumptions are anything but baseless.
Please explain what prevents Mexico from improving its standard of living on its own. Mexico is not some kind of slave to America; it's a sovereign nation, in control of its own destiny. It's free to trade with all the other 200+ nations on Earth, or to attempt to negotiate having its people go live there.
Why does America get all the blame in your world for Mexico's problems? Who does America get to blame for its problems?
Nothing whatsoever. Except of course that no country exists 'on its own'.
> Mexico is not some kind of slave to America; it's a sovereign nation, in control of its own destiny.
No, it's a lot less in control of its own destiny than America, mostly because of America (incidentally, also the biggest consumer in the drug trade). To all intents and purposes Mexico is utterly dependent on what happens on the other side of the border. Of course it is easy to deny that if you choose to do so but it suits quite a few interests in the United States just fine to have a weak and poor country next door.
To the point that there have been serious interventions in Mexican internal affairs to keep it that way benefiting (mostly American) foreign strategic and economic interests.
> It's free to trade with all the other 200+ nations on Earth, or to attempt to negotiate having its people go live there.
To the extent that it is able to do so, it does.
> Why does America get all the blame in your world for Mexico's problems?
It doesn't. Why do you read it as such?
America is to blame only to such an extent that they first establish a whole pile of factories abroad when it suits them and then at the drop of a hat imperils the newly created stability and middle-class in a country next door. That sort of action comes with responsibility.
> Who does America get to blame for its problems?
With great power comes great responsibility. If you don't want to be seen as responsible do not continuously mess in other countries affairs and when you do realize that you can't withdraw that support overnight.
Where do you think the vast majority of the money propping up the organized crime groups that are disrupting civil society in Mexico comes from? The flow of money from the US involved is, proportional to the size of target economy, equivalent to some other country funnelling something like $200 billion a year to armed anti-government groups in the US.