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Comment by DoubleMalt | Hacker News Reader

I don't like borders. Maybe it is because I come from a small country (of almost exactly the blessed size mentioned in the article) and perceived borders mostly as an impediment to exploring the world.

In my opinion the one great thing the European Union brought to us is to tear down these pesky border stations where people insist on checking your passport and exact medieval tolls on goods that are transported a few miles just because the few miles cross a mostly imagined line.

However borders can be removed by implosion, too. If you assign more and more rights to smaller and smaller units borders will get less and less important.

The Seven Kingdoms of Anglia will probably join the Schengen treaty as they don't have a common big external border to protect.

That way we get all benefits: Decisions are made closer at the people and the number of borders that impede our movements will be reduced.

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^ that's basically why I'm voting Yes to Scottish independence, in fact. I'm worried by the trend in Westminster that "foreigner blaming" has become normalised and there is already talk of holding an in-out referendum on EU membership.

I want to live in a smaller country, with decisions made closer to home; but with open, welcoming borders. Actually there is evidence that we need immigration in Scotland. We have an ageing (for want of a better word) "indigenous" population - but we can mitigate the problems this poses if we can build a great job market and promote our world-class universities; we can attract talented young people from across the world to our universities and give them jobs here. Build a truly multi-national country. That's the intention of the SNP and the Greens, anyway, and its one I support very much, and I will vote any way I can to get us closer to that dream.

Very similar to my own reasons for voting "Yes" - my other being getting rid of Trident.

A cool policy would be allowing European regions to gain independence from their larger state incumbent on devolution of some powers to the EU.

Yeah, further European integration is really good for separatist politicians all over Europe, from Veneno to Scotland to Catalonia to wherever.

As Artur Mas, current leader of the goverment of Catalonia said: "I think that the right answer would be the following one: imagine that the European Union turns into the United States of Europe. In this case, with a federal structure, Catalonia would like to be one of the states of that federation. If you look at the United States of America, you will realise that, with a population of about 300 million people, they have 50 states. The European union, with more than 500 million people, could have more than 60 or 70, or maybe 75 states. And why couldn’t Catalonia be one of these states, in a federal structure and with the powers of a state which belongs to a federal structure? So, with less powers than an independent country but more powers than we have today. In that case, Spain would have less powers, and France and Germany and Holland, but Catalonia would have more powers…"

Well the existence of the UK is what erected a border between the 6 north counties of Ireland and the 26 south counties of Ireland. So what might remove some borders is a weakening of the United Kingdom.

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