Hacker News Reader

Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

You're a nation if you have a military. These folks clearly failed that test.

Not sure if you're being facetious but Iceland, Costa Rica and Mauritius all fail that test and are commonly accepted as nations.

By that line of reasoning, I should be legally allowed to invade my unarmed neighbor's house, kick him out and claim it for myself.

Your unarmed neighbor's house happens to be on the land of an existing nation, so you would have to deal with their military before claiming rights to said house.

Refer to xtrumanx's comment above.

The one about Iceland, Costa Rica and Mauritius? Certainly those countries have allies who would come to their aid if their land was being invaded by foreigners. I'm not claiming that every nation has their own military, just that they must be prepared to defend their interests in one way or another.

The question of "legally" invading someone's house is odd anyway, because legality implies some authority having deemed it appropriate. In the case of a neighbor's house, it is the government of the country containing the house. I can't think of an entity that establishes the "legal" way of creating/invading a country.

Its exists, and has something to do with who 'recognizes' a country's claim to exist. There's a cool case in Australia where a guy with a large ranch wrote a letter to the territorial governor, styling himself as the leader of his fictitious nation. The governor responded in kind, maybe tongue in cheek, but using the same title. That meant, as Queen's representative, that the Queen had recognized him. Now he has a post office, currency, stamps etc, and Australia has to deal with him on that basis.

I was trying to make an analogy. JoeAltmaier's comment implies that it's justifiable for a nation to invade another and kick them out if the latter does not have a military, because it's not really a nation (by his definition). So my analogy meant that by that line of reasoning an unarmed neighbor has no "household" and it should be no problem if someone armed invades it and kicks the family out.

Of course this is all messed up. There's no reason a nation shouldn't be considered a nation just because it doesn't have a military.

Well, historically its all that's mattered. And if we're going to change the definitions of well-understood things, then lets just get rid of nations altogether. Make them all states of a world union or something. Because as long as they're independent and self-managing, then some of them will prey on others of them, and military will continue to be the final arbiter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com