There is nothing inherently wrong about borders.
You’re probably very happy your house has a border. Wolf packs have borders. Borders are useful.
As I see it, borders are physical manifestations of a social construct. You know, like money, flags, medals, wedding gowns, etc etc. And just like all of these, borders have a social purpose for the tribe within. In their case it’s to distinguish between “us” and “them”.
Why make that distinction? Because tribes must pool their resources to thrive. That includes material things like food and shelter, but also immaterial resources like labor, safety, clean water, you name it.
But sharing has two hard requirements: reciprocity and trust. Without either, you cannot pool your resources without risk of getting taken advantage of. Why invest in a common good that might not be there for you when YOU need it?
That’s why reciprocity and trust are so fundamental to human relations! We built an entire society about signals of trust, about showing other people you are “us” and not “them”.
Long story short, tribes (“us”) guard their pooled resources from outsiders (“them”). That’s why Germans can’t collect their pension from Mongolian state funds. Nationalities, then, are a shorthand for calculating whether a person has contributed to a tribe’s resources and is therefore an “us”.
There’s a ton of valid(!) arguments to be made about which kinds of borders are fair, or which immigrants deserve our pooled resources. But that’s not my point here, I’m here to argue that visa are useful and serve a purpose (which is not bullying outsiders, but protecting INsiders)
Sure, I’ll try!
There is nothing inherently wrong about borders. You’re probably very happy your house has a border. Wolf packs have borders. Borders are useful.
As I see it, borders are physical manifestations of a social construct. You know, like money, flags, medals, wedding gowns, etc etc. And just like all of these, borders have a social purpose for the tribe within. In their case it’s to distinguish between “us” and “them”. Why make that distinction? Because tribes must pool their resources to thrive. That includes material things like food and shelter, but also immaterial resources like labor, safety, clean water, you name it.
But sharing has two hard requirements: reciprocity and trust. Without either, you cannot pool your resources without risk of getting taken advantage of. Why invest in a common good that might not be there for you when YOU need it? That’s why reciprocity and trust are so fundamental to human relations! We built an entire society about signals of trust, about showing other people you are “us” and not “them”.
Long story short, tribes (“us”) guard their pooled resources from outsiders (“them”). That’s why Germans can’t collect their pension from Mongolian state funds. Nationalities, then, are a shorthand for calculating whether a person has contributed to a tribe’s resources and is therefore an “us”.
There’s a ton of valid(!) arguments to be made about which kinds of borders are fair, or which immigrants deserve our pooled resources. But that’s not my point here, I’m here to argue that visa are useful and serve a purpose (which is not bullying outsiders, but protecting INsiders)