NationStates Jolt Archive

do they serve any good moral purpose? obviously they serve governmental purposes, but in practical terms all they do is pit people against each other and draw out differences and conflict. discuss (read: prove me wrong or agree, i don't mind - just interested in people's opinions)

(ooh a serious thread... i'm kinda bored hehe...)

One good thing about them is that they prevent scumbag regimes like Saudi Arabia from enforcing their unjust laws on people outside their oily sandbox.

One good thing about them is that they prevent scumbag regimes like Saudi Arabia from enforcing their unjust laws on people outside their oily sandbox.
that's a good one...

Yes, I think they do serve a purpose - generally. When national boundaries serve as a demarcation between peoples of different culture and belief, allowing each side to have laws and customs that suit them, without imposing those same on people of different leanings - then national boundaries provide a mechanism of cultural freedom.

On the other hand, some national boundaries serve to divide one group from another for no good reason. The middle east is the poster child for this - the cultural and philosophical differences between Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Palestine, as well as the Sunni areas of Iraq are so small as to be easily ignorable. There is no good reason for those boundaries, save that they were imposed by the colonial powers post WWI.

It's nice to think about a world without such borders, but think about that for a moment. Do we want to live in a system that recognizes Shari'a as legitimate? Does a Zimbabwean want to live under a regime that sees homosexuality as legitimate? Would a man from Beijing want to be forced to reverse the order of his names?

There are real differences between human beings. That isn't a bad thing. Trying to shoehorn all of our different beliefs and cultures into a single system would be.

I suppose one could argue that national boundaries are acceptable because they allow for an easier implementation of societal (national) laws. I suppose if people are too lazy to do it another way, then national boundaries are fine.

Well sometimes they inhibite my ability to Rape, pillage and burn.

Well sometimes they inhibite my ability to Rape, pillage and burn.
obviously you are not very good at these actions if something so small is capable of inhibiting you from performing them. :p

I would like to see national border become less important. For example, I would like passports to merely become a form of identification rather than a legal requirement for travel. (So in the future they will just scan your eyeball, see from your record that you don't have a habit of blowing things up or commiting crimes and let you on the plane.) I would also like to see it become easier for people to work in other countries, travel, marry people from other countries, etc. These changes can be achieved gradually in a step by step manner. No need for massive change all at once.

I would like to see national border become less important. For example, I would like passports to merely become a form of identification rather than a legal requirement for travel. (So in the future they will just scan your eyeball, see from your record that you don't have a habit of blowing things up or commiting crimes and let you on the plane.) I would also like to see it become easier for people to work in other countries, travel, marry people from other countries, etc. These changes can be achieved gradually in a step by step manner. No need for massive change all at once.
You don't need your passport to travel within the EU. Well, you do as identification, but not as a legal document. So that's the first part done. And the EU is doing the rest of what you asked. And it's trying to expand.

National boundaries are essential to effective management too. Running anything from a village to a city to a nation is basically a resource allocation exercise, and in order to have any hope of succeeding, every office/committee must know where its responsibility ends, and someone else's begins. You have to draw a boundary around a problem in order to solve it. This is even the case in a lot of mathematics.

This is why we see boundaries in places where none are necessary for nationhood - city councils and regions for example - even in nations where there is no electoral process which would make use of these.

You don't need your passport to travel within the EU. Well, you do as identification, but not as a legal document. So that's the first part done. And the EU is doing the rest of what you asked. And it's trying to expand.

The EU: It's more than just classifing rabbits as birds.

Good on you EU!

Kashmir has nothing decent yet there are boundaries there, and a few nations all want it.

The EU: It's more than just classifing rabbits as birds.

Good on you EU!
Or getting rid of Wales...

Kashmir has nothing decent yet there are boundaries there, and a few nations all want it.
It's got a nice altitudinal advantage - if either Pakistan or India gained sovereignty over it, they's start setting up mortars and shit there in order to bomb the other country.

do they serve any good moral purpose? obviously they serve governmental purposes, but in practical terms all they do is pit people against each other and draw out differences and conflict. discuss (read: prove me wrong or agree, i don't mind - just interested in people's opinions)

(ooh a serious thread... i'm kinda bored hehe...)
Easier to point out what they are bad for, than what they are good for. Much good those pencil made boundaries in Africa are doing. Practically the reason for Rwanda issues.

I think national borders work alright at the best of times. But I don't like it when they are used as defences for tyrants. It is only the dictators and torturers who win when you get people who petition their governments to follow the exact letter of Intenational Law, (law which was created to appease Josef Stalin and others of his ilk, law with no relation to common moralty or human rights... but that's another rant all together).

Without a border between Turkey and Iraq there would be huge terror problems. Instead, Turkey is an increasingly westernised nation with a economy growing faster than any other Arab country. Try telling the Turks the national borders are bad.

Philosophical though, they only cause war. And anyway, the ancient Greeks never had them and they did pretty well!

National boundaries obviously have pros and cons like everything in the world - they allow dictators to keep people trapped in opression, but they also prevent people you don't want in your nation entering. Without national boundaries, land property rights would disappear as whose jurisdication would you land come under - ie which court can enforce your ownership rights if your land is not inside a national boundary? Along the same line which court can enforce any of your rights if nations are not inside a nation at any time? Would nations exist without national boundaries, if they didnt would it be anarchy or a global dictartorship? How big would the administration need to be in order to globalise government?

This raises an interesting question: By what authority can one deny an immigrant the right to settle where they wish?

My feeling is that border control is fundamentally illiberal, and hypocratic, considering very few border controllers will have lived in the state are likely to be entirely indigenous.

I think by opening the world's borders we will create a free market of nationality, where people choose the home that they feel will best safeguard their liberties and provide them with prosperity. Competition, as we all know, increases everyone's game, and the world would be made a better place.

However, national leaders are not going to allow this to happen, as borders provide convenient barriers to imprison their populaces.

As long as different countries have vastly different laws, there will always be national borders. They are a means of control, but control isn't always a bad thing.

do they serve any good moral purpose? obviously they serve governmental purposes, but in practical terms all they do is pit people against each other and draw out differences and conflict. discuss (read: prove me wrong or agree, i don't mind - just interested in people's opinions)

(ooh a serious thread... i'm kinda bored hehe...)

i wrote an essay on this a couple of years ago. the language is a bit juvenile and its a bit of a rant and its also missing several important points. it's not quite the right subject but i think it puts forward my opinions on this fairly clearly:

The Importance of State Boundaries to Geographical Understanding

In this essay I intend to outline and explain the functions of state boundaries, some of the ways in which they have come to exist, and the significance they have for Geographical studies. I will focus on the history of state boundaries and how that history affects the way in which a state boundary is regarded; the interpretation of geographical data with consideration for variables within the concept of a state boundary; and also the meaning of the phrase “state boundary” and how the definition of the state is open to interpretation.

One of the main things to consider when discussing states and state boundaries is that many of the state boundaries that exist today were outlined and legitimized by colonial powers after the end of the Second World War. Before that state boundaries in many parts of the world were vaguely defined with some areas being effectively “unclaimed”. This means that many of todays state boundaries are wholly artificial with little or no consideration for local history and identities. The only real relevance that state boundaries have is to the people who set them out and decided where they should be located in the first place. To these people (governments, monarchs etc) a state boundary represents the unifying and nationalizing of the space and people they claim rulership over and the rendering of these into definite defensible sovreign territory and communities that can feasibly be surveyed and managed.( Daniels, Bradshaw, Shaw, Sidaway. (2001). p462)

In terms of academic study, state boundaries provide ready made parameters for the gathering and presentation of data, for example, when studying a topic like literacy rates, state boundaries provide an obvious package in which to present the data. However, it should also be mentioned that the presence of state boundries can lead to the misinterpretation of data, for example, it might be assumed when looking at figures for literacy rates within a state boundary that the data is accurate for all regions within that boundary. Therefore it is sometimes neccessary to further break down data into smaller categories like, for example, separation into urban and rural populations. If human world history was different and humans had not had the idea of claiming rulership over space and communities then state boundaries might not exist and another classification would be used to group data sets. Even with the history of state building that we have in the world, state boundaries are still only lines on a map and in reality only exist to geographers in this sense as a convenient box in which to package data.

The concept of a state boundary defines such things as nationality and sovreignty, and is related to many other issues, for example, trade, conflict, administration, migration, and so on (Winichakul. (1996). p67). However, not all of the population domicile within a state boundary may consider themselves members of the particular state it surrounds. In some countries, this situation is reality for a large proportion of the population within a state boundary. For example, the Kurds in the Middle East consider themselves part of the Kurdish nation and not part of the nations considered to “own” the particular area spanning the state boundaries that they occupy, in this case Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The Kurds consider themselves a nation apart, even though they do not have their own state.On a similar tack, many former states, such as the USSR and Yugoslavia, that were generally considered to be whole nations, have now split into separate parts, depending on religion, language and cultural differences, to form new nations.

The very idea of nationality and sovreignty is becoming less and less important and in reality is based on a wholly imaginary concept – the idea that being born in or living in a particular country gives you a claim of “ownership” of and belonging to that portion of the earths surface. Ludwig von Mises (1919) wrote, when discussing the essence of nationality, “We then recognize immediately that this national aspect can be neither where he lives nor his attachment to a state.” With the continuing trend of multi-nationalism within a state, for example, the UK population is made up of nationals of many different states across the world, nationalism is fairly pointless because the idea suggests that the population of a state has, or should have, one nationality. The term nationalism is almost impossible to define to the satisfaction of all parties. It has been expressed in terms of religion, language, ethnicity, race and culture but exceptions to the rule will always crop up. (Daniels, Bradshaw, Shaw, Sidaway. (2001). Ch.16. and Anderson, B. (1983). p3)

When considering subjects such as migration, the existence of state boundaries is considered a fundamental factor in explaining the phenomenon. In the case of migration, explaining the movement of people across a state boundary. However, if a family was to move to a new location five hundred metres up the road but happened to cross a state boundary in the process, they are still the same people with the same feelings, thoughts and habits, even though they are now living in a different state. Therefore a state boundary cannot be considered to be a physical thing that affects not only administrative and beaurocratic interests but also the identity of people, rather it should be regarded as nothing more than an administrative or beaurocratic divide, the existence of which is only really relevant and useful to the state.

State boundaries are politically relevant because they give a tangible representation of the extent of the territory controlled by a state and its government and a reason for the states existence. Hence, when studying the political aspects of Geography, state boundaries are essential elements to be considered as very few states have identical political profiles. A state boundary provides a necessary division between different political entities.

Conclusion:

In writing this essay I have concluded that state boundaries can be important, even essential, to some limited fields of geographical study, but should always be recognised as merely lines on a map drawn out for the convenience of government and that they have little real meaning to the general population of a state or to the study of global geographical issues.

Bibliography:

• Ludwig von Mises Institute, http://www.mises.org/nsande.asp. (2003). accessed 13th November 2003.
• Daniels, Bradshaw, Shaw, Sidaway. (2001). Human Geography: Issues for the 21st Century. Pearson Education, Harlow. Chapter 16, Sidaway, J. The Place of the Nation State.
• Winichakul, T. (1996). Asian Forms of the Nation. Curzon Press, Richmond. Page 67.
• Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.Verso, London. Page 3.

To this i would add that the cultural differences we perceive between nation-states are reinforced by the presence of borders and hence xenophobia is encouraged with thee result being the sort of draconian immigration laws we see today. in reality there is more of a gradation of cultural practices which have no real relation with the nations they are specifically attributed to.

My feeling is that border control is fundamentally ... hypocratic


i think Hypocrates may take issue with this! :p

do they serve any good moral purpose? obviously they serve governmental purposes, but in practical terms all they do is pit people against each other and draw out differences and conflict. discuss (read: prove me wrong or agree, i don't mind - just interested in people's opinions)

If the whole world was one country, we would never be able to agree on anything. Agreement must be reached for laws to be enforced.

National boundaries are completely necessary, a single world country would just not work. Humans have a natural propensity to feud and combat; this would occur and we would split up into tribes and we'd be back where we started.

Humans have a natural propensity to feud and combat; this would occur and we would split up into tribes and we'd be back where we started.

really? right-wingers and authoritarians always say this and yet i've got to just ask: source?

i look out the window just now, i don't see any feuding going on, i don't see any combat. in most situations, except for sport (which is ritualised warfare anyway) and business, the majority of people seem to have a propensity to get along the best they can with one another. occaisionally you'll get a bad apple who is quite obviously out for themselves. but these kinds of people are only ever rewarded in such things as big business and sport, and even in sport they are frowned upon. that's why there is the phrase "good sportsmanship", a real sportsperson will be competitive only on the field, as soon as the competition is over or halted for whatever reason they will make every effort to get along with their contemporaries. i just really wonder where people get the idea that humans are 'naturally' competitive and at odds with one another. the histor and prehistory of humans is one of co-operation. that's where society comes from, out of co-operation, first manifested in the clan system and increasing in complexity to the present day.