[cryptarch]

In the case of western Europe, we should care because we don't have internal OR external border controls, and Turkey is a neighboring country with a lot of refugees to dump on us.

I wish I understood why there isn't a move to reinstate border checks in the Schengen area.

It seems ludicrous to me to keep internal borders open when it is clear that the external borders have failed.

[icebraining]

I wish I understood why there isn't a move to reinstate border checks in the Schengen area.

But there is a move. In fact, multiple countries have done so, although temporarily: https://euobserver.com/migration/130260

Thing is, border control isn't free; it may not be visible for many of us, but there are a lot of people reliant on the openness of our borders for their daily lives. Imagine having to pass a border check on your way to work - that'd be the reality for many EU citizens nowadays if you were to reintroduce country borders.

And would it really solve the problem? What if those migrants just came by boat anyway? What are we going to do, let'em drown?

[cryptarch]

I have nothing.

I sometimes miss having more black-and-white opinions. Real life is hard.

[taway_1212]

> What if those migrants just came by boat anyway? What are we going to do, let'em drown?

What's wrong with rescuing them and then shipping them back to the coast they sailed off from? If they're on international waters, there are no legal obligations to treat them as asylum seekers.

[icebraining]

Is it practical? As far as I know, unless they're citizens, the countries of such coasts aren't obligated to accept them. And it's often not clear where they're actually from. Plus, what if they're from a war zone?

[taway_1212]

In the case I have in mind (people trying to get from Lybia to Italy), there's no country to speak of in Lybia currently. Even if there were and it wouldn't agree to the EU ship entering their waters, you can always get very near to the water border, inflate another raft for the people and board them on it. They'd have to sail to Lybia by themselves.

The bigger picture is that these situations would very quickly stop happening if the word spread that it's not longer viable as a way to get into the EU.

[icebraining]

I wonder if returning them to Libya is actually better than letting them drown.

[cryptarch]

How will you tell where to ship them if they've discarded their passports?

[taway_1212]

Ship them to the shore they came from, not their home country. The whole operation could take a couple hours, not weeks/months/years of paper-pushing.

[cryptarch]

How do you find out where they came from? And is it at all plausible to survey enough of the sea to catch even half of refugees coming in by boat?

[girvo]

Letting them drown is exactly what my (Australian) government did, disgustingly...

[jstanley]

All borders should be abolished. No human being has the right to tell any other human being where he can or can't go (with the exception of trespassing on private property, of course).

[cryptarch]

I don't agree at all, I think it's important to integrate immigrants in a country's culture as well as possible, because not doing so will result in damaging conflict between the existing population and the immigrants who bring conflicting value systems with them. I think the lack of an endless supply of resources for integrating immigrants is a good reason to limit immigration.

I think borders can be very valuable to separate groups with conflicting ideologies and worldviews, but I wish you the best luck in advocating that policy in your local political sphere.

[thinknot]

As someone who lives next to a border: no thank you.

[ardaozkal]

The parent post also defends your right of moving away from a border, you know.

[ue_]

>(with the exception of trespassing on private property, of course).

This ought to be removed too, along with the whole concept of property.

[vidarh]

I regularly point people to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

Especially in the Nordic countries. Having grown up in Norway, the idea of people e.g. fencing in fields or forests and keeping people off their land seems ludicrous and to an extent offensive. It's a massive restriction of liberty of the many for the benefit of the few.

(it's worth noting that the freedom to roam is generally restricted to non-urban areas, so e.g. not gardens in residential areas and the like)

[cryptarch]

Be the change you want to see!

Go ahead and abolish all your own property, you're free to do so.

Or was it more about you wanting to be entitled to product of your fellow man's labor?

[czep]

It's more like not wanting rent-seekers, whose property was given to them at birth, to be entitled to other people's labor. All property is theft, because in the grand scheme of things, we are all renters. We are here on borrowed time, why do we make a system in which some have more rights than others?

[cryptarch]

Do you have ideas on how to fix that?

I recently heard "land-ownership tax/renting land from the state instead of owning it" and "100% tax on death/abolish inheritance", I think they're interesting but not without problems.

[esun]

One of the reasons I work hard is so that my children have a good future ahead of them. Why should my family give that all back to the state when I die? The state didn't earn that money... I did.

[user5994461]

It's really easy to fix.

The process is called war. Properties are not valuable when tenants and landlords keep dying and the properties themselves might get destroyed.

[ue_]

>Go ahead and abolish all your own property, you're free to do so.

I do not own any private property.

>Or was it more about you wanting to be entitled to product of your fellow man's labor?

No; in fact, the exact opposite. It is about the worker owning the product of his own labour, rather than having it appropriated when production has finished. To each according to his labour.

[cryptarch]

I guess we agree on more than I thought we did.

This is why I insist on working as a contractor and not as an employee: I want to own my intellectual property until I choose to sell it, and I want to create and sell a product that's useful, not be paid for my time.

[andai]

You've figured out something very important, which is that as an employee, you never get to see most (ie. all, beyond the limit of your wage) of the value you create.

[ue_]

Well, I didn't figure it out as much as Marx, Engels, Kropotkin and Proudhon did.

[vixen99]

So you want to abolish the freedom for a group of people to decide how many and what kind of people should be able to take up permanent residence within their community? Good luck with that one. Is there a country anywhere that does that? I wonder that you stop at the family level! I suppose you do. If so, why?

[jstanley]

I live in Bristol. The people of Manchester have no right to tell me I can't come and live in Manchester.

I live in England. Why can "the people" (although it is surely not the people: it is the government) of Australia decide that I can't come and live there?