[toyg]

"People's desire to belong to a nation" is not a given - nations didn't even exist until roughly 300-400 years ago. People's desire to belong to something is a thing, but the definition of that something is very fluid: your town, your religion, your guild, your football club, your political party, your programming language community... The definition of one's "tribe" changes with the years, even in one's own lifetime.

Nation-states came into existence following the increased reach of reliable, everyday movement of people, goods, and ideas. Such limits are now disappearing, and not even slowly. This will continue to generate friction, while people's desire for belonging morphs political structures into something that suits the new conditions.

A reality in which the citizens of New York and London share more values than they do with people from the surrounding townships, is already here; one cannot wish it away out of nostalgia, sooner or later reaction gives way to progress.

[mytailorisrich]

It is not nostalgia. In Europe, for instance this is something actively forced on the people.

You put it like this is all inevitable and 'progress', which I think is both not true and dangerous by discarding the opinions of those unhappy with it (which leads to things like Brexit, IMHO)

This is a choice made on behalf of the people and Brexit, the recent election result in the Netherland, and the political situation in many other countries show that the people don't necessarily agree with it.

[toyg]

> this is something actively forced on the people.

Forced by whom? Changes are agreed by people, often very smart people who believe in a future where we won't squabble on silly things because someone drew a line in 1840something as far as they could drag their cannons.

In a world where your goods and services are built and sold all over the world at any given time, where everyone talks across continents at every hour of the day, a lot of the old "national" dimensions simply don't matter - or keep us in a state of vassalage towards folks who have already embraced the future.

There is always someone resisting change; you can still travel by horse if you really want to, but people will zip by you in trains and cars. Most of the Brexit-supporting public, for example, have already realized that they voted themselves on a buggy whip, and are busy trying to retrofit a steam engine on it.

[mytailorisrich]

You may remember how the Dutch, French, and Irish rejected the EU Constitution just for the EU to repack the same as the Lisbon Treaty and run with it anyway.

Immigration is a highly sensitive subject, and both in the UK and the EU governments have decided that 'more' is correct and anyone complaining is wrong and an extremist.

So I am not sure that changes are necessarily agreed by the people (not the same as "by people", which is the whole point).

> There is always someone resisting change

Again, you paint "change" as inevitable when most of what we're seeing is conscious decision by some people, not inevitable change (which is only mostly technology as in your examples).

[toyg]

> just for the EU to repack the same

"The EU" didn't repack anything - treaties are agreed or amended by national governments. If the Irish voted one way and then their government agreed something else, they can take it up with their own politicians.

> Immigration is a highly sensitive subject, and both in the UK and the EU governments have decided that 'more' is correct

Again, immigration is a topic managed almost exclusively by democratically-elected national governments. And it has always been - EU rules only apply to "traffic" between member states, and in fact give extra responsibilities to peripheral countries. Even between EU members, the only real EU rule covers right of employment; everything else (who can stay where for how long, which services they can access, etc) is for the local authority to decide.

The UK government, in particular, is currently schizophrenic on this subject. They spent inordinate amounts of time and money on grand public gestures (Rwanda policy, "hostile environment", Windrush fallout, or indeed Brexit) while, at the same time, completely failed to implement serious and sustainable policies on who is allowed to stay where and how - hence numbers skyrocketing.

You won't find a single UK cabinet minister not genuinely convinced that immigration should be curbed; it's just that nobody knows how to do it without looking like a buggy whip maker in a world of car drivers. To compete on the global stage of modern capitalism, a country needs talent and labor to go there, regardless of where they were born; a closed country inevitably declines, as it happened even to mighty Japan in the last 30 years. That doesn't have to mean that you relinquish entire towns to groups fresh off the boat. It's not a binary choice, and painting it as such is disingenuous at best.

> you paint "change" as inevitable

Because it is - change is driven by technological advancements. You can fight for the ancien règime as much as you want, sooner or later someone will show up at your port with a metaphorical warship and force you to join modernity.

[mytailorisrich]

> "The EU" didn't repack anything - treaties are agreed or amended by national governments

Yes, but you got the point, I used "EU" as umbrella term to mean the institutions and national governments controlling them. They all came together and 'repacked' the initial Treaty because they had decided to move forward with it even if the people made the "wrong decision" when asked about it.

> everything else (who can stay where for how long, which services they can access, etc) is for the local authority to decide.

That is not correct. EU law extensively governs these aspects as well.

> You won't find a single UK cabinet minister not genuinely convinced that immigration should be curbed; it's just that nobody knows how to do it without looking like a buggy whip maker in a world of car drivers. To compete on the global stage of modern capitalism, a country needs talent and labor to go there, regardless of where they were born; a closed country inevitably declines

And here we have it. The usual blurb that we cannot do anything and that, anyway, this is required, both of which are not true. We could divide immigration by 10 (the government is free to decide how many visa are issued and to whom) and still get the real, actual "talent". That's exactly the point and issue of all my comments in this thread, and this applies across Europe.

Certainly, in case of the UK, it is totally mad to claim that 700k extra immigrants in a single year were "needed talent". They are used to hide the decline of the UK economy that keeps declining per capita while the overall GDP holds on because of the ever increasing population (which is unsustainable so, actually, we need to learn to do without more people sooner or later), and too bad if that is going to create social and cultural issues in the future.

I agree with you that cabinet ministers do not want to curb immigration, that's the point: this is not "schizophrenia", it is a deliberate, deceitful strategy by the government. Again, the same seems to apply in many European countries and when the people show their dissatisfaction in the polls they are suppressed by the usual labels of "far right" and "xenophobia", which is also a deliberate strategy.

[toyg]

> used "EU" as umbrella term to mean the institutions and national governments

I.e. "the people", according to the various national constitutions. Unless you're actually stating that all EU governments have never represented their electorate for over 50 years, which is a bit of an extraordinary claim, your original point is fundamentally baseless.

> EU law extensively governs these aspects as well.

That's basically not true. The Dutch government can and does, for example, tax non-Dutch citizens extra amounts for healthcare, and/or remove them from the country. It can, and does, regulate how the non-Dutch can rent or buy property and where. The only thing it cannot do is stopping people from entering the country from another member country to look for a job, or stop them from getting such job. Everything else is fair game.

> And here we have it. The usual blurb

Please read what I wrote, not whatever strawman you wish I had written.

> We could divide immigration by 10 [...] and still get the real, actual "talent".

Note that I said talent and labor. You need basic labor to grow as much as you need advanced talent. Even Japan imported Iranian laborers during the stagflation years, effectively just to maintain the levels they already had. That's a simple function of increased wealth: the more people get wealthy, the less they want to break their backs doing hard jobs. So you either push up wages around the board, with massive inflationary pressures which will make everything even worse, or you import some basic labor. That doesn't mean 700k, obviously, but realistically it doesn't mean 1k either.

> They are used to hide the decline of the UK economy

I think you overestimate the strategic abilities of UK politicians. They are just incompetent buffoons propped up by propaganda based on obsoleted assumptions and lies, without any real ideological horizon.

[Shorel]

I disagree.

I think this desire to belong to a group is a very strong instinct, and it will be the strongest during our teenager years, up until we are 25 or so.

It is a biological imperative, not just a cultural construct.

Now, the size of the groups we are capable to create depends on our technology and culture, of course, but not the desire to belong to one.

Therefore, we have sports fans, anime and sci-fi subcultures, and so on.

[toyg]

That's what I said, verbatim: "People's desire to belong to something is a thing, but the definition of that something is very fluid."

The instinct is there, but how that instinct manifests is absolutely a cultural construct determined by circumstances. There is no biological imperative that says I should belong to the group of people born less than 10km from me (or 100, or 1.000, or 100.000).

[vixen99]

I can't speak for New York but I question just how increasingly many London residents do not share values with surrounding townships and vice versa.